“You still there?” Haller asked.
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “We’re not done talking about this.”
“All right, all right. Tell you what, let’s meet tomorrow morning. Breakfast at Du-Par’s. How’s eight o’clock sound? You make your case to me. I’ll listen.”
“Which Du-Par’s?”
“Farmer’s Market.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Where are you headed now?”
“Hollywood. To check something out.”
Haller waited for more but Bosch wasn’t giving. He tried to shake off his upset and refocus.
“I’ll let you know if it pans out,” he finally said.
“Okay,” Haller said. “See you tomorrow.”
Bosch disconnected, pulled the earbud out, and dropped the phone into one of the cup holders in the center console. He regretted his outburst with Haller but there was nothing to do about it now. He focused on his driving as he took Fairfax up from Santa Monica to Sunset.
A few years earlier it was discovered that members of an Armenian street gang had rented an office suite in the twelve-story building located at Sunset and Wilcox. The office was on the seventh floor and at the back of the building, where its windows overlooked the LAPD Hollywood Station with a full view of its rear door and adjoining parking lots. By posting someone behind a telescope in the office twenty-four hours a day the gang was able to gather intelligence on the undercover Narcotics and Vice Units as well as the gang-suppression teams. They learned the times when the various units were on duty, when they were out on the streets, and the general direction they went after mounting up in the parking lot and heading through the gate.
At some point an informant revealed the existence of the spy post to a DEA handler and it was shut down in an FBI raid that thoroughly embarrassed the department. The FBI seized surveillance logbooks that had individual code names for various members of the Hollywood Station units, describing both their personal cars and their undercover vehicles. It was also discovered that the Armenian gang had been selling the fruits of their intelligence gathering to other gangs and criminal enterprises operating in Hollywood.
The department instituted several procedural changes designed to prevent such embarrassment from happening again. Among them was moving the undercover car pool from the station lot to an off-site lot where space was donated by a supportive local business — the Hollywood Athletic Club. As with most secrets within the department, the location of the undercover lot was not so secret. The spy post scandal had occurred after Bosch moved to the Open-Unsolved Unit in the downtown PAB, but even he had heard where they had moved the UC car lot to.
The HAC was on Sunset and only a few blocks from the Hollywood Station. Its parking lot was behind it and was surrounded by buildings on three sides and a fence on the fourth that ran along Selma. There was no parking attendant on-site but a key card was required to enter through the gate.
Bosch didn’t have a key card but he didn’t need to enter the lot. He parked at the curb on Selma, got out, and walked to the fence. He knew it was a good time to inventory the UC cars, because almost all of them would be in the lot. It was only 10 a.m. and the vice, drug, and gang teams that used the cars kept the same hours as their prey. That is, they started operations in the afternoons and worked into the nights. The mornings were for sleeping late.
The pool cars used by the undercover teams were changed out or swapped with other divisions at least once a year to avoid familiarity on the street. Some were pulled out of circulation for a month here and there as well. Some were traded with other divisions so each would have fresh cars. It had been two months since Cisco Wojciechowski had been run into oncoming traffic and so there was a possibility that the burnt-orange Camaro that Bosch was looking for would be gone already. The fact that Ellis and Long were using a different UC car when they bagged Haller on the DUI seemed to indicate that the car had been changed over. On the other hand, Bosch thought, if they had committed a crime in the Camaro, they might trade it in right away for a different car. A jet-black Dodge, for example.
Either way Bosch had to make sure, and his diligence paid off. He spotted the familiar front lights of a Camaro that was backed into a parking spot against the rear wall of the lot. It had a heavy layer of smog dust on its windshield and obviously had not been driven for quite a while. He had to move down the fence a few paces to get a side angle on it and confirm its color: burnt orange.
He used his phone to take a photo of the car. He then texted it to the number Cisco had given him earlier with a question: Is this the car?
Bosch walked back to his rental. Cisco answered as he was opening the door: I think so. Looks like it.
Bosch got into the car. He felt the spark ignite in his bloodstream. Seeing the Camaro confirmed only a small part of his theory and was proof of nothing, but the charge of adrenaline came nonetheless. He was putting pieces of the puzzle together, and there was always a charge when even the smallest pieces fit. The Camaro was important. If Ellis and Long were using it when they ran Cisco off the road, they may have been using it a few weeks earlier when James Allen’s body was transported to the alley off of El Centro.
He got back in the Chrysler and worked his way down to Santa Monica and then over to the Hollywood Forever cemetery. He parked in front of the office, went in, and found Oscar Gascon behind the desk in his little office. He recognized Bosch from the prior visit.
“Detective, you’re back,” he said.
“I am,” Bosch said. “How’s business?”
“Still dead. You need to look at my cameras again?”
“That’s right. But I’ve got a different date for you. When I was here before, you said the LAPD guys came by to look at tape for the night of that murder down at the Haven House.”
“That’s right.”
“All right if I take a look at the same night?”
Gascon studied Bosch for a moment like he was trying to figure out his angle. Finally, he shrugged.
“Don’t see why not.”
It took Gascon five minutes to retrieve the video from the cloud of the night James Allen was murdered. He put it on fast play and Bosch watched the entrance of the motel property.
“What are we looking for?” Gascon asked.
Bosch answered without taking his eyes off the screen.
“A burnt-orange Camaro,” he said.
They watched silently for the next ten minutes. Cars moved up and down Santa Monica with an unnatural speed. Bosch decided that if they got through the night without seeing the Camaro, he would ask to watch it again on a slower speed. Gascon might object to that but Bosch would push for it.
“There,” Gascon suddenly said. “Was that a Camaro?”
“Slow it,” Bosch said.
The playback went to normal speed and they watched wordlessly. The car they had seen enter the Haven House parking lot did not come back out. Bosch realized that there was no reason to think the car would reemerge quickly.
“Let’s back it up and see that again,” he said.
Gascon did as instructed. Then on his own he put the playback on slow motion. They waited and an orange car came into the screen from the left side and turned left toward the motel entrance.
“Freeze it,” Bosch ordered.
Gascon froze the image as the car was crossing the westbound lanes of Santa Monica. It was directly sideways to the camera but the image was grainy and undefined. The general lines of the car appeared to match those of a Camaro. A two-door coupe design with a sleek, low profile roof.
“What do you think?” Gascon asked.
Bosch didn’t answer. He was studying the dark band of windows on the car and the matching dark wheels. It was close but Bosch couldn’t call it. He wondered if Haller’s videoenhancement person could improve the image.