ABEL PRATT CAME OUT of his office with his suit jacket on. He noticed Bosch sitting at his desk in the alcove, using two fingers to type up a report on his telephone conversation with Muriel Verloren. The finished reports on the phone interviews with Grace Tanaka and Daniel Kotchof were on the desk.
“Where’s Kiz?” Pratt asked.
“She’s working on the warrant at home. She can think better there.”
“I can’t think when I get home. I can only react. I have twin boys.”
“Good luck.”
“Yeah, I need it. I’m going that way now. I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry.”
“Okay.”
But Pratt didn’t walk away. Bosch looked up from the typewriter at him. He thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe it was the typewriter.
“I found this on a desk on the other side,” Bosch said. “It didn’t look like it was being used by anybody.”
“It wasn’t. Most people use their computers now. You are definitely an old-school kind of guy, Harry.”
“I guess. Kiz usually does the reports, but I have some time to kill.”
“Working late?”
“I’ve got to go over to the Nickel.”
“Fifth Street? What do you want over there?”
“Looking for our victim’s father.”
Pratt shook his head somberly.
“Another one of those. We’ve seen it before.”
Bosch nodded.
“Ripples,” he said.
“Yeah, ripples,” Pratt agreed.
Bosch was thinking about offering to walk out with Pratt, maybe have a conversation and get to know him better, but his cell phone started to chirp. He pulled it off his belt and saw the name Sam Weiss in the caller ID screen.
“I better take this.”
“All right, Harry. Be careful over there.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
He flipped open the phone.
“Detective Bosch,” he said.
“Detective?”
Bosch remembered he had left no information on his message to Weiss.
“Mr. Weiss, my name is Harry Bosch. I am a detective with the LAPD. I’d like to ask you a few questions about an investigation I am conducting.”
“I have all the time you need, Detective. Is this about my gun?”
The question caught Bosch off guard.
“Why would you ask that, sir?”
“Well, because I know it was used in a murder that was never solved. And that’s the only thing I can think of that the LAPD would want to ask me about.”
“Well, yes, sir, it’s about the gun. Can I talk to you about it?”
“If it means you are trying to find who killed that girl, then you can ask me anything you want.”
“Thank you. I guess the first thing I’d like is for you to tell me how and when you knew or were told that the weapon stolen from you was used in a homicide.”
“It was in the papers—the murder was—and I put two and two together. I called the detective assigned to my burglary and asked and got the answer I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why is that, Mr. Weiss?”
“Because I’ve had to live with it.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong, sir.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t make a person feel any better. I bought that gun because I was having trouble with a bunch of punks. I wanted protection. Then the gun I bought ended up being the instrument of death for that young girl. Don’t think I haven’t thought about changing history. I mean, what if I wasn’t so stubborn? What if I just pulled up stakes and moved instead of going and buying that damn thing? You see what I mean?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Now, that said, what else can I tell you, Detective?”
“I have just a few questions. Calling you was sort of a shot in the dark. I thought it might be easier than trying to find my way back through seventeen years of paperwork and department history. I have the initial report on the burglary and the investigator is listed as John McClellan. Do you remember him?”
“Sure, I remember him.”
“Did he ever clear the case?”
“Not as far as I know. At first John thought it might have been connected to the punks who had threatened me.”
“And was it?”
“John told me no. But I was never sure. The burglars really tore the place apart. It wasn’t like they were really looking for stuff to steal. They were just destroying things—my belongings. I walked in this place and, man, I could feel a lot of anger.”
“Why do you say burglars? Did the police think it was more than one?”
“John figured it had to be at least two or three. I was only gone an hour—went to the store. One guy couldn’t have done all that damage in that time.”
“The report lists the gun, a coin collection and some cash that was taken. Anything else come up missing after?”
“No, that was it. That was enough. At least I got the coins back, and that was the most valuable thing. It was my father’s collection from when he was a boy.”
“How did you get it back?”
“John McClellan. He brought them back to me a couple weeks later.”
“Did he say where he recovered them from?”
“He said a pawnshop in West Hollywood. And then, of course, we know what became of the gun. But that was not given back to me. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway.”
“I understand, sir. Did Detective McClellan ever tell you who he thought burglarized your home? Did he have any theories?”
“He thought it was just another set of punks, you know. Not the Chatsworth Eights.”
The mention of the Chatsworth Eights stirred something in Bosch, but he couldn’t place it.
“Mr. Weiss, act like I don’t know anything. Who were the Chatsworth Eights?”
“It was a gang out here in the Valley. They were all white kids. Skinheads. And back in nineteen eighty-eight they committed a number of crimes out here. They were hate crimes. That’s what they called them in the papers. Back then it was the new term for crimes motivated by race or religion.”
“And you were the target of this gang?”
“Yeah, I started getting calls. The typical kill-the-Jew stuff.”
“But then the police told you the Eights did not commit the burglary.”
“That’s right.”
“Strange, isn’t it? They didn’t see any connection.”
“That’s what I thought at the time but he was the detective, not me.”
“What made the Eights target you, Mr. Weiss? I know you are Jewish but what made them pick you out?”
“Simple. One of the little shits was a kid who lived in my neighborhood. Billy Burkhart was four houses away. I put a menorah in my window during Chanukah and that’s when it all started.”
“What happened to Burkhart?”
“He went to jail. Not for what he did to me, but to others. They got him and the others on other crimes. They burned a cross a few blocks from me. In the front lawn of a black family. And they did other things. Mean things, vandalism. They tried to burn a temple, too.”
“But not the burglary at your house.”
“That’s right. That’s what the police told me. You see, there was no graffiti or indication of religious motivation. The place was just torn apart. So they didn’t classify the burglary as a hate crime.”
Bosch hesitated, wondering if there was anything else to ask. He decided he didn’t know enough to ask smart questions.
“Okay, Mr. Weiss, I appreciate your time. And I am sorry to reawaken bad memories.”
“Don’t worry about it, Detective. Believe me, they weren’t asleep.”
Bosch closed the phone. He tried to think of whom he could call about all of this. He didn’t know John McClellan and the chances of his still being in Devonshire Division seventeen years later were slim. Then it hit him: Jerry Edgar. His old partner at Hollywood Division had previously been assigned to Devonshire detectives. He would have been there in 1988.
Bosch called the Hollywood homicide table but got the machine. Everybody had cut out early. He called the main detective bureau number and asked if Edgar was around. Bosch knew that there was a sign-out chart at the front counter. The clerk who answered the phone said Edgar had signed out for the day.
The third call was to Edgar’s cell phone. His old partner answered it promptly.
“You guys go home early in Hollywood,” Bosch said.
“Who the hell is—Harry, that you?”
“That me. How’s it hanging, Jerry?”
“I was wondering when I’d hear from you. You start again today?”
“The world’s oldest boot. And I already got a hot shot. Kiz and I are working a breaking case.”
Edgar didn’t respond and Bosch knew mentioning Rider had been a mistake. The gulf between them not only still existed but was apparently frozen over.
“Anyway, I need to tap into that big brain of yours. This is going back to Club Dev days.”
“Yeah, which day?”
“Nineteen eighty-eight. The Chatsworth Eights. You remember them?”
There was silence while Edgar thought for a moment.
“Yeah, I remember the Eights. They were a bunch of peckerwoods that thought shaved heads and tattoos made them men. They did a lot of shit, then they got stepped on. They didn’t last long.”
“You remember a guy named Roland Mackey? Would’ve been about eighteen back then.”
After a pause Edgar said he didn’t remember the name.
“Who was working the Eights?” Bosch asked.
“Not Club Dev, man. Everything with them went straight down the rabbit hole.”
“PDU?”
“You got it.”
The Public Disorder Unit. A shadowy downtown squad that gathered data and intelligence on conspiracies but made few cases. Back in 1988 the PDU would have been under the aegis of then commander Irvin Irving. The unit was not in existence anymore. When Irving rose to the level of deputy chief he promptly disbanded the PDU, with many in the department believing it was a measure taken to cover up and distance himself from its activities.
“That’s not going to help,” Bosch said.
“Sorry about that. What are you working?”
“The murder of a girl up on Oat Mountain.”
“The one taken out of her house?”
“Yeah.”
“I remember that one, too. I didn’t work it—I had just gotten to the homicide table. But I remember that one. You’re saying the Eights were in on that one?”
“No. Just that a name came up that might have a connection to the Eights. Might. So does Eights mean what I think?”
“Yeah, man, eight for H. Eighty-eight for H-H. And H-H for Heil—”
“— Hitler. Yeah, I thought so.”
Then it struck Bosch that Kiz Rider had been right when she thought the year of the crime might be significant. The murder and the rest of the crimes committed by the Chatsworth Eights had occurred in 1988. It was all part of a confluence of seemingly small things coming together. And now Irvin Irving and the PDU were mixed into the soup as well. A cold hit match of DNA to a loser who drove a tow truck for a living was blossoming into something bigger.
“Jerry, you remember a guy who worked at Devonshire named John McClellan?”
“John McClellan? No, I don’t remember. What did he work?”
“I got his name here on a burglary report.”
“No, definitely not the burglary table. I worked burglary before going over to homicide. There was no John McClellan on burglary. Who is he?”
“Like I said, just a name on a report. I’ll figure it out.”
Bosch knew that this meant McClellan was likely in the PDU at the time and the investigation of the burglary of Sam Weiss’s home was folded into the investigation of the Chatsworth Eights. He didn’t care to discuss all of this with Edgar.
“Jerry, so you were new on the homicide table back then?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you know Green and Garcia very well?”
“Not really. I just got to the table and they weren’t there that long after. Green pulled the pin and about a year after that Garcia made lieutenant.”
“From what you saw, what was your take on them?”
“How so?”
“As homicide men.”
“Well, Harry, I was pretty fresh back then. I mean, what did I know? I was still learning. But the take on them was that Green was the power. Garcia was just the housekeeper. What some people said about Garcia was that he couldn’t find shit in his own mustache with a mirror and comb.”
Bosch didn’t respond. By labeling Garcia a housekeeper Edgar was saying that Garcia rode his partner’s coattails. Green was the real homicide cop and Garcia was the guy who backed him up and kept the murder books tidy and up to date. A lot of partnerships got sanded down into such relationships. An alpha dog and his assistant.
“I guess he didn’t need to,” Edgar said.
“Didn’t need to what?”
“Find shit in his mustache. He was going places, man. He made lieutenant and was out of there. You know he’s currently second in command in the Valley, right?”
“Yeah, I know. In fact, if you see him you might not want to mention that mustache bit.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
Bosch thought some more about what this might have meant to the Verloren investigation. A small crack was moving under the surface of things.
“That it, Harry?”
“I heard Green ate his gun not too long after pulling the pin.”
“Yeah, I heard that. I don’t remember being surprised. He always looked like a guy carrying a full load of somethin’. You going to take a run at PDU, Harry? You know that was Irving’s squad, don’t you?”
“Yeah, Jerry, I know. I doubt I’m going that way.”
“Be careful if you do, my man.”
Bosch wanted to change the subject before hanging up. Edgar had always been a department gossip. Harry didn’t want his old partner’s loose lips to spread the word that Bosch was taking a run at Irving now that he was back with a badge.
“So how’s things in Hollywood?” he asked.
“We just got back into the bureau after the earthquake retrofit. You missed all of that. We were stuck upstairs in roll call for like a year.”
“How is it?”
“It’s like an insurance office now. We have pods and sound filters between the desks. All done up in government gray. Nice but not the same.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Then they gave the D-threes double-wides—desks with two sides of drawers. The rest of us get one side.”
Bosch smiled. Little slights like that got magnified in the department and the administrators who made such decisions never learned. Like when most of Internal Affairs moved out of Parker Center and into the old Bradbury Building and the word spread through the ranks that the captain over there had a fireplace in his office.
“So what are you gonna do, Jerry?”
“Same old same old, that’s what I’m gonna do. Get off my ass and knock on doors.”
“I hear you, man.”
“Watch your six, Harry.”
“Always.”
After hanging up, Bosch sat motionless at his desk for a few moments as he thought through the conversation and the new meanings it brought to the case. If there was a connection between the case and PDU then they had a whole new ball game.
He looked down at the murder book, still open to the burglary report, and stared at the scrawled signature of John McClellan. He picked up the phone and called the Department of Operations in Parker Center and asked the duty officer for an assignment location for a detective named John McClellan. He read McClellan’s badge number off the burglary report. He was put on hold and expected that he would be told that McClellan was long retired. It had been seventeen years.
But when the duty officer came back on the line he reported that an officer named John McClellan with the badge number Bosch provided was now a lieutenant assigned to the Office of Strategic Planning. The synapse connections in Bosch’s brain started tripping. Seventeen years ago McClellan worked for Irving in the PDU. Now the assignment and rank were different but he was still working for him. And Irving just happened to run into Bosch in the Parker Center cafeteria on the day Bosch caught a case with ties to the PDU.
“High jingo,” Bosch whispered to himself as he hung up.
Like a battleship going into a turn, the case was slowly, surely and unstoppably moving in a new direction. Bosch could feel something building inside his chest. He thought about the coincidence of Irving crossing his path. If it was a coincidence. Bosch wondered if the deputy chief already knew at that moment what case they had pulled the cold hit on and where it was going to lead.
The department buried secrets every day. It was a given. But who would have thought seventeen years ago that a chemical test run one day in a DOJ lab in Sacramento might put a shovel into the greasy dirt and turn over the past, bringing this secret to light.