“Sounds like lawyer bullshit to me. Grandstanding. How was he gonna find the killer if you guys on the PD didn’t? That is, if the killer really wasn’t Michael Harris, like every cop and white person in this town believes.”

Bosch hiked his shoulders.

“Even if he was wrong – even if he was going to name somebody as a smoke screen, it could have made him a target.”

He purposely wasn’t telling Lindell everything – particularly about the mystery notes. He wanted the FBI agent to think that Bosch’s team would be chasing rainbows while he would be commanding the real investigation.

“So you run with that and I chase down bad cops, is that the deal?”

“Pretty much. Chastain should have a head start for you. First of all, he’s the most familiar with the Black Warrior thing. He handled the IAD investigation on it. And – ”

“Yeah, but he cleared everybody on it.”

“Maybe he messed up. Or maybe he was told to clear everybody.”

Lindell nodded that he understood the suggestion.

“Also, his crew was supposedly going through Elias’s files yesterday and making a list. And I just brought in five more boxes of files. From all of that you’ll get a list of guys to talk to. I think you’re in good shape.”

“If I’m in such great shape why are you giving this side of things to me?”

“ ’Cause I’m a nice guy.”

“Bosch, you’re holding out.”

“I just have a hunch, that’s all.”

“That what, Harris really was framed?”

“I don’t know. But something wasn’t right with the case. I want to find out what it was.”

“So meantime I’m stuck with Chastain and his crew.”

“Yup. That’s the deal.”

“Well, what am I going to do with them? You just told me Chastain’s a leak.”

“Send them out for coffee and then run away and hide.”

Lindell laughed.

“This is what I would do,” Bosch then added on a serious note. “I’d put two of them on Elias and two on Perez. You know, doing the paper, managing the evidence, taking the autopsies – which will probably be today anyway. That will keep them busy and out of your way. Regardless of whether it’s them or not, you’ve got to put at least one body on Perez. We’ve treated her as an also-ran, which she obviously was. But you gotta do the due diligence on it or it can come back on you if you ever go to court and the lawyer asks why Perez wasn’t pursued as the primary target.”

“Right, right. We gotta cover all the bases.”

“Right.”

Lindell nodded but said nothing further.

“So come on, do we have a deal?” Bosch prompted.

“Yeah. Sounds like a plan to me. But I want to know what you and your people are doing. You keep in touch.”

“You got it. Oh, and by the way, one of the IAD guys is a Spanish speaker. Fuentes. Put him on Perez.”

Lindell nodded and pushed back from the table. He left his coffee cup there, untouched. Bosch took his with him.

On his way through the anteroom to Irving’s conference room, Bosch noticed that the deputy chief’s adjutant was not at his desk. He saw a telephone message pad on the blotter and reached down and grabbed it as he passed by. He put it in his pocket and entered the conference room.

Bosch’s partners and the IAD men were now in the conference room. Irving was there also. It was very crowded. After some brief introductions the floor was turned over to Bosch, who briefed the newcomers and Irving on the investigation up to that point. He left out specific details about the visit to Regina Lampley’s apartment, making that part of the investigation appear to be at a dead end. He also made no mention at all of his barroom talk with Frankie Sheehan. When he was done he nodded to Irving, who then took the floor. Bosch moved over to the wall and leaned next to a bulletin board Irving had apparently had installed for the investigators to use.

Irving began speaking of the political tensions surrounding the case like a storm pressure cell. He mentioned that protest marches were scheduled that day in front of three of the south end police stations and at Parker Center. He said City Councilman Royal Sparks and Reverend Preston Tuggins were scheduled to be guests that morning on a local meet-the-press type of television show called Talk of L.A. He said the chief of police had met with Tuggins and other South Central church leaders the night before to call in markers and urge them to call for calm and restraint from the pulpits during the morning’s services.

“We are sitting on a powder keg here, people,” Irving said. “And the way to defuse it is to solve this case one way or the other… quickly.”

While he talked, Bosch took out the phone message pad and wrote on it. He then checked the room to make sure all eyes were on Irving and quietly tore off the top sheet. He reached over and tacked it to the bulletin board and then nonchalantly moved inch by inch down the wall and away from the board. The sheet he had put on the board had Chastain’s name on it. In the message section it said: “Harvey Button called, said thanks for the tip. Will call back later.”

Irving wound up his comments with a mention about the Channel 4 story.

“Someone in this room leaked information to a television reporter yesterday. I am warning you people that we will not have this. That one story was your grace period. One more leak and you people will be the ones under investigation.”

He looked around the room at the LAPD faces, to make sure the message was clear.

“Okay, that is it,” he finally said. “I will leave you to it. Detective Bosch, Agent Lindell? I would like to be briefed at noon on our progress.”

“No problem, Chief,” Lindell said before Bosch could respond. “I will be talking to you then.”

Fifteen minutes later Bosch was walking down the hallway to the elevators again. Edgar and Rider were following behind.

“Harry, where are we going?” Edgar asked.

“We’ll work out of Hollywood station.”

“What? Doing what? Who is going to run the show?”

“Lindell. I made a deal. He runs the show. We do something else.”

“Suits me,” Edgar said. “Too many agents and too much brass around here anyway.”

Bosch got to the elevators and pushed the call button.

“What exactly are we doing, Harry?” Rider asked.

He turned and looked at them.

“Starting over,” he said.

THE squad room was completely empty, which was unusual, even for a Sunday. Under the twelve-and-twelve readiness plan all detectives not assigned to time-critical investigations were to be in uniform and out on the street. The last time such deployment had been instituted was after a major earthquake had rocked the city in 1994. The Elias murder was a social rather than a geologic cataclysm, but its magnitude was just as great.

Bosch carried the box containing Elias’s files on the Black Warrior case to what they called the homicide table, a raft of desks pushed up against each other to create a huge boardroom-like table. The section that belonged to team one, Bosch’s team, was at the end, near an alcove of file cabinets. He put the box in the middle, where his team’s three desks conjoined.

“Dig in,” he said.

“Harry…,” Rider said, not happy with his lack of direction.

“Okay, listen, this is what I want. Kiz, you’re going to be master of the ship. Jerry and I will work the field.”

Rider groaned. Master of the ship meant that she was to be the keeper of the facts. She was to become familiar with all facets of the files, a walking compendium of the details of the investigation. Since they were starting off with an entire carton of files, this was a lot of work. It also meant she would not be doing much, if anything, in the way of field investigation. And no detective wants to be stuck in a windowless and empty office all day.

“I know,” Bosch said. “But I think you are best for it. We’ve got a ton of stuff here and your mind and your computer will be best for keeping track of it.”