lungs. The ringing in my ears was still there but I could now also hear my heart as it slowed its cadence to the normal beat of life. I looked up into the dark, sacred night, to the place where those not saved on earth wait for the rest of us above. Not yet, I thought. No, not yet.
40
While the cop on the deck above kept his gun on me his partner dropped through the trapdoor and made his way down the slope to me. He had a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other and the wild eyes of a man who has no idea what he has stepped into.
“Roll over and put your hands behind your back,” he ordered, adrenaline drawing his voice high and tight.
I did as I was instructed and he put his flashlight down on the ground as he cuffed my wrists, thankfully not in the style of the FBI. I tried to calmly talk to him.
“Just so you know, I -”
“I don’t want to know anything from you.”
“- I’m LAPD retired. Out of Hollywood. Pulled the pin last year after twenty-five-plus.”
“Good for you. Why don’t you save it for the suits?”
My house was in North Hollywood Division. I knew there was no reason why they should know me or care.
“Hey,” said the one from above. “What’s his name? Put the light on him.”
The man on the ground put the light in my face from a foot away. It was blinding.
“What’s your name?”
“Harry Bosch. I worked homicide.”
“Har-”
“I know who he is, Swanny. He’s all right. Get the light out of his face.”
Swanny took the light away.
“Yeah, fine. But the cuffs stay on. The suits can sort it all-ah, Jesus!”
He had put his light on the faceless body in the brush to my left. Linus Simonson, or what was left of him.
“Don’t puke, Swanny,” came the voice from above. “It’s a crime scene.”
“Fuck you, Hurwitz, I’m not gonna puke.”
I heard him moving around. I tried to lift my head to watch him but the brush was too tall. I could only listen. It sounded like he was moving from body to body. I was right.
“Hey, we got a live one down here! Call it in.”
That would be Banks, I assumed. I was glad to hear it. I had the feeling I was going to need a survivor to back up my account. I figured that with Banks facing the fall by himself for the whole thing, he would cut a deal to save his ass and tell the story.
I rolled over and sat up. The cop was kneeling next to Banks on the dirt below the deck. He looked over at me.
“I didn’t tell you to move.”
“I couldn’t breathe with my face in the dirt.”
“Don’t fucking move again.”
“Hey, Swanny,” Hurwitz called down. “The stiff in the house? He’s got a badge. FBI.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, holy shit.”
And they were right. It was a holy shit case. Within the hour the place was swarmed. By the LAPD. By the LAFD. By the FBI. By the media. By my count, there were six helicopters circling in the sky through most of the night, the cacophony so loud I found myself preferring the shotgun blast ringing in my ears.
The LAFD used a chopper to bring Banks up out of the canyon on a stretcher. When they were done with him I called the paramedics over and they put a clear aloe-based gel over the gas burns on my face. They gave me an aspirin and told me the injuries were minor and that there would be no scarring. It felt to me like I’d had my face laser-peeled by a blind surgeon.
I was uncuffed long enough to climb up the slope and then up through the trapdoor. In my house I was recuffed and made to sit on a couch in the living room. From there I could see Milton’s legs extending from the hallway as a crime scene team hovered over him.
Once all of the suits started showing up it started getting serious. Most of them followed the same pattern. They came in, somberly studied Milton’s body, then walked through the living room without looking at me and out onto the deck, where they looked down at the other three bodies. Then they came back in, looked at me without saying a word and went into the kitchen, where somebody had taken it upon himself to open up my new bag of coffee and put the percolator into heavy rotation.
This went on for at least two hours. At first I didn’t know any of them because they were North Hollywood detectives. But then the command decision was made to shift the investigation-LAPD’s part of it-to Robbery- Homicide Division. When the RHD dicks started showing up it started getting like old-home week. I knew many of them and had even worked side by side with some. It wasn’t until Kiz Rider showed up from the chief’s office that anybody thought to take the cuffs off my wrists. She angrily demanded that I be released from the bindings and when nobody made a move to do it, she did it herself.
“You okay, Harry?”
“I think I am now.”
“Your face is red and kind of puffy. You want me to call paramedics?”
“They already checked me out. Minor burns from getting too close to the wrong end of a shotgun.”
“How do you want to do this? You know the score. You want to get a lawyer or can we talk?”
“I’ll talk to you, Kiz. I’ll tell you the whole story. Otherwise, I’ll take the lawyer.”
“I’m not in RHD anymore, Harry. You know that.”
“You should be and you know that.”
“But I’m not.”
“Well, that’s the deal, Kiz. Take it or leave it. I’ve got a good lawyer.”
She thought about it for a few moments.
“All right, wait here for a minute and I’ll be right back.”
She went out the front door to consult with the powers that be about my offer. While she was gone and I was waiting I saw Special Agent John Peoples come in and crouch next to Milton’s body. He then looked over at me and held my eyes. If he was trying to send me a message I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. But he knew I held something of his in the balance. His future.
Rider came back inside and over to me.
“This is the deal. It’s turning into a major gang bang. We’ve got FBI all over this. The guy on the floor is apparently from a terrorism squad and that trumps all. They’re not going to let you and me waltz off into the sunset.”
“Okay, this is what I’ll do. I’ll talk to you and one agent. I want it to be Roy Lindell. Wake him up and bring him in and I’ll lay it all out for everybody. It’s got to be you and Roy or I lawyer up and everybody can figure it out for themselves.”
She nodded and turned and went back out. I noticed that Peoples was no longer in the hallway but I hadn’t seen him leave.
This time Rider was gone for a half hour. But when she came back she strode in with a command presence. I knew before she told me that the deal had been made. The case was hers, at least on the LAPD side of the ledger.
“Okay, we’re going to go down the hill to North Hollywood Division. We’ll use a room there and they’ll tape it for us. Lindell is on his way there. This way everybody’s happy and everybody’s got a piece.”
That was always the way. You had to walk the gauntlet of departmental and intra-agency politics just to get the job done. I was glad I no longer had a part of it.
“You can stand up now, Harry,” Rider said. “I’ll drive.”
