Bosch checked his watch. It was almost eight and he hoped he wasn’t too late.
“I’m not going for the doughnuts.”
Ferras cursed and shook his head.
“You’re going to talk to the Man?” he asked. “Are you kidding?”
“Unless I missed him already. If you’re worried about it you can stay in the car.”
“You’re jumping about five links in the chain, you know. Lieutenant Gandle is going to have our asses for this.”
“He’ll have
“Except what one partner does, the other always gets equal blame for. You know that. That’s how it works. That’s why they call them
“Look, I’ll take care of it. There’s no time to go through proper channels. The chief should know what is what and I’m going to tell him. He’ll probably end up thanking us for the heads-up.”
“Yeah, well, Lieutenant Gandle won’t be thanking us.”
“Then I’ll deal with him, too.”
The partners drove the rest of the way in silence.
The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the most insular bureaucracies in the world. It had survived for more than a century by rarely looking outward for ideas, answers or leaders. A few years earlier, when the city council decided that after years of scandal and community upset it required leadership from outside the department, it was only the second time in the LAPD’s long history that the position of chief of police was not filled by promoting from within the ranks. Subsequently, the outsider who was brought in to run the show was viewed with tremendous curiosity, not to mention skepticism. His movements and habits were documented and the data was all dumped into an informal police pipeline that connected the department’s ten thousand officers like the blood vessels in a closed fist. The intelligence was passed around in roll calls and locker rooms, text messages to and from patrol car computers, e-mails and phone calls, at cop bars and backyard barbecues. It meant street officers in South L.A. knew what Hollywood premiere the new chief had attended the night before. Vice officers in the Valley knew where he took his dress uniforms to be pressed and the gang detail in Venice knew what supermarket his wife liked to shop at.
It also meant that Detective Harry Bosch and his partner Ignacio Ferras knew what doughnut shop the chief stopped at for coffee every morning on his way into Parker Center.
At 8 a.m. Bosch pulled into the parking lot of the Donut Hole but saw no sign of the chief’s unmarked car. The business was an aptly named establishment in the flats below the hillside neighborhoods of Los Feliz. Bosch killed the engine and looked over at his partner.
“You staying?”
Ferras was looking straight ahead through the windshield. He nodded without looking at Bosch.
“Suit yourself,” Bosch said.
“Listen, Harry, no offense but this isn’t working. You don’t want a partner. You want a gofer and somebody who doesn’t question anything you do. I think I’m going to talk to the lieutenant about hooking me up with someone else.”
Bosch looked at him and composed his thoughts.
“Ignacio, it’s our first case together. Don’t you think you should give it some time? That’s all Gandle’s going to tell you. He’s going to tell you that you don’t want to start out in RHD with a reputation as a guy who cuts and runs on his partner.”
“I’m not cutting and running. It’s just not working right.”
“Ignacio, you’re making a mistake.”
“No, I think it would be best. For both of us.”
Bosch stared at him for a long moment before turning to the door.
“Like I said, suit yourself.”
Bosch got out and headed toward the doughnut shop. He was disappointed in Ferras’s reaction and decisions but knew he should cut him some slack. The guy had a kid on the way and needed to play it safe. Bosch was not one to ever play it safe and it had lost him more than a partner in the past. He would take another shot at changing the young man’s mind once the case settled down.
Inside the shop Bosch waited in line behind two people and then ordered a black coffee from the Asian man behind the counter.
“No doughnut?”
“No, just coffee.”
“Cappuccino?”
“No, black coffee.”
Disappointed with the meager sale, the man turned to a brewer on the back wall and filled a cup. When he turned back around, Bosch had his badge out.
“Has the chief been in yet?”
The man hesitated. He had no idea about the intelligence pipeline and was unsure about responding. He knew he could lose a high-profile customer if he spoke out of turn.
“It’s all right,” Bosch said. “I’m supposed to meet him here. I’m late.”
Bosch tried to smile as though he was in trouble. It didn’t come out right and he stopped.
“He not here yet,” the counterman said.
Relieved he hadn’t missed him, Bosch paid for the coffee and put the change in the tip jar. He went to an empty table in the corner. It was mostly a takeout operation at this time of morning. People grabbing fuel on their way into work. For ten minutes Bosch watched a cross section of the city’s culture step up to the counter, all united by the addiction to caffeine and sugar.
Finally, he saw the black Town Car pull in. The chief was riding in the front passenger seat. Both he and the driver got out. Both scanned their surroundings and headed toward the doughnut shop. Bosch knew the driver was an officer and served as a bodyguard as well.
There was no line at the counter when they came in.
“Hiyou, Chief,” the counterman said.
“Good morning, Mr. Ming,” the chief responded. “I’ll have the usual.”
Bosch stood up and approached. The bodyguard, who was standing behind the chief, turned and squared himself in Bosch’s direction. Bosch stopped.
“Chief, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Bosch asked.
The chief turned and did a double take when he recognized Bosch and realized he wasn’t a citizen wanting to make nice. For a moment Bosch saw a frown move across the man’s face-he was still dealing with some of the fallout from the Echo Park case-but then it quickly disappeared into impassivity.
“Detective Bosch,” he said. “You’re not here to give me bad news, are you?”
“More like a heads-up, sir.”
The chief turned away to accept a cup of coffee and a small bag from Ming.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I have about five minutes and I’ll pay for my own coffee.”
Bosch went back to the same table as the chief paid for his coffee and doughnuts. He sat down and waited while the chief took his purchase to another counter and put cream and sweetener into his coffee. Bosch believed that the chief had been good for the department. He had made a few missteps politically and some questionable choices in command staff assignments but had largely been responsible for raising the morale of the rank and file.
That was no easy task. The chief had inherited a department operating under a federal consent decree negotiated in the wake of the FBI’s Rampart corruption probe and myriad other scandals. All aspects of operation and performance were subject to review and compliance assessment by federal monitors. The result was that the department was not only answering to the feds but was awash in federal paperwork. Already an undersized department, it was hard sometimes to see where any police work was getting done. But under the new chief the rank and file had somehow pulled together to get the job done. Crime stats were even down, which to Bosch meant there was a good possibility that actual crime was down as well-he viewed crime statistics with suspicion.
But all of that aside, Bosch liked the chief for one overarching reason. Two years earlier he had given Bosch
