“B and W, man. We got a copy of a letter from the Irving guy telling the city people that they were coming after our ticket. They were going to shut us down. Somebody Googled the motherfucker in the office. They got his picture and showed it around. It was on the bulletin board with the letter. They wanted us drivers to know what was up and what was at stake. That this guy was leading the charge against us and we better shape up and fly straight.”
Bosch understood the strategy.
“So you recognized him when you pulled into the Chateau Marmont on Sunday night.”
“Damn right. I knew he was the asshole tryin’ to run us out of business.”
“Have some Coke.”
Bosch needed to break momentum to think about this. While Rollins opened the can and started to drink, Harry thought of the next set of questions. There were a number of things going on here that he had not seen coming.
Rollins took a long drink and put the can down.
“When did you get off shift Sunday night?” Bosch asked.
“I didn’t. I need doubles on account of my girl’s about to drop a kid without no insurance. I took a second shift just like I’m doing today and worked on through to the light a day. That would be Monday.”
“What were you wearing that night?”
“What is this shit, man? You said I’m not a suspect.”
“You’re not as long as you keep answering questions. What were you wearing, Hooch?”
“My usual thing. Tommy Bahama and my cargoes. You sit in a car sixteen hours and you want to be comfortable.”
“What color was the shirt?”
He gestured to his chest.
“This is the shirt.”
It was bright yellow with a surfboard design on it. Bosch was pretty sure of one thing. It was a Tommy Bahama knockoff, not the real thing. Either way, it seemed to him to be a stretch to consider the shirt gray. Unless Rollins had changed clothes, he wasn’t the man on the fire escape ladder.
“So who did you tell that you had seen Irving at the hotel?” Bosch asked.
“No one.”
“Are you sure about that, Hooch? You don’t want to start lying to us. That would make it tough for us to let you go.”
“Nobody, man.”
Bosch could tell by the sudden lack of eye contact that Rollins was lying.
“That’s too bad, Hooch. I figured you were smart enough to know we wouldn’t ask a question we didn’t already know the answer to.”
Bosch stood up. He reached under his jacket and pulled his handcuffs off his belt.
“I only told my shift supervisor,” Rollins said quickly. “Just like in passing. On the radio. I said, Guess who I just saw. Like that.”
“Yeah, and did he guess it was Irving?”
“No, I had to tell him. But that was it.”
“Did your shift supervisor ask where you just saw Irving?”
“No, he knew ’cause I had called in my twenty on the drop-off. He knew where I was.”
“What else did you tell him?”
“That was it. Just that, like conversation.”
Bosch paused to see if anything else would come out. Rollins was silent, his eyes holding on the cuffs in Bosch’s hand.
“Okay, Hooch, what’s the name of the shift supervisor you had Sunday night?”
“Mark McQuillen. He’s on the stick at night.”
“The stick?”
“He’s the dispatcher. But they call him the stick cause in the old days there was like a microphone or something on the desk. The stick. You know, somebody told me he’s an ex-cop.”
Bosch looked at Rollins for a long moment as he fit the name McQuillen into the picture. Rollins was right about his being an ex-cop. And the feeling Bosch had had earlier about things tumbling together now returned. Only things weren’t tumbling anymore. They were cascading. Mark McQuillen was a name out of the past. Both Bosch’s and the department’s.
Bosch finally came away from his thoughts and looked at Rollins.
“What did McQuillen say when you told him you saw Irving?”
“Nothing. I think he asked if the guy was checking in.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“That I thought he was. I mean, he was dumping his car at the garage. That garage is too small; they only let hotel guests park there. If you’re just going to the bar or something, you have to use the outside valet.”
Bosch nodded. Rollins was right about that.
“Okay, we’re going to take you back now, Hooch. If you tell anybody what we talked about here, I’m going to know. And I promise you if that happens, it’s not going to turn out good for you.”
Rollins raised his hands in surrender.
“I’m straight with that,” he said.
19
After they dropped Rollins off they headed back toward downtown and the PAB.
“So, McQuillen,” Chu said, as Bosch knew he would. “Who is he? I could tell the name meant something to you.”
“Like Hooch said, a former cop.”
“But you know him? Or knew him?”
“I knew of him. I never met him.”
“Well, what’s the story?”
“He was a cop who was sacrificed to the gods of appeasement. He lost his job for doing it just the way they taught him.”
“Stop talking in circles, Harry. What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I have to go up to the tenth floor and talk to somebody.”
“The chief?”
“No, not the chief.”
“And this is one of those times again where you’re not going to tell your partner what’s going on until you feel like it.”
Bosch didn’t answer. He was grinding things down.
“
“Chu, when we get back, I want you to start a moniker search.”
“Who?”
“Somebody who went by the name Chill in the North Hollywood–Burbank area about twenty-five years ago.”
“What the fuck? Are you talking about the other case now?”
“I want you to find this guy. His initials are C. H. and people called him Chill. It’s got to be a variation on his first name.”
Chu shook his head.
“That’s it, man, I’m done after this. I can’t work this way. I’ll tell the lieutenant.”
Bosch just nodded.
“‘After this’? Does that mean you’ll do the moniker search first?”
Bosch didn’t call ahead to Kiz Rider. He just took the elevator up to the tenth floor and entered the OCP suite
