The phone buzzed again but this time when the man reached for the desk button, Bosch was quicker. He pushed it once to connect the call, then again to disconnect it.
“What the fuck you doing, man? This is our business here.”
“It’s my business being here, too. They’ll just call somebody else. Maybe Regent Cab will get their business.”
Bosch checked him for a reaction and saw his tight-lipped response.
“Now, who is driver twenty-six?”
“We don’t give drivers numbers. We give cars numbers.”
His tone was meant to convey that he thought this was the dumbest pair of cops going.
“Then tell me who was driving car twenty-six about nine thirty Sunday night.”
The call taker leaned back so he could look around Bosch at the dispatcher and they exchanged a silent message.
“You got a warrant for that?” the dispatcher asked. “We’re not just going to give you a guy’s name so you can go out and trump up another bullshit arrest on us.”
“I don’t need a warrant,” Bosch said.
“The hell you don’t!” cried the dispatcher.
“What I need is your cooperation, and if I don’t get it, those deuces you’re worried about are going to be the least of your problems. And at the end of the day, I’m still going to get what I want. So decide right now how you want to play it.”
The two B&W men looked at each other again. Bosch looked at Chu. If the bluff didn’t work, they might have to amp up the situation. Bosch checked Chu’s face for any sign of retreat. There was none.
The dispatcher opened a binder that was to the side of his desk. From Bosch’s angle he could see it was some sort of schedule. He turned back three pages to Sunday.
“All right, Hooch Rollins had that car Sunday night. Now leave, the both of you.”
“Hooch Rollins? What’s his real name?”
“How the fuck should we know?”
It was the dispatcher. Bosch was getting pretty annoyed with him. He stepped over closer and looked down at him. The phone rang.
“Don’t answer that,” Bosch said.
“You’re killing us here, man!”
“They’ll call back.”
Bosch locked in on the dispatcher.
“Is Hooch Rollins working right now?”
“Yeah, he’s working a double today.”
“Well, dispatcher, get on the radio and call him back here.”
“Yeah, what do I say to get him to do that?”
“You tell him you need to switch out his car. Tell him you’ve got a better one for him. It just came in on the truck.”
“He won’t believe that. We got no truck coming. We’re about to go out of business thanks to you people.”
“Make him believe it.”
Bosch gave the dispatcher a hard look and the man turned to his microphone and called Hooch Rollins in.
Bosch and Chu stepped out of the office and conferred about what to do when Rollins showed up. They decided that they would wait until he was out of the car before making an approach to him.
A few minutes later a beat-up taxi that was a year past needing a wash pulled into the bay area. It was driven by a man in a straw hat. He jumped out and said to no one in particular, “Where’s my new wheels?”
Bosch and Chu approached from two sides. When they got close enough to contain Rollins, Bosch spoke.
“Mr. Rollins? We’re with the LAPD and we need to ask you some questions.”
Rollins looked confused. Then the fight-or-flight look entered his eyes.
“What?”
“I said we need to ask you a few questions.”
Bosch badged him then so he’d know that it was formal and official. There was no running from the law.
“What’d I do?”
“As far as we know, nothing, Mr. Rollins. We want to talk to you about something you may have seen.”
“You’re not going to jack me up like the other fellas, are you?”
“We don’t know anything about that. Will you please accompany us to the Hollywood police station so we can sit in a quiet room and talk?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not now, no. We were counting on you wanting to cooperate and just answer some questions. We’ll get you back here right after.”
“Man, if I’m with you, then I ain’t making no money out there.”
Bosch was about to lose his patience.
“We won’t take long, Mr. Rollins. Please cooperate with us.”
Rollins seemed to read Bosch’s tone and realized that it didn’t matter whether he went the hard or easy way, he was going nonetheless. The street pragmatist in him made him choose the easy way.
“Okay, let’s get it over with. You don’t have to cuff me or anything, do you?”