The Concrete Blonde (1994)

by Michael Connelly

  “We should try to go down there by that deli, get a closer—”

  Clarke shut up and turned around at the sound of footsteps. Lewis kept his eye to the camera, waiting for the shot at the restaurant. The steps belonged to a man in a blue security uniform.

  “Can I ask you what you guys are doing?” the guard asked.

  Clarke badged him and said, “We’re on the job.”

  The guard, a young black man, stepped closer to look at the badge and ID and raised his hand to hold it steady. Clarke jerked it up out of his reach.

  “Don’t touch it, bro. Nobody touches my badge.”

  “That says LAPD. You all check in with Santa Monica PD? They know you’re out here?”

  “Who the fuck cares? Just leave us alone.”

  Clarke turned around. When the guard didn’t leave, he turned back and said, “Son, you need something?”

  “This garage is my beat, Detective Clarke. I can be wherever I want to be.”

  “You can get the fuck outta here. I can—”

  Clarke heard the camera shutter close and the sound of the automatic wind. He turned to Lewis, who stood up smiling.

  “I got it—a hand shot,” Lewis said as he stood up. “They’re on the move, let’s go.”

  Lewis collapsed the telescope legs of the tripod and quickly got in the passenger seat of the gray Caprice they had traded the black Plymouth for.

  “See ya, bro,” Clarke said to the guard. He got in behind the wheel.

  The car backed out, forcing the security guard to jump out of the way. Clarke looked in the rearview mirror smiling as he drove toward the exit ramp. He saw the guard talking into a hand-held radio.

  “Talk all you want, buddy boy,” he said.

  The IAD car pulled up to the exit booth. Clarke handed the parking stub and two dollars to the man in the booth. He took it but didn’t lift the black-and-white-striped pipe that served as a gate.

  “Benson said I have to hold you guys here,” the man in the booth said.

  “What? Who the fuck is Benson?” Clarke said.

  “He’s the security. He said hold it here a minute.”

  Just then, both IAD officers saw Bosch and Wish drive by the garage, heading up to Fourth Street

  . They were going to lose them. Clarke held out his badge to the booth attendant.

  “We’re on the job. Open that goddam gate. Now!”

  “He’ll be along. I gotta do what he say. Else I’ll lose my job.”

  “You open that gate or you’re going to lose it, peckerwood,” Clarke yelled.

  He put his foot down and revved the engine to show he meant to drive through it.

  “Why you think we got a pipe ’stead a flimsy piece a wood. You go ahead. That pipe’ll take out your windshield, mister. You do what you want, but he’s coming right along.”

  In the rearview, Clarke saw the security guard walking down the ramp. Clarke’s face was becoming blotchy red with anger. He felt Lewis’s hand on his arm.

  “Cool it, partner,” Lewis said. “They were holding hands when they came out of the restaurant. We won’t lose them. They’re only going to her place. I’ll bet you a week’s driving that we’ll pick ’em up there.”

  Clarke shook his hand off and let out a long breath; that seemed to bring a more placid tone to his face. He said, “I don’t care. I don’t fucking like this shit one bit.”

  On Ocean Park Boulevard Bosch found a parking space across from Eleanor’s building. He pulled in but made no move to get out of the car. He looked at her, still feeling the glow of a few minutes before but unsure where they were going with this. She seemed to know this, maybe even feel it herself. She put her hand on top of his and leaned over to kiss him. She whispered, “Come in with me.”

  He got out and came around to her side. She was already out and he closed the door. They rounded the front end of the car and then stood next to it, waiting for an approaching car to pass by. The car’s high beams were on and Bosch turned away and looked at Eleanor. So it was she who first noticed the high beams drift toward them.

  “Harry?”

  “What?”

  “Harry!”

  Then Bosch turned back to the approaching car and saw the lights—actually four beams from two sets of square side-by-side headlights—bearing down on them. In the few seconds that were left Bosch clearly came to the conclusion that the car was not drifting their way but rather driving at them. There was no time, yet time seemed to go into suspension. In what seemed to him to be slow motion, Bosch turned to his right, to Eleanor. But she needed no help. In unison, they leapt onto the hood of Bosch’s car. He was rolling over her and they were both tumbling toward the sidewalk when his car lurched violently and there was a high-pitched keening sound of tearing metal. Bosch saw a shower of blue sparks pass in his peripheral vision. Then he landed on top of Eleanor on the thin strip of sod that was between the curb and the sidewalk. They were safe, Bosch could sense. Scared, but safe for the moment.

  He came up, gun out and steadied by both hands. The car that had come after them was not stopping. It was already fifty yards east, heading away and picking up speed. Bosch fired one round that he thought ricocheted off the rear window, the bullet too weak at that distance to penetrate the glass. He heard Eleanor’s gun fire twice at his side, but saw no damage to the hit-and-run car.

  Without a word they both piled into Bosch’s car through the passenger door. Bosch held his breath while he turned the key, but the engine started and the car squealed away from the curb. Bosch rocked the steering wheel from side to side as he picked up speed. The suspension felt a little loose. He had no idea what the extent of the damage was. When he tried to check the side-view mirror he saw it was gone. When he turned on the lights, only the passenger-side beam worked.

  The hit-and-run car was at least five blocks ahead, near the crest where Ocean Park Boulevard

  rises and then drops from sight. The lights on the speeding car went out just as it dropped over the hill out of sight. He was heading for Bundy Drive

  , Bosch thought. From there a short jog to the 10. And from there he would be gone and they’d never catch him. Bosch grabbed the radio and called in an Officer Needs Assistance. But he could not provide a description of the car, only the direction of the chase.

  “He’s going for the freeway, Harry,” Eleanor yelled. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Are you? Did you get a make?”

  “I’m fine. Scared is all. No make. American, I think. Uh, square headlights. No color, just dark. I didn’t see the color. We won’t catch him if he makes the freeway.”

  They were heading east on Ocean Park, parallel to the 10, which was about eight blocks to the north. They approached the top of the crest, and Bosch cut off the one working headlight. As they came over, he saw the unlit form of the hit-and-run car passing through the lighted intersection at Lincoln. Yeah, he was going for Bundy. At Lincoln, Bosch took a left and floored the gas pedal. He put the lights back on. And as the car’s speed increased there was a thumping sound. The front left tire and alignment were damaged.

  “Where are you going?” Eleanor shouted.

  “I’m going for the freeway first.”

  Bosch had no sooner said that than the freeway entrance signs came up and the car made a wide, arcing right turn onto the ramp. The tire held up. They sped down the ramp into the traffic.

  “How’ll we know?” Eleanor shouted. The noise from the tire was very loud now, almost a continual throbbing.

  “I don’t know. Look for the square lights.”

  In one minute they were coming up on the Bundy entrance, but Bosch had no idea whether they had beaten the other car or if it was already well ahead of them. A car was coming up the ramp and into the merging lane. The car was white and foreign.

  “I don’t think so,” Eleanor called.

  Bosch gunned it to the floor again and moved ahead. His heart was pounding almost as fast as the tire, half with the excitement of the cha
se, half with the excitement of still being alive and not broken on the street in front of Eleanor’s apartment. He was gripping the steering wheel at the ten and two o’clock positions, urging the car on as if he held the reins of a galloping horse. They were moving through sparse traffic at ninety miles an hour, both of them looking at the front ends of the cars they passed, searching for the four square lights or a damaged right side.

  A half-minute later, Bosch’s knuckles as white as bones wrapped around the wheel, they came upon a maroon Ford going at least seventy in the slow lane. Bosch swung out from behind and passed alongside. Eleanor had her gun in her hands but was holding it below the window so it could not be seen from outside the car. The white male driver didn’t even look over or register notice. As they pulled ahead, Eleanor shouted, “Square lights, side by side.”

  “Is it the car?” Bosch called back excitedly.

  “I can’t—I don’t know. Can’t see the right side for damage. It could be. The guy isn’t showing anything.”

  They were three-quarters of a car length ahead now. Bosch grabbed the portable pull-over light off the transmission hump on the floor and swung it out the window onto the roof. He switched on the revolving blue light and slowly began to angle the Ford onto the shoulder. Eleanor put her hand out the window and signaled the car over. The driver began to comply. Bosch braked sharply and let the other car shoot by onto the shoulder, then Bosch swung his car onto the shoulder behind it. When both had stopped alongside a sound barrier wall Bosch realized he had a big problem. He put on the high beams, but still only the passenger-side headlight responded. The car in front was too close to the wall for Bosch and Wish to see if the right side was damaged. Meantime, the driver sat in his car, mostly shrouded in darkness.

  “Shit,” Bosch said. “Okay. Don’t come up till I say it’s clear, okay?”

  “Got it,” she said.

  Bosch had to throw his weight hard against the door to open it. He came out of the car, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. He held the light out away from his body and trained its beam on the driver of the car ahead. The roar of passing traffic in his ears, Bosch started to shout, but a diesel horn drowned him out and a blast of wind from the passing semi shoved him forward. Bosch tried again, shouting for the driver to stick both hands out the side window where Bosch could see them. Nothing. Bosch shouted the order again. After a long moment, with Bosch poised off the left rear fender of the maroon car, the driver finally complied. Bosch ran the flash beam through the back window and saw no other occupants. He ran up and put the light on the driver and ordered him to step out slowly.

  “What is this?” the man protested. He was small, with pale skin, reddish hair and a transparent mustache. He opened the car door and stepped out with his hands up. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and beige pants held up by suspenders. He looked out into the passing field of cars, almost as if beckoning for a witness to this commuter’s nightmare.

  “Can I see a badge?” he stammered. Bosch rushed forward, spun him around and slammed his body into the side of his car, his head and shoulders over its roof. With one hand on the back of the man’s neck, holding him down, and the other holding the gun to his ear, Bosch shouted to Eleanor that it was clear.

  “Check the front side.”

  The man beneath Bosch let out a moaning sound, like a scared animal, and Bosch could feel him shaking. His neck felt clammy. Bosch never took his eyes off him to see where Eleanor was. Suddenly her voice was right behind him.

  “Let him go,” she said. “It’s not him. There’s no damage. We’ve got the wrong car.”

  PART VI

  FRIDAY, MAY 25

  They were interviewed by the Santa Monica police, the California Highway Patrol, LAPD and the FBI. A DUI unit had been called to give Bosch a sobriety test. He passed. And by 2 A.M. he sat in an interview room at the West Los Angeles bureau, bone-tired and wondering if the Coast Guard or IRS would be next. He and Eleanor had been separated and he hadn’t seen her since they had arrived three hours earlier. It bothered him that he could not be with her to protect her from the interrogators. Lieutenant Harvey “Ninety-eight” Pounds came into the room then and told Bosch they were finished for the night. Bosch could tell that Ninety-eight was angry, and it wasn’t just because he had been rousted from home.

  “What kind of cop doesn’t get the make of the car that tries to run him down?” he asked.

  Bosch was used to the second-guessing tone to the questions. It had been that way all night.

  “Like I told every one of those guys before you, I was a little busy at the time. I was trying to save my ass.”

  “And this guy you pull over,” Pounds cut in. “Jesus, Bosch, you rough him up on the side of the freeway. Every asshole with a car phone is dialing nine one one reporting kidnap, murder, who knows what else. Couldn’t you have tried to get a look at the right side of his car before you pulled him over?”

  “It was impossible. All of this is covered in the report we typed up, Lieutenant. I’ve gone over it, seems like ten times already.”

  Pounds acted as though he didn’t hear. “And he’s a lawyer no less.”

  “So what?” Bosch said, now losing his patience. “We apologized. It was a mistake. The car looked the same. And if he is going to sue anybody it will be the FBI. They’ve got deeper pockets. So don’t worry about it.”

  “No, he’ll sue us both. He’s already talking about it, fer crissake. And this is not the time to try to be funny, Bosch.”

  “It’s also not the time to be worried about what we did or didn’t do right. None of the suits that have come in here to interview me have seemed to care that somebody might be trying to kill us. They just want to know how far away I was when I fired and whether I endangered bystanders and why I pulled that car over without probable cause. Well, fuck it, man. Somebody is out to kill my partner and me. Excuse me if I’m not feeling particularly sorry for the lawyer who got his suspenders twisted.”

  Pounds was ready for that argument.

  “Bosch, for all we have evidence of, it could have just been a drunk. And what do you mean ‘partner’? You are on a day-to-day loan to this investigation. And after tonight, I think the loan is going to be withdrawn. You’ve spent five solid days on this case, and from what I understand from Rourke, you’ve got nothing.”

  “It was no drunk, Pounds. We were a target. And I don’t care what Rourke says we have, I’m going to clear this one. And if you’d quit undermining the effort, believe in your own people for once and maybe get those Internal Affairs assholes off me, you might be in line for a piece of the honors when it happens.”

  Pounds’s eyebrows arched like roller coasters.

  “Yeah, I know about Lewis and Clarke,” Bosch said. “And I know their paper was being copied to you. I guess they didn’t tell you about the little talk we had? I caught ’em snoozing outside my house.”

  It was clear from his expression that Pounds had not heard. Lewis and Clarke were staying low and Bosch would not get jammed up over what he had done to them. He began to wonder where the two IAD detectives had been when he and Eleanor had almost been run down.

  Meanwhile, Pounds remained silent for a long time. He was a fish swimming around the bait Bosch had cast, seeming to know there was a hook in it but thinking there might be a way to get the bait without the hook. Finally he told Bosch to give him a rundown on the week’s investigation. He was on the hook now. Bosch ran the case down for him, and though Pounds never spoke once during the next twenty minutes Bosch could tell by his roller-coasting eyebrows whenever he heard something that Rourke had neglected to bring up.

  When the story was finished, there was no more talk from Pounds of Bosch’s being withdrawn from the case. Nevertheless, Bosch felt very tired of the whole thing. He wanted to sleep, but Pounds still had questions.

  “If the FBI isn’t putting people into the tunnels, should we?” he asked.

  Bosch could see he was thinking in terms
of being in on the bust, if there was one. If he put LAPD people into the drainage tunnels, the FBI wouldn’t be able to crowd the department out when the credit for the bust came. Pounds would receive a slap on the back from the chief if he could defend against such a maneuver.

  But Bosch had come to believe that Rourke’s reasoning was sound and correct. A tunnel crew would stand a good chance of stumbling into the thieves and maybe getting killed.

  “No,” Bosch told Pounds. “Let’s first see if we can get a fix on Tran and where he keeps his stash. For all we know, it might not even be a bank.”

  Pounds stood up, having heard enough. He said Bosch was free to go. As the lieutenant headed to the interview room door he said, “Bosch, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with this incident tonight. It sounds to me like you did what you could. The lawyer got his feathers ruffled but he’ll settle down. Or just settle.”