Bosch nodded. He had gotten what he’d come for.
“One thing, though,” Coleman said.
“What’s that?”
“Tru Story’s dead, man. Least that’s what I heard up here.”
Bosch had prepared himself on the way up. In the past two decades, the gang body count in South L.A. was in the thousands. He knew that there was a better-than-good chance he was looking for a dead man. But he also knew that the trail didn’t necessarily stop with Tru Story.
“You still going to send in that letter?” Coleman asked.
Bosch stood up. He was done. The brutish man in front of him was a stone-cold killer and was in the place he deserved to be. But Bosch had made a deal with him.
“You’ve probably thought about it a million times,” he said. “What do you do after you get out and hug your daughter?”
Coleman answered without missing a beat.
“I find a corner.”
He waited, knowing Bosch would jump to the wrong conclusion.
“And I start to preach. I tell everybody what I’ve learned. What I know. Society won’t have no problem with me. I’ll be a soldier still. But I’ll be a soldier for Christ.”
Bosch nodded. He knew that many who left here had the same plan. To go with God. Few of them made it. It was a system that relied on repeat customers. In his gut he knew Coleman was probably one of them.
“Then I’ll send the letter,” he said.
3
In the morning, Bosch went to the South Bureau on Broadway to meet with Detective Jordy Gant in the Gang Enforcement Detail. Gant was at his desk and on a phone call when Bosch arrived but it didn’t sound important and he quickly got off.
“How’d it go up there with Rufus?” he said.
He smiled as a way of showing understanding if Bosch said, as expected, that the trip to San Quentin was a bust.
“Well, he gave me a name but he also told me the guy was dead, so the whole thing could have been him playing me while I was playing him.”
“What’s the name?”
“Trumont Story. Heard of him?”
Gant just nodded and turned to a short stack of files on the side of his desk. Next to it was a small black box labeled “Rolling 60s—1991–1994.” Bosch recognized it as a box that was used in the old days for holding field interview cards. That was before the department started using computers to store intelligence data.
“Imagine that,” Gant said. “And I just happen to have Tru Story’s file right here.”
“Yeah, imagine that,” Bosch said, taking the file.
He opened it directly to an 8 × 10 shot of a man lying dead on a sidewalk. There was a contact entry wound on his left temple. His right eye had been replaced with a large exit wound. A small amount of blood had oozed onto the concrete and coagulated by the time the photo had been shot.
“Nice,” Bosch said. “Looks like he let somebody get a little too close. This still an open case?”
“That’s right.”
Harry flipped past the photo and checked the date on the incident report. Trumont Story had been dead almost three years. He closed the file and looked at Gant sitting smugly in his desk chair.
“Tru Story’s been dead since ’oh-nine and you just happen to have his file on your desk?”
“Nope, I pulled it for you. Pulled two others as well and thought you might even want to look at our shake cards from back in ’ninety-two. Never know, a name in there might mean something to you.”
“Maybe so. Why’d you pull the files?”
“Well, after we talked about your case and the ATF matches to the other two—you know, three cases, one gun, three different shooters—I started to—”
“Actually, it’s a long shot, but it could be just two shooters. The same guy who kills my victim in ’ninety-two comes back around and hits Vaughn in ’oh-three.”
Gant shook his head.
“Could be but I’m thinking no. Too long a shot. So I was thinking for the sake of argument, three victims, three different shooters, one gun. So I went through our Rolling Sixties cases. That is, cases they were involved in on either side of the violence. As killers or the killed. I pulled cases that might be related to this gun and I got three where there were gunshot killings in which no ballistics evidence was recovered. Two were hits on Seven-Treys, and one—you guessed it—was Tru Story.”
Bosch was still standing. Now he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Can I take a quick look at the other two?”
Gant handed the files across the desk and Bosch started a quick survey. These weren’t murder books. They were gang files and therefore abbreviated accounts and reports on the killings. The full murder books would be in the hands of the homicide investigators assigned to the cases. If he wanted more, Bosch would have to requisition them, or drop by the lead detective’s desk to borrow a look.
“Typical stuff,” Gant said as Bosch read. “You sell on the wrong corner or visit a girl in the wrong neighborhood and you’re marked for death. The reason I threw Tru Story in there was that he was shot elsewhere and dumped.”
Bosch looked over the files at Gant.
“And why’s that significant?”
“Because it might mean it was an inside job. His own crew. It’s unusual to see a body dump in a gang killing. You know, with the drive-bys and straight-up assassinations. Nobody takes the time to pop a guy and then move the body unless there’s a reason. One might be to disguise that it was internal housekeeping. He was dumped on Seven-Trey turf, so the thinking was he was probably hit on his own turf and then dumped in enemy territory to make it look like he strayed across the line.”
Bosch registered all of this. Gant shrugged his shoulders.
“Just a working guess,” he said. “The case is still open.”
“It’s gotta be more than a working guess,” Bosch said. “What do you know that leads you to make a guess like that? Are you working this?”
“I’m not homicide, I’m intel. I was called in to consult. But that was back then—three years ago. All I know now is that the case is still open.”
The Gang Enforcement Detail was the overarching street gang branch of the LAPD. It had homicide squads, detective squads, intelligence units, and community outreach programs.
“Okay, so you consulted,” Bosch said. “So, what do you know from three years ago?”
“Well, Story was high up in the pyramid I told you about the other day. It can get contentious up there. Everybody wants to be at the top, and then when you’re there, you gotta look over your shoulder, see who’s coming up behind you.”
Gant gestured toward the files Bosch held.
“You said so yourself when you saw the picture. He let somebody get too close. That’s for damn sure. You know how many gang murders involve contact wounds? Almost none—unless like it’s a club shooting or something. Then only sometimes. But most of the time these guys don’t get up close and personal. This time, however, with Tru Story, they did. So the theory at the time was that the Sixties did this one themselves. Somebody near the top of the pyramid had reason to believe Tru Story had to go and it got done. Bottom line, it could be the same gun you’re looking for. There was no slug and no shell recovered, but the wound would work with a nine-mill, and now that you’ve got Rufus Coleman up there in the Q putting your Beretta model ninety-two in Tru Story’s hands, then it sounds even better.”
Bosch nodded. It made a certain amount of sense.
“And the GED never picked up on what this was about?”
Gant shook his head.
“Nah, they never got close. You gotta understand something, Harry. The pyramid is most vulnerable to law enforcement at the bottom. The street level. It’s also most visible there.”