Normandie. One of the guys I got to in roll call this morning had his picture on the visor. Sure enough, it was Two Small.”
“Where’d they take him?”
“Seventy-seventh. He’s being booked as we speak, and right now they’re only holding him on the bench warrant. I figure if you move now, you can get there before he can get to a lawyer.”
“I’m on my way.”
“How ’bout I meet you and sit in?”
“See you there.”
It took him only twenty minutes in midday traffic to get to 77th Street Station. The whole way he thought about how to play Washburn. Bosch had nothing on 2 Small but a hunch based on proximity. No evidence of anything and nothing for sure. It seemed to him that his one shot was a play. To convince Washburn that he had something and to use the lie to draw out an admission. It was the weakest way to go, especially with a suspect that had been around the block a few times with the police. But it was all he had.
At 77th, Gant was already in the watch office waiting for him.
“I had him moved down to the D bureau. You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Bosch saw a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts on a counter behind the patrol lieutenant’s desk. It was open and there were only two doughnuts left, probably sitting there since the morning’s roll call.
“Hey, does anybody mind?”
He pointed toward the doughnuts.
“Knock yourself out,” Gant said.
Bosch took a glazed doughnut and ate it in four bites while he followed Gant down the back hallway of the station to the detective bureau.
They entered the sprawling squad room of desks, file cabinets, and piles of paperwork. Most of the desks were empty and Bosch figured the detectives were out working cases or on lunch break. He saw a tissue box on one of the empty desks and pulled out three tissues to wipe the sugar off his fingers.
A patrol officer was sitting outside the door of one of the two interrogation rooms. He stood up as Gant and Bosch approached. Gant introduced him as Chris Mercer, the patrolman who had spotted 2 Small Washburn.
“Nice work,” Bosch said, shaking his hand. “Did you read him the words?”
Meaning his constitutional rights and protections.
“I did.”
“Great.”
“Thank you, Chris,” Gant said. “We’ll take it from here.”
The officer gave a mock salute and headed out. Gant looked at Bosch.
“Any particular way you want to do this?”
“We have anything on him besides the warrant?”
“A little. He had a half ounce of weed on him.”
Bosch frowned. It wasn’t much.
“He also had six hundred dollars cash.”
Bosch nodded. That made things a little better. He might be able to work with the money, depending on how smart Washburn was about current drug laws.
“I’m going to run a game on him, see if I can get him to hurt himself. I think it’s our best shot. Put him in a corner so he has to talk his way out.”
“Okay, I’ll play along if you need it.”
On the wall between the doors to the two interrogation rooms was a documents file. Bosch pulled a standard rights-waiver form, folded it, and put it in his inside coat pocket.
“Open it and let me go in first,” he said.
Gant did so and Bosch walked into the interrogation room with a dark look on his face. Washburn was sitting at a small table, his wrists bound by snap ties to the back of his chair. As advertised, he was a small man who wore baggy clothes to help disguise how little he was. On the table was a plastic evidence bag containing the items found in his clothing at the time of his arrest. Bosch took the chair directly across from him. Gant pulled the third chair back to the door and sat down as if guarding it. He was a few feet behind Bosch’s left shoulder.
Bosch lifted the evidence bag and looked through it. A wallet, cell phone, set of keys, the money roll, and the plastic bag containing the half ounce of marijuana.
“Charles Washburn,” he said. “They call you Two Small, right? With a number two. That’s clever. Was that you who came up with that?”
He looked up from the bag to Washburn, who didn’t reply. Bosch looked back down at the evidence bag and shook his head.
“Well, we’ve got a problem here, Two Small. You know what the problem is?”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Well, you know what I’m not seeing in this bag?”
“Don’t matter to me.”
“I’m not seeing a pipe or even any papers. And then you got this big wad of cash in here with the reefer. You know what all that adds up to now, don’t you?”
“It adds up to you letting me call my lawyer. And don’t bother talking to me ’cause I got nothin’ to say to your ass. Just bring me the phone and I call my guy up.”
Through the bag Bosch pushed the main button on 2 Small’s phone, and the screen came to life. As he expected, the phone was password protected.
“Oops, you need a password.”
Bosch held it up for Washburn to see.
“Give it to me and I’ll call your lawyer for you.”
“No, that’s okay. Put me back in the tank and I’ll use the pay phone in there.”
“Why not this one? You probably have your guy on speed dial, don’t you?”
“’Cause that ain’t my phone and I don’t know the password.”
Bosch knew the phone probably had call information and contact lists that could lead to further trouble for Washburn. Two Small had no choice but to deny ownership, even if it was laughable.
“Really? That’s sort of strange, since this came out of your pocket. Along with the weed and the money.”
“You people put that shit on me. I want to call a lawyer.”
Bosch nodded and turned to Gant and addressed him. He was strolling along a very thin constitutional line here.
“You know what that means, Jordy?”
“Tell me.”
“It means this guy had a controlled substance in one pocket and a wad of cash in the other. See, not carrying a pipe was a mistake. Because without carrying a means of personal consumption, the law views that as possession with intent to sell. And that bumps it up to a felony. His lawyer will probably tell him all of that.”
“What are you talking about, man?” Washburn protested. “That idn’t even half a lid. I ain’t selling it and you fucking know it.”
Bosch looked back at him.
“Are you talking to me?” he asked. “Because you just told me you wanted a lawyer, and when you say that, I gotta shut it down. You want to talk to me now?”
“All I’m sayin’ is I wasn’t sellin’ shit.”
“Do you want to talk to me?”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to you if it gets this bullshit taken care of.”
“Well, then, we gotta do it right.”
Bosch pulled the rights waiver out of his jacket pocket and had Washburn sign it. Bosch doubted his play would stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny but he didn’t think it would ever come to that.
“Okay, Two Small, let’s talk,” he said. “All I know here is what’s in the bag. It says you’re a drug dealer, and that’s how we have to charge you.”
