“Jerry, you remember a guy who worked at Devonshire named John McClellan?”
“John McClellan? No, I don’t remember. What did he work?”
“I got his name here on a burglary report.”
“No, definitely not the burglary table. I worked burglary before going over to homicide. There was no John McClellan on burglary. Who is he?”
“Like I said, just a name on a report. I’ll figure it out.”
Bosch knew that this meant McClellan was likely in the PDU at the time and the investigation of the burglary of Sam Weiss’s home was folded into the investigation of the Chatsworth Eights. He didn’t care to discuss all of this with Edgar.
“Jerry, so you were new on the homicide table back then?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you know Green and Garcia very well?”
“Not really. I just got to the table and they weren’t there that long after. Green pulled the pin and about a year after that Garcia made lieutenant.”
“From what you saw, what was your take on them?”
“How so?”
“As homicide men.”
“Well, Harry, I was pretty fresh back then. I mean, what did I know? I was still learning. But the take on them was that Green was the power. Garcia was just the housekeeper. What some people said about Garcia was that he couldn’t find shit in his own mustache with a mirror and comb.”
Bosch didn’t respond. By labeling Garcia a housekeeper Edgar was saying that Garcia rode his partner’s coattails. Green was the real homicide cop and Garcia was the guy who backed him up and kept the murder books tidy and up to date. A lot of partnerships got sanded down into such relationships. An alpha dog and his assistant.
“I guess he didn’t need to,” Edgar said.
“Didn’t need to what?”
“Find shit in his mustache. He was going places, man. He made lieutenant and was out of there. You know he’s currently second in command in the Valley, right?”
“Yeah, I know. In fact, if you see him you might not want to mention that mustache bit.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
Bosch thought some more about what this might have meant to the Verloren investigation. A small crack was moving under the surface of things.
“That it, Harry?”
“I heard Green ate his gun not too long after pulling the pin.”
“Yeah, I heard that. I don’t remember being surprised. He always looked like a guy carrying a full load of somethin’. You going to take a run at PDU, Harry? You know that was Irving ’s squad, don’t you?”
“Yeah, Jerry, I know. I doubt I’m going that way.”
“Be careful if you do, my man.”
Bosch wanted to change the subject before hanging up. Edgar had always been a department gossip. Harry didn’t want his old partner’s loose lips to spread the word that Bosch was taking a run at Irving now that he was back with a badge.
“So how’s things in Hollywood?” he asked.
“We just got back into the bureau after the earthquake retrofit. You missed all of that. We were stuck upstairs in roll call for like a year.”
“How is it?”
“It’s like an insurance office now. We have pods and sound filters between the desks. All done up in government gray. Nice but not the same.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Then they gave the D-threes double-wides-desks with two sides of drawers. The rest of us get one side.”
Bosch smiled. Little slights like that got magnified in the department and the administrators who made such decisions never learned. Like when most of Internal Affairs moved out of Parker Center and into the old Bradbury Building and the word spread through the ranks that the captain over there had a fireplace in his office.
“So what are you gonna do, Jerry?”
“Same old same old, that’s what I’m gonna do. Get off my ass and knock on doors.”
“I hear you, man.”
“Watch your six, Harry.”
“Always.”
After hanging up, Bosch sat motionless at his desk for a few moments as he thought through the conversation and the new meanings it brought to the case. If there was a connection between the case and PDU then they had a whole new ball game.
He looked down at the murder book, still open to the burglary report, and stared at the scrawled signature of John McClellan. He picked up the phone and called the Department of Operations in Parker Center and asked the duty officer for an assignment location for a detective named John McClellan. He read McClellan’s badge number off the burglary report. He was put on hold and expected that he would be told that McClellan was long retired.