Bosch nodded. If it was a true story, Mason had done nothing wrong. But his story brought Irvin Irving solidly back into the picture. The question for the district attorney or even a grand jury would be about the councilman. Was he subtly using his influence to help benefit his son’s client, or was he motivated by concerns for public safety? There was a fine line and Bosch doubted the question would ever get so far as a grand jury. Irving was too smart. Still, Bosch was intrigued by what Mason had tagged to the end of his story. There was nothing wrong with the chain of events “at that time.”
“Did the councilman tell you when this complaint came in or how exactly it got to him?”
“No, he did not.”
“Did this sort of alert ever come up in a roll call over the summer?”
“Not that I remember but I probably wouldn’t know, to tell you the truth. I’ve been around. I’ve got years and I’m allowed certain indulgences, I guess you might call it. I usually roll in first on shift change. I get priority vacation dibs, shit like that. I miss a lot of roll calls. I’ve been to too many and I can’t stand sitting up there in that little room and listening to the same thing night after night. But my partner, who’s a rookie, never misses and he tells me what I need to know. So this RFC could’ve come up. I just wasn’t there.”
“But your partner never told you it came up, right?”
“No, but we were already on it, so he wouldn’t have to. First deployment after that party, I started pulling over taxis. So he wouldn’t have to tell me if it came up in roll call. See what I mean?”
“I do.”
Bosch pulled out his notebook and flipped it open. There was nothing written on the pages concerning Mason but he wanted time to collect his thoughts and consider what to ask next. He started flipping through his pages of notes.
“Nice,” Mason said. “That your number on the badge?”
He pointed to the notebook.
“Yeah.”
“Where do you get something like that?”
“Hong Kong. Did you know that your friend George Irving was repping a taxi company that was hoping to take the franchise away from Black and White? Did you know that the DUIs you put on the company’s record were going to help George succeed?”
“Like I said, not at the time. Not last summer.”
Mason rubbed his palms up and down his thighs. They were now moving toward something that was uncomfortable for him.
“So at some point you did come to know this?”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
“When?” Bosch prompted.
“Uh, that would have been about six weeks ago.”
“Tell me.”
“One night I pulled over a taxi. Saw the guy roll a stop sign and pulled him over. It was a Black and White, and right away the guy starts giving me shit about collusion and all this and I’m thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah, just touch your nose with your forefinger, asshole. But then he says, ‘You and Irving Junior are doing this to us’ and I’m like, What the hell? So I get in his face and tell him to tell me exactly what he means by that. And that’s when I found out my friend Georgie was repping another cab company putting the move on Black and White.”
Bosch leaned forward, closer to Mason, and put his elbows on his knees. They were getting to the center of it now.
“What did you do?”
“I confronted him. I went to George and gave him every way out, but at the end of the day, there was no way out. I felt he and his father had used me and I told him that. I told him we weren’t friends anymore and that was the last time I saw him.”
Bosch nodded.
“And this is why you think he killed himself.”
Mason scoffed.
“No, man. If he used me like that, then I wasn’t really that important in his life. I think he killed himself for other reasons. I think Chad leaving was a big thing . . . and maybe there were other things. The family had secrets, you know what I mean?”
Mason didn’t know about McQuillen or the marks on George Irving’s back. Bosch decided that this wasn’t the time for him to find out.
“Okay, Mason, you have anything else for me?”
Mason shook his head.
“You didn’t confront the councilman about all of this, did you?”
“Not yet.”
Bosch thought about that.
“You going to the funeral tomorrow?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Tomorrow morning, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll guess I’ll decide then. We were friends a long time. Things just sort of went wrong at the end.”
“Well, maybe I’ll see you there. You can go now. I appreciate you telling the story.”