The Black Echo

Morning light cut through the crack in the curtains and slashed its mark across the bleached pine floor. He watched particles of dust floating lazily in the light near the sliding glass door. The lamp on the table next to him was on, and the TV against the wall, its sound very low, was broadcasting a Sunday-morning Jesus show. On the table next to the chair were the companions of insomnia: playing cards, magazines, and paperback mystery novels-these only lightly thumbed and then discarded. There was a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the table and three empty beer bottles-assorted brands that had once been members of six-packs of their own tribe. Bosch was fully dressed, right down to a rumpled tie held to his white shirt by a silver 187 tie tack.

He reached his hand down to his belt and then around back to the area below his kidney. He waited. When the electronic pager sounded he cut the annoying chirp off in a second. He pulled the device off his belt and looked at the number. He wasn’t surprised. He pushed himself out of the chair, stretched, and popped the joints of his neck and back. He walked to the kitchen, where the phone was on the counter. He wrote “Sunday, 8:53A.M.” in a notebook he took from his jacket pocket before dialing. After two rings a voice said, “Los Angeles Police Department, Hollywood Division. This is Officer Pelch, how can I help you?”

Bosch said, “Somebody could die in the time it took to get all that out. Let me talk to the watch sergeant.”

Bosch found a fresh pack of cigarettes in a kitchen cabinet and got his first smoke of the day going. He rinsed dust out of a glass and filled it with tap water, then took two aspirins out of a plastic bottle that was also in the cabinet. He was swallowing the second when a sergeant named Crowley finally picked up.

“What, did I catch you in church? I rang your house. No answer.”

“Crowley, what have you got for me?”

“Well, I know we had you out last night on that TV thing. But you’re still catching. You and your partner. All weekend. So, that means you got the DB up at Lake Hollywood. In a pipe up there. It’s on the access road to the Mulholland Dam. You know it?”

“I know the place. What else?”

“Patrol’s out. ME, SID notified. My people don’t know what they got, except a DB. Stiff’s about thirty feet into this pipe there. They don’t want to go all the way in, mess up a possible crime scene, you know? I had ’em page your partner but he hasn’t called in. No answer at his phone either. I thought maybe the two of you was together or something. Then I thought, nah, he ain’t your style. And you ain’t his.”

“I’ll get ahold of him. If they didn’t go all the way in, how they know it’s a DB and not just some guy sleeping it off?”

“Oh, they went in a bit, you know, and reached in with a stick or something and poked around at the guy pretty good. Stiff as a wedding night prick.”

“They didn’t want to mess up a crime scene but then they go poking around the body with a stick. That’s wonderful. These guys get in after they raised the college requirement, or what?”

“Hey, Bosch, we get a call, we’ve got to check it out. Okay? You want for us to transfer all our body calls directly to the homicide table to check out? You guys’d go nuts inside a week.”

Bosch crushed the cigarette butt in the stainless steel sink and looked out the kitchen window. Looking down the hill he could see one of the tourist trams moving between the huge beige sound studios in Universal City. A side of one of the block-long buildings was painted sky blue with wisps of white clouds; for filming exteriors when the natural L.A. exterior turned brown as wheat.

Bosch said, “How’d we get the call?”

“Anonymous to nine one one. A little after oh four hundred. Dispatcher said it came from a pay phone on the boulevard. Somebody out screwin’ around, found the thing in the pipe. Wouldn’t give a name. Said there was a stiff in the pipe, that’s all. They’ll have the tape down at the com center.”

Bosch felt himself getting angry. He pulled the bottle of aspirin out of the cabinet and put it in his pocket. While thinking about the 0400 call, he opened the refrigerator and bent in. He saw nothing that interested him. He looked at his watch.

“Crowley, if the report came in at fourA.M. why are you just getting to me now, nearly five hours later?”

“Look, Bosch, all we had was an anonymous call. That’s it. Dispatcher said it was a kid, no less. I wasn’t going to send one of my guys up that pipe in the middle of the night on information like that. Coulda been a prank. Coulda been an ambush. Coulda been anything, fer crissake. I waited till it got light out and things slowed down around here. Sent some of my guys over there at the end of shift. Speaking of end of shifts, I’m outta here. I’ve been waiting to hear from them and then from you. Anything else?”

Bosch felt like asking if it ever occurred to him that it would be dark in the pipe whether they went poking around at 0400 or 0800, but let it go. What was the use?