The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch had an idea about where this story was going.

  “You guys never heard about it at the time?” he asked.

  “Not a word,” Braley said. “Glendale kept it to themselves and we never heard about it until ’97, when the shit hit the fan at Bank of America. So then we go back to that Glendale case and that’s when we see they were using AR-15s within a month of our cash-box hit and think, holy shit, we’ve got something here. But you know what?”

  “No AR-15s.”

  “Exactly right. Glendale had a confiscated weapons bonfire in ’96 and those 15s went into the smelter. We never got a chance to see if they matched our case.”

  There was bitterness in Braley’s voice and it was understandable. Bosch knew it wasn’t the first time and by no means the last time that the lack of communication between law enforcement agencies let things slip through the cracks. In 1993, there was barely any digital tracking of weapons or cases. The computer revolution in law enforcement that would make for better and more immediate connections was just about to begin.

  “So we never closed it,” Braley said. “Then my partner, Jimmy Corbin, retired, and six months after him I pulled the pin, too. Nobody came in to carry the torch because Major Crimes was changing and nobody gave a shit anymore. You know how that went.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Major Crimes as an elite robbery squad was dissolved and the unit designation was later applied to the squad tasked with all terrorism-related investigations and intelligence gathering. The history aside, there was something that bothered Bosch about the mention of the North Hollywood bank robbers. Something he couldn’t quite place or remember.

  He let it go for the moment.

  “Can I ask you a couple more questions, Gus?” he asked.

  “Sure, might as well,” Braley said. “I kind of like this, Bosch. You know, thinking about cases. I didn’t miss it when I first retired and then I did. Now I sit out here and bake in the fucking sun all day.”

  Bosch made a mental note of this complaint for his own future reference and moved ahead.

  “You remember the name of the girl who opened the door for these guys? You remember any other names?”

  “No, sorry. I just remember Rodney. The girl was Mexican, from the neighborhood. They needed her in there to help translate. The other guy who was in there was Ukrainian. What was his name? It started with a B. Boiko, that’s it. Max Boiko.”

  “So it was the security guard, the girl, and the Ukrainian guy. That’s it?”

  “Yeah. It was the morning and things didn’t start cooking there until after the mail was delivered in that neighborhood about twelve. They had more help scheduled for the afternoon.”

  “Okay, what about the Ukrainian? Did you look at him?”

  “We looked at everybody, Bosch. We were thorough. But the Ukrainian guy was a part owner with this group that owned two or three of those places around the city. We couldn’t make it work. You know, why would he steal his own money? He was way over the insurance limit because of Mother’s Day. He took a significant loss and it didn’t make sense to us.”

  “Okay.”

  “But get this, he was also sleeping with the girl.”

  “You mean the translator?”

  “Yeah, the Mexican. She was banging them both. I remember the Ukrainian was married and he was more worried about that than the money that got taken. He told me he’d lose more in the divorce if that got out.”

  Bosch registered all of this and wondered if any of it had been a motivating part of the robbery. It was difficult to grasp the subtleties of the case twenty-one years later and without a file in front of him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Going back to the robbery, this newspaper story says they pulled up right in front of the door in the getaway vehicle.”

  “Yeah, so they could jump out and get in quick.”

  “I know these guys shot out the cameras but there must have been some video before that happened.”

  “Yeah, we had video. About five or ten seconds, so we got the make on the car but that was about it. We figured it was stolen anyway.”

  “Okay. But do you remember which way they pulled up from? The store was on the northwest corner of Burlington and Wilshire. Did they come from Wilshire or Burlington?”

  Braley didn’t answer right away. He had to carefully check the memory banks.

  “Okay, don’t hold me to this,” he finally said. “But my memory is that they came down Burlington and then just pulled up in front of the door. That put the passenger side of the car four feet from the front door of the cash box. One guy got out that passenger side and went right in and took out the cameras. The driver jumped out and was following him in when everything went black.”

  “So they would’ve come down from Sixth on Burlington?”

  “Right.”

  Bosch considered this. The route from the Bonnie Brae Arms to the EZBank location could have included coming south on Burlington from 6th.

  “Okay, next thing,” he said. “What do you remember about how long the robbery took? First they take out the cameras, then they had the scuffle with the security guard, either real or not, then the paper said they made them open a safe and three cash drawers. How long did all of that take?”

  “The longest part was the safe,” Braley said. “They had to rough up the manager ’cause only he had the combo. They did the same thing again, only they put the gun on the girl this time and told him to open it or they’d put her blood on the walls. So he opened up the safe but it took him a few times because he’s scared and fucks up the combo.”

  “And then the cash drawers. So how long in all?”

  Again silence as Braley probed his memory.

  “I’d say no more than six minutes—and that’s actually long for this kind of thing.”

  “Right. And you said the girl hit the silent alarm right away.”

  “Yeah, she was good. As soon as she saw guys in masks in the car that pulled up, she hit it. That was verified on the video before it was taken out. She recognized the situation and hit the alarm. No hesitation, no delay. That’s why we were pretty sure she wasn’t in on it.”

  Bosch nodded. He could see the logic and conclusion Braley had made.

  “How long after did officers arrive on scene?”

  “That was long. Response time was something like eight or nine minutes. Everybody was tied up on a big fire down in Pico-Union. You remember the Bonnie—wait a minute, that’s it, right? That’s the case you’re looking at.”

  “Did you ever look at it, Gus?”

  “You mean like the fire was a diversion from the robbery? Yeah, me and Jimmy, we thought about it. But it didn’t fit. Even after they said it was arson, we looked at it again, and it was neighborhood gang stuff. Drug stuff. We were looking for two white guys and it didn’t fit.”

  “Did anybody from Criminal Conspiracy ever come to you to take a look at your case?”

  “Not that I remember, no.”

  Now it was Bosch who was quiet. He thought about the two cases. The arson and armed robbery occurring almost simultaneously three and a half blocks apart. The advantage of time sometimes allowed Bosch to see things more clearly. No evidence in the Bonnie Brae case ever directly pointed to the motivation of the arson being gang or drug related. That was simply rumor turned to gospel by the media and the members of the community. But what was seemingly easily dismissed twenty-one years ago could not be dismissed now.

  “I just remembered something about the guy we thought was the inside man,” Braley said.

  “Yeah, what’s that?” Bosch asked.

  “Like most of these rent-a-cops, he wanted to be a cop but wasn’t good enough. He’d made applications to the sheriff’s and then to us. He’d been accepted in the academy but then got washed out.”

  “Did you find out why?”

  “Yeah, I remember we thought it was kinda strange, because he’s banging the girl behind the counter and she was as brown a
s molasses. She was Mexican and he’d gotten washed out on a racial beef with somebody else in his class. Another Mexican.”

  “How long before the robbery was that?”

  “Shit, you want me to do all your work for you? I can’t remember. A couple years, at least.”

  Bosch thought about this last piece of information from Braley. He wondered if there might still be a record at the academy or the city personnel office regarding the security guard named Rodney. He would need the full name before he could find out. More food for thought was the seeming contradiction of Rodney having a racial problem at the academy and later being involved with a Latina.

  “Thanks a lot, Gus,” he finally said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Hey, call me back if you ever put something together, will ya?” Braley said. “I’d like to know.”

  “You got it, Gus.”

  21

  Bosch got to the squad room at eight Sunday morning and found Soto already at her desk in the cubicle. Before he could tell her about the theory that had emerged the night before on the Bonnie Brae case, she swiveled around in her chair and started talking excitedly about her own findings on the Merced case.

  “Yesterday, after I left Mariachi Plaza, I went up to the Valley to see Alberto Cabral. He let me look at the band’s calendar from ’04, and I found the Broussard booking. It was a fund-raiser—”

  “—for Robert Inglin.”

  She looked stunned.

  “You know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Bosch didn’t know whether to be mad at her for speaking to a potential witness without him or to admire her for her passion and drive on the case—to the point of putting in so much of her own time.

  “You should have told me, Lucy. Talking to a witness like that, a lot of things can go wrong. Sometimes witnesses turn out to be suspects, and sometimes they’re friends with the suspects and turn around and spill everything you just told them. You have to be careful and you should have at least told me where you were going so I could have decided if I should go with you or not.”

  “It was better it was just me. He opened up without you there. And speaking in Spanish.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, I should have known what you were doing and where you were. Next time shoot me a text, that’s all.”

  She nodded, eyes down.

  “Roger that,” she said. After a pause, she asked, “So how did you know about Inglin?”

  He put the stack of binders he was carrying down on his desk, pulled out his chair, and turned it so he could face her. He sat down.

  “Well, I didn’t talk to a potential witness about it. I got it from campaign finance records.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “I have a friend with access.”

  She looked at him suspiciously but then relented.

  “Did you find out anything else?”

  “Yeah, I did. In that same election year Broussard went from being all in for Inglin in January to being all in for Zeyas in May. And he stuck with Zeyas in the next election and is a primary backer of his so-called exploratory bid for the Governor’s Office.”

  “What made him switch? The Merced shooting was right in the middle of that.”

  Bosch pointed at her.

  “The million-dollar question.”

  Soto sat bolt upright.

  “Oh my god, I just thought of something. One of the calls Sarah got on the tip line.”

  She swiveled back to her desk and grabbed up the stack of tip reports Holcomb had brought by. Soto looked through the pages until she found what she was looking for.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Tip came in Friday morning, 12:09 a.m. ‘Female caller said the mayor knows who shot Orlando Merced.’ That’s it. The call was anonymous but the register recorded the number. Do you want to call it, see who answers?”

  “You really think Zeyas called in the hit on a mariachi musician?”

  The question gave Soto pause. Bosch’s saying it out loud indeed made it sound crazy.

  “I was just going to call, see what she had to say,” she finally said.

  “Go ahead. But she’s your crazy, then. Don’t bring her around me.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  She pulled out her cell to call.

  “You have your number blocked on that?” Bosch asked quickly.

  “Yes, it’s blocked.”

  She tapped in the number on the tip sheet and made the call. Bosch watched her as she listened.

  “No answer,” she said. “I’ll leave a message.”

  “Use the tip number. Don’t give her your number.”

  Soto nodded.

  “Hello, this is Detective Soto at the Los Angeles Police Department and this message is for the woman who called about the Orlando Merced shooting. Could you please call us back, because we want to follow up on your call.”

  Soto gave the tip line number, thanked the anonymous tipster, and disconnected.

  “Don’t count on hearing back,” Bosch said. “Cases are made with patience and little steps, Lucy. Not lightning strikes.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s switch tracks here for a bit. There’s something I want to show you.”

  He leaned back to his desk and pulled a newspaper clip out of the top binder from the Bonnie Brae case. He handed it to her.

  “It’s a profile the Times ran of Mrs. Gonzalez. You remember her, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Bosch could see her eyes holding on the photo of Esther Gonzalez.

  “Go to the jump,” he said.

  She looked at him, confused.

  “The continuation page. Turn it over.”

  She did so and he rolled his chair closer and tapped his finger on the brief about the EZBank robbery.

  “Read that.”

  He gave her time and when she looked up at him, he began.

  “I talked to Gus Braley last night and got what he could remember about the case. He—”

  “We can pull the file. But what are we looking for?”

  “There won’t be any file. This case would have been shredded in the digital purge. Statute of limitations. They never made a case against anybody. But the old robbery journals from Major Crimes are now in the captain’s office in Robbery Special. We’ll look there. Usually the names of victims are in the entries. That’s where we need to start.”

  “Start what?”

  “Braley said they thought at the time that it was an inside job, but they could never prove it. That means one of the names of the victims listed in the robbery journal could be the insider. We track him down and we talk about Bonnie Brae. No statute of limitations on murder.”

  “Wait a minute. Bonnie Brae? How is—you’re losing me.”

  Bosch nodded. He understood that he was moving too quickly and with information Soto didn’t have.

  “The robbery took place fifteen minutes after the fire was reported,” he said. “It was three and a half blocks away. It was very carefully planned and involved first getting behind a bulletproof enclosure and then forcing employees to open a safe and three cash drawers. It took time. And I’m thinking they may have bought that time with something that diverted the attention of the police.”

  “The fire.”

  “Exactly. And right now I don’t have a leg to stand on—Braley said they even considered it back then and discarded the idea. But that was when they first thought the fire was accidental and then later attributed it to gangs and drugs. And the robbery suspects were white and they didn’t see the connection to a Pico-Union firetrap where only Hispanics lived. They dropped the idea back then, but I think we want to pick it up now.”

  Soto sat silently, nodding her head slightly as she apparently ran the scenario through her mind. She saw what Bosch saw and looked up at him.

  “So what do we do?”

  Bosch stood up.

  “Well, first we go look at the journals in Robbery.”
/>   They moved through the squad room and through a door into the adjoining squad room for the Robbery Special section. It was deserted and the captain’s office was locked. Bosch looked into the darkened office through the glass panel next to the door. He could see the shelves containing the robbery journals, their leather bindings cracked and worn.

  “Should we call maintenance, see if they’ll open the door?” Soto asked.

  “They won’t,” Bosch said.

  He looked at the doorknob. He knew it would be easy to pick. Not much emphasis was put on security inside a police headquarters.

  “Go out to the hallway,” he said. “If anybody gets off the elevator, let me know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just go.”

  As she headed toward the door to the hallway, Bosch moved down the aisle between the detective modules, checking the desks. He saw one with a magnet holding a variety of paperclips. He took two and headed back to the captain’s office, straightening one of the clips out completely and putting a slight bend at the end of the other. He did not have his lock picks with him because they were in his suit jacket and he was dressed informally for what he thought would be a Sunday morning of sifting through files.

  Bosch crouched in front of the knob and went to work. It took him only a minute to open the door. He moved in, dropped the paperclips in the trash can next to the desk, and moved to the journal shelves. The bindings of the journals were marked by the years each contained. For the past forty years or so, each year required its own book. Bosch quickly found the journal marked 1993 and pulled it. He walked out into the Robbery squad room and over to the alcove where there was a copy machine. He flipped through the journal to the date of the EZBank robbery and found its entry—just one-third of a page.

  After making a copy, he retraced his steps, put the journal back in its spot, and relocked the door as he left the captain’s office. He read the entry on the journal page as he walked to the hallway door. It was basic but it did include the names and DOBs of three victims, including a security guard named Rodney Burrows.

  It was all Bosch needed.

  Soto was standing at the glass wall, looking out into the Civic Center. It was quiet on a Sunday morning. City Hall stood in silhouette with the sun climbing the sky behind it. Monolithic, it was still the most recognizable building in the city—and the one with the most secrets.