“Harry Bosch? Don’t worry about Harry Bosch. We’re taking care of him. Worry about yourself, Mr. Cross.”
He leaned down now, putting his face close to Cross’s. We now could see Lawton’s eyes as they looked into the agent’s.
“Because you are in harm’s way. You are trespassing on a federal case. That is federal with a capital F. You understand?”
“Fuck you. And that is fuck you with a capital F. You understand?”
I had to smile. Lawton was doing his best to stand up to him. The bullet had taken away his body but not his spine and not his balls.
On the screen Parenting Today moved away from the chair and to the left. The camera caught his face and I could see the anger in his eyes. He leaned against the bureau, just out of the reach of Cross’s view.
“Your hero, Harry Bosch, is gone and he might not be coming back,” he said. “The question is, do you want to go where he’s gone? A guy like you, in your condition, I don’t know. You know what they do to guys like you in lockup? They wheel them into the corner and make them give blow jobs all day. Nothing they can do about it but sit there and take it. You into that, Cross? That what you want?”
Cross closed his eyes for a moment but then came back strong.
“You think you can pull that off, then take your best shot, Big Man.”
“Yeah?”
Parenting Today came off the bureau and up behind Cross. He leaned over his right shoulder as if to whisper in his ear. But he didn’t.
“What if I take my shot here? Huh? How would that be?”
The agent brought his hands up on both sides of Cross’s face. He took hold of the plastic breathing tubes that were attached to Cross’s nostrils. With his fingers he crimped the tubes closed, cutting off the air supply.
“Hey, Milton…,” the other agent said.
“Shut up, Carney. This guy thinks he’s smart. Thinks he doesn’t have to cooperate with the federal government.”
Cross’s eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth to gulp for air. He wasn’t getting any.
“Motherfucker,” Burnett Biggar said. “Who is this guy?”
I said nothing. I watched silently, the anger rising in me. Biggar had it right, though. In the lexicon of cop talk “motherfucker” was the ultimate expletive, the one reserved for the worst offender, the worst enemy. I felt like saying it but my voice wouldn’t come. I was too consumed by what I saw on the screen. What they had done to me was nothing compared to the humiliation and scarring they were putting on Lawton Cross.
On the screen Cross was trying to speak but couldn’t get the words out with no air in his lungs. There was a sneer on the face of the agent I now knew was named Milton.
“What?” he asked. “What’s that? You want to talk to me?”
Cross tried again to talk but couldn’t.
“Nod your head if you want to tell me something. Oh, that’s right, you can’t nod your head, can you?”
He finally let go of the tubes and Cross began to pull in air like a man coming up out of the water from fifty feet down. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he tried to recover.
Milton came around in front of the chair. He looked down upon his victim and nodded.
“You see? That’s how easy it is. You want to cooperate now?”
“What do you want?”
“What did you tell Bosch?”
Cross’s eyes flicked up toward the camera for a moment and then back to Milton. In that moment I didn’t think he was checking the time. I suddenly thought that maybe Lawton knew about the camera. He’d been a good cop. Maybe he knew what I had been doing all along.
“I told him about the case. That’s all. He came to me and I told him what I knew. I don’t remember it all. I got hurt, you know. I got hurt and my memory isn’t so good. Things are just starting to come back to me. I -”
“Why did he come here tonight?”
“Because I forgot I had some files. My wife called for me and I left him a message. He came for the files.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. What do you want?”
“What do you know about the money that was taken?”
“Nothing. We never got that far.”
Milton reached forward and held the breathing tubes again. He didn’t crimp them this time. The threat was enough.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Cross protested.
“You better be.”
The agent let go of the tubes.
“You are finished talking to Bosch, is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m finished talking to Bosch.”
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
When Milton moved away from the chair I saw Cross’s eyes were downcast. As the agents were leaving, one of them-probably Milton-hit the wall switch and the room and screen dropped into darkness.
We stood there staring at the screen and in the minute before the camera cut off we could hear but not see Lawton Cross crying. They were the deep sobs of a wounded and helpless animal. I did not look at the two men with me and they didn’t look at me. We just watched the dark screen and listened.
The camera finally-thankfully-cut off at the end of the minute but then the screen came alive again when the room’s light was flicked back on and Danny entered the room. I checked the time on the screen and saw this was only three minutes after the agents had left the room. Her husband’s face was streaked with tears. Tears he could do nothing to hide.
She crossed the room to him. Without a word she climbed onto the chair in front of him, her knees alongside his thin thighs. She lowered her hips onto his lap. She opened her bathrobe and pulled his face forward to her breasts. She held him there and he cried again. No words were spoken at first. She quietly and tenderly shushed him. And then she started to sing to him.
The song I knew and she sang it well. Her voice was as soft as a breeze, whereas the song’s original voice carried the rasp of all the world’s anguish in it. I didn’t think anybody could ever touch Louis Armstrong but Danny Cross certainly did.
I see skies of blue
And clouds of white
The bright blessed day
The dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
And that was the hardest part of the surveillance to watch. That was the part that made me feel the most like an intruder, as if I had crossed some line of decency within myself.
“Turn it off now,” I finally said.
24
The defining moment for me as a police officer did not occur on the street or while I worked a case. It occurred on March 5, 1991. It was during the afternoon and I was in the squad room in Hollywood Division
