“We must accede to our client’s needs,” he explained. “If a Beverly Hills lady should call on a Sunday because she needs her tiara for the charity ball, I want to be able to get that tiara for her. You see, it is the service we sell.”
“Do all your clients know about that weekend service?” Wish asked.
“Of course not,” Avery III said. “Only a select few. You see, we charge a hefty fee. We must bring in a security guard to do it.”
“How long does it take to do the override and swing the door open?” Bosch asked.
“Not long. I tap in the override code on the keypad next to the vault door and it is done in a matter of seconds. You then set the vault unlock code in, then turn the wheel and the door opens under its own weight. Thirty seconds, perhaps a minute, perhaps less.”
Not fast enough, Bosch thought. Tran’s box was located near the front of the vault. That’s where the bandits would be working. They would see and probably hear the vault door being opened. No element of surprise.
An hour later, Bosch and Wish were back in his car. They had moved to the second level of the parking garage across Wilshire and east a half block from Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. From there they had an open view of the vault room. After they had left Avery III and taken the surveillance position, they had watched as Avery IV and Grant swung the huge stainless steel vault door closed. They turned the wheel and typed on the computer keypad, locking it. Then the lights inside the business went out, all except those in the glass vault room. Those always stayed on to display the very symbol of the security they offered.
“You think they’ll come through tonight?” Wish asked.
“Hard to say. Without Meadows, they’re down a man. They might be behind schedule.”
They had told Avery III to go home and be ready for a callout. The owner had agreed but remained skeptical of the whole scenario Bosch and Wish had spun for him.
“We are going to have to get them from underground,” Bosch said, his hands holding the steering wheel as if he were driving. “We’d never get that door open fast enough.”
Bosch idly looked to his left, up Wilshire. He saw a white LTD with police wheels parked at the curb a block away. It was parked next to a fire hydrant and there were two figures in it. He still had company.
Bosch and Wish stood next to his car, which was parked on the second level of the garage facing the retainer wall at the south end. The garage had been virtually empty for more than an hour, but the drab concrete enclosure smelled of exhaust fumes and burning brakes. Bosch was sure the brakes smell was from his car. The stop-and-go tail from Little Saigon had taken its toll on the replacement car. From their position they could look across Wilshire and west a half block to the vault showroom of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. Farther down Wilshire the sky was pink and the setting sun a deep orange. Evening lights were coming on in the city and traffic was thinning out. Bosch looked east up Wilshire and could see the white LTD parked at the curb, its occupants shadows behind the tinted windshield.
At eight o’clock a procession of three cars, the last a Beverly Hills patrol car, came up the ramp and cut across the empty parking spaces to where Bosch and Wish stood at the wall.
“Well, if our perps have their lookout in any of these high rises and they saw this little parade, you can bet he is pulling them out now,” Bosch said.
Rourke and four other men got out of the two unmarked cars. Bosch could tell by the suits that three of them were agents. The fourth man’s suit was a little too worn, its pockets baggy like Bosch’s. He carried a cardboard tube. Harry figured him for the DWP supe Wish had said was coming. Three Beverly Hills uniforms, one with captain’s bars on his collar, got out of the patrol car. The captain was also carrying a rolled tube of paper.
Everybody converged at Bosch’s car and used its hood as the meeting table. Rourke made some quick introductions. The three from BHPD were there because the operation was in their jurisdiction. Interdepartmental courtesy, Rourke said. They were also on hand because Beverly Hills Safe & Lock had filed a design plan with the local police department’s commercial security division. They would only observe the meeting, Rourke said, and be called on later if their department was needed for backup. Two of the FBI agents, Hanlon and Houck, would work the overnight surveillance with Bosch and Wish. Rourke wanted a view of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock from at least two angles. The third agent was the FBI’s SWAT coordinator. And the last man was Ed Gearson, a DWP underground facilities supervisor.
“Okay, let’s set the battle plans,” Rourke announced at the end of the introductions. He took the cardboard tube from Gearson without asking and slid out a rolled blueprint. “This is a DWP schematic print for this area. It has all the utility lines, the tunnels and culverts. It tells us exactly what is down there.”
He unfurled the grayish map with smeared blue lines on it across the hood. The three Beverly Hills cops anchored the other end with their hands. It was getting dark in the garage and the SWAT man, an agent named Heller, held a penlight with a surprisingly wide and bright beam over the drawing. Rourke took a pen out of his shirt pocket, pulled on it until it telescoped into a pointer.
“Okay, we are… right…” Before he could find the spot Gearson reached his arm into the light and put a finger on the map. Rourke brought his pen point over to the spot. “Yes, right here,” he said and gave Gearson a don’t-fuck-with-me look. The DWP man’s shoulders seemed to stoop a little more in his threadbare jacket.
Everyone around the car leaned in closer over the hood to study the location. “Beverly Hills Safe & Lock is here,” Rourke said. “The actual vault is here. Can we see your blueprint, Captain Orozco?”
Orozco, who was built like an inverted pyramid, broad shoulders over thin hips, unrolled his drawing across the top of the DWP print. It was a copy of the drawing Avery III had shown Bosch and Wish earlier.
“Three thousand square feet of vault space,” said Orozco, indicating the vault area with his hand. “Small private boxes along the sides and free-standing closets down the middle. If they are under there, they could come up through the floor anywhere along these two aisles. So we are talking about a range of about sixty feet in which they could come through the floor.”
“Now, Captain,” Rourke said, “if you pick that up and we look back at the DWP chart, we can place that breakthrough zone right here.” With a Day-Glo yellow underliner he outlined the floor of the vault on the utility map. “Using that as a guide, we can see the subterranean structures that offer the closest proximity. What do you think, Mr. Gearson?”
Gearson leaned over the car hood another few inches and studied the utility map. Bosch also leaned in. He saw thick lines he assumed indicated major east-west drainage lines. The kind the tunnelers would seek. He noticed that they corresponded to major surface streets: Wilshire, Olympic, Pico. Gearson pointed out the Wilshire line, saying it ran thirty feet below ground and was large enough to drive a truck through. With his finger, the DWP man traced the Wilshire line east ten blocks to Robertson, a major north-south stormwater line. From that intersection, he said, it was just a mile south to an open drainage culvert that ran alongside the Santa Monica Freeway. The opening at the culvert was as big as a garage door and blocked only by a gate with a padlock on it.
“I’d say that’s where they could’ve come in,” Gearson said. “Like following surface streets. You take the Robertson line up to Wilshire. Take a left and you’re practically here by your yellow line. The vault. But I don’t think they’d dig a tunnel off the Wilshire line.”