For a few moments there was silence in the small room, even though the tension among the five men threatened to shatter the windows. Pounds looked out at the squad room and saw about a dozen detectives acting as if they were working but who were actually trying to pick up whatever they could through the glass. Some had been attempting to read the lieutenant’s lips. He got up and lowered a set of venetian blinds over the windows. He rarely did this. It was a signal to the squad that this was big. Even Edgar showed his concern, audibly exhaling. Pounds sat back down. He tapped a long fingernail on the blue plastic binder that lay closed on his desk.

“Okay, now let’s get down to it,” he began. “You two guys are off the Meadows case. That’s number one. No questions, you’re done. Now, from the top, you are going to tell us anything and everything.”

At that, Lewis snapped open a briefcase and pulled out a cassette tape recorder. He turned it on and put it on Pounds’s spotless desk.

Bosch had been partnered with Edgar only eight months. He didn’t know him well enough to know how he would take this kind of bullying, or how far he could hold out against these bastards. But he did know him well enough to know he liked him and didn’t want him to get jammed up. His only sin in this whole thing was that he had wanted Sunday afternoon off to sell houses.

“This is bullshit,” Bosch said, pointing to the recorder.

“Turn that off,” Pounds said to Lewis, pointing to the recorder, which was actually closer to him than to Lewis. The Internal Affairs detective stood up and picked up the recorder. He turned it off, hit the rewind button and replaced it on the desk.

After Lewis sat back down Pounds said, “Jesus Christ, Bosch, the FBI calls me today and tells me they’ve got you as a possible suspect in a goddam bank heist. They say this Meadows was a suspect in the same job, and by virtue of that you should now be considered a suspect in the Meadows kill. You think we aren’t going to ask questions about that?”

Edgar was exhaling louder now. He was hearing this for the first time.

“Keep the tape off and we’ll talk,” Bosch said. Pounds contemplated that for a moment and said, “For now, no tape. Tell us.”

“First off, Edgar doesn’t know shit about this. We made a deal yesterday. I take the Meadows case and he goes home. He does the wrap-up on Spivey, the TV stabbed the night before. This FBI stuff, the bank job, he doesn’t know for shit. Let him go.”

Pounds seemed to make a point of not looking at Lewis or Clarke or Edgar. He’d make this decision on his own. It produced a slight glimmer of respect in Bosch, like a candle set out in the eye of a hurricane of incompetence. Pounds opened his desk drawer and pulled out an old wooden ruler. He fiddled with it with both hands. He finally looked at Edgar.

“That right, what Bosch says?”

Edgar nodded.

“You know it makes him look bad, like he was trying to keep the case for himself, conceal the connections from you?”

“He told me he knew Meadows. He was up front all the way. It was a Sunday. We weren’t going to get anybody to come out and take it off us on account of him knowing the guy twenty years ago. Besides, most of the people who end up dead in Hollywood the police have known one way or the other. This stuff about the bank and all, he must’ve found out after I left. I’m finding it all out sitting here.”

“Okay,” Pounds said. “You got any of the paper on this one?”

Edgar shook his head.

“Okay, finish up what you’ve got on the-what did you call it?-Spivey, yeah, the Spivey case. I’m assigning you a new partner. I don’t know who, but I’ll let you know. Okay, go on, that’s all.”

Edgar let out one more audible breath and stood up.

Harvey “Ninety-eight” Pounds let things settle in the room for a few moments after Edgar left. Bosch wanted a cigarette badly, even to just hold one unlit in his mouth. But he wouldn’t show them such a weakness.

“Okay, Bosch,” Pounds said. “Anything you want to tell us about all this?”

“Yeah. It’s bullshit.”

Clarke smirked. Bosch paid no mind. But Pounds gave the IAD detective a withering look that further increased his stock of respect with Bosch.

“The FBI told me today I was no suspect,” Bosch said. “They looked at me nine months ago because they looked at anybody around here who’d worked the tunnels in Vietnam. They found some connection to the tunnels back there. Simple as that. It was good work, they had to check out everybody. So they looked at me and went on. Hell, I was in Mexico-thanks to these two goons-when the bank thing went down. The FBI just-”

“Supposedly,” Clarke said.

“Shove it, Clarke. You’re just angling for a way to take your own vacation down there, at taxpayers’ expense, checking it out. You can check with the bureau and save the money.”

Bosch then turned back to Pounds and adjusted his chair so his back was to the IAD detectives. He spoke in a low voice to make it clear he was talking to Pounds, not them. “The bureau wants me off it because, one, I threw a curve at ’ em when I showed up there today to ask about the bank caper. I mean, I was a name from the past, and they panicked and called you. And two, they want me off the case because they probably fucked it up when they let Meadows skate last year. They blew their one chance at him and don’t want an outside department to come in and see that or to break the thing they couldn’t break for nine months.”

“No, Bosch, that’s what’s bullshit,” Pounds said. “This morning I received a formal request from the assistant special agent in charge who runs their bank squad, a guy named-”

“Rourke.”

“You know him. Well, he asked that-”

“I be removed from the Meadows case forthwith. He says I knew Meadows, who just happened to be the prime suspect in the bank job. He ends up dead and I’m on the case. Coincidence? Rourke thinks not. I’m not sure myself.”

“That’s what he said. So that’s where we start. Tell us about Meadows, how you knew him, when you knew him, don’t leave one thing out.”

Bosch spent the next hour telling Pounds about Meadows, the tunnels, the time Meadows called after almost twenty years and how Bosch got him into VA Outreach in Sepulveda without ever seeing him. Just phone calls. At no time did Bosch address the IAD detectives or acknowledge that they were even in the room.

“I didn’t make it a secret that I knew him,” he said at the end. “I told Edgar. I walked right in and told the FBI. You think I would have done that if I was the one who did Meadows? Not even Lewis and Clarke are that dumb.”

“Well, then, Jesus Christ, Bosch, why didn’t you tell me?” Pounds boomed. “Why isn’t it in the reports in this book? Why do I have to hear it from the FBI? Why does Internal Affairs have to hear it from the FBI?”

So Pounds hadn’t made the call to IAD. Rourke had. Bosch wondered if Eleanor Wish had known that and had lied, or if Rourke called out the goons on his own. He hardly knew the woman-he didn’t know the woman-but he found himself hoping she hadn’t lied to him.

“I only started the reports this morning,” Bosch said. “I was going to bring them up to date after seeing the FBI. Obviously, I didn’t get the chance.”

“Well, I’m saving you the time,” Pounds said. “It’s been turned over to the FBI.”

“What has? The FBI has no jurisdiction over this. This is a murder case.”

“Rourke said they believe the slaying is directly related to their ongoing investigation of the bank job. They will include this in their investigation. We will assign our own case officer through an interdepartmental liaison. If and when the time comes to charge someone with the murder, the appointed officer will take it to the DA for state charges.”