Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [73]
Most of this was department legend or rumor, but Bosch knew even legend and rumor usually have some basis in reality. He was reluctant to step behind this curtain and possibly into this fight, as Billets clearly was, but offered to do so because he saw no alternative. He had to know what OCID had been doing and what it was that Carbone was trying to protect by breaking into the Archway office.
“Okay,” Billets said after some long thought. “But be careful.”
“Where’s the video from Archway?”
She pointed to the safe on the floor behind her desk. It was used to secure evidence.
“It will be safe,” she said.
“It better be. It will probably be the only thing that keeps them off me.”
She nodded. She knew the score.
The OCID offices were on the third floor of Central Division in downtown. The division was located away from police headquarters at Parker Center because the work of the OCID involved many undercover operations and it would not be wise to have so many undercovers going in and out of a place as public as the so-called Glass House, Parker Center. But it was that separation that helped foster the deepening gulf between Leon Fitzgerald and the police chief.
On the drive over from Hollywood, Bosch thought about a plan and knew just how he was going to play it by the time he got to the guard shack and flipped his ID to the rookie assigned parking lot duty. He read the name off the tag above the cop’s breast pocket and drove into the lot and over toward the back doors of the station, then put the car in park and got out his phone. He called the OCID’s main number and a secretary answered.
“Yeah, this is Trindle down on the parking lot,” Bosch said. “Is Carbone there?”
“Yes, he is. If you hold a —”
“Just tell him to come down. Somebody busted into his car.”
Bosch hung up and waited. In three minutes one of the doors at the rear of the station house opened and a man hurried out. Bosch recognized him from the Archway surveillance tape. Billets had been right on. Bosch put the car in drive and followed along behind the man. Eventually, he pulled up alongside him and lowered the window.
“Carbone.”
“Yeah, what?”
He kept walking, barely giving Bosch a glance.
“Slow down. Your car’s all right.”
Carbone stopped and now looked closely at Bosch.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I made the call. I just wanted to get you out here.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Bosch. We talked the other night.”
“Oh, yeah. The Aliso caper.”
Then it dawned on him that Bosch could have just taken the elevator up to the third floor if he wanted to see him.
“What is this, Bosch? What’s going on?”
“Why don’t you get in? I want to take a little ride.”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t like the way you’re doing this.”
“Get in, Carbone. I think you better.”
Bosch said it in a tone and with an accompanying stare that invited no choice but compliance. Carbone, who was about forty with a stocky build, hesitated a moment, then walked around the front of the car. He was wearing a nice dark blue suit like most mob cops liked to wear and he filled the car with the smell of a brisk cologne. Right away Bosch didn’t like him.
They drove out of the parking lot and Bosch went north toward Broadway. There was a lot of traffic and pedestrians and they moved slowly. Bosch said nothing, waiting for Carbone.
“Okay, so what’s so important you have to kidnap me away from the station?” he finally asked.
Bosch drove another block without answering. He wanted Carbone to sweat a little.
“You’ve got problems, Carbone,