Читаем The Black Echo полностью

“They had been converting all along. Do you know what eighteen million dollars looks like? Would probably fill a room. So they found a way to shrink it. At least, that’s what we believe.”

“Precious gems,” Bosch said.

“Diamonds,” Ernst said. “It is said eighteen million dollars’ worth of the right diamonds would easily fit in two shoe boxes.”

“And into a safe-deposit box,” Bosch said.

“That could be, but, please, I don’t want to know what I don’t need to know.”

“Binh was one of the captains,” Bosch said. “Who were the other two?”

“I am told one of them was named Van Nguyen. And he is believed to be dead. He never left Vietnam. Killed by the other two, or maybe the North Army. But he never got out. That was confirmed by our agents in Ho Chi Minh after the fall. The other two did. They came here. And both had passes, arranged through connections and money, I suppose. I can’t help you there… There was Binh, who it seems you have found, and the other was Nguyen Tran. He came with Binh. Where they went and what they did here, I can’t help you with. It’s been fifteen years. Once they came across they were no longer our concern.”

“Why would you allow them to come across?”

“Who says we did? You have to realize, Detective Bosch, that much of this information was put together after the fact.”

Ernst stood up then. That was all the information he would decompartmentalize for today.

***

Bosch didn’t want to go back up to the bureau. The information from Ernst was amphetamine in his blood. He wanted to walk. He wanted to talk, to storm. When they got in the elevator he pushed the button for the lobby and told Eleanor they were going outside. The bureau was like a fishbowl. He wanted a big room.

In any investigation, it had always seemed to Bosch, information would come slowly, like sand dropping steadily through the cinched middle of an hourglass. At some point, there was more information in the bottom of the glass. And then the sand in the top seemed to drop faster, until it was cascading through the hole. They were at that point with Meadows, the bank burglary, the whole thing. Things were coming together.

They went out through the front lobby and onto the green lawn where there were eight U.S. flags and a California state flag flapping lazily on poles posted in a semicircle. There were no protestors on this day. The air was warm and unseasonably humid.

“Do we have to walk out here?” Eleanor asked. “I would rather be upstairs, where we’d be near the phones. You could have a coffee.”

“I want to smoke.”

They walked north toward Wilshire Boulevard.

Bosch said, “It’s 1975. Saigon is about to go down the sewer. Police Captain Binh pays people to get him and his share of diamonds out. Who he pays, we don’t know. But we do know that he gets VIP treatment all the way. Most people took boats out, he flew. Four days from Saigon to the States. He is accompanied by an American civilian adviser to help smooth things. That’s Meadows. He-”

“He may have been accompanied,” she said. “You forgot the word ‘may’ there.”

“We’re not in court. I’m saying it the way I see it might’ve been, okay? Afterward, if you don’t like it, you say it your way.”

She raised her arms in a hands-off kind of way and Bosch continued.

“So, Meadows and Binh are together. Nineteen seventy-five. Meadows is working refugee security or something. See, he’s getting out of there, too. He may or may not have known Binh from his old sideline, dealing heroin. The chances are he did. He was probably, in effect, working for Binh. Now, he may or may not have known what Binh was carrying with him to the States. Chances are he at least had an idea.”

Bosch stopped to organize his thoughts and Eleanor reluctantly took over.

“Binh takes with him his cultural dislike or distrust for putting his money in the hands of bankers. He has an additional problem, too. His money is not kosher. It is undeclared, unknown and illegal for him to have. He can’t declare it or make a normal deposit because this would be noticed and then have to be explained. So, he keeps this sizable fortune in the next best thing: a safe-deposit vault. Where are we going?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He was too consumed by his thoughts. They were at Wilshire. When the walk sign flashed above the crosswalk they went with the flow of bodies. On the other side of the street they turned west, walking along the hedges that bordered the veterans cemetery. Bosch took over the story.

“Okay, so Binh’s got his share in the safe-deposit box. He starts the great American dream as a refugee. Only he’s a rich refugee. Meantime, Meadows comes back after the war, can’t get into the groove of real life, can’t beat his habit, and starts capering to feed it. But things aren’t as easy as in Saigon. He gets caught, spends some time in stir. He gets out, goes back, gets out, then finally starts blocking some real time on federal raps on a couple of bank jobs.”