The Drop - Michael Connelly [71]
There were wooden signs hanging from the ceiling above the pods for the different crime units. Bosch went over to the homicide pod and looked for his old partner Jerry Edgar’s desk. He identified it because of a photo taped to the back of the cubicle of Edgar with Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of the Dodgers. Bosch sat down and tried the pen drawer but found it locked. This gave him an idea and he quickly stood back up and scanned all the desks and counters in the squad room until he saw a stack of newspapers on a break table near the front of the room. He walked over and looked through the stack until he found the sports section. He then leafed through it until he found one of the ubiquitous advertisements for pharmaceutical treatment of erectile dysfunction. He tore the ad out and then went back to Edgar’s desk.
Bosch had just finished slipping the ad through the crack above Edgar’s locked desk drawer when a voice surprised him from behind.
“RHD?”
Bosch swiveled around on Edgar’s chair. A uniformed cop was standing by the entrance from the back hallway. He had gray close-cropped hair and a muscular build. He was in his midforties but looked younger, even with the gray hair.
“Yeah, that’s me. Robert Mason?”
“That’s me. What is—”
“Come on over here so we can talk, Officer Mason.”
Mason came over. Bosch noticed that his short sleeves were tight on his biceps. He was the breed of cop who wanted any potential challengers to see the guns and know what they would be up against.
“Have a seat,” Bosch said.
“No, thanks,” Mason said. “What’s going on? I’m EOW and I want to get out of here.”
“Three deuces.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Three deuces.”
Bosch was watching his eyes, looking for any sort of tell.
“Okay, three deuces. You got me. What does it mean?”
“It means there are no coincidences, Mason. And you writing up three deuces last summer on three different B and W taxi drivers, all in Adam-sixty-five, stretches the limits of possible coincidence. My name isn’t RHD. It’s Bosch and I’m investigating the murder of your buddy George Irving.”
Now he saw the tell. But it came and went. Mason was about to make a bad choice. But when he did, Bosch was still surprised.
“George Irving was a suicide.”
Bosch looked at him for a moment.
“Really? You know that?”
“I know it’s the only way it could’ve happened. Him going there, to that hotel. He killed himself and it had nothing to do with Black and White. You’re barking up the wrong tree, dog.”
Bosch started to get annoyed with this arrogant asshole.
“Let’s cut the bullshit, Mason. You’ve got a choice here. You can take a seat and tell me what you did and who told you to do it and maybe you’ll get out of this okay. Or you can stand there and keep spinning bullshit and then I won’t really care what happens to you.”
Mason folded his arms across his thick chest. He was going to turn this into a mano a mano battle of who backs down first, and it wasn’t a game where big biceps gave you the edge. He was ultimately going to lose.
“I don’t want to sit down. I have no involvement in this case other than that I knew the guy who jumped. That’s it.”
“Then tell me about the three deuces.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit.”
Bosch nodded.
“You’re right. You don’t.”
He stood up and glanced back at Edgar’s desk to make sure he hadn’t left anything out of place. He then took a step toward Mason and pointed at his chest.
“Remember this moment. Because this was the moment you blew it, dog. This was the moment you could have saved your job but instead you gave it away. You’re not EOW. You just put the P in front of it—permanent end of watch.”
Bosch headed toward the back hallway. He knew he was a walking contradiction. A guy who on Monday morning said he wouldn’t investigate cops, and now here he was. He was going to burn this