The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch thought for a few minutes and nodded.

  “I think so. Musicians are an itinerant sort. They come and go, float around.”

  Soto nodded and they were silent for a while. Then he remembered Soto’s unfinished story.

  “What you said before about the bounty and Thirteenth Street, you didn’t finish. You said they ‘got the message’?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, some guys from Gang Intelligence went to visit some of the OGs and told them that if anything happened to me, it would instigate an all-out war with the LAPD, and that Thirteenth Street would never get any business done. Big blue would be all over them.”

  “And what? They promised no harm would come your way?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  Bosch nodded and continued to think about Soto and her journey. His next questions went back to the Bonnie Brae case.

  “What do you remember from that day?” he asked. “About the fire. You were, what, six or seven?”

  Soto composed her thoughts before answering.

  “I was seven and the thing I remember most is the smoke coming under the door. We had tried to leave but we had to go back because the fire was in the stairwell and the stairs at the other end of the hallway were blocked. So we went back and closed the door and there was no other way out.”

  “Was there a teacher?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Gonzalez . . . she died. We were in there and nobody came to help and pretty soon the smoke started to come in. We had these aprons that we used when we painted, and Mrs. Gonzalez and her helper, a lady named Adele, cut them with scissors so we could dip them in the fish tank to get them wet, and then we wrapped them around our faces and over our noses and mouths.”

  “That was smart.”

  “But the smoke kept coming in and we were coughing and gagging. So we all went into the supply closet and closed that door, except there wasn’t room for Mrs. Gonzalez so she stayed out and she kept calling for help. Yelling for help.”

  “But nobody came?”

  “Not for a long time. And pretty soon we didn’t hear her anymore and the smoke was coming into the supply closet.”

  Bosch imagined how scared they all must have been. All those little kids and one adult left.

  “Then the smoke was too much for us and we all went to sleep. Only some of us didn’t wake up. A fireman saved me. Gave me mouth-to-mouth and then they put a breathing mask on me. I remember being in the truck and seeing them working on my best friend, Elsa. They couldn’t save her. They saved me but not her. I didn’t understand that.”

  Bosch wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing for a long time. When he finally spoke it was to pick out one of the positive parts of the story.

  “Did you ever know who that firefighter was?”

  “No, I never did. I thought maybe his name would be in one of the reports but I haven’t seen it so far.”

  Bosch nodded but his attention had been drawn to the side-view mirror. A car was coming up slowly along the line of cars parked at the curb. It was an old shit box with its windows down. It looked like a drive-by hoopty.

  Bosch pulled his gun off his belt and held it down in his lap, the barrel pointed at his door.

  “What is it?” Soto said.

  “Hopefully nothing.”

  Soto shifted sideways in her seat so her back was to her door. She pulled her weapon as well and held it with two hands in her lap.

  “Just don’t shoot me,” Bosch said.

  He noticed that his voice was tight. Adrenaline was flowing into his bloodstream. The car was two spaces back now and Bosch could make out at least three figures in it. Two in the front, one in the middle in the backseat.

  It slowly cruised by and Bosch made eye contact with the front passenger and then with the man in the backseat. Both men had full-neck tattoos. They stared back at Bosch but made no furtive moves and the car kept going. Once it passed, Bosch eased his grip on his weapon and checked the car’s plate.

  The microphone for the police radio was on a cord so old it had lost its coil and had to be draped over the rearview mirror. Bosch grabbed it and called the communication center to give the plate number and get a rundown on the car’s ownership.

  “Recognize them?” he asked Soto while he waited. “Are they Thirteenth?”

  “No. They look like bangers, but who knows. Why would Thirteenth be all the way up here?”

  “You. Those men in the courtyard where Hernandez lives, they made you as the shooter in the Pico-Union thing. If any of them had connections to Thirteenth . . . maybe they think if they take you out off their turf, there won’t be a problem.”

  Soto didn’t say anything. Bosch continued.

  “And the cholos in that hoopty were young bucks. They don’t always listen to the OGs who make deals with cops. They try to make a name for themselves.”

  The dispatcher came back with the report on the plate number. The car was registered to an owner with an address in the town of San Fernando, the tiny city in the middle of the Valley surrounded on all sides by Los Angeles.

  “Not Thirteenth Street turf,” Soto said as he hung the mike back over the mirror.

  “Let’s not take any chances.”

  The car in question had turned right a block up the street. This meant that they could be coming back around for another look-see or something worse.

  Bosch started the car and pulled out from the curb. He went down the street and turned where the car had turned. He navigated around the block but never saw the car again. He came back to the same parking space and pulled in.

  “Maybe it was nothing,” Soto said.

  There was a false hopefulness in her voice.

  “Maybe,” Bosch said.

  They waited another half hour, with no sign of Cabral. Bosch said they’d give it another ten minutes, and five minutes later a city bus pulled to a stop at the corner and several people got off, including a man Bosch was pretty sure was the accordion player from the video.

  “That him?”

  Soto stared and eventually nodded.

  “I think so.”

  They got out of the car in unison. Bosch was on the street side and he looked around, still wary of the car and the gangbangers who had scoped them out earlier. He saw no sign of them and came around to join his partner on the sidewalk.

  The man they thought was Alberto Cabral was carrying two cloth shopping bags that appeared filled with groceries. The bags looked like they were heavy with cans and other staples. Bosch and Soto blocked his path and Soto badged him and confirmed his identity. She started out speaking English.

  “We need to speak to you about the Orlando Merced shooting,” she said.

  Cabral attempted to shrug but the weight of the bags he carried in either hand impeded him.

  “I don’t know anything,” he said in a thick accent.

  “Did you hear that Mr. Merced has passed away?” Soto asked.

  “Yeah, I heard about it,” Cabral said.

  “Do you know where Angel Ojeda is?” Bosch asked.

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  “Do you know where he is? We need to talk to him.”

  Soto repeated the question in Spanish and Cabral answered in English.

  “Yeah, he went to Tulsa.”

  “Tulsa, Oklahoma?” Soto asked.

  Cabral nodded. He put the bags down on the sidewalk to rest his arms. Bosch realized that this was the wrong place to be doing the interview, especially since it looked like the interview was going to produce a line on Ojeda. He reached down and picked up the nearest bag.

  “Let us help you. Let’s take your groceries in and we’ll talk inside.”

  Five minutes later they were in Cabral’s threadbare apartment, where, like his bandmate Hernandez, he lived alone and sparely. All the night work and inconsistency of gigs had made for a lonely life. There was no sign of a wife or children. No framed photos, no school drawings on the refrigerator. Bosch thought of a bumper s
ticker he had once seen: “Play Accordion—Go to Jail.” In many ways it appeared that Cabral’s life as a mariachi musician had been its own form of incarceration.

  “How do you know Angel Ojeda is in Tulsa?” Soto asked.

  Without the bags weighing his arms down Cabral could now shrug, and he did so.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “When he quit the band he said he was going to Oklahoma to run his uncle’s bar.”

  “So this is ten years ago?” she asked. “Right after Orlando got shot?”

  He nodded.

  “Pretty soon after, yes.”

  Cabral was standing in the tiny kitchen, putting away his groceries, while Bosch and Soto stood on the other side of the counter. He opened the refrigerator door to put away a small carton of milk. A fetid smell of food kept too long despite the cold storage wafted into the room.

  “Have you heard anything about him since?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re sure it was Tulsa?” Bosch asked.

  “Yes, Tulsa,” Cabral insisted. “I know because I had to send him a money order with the last money he made with us.”

  Bosch moved into the kitchen, crowding Cabral. These next few questions were important.

  “Do you remember where you sent the check?”

  “I told you, Tulsa.”

  “The address. Where in Tulsa?”

  “I don’t remember. It was the bar where he worked.”

  “Do you remember the name of the bar?”

  “Yes, because it was El Chihuahua.”

  “That was the name of the bar in Tulsa? El Chihuahua?”

  “Yes, I remember that. Because it was where he was from. Chihuahua the place, not the dog.”

  Bosch nodded. The name of the bar was a good piece of information. He decided to change tacks with Cabral.

  “Why did you bring him into the band?” he asked. “He wasn’t from Jalisco.”

  Cabral responded with another shrug.

  “We wanted a trumpet and he was always there at the plaza, available. He could play. I said, ‘Why not?’ ”

  “Was he in trouble with anybody?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say this.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about the shooting? I mean after. Before he went to Tulsa.”

  Instead of shrugging, Cabral frowned and shook his head.

  “Not really. He just said that we were lucky and Orlando wasn’t.”

  “He never said that he knew what happened? He never said he knew who fired the shot and why?”

  Cabral looked sharply at Bosch, surprised by the question. Bosch read it as a legit reaction.

  “No, never,” Cabral said.

  Bosch believed him. He looked around the apartment, thinking about what else to ask. He saw a tiny desk in the corner that had a stack of ledgers and a Rolodex on it.

  “So you’re the band’s manager, right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Cabral said.

  “You make the bookings?”

  “I do. When there are bookings to be made. Not so much work anymore for the mariachis. Traditions don’t mean much anymore.”

  Bosch nodded again. He agreed with that.

  It had been a good interview. It gave them something to pursue. But rather than leave it, Bosch decided to throw Cabral a curve ball. Sometimes it worked to catch an interview subject off guard.

  “What about the drugs?” he asked.

  Cabral squinted his eyes.

  “What drugs?” he asked.

  “We were told Ojeda was a user.”

  Cabral shook his head.

  “Not around me. We had a rule. No drugs.”

  “Okay,” Bosch said. “No drugs.”

  It had been worth a shot.

  After concluding the interview they returned to the car, and as Bosch was walking around the rear bumper, he noticed the gang car from before was now parked across the four-lane street and down about forty yards. With a nonchalant glance he discerned that there were still three figures in it.

  He unlocked the Ford but opened the rear door. He slipped off his jacket so the gun and badge on his belt were readily visible. He took his time folding his jacket and then leaned into the car to put it on the backseat. Soto had already gotten into the front passenger seat. Bosch spoke calmly to her.

  “Your friends are back.”

  “What friends?”

  “From San Fernando.”

  “Where?”

  “Right across the street.”

  She clocked the car and concern spread on her face.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “You call backup and sit tight. I’m going to go pay them a visit.”

  “Harry, you should wait until—”

  He closed the door and went to the rear of the Ford. He popped the trunk, leaned down, and released the snaps on the shotgun rack. Using the trunk lid as a blind he glanced into the street and waited for a moment when the traffic was clear. He could hear Soto on the radio reporting an officer needing assistance—the non-emergency request for backup. The moment the street was clear he stepped away from the trunk with the Remington 870 and started to cross diagonally, directly toward the gang car. Almost immediately he heard its engine fire to life.

  He racked the action on the shotgun, putting a round into the chamber. He made it to the center median before the car lurched away from the opposite curb into a screeching U-turn and took off.

  “Hey, where’re you going?” he called after the speeding car.

  Soto came running across the street, her weapon out and at her side.

  “Harry, what the hell were you doing?” she yelled.

  He didn’t answer at first. He watched the car until it turned right at the next block and disappeared.

  “Sending a message,” he finally said.

  “What message?” she said. “We don’t even know if they were Thirteenth.”

  “Doesn’t matter who they were. Our gang is bigger than theirs. That’s the message.”

  A patrol car came coasting down the street behind them, its blues on but no siren. Bosch leaned down, holding the shotgun across his thighs, to talk to the driver.

  13

  The only thing Bosch regretted about his decision to grab the shotgun and confront the gangbangers trying to intimidate them was that it cost them nearly an hour of explanation and waiting while patrol units flooded the zone and tried to find the vehicle. Once it was determined that the vehicle was GOA—patrol speak for gone on arrival—Bosch and Soto were cleared to proceed on their way. But neither the slow-moving afternoon traffic that hampered their drive back downtown nor the sideshow Bosch had created with the Remington could dampen the flow of momentum Bosch was feeling.

  The video analysis coupled with now having a line on Ojeda in Tulsa—even if it was ten-year-old information—was giving the case undeniable speed. If the trumpet player went to Oklahoma after the shooting, Bosch felt confident they would be able to pick up his trail. The plan would be to confirm his location and then go there to interview him in person. While Ojeda wasn’t a suspect in the shooting, it seemed obvious now that he knew more than he had ever revealed. He allowed the original investigation to go down the wrong road—random gang violence—when there may have been an entirely different motivation for the shooting. If Ojeda held that secret, then it couldn’t be handled in a phone call or as a favor by the police in Oklahoma. He told Soto that they were going to need to persuade Crowder to send them to Tulsa to handle it themselves.

  “Have you ever been?” Soto asked.

  “Tulsa? I’ve only flown in and out. I had a case about five years ago where we had science on a guy who lived up in a small town north of Tulsa. One of those places that later got wiped out by a tornado. It’s a funny story. I mean now. I was pretty pissed off then and it changed how we deal with other departments.”

  “What happened?”

  He told her the story. It began with a cold hit on DNA from a 1990 home invasion robb
ery, rape, and murder. The match was to a fifty-eight-year-old ex-convict named Frank Tomlinson, whose criminal history stretched all the way back to repeated stints in juvenile hall. Tomlinson had long been off the grid, his whereabouts unknown since he jumped a parole tail in 2006. But he still had family in L.A., so Bosch and his partner at the time, Dave Chu, put together a play. They first applied for and received a court order allowing them to eavesdrop on phone calls made by Tomlinson’s elderly mother and his brother. Bosch then knocked on their doors and inquired about the suspect, dropping hints that he needed to talk to Tomlinson about a murder from 1990. Meantime, Chu was in the wire room, waiting to listen in on any calls that went out from their homes after Bosch’s visit.

  Sure enough, the brother placed a call to Tomlinson and warned him about the police visit. The call was traced to a cell tower located in the tiny town of Beacon, Oklahoma. Bosch made contact with the Beacon Police Department and spoke to a Sergeant Haden, who looked at an e-mailed photograph of Tomlinson and identified it as a photo of Tom Frazier, who worked as one of the town’s two cab drivers. Bosch inquired as to whether the police department had the manpower to keep an eye on Frazier/Tomlinson until Bosch and Chu could get there the next day. The concern was that the call from the brother might spook the suspect and cause him to once again disappear. Haden said surveillance would not be a problem but offered to go ahead and arrest Tomlinson and hold him in the town jail. Bosch said no, that they wanted to casually interview the suspect before he was placed under arrest and could exercise his right to legal counsel.

  Haden agreed not to approach the suspect and told Bosch to email the details of their flight to Tulsa. Haden said he would pick Bosch and Chu up at the airport and take them directly to the suspect’s home, where he would be, since he worked the night shift.

  What Bosch didn’t learn until he got there was that the town of Beacon was so small that its police department had only four officers, which amounted to one officer on duty at any given time. When Haden went to pick up the two L.A. detectives at the airport down in Tulsa, he left Tomlinson unwatched. The suspect made his move and left town. He was long gone by the time Bosch and Chu got to the ranch where he had lived—and where Haden had been watching until it was time to go to the airport.