The Black Echo

Bosch’s embarrassment at being unceremoniously dismissed by Agent Wish had turned to anger and frustration as he rode down the elevator. It was like a physical presence in his chest that jumped into his throat as the stainless steel cell descended. He was alone, and when the pager on his belt started to chirp, he let it go on for its allotted fifteen seconds rather than turn it off. He swallowed his anger and embarrassment and formed it into resolve. As he stepped out of the elevator car, he looked down at the phone number on the pager’s digital display. An 818 area code-the Valley, but he didn’t recognize the number. He stepped to a pod of pay phones in the courtyard in front of the Federal Building and dialed the number. Ninety cents, an electronic voice said. Luckily he had the loose change. He dumped it in and the call was picked up on a half ring by Jerry Edgar.

“Harry,” he began without a hello, “I’m still up here at the VA and I’m getting the runaround, man. They don’t have any files on Meadows. They say I have to go through D.C. or I gotta get a warrant. I tell them I know there is a file, you know, on account of what you told me. I say, ‘Look, if I was to get a search warrant, can you look and make sure you know where this file is?’ And so they’re lookin’ for a while and what they finally come out saying is, yes, they had a file but it’s gone. Guess who came and got it with a court order last year?”

“The FBI.”

“You know something I don’t know?”

“I haven’t exactly been sitting on my ass. They say when the bureau took it or why?”

“They weren’t told why. FBI agent just came in with the warrant and took it. Checked it out last September and hasn’t brought it back since. Didn’t give a reason. The Fucking-B-I doesn’t have to.”

Bosch was quiet while he thought about this. They knew all along. Wish knew about Meadows and the tunnels and everything else he had just told her. It had all been a show.

“Harry, you there?”

“Yeah, listen, did they show you a copy of the paperwork or know the name of the agent?”

“No, they couldn’t find the subpoena receipt and nobody remembered the agent’s name, except that she was a woman.”

“Take this number where I’m at. Go back to them in records and ask for another file, just see if it’s there. My file.”

He gave Edgar the pay phone number, his date of birth, social security number and his full name, spelling out his real first name.

“Jesus, that’s your first name?” Edgar said. “Harry for short. How’d your momma come up with that one?”

“She had a thing about fifteenth-century painters. It goes with the last name. Go check on the file, then call me back. I’ll wait here.”

“I can’t even pronounce it, man.”

“Rhymes with ‘anonymous.’”

“Okay, I’ll try that. Where you at, anyway?”

“A pay phone. Outside the FBI.”

Bosch hung up before his partner could ask any questions. He lit a cigarette and leaned on the phone booth while watching a small group of people walking in a circle on the long green lawn in front of the building. They were holding up homemade signs and placards that protested a proposal to open new oil leases in Santa Monica Bay. He saw signs that said Just Say No to Oil and Isn’t the Bay Polluted Enough? and United States of Exxon and so on.

He noticed a couple of TV news crews on the lawn filming the protest. That was the key, he thought. Exposure. As long as the media showed up and put it on the six o’clock news, the protest was a success. A sound-bite success. Bosch noticed that the group’s apparent spokesman was being interviewed on camera by a woman he recognized from Channel 4. He also recognized the spokesman but he wasn’t sure from where. After a few moments of watching the man’s ease during the interview in front of the camera, Bosch placed him. The guy was a TV actor who used to play a drunk on a popular situation comedy that Bosch had seen once or twice. Though the guy still looked like a drunk, the show wasn’t on anymore.

Bosch was on his second cigarette, leaning on the phone booth and beginning to feel the heat of the day, when he looked up at the glass doors of the building and saw Agent Eleanor Wish walking through. She was looking down and digging a hand through her purse and hadn’t noticed him. Quickly and without analyzing why, he ducked behind the phones and, using them as a shield, moved around them as she walked by. It was sunglasses she had been looking for in the purse. Now she had them on as she walked past the protestors without even a glance in their direction. She headed up Veteran Avenue to Wilshire Boulevard. Bosch knew the federal garage was under the building. Wish was walking in the opposite direction. She was going somewhere nearby. The phone rang.

“Harry, they have your file, too. The FBI. What’s going on?”

Edgar’s voice was urgent and confused. He didn’t like waves. He didn’t like mysteries. He was a straight nine-to-five man.