“Uh, I didn’t really track that. I don’t know whether she stayed in the business.”
“Do you think you can find her?”
“If she’s alive, I’ll find her. But if she’s not in L.A., I don’t know about getting her here by Wednesday morning.”
“Right. Just see what you can do. Maybe we get lucky.”
“Maybe. What else?”
“For you, that’s it. I’m going to work here this morning and figure out a case path.”
“What’s that?”
“The one thing we can count on is that our request to intervene on the motion to vacate will draw heavy fire from both the D.A. and Borders. I’ll make an argument and I’ll offer a proffer to the judge — sort of an unofficial look at what we’ll present if granted standing. I’ll run down our witness list and say what each of them is willing to testify to. If we convince the judge, then we’re in and then we kick their asses.”
“Got it. Do you mind if I split? I gotta go in for some follow-up stuff this morning and I want to go to work on finding Dina.”
“No problem, Harry. Go get ’em. But between now and Wednesday get some sleep. I don’t want you coming into that courtroom looking like you’re guilty.”
Taking a last gulp of coffee, Bosch pointed a finger at Haller like a gun and then slid out of the booth. Haller spoke again before he could walk away.
“Hey, Harry, one last thing? You are a damn fine detective, brother, but I want my man Cisco back.”
“Right. I’ll tell him.”
35
Bosch saw a TV truck from one of the Spanish-language stations parked in front of the SFPD headquarters when he drove in. He assumed it was there because of the farmacia murders, but he didn’t think that what had happened over the weekend could be contained for very long, and the Spanish-language media was often ahead of the game when it came to the news in San Fernando.
Before going to his office in the jail across the street, Bosch went in the side door of the station to get more coffee and check on things in the detective bureau. It was a full house this time, with all three detectives in their work pods and even Captain Trevino visible behind his desk through the open door of his office.
Only Bella Lourdes looked up at Bosch’s entrance, and she immediately signaled him over to her cubicle.
He held up a finger, telling her to hold a moment. He turned to the nearby coffee station and quickly poured his second jolt of the day into a cup. He then worked his way around the three-desk module to get to Bella’s spot in the back.
“Morning, Harry.”
“Morning, Bella. What’s up?”
She pointed to her computer screen, where a video was playing. It was obviously taken from a helicopter and shot downward at a water recovery of a body. Two divers were wrestling with the body of a man floating facedown. He was clothed but the T-shirt he wore was torn off and held to his body by the collar only. The rest of it waved in the water like a white flag of surrender. The divers were struggling as they tried to roll the body onto a rescue stretcher attached to a cable extending down from the chopper.
“Salton Sea,” Lourdes said. “This was two hours ago. They spotted the body on a flyover at dawn.”
Bosch leaned down, careful not to spill his coffee, to look more closely at the screen and the body.
“That the second Russian?” Lourdes asked.
Before Bosch could answer, he noticed that they had been joined by Sisto, who was looking over Bella’s other shoulder.
“Clothes look the same,” Bosch said. “From what I can remember. Gotta be him.”
“I asked them to send us a close-up of the face once they have the body at the coroner’s,” Lourdes said.
“That would wrap things up nice,” Sisto said. “On our case at least.”
“Sure would,” Lourdes added. “Why don’t we all go into the war room for updates and to figure out who’s doing what on this today?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sisto said.
Lourdes got up and called to Trevino and Luzon.
Bosch could still smell the breakfast he had missed lingering in the air of the war room. The four detectives took seats around the table and Trevino joined as well. Bosch spoke first.
“Uh, before we start divvying up paperwork and stuff, I’m here to do what I need to do and be available for any follow-ups with other agencies. But as you all know, I have a thing in court Wednesday morning with my reputation and possible future with this department on the line. So I need some prep time for that today. There are some things I have to do, and they can’t wait.”
“Understood, Harry,” Trevino said. “And if there’s anything we can do here to help with that, you let me know. I’ve talked to the chief and, speaking for him and everybody in this room, we are behind you one hundred percent. We know what kind of detective and person you are.”
Bosch could feel his face turning red with embarrassment. In all his years in law enforcement, he had never heard such accolades from a supervisor.
“Thanks, Cap,” he managed to say.
They settled down and got to the business at hand, starting with Lourdes summarizing a report she had gotten that morning from Agent Hovan on the DEA’s activities since the previous afternoon. She reported that the encampment down near Slab City had been raided and shut down. The addicted inhabitants were evacuated to the naval base in San Diego, where they were being medically evaluated before being offered placement in pro bono rehab programs.
Lourdes reported that the DEA had also shut down the clinic in Pacoima and arrested the men operating it, along with the physician of record, Efram Herrera. Among those arrested was the driver of the van. Though he was suspected of being the getaway driver in the farmacia murders, he had so far been charged under federal law only for taking part in a continuing criminal organization.
From there, report writing, follow-up inquiries, and notifications were distributed among the detectives, with Bosch getting a full pass. Lourdes and Luzon were assigned to go to the federal detention facility downtown and take a shot at interviewing the driver about the farmacia shootings, a task all of those in the room predicted would be fruitless. Fifteen minutes later Bosch was crossing the street to the old jail, carrying his third cup of coffee of the day. He noticed that the TV truck was now gone and he guessed that the reporter and crew had been shined on by Chief Valdez. A joint press conference on the case would be held at three p.m. at the station with DEA and state medical board officials. It would be announced that the double murder at La Farmacia Familia had been solved and that the suspects were dead, provided that Bosch was able later to identify the body recovered that morning from the Salton Sea as the second Russian.
Because Bosch had worked undercover on the case, he had an out and would not be required to appear at the press conference.
Besides his coffee, Bosch carried a file containing copies of documents that had been pulled together overnight on the case. The one he was most interested in studying was the Interpol report on the man he had killed on the plane. Once in his cell in the old jail, he sat down behind his makeshift desk and opened the file.
It turned out that the man he killed was not technically Russian, though it was clear from the Interpol data that he grew up speaking the language. Fingerprints had identified him as Dmitri Sluchek, born in 1980 in Minsk, Belarus. He had served time in two different Russian prisons for theft and assault. The Interpol file tracked him until 2008, when he slipped into the United States illegally and never returned. It described him at that time as a “six” who was associated with a Minsk-based subset of the Russian Bratva — meaning “brotherhood,” a general word encompassing all of Russian organized crime. The report stated that a six was a low-level mob associate used on the front line of criminal enterprises. The reference came from the lowest rank in a deck of cards used in a Russian game called The Sixes. Such associates were often used as enforcers until they showed leadership skills and were moved up to the position of bratok, or soldier.