least of your problems. And at the end of the day, I’m still going to get what I want. So decide right now how you want to play it.”
The two B&W men looked at each other again. Bosch looked at Chu. If the bluff didn’t work, they might have to amp up the situation. Bosch checked Chu’s face for any sign of retreat. There was none.
The dispatcher opened a binder that was to the side of his desk. From Bosch’s angle he could see it was some sort of schedule. He turned back three pages to Sunday.
“All right, Hooch Rollins had that car Sunday night. Now leave, the both of you.”
“Hooch Rollins? What’s his real name?”
“How the fuck should we know?”
It was the dispatcher. Bosch was getting pretty annoyed with him. He stepped over closer and looked down at him. The phone rang.
“Don’t answer that,” Bosch said.
“You’re killing us here, man!”
“They’ll call back.”
Bosch locked in on the dispatcher.
“Is Hooch Rollins working right now?”
“Yeah, he’s working a double today.”
“Well, dispatcher, get on the radio and call him back here.”
“Yeah, what do I say to get him to do that?”
“You tell him you need to switch out his car. Tell him you’ve got a better one for him. It just came in on the truck.”
“He won’t believe that. We got no truck coming. We’re about to go out of business thanks to you people.”
“Make him believe it.”
Bosch gave the dispatcher a hard look and the man turned to his microphone and called Hooch Rollins in.
Bosch and Chu stepped out of the office and conferred about what to do when Rollins showed up. They decided that they would wait until he was out of the car before making an approach to him.
A few minutes later a beat-up taxi that was a year past needing a wash pulled into the bay area. It was driven by a man in a straw hat. He jumped out and said to no one in particular, “Where’s my new wheels?”
Bosch and Chu approached from two sides. When they got close enough to contain Rollins, Bosch spoke.
“Mr. Rollins? We’re with the LAPD and we need to ask you some questions.”
Rollins looked confused. Then the fight-or-flight look entered his eyes.
“What?”
“I said we need to ask you a few questions.”
Bosch badged him then so he’d know that it was formal and official. There was no running from the law.
“What’d I do?”
“As far as we know, nothing, Mr. Rollins. We want to talk to you about something you may have seen.”
“You’re not going to jack me up like the other fellas, are you?”
“We don’t know anything about that. Will you please accompany us to the Hollywood police station so we can sit in a quiet room and talk?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not now, no. We were counting on you wanting to cooperate and just answer some questions. We’ll get you back here right after.”
“Man, if I’m with you, then I ain’t making no money out there.”
Bosch was about to lose his patience.
“We won’t take long, Mr. Rollins. Please cooperate with us.”
Rollins seemed to read Bosch’s tone and realized that it didn’t matter whether he went the hard or easy way, he was going nonetheless. The street pragmatist in him made him choose the easy way.
“Okay, let’s get it over with. You don’t have to cuff me or anything, do you?”
“No cuffs,” Bosch said. “Just nice and easy.”
On the way, Chu sat in the back with the uncuffed Rollins and Bosch called ahead to the nearby Hollywood Division and reserved an interrogation room in the detective bureau. It was a five-minute ride over and soon they were walking Rollins into a nine-by-nine with a table and three chairs. Bosch made him sit on the side with only one chair.
“Can we get you something before we start?” Bosch asked.
“How about a Coke, a smoke and a poke?”
He started to laugh. The detectives didn’t.
“How about just a Coke?” Bosch said.
Bosch reached into his pocket for his change and then picked four quarters off his palm. He handed them to Chu. Since Chu was the junior partner here, he would go out to the machines in the back hallway.
“So, Hooch, why don’t we start with you telling me your real full name?”
“Richard Alvin Rollins.”
“How did you get the name Hooch?”
“I don’t know, man, I just always had it.”
“What did you mean back at the shop when you said you didn’t want to get jacked like the other fellas?”
“That wasn’t anythin’, man.”
“Sure it was. You said it. So tell me who’s getting jacked up. You tell me and it doesn’t leave this room.”
“Ah, man, you know. It just looks to us like they coming after us all a sudden with the DUIs and everything.”
“And you think those were setups?”
“Come on, man, its pol-o-tics. What do you expect? I mean, look at what they did to that Armenian bastard.”
Bosch remembered one of the drivers arrested was named Hratch Tartarian. He assumed Rollins was referring to him.
“What about him?”
“He was just sitting on the stand and they pull up and pull ’im outta the car. He refuses to blow but then they find the bottle under the seat and he’s toast. That bottle, man, is always under there. It stays in that car and nobody be driving drunk. You take a couple sips a night to make yourself right. But everybody wants to know how those officers knew about that bottle, you know?”
Bosch sat back in his chair and tried to follow and decipher what had been said. Chu came back in and put a can of Coke down in front of Rollins. He then took a seat at the corner of the table and to Bosch’s right.
“This conspiracy to set you guys up, who’s behind it? Who’s running it?”
Rollins raised his hands in a gesture meant to say
“It’s the councilman and he just lets his son do the dirty work and run things. I mean, he did. Now he’s dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“I seen it in the paper. E’rybody knows that.”
“Did you ever see the son before? In person?”
Rollins didn’t speak for a long moment. His mind was probably working, dancing around the trap being set for him. He decided not to lie.
“For like ten seconds. I was on a drop Sunday at the Chateau and saw him going in. That was it.”
Bosch nodded.
“How did you know who he was?”
“Because I seen a picture of him.”
“Where? The newspaper?”
“No, somebody had a picture of him after we got the letter.”
“What letter?”
