The Black Box

choice, whether to save yourself or not.”

Banks shook his head like he was trying to clear a dream.

“Oh, man . . . this is so fuckin’ crazy. You’re not a cop, are you? That’s it. You’re some kind of nut goin’ around doing this. If you’re a cop, show me your badge. Let me see it, asshole.”

Bosch didn’t move, except to take another drink of water. He waited. Car lights from the parking lot raked across the front window and Banks started yelling.

“Hey! Help! I’m in—”

Bosch grabbed the cup and threw the rest of the water in Banks’s face to shut him up. He moved quickly into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. When he came out, Banks was coughing and sputtering, and Bosch used the towel to gag him, and then tied it behind his head. Grabbing his hair and jerking his head at an angle, he said into Banks’s ear, “You yell again and I won’t be so gentle.”

Bosch walked to the window and split the blinds with a finger. He could only see the two cars that were already in the lot when they arrived. Whoever had just driven into the lot had apparently turned around and then driven out. He turned back to check on Banks, then took his jacket off and threw it on the bed, exposing the pistol holstered on his hip. He sat back down across from Banks.

“Okay, where were we? Right, the choice. You have a choice to make tonight, Reggie. The immediate choice is whether to speak to me or not. But that decision has great implications for you. It’s really a choice between spending the rest of your life in prison, or ameliorating your situation with your cooperation. You know what ameliorate means? It means ‘make better.’”

Banks shook his head, but not to say no. It was more of an I-can’t-believe-what-is-happening-to-me shake of the head.

“Now I’m going to take the gag off, and if you try to yell out again, then . . . well, then there are going to be consequences. But before I do that, I want you to concentrate on what I tell you here for the next few minutes because I want you to really understand the position you’re in. You understand?”

Banks dutifully nodded and even tried to voice his agreement through the gag, but it came out as an unintelligible sound.

“Good,” Bosch said. “Here’s the deal. You are part of a conspiracy that has lasted more than twenty years. It is a conspiracy that started on a boat called the Saudi Princess and it has lasted until this very moment.”

Bosch watched Banks’s eyes grow large and fearful as he processed what was said. There was now a growing look of terror in them.

“You’re either going to prison for a very long time or you are going to cooperate and help us break open the conspiracy. If you cooperate, then you have a shot at some leniency, a chance to avoid spending the rest of your life in a prison. Can I take the gag away now?”

Banks nodded vigorously. Bosch reached across the table and roughly pulled the towel off his head.

“There,” he said.

Bosch and Banks stared at each other for a long moment. Then Banks spoke with unadulterated desperation in his voice.

“Please, mister, I don’t know what the hell you are talking about with conspiracies and shit. I sell tractors. You know that. You saw me, man. That’s what I do. If you want to ask me questions about a John—”

Bosch slammed his palm down hard on the table.

“Enough!”

Banks held quiet and Bosch got up. He went to the case file that was in his backpack and brought it back to the table. He had stacked the deck that morning, preparing the file so that it could be opened and photos and documents could be presented in a sequence of his choosing. Bosch opened it, and there was one of the photos of Anneke Jespersen on the ground in the alley. He slid it across the table so that it was right in front of Banks.

“There is the woman you five killed and then you covered it up.”

“You’re crazy. This is so—”

Bosch slid the next photo across—a shot of the murder weapon.

“And there’s the Iraqi Army pistol she was killed with. One of the weapons you told me earlier you smuggled back from the Gulf.”

Banks shrugged.

“So? What are they going to do to me? Take away my VFW card? Big fucking deal. Get these pictures out of my face.”

Bosch slid the next one across. Banks, Dowler, Cosgrove, and Henderson on the pool deck of the Saudi Princess.

“And there you four are together on the Princess, the night before you all got drunk and raped Anneke Jespersen.”

Banks shook his head, but Bosch could tell the last photo had hit its target. Banks was scared because even he knew that he was the weak link. Dowler might be right there with him, but Dowler wasn’t handcuffed to a chair. He was.

All the fear and worry boiled up inside and Banks made a colossal mistake.

“The statute of limitations on a rape is seven years and you’ve got nothing on me. I didn’t have a fucking thing to do with any of the other shit.”

It was a major concession on his part. All Bosch had was a conspiracy theory with no evidence to back it up. The play with Banks had only one purpose. To turn him against the others. To make him the evidence against them.

But Banks didn’t appear to understand what he had said, what he had given. Bosch rolled with it.

“Is that what Henderson said, that you all were in the clear on the rape? Is that why he made a move on Cosgrove, wanted money for his own restaurant?”

Banks didn’t answer. He seemed stunned by Bosch’s knowledge of things. Bosch had been reaching, but not without confidence in how all things between the men who had been on the boat were linked.

“Only that move sort of backfired on him, huh?”

Bosch nodded as if confirming his own statement. He saw some sort of realization come into Banks’s eyes. It was what he was waiting for.

“That’s right,” Bosch said. “We’ve got Dowler. And he doesn’t want to go away for the rest of his life. So he’s been cooperating.”

Banks shook his head.

“That’s impossible. I just talked to him. On the phone. Right after you left the post.”

That was the trouble with improvising. You never knew when your story would bump into irrefutable facts. Bosch tried to cover by smiling slyly and nodding.

“Of course you did. He was with us when you called him. He said exactly what we told him to say to you. And then he went back to telling us stories about you and Cosgrove and Drummond . . . Drummer, as you guys called him back then.”

Bosch saw belief enter Banks’s eyes. He knew someone had to have told Bosch about Drummer. He couldn’t just make it up.

Bosch made a show of looking at the file in front of him, as if to check whether he had forgotten something.

“I don’t know, Reg. When this all goes down with the grand jury and you guys all get charged with murder, rape, and conspiracy, et cetera, et cetera, who do you think Cosgrove and Drummond will come up with for lawyers? Who will you be able to get? And when they decide to throw you under the bus and say it was you and Dowler and Henderson that formed the conspiracy, who do you think the jury is going to believe? Them or you?”

His arms pinned behind the chair, Banks tried to lean forward but could only move a few inches. So he just hung his head forward in bitter fear and disappointment.

“That statute of limitations is over,” he said. “I can’t be charged with the boat, and that’s all I did.”

Bosch shook his head slowly. The criminal mind always amazed him in its ability to distance itself from crimes and to rationalize them.

“You can’t even say it, can you? You call it ‘the boat.’ It was rape, you guys raped her. And you don’t know