The Black Echo by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

says his job is murder. I been waiting now since fiveA.M. in the morning.”
    “Give me your phone. I’ll get somebody over.”
    Obinna took the receiver off a wall phone behind one of the damaged counters and handed it across. Bosch gave him the number to dial. While Bosch talked to the duty detective at Parker Center, the shopkeeper looked up the pawn ticket in a logbook. The duty detective, a woman Bosch knew had not been involved in a field investigation during her entire career with the Robbery-Homicide Division, asked Bosch how he had been, then told him that she had referred the pawnshop break-in to the local station even though she knew there would be no detectives there today. The local station was Central Division. Bosch walked around the counter and dialed the detective bureau there anyway. There was no answer. While the phone rang on unanswered, Bosch began a one-sided conversation.
    “Yeah, this is Harry Bosch, Hollywood detectives, I’m just trying to check on the status of the break-in over at the Happy Hocker on Broadway… He is. Do you know when?… Uh huh, uh huh… Right, Obinna, O-B-I-N-N-A.”
    He looked over and Obinna nodded at the correct spelling.
    “Yeah, he’s here waiting… Right… I’ll tell him. Thank you.”
    He hung up the phone. Obinna looked at him, his bushy eyebrows arched.
    “It’s been a busy day, Mr. Obinna,” Bosch said. “The detectives are out, but they’ll get here. Shouldn’t be too much longer. I gave the watch officer your name and told him to get ’em over here as soon as possible. Now, can I see the bracelet?”
    “No.”
    Bosch dug a cigarette out of a package he pulled from his coat pocket. He knew what was coming before Obinna spread his arm across one of the damaged display cases.
    “Your bracelet, it is gone,” the pawnbroker said. “I looked it up here in my record. I see that I had it here in the case because it was a fine piece, very valuable to me. Now it is gone. We are both victims of the robber, yes?”
    Obinna smiled, apparently happy to share his woe. Bosch looked into the glitter of sharp glass in the bottom of the case. He nodded and said, “Yes.”
    “You are a day late, detective. A shame.”
    “Did you say only these two cases were robbed?”
    “Yes. A smash and grab. Quick. Quick.”
    “What time?”
    “Police called me at four-thirty in the morning. That is the time of the alarm. I came at once. The alarm, when the window was smashed, the alarm went off. The officers found no one. They stayed until I came. Then I begin to wait for detectives that do not come. I cannot clean up my cases until they get here to investigate this crime.”
    Bosch was thinking of the time scheme. The body dumped sometime before the anonymous 911 call at 4A.M. The pawnshop broken into about the same time. A bracelet pawned by the dead man taken. There are no coincidences, he told himself.
    “You said something about pictures. Lists and pictures for the pawn detail?”
    “Yes, LAPD, that is true. I turn over lists of everything I take in to the pawn detectives. It is the law. I cooperate fully.”
    Obinna nodded his head and frowned mournfully into the broken display case.
    “What about the pictures?” Bosch said.
    “Yes, pictures. These pawn detectives, they ask me to take pictures of my best acquisitions. Help them better identify for stolen merchandise. It is not the law, but I say sure, I cooperate fully. I buy the Polaroid kind of camera. I keep pictures if they want to come and look. They never do. It’s bullshit.”
    “You have a picture of this bracelet?”
    Obinna’s eyebrows arched again as he considered the idea for the first time.
    “I think,” he said, and then he disappeared through a black curtain in a doorway behind the counter. He came out a few moments later with a shoe box full of Polaroid photos with yellow carbon slips paper-clipped to them. He rustled through the photos, occasionally pulling one out, raising his eyebrows, and