whole thing—oh, I got it, Rapid Response Enforcement And Counterterrorism. That’s it.”
“That one must’ve come straight out of the director’s office in D.C. That took some thought.”
“Funny. Basically, it’s a multi-agency gang bang. You’ve got us, Secret Service, DEA, everybody.”
I figured that last “everybody” was a catchall for the agencies that didn’t like their initials bandied about. NSA, CIA, DIA and so on through the federal alphabet.
A man on a bike rode by the Benz and slapped the side view mirror hard, making Lindell jump. The biker kept going, keeping his gloved hand up and giving me the finger. I realized I had pulled over in the bike lane and pulled the Benz back out onto the street.
“These fucking bikers think they own the road,” Lindell said. “Pull up next to him and I’ll give him a whack.”
Ignoring the request, I sped past the biker, giving him a wide berth.
“I don’t get it, Roy. What does the ninth floor have to do with my case?”
“First of all, it’s not your case anymore. Secondly, I don’t know. They ask me the questions. I don’t get to ask them.”
“When did they start asking?”
“Today. You call up and ask about Marty Gessler and tell Nunez it has something to do with the movie money case. He comes to me and I tell him to have you come in. Meantime, I start doing some checking. Turns out, we’ve got the movie money caper listed on our computer. With a REACT flag on it. So I call down to the ninth and say, ‘What’s up, fellas?’ and two seconds later I get crapped on pretty good.”
“You were told to find out what I know, then shut me down and send me on my way. Oh, and to tape it so they could listen and make sure you were a good little agent and did what you were told to do.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“So why’d you let me read the file? And take it? Why are we driving around talking?”
Lindell took his time before responding. We had made the curve onto Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica. I pulled off the road again next to the cliffs that look down to the beach and the Pacific. The horizon was blurred white by the marine layer. The Ferris wheel on the Pacific Park pier stood still, and without its neon blazing.
“I did it because Marty Gessler was a friend of mine.”
“Yeah, I could sort of tell from the file. Close friends?”
My meaning was obvious.
“Close,” he said.
“Wasn’t that sort of a conflict, you leading the case?”
“Let’s just say my relationship with her was not known until we were down the road a ways on the investigation. I then cashed in every chip I had to stay on it. Not that it did a hell of a lot of good. Here we are three-plus years later and I still have no idea what happened to her. Then you call up and tell me something that was brand-fucking-new to me.”
“So you were being square. There was no record of her talking to Dorsey about the currency number?”
“Nothing we found. But she kept a lot of stuff on her computer and that’s gone, man. There had to be stuff she hadn’t backed up on the office box. You know, the rule is back everything up every night before going home, but nobody does that. Nobody has the time.”
I nodded and thought about things. I was gathering a lot of information but had little time to process it. I tried to think about what else I needed to ask Lindell while I was with him.
“I’m still not tracking something,” I finally said. “Why was it one way up in the interrogation room and another way out here? Why are you talking to me, Roy? Why let me see the file?”
“REACT is a BAM squad, Bosch. By Any Means. There are no rules with these guys. The rules went out the window September eleventh, two thousand one. The world changed, so did the bureau. The country sat back and let it happen. They were watching the war over there in Afghanistan when they were changing all the rules here. Homeland security is what it’s all about now and everything else can take a back-fucking-seat. Including Marty Gessler. You think the ninth floor took over this case because an agent is missing? They couldn’t care less. There is something else and whether or not they find out what happened to her doesn’t matter. To them,