The Concrete Blonde (1994)

by Michael Connelly

  “Sharkey, we are going to tape this because it might help us later to go over it,” Bosch said. “Like I said, you are not a suspect, so you don’t have to worry about what you say, unless of course you’re going to say you did it.”

  “See what I mean?” the boy protested. “I knew you’d get around to saying that and putting on the tape. Shit, I been in one of these rooms before, you know.”

  “That’s why we aren’t bullshitting you. So let’s say it once for the record. I’m Harry Bosch, LAPD, this is Eleanor Wish, FBI, and you are Edward Niese, AKA Sharkey. I want to start by—”

  “What’s this shit? Was that the president what got dragged in that pipe? What’s the FBI doing here?”

  “Sharkey!” Bosch said loudly. “Cool it. It’s just an exchange program. Like when you used to go to school and the kids would come from France or someplace. Think like she’s from France. She’s just kinda watching and learning from the pros.” He smiled and winked at Wish. Sharkey looked over at her and smiled a little, too. “First question, Sharkey, let’s get it out of the way so we can get to the good stuff. Did you do the guy up at the dam?”

  “Fuck no. I see—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Wish broke in. She looked at Bosch. “Can we go outside a moment?”

  Bosch got up and walked out. She followed, and this time she closed the interview room door.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “What are you doing? Are you going to read that kid his rights, or do you want to taint this interview from the start?”

  “What are you talking about? He didn’t do it. He isn’t a suspect. I’m just asking him questions because I’m trying to establish an interrogation pattern.”

  “We don’t know he isn’t the killer. I think we should give him his rights.”

  “We read him his rights and he is going to think we think he’s a suspect, not a witness. We do that and we might as well go in there and talk to the walls. He won’t remember a thing.”

  She walked back into the interview room without another word. Bosch followed and picked up where he had left off, without saying anything about anybody’s rights.

  “You do the guy in the pipe, Sharkey?”

  “No way, man. I seen him, that’s all. He was already dead.”

  The boy looked to his right at Wish as he said this. Then he pulled himself up in his chair.

  “Okay, Sharkey,” Bosch said. “By the way, how old are you, where you from, tell me a couple of things like that.”

  “Almost eighteen, man, then I’m free,” the boy said, looking at Bosch. “My mom lives up in Chatsworth, but I try not to live with—man, you already got all of this in one of your little notebooks.”

  “You a faggot, Sharkey?”

  “No way, man,” the boy said, staring hard at Bosch. “I sell them pictures, big fucking deal. I ain’t one of ’em.”

  “You do more’n sell pictures to them? You roll a few when you get the chance? Bust ’em up, take their money. Who’s going to file a complaint? Right?”

  Now Sharkey looked back over to Wish and raised an open hand. “I don’t do that shit. I thought we’re talking about the dead guy.”

  “We are, Sharkey,” Bosch said. “I just want to figure out who we’re dealing with here, is all. Take it from the top. Tell us the story. I got pizza coming and there’s more cigarettes. We got the time.”

  “It won’t take any time. I din’t see anything, except the body in there. I hope there’s no anchovies.”

  He said this looking at Wish while pulling himself up in the chair. He had established a pattern in which he would look at Bosch when he was telling the truth, at Wish when he was shading it or outright lying. Scammers always play to the women, Bosch thought.

  “Sharkey,” Bosch said, “if you want we can take you up to Sylmar and have ’em hold you overnight. We can start again in the morning, maybe when you’re memory’s a little—”

  “I’m worried about my bike back there, might get stole.”

  “Forget the bike,” Bosch said, leaning into the boy’s personal space. “We aren’t spoiling you, Sharkey, you haven’t told us anything yet. Start the story, then we’ll worry about the bike.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you everything.”

  The boy reached for his cigarettes on the table and Bosch pulled back and got out one of his own. The leaning in and out of his face was a technique Bosch had learned while spending what seemed like ten thousand hours in these little rooms. Lean in, invade that foot and a half that is all theirs, their own space. Lean back when you get what you want. It’s subliminal. Most of what goes on in a police interrogation has nothing to do with what is said. It is interpretation, nuance. And sometimes what isn’t said. He lit Sharkey’s cigarette first. Wish leaned back in her chair as they exhaled the blue smoke.

  “You wanna smoke, Agent Wish?” Bosch said.

  She shook her head no.

  Bosch looked at Sharkey and a knowing look passed between them. It said, You and me, sport. The boy smiled. Bosch nodded for him to start his story and he did. And it was a story.

  “I go up there to crash sometimes,” Sharkey said. “You know? When I don’t find anybody to help me out with some motel money or nothing. Sometimes the room at my crew’s motel is too crowded. I gotta get out. So I go up there, sleep in the pipe. It stays warm most the night. Not bad. So anyway, it was one of those nights. So I went up there—”

  “What time was this?” Wish asked.

  Bosch gave her a look that said, Cool it, ask the questions after the story is out. The kid had been going pretty good.

  “Musta been pretty late,” Sharkey answered. “Three, maybe four o’clock. I don’t have a watch. And so I went up there. And I went in the pipe and I saw the guy that was dead. Just laying there. I climbed out and split. I wasn’t going to stay in there with a dead guy. When I got down the hill I called you guys, nine one one.”

  He looked back from Wish to Bosch.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Can I get a ride back to my bike?”

  No one answered, so Sharkey lit another cigarette and pulled himself up in the chair.

  “That’s a nice story, Edward, but we need the whole thing,” Bosch said. “We also need it right.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “I mean it sounds like it was made up by a moron, is what I mean. How’d you see the body in there?”

  “I had a flashlight,” he explained to Wish.

  “No you didn’t. You had matches, we found one.” Bosch leaned forward until his face was only a foot from the boy’s. “Sharkey, how do you think we knew it was you that called? You think the operator just recognized your voice? ‘Oh, that’s old Sharkey. He’s a good kid, calling us about the body.’ Think, Sharkey. You signed your name—or at least half of it on the pipe up there. We got your prints off a half a can of paint. And we know you only crawled halfway in the pipe. That’s when you got scared and got out. You left tracks.”

  Sharkey stared forward, his eyes slightly lifted toward the mirrored window on the door.

  “You knew the body was there before you went in. You saw somebody drag it into the pipe, Sharkey. Look at me now and tell me the real story.”

  “Look, I didn’t see nobody’s face. It was too dark, man,” the boy said to Bosch. Eleanor let out a breath. Bosch felt like telling her that if she thought the boy was a waste of time she could leave.

  “I was hiding,” Sharkey said. “ ’Cause, see, at first I thought they were after me or something. I had nothin’ to do with this. Why you dragging me down, man?”

  “We got a man dead, Edward. We’ve got to find out why. We don’t care about faces. That’s fine. Tell us what you did see, and then you’re no longer in it.”

  “That’ll be it?”

  “That’ll be it.”

  Bosch leaned back then and lit his second cigarette.

  “Well, yeah, I was up there and I wasn’t too tired yet so I was doing my
paint thing and I heard a car coming. Like holy shit. And what was weird was that I heard it before I saw it. ’Cause the guy has no lights on. So, man, I hauled ass and hid in the bushes on the hill right by there, you know, right by the pipe, right by where I hide my bike, you know, while I’m sleeping.”

  The boy was becoming more animated, using his hands and nodding his head and looking mostly at Bosch now.

  “Shit, I thought those guys were coming for me, like somebody had called the cops on account of me being up there spraying a scrip or something. So like I hid. In fact, when they got there a guy gets out and says to the other guy he smells paint. But it turns out they didn’t even see me. They just stopped by the pipe ’cause of the body. And only it wasn’t a car, either. It was a Jeep.”

  “You get a license plate number?” Wish said.

  “Let him tell it,” Bosch said without looking at her.

  “No, I didn’t get a fuckin’ plate. Shit, their lights were off and it was too dark. So anyway, there was three of them, if you count the dead guy. One guy gets out, he was the driver, and he pulls the dead guy right out of the back, from underneath a blanket or something. Opened a little back door those Jeeps got and drug the guy onto the ground. It was total horror, man. I could tell it was real, you know, a real dead body, just kinda by the way it fell on the ground. Like a dead guy. It made a noise like a body. Not like on TV. But what you’d expect, like, ‘Oh no, that’s a body he drug out of there,’ or something. Then he drug it into the pipe. The other guy wouldn’t help him. He stayed in the Jeep. So the first dude, he did it by hisself.”

  Sharkey took a deep drag on his cigarette and then killed it in the tin ashtray, which was already full of ash and old butts. He exhaled through his nose and looked at Bosch, who just nodded for him to continue. The boy pulled himself up in the seat.

  “Um, I stayed there and the guy came out of the pipe after a minute. No longer than that. He looked around when he came out but didn’t see me. He went over to a bush near where I was hiding and tore off a branch. Then he went back inside the pipe for a while. And I could hear him in there sweeping or something with the branch. Then he came out and they left. Oh, and uh, he started to back up and the reverse light went on, you know. He took it out of gear like real quick. Then I heard him say something about they couldn’t go backward ’cause of the light. They might get seen. So then they went forward, you know, without lights. They drove down the road and across the dam and around the other side of the lake. When they went by that little house on the dam they bashed the light bulb. I saw it go out. I stayed hidden till I couldn’t hear the engine anymore. Then I come out.”

  Sharkey stopped the story for a beat and Wish said, “I’m sorry, can we open the door, get some of this smoke out of here?”

  Bosch reached over and pulled the door open without getting up or trying to hide his annoyance. “Go on, Sharkey,” was all he said.

  “So when they were gone I went over to the pipe and yelled in to the guy. You know, ‘Hey, in there’ and ‘Are you all right,’ stuff like that. But nobody answered. So I leaned my bike down on the ground so the light would go in there and I crawled in a little bit. I also lighted a match like you say. And I could see him in there and he looked dead and all. I was going to check but it was too creepy. I got out. I went down the hill and I called the cops. That’s all I did, and that’s the whole thing.”

  Bosch figured the boy was going to rob the body but got scared halfway in. That was okay though. The boy could keep that as his secret. Then he thought of the branch taken from the bush and used by the man Sharkey had seen to obliterate the tracks and drag marks in the pipe. He wondered why the uniform cops hadn’t come across either the discarded branch or the broken bush during the crime scene search. But he didn’t dwell on it long, because he knew the answer. Sloppiness. Laziness. It wasn’t the first time things had been missed and wouldn’t be the last.

  “We’re going to go check on that pizza,” Bosch said, and he stood up. “We’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

  Outside the interview room Bosch checked his anger and said, “My fault. We should have talked more about how we wanted to do it before we heard his story. I like to hear what they have to say first, then ask questions. It was my fault.”

  “No problem,” Wish said curtly. “He doesn’t seem that valuable anyway.”

  “Maybe.” He thought a moment. “I was thinking of going back in and talking a little more to him, maybe bring an Identikit in. And if he doesn’t get any better at remembering things we could hypnotize him.”

  Bosch had no way of knowing what her reaction to the last suggestion would be. He offered it in an offhand manner, half hoping it would slip by unnoticed. California courts had ruled that hypnotizing a witness taints that witness’s later court testimony. If they hypnotized Sharkey, he could never be a witness in any court case that could arise from the Meadows investigation.

  Wish frowned.

  “I know,” Bosch said. “We’d lose him in court. But we might never get to court with what he’s given us now. You just said yourself he’s not that valuable.”

  “I just don’t know whether we should close the door on his usefulness now. So early in the investigation.”

  Bosch walked over to the interview room door and looked through the one-way glass at the boy. He was smoking another cigarette. He put it down on the ashtray and stood up. He looked at the door window, but Bosch knew he couldn’t see out. The boy quickly and quietly switched his chair with the one Wish had been using. Bosch smiled and said, “He’s a smart kid. There might be more there that we won’t get unless we put him under. I think it’s worth the chance.”

  “I didn’t know you were one of LAPD’s hypnotists. I must have missed that in your file.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot you missed,” Bosch replied. After a few moments, he said, “I guess I’m one of the last around. After the supreme court shot it down the department quit training people. There was only one class of us. I was one of the youngest. Most of the others have retired.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “I don’t think we should do it yet. Let’s talk to him some more, maybe wait a couple days before we waste him as a witness.”

  “Fine. But in a couple days who knows where a kid like Sharkey will be?”

  “Oh, you’re resourceful. You found him this time. You can do it again.”

  “You want to take a shot in there?”

  “No, you’re doing okay. As long as I can jump in now, whenever I think of something.”

  She smiled and he smiled and they went back into the interview room, which smelled of smoke and sweat. Bosch left the door open again to air it out. Wish didn’t have to ask.

  “No food?” Sharkey said.

  “Still on the way,” Bosch said.

  Bosch and Wish took Sharkey through his story two more times, picking up small details along the way. They did it as a team. Partners, exchanging knowing looks, surreptitious nods, even smiles. A few times Bosch noticed Wish slipping in her chair and thought he saw a smile play on Sharkey’s boyish face. When the pizza came he protested the anchovies but still ate three-quarters of the pie and downed two of the Cokes. Bosch and Wish passed.

  Sharkey told them the Jeep that Meadows’s body came in was dirty white or beige. He said there was a seal on the side door but he could not describe it. Perhaps this was so it would look like a DWP vehicle, Bosch thought. Maybe it was a DWP vehicle. Now he definitely wanted to hypnotize the boy, but he decided not to bring it up again. He’d wait for Wish to come around, to see that it had to be done.

  Sharkey said the one who stayed behind in the Jeep as the body was dragged into the pipe didn’t say a word the whole time the boy watched. This person was smaller than the driver. Sharkey described seeing only a slightly built form, a whisper of a silhouette against what little light there was from the moon above the reservoir perimeter’s thick stand of pine.

  “What did this other guy do?” Wish asked.r />
  “Just watched, I guess. Like a lookout. He didn’t even do the driving. I guess he was in charge or something.”

  The boy got a better look at the driver but not enough to describe a face, or to make a drawing with the facial templates in the Identikit that Bosch had brought into the interview room. The driver had dark hair and was white. Sharkey couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be any more exact in his description. He had worn matching dark shirt and pants, maybe overalls. Sharkey said that he also wore some kind of equipment belt or carpenter’s apron. Its dark tool pockets hung empty at the hips and flapped like an apron at his waist. This was curious to Bosch, and he asked Sharkey several questions, coming at it from different angles but getting no better description.