The Closers

by Michael Connelly

  Just as she said the warning there was a sharp rap on the window. Bosch lowered the phone and turned to see Mackey staring at him. He rolled the window down.

  "It's done," he said.

  "Already?"

  "Yup. You can come into the office and pay while he puts the wheel back on. You'll make it home in a couple hours."

  "Great."

  Holding the phone up to his right ear, Bosch got out of the truck and walked to the office, never allowing Spider a decent look at his face. He spoke to Rider while he walked.

  "It looks like I'm getting out of here," he said.

  "Good," she said. "The man in question is putting on your wheel. Watch yourself when you leave."

  "Will do."

  Once he was in the little office Bosch closed the phone. Mackey had gone behind a greasy, cluttered desk. He took several seconds to use a calculator to do the simple arithmetic of the tow and repair charges.

  "Comes to one twenty-five even," he said. "Four miles towing and the valve was three bucks."

  Bosch sat down in a chair in front of the desk and pulled out his fold of money.

  "Can I get a receipt for it?"

  As he counted out six twenties and a five he heard the drill outside. The tire was being put back on. He held the money out, but Mackey was preoccupied by looking at a Post-it note he had found on the desk. He held it at an angle that allowed Bosch to read it.

  Ro-FYI. Visa called to confirm employment on your app.

  Bosch read it in a few seconds, but Mackey looked at it for a long time before finally dropping the note back on the desk and taking the money from Bosch. Mackey put the money in a cash drawer and then started fishing around on the desk for a receipt pad. He was taking a long time.

  "Kenny usually writes up the receipts," he said. "And he went to get some chicken."

  Bosch was about to say never mind about the receipt when he heard the scrape of a step behind him and knew that someone had entered the office. He didn't turn in case it was Spider.

  "All right, Ro, it's done. You just need to let her down."

  Bosch knew this was the tight moment. Mackey would either introduce him or not.

  "All right, Spider," Mackey said.

  "Then I'm outta here."

  "Okay, man, thanks for sticking. Catch you tomorrow."

  Spider left the office without Bosch ever turning around. Mackey found what he was looking for in the center drawer and scribbled something on it. He gave it to Bosch. It was a blank receipt. He had written $125 in a childlike scrawl at the bottom.

  "You can just fill that out," Mackey said as he got up. "I'll go drop your machine and you can get out of here."

  Bosch followed him out, realizing he had left the newspaper on the seat of the truck. He wondered if he should leave it there or come up with an excuse to go back into the truck so he could get it and maybe leave it in the office where he knew Mackey watched television during the slow parts of his shift.

  He decided to leave it where it was. He had planted the seed as best he could. It was time now to just step back and see what grew from it.

  The Mercedes was off the truck now. Bosch walked around to the driver's side. Mackey was stowing the harness in the back of the tow truck.

  "Thanks, Roland," Bosch said.

  "Just Ro, man," Mackey responded. "You take care, man. And do yourself a favor and stay out of South-Central."

  "Don't worry about me," Bosch said. "I will."

  Mackey smiled and winked as he pulled off his glove again and offered Bosch his hand. Bosch shook it and smiled back. He then looked down at their hands and saw a tiny white scar in the fleshy part between Mackey's right thumb and finger. The tattoo from a Colt .45.

  "I'll catch you later," he said.

  30

  BOSCH DROVE TO THE SPOT where he had met Rider at the start of the surveillance shift and she was there waiting. He parked and got into her Taurus.

  "That was close," she said. "Turns out you probably did know that guy. Jerry Townsend. Ring a bell? We ran the plate on his pickup when he left work and got the ID."

  "Jerry Townsend? No, not the name. I just recognized his face."

  "He has a manslaughter conviction in 'ninety-six. Served five years. Sounds like it was a domestic abuse case, but that's all they could pull off the computer. I bet if we pulled the file your name would be on it. That's how you recognized him."

  "You think he could be connected to this thing we're working?"

  "I doubt it. What's probably going on is that whoever owns that station doesn't mind hiring ex-cons. They come cheap, you know? And if he's scamming on repairs, then who's going to complain?"

  "Well, let's get back and see what happens."

  She put the car into gear and pulled out on Tampa to head back up to the intersection where the service station was.

  "How did it go with him?" Rider asked.

  "Pretty good. I did all but read the story to him. He didn't show anything, no recognition, but the seed is definitely planted."

  "Did he see the tattoos?"

  "Yeah, they worked good. He started asking questions right after he saw them. Your file on Simmons paid off, too. He came up in the conversation. And for what it's worth, he had a scar on the webbing by his right thumb. From the bite."

  "Harry, man, you covered everything. I guess all we do now is sit back and see what happens."

  "Did the other guys take off?"

  "As soon as we get back on post they're leaving."

  When they got to the intersection of Tampa and Roscoe they saw Mackey's tow truck waiting to pull onto Roscoe to head west.

  "He's on the move," Bosch said. "Why didn't anybody tell us?"

  Just as he said it Rider's cell phone buzzed. She handed it to Bosch so she could concentrate on driving. She cut into the left turn lane so she would be able to follow Mackey onto Roscoe. Bosch opened her phone. It was Tim Marcia. He explained that Mackey went on the move without a call coming into the station for a tow. Jackson had checked with the sound room. There had been no call on the lines they were listening to.

  "All right," Bosch said. "He said something when I was in the truck about going to grab dinner. Maybe this is it."

  "Maybe."

  "Okay, Tim, we got him now. Thanks for sticking around. Tell Rick the same."

  "Good luck, Harry."

  They followed the tow truck to a plaza shopping center and watched Mackey go into a Subway fast food restaurant. He did not take the newspaper Bosch had left in the truck with him, but after getting his food he sat down at one of the inside tables and started to eat.

  "You going to get hungry, Harry?" Rider asked. "Now might be the time."

  "I did Dupar's on the way in so I'll be fine. Unless we see a Cupid's around. I'd go for that."

  "No way. That's one thing I got over after you left. I don't eat that fast food crap anymore."

  "What do you mean? We ate good. Didn't we go to Musso's every Thursday?"

  "If you call chicken pot pie a healthy meal, yeah, we ate good. Besides, I'm talking about stakeouts. Did you hear about Rice and Beans in Hollywood?"

  Rice and Beans was the designation given to a pair of robbery detectives in Hollywood Division named Choi and Ortega. They were there when Bosch worked in the division.

  "No, what happened?"

  "They were on a surveillance gig on these guys that were taking down street prostitutes, and Ortega was sittin' in the car eating a hotdog. He suddenly started choking on it and he couldn't clear himself. He's turning purple and pointing to his throat and Choi's like, what the fuck? So finally Beans jumps out of the car and Choi finally gets what's going on. He comes running around to give him the Heimlich. He popped the hotdog onto the hood of the car. And they blew the surveillance."

  Bosch laughed as he pictured it. He knew it was a story Rice and Beans would never live down in the division. Not with people like Edgar there to tell and retell it to anyone who transferred in.

  "W
ell, see, they don't have a Cupid's down in Hollywood," he said. "If he'd been eating a nice soft dog from Cupid's there wouldn't have been a problem like that."

  "I don't care, Harry. No hotdogs on stakeout. No crap. That's my new rule. I don't want people talking about me like that the rest of my -"

  Bosch's phone chirped. It was Robinson, who was working the late shift in the sound room with Nord.

  "They just had a tow call come into the station. They then turned around and called Mackey. He must not be at the station."

  Bosch explained the situation and apologized for not keeping the sound room in the loop.

  "Where's the tow?" he asked.

  "It's an accident on Reseda at Parthenia. I guess the car's DOA. He's got to tow it into a dealership."

  "Okay, we're with him."

  A few minutes later Mackey came out of the fast food restaurant carrying a large soda cup with a straw sticking out. They followed him to Reseda Boulevard and Parthenia Street, where a Toyota with the front end caved in had been pushed off the road. Another tow truck was just jacking up the other car, a large SUV that had its back end realigned by the accident. Mackey spoke briefly with the other tow truck driver-a professional courtesy-and went to work on the Toyota. An LAPD patrol car was sitting in the parking lot of the corner plaza and the officer inside was writing up a report. Bosch saw no drivers. He thought this meant that they might have all been transported to an emergency room because of injuries.

  Mackey towed the Toyota to a dealership all the way over on Van Nuys Boulevard. While he was there, letting the wreck down in the service drive, Bosch got another call. Robinson told him that Mackey had been summoned again. This time to the Northridge Fashion Center, where an employee of the Borders bookstore needed a battery jump.

  "This guy isn't going to have time to read the paper if he stays busy like this," Rider said after Bosch reported on the phone call.

  "I don't know," Bosch said. "I'm wondering if he can even read."

  "You mean the dyslexia?"

  "Yeah, but not just that. I haven't seen him do any reading or writing. He told me to fill in the forms for the tow. Then he either didn't want to or couldn't fill out a receipt at the end. And then there was this note on the desk for him."

  "What note?"

  "He picked it up and stared at it for a long time but I wasn't really sure he knew what it said."

  "Could you read it? What did it say?"

  "It was a note from the dayshift people. Visa had called to confirm his employment on an application he had made, I guess."

  Rider wrinkled her brow.

  "What?" Bosch asked.

  "Just seems weird, him applying for a credit card. That would make him findable, which I thought he was trying to avoid."

  "Maybe he's starting to feel safe."

  Mackey went from the Toyota dealership straight to the shopping mall, where he jump-started a woman's car. He then turned his truck toward the home base. It was almost ten o'clock by the time he pulled back into the station. Bosch's sagging hopes were buoyed when he looked through the binoculars from the plaza across the street and saw Mackey walking from the truck to the office.

  "We might still be in play," he said to Rider. "He's carrying the paper with him."

  It was hard to keep track of Mackey inside the station. The front office was glass on two sides and that was not a problem. But the garage doors were now closed and oftentimes it seemed that Mackey would disappear into these areas, where Bosch could not see him.

  "You want me to be the eyes for a while?" Rider asked.

  Bosch lowered the binoculars and looked at her. He could barely read her face in the darkness of the car.

  "Nah, I'm okay. You're doing all the driving anyway. Why don't you rest? I woke you up early today."

  He raised the binoculars back up.

  "I'm fine," Rider said. "But anytime you need a break . . ."

  "Besides," Bosch said, "I sort of feel responsible for this guy."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know. This whole thing. I mean, we could've just pulled Mackey in and sweated him in the box, tried to break him. Instead we went this way, and it's my plan. I'm responsible."

  "We can still sweat him. If this doesn't work, then that's probably what we'll need to do."

  Bosch's phone began to chirp.

  "Maybe this is what we're waiting for," he said as he answered.

  It was Nord.

  "I thought you told us this guy got his general education degree, Harry."

  "He did. What's going on?"

  "He just had to call someone to read the story to him out of the paper."

  Bosch sat up a little straighter. They were in play. It didn't matter how the story was communicated to Mackey, the important thing was that he wanted to know what it said.

  "Who did he call?"

  "A woman named Michelle Murphy. Sounded like an old girlfriend. He asked if she still got the paper every day, like he wasn't sure anymore. She said yeah and he asked her to read the story to him."

  "Did they talk about it after she read it?"

  "Yeah. She asked him if he knew the girl the story was about. He said no, but then he said, 'I knew the gun.' Just like that. Then she said she didn't want to know anything else and that was it. They hung up."

  Bosch thought about all of this. The play earlier in the day had worked. It had kicked over a rock that had not been moved in seventeen years. He was excited, and he could feel the charge building in his blood.

  "Can you pipe the recording over the line to us here?" he asked. "I want to hear it."

  "I think we can," Nord said. "Let me get one of the techs who are floating around here to-hey, Harry, I gotta call you back. Mackey's making a call."

  "Call me back."

  Bosch quickly closed the phone so Nord could get back to her monitor. He excitedly recounted for Rider the report on Mackey's phone call to Michelle Murphy. He could tell Rider caught the charge as well.

  "We might be in business, Harry."

  Bosch was looking through the binoculars at Mackey. He was sitting behind the desk in the office and talking on his cell phone.

  "Come on, Mackey," Bosch whispered. "Spill it. Tell us the story."

  But then Mackey closed the phone. Bosch knew the call was too short.

  Ten seconds later Nord called Bosch back.

  "He just called Billy Blitzkrieg."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said, 'I might be in trouble' and 'I might need to make a move,' and then Burkhart cut him off and said, 'I don't care what it is, don't talk about it on the phone.' So they agreed to meet after Mackey gets off work."

  "Where?"

  "Sounded like at the house. Mackey said, 'You'll be up?' and Burkhart said he would be. Mackey then said, 'What about Belinda, she still there?' and Burkhart said she'd be asleep and not to worry about her. They ended it like that."

  Bosch immediately felt a crushing blow to his hopes of breaking the case that night. If Mackey met Burkhart inside the house, they would not hear what transpired inside. They'd be locked out of the confession they had set up the surveillance to get.

  "Call me if he makes any other calls," he said quickly and then hung up.

  He looked at Rider, who was waiting expectantly in the dark.

  "Not good?" she asked. She had obviously read something in his tone to Nord.

  "Not good."

  He told her about the calls and the obstacle they would face if Mackey met with Burkhart to discuss his "trouble" behind closed doors.

  "It's not all bad, Harry," she said after hearing everything. "He made a solid admission to the Murphy woman and a lesser admission to Burkhart. But we're getting close so don't get depressed. Let's figure this out. What can we do to make them meet outside of the house? Like at a Starbucks or something."

  "Yeah, right. Mackey ordering a latte."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Even if we roust them out of the house, how are w
e going to get close? We can't. We need this to be a phone call. It's the blind spot-my blind spot-to this whole thing."

  "We just need to sit tight and see what happens. It's all we can do right now. Look, it would be good to have an ear on this but maybe it's not the end of the world. We already have Mackey on the phone saying he might have to make a move. If he does, if he runs, then that could be seen by a jury as a shading of guilt. And if you take that and what we already have on tape it might be enough to squeeze more out of him when we finally bring him in. So all is not lost here, okay?"