The Drop(91)

“Deborah?” Irving said. “She told you nothing.”

“On the first day she told us nothing. That is correct. It was during a subsequent interview that she was more forthcoming about the details of her marriage and her husband’s life and work.”

Irving leaned back, dragging a balled fist on the table.

“I was informed by this office just yesterday that this was a homicide investigation, that there was evidence of assault on my son’s body prior to the fatal impact and that it was likely that there was a former or current police officer involved. Now today I pick up the paper and read something completely different. I read that it’s a suicide. You know what this is? This is a payback. And it’s a cover-up and I will formally petition the council for an independent review of your so-called investigation and I will ask the district attorney—whoever that may be after next month’s election—to also review the case and its handling.”

“Irv,” the chief said. “You asked for Detective Bosch to be put on the case. You said let the chips fall and now you don’t like how they have fallen. So you want to investigate how it was investigated?”

The chief went back long enough in the department to call the councilman by his first name. No one else in the room would even dare.

“I chose him because I thought he had the integrity not to be swayed from the truth but what obviously has—”

“Harry Bosch has more integrity than anybody I’ve ever met. Anybody in this room.”

It was Chu and the whole room looked at him, shocked by his outburst. Even Bosch was taken aback.

“We’re not going to get into personal attacks here,” the chief said. “We first want to—”

“If there is an investigation of the investigation,” Bosch said, daring to cut the chief off, “it will most likely lead to your indictment, Councilman.”

That stunned the group. But Irving recovered quickly.

“How dare you!” he said, his eyes full of growing rage. “How dare you say such a thing about me in front of other people. I will have your badge for this! I have served this city for nearly fifty years and not once has anyone accused me of any impropriety. I am less than a month from being reelected to my seat for the fourth time and you won’t stop me or the will of the people who want me to represent them.”

A silence followed, during which one of Irving’s aides opened a leather folder with a legal pad inside. He wrote something down on the pad and Bosch half-imagined it was Take Bosch’s badge.

“Detective Bosch,” Rider said. “Why don’t you explain your statement?”

It was said with a tone of shock and maybe even outrage, as if she were joining the defense of Irving’s reputation. But Bosch knew that she was giving him the entrée he needed to say what he wanted.

“George Irving billed himself as a lobbyist, but he wasn’t really much more than a fixer and a bagman. He sold influence. He used his own connections as a former cop and assistant city attorney but his most notable connection was to his father, the city councilman. You wanted something? He could get it to his father. You wanted a concrete supply contract or a taxi franchise, George was the man to see because he could get it done.”

Bosch looked directly at Irving when he mentioned the taxi franchise. He saw a slight tremor in one eyelid and took it as a tell. He wasn’t saying anything the old man didn’t already know.

“This is outrageous!” Irving bellowed. “I want this stopped! This man is using a long-held grudge to tarnish what I have worked for all my life.”

Bosch stopped and waited. He knew this was the moment when the police chief would choose sides. It was going to be him or Irving.

“I think we need to hear what Detective Bosch has to say,” the chief said.

He shared his own hard stare with Irving, and Bosch knew that the chief was taking a major gamble. He was positioning himself against a powerful force in city government. He was banking on Bosch, and Harry knew he had Kiz Rider to thank for that.

“Go ahead, Detective,” the chief said.

Bosch leaned forward so he could look directly down the table at the chief.

“A couple months ago George Irving parted ways with his closest friend. A cop he had known since the police academy. The friendship ended when the cop realized George and his father had been using him without his knowledge to help swing a lucrative taxi franchise toward one of George’s clients. The cop was asked directly by the councilman to start hitting the existing franchise holder with DUI spot checks, knowing that a file full of such stops or arrests would damage their efforts to retain the franchise.”