Read Online The Black Box by Michael Connelly - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Connelly
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it?”
“It goes.”
Bosch sat down, waiting for Chu to mention his birthday, but he didn’t. The cubicle was set up with their desks on either side so they worked back-to-back. In the old Parker Center, where Bosch had spent most of his career, partners faced each other across desks pushed up against each other. Bosch liked the back-to-back setup better. It gave him more privacy.
“What’s with the black box?” Chu said from behind him.
“Shake cards on the Rolling Sixties. I’m grasping at straws on this thing, hoping something might pop.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.”
As partners they were assigned the same cases but then split them up and worked them solo until it was time for field work such as surveillance or serving search warrants. Arrests werealways a team job as well. This practice gave each an understanding of the other’s workload. Usually, they had coffee on Monday mornings to go over the cases and where each active investigation stood. Bosch had already briefed Chu about the trip to San Quentin when he checked in from SFO the afternoon before.
Bosch opened the box and contemplated the thick stack of FI cards. Thoroughly going through them would probably take the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening. He was fine with that but he was also an impatient man. He removed the brick of 3 × 5 cards, and a quick survey of them told him they were stacked chronologically, covering the four years on the box’s label. He decided that he would center his initial work on the year of the Anneke Jespersen murder. He culled the cards from 1992 and started reading.
Each card took only a few seconds to digest. Names, aliases, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and assorted other details. Often the officer who conducted the interview wrote down the names of other gang members who were with the individual at the time of the field interview. Bosch saw several names repeated in the cards as either the subjects of interviews or known associates.
Bosch took every address noted on the cards—location of interview and subject’s DL address—and charted it on the Thomas Bros. map that already had the Beretta model 92 murders charted on it. He was looking for close connections to the six murders on his time chart. There were several and most of them were obvious. Two of the murders occurred on street corners where hand-to-hand drug transactions were routinely carried out. It stood to reason that patrol officersand CRASH units would roust gang members congregating at such locations.
It wasn’t until he was two hours into the project, his back and neck getting stiff with the physically repetitive work of charting the cards, that Bosch found something that put a live wire into his blood. A teenager identified on the shake card as a Rolling 60s “BG,” or baby gangster, was stopped for loitering at Florence and Crenshaw on February 9, 1992. The name on his driver’s license was Charles William Washburn. His street name, according to the card, was “2 Small.” At sixteen years old and five foot three, he had already managed to get the signature Rolling 60s tattoo—the number sixty on a gravestone signifying gang loyalty until death on his left biceps. What drew Bosch’s attention was the address on his driver’s license. Charles “2 Small” Washburn lived on West 66th Place, and when Bosch charted the address on the map, he pinpointed it to a property backing up to the alley where Anneke Jespersen had been murdered. Looking at it on the map, Bosch estimated that Washburn lived no more than fifty feet from the spot where Jespersen’s body was found.
Bosch had never worked in a gang-specific unit but he had investigated several gang-related murders over the years. He knew that a baby gangster was a kid who was primed for membership but hadn’t officially been jumped in. There was a cost of admission, and that was usually a show of neighborhood or gang pride, a piece of work, a showing of
“It goes.”
Bosch sat down, waiting for Chu to mention his birthday, but he didn’t. The cubicle was set up with their desks on either side so they worked back-to-back. In the old Parker Center, where Bosch had spent most of his career, partners faced each other across desks pushed up against each other. Bosch liked the back-to-back setup better. It gave him more privacy.
“What’s with the black box?” Chu said from behind him.
“Shake cards on the Rolling Sixties. I’m grasping at straws on this thing, hoping something might pop.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.”
As partners they were assigned the same cases but then split them up and worked them solo until it was time for field work such as surveillance or serving search warrants. Arrests werealways a team job as well. This practice gave each an understanding of the other’s workload. Usually, they had coffee on Monday mornings to go over the cases and where each active investigation stood. Bosch had already briefed Chu about the trip to San Quentin when he checked in from SFO the afternoon before.
Bosch opened the box and contemplated the thick stack of FI cards. Thoroughly going through them would probably take the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening. He was fine with that but he was also an impatient man. He removed the brick of 3 × 5 cards, and a quick survey of them told him they were stacked chronologically, covering the four years on the box’s label. He decided that he would center his initial work on the year of the Anneke Jespersen murder. He culled the cards from 1992 and started reading.
Each card took only a few seconds to digest. Names, aliases, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and assorted other details. Often the officer who conducted the interview wrote down the names of other gang members who were with the individual at the time of the field interview. Bosch saw several names repeated in the cards as either the subjects of interviews or known associates.
Bosch took every address noted on the cards—location of interview and subject’s DL address—and charted it on the Thomas Bros. map that already had the Beretta model 92 murders charted on it. He was looking for close connections to the six murders on his time chart. There were several and most of them were obvious. Two of the murders occurred on street corners where hand-to-hand drug transactions were routinely carried out. It stood to reason that patrol officersand CRASH units would roust gang members congregating at such locations.
It wasn’t until he was two hours into the project, his back and neck getting stiff with the physically repetitive work of charting the cards, that Bosch found something that put a live wire into his blood. A teenager identified on the shake card as a Rolling 60s “BG,” or baby gangster, was stopped for loitering at Florence and Crenshaw on February 9, 1992. The name on his driver’s license was Charles William Washburn. His street name, according to the card, was “2 Small.” At sixteen years old and five foot three, he had already managed to get the signature Rolling 60s tattoo—the number sixty on a gravestone signifying gang loyalty until death on his left biceps. What drew Bosch’s attention was the address on his driver’s license. Charles “2 Small” Washburn lived on West 66th Place, and when Bosch charted the address on the map, he pinpointed it to a property backing up to the alley where Anneke Jespersen had been murdered. Looking at it on the map, Bosch estimated that Washburn lived no more than fifty feet from the spot where Jespersen’s body was found.
Bosch had never worked in a gang-specific unit but he had investigated several gang-related murders over the years. He knew that a baby gangster was a kid who was primed for membership but hadn’t officially been jumped in. There was a cost of admission, and that was usually a show of neighborhood or gang pride, a piece of work, a showing of
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