Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(20)

“Where are the officers?” she asked.

“I’ll walk you back,” the bouncer said.

He opened a door that matched the walls in red-velvet paisley and led her down a dark hallway to the open door of a well-lit office. He then headed back to the front.

Three officers were crowded into the small room in front of a desk where a man sat. Ballard nodded. The blue suiters were Dvorek in charge and Herrera and Dyson, whom Ballard knew well because they were a rare female team, and the women on the late show often took code seven together. Herrera was the senior lead officer and had four hash marks on her sleeves. Her partner had one. Both women wore their hair short to avoid having it grabbed and pulled by suspects. Ballard knew that most days they worked out in the gym after their shifts and their shoulders and upper arms showed the results. They could hold their own in a confrontation and the word on Dyson was that she liked to start them.

“Detective Ballard, glad you could make it,” Dvorek said. “This is Mr. Peralta, manager of this fine establishment, and he requested your services.”

Ballard looked at the man behind the desk. He was in his fifties, overweight, with slicked-back hair and long, sharply edged sideburns. He wore a garish purple vest over a black collared shirt. On the wall behind his chair was a framed poster of a naked woman using a stripper pole to strategically cover her privates, but not quite enough to hide that her pubic hair had been trimmed to the shape of a small heart. To his right was a video monitor that showed sixteen camera angles of the stages, bars, and exits of the club. Ballard saw herself in one of the squares from a camera over her right shoulder.

“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.

“This is like a dream come true,” Peralta said. “I didn’t realize the LAPD was almost all women. You want a part-time job?”

“Sir, do you have a problem that requires police involvement or not?” Ballard replied.

“I do,” Peralta said. “I’ve got a problem—someone is going to break in.”

“Going to? Why would someone break in when they can walk in the front door?”

“You tell me. All I’m saying is, it’s going down. Look at this.”

He turned to the video monitor and pulled out a drawer beneath it, revealing a keyboard. He hit a few keys and the camera angles were replaced with a schematic of the premises.

“I’ve got every opening in the building wired,” Peralta said. “Somebody’s on the roof fucking with the skylights. They’re going to come down through there.”

Ballard leaned across the desk so she could see the screen better. It was showing breaches at two of the skylights over the stages.

“When did this happen?” she asked.

“Tonight,” Peralta said. “Like an hour ago.”

“Why would they break in?”

“Are you kidding me? This is a cash business, and I don’t walk out of here at four-thirty in the fucking morning with a cash bag under my arm. I’m not that stupid. Everything goes into the safe and then once, maybe twice, a week—in daylight—I come in to do the banking, and I have two guys you don’t want to fuck with watching my back the whole time.”

“Where’s the safe?”

“You’re standing on it.”

Ballard looked down. The officers moved back toward the walls of the room. There was an outline cut in the planked wood floor and a fingerhold for pulling open the trap door.

“Is it removable?” Ballard asked.

“Nope,” Peralta said. “Set in concrete. They’d have to drill it—unless they knew the combo, and there are only three people who know that.”

“So how much is in there?”

“I did the banking after the weekend, so it’s going to be light tonight. About twelve thou in there right now and we’ll get it up to sixteen when I close out the registers tonight.”

Ballard assessed things, looked up, and caught Dvorek’s eye and nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to take a look around. Any cameras on the roof?”

“No,” Peralta said. “Nothing up there.”

“Any access?”

“Nothing from inside. You’d need a ladder on the outside.”

“All right. I’ll be back in after we check around. Where’s the door to the alley?”

“Marv will take you.”

Peralta reached under the desk and pushed a button to call his bouncer. Soon the big man from the velvet rope was back.

“Take them out the back, Marv,” Peralta said. “To the alley.”

A few minutes later Ballard was standing in the alley, assessing the roofline of the club. The building was freestanding with a flat roof about twenty feet up. There was no approach from the business on either side and no ladders or obvious means of getting up. Ballard checked behind her. The other side of the alley was contained by wood and concrete fences and bordered on a residential neighborhood.

“Can I borrow a light?” Ballard asked.

Dyson pulled her Pelican off her equipment belt and handed it to Ballard. It was a small but powerful flashlight. Ballard walked the length of the building, looking for upward access. She found a possible ascension point by the west corner. A cinder-block enclosure had been built to contain a row of city trash containers. It was about six feet high and was next to the downspout of a gutter that ran along the edge of the roofline. Ballard shone the light up the downspout and saw that it was secured to the exterior wall with brackets every few feet.