The search team was waiting outside Pacoima Tire & Muffler when the current owner opened up for a day of business. To say he was surprised by the police presence that greeted him was an understatement. After lifting the garage door, he held his arms aloft and stared wide-eyed at the vehicles amassed in front of him. Bosch was the first out of his car and the first to get to him.
“Mr. Cardinale?” he said. “You can put your hands down. I’m Detective Bosch with the San Fernando Police Department. We have a search warrant for these premises.”
“What?” Cardinale said. “What are you talking about?”
Bosch handed him the warrant.
“It’s a search warrant,” he said. “Signed by a judge. And it allows us to search for specific evidence relating to a crime.”
“What crime?” Cardinale said. “I run a clean business. I’m not like the guy who was here before.”
“We know that, sir. The crime relates to the prior ownership of the business but we still need to search, because we believe the evidence may still be in place.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no crime here.”
It took Bosch several more exchanges before Cardinale seemed to understand what was happening. He was about fifty with a midlife paunch and gray thinning hair. His hands were scarred from a lifetime spent working on cars. He had blurred blue tattoos on his forearms that looked to Bosch like old military insignia.
“How long ago did you take over the business?” Bosch asked.
“Eight years,” Cardinale said. “I bought it for cash. No loan. My own hard-earned money.”
“When you bought it, did you make any changes inside?”
“A lot of changes. I brought in all new tools. I modernized. Cleared out the old shit.”
“What about the structure of the building? Any changes?”
“I spruced things up. Patched and painted, the usual. Inside and out.”
Bosch assessed the building. It was standard cinder-block construction. Solid on the outside.
“What did you patch?”
“Holes in the walls, broken windows. I can’t remember everything I did.”
“You remember any bullet holes?”
That gave Cardinale pause. His eyes drifted away from Bosch’s as he remembered taking over the shop.
“Are you saying somebody got shot here?” he asked.
“No, not at all,” Bosch said. “We’re looking for bullets that were shot into the walls.”
Cardinale nodded and seemed relieved.
“Yeah, there were bullet holes,” he said. “I mean, they looked like bullet holes. I had ’em patched and painted over.”
“Can you show me where?” Bosch asked.
Cardinale entered his garage and Bosch followed, signaling Lourdes and Luzon to follow. The shop owner led them to the rear of the first garage bay.
“Back here,” he said. “There were holes in this wall that looked like they were from bullets. I remember thinking that at the time. We patched them all up.”
He pointed behind a workbench that was covered with tools and pipe-bending vises. The area fit with the description Bosch had gotten from the witness Martin Perez.
“Okay,” Bosch said. “We’re going to have to move this bench and the tools out of here. We need to open the wall.”
“And who closes it back up?” Cardinale asked.
“We have a city crew here that will make the necessary repairs. I can’t promise it will be all painted and back to normal by the end of the day, but we’ll get it there.”
Cardinale frowned. He didn’t put much stock in the promise. Bosch turned to Lourdes.
“Let’s get the city guys in here to clear this and then bring the metal detector first,” he said. “Let’s move fast, maybe get out of here before the neighborhood takes notice.”
“Too late,” Lourdes said.
She signaled Bosch over into a private conversation.
“We have a problem,” she said in a whisper. “The LAPD guy says Tranquillo Cortez is across the street.”
“Are you kidding?” Bosch said. “How’d he find out so fast?”
“Good question. He’s out there with some of his boys.”
“Come on.”
Bosch walked quickly out of the garage, with Lourdes following. Across the street was a lavandería with a small front parking lot. The business had not yet opened for the day, but there was a car in the lot, a classic old Lincoln Continental with pearl-white paint and suicide doors. Its suspension had been dropped a few notches so that it would barely clear a speed bump. Three men were leaning against its side with their arms folded, their tattoo sleeves on full display. The man in the middle wore a flat-brimmed Dodgers cap and a long white T-shirt that went down to his thighs. He was the smallest of the three but presented as the man in charge. Bosch recognized him from a photo on a SanFers organizational chart at the SFPD gang unit office. Tranquillo Cortez.
Without hesitation Bosch crossed the street.
“Harry, what are we doing?” Lourdes whispered from behind.
“Just gonna ask him a few questions,” Bosch said.
As they entered the laundry’s parking lot, only Cortez pushed his hips off the car and stood tall to greet Bosch.
“Officer, how are you today?” he said.
Bosch didn’t answer. He walked directly up to Cortez and leaned down to get in the shorter man’s face. He noticed the diamond earrings on both sides and the two blue tears tattooed off the outside corner of his left eye.
“Cortez, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m waiting for the laundry to open,” Cortez said. “You know, wash my clothes, see how white my whites can be with Tide and all.”
He picked at his T-shirt and adjusted it like he was looking in a mirror.
“Who told you we were coming here?” Bosch said.
“Hmm, that’s a good question,” Cortez said. “I’m not sure I remember. Who told you to come here?”
Bosch didn’t answer. Cortez wore his hat up high. He had shaved sidewalls with “VSF” tattooed above his right ear and “13” above his left. He smiled and his dark eyes became slits.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Bosch ordered.
“You arresting me if I don’t?” Cortez challenged.
“Yeah, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Then, who knows, maybe they make a mistake and put you in the Pacoima Flats tank and we see what happens next.”
Cortez flashed the smile again.
“That’d be fun,” he said. “For me, but not them.”
Bosch reached up and slapped the brim of Cortez’s Dodgers cap, knocking it off his head to the ground. A dark anger momentarily invaded the gangster’s eyes. But then it cleared and Cortez returned to his standard smirk. He glanced back at his seconds and nodded. They pushed off the car and one opened the back door of the Lincoln for Cortez while the other retrieved his fallen hat.
“Catch you later, homeboy,” Cortez said.
Bosch didn’t respond. He and Lourdes stood there until the Lincoln pulled out of the lot and headed down San Fernando Road.
“Harry, why’d you do that with the hat?” Lourdes said.
Bosch ignored the question and answered with his own.
“How’d he know about this?” he asked.
“Like Sergeant Rosenberg said yesterday,” Lourdes said. “They’ve got eyes everywhere.”
Bosch shook his head. He didn’t believe that Cortez had shown up just because he got a message from someone who happened to see the police activity at the garage.
“We might as well pull out of here right now,” he said.
“Harry, what are you talking about?” Lourdes said. “They’re in there, getting ready to take down the wall.”
“Cortez was gloating. Why else would he show up here? He must know there’s no slugs in the wall and no case.”
“I don’t know. That seems like a stretch. He’s not that smart.”
“Really? Well, we’re about to find out.”
They crossed back over to the auto shop and Bosch was stopped by Tom Yaro, the LAPD detective from Foothill Division who was on hand to represent his department, since the search was being conducted on his city’s turf. Yaro was dressed down for the occasion, wearing blue jeans and a black golf shirt. He had jet-black hair that didn’t look natural and had deposited liberal amounts of dandruff on his shoulders. He was little more than a babysitter on this operation and seemed put out by it, as though he felt that the LAPD shouldn’t take the back seat to the smaller SFPD. He had been given few details of the case, but he knew who Tranquillo Cortez was and had sounded the alarm about the gangster showing up across the street. He now wanted to know what was going on. Bosch gave him the short version.
“Our suspect somehow got wind of the search and got up early to come watch,” he said.
“That’s fucked up,” Yaro said. “Sounds like you sprung a leak.”
“If we did, I’ll find it.”
Bosch walked on past him and back into the garage. He watched as a metal detector usually used to find water mains was moved over the back wall. It easily picked up the lines of screws used to secure drywall to the interior studs, but no other alerts came up. The bullet that was fired into Cristobal Vega’s head had been a metal-jacketed .38 slug. Similar slugs should have registered as easily as drywall screws.
Despite his feeling that the search for bullets was for naught, Bosch decided to follow through with the execution of the warrant and told the city workers to cut through the drywall and bring the wall down. He reasoned that while Cortez may have dug the slugs out of the wall long ago, the interior side of the drywall would still show where bullets had gone through and the wall had eventually been patched. It would be at least a minor confirmation of the Perez’s story. Most likely not enough to move the case closer to prosecution, but confirmation just the same.
The workers cut out floor-to-ceiling slices of the drywall between the studs. The inside surface of each sixteen-inch-wide cut was then examined by the detectives for indications of bullet entry.
The third cut had what they were looking for. It was clear that there had been two perforations—matching Perez’s story. They were small, bullet-size perforations and there was no indication that any effort had previously been made to extract the slugs. This contradicted Bosch’s theory about why Cortez had showed up across the street to gloat. Rather than knowing there were no bullets in the wall, he knew something else that made him confident enough to show up.
The shots were spread four inches apart on the drywall, an indicator that they were part of the same test firing that Perez had described. The unpainted cinder block corresponding to the drywall penetrations showed impact damage but no bullets. The team had borrowed an evidence technician from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which contracted with the tiny SFPD to do all lab work. It was his job to pick through the rat droppings, hair, and other debris at the bottom of the space created by the 2 x 4 framing between the drywall and the cinder-block wall. His name was Harmon and he used a metal pick to search through about six inches of debris that had built up inside the wall, spreading it all out on the floor of the shop.
Bosch recorded Harmon’s efforts on his cell phone, knowing that at some point he might have to lead a jury through the steps he had taken in finding the evidence against Tranquillo Cortez.
“Got one,” Harmon said.
He used the metal pick to knock a slug out of the packed debris and across the concrete floor. Bosch leaned down, still holding the phone out to record. When he saw the slug, his renewed hopes for the case took another tumble. The projectile had split its metal casing and pancaked upon impact with the cinder block inside the wall. Bosch would wait for the expert opinion but he had been around enough cases to know that the bullet was too damaged to be considered for comparison with the bullet that killed Cristobal Vega.
“And here’s the other one,” Harmon said.
He picked out the second slug with a gloved hand and held it up. Bosch’s eyes went to it with urgency.
But this one was in even worse shape. It too had pancaked but it had also shattered. He was looking at about half of the bullet.
“There’s more,” he said, even though someone of Harmon’s skill would already know this.
“Still looking,” Harmon said.
Bosch felt his phone buzz with a call but he let it go to message so he could continue to video Harmon’s search.
Harmon soon found the rest of the second bullet and it was in as poor shape as the others. He then went through evidence-collecting procedures. He spoke without looking up at Bosch.
“Detective, it looks like you’ve been around,” he said. “You probably know what I’m going to tell you.”
“No good, huh?” Bosch said.
“Not for comparison on a scope,” Harmon said. “We’ll be able to determine a brand match and there’s more than enough for metal-alloy comparison, but you know how that goes.”
“Right.”
The content of the slugs could be determined and compared to the bullet that killed Perez, possibly leading to a conclusion that the bullets came from the same manufacturing group and lending some credence to the witness’s story, but it would be nowhere near as definitive as the marks left by the gun that fired them. It was the difference between saying that the bullets came from the same batch and that they were fired by the same weapon. The difference had reasonable doubt written all over it.
Bosch was seeing the case go away as he stood there.
“I want to do the metal-alloy testing anyway,” he said.
It was a last desperate shot.
“I’ll talk to the boss,” Harmon said. “I’ll tell him it’s a good case for it and will let you know.”
Bosch knew that when he would hear back was anyone’s guess. The alloy testing would take money and time. The SFPD was usually last in line at the sheriff’s lab. Any sort of special work would go on the when-we-can-get-to-it list.
Bosch backed away from the grouping at the wall, giving Lourdes a look that said this was going nowhere. He addressed the head man of the Public Works crew.
“Okay, we’re going to need to put this place back together,” he said. “We want to keep the one piece of wall where we found the bullet holes. So you’ll have to replace that.”
One of the men grunted his assent and they headed out to the truck for their tools and a fresh piece of drywall to replace the old one.
Lourdes huddled with Bosch.
“So, if there were bullets in the wall after all, what was Cortez so smug about?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “He knew something, but I doubt he knew the slugs would be useless.”
Lourdes shook her head and then stepped back as the city workers walked a large sheet of fresh drywall into the garage bay.
Bosch’s phone started buzzing again, and he walked out of the garage as he pulled it out of his pocket. The caller ID was blocked but he took the call anyway.
“Bosch.”
“Harry Bosch?”
“That’s right, who’s this?”
“Ted Lannark, Sheriff’s Homicide. You got a minute?”
“What’s up?
“What can you tell me about a guy named Martin Perez?”
All at once Bosch knew why Cortez had acted like he had the world on a string.
“He’s a peripheral witness in a gang murder I’m working. What is he to you?”
“He’s dead and I have to find out who killed him.”
Bosch closed his eyes.
“Where?” he asked.
“His apartment,” Lannark said. “Somebody put a round in the back of his head.”
Bosch opened his eyes and looked around for Lourdes.
“Bosch, you wondering how I knew to call you on your cell?” Lannark asked.
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “How?”
“Your business card with the cell handwritten on it was in his mouth. Like it was a message or something.”
Bosch considered that for a long moment before responding.
“I’m on my way.”
“We’ll be here waiting.”