Connelly, Michael - The Black Ice
Connelly, Michael - The Black Ice
Connelly, Michael - The Black Ice
The
Black
graph-definition>
Ice
The mat on the porch below the front door said WELCOME but it
was worn and nobody had bothered to shake the dust off it in
some time. Bosch noticed all of this because he kept his head
down after knocking. He knew that looking at anything would
be better than looking at this woman.
Her voice answered after his second knock.
“Go away. No comment.”
Bosch had to smile, thinking how he had used that one himself
tonight.
“Hello, Mrs. Moore? I’m not a reporter. I’m with the L.A.
police.”
The door came open a few inches and her face was there,
backlit and hidden in shadow. Bosch could see the chain lock
stretching across the opening. Harry was ready with his badge
case already out and opened.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Moore?”
“Yes?”
“I am Harry Bosch. Um, I’m a detective, LAPD. And I’ve
been sent out — could I come in? I need …to ask you a few
questions and inform you of some, uh, developments in —”
“You’re late. I’ve had Channel 4 and 5 and 9 already out here.
When you knocked I figured you were somebody else. Two or
seven. I can’t think who else.”
“Can I come in, Mrs. Moore?”
He put his badge wallet away. She closed the door and he
heard the chain slide out of its track. The door came open and
she signaled him in with her arm. He stepped into an entryway
of rust-colored Mexican tile. There was a round mirror on the
wall and he saw her in it, closing and locking the door. He saw
she held tissue in one hand.
“Will this take long?” she asked.
He said no and she led him to the living room, where she took
a seat on an overstuffed chair covered in brown leather. It
looked very comfortable and it was next to the fireplace. She
motioned him toward a couch that faced the fireplace. This
was where the guests always sat. The fireplace had the
glowing remnants of a dying fire. On the table next to where
she sat he saw a box of tissues and a stack of papers. More like
reports or maybe scripts; some were in plastic covers.
“Book reports,” she said, having noticed his gaze. “I assigned
books to my students with the reports due before the
Christmas vacation. It was going to be my first Christmas
alone and I guess I wanted to make sure I had something to
keep me busy.”
Bosch nodded. He looked around the rest of the room. In his
job, he learned a lot about people from their rooms, the way
they lived. Often the people could no longer tell him
themselves. So he learned from his observations and believed
that he was good at it.
The room in which they sat was sparse. Not much furniture. It
didn’t look like a lot of entertaining of friends or family
happened here. There was a large bookshelf at one end of the
room that was filled by hardback novels and oversized art
books. No TV. No sign of children. It was a place for quiet
work or fireside talks.
But no more.
In the corner opposite the fireplace was a five-foot Christmas
tree with white lights and red balls, a few homemade
ornaments that looked as if they might have been passed down
through generations. He liked the idea that she had put up the
tree by herself. She had continued her life and its routines
amidst the ruins of her marriage. She had put the tree up for
herself. It made him feel her strength. She had a hard shell of
hurt and maybe loneliness but there was a sense of strength,
too. The tree said she was the kind of woman who would
survive this, would make it through. On her own. He wished
he could remember her name.
“Before you start,” she said, “can I ask you something?”
The light from the reading lamp next to her chair was low
wattage but he could clearly see the intensity of her brown
eyes.
“Sure.”
“Did you do that on purpose? Let the reporters come up here
first so you wouldn’t have to do the dirty work? That’s what
my husband used to call it. Telling families. He called it the
dirty work and he said the detectives always tried to get out of
it.”
Bosch felt his face grow warm. There was a clock on the
fireplace mantel that now seemed to be ticking very loudly in
the silence. He managed to say, “I was told only a short time
ago to come here. I had a little trouble finding it. I —”
He stopped. She knew.
“I’m sorry. I guess you’re right. I took my time.”
“It’s okay. I shouldn’t put you on the spot. It must be a terrible
job.”
Bosch wished he had a fedora like the ones the detectives in
the old movies always had; that way he could hold it in his
hands and fiddle with it and let his fingers trace its brim, give
him something to do. He looked at her closely now and saw
the quality of damaged beauty about her. Mid-thirties, he
guessed, with brown hair and blonde highlights, she seemed
agile, like a runner. Clearly defined jawline above the taut
muscles of her neck. She had not used makeup to try to hide
the lightly etched lines that curved under her eyes. She wore
blue jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt that he thought might
have been her husband’s once. Bosch wondered how much of
Calexico Moore she still carried in her heart.
Harry actually admired her for taking the shot at him about the
dirty work. He knew he deserved it. In the three minutes he
had known her he thought she reminded him of someone but
he wasn’t sure who. Someone from his past maybe. There was
a quiet tenderness there beside her strength. He kept bringing
his eyes back to hers. They were magnets.
“Anyway, I’m Detective Harry Bosch,” he began again,
hoping she might introduce herself.
“Yes, I’ve heard of you. I remember the newspaper articles.
And I’m sure my husband spoke of you — I think it was when
they sent you out to Hollywood Division. Couple years ago.
He said before that one of the studios had paid you a lot of
money to use your name and do a TV movie about a case. He
said you bought one of those houses on stilts up in the hills.”
Bosch nodded reluctantly and changed the subject.
“I don’t know what the reporters told you, Mrs. Moore, but I
have been sent out to tell you that it appears your husband has
been found and he is dead. I am sorry to have had to tell you
this. I —”
“I knew and you knew and every cop in town knew it would
come to this. I didn’t talk to the reporters. I didn’t need to. I
told them no comment. When that many of them come to your
house on Christmas night, you know it’s because of bad
news.”
He nodded and looked down at the imaginary hat in his hands.
“So, are you going to tell me? Was it an official suicide? Did
he use a gun?”
Bosch nodded and said, “It looks like it but nothing is definite
un —”
“Until the autopsy. I know, I know. I’m a cop’s wife. Was, I
mean. I know what you can say and can’t say. You people
can’t even be straight with me. Until then there are always
secrets to keep to yourselves.”
He saw the hard edge enter her eyes, the anger.
“That’s not true, Mrs. Moore. I’m just trying to soften the im
—”
“Detective Bosch, if you want to tell me something, just tell
me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Moore, it was with a gun. If you want the details, I
can give you the details. Your husband, if it was your husband,
took his face off with a shotgun. Gone completely. So, we
have to make sure it was him and we have to make sure he did
it himself, before we can say anything for sure. We are not
trying to keep secrets. We just don’t have all the answers yet.”
She leaned back in her chair, away from light. In the veil of
shadows Bosch saw the look on her face. The hardness and
anger in her eyes had softened. Her shoulders seemed to
untighten. He felt ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you that. I
should have just —”
“That’s okay. I guess I deserved it. …I apologize, too.”
She looked at him then without anger in her eyes. He had
broken through the shell. He could see that she needed to be
with someone. The house was too big and too dark to be alone
in right now. All the Christmas trees and book reports in the
world couldn’t change that. But there was more than that
making Bosch want to stay. He found that he was instinctively
attracted to her. For Bosch it had never been an attraction of an
opposite but the reverse of that myth. He had always seen
something of himself in the women who attracted him. Why it
was this way, he never understood. It was just there. And now
this woman whose name he didn’t even know was there and he
was being drawn to her. Maybe it was a reflection of himself
and his own needs, but it was there and he had seen it. It
hooked him and made him want to know what had etched the
circles beneath such sharp eyes. Like himself, he knew, she
carried her scars on the inside, buried deep, each one a
mystery. She was like him. He knew.
“I’m sorry but I don’t know your name. The deputy chief just
gave me the address and said go.”
She smiled at his predicament.
“It’s Sylvia.”
He nodded.
“Sylvia. Um, is that coffee I smell by any chance?”
“Yes. Would you like a cup?”
“That would be great, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.”
She got up and as she passed in front of him so did his doubts.
“Listen, I’m sorry. Maybe I should go. You have a lot to think
about and I’m intruding here. I’ve —”
“Please stay. I could use the company.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. The fire made a popping sound
as the flames found the last pocket of air. He watched her head
toward the kitchen. He waited a beat, took another look around
the room and stood up and headed toward the lighted doorway
of the kitchen.
“Black is fine.”
“Of course. You’re a cop.”
“You don’t like them much, do you. Cops.”
“Well, let’s just say I don’t have a very good record with
them.”
Her back was to him and she put two mugs on the counter and
poured coffee from a glass pot. He leaned against the doorway
next to the refrigerator. He was unsure what to say, whether to
press on with business or not.
“You have a nice home.”
“No. It’s a nice house, not a home. We’re selling it. I guess I
should say I’m selling it now.”
She still hadn’t turned around.
“You know you can’t blame yourself for whatever he did.”
It was a meager offering and he knew it.
“Easier said than done.”
“Yeah.”
There was a long moment of silence then before Bosch
decided to get on with it.
“There was a note.”
She stopped what she was doing but still did not turn.
“‘I found out who I was.’ That’s all he said.”
She didn’t say anything. One of the mugs was still empty.
“Does it mean anything to you?”
She finally turned to him. In the bright kitchen light he could
see the salty tracks that tears had left on her face. It made him
feel inadequate, that he was nothing and could do nothing to
help heal her.
“I don’t know. My husband … he was caught on the past.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was just — he was always going back. He liked the past
better than the present or the hope of the future. He liked to go
back to the time he was growing up. He liked … He couldn’t
let things go.”
He watched tears slide into the grooves below her eyes. She
turned back to the counter and finished pouring the coffee.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“What happens to anybody?” For a while after that she didn’t
speak, then said, “I don’t know. He wanted to go back. He had
a need for something back there.”
Everybody has a need for their past, Bosch thought.
Sometimes it pulls harder on you than the future. She dried her
eyes with tissue and then turned and gave him a mug. He
sipped it before speaking.
“Once he told me he lived in a castle,” she said. “That’s what
he called it, at least.”
“In Calexico?” he asked.
“Yes, but it was for a short while. I don’t know what
happened. He never told me a lot about that part of his life. It
was his father. At some point, he wasn’t wanted anymore by
his father. He and his mother had to leave Calexico — the
castle, or whatever it was — and she took him back across the
border with her. He liked to say he was from Calexico but he
really grew up in Mexicali. I don’t know if you’ve ever been
there.”
“Just to drive through. Never stopped.”
“That’s the general idea. Don’t stop. But he grew up there.”
She stopped and he waited her out. She was looking down at
her coffee, an attractive woman who looked weary of this. She
had not yet seen that this was a beginning for her as well as an
end.
“It was something he never got over. The abandonment. He
often went back there to Calexico. I didn’t go but I know he
did. Alone. I think he was watching his father. Maybe seeing
what could have been. I don’t know. He kept pictures from
when he was growing up. Sometimes at night when he thought
I was asleep, he’d take them out and look at them.”
“Is he still alive, the father?”
She handed him a mug of coffee.
“I don’t know. He rarely spoke of his father and when he did
he said his father was dead. But I don’t know if that was
metaphorically dead or that he actually was dead. He was dead
as far as Cal went. That was what mattered. It was a very
private thing with Cal. He still felt the rejection, all these years
later. I could not get him to talk about it. Or, when he would,
he would just lie, say the old man meant nothing and that he
didn’t care. But he did. I could tell. After a while, after years, I
have to say that I stopped trying to talk with him about it. And
he would never bring it up. He’d just go down there —
sometimes for a weekend, sometimes a day. He’d never talk
about it when he came back.”
“Do you have the photos?”
“No, he took them when he left. He’d never leave them.”
Bosch sipped some coffee to give himself time to think.
“It seems,” he said, “I don’t know, it seems like … could this
have had anything to do with…”
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that it had a lot to do with
us. It was an obsession with him. It was more important to him
than me. It’s what ended it for us.”
“What was he trying to find?”
“I don’t know. In the last few years he shut me out. And I have
to say that after a while I shut him out. That’s how it ended.”
Bosch nodded and looked away from her eyes. What else
could he do? Sometimes his job took him too far inside
people’s lives and all he could do was stand there and nod. He
was asking questions he felt guilty asking because he had no
right to the answers. He was just the messenger boy here. He
wasn’t supposed to find out why somebody would hold a
double-barrel shotgun up to his face and pull the triggers.
Still, the mystery of Cal Moore and the pain on her face
wouldn’t let him go. She was captivating in a way that went
beyond her physical beauty. She was attractive, yes, but the
hurt in her face, the tears and yet the strength in her eyes
tugged at him. The thought that occurred to him was that she
did not deserve this. How could Cal Moore have fucked up so
badly?
He looked back at her.
“There was another thing he told me once. Uh, I’ve had some
experience with the IAD, uh, that’s Internal —”
“I know what it is.”
“Yes, well, he asked me for some advice. Asked me about if I
knew somebody that was asking questions about him. Name of
Chastain. Did Cal tell you about this? What it was about?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Her demeanor was changing. Bosch could actually see the
anger welling up from inside again. Her eyes were very sharp.
He had struck a nerve.
“But you knew about it, right?”
“Chastain came here once. He thought I would cooperate with
whatever it was he was doing. He said I made a complaint
about my husband, which was a lie. He wanted to go through
the house and I told him to leave. I don’t want to talk about
this.”
“When did Chastain come?”
“I don’t know. Couple months ago.”
“You warned Cal?”
She hesitated and then nodded.
Then Cal came to the Catalina and asked me for advice, Harry
realized.
“You sure you don’t know what it was about?”
“We were separated by then. We didn’t talk. It was over
between us. All I did was tell Cal that this man had come and
that he had lied about who made the complaint. Cal said that
was all they do. Lie. He said don’t worry about it.”
Harry finished his coffee but held the mug in his hand. She
had known her husband had somehow fallen, had betrayed
their future with his past, but she had stayed loyal. She had
warned him about Chastain. Bosch couldn’t fault her for that.
He could only like her better.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“What?”
“If you are investigating my husband’s death, I would assume
you already know about IAD. You are either lying to me, too,
or don’t know. If that’s the case, what are you doing here?”
He put the mug down on the counter. It gave him a few extra
seconds.
“I was sent out by the assistant chief to tell you what was —”
“The dirty work.”
“Right. I got stuck with the dirty work. But like I said, I sort of
knew your husband and…”
“I don’t think it’s a mystery you can solve, Detective Bosch.”
He nodded — the old standby.
“I teach English and lit at Grant High in the Valley,” she said.
“I assign my students a lot of books written about L.A. so they
can get a feel for the history and character of their community.
Lord knows, few of them were born here. Anyway, one of the
books I assign is The Long Goodbye. It’s about a detective.”
“I’ve read it.”
“There is a line. I know it by heart. ‘There is no trap so deadly
as the trap you set for yourself.’ Whenever I read that I think
of my husband. And me.”
She started to cry again. Silently, never taking her eyes off
Bosch. This time he didn’t nod. He saw the need in her eyes
and crossed the room and put his hand on her shoulder. It felt
awkward, but then she moved into him and leaned her head
against his chest. He let her keep crying until she pulled away.
···
An hour later, Bosch was home. He picked up the half-filled
glass of wine and the bottle that had been sitting on the table
since dinner. He went out on the back porch and sat and drank
and thought about things until early into the morning hours.
The glow of the fire across the pass was gone. But now
something burned within himself.
Calexico Moore had apparently answered a question that all
people carry deep within themselves — that Harry Bosch, too,
had longed to answer. I found out who I was.
And it had killed him. It was a thought that pushed a fist into
Bosch’s guts, into the most secret folds of his heart.
5
The restaurant’s sign had been changed since the last time he
had been there. It was now the All-American Egg and I, which
meant it had probably been sold to foreigners. Bosch got out
of his Caprice and walked through the back alley, looking at
the spot where Juan Doe #67 had been dumped. Right outside
the backdoor of a diner frequented by the local narc crew. His
thoughts on the implications of this were interrupted by the
panhandlers in the alley who came up to him shaking their
cups. Bosch ignored them but their presence served to remind
him of another shortcoming in Porter’s meager investigation.
There had been nothing in the reports about vagrants in the
alley being interviewed as possible witnesses. It would
probably be impossible to track them down now.
Inside the restaurant, he saw four young men, one of them
black, in a rear booth. They were sitting silently with their
faces turned down to the empty coffee cups in front of them.
Harry noticed a closed manila file on the table as he pulled a
chair away from an empty table and sat at the end of the booth.
“I’m Bosch.”
“Tom Rickard,” the black one said. He put out his hand and
then introduced the other three as Finks, Montirez and
Fedaredo.
“We got tired of being around the office,” Rickard said. “Cal
used to like this place.”
Bosch just nodded and looked down at the file. He saw the
name written on the tab was Humberto Zorrillo. It meant
nothing to him. Rickard slid the file across the table to him.
“What is it?” Harry asked, not yet touching it.
“Probably the last thing he worked on,” Rickard said. “We
were going to give it over to RHD but thought what the hell,
he was working it up for you. And those boys down there at
Parker are just trying to drag him through the shit. Ain’t going
to help with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they can’t let it be that the man killed himself. They
hafta dissect his life and figure out exactly why he did this and
why he done that. The man fucking killed himself. What else
is there to say about it?”
“You don’t want to know why?”
“I already know why, man. The job. It will get us all in the
end. I mean, I know why.”
Bosch just nodded again. The other three narcs still hadn’t said
anything.
“I’m just letting off steam,” Rickard said. “Been one of those
days. Longest fucking day of my life.”
“Where was this?” Harry asked, pointing to the file. “Didn’t
RHD already go through his desk?”
“Yeah, they did. But that file wasn’t in it. See, Cal left it in one
of the BANG cars — one of those undercover pieces of shit
we use. In the pocket behind the front seat. We never noticed it
during the week he was missing because today was the first
time any of us rode in the back of the car. We usually take two
cars out on operations. But today we all jumped in one for a
cruise on the Boulevard after we came in and heard the news. I
saw it shoved down into the pocket. It’s got a little note inside.
Says to give it to you. We knew he was working on something
for you ’cause of that night he peeled off early to go meet with
you at the Catalina.”
Bosch still hadn’t opened the file. Just looking at it gave him
an uneasy feeling.
“He told me that night at the Catalina that the shoeflies were
on him. You guys know why?”
“No, man, we don’t know what was going down. We just
know they were around. Like flies on shit. IAD went through
his desk before RHD. They took files, his phone book, even
took the fucking typewriter off the desk. That was the only one
we had. But what it was about, we don’t know. The guy had a
lot of years in and it burns my ass that they were gunning for
him. That’s what I meant before about the job doing him in.
It’ll get all of us.”
“What about outside the job? His past. His wife said —”
“I don’t want to hear about that shit. She’s the one who put the
suits on him. Made up some story when he walked out and
dropped the dime on him. She just wanted to bring him down,
you ask me.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“Cal told us, man. Said the shoeflies might come around
asking questions. Told us it came from her.”
Bosch wondered who had been lying, Moore to his partners or
Sylvia to himself. He thought about her for a moment and
couldn’t see it, couldn’t see her dropping the dime. But he
didn’t press it with the four narcs. He finally reached down
and picked up the file. Then he left.
···
He was too curious to wait. He knew that he should not even
have the file. That he should pick up a phone and call Frankie
Sheehan at RHD. But he unconsciously took a quick look
around the car to make sure he was alone and began to read.
There was a yellow Post-it note on the first page.
Give to Harry Bosch.
It was not signed or dated. It was stuck to a sheet of paper with
five green Field Interview cards held to it with a paper clip.
Harry detached the FI cards and shuffled through them. Five
different names, all males. Each had been stopped by members
of the BANG unit in October or November. They were
questioned and released. Each card held little more
information than a description, home address, driver license
number, and date and location of the shakedown. The names
meant nothing to Bosch.
He looked at the sheet the cards had been attached to. It was
marked INTERNAL MEMO and had a subheading that said BANG
Intelligence Report #144. It was dated November 1 and had a
FILED stamp mark on it that was dated two days after that.
Nov.
9
Dance arrested
Nov.
13
Jimmy Kapps dead
Dec.
4
Moore, Bosch meet
He now started to add other dates and facts, even some that did
not seem to fit into the picture at the moment. But his
overriding feeling was that his cases were linked and the link
was Calexico Moore. He didn’t stop to consider the chart as a
whole until he was finished. Then he studied it, finding that it
gave some context to the thoughts that had jumbled in his head
in the last two days.
Nov.
1
BANG cya memo on black ice
Nov.
9
Rickard gets tip — from Jimmy Kapps
Nov.
9
Dance arrested, case kicked
Nov.
13
Jimmy Kapps dead
Dec.
4
Moore, Bosch meet — Moore holds back
Dec.
11
Moore receives DEA briefing
Dec.
18
Moore finds body — Juan Doe #67
Dec.
18
Porter assigned Juan Doe case
Dec.
19
Moore checks in, Hideaway — suicide?
Dec.
24
Juan Doe #67 autopsy — bugs?
Dec.
25
Moore’s body found
Dec.
26
Porter pulls pin
Dec.
26
Moore autopsy — inconclusive?
She drove him back to get his car near the Red Wind and then
followed him out of downtown and up to his home in the hills.
She lived in a condo in Hancock Park, which was closer, but
she said she had been spending too much time there lately and
wanted a chance to see or hear the coyote. He knew her real
reason was that it would be easier for her to extricate herself
from his place than to ask him to leave hers.
Bosch didn’t mind, though. The truth was, he felt
uncomfortable at her place. It reminded him too much of what
L.A. was coming to. It was a fifthfloor loft with a view of
downtown in a historic residence building called the Warfield.
The exterior of the building was still as beautiful as the day in
1911 it was completed by George Allan Hancock. Beaux Arts
architecture with a blue-gray terra-cotta facade. George hadn’t
spared the oil money and from the street the Warfield, with its
fleurs-de-lys and cartouches, showed it. But it was the interior
— the current interior, that is — that Bosch found
objectionable. The place had been bought a few years back by
a Japanese firm and completely gutted, then retrofitted,
renovated and revamped. The walls in each apartment were
knocked down and each place was nothing but a long, sterile
room with fake wood floors, stainless-steel counters and track
lighting. Just a pretty shell, Bosch thought. He had a feeling
George would’ve thought the same.
At Harry’s house they talked while he lit the hibachi on the
porch and put an orange roughy filet on the grill. He had
bought it Christmas Eve and it was still fresh and large enough
to split. Teresa told him the County Commission would
probably informally decide before New Year’s on a permanent
chief medical examiner. He wished her good luck but privately
wasn’t sure he meant it. It was a political appointment and she
would have to toe the line. Why get into that box? He changed
the subject.
“So, if this guy, this Juan Doe, was down in Mexicali — near
where they make these fruit flies — how do you think his
body got all the way up here?”
“That’s not my department,” Teresa said.
She was at the railing, staring out over the Valley. There were
a million lights glinting in the crisp, cool air. She was wearing
his jacket over her shoulders. Harry glazed the fish with a
pineapple barbecue sauce and then turned it over.
“It’s warm over here by the fire,” he said. He dawdled a bit
over the filet and then said, “I think what it was is that maybe
they didn’t want anybody checking around that USDA
contractor’s business. You know? They didn’t want that body
connected to that place. So they take the guy’s body far away.”
“Yeah, but all the way to L.A.?”
“Maybe they were …well, I don’t know. That is pretty far
away.”
They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments.
Bosch could hear and smell the pineapple sizzling as it dripped
on the coals. He said, “How do you smuggle a dead body
across the border?”
“Oh, I think they’ve smuggled larger things than that across,
don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Ever been down there, Harry, to Mexicali?”
“Just to drive through on my way to Bahia San Felipe, where I
went fishing last summer. I never stopped. You?”
“Never.”
“You know the name of the town just across the border? On
our side?”
“Uh uh.”
“Calexico.”
“You’re kidding? Is that where —”
“Yup.”
The fish was done. He forked it onto a plate, put the cover on
the grill and they went inside. He served it with Spanish rice
he made with Pico Pico. He opened a bottle of red wine and
poured two glasses. Blood of the gods. He didn’t have any
white. As he put everything on the table he saw a smile on her
face.
“Thought I was a TV dinner guy, didn’t you?”
“Crossed my mind. This is very nice.”
They clicked glasses and ate quietly. She complimented him
on the meal but he knew the fish was a little too dry. They
descended into small talk again. The whole time he was
looking for the opening to ask her about the Moore autopsy. It
didn’t come until they were finished.
“What will you do now?” she asked after putting her napkin
on the table.
“Guess I’ll clear the table and see if —”
“No. You know what I mean. About the Juan Doe case.”
“I’m not sure. I want to talk to Porter again. And I’ll probably
look up the USDA. I’d like to know more about how those
flies get here from Mexico.”
She nodded and said, “Let me know if you want to talk to the
entomolo-gist. I can arrange that.”
He watched her as she once again got the far-off stare that had
been intruding all night.
“What about you?” he asked. “What will you do now?”
“About what?”
“About the problems with the Moore autopsy.”
“That obvious, huh?”
He got up and cleared the plates away. She didn’t move from
the table. He sat back down and emptied the bottle into the
glasses. He decided he would have to give her something in
order for her to feel comfortable giving him something in
return.
“Listen to me, Teresa. I think you and I should talk about
things. I think we have two investigations, probably three
investigations, here, that may all be part of the same thing.
Like different spokes on the same wheel.”
She brought her eyes up, confused. “What cases? What are
you talking about?”
“I know that all of what I’m about to say is outside your venue
but I think you need to know it to help make your decision.
I’ve been watching you all night and I can tell you have a
problem and don’t know what to do.”
He hesitated, giving her a chance to stop him. She didn’t. He
told her about Marvin Dance’s arrest and its relation to the
Jimmy Kapps murder.
“When I found out Kapps had been bringing ice over from
Hawaii, I went to Cal Moore to ask about black ice. You know,
the competition. I wanted to know where it comes from, where
you get it, who’s selling it, anything that would help me get a
picture of who might’ve put down Jimmy Kapps. Anyway, the
point is I thought Moore shined me on, said he knew nothing,
but today I find out he was putting together a file on black ice.
He was gathering string on my case. He held stuff back from
me, but at the same time was putting something together on
this when he disappeared. I got the file today. There was a
note. It said ‘Give to Harry Bosch’ on it.”
“What was in it? The file.”
“A lot. Including an intelligence report, says the main source
of black ice is probably a ranch down in Mexicali.”
She stared at him but said nothing.
“Which brings us to our Juan Doe. Porter bails out and the
case comes to me today. I am reading through the file and I’ll
give you one guess who it was that found the body and then
disappeared the next day.”
“Shit,” she said.
“Exactly. Cal Moore. What this means I don’t know. But he is
the reporting officer on the body. The next day he is in the
wind. The next week he is found in a motel room, a supposed
suicide. And then the next day — after the discovery of Moore
has been in the papers and on TV — Porter calls up and says,
‘Guess what, guys, I quit.’ Does all of this sound aboveboard
to you?”
She abruptly stood up and walked to the sliding door to the
porch. She stared through the glass out across the pass.
“Those bastards,” she said. “They just want to drop the whole
thing. Because it might embarrass somebody.”
Bosch walked up behind her.
“You have to tell somebody about it. Tell me.”
“No. I can’t. You tell me everything.”
“I’ve told you. There isn’t much else and it’s all a jumble. The
file didn’t have much, other than that the DEA told Moore that
black ice is coming up from Mexicali. That’s how I guessed
about the fruit fly contractor. And then there’s Moore. He grew
up in Calexico and Mexicali. You see? There are too many
coincidences here that I don’t think are coincidences.”
She still faced the door and he was talking to her back, but he
saw the reflection of her worried face in the glass. He could
smell her perfume.
“The important thing about the file is that Moore didn’t keep it
in his office or his apartment. It was in a place where someone
from IAD or RHD wouldn’t find it. And when the guys on his
crew found it, there was the note that said to give it to me. You
understand?”
The confused look in the glass answered for her. She turned
and moved into the living room, sitting on the cushioned chair
and running her hands through her hair. Harry stayed standing
and paced on the wood floor in front of her.
“Why would he write a note saying give the file to me? It
wouldn’t have been a note to himself. He already knew he was
putting the file together for me. So, the note was for someone
else. And what does that tell us? That he either knew when he
wrote it that he was going to kill himself. Or he —”
“Knew he was going to be killed,” she said.
Bosch nodded. “Or, at least, he knew he had gotten into
something too deep. That he was in trouble. In danger.”
“Jesus,” she said.
Harry approached and handed her her wineglass. He bent
down close to her face.
“You have to tell me about the autopsy. Something’s wrong. I
heard that bullshit press release they put out. Inconclusive.
What is that shit? Since when can’t you tell if a shotgun blast
to the face killed somebody or not?
“So tell me, Teresa. We can figure out what to do.”
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, but Harry
knew she was going to tell.
“They told me because I wasn’t a hundred percent — Harry,
you can’t reveal where you got this information. You can’t.”
“It won’t get back to you. If I have to, I will use it to help us,
but it won’t get back to you. That’s my promise.”
“They told me not to discuss it with anyone because I couldn’t
be completely sure. The assistant chief, Irving, that arrogant
prick knew just where to stick it in. Talking about the County
Commission deciding soon about my position. Saying they
would be looking for a chief ME who knew discretion. Saying
what friends he had on the commission. I’d like to take a
scalpel —”
“Never mind all of that. What was it you weren’t one hundred
percent sure about?”
She drained her wineglass. Then the story came out. She told
him that the autopsy had proceeded as routine, other than the
fact that in addition to the two case detectives observing it,
Sheehan and Chastain from IAD, was assistant police chief
Irving. She said a lab technician was also on hand to make the
fingerprint comparisons.
“The decomposition was extensive,” Teresa said. “I had to
take the finger-tips off and spray them with a chemical
hardening agent. Collins, that’s my lab tech, was able to take
prints after that. He made the comparison right there because
Irving had brought exemplars. It was a match. It was Moore.”
“What about the teeth?”
“Dental was tough. There wasn’t much left that hadn’t been
fragged. We made a comparison between a partial incisor
found in the tub and some dental records Irving came up with.
Moore had had a root canal and it was there. That was a
match, too.”
She said she began the autopsy after confirming the identity
and immediately concluded the obvious: that damage from the
double-barrel-shotgun blast was massive and fatal. Instantly.
But it was while examining the material that had separated
from the body that she began to question whether she could
rule Moore’s death a suicide.
“The force of the blast resulted in complete cranial
displacement,” she said. “And, of course, the autopsy protocol
calls for examination of all vital organs, including the brain.
“Problem was the brain was mostly unmassed due to the wide
projectile pattern. I believe I was told the pellets came from a
double-barrel, side-by-side configuration. I could see that. The
projectile pattern was very wide. Nevertheless, a large portion
of the frontal lobe and corresponding skull fragment were left
largely intact, though it had been separated.
“You know what I mean? The diagram said this had been
charted in the bathtub. Is this … too much? I know you knew
him.”
“Not that well. Go on.”
“So I examined this piece, not really expecting anything more
than what I was seeing earlier. But I was wrong. There was
hemorrhagic demarcation in the lobe along the skull lining.”
She took a hit off his wineglass and breathed heavily, as if
casting out a demon.
“And so, you see Harry, that was a big fucking problem.”
“Tell me why.”
“You sound like Irving. ‘Tell me why. Tell me why.’ Well, it
should be obvious. For two reasons. First of all you don’t have
that much hemorrhage on instant death like that. There is not
much bleeding in the brain lining when the brain has been
literally disconnected from the body in a split second. But
while there is some room for some debate on that — I’ll give
that to Irving — there is no debate whatsoever on the second
reason. This hemorrhaging was clearly indicative of a contre-
coup injury to the head. No doubt in my mind at all.”
Harry quickly reviewed the physics he had learned over the
ten years he had been watching autopsies. Contre-coup brain
injury is damage that occurs to the side of the brain opposite
the insult. The brain, in effect, was a Jell-O mold inside the
skull. A jarring blow to the left side often did its worst damage
to the right side because the force of impact pushed the Jell-O
against the right side of the skull. Harry knew that for Moore
to have the hemorrhage Teresa described to the front of the
brain, he would have to be struck from behind. A shotgun blast
to the face would not have done it.
“Is there any way …,” he trailed off, unclear of what he
wanted to ask. He suddenly became aware of his body’s pangs
for a cigarette and smacked the end of a fresh pack on his
palm.
“What happened?” he asked as he opened it.
“Well, when I started explaining, Irving got all uptight and
kept asking, ‘Are you sure? Is that a hundred percent accurate?
Aren’t we jumping the gun?’ and on and on like that. I think it
was pretty clear. He didn’t want this to be anything other than
a suicide. The minute I raised a doubt he started talking about
jumping to conclusions and the need to move slowly. He said
the department could be embarrassed by what an investigation
could lead to if we did not proceed slowly and cautiously and
correctly. Those were his words. Asshole.”
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Bosch said.
“Right. So I just flat-out told them I was not going to rule it a
suicide. And then … then they talked me out of ruling it a
homicide. So that’s where the inconclusive comes from. A
compromise. For now. It makes me feel like I am guilty of
something. Those bastards.”
“They’re just going to drop it,” Bosch said.
He couldn’t figure it out. The reluctance had to be because of
the IAD investigation. Whatever Moore was into, Irving must
believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And
either way Irving didn’t want to open that box without
knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know.
That told Bosch one thing: he was on his own. No matter what
he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get
it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing.
“Do they know that Moore was working on something for
you?” Teresa asked.
“By now they do, but they probably didn’t when they were
with you. Probably won’t make any difference.”
“What about the Juan Doe case? About him finding the body.”
“I don’t know what they know on that.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. What will you do?”
She was silent for a long time, then she got up and walked to
him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the lips. She
whispered, “Let’s forget about all of this for a while.”
···
He conceded to her in their lovemaking, letting her lead and
direct him, use his body the way she wanted. They had been
together often enough so that they were comfortable and knew
each other’s ways. They were beyond the stages of curiosity or
embarrassment. At the end, she was straddled over him as he
leaned back, propped on pillows, against the headboard. Her
head snapped back and her clipped nails dug painlessly into
his chest. She made no sound at all.
In the darkness he looked up and saw the glint of silver
dripping from her ears. He reached up and touched the
earrings and then ran his hands down her throat, over her
shoulders and breasts. Her skin was warm and damp. Her slow
methodical motion drew him further into the void where
everything else in the world could not go.
When they were both resting, she still huddled on top of him, a
sense of guilt came over him. He thought of Sylvia Moore. A
woman he had met only the night before, how could she
intrude on this? But she had. He wondered where the guilt
came from. Maybe it was for what was still ahead of them.
He thought he heard the short, high-pitched bark of the coyote
in the distance behind the house. Teresa raised her head off his
chest and then they heard the animal’s lonesome baying.
“Timido,” he heard her say quietly.
Harry felt the guilt pass over him again. He thought of Teresa.
Had he tricked her into telling him? He didn’t think so.
Maybe, again, it was guilt over what he had not yet done.
What he knew he would do with the information she had
given.
She seemed to know his thoughts were away from her. Perhaps
a change in his heartbeat, a slight tensing in his muscles.
“Nothing,” she said.
“What?”
“You asked what I was going to do. Nothing. I’m not going to
get involved in this bullshit any further. If they want to bury it,
let them bury it.”
Harry knew then that she would make a good permanent chief
medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles.
He felt himself falling away from her in the dark.
Teresa rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking
out the window at the three-quarter moon. They had left the
curtain open. The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he
could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance.
“Are you like him?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.”
“Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.”
“Yes, but you like it, don’t you?”
“Not always.”
“Not always…”
He thought about what to say. The wrong word and she’d be
gone.
“I’m sorry if I’m distant,” he tried. “There’s a lot of things…”
He didn’t finish. There was no excuse.
“You do like living up here in this little, lonely house, with the
coyote as your only friend, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer. The face of Sylvia Moore inexplicably came
back into his mind. But this time he felt no guilt. He liked
seeing her there.
“I have to go,” Teresa said. “Long day tomorrow.”
He watched her walk naked into the bathroom, picking her
purse up off the night table as she went. He listened as the
shower ran. He imagined her in there, cleaning all traces of
him off and out of her and then splashing on the all-purpose
perfume she always carried in her purse to cover up any smells
left on her from her job.
He rolled to the side of the bed to the pile of his clothes on the
floor and got out his phone book. He dialed while the water
still ran. The voice that answered was dulled with sleep. It was
near midnight.
“You don’t know who this is and I never talked to you.”
There was silence while Harry’s voice registered.
“Okay, okay. Got it. I understand.”
“There’s a problem on the Cal Moore autopsy.”
“Shit, I know that, man. Inconclusive. You don’t have to wake
me up to —”
“No, you don’t understand. You are confusing the autopsy
with the press release on the autopsy. Two different things.
Understand now?”
“Yeah …I think I do. So, what’s the problem?”
“The assistant chief of police and the acting chief ME don’t
agree. One says suicide, the other homicide. Can’t have both. I
guess that’s what you call inconclusive in a press release.”
There was a low whistling sound in the phone.
“This is good. But why would the cops want to bury a
homicide, especially one of their own? I mean, suicide makes
the department look like shit as it is. Why bury a murder
unless it means there’s something —”
“Right,” Bosch said and he hung up the phone.
A minute later the shower was turned off and Teresa came out,
drying herself with a towel. She was totally unabashed about
her nakedness with him and Harry found he missed that
shyness. It had eventually left all the women he became
involved with before they eventually left him.
He pulled on blue jeans and a T-shirt while she dressed.
Neither spoke. She looked at him with a thin smile and then he
walked her out to her car.
“So, we still have a date for New Year’s Eve?” she asked after
he opened the car door for her.
“Of course,” he said, though he knew she would call with an
excuse to cancel it.
She leaned up and kissed him on the lips, then slipped into the
driver’s seat.
“Good-bye, Teresa,” he said, but she had already closed the
door.
···
It was midnight when he came back inside. The place smelled
of her perfume. And his own guilt. He put Frank Morgan’s
Mood Indigo on the CD player and stood there in the living
room without moving, just listening to the phrasing on the first
solo, a song called “Lullaby.” Bosch thought he knew nothing
truer than the sound of a saxophone.
11
Bosch didn’t get back to his search for Porter until four in the
morning. By then he had had two cups of coffee in the station
and was holding his third. He was back in the Caprice, alone
and roaming the city.
Rickard had agreed to ferry Kerwin Tyge downtown. The kid
had never talked. His shell of hardened rejection, cop hate and
misguided pride never cracked. At the station, it had become a
mission for Rickard to break the kid. He renewed the threats,
the questions, with a zeal that Bosch found disturbing. He
finally told Rickard that it was over. He told the narc to book
the kid and they’d try again later. After stepping out of the
interview room, the two decided to meet at seven thousand at
2 P.M. That would give the kid about a ten-hour taste of the big
house, enough time to make a decision.
Now Bosch was cruising the bottle clubs, the after-hour joints
where “members” brought their own bottles and were charged
for the setups. The setups, of course, were a ripoff, and some
clubs even charged a membership fee. But some people just
couldn’t drink at home alone. And some people didn’t have
much of a home.
At a stoplight on Sunset at Western, a blur passed the car on
the right and a figure lunged over the passenger side of the
hood. Bosch instinctively drew his left hand up to his belt and
almost dropped his coffee but then realized the man had begun
to rub a newspaper on the windshield. Half past four in the
morning and a homeless man was cleaning his windshield.
Badly. The man’s efforts only smudged the glass. Bosch pulled
a dollar out of his pocket and handed it out the window to the
man when he came around to do the driver’s side. He waved
him away.
“Don’t worry about it, partner,” he said and the man silently
walked away.
Bosch headed off, hitting bottle clubs in Echo Park near the
police academy and then Chinatown. No sign of Porter. He
crossed over the Hollywood Freeway into downtown, thinking
of the kid as he passed the county lockup. He’d be on seven,
the narco module, where the inhabitants were generally less
hostile. He’d probably be okay.
He saw the big blue trucks pulling out of the garage on the
Spring Street side of the Times building, heading off with
another morning’s cargo of news. He tried a couple of bottle
clubs near Parker Center, then one near skid row. He was
scratching bottom now, getting near the end of the line and
running out of places to check.
The last place he stopped was Poe’s, which was centrally
located on Third Avenue near skid row, the Los Angeles
Times, St. Vibiana’s and the glass bank towers of the financial
district, where alcoholics were manufactured wholesale. Poe’s
did a good business in the morning hours before downtown
came alive with hustle and greed.
Poe’s was on the first floor of a prewar brick walkup that had
been tagged for demolition by the Community Redevelopment
Agency. It had not been earthquake-proofed and retrofitting it
would cost more than the building was worth. The CRA had
bought it and was going to knock it down to put up condos that
would draw live-in residents downtown. But the whole thing
was on hold. Another city agency, the Office of Preservation,
wanted the Poe building, as it was informally known, granted
landmark status and was suing to stop the demolition. So far
they had held up the plan four years. Poe’s was still open. The
four floors above it were abandoned.
Inside, the place was a black hole with a long, warped bar and
no tables. Poe’s wasn’t a place to sit in a booth with friends. It
was a place to drink alone. A place for executive suicides who
needed courage, broken cops who couldn’t cope with the
loneliness they built into their lives, writers who could no
longer write and priests who could no longer forgive even
their own sins. It was a place to drink mean, as long as you
still had the green. It cost you five bucks for a stool at the bar
and a dollar for a glass of ice to go with your bottle of
whiskey. A soda setup was three bucks but most of these
people took their medicine straight up. It was cheaper that way
and more to the point. It was said that Poe’s was not named
after the writer but for the general philosophy of its clientele:
Piss On Everything.
Even though it was dark outside, stepping into Poe’s was like
walking into a cave. For a moment, Bosch was reminded of
that first moment after dropping into a VC tunnel in Vietnam.
He stood utterly still by the door until his eyes focused in the
dim light and he saw the red leather padding on the bar. The
place smelled worse than Porter’s trailer. The bartender, in a
wrinkled white shirt and unbuttoned black vest, stood to the
right, backed by the rows of liquor bottles, each with the bottle
owner’s name attached on a piece of masking tape. A red stem
of neon ran along the booze shelf, behind the bottles, and gave
them an eerie glow.
From the darkness to Bosch’s left, he heard, “Shit, Harry,
whaddaya doing? You looking for me?”
He turned and there was Porter at the other end of the bar,
sitting so he could see whoever came in before they could see
him. Harry walked over. He saw a shot glass in front of Porter
along with a half-filled water glass and a third-filled bottle of
bourbon. There was a twenty and three ones fanned out on the
bar as well and a package of Camels. Bosch felt anger rising in
his throat as he approached and came up on Porter’s back.
“Yeah, I’m looking for you.”
“Whassup?”
Bosch knew he had to do what he had to do before any
sympathy could crack through his anger. He yanked Porter’s
sport coat down over his shoulders so his arms were caught at
his sides. A cigarette dropped out of his hand to the floor.
Bosch reached around and pulled the gun out of his shoulder
holster and put it on the bar.
“What’re you still carrying for, Lou? You pulled the pin,
remember? What, you scared of something?”
“Harry, what’s going on? Why are you doing this?”
The bartender started walking down behind the bar to the aid
of his club member but Bosch fixed him with a cold stare, held
up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Cool it. It’s private.”
“Damned right. It’s a private club and you ain’t a member.”
“It’s okay, Tommy,” Porter spoke up. “I know him. I’ll take
care of it.”
A couple of men who had been sitting a few stools from Porter
got up and moved to the other end of the bar with their bottles
and drinks. A couple of other drunks were already down there
watching. But nobody left, not with booze still in their jars and
it not quite being six o’clock yet. There would be no place else
to go. Bars wouldn’t open until seven and the hour or so until
then could last a lifetime. No, they weren’t going anywhere.
This crew would sit there and watch a man murdered if they
had to.
“Harry, c’mon,” Porter said. “Cool it yourself. We can talk.”
#8220;Can we? Can we? Why didn’t you talk when I called
the other day? How about Moore? Did you have a talk with
Cal Moore?”
“Look, Harry —”
Bosch spun him around off the stool and face first into the
wood-paneled wall. He came easier than Harry had thought he
would and hit the wall hard. His nose made a sound like an
ice-cream cone hitting the sidewalk. Bosch leaned his back
against Porter’s back, pinning him face first against the wall.
“Don’t ‘Look, Harry’ me, Porter. I stood up for you, man,
’cause I thought you were …I thought you were worth it. Now
I know, Porter. I was wrong. You quit on the Juan Doe. I want
to know why. I want to know what’s going on.”
Porter’s voice was muffled by the wall and his own blood. He
said, “Harry, shit, I think you broke my nose. I’m bleeding.”
“Don’t worry about it. What about Moore? I know he reported
the body.”
Porter made some kind of wet snorting sound but Bosch just
pushed him harder. The man stunk of sour body odor, booze
and cigarettes, and Bosch wondered how long he had been
sitting in Poe’s, watching the door.
“I’m calling the police now,” the bartender yelled. He stood
holding the phone out so Bosch would see it was a real threat,
which of course it wasn’t. The bartender knew if he dialed that
phone every stool in the bar would be left spinning as the
drunks filed out. There would be no one left to scam on the
change or to leave quarters for his cup.
Using his body to keep Porter pinned to the wall, Bosch pulled
out his badge wallet and held it up. “I am the police. Mind
your own fucking business.”
The bartender shook his head as if to say what is this fine
business coming to, and put the phone back next to the cash
register. The announcement that Bosch was a police officer
resulted in about half the other customers jerking their drinks
down and leaving. There were probably warrants out for
everybody in the place, Bosch thought.
Porter was starting to mumble and Bosch thought he might be
crying again, like on the phone Thursday morning.
“Harry, I — I didn’t think I was doing …I had —”
Bosch bounced harder against his back and heard Porter’s
forehead hit the wall.
“Don’t start that shit with me, Porter. You were takin’ care of
yourself. That’s what you were doing. And —”
“I’m sick. I’m gonna be sick.”
“— and right now, believe it or not, right now the only one
that really cares about you is me. You fuck, you just tell me
what you did. Just tell me what you did and we’re square. It
goes nowhere else. You go for your stress out and I never see
your face again.”
Bosch could hear his wet breathing against the wall. It was
almost as if he could hear him thinking.
“You sure, Harry?”
“You don’t have a choice. You don’t start talking, you end up
with no job, no pension.”
“He, uh — I just …there’s blood on my shirt. It’s roon.”
Bosch pushed harder against him.
“Okay, okay, okay. I’ll tell ya, I’ll tell …I just did him a favor,
thas all, and he ended up deader’n shit. When I heard, I, uh, I
couldn’t come back in, see. I didn’t know what happened. I
mean, I mean, they — somebody could be looking for me. I
got scared, Harry. I’m scared. I been sitting in bars since I
talked to you yesterday. I stink like shit. And now all this
blood. I need a napkin. I think they’re after me.”
Bosch took his weight off him but held one hand pressed
against his back so he would not go anywhere. He reached
back to the bar and took a handful of cocktail napkins off a
stack near a bowl of matches. He held them over Porter’s
shoulder and the broken cop worked his hand loose from his
jacket and took them. He turned his head away from the wall
to press the napkin to his swelling nose. Harry saw tears on his
face and looked away.
The door to the bar opened then and dawn’s early gray light
shot into the bar. A man stood there, apparently adjusting to
the darkness of the bar as Bosch had done. Bosch saw he was
dark complexioned with ink-black hair. Three tattooed tears
dripped down his cheek from the corner of his left eye. Harry
knew he was no banker or lawyer who needed a double-scotch
breakfast to start the day. He was some kind of player, maybe
finishing a night collecting for the Italians or Mexicans and
needing something to smooth out the edges. The man’s eyes
finally fell on Bosch and Porter, then to Porter’s gun, which
was still on the bar. The man sized up the situation and calmly
and wordlessly backed out through the door.
“Fucking great,” the bartender yelled. “Would you get the hell
out of here. I’m losing customers. The both of you, get the
fuck out.”
There was a sign that said Toilet and an arrow pointing down a
darkened hallway to Bosch’s left. He pushed Porter that way.
They turned a corner and went into the men’s room, which
smelled worse than Porter. There was a mop in a bucket of
gray water in the corner, but the cracked tile floor was dirtier
than the water. He pushed Porter toward the sink.
“Clean yourself up,” Bosch said. “What was the favor? You
said you did something for Moore. Tell me about it.”
Porter was looking at his blurred reflection in a piece of
stainless steel that was probably put in when the management
got tired of replacing broken mirrors.
“It won’t stop bleeding, Harry. I think it’s broke.”
“Forget your nose. Tell me what you did.”
“I, uh — look, all he did was tell me that he knew some people
that would appreciate it if the stiff behind the restaurant didn’t
get ID’d for a while. Just string it out, he said, for a week or
two. Christ, there was no ID on the body, anyway. He said I
could do the computer runs on the prints cause he knew they
wouldn’t bring a match. He said just take my time with it and
that these people, the ones he knew, would take care of me. He
said I’d get a nice Christmas present. So, I, you know, I went
through the motions last week. I wouldn’t have gotten
anywhere with it, anyway. You know, you saw the file. No ID,
no wits, no nothing. The guy’d been dead at least six hours
before he got dumped there.”
“So what spooked you? What happened Christmas?”
Porter blew his nose into a bouquet of paper towels and this
brought more tears to his eyes.
“Yeah, it’s broke. I’m not getting any air through. I gotta go to
a clinic, get it set. Anyway …well, nothing happened
Christmas. That’s the thing. I mean, Moore’d been missing for
almost a week and I was getting pretty nervous about the
whole thing. On Christmas Moore didn’t come, nobody did.
Then when I’m walking home from the Lucky my neighbor in
the trailer next door says to me about how real sorry she was
about that dead cop they found. I said thanks and went inside
and put on the radio. I hear it’s Moore and that scares me
shitless, Harry. It did.”
Porter soaked a handful of towels and began stroking his
bloodstained shirt in a manner that Bosch thought made him
look more pathetic than he was. Bosch saw his empty shoulder
holder and remembered he had left the gun on the bar. He was
reluctant to go back and get it while Porter was talking.
“See, I knew Moore wasn’t no suicide. I don’t care what
they’re putting out at Parker. I know he didn’t do himself like
that. He was into something. So, I decided, that was enough. I
called the union and got a lawyer. I’m outta here, Harry. I’m
gonna get cleaned up and go to Vegas, maybe get in with
casino security. Millie’s out there with my boy. I wanna be
close by.”
Right, Bosch thought. And always be looking over your
shoulder. He said, “You’re bleeding again. Wash your face.
I’m going to get some coffee. I’m taking you out of here.”
Bosch moved through the door but Porter stopped him.
“Harry, you going to take care of me on this?”
Bosch looked at his damaged face a long moment before
saying, “Yeah, I’ll do what I can.”
He walked back out to the bar and signaled the bartender, who
was standing all the way down at the other end smoking a
cigarette. The man, about fifty, with faded blue tattoos
webbing both forearms like extra veins, took his time coming
over. By then Bosch had a ten-dollar bill on the bar.
“Give me a couple coffees to go. Black. Put a lot of sugar in
one of them.”
“’Bout time you got outta here.” The bartender nodded at the
ten-dollar bill. “And I’m taking out for the napkins, too.
They’re not for cops who go round beat’n’ on people. That
oughta ’bout cover it. You can just leave that on the bar.”
He poured coffee that looked like it had been sitting in the
glass pot since Christmas into foam cups. Bosch went to
Porter’s spot at the bar and gathered up the Smith thirty-eight
and the twenty-three dollars. He moved back to his ten-dollar
bill and lit a cigarette.
Not realizing Bosch was now watching, the bartender poured a
gagging amount of sugar into both coffees. Bosch let it slide.
After snapping plastic covers on the cups, the bartender
brought them over to Bosch and tapped one of the tops, a
smile that would make a woman frigid on his face.
“This is the one with no — hey, what is this shit?”
The ten Bosch had put down on the bar was now a one. Bosch
blew smoke in the bartender’s face as he took the coffees and
said, “That’s for the coffee. You can shove the napkins.”
“Just get the fuck out of here,” the bartender said. Then he
turned and started walking down to the other end of the bar,
where several of the patrons were impatiently holding their
empty glasses up. They needed more ice to chill their plasma.
Bosch pushed the door to the restroom open with his foot but
didn’t see Porter. He pushed the door to the only stall open and
he wasn’t there either. Harry left the room and quickly pushed
through the women’s restroom door. No Porter. He followed
the hallway around another corner and saw a door marked
Exit. He saw drops of blood on the floor. Regretting his play
with the bartender and wondering if he’d be able to track
Porter by calling hospitals and clinics, he hit the door’s push
bar with his hip. It opened only an inch or so. There was
something on the other side holding it closed.
Bosch put the coffees down on the floor and put his whole
weight on the door. It slowly moved open as the blockage gave
way. He squeezed through and saw a Dumpster had been
shoved against the door. He was standing in an alley behind
Poe’s and the morning light, flowing down the alley from the
east, was blinding.
There was an abandoned Toyota, its wheels, hood and one
door gone, sitting dead in the alley. There were more
Dumpsters and the wind was blowing trash around in a swirl.
And there was no sign of Porter.
13
It was after one A.M. by the time Bosch turned the Caprice onto
Woodrow Wilson and began the long, winding ascent to his
house. He saw the spotlights tracing eights on the low-lying
clouds over Universal City. On the road he had to navigate his
way around cars double-parked outside holiday parties and a
discarded Christmas tree, a few strands of lonely tinsel still
clinging to its branches, that had blown into his path. On the
seat next to him were the lone Budweiser from Cal Moore’s
refrigerator and Lucius Porter’s gun.
All his life he believed he was slumming toward something
good. That there was meaning. In the youth shelter, the foster
homes, the Army and Vietnam, and now the department, he
always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some
kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was
something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that
was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his
soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew
when they looked at him that he was empty. He had learned to
fill that hollowness with isolation and work. Sometimes drink
and the sound of the jazz saxophone. But never people. He
never let anyone in all the way.
And now he thought he had seen Sylvia Moore’s eyes. Her
true eyes, and he had to wonder if she was the one who could
fill him.
“I want to see you,” he had said when they separated outside
The Fountains.
“Yes,” was all she said. She touched his cheek with her hand
and got into her car.
Now Bosch thought about what that one word and the
accompanying touch could mean. He was happy. And that was
something new.
As he rounded the last curve, slowing for a car with its brights
on to pass, he thought of the way she had looked at the picture
frame for so long before saying she did not recognize it. Had
she lied? What were the chances that Cal Moore would have
bought such an expensive frame after moving into a dump like
that? Not good, was the answer.
By the time he pulled the Caprice into the carport, he was full
of confusing feelings. What had been in the picture? What
difference did it make that she had held that back? If she did.
Still sitting in the car, he opened the beer and drank it down
quickly, some of it spilling onto his neck. He would sleep
tonight, he knew.
Inside, he went to the kitchen, put Porter’s gun in a cabinet
and checked the phone machine. There were no messages. No
call from Porter saying why he had run. No call from Pounds
asking how it was going. No call from Irving saying he knew
what Bosch was up to.
After two nights with little sleep, Bosch looked forward to his
bed as he did on few other nights. It was most often this way,
part of a routine he kept. Nights of fleeting rest or nightmares
followed by a single night when exhaustion finally drove him
down hard into a dark sleep.
As he gathered the covers and pillows about him, he noticed
there was still the trace of Teresa Corazón’s powdery perfume
on them. He closed his eyes and thought about her for a
moment. But soon her image was pushed out of his mind by
Sylvia Moore’s face. Not the photo from the bag or the night
stand, but the real face. Weary but strong, her eyes focused on
Bosch’s own.
The dream was like others Harry had had. He was in the dark
place. A cavernous blackness enveloped him and his breath
echoed in the dark. He sensed, or rather, he knew in the way
he had knowledge of place in all his dreams that the darkness
ended ahead and he must go there. But this time he was not
alone. That was what was different. He was with Sylvia, and
they huddled in the black, their sweat stinging their eyes.
Harry held her and she held him. And they did not speak.
They broke from each other’s embrace and began to move
through the darkness. There was dim light ahead and Harry
headed that way. His left hand was extended in front of him,
his Smith Wesson in its grasp. His right hand was behind him,
holding hers and leading her along. And as they came into the
light Calexico Moore was waiting there with the shotgun. He
was not hidden, but he stood partially silhouetted by the light
that poured into the passage. His green eyes were in shadow.
And he smiled. Then he raised the shotgun.
“Who fucked up?” he said.
The roar was deafening in the blackness. Bosch saw Moore’s
hands fly loose from the shotgun and up away from his body
like tethered birds trying to take flight. He back-stepped wildly
into the darkness and was gone. Not fallen, but disappeared.
Gone. Only the light at the end of the passage remained in his
wake. In one hand Harry still gripped Sylvia’s hand. In the
other, the smoking gun.
He opened his eyes then.
Bosch sat up on the bed. He saw pale light leaking around the
edges of the curtains on the windows facing east. The dream
had seemed so short, but he realized because of the light he
had slept until morning. He held his wrist up to the light and
checked his watch. He had no alarm clock because he never
needed one. It was six o’clock. He rubbed his face in his palms
and tried to reconstruct the dream. This was unusual for him.
A counselor at the sleep dysfunction lab at the VA had once
told him to write down what he remembered from his dreams.
It was an exercise, she said, to try to inform the conscious
mind what the subconscious side was saying. For months he
kept a notebook and pen by the bed and dutifully recorded his
morning memories. But Bosch had found it did him no good.
No matter how well he understood the source of his
nightmares, he could not eliminate them from his sleep. He
had dropped out of the sleep deprivation counseling program
years ago.
Now, he could not recapture the dream. Sylvia’s face
disappeared in the mist. Harry realized he had been sweating
heavily. He got up and pulled the bed sheets off and dumped
them in a basket in the closet. He went to the kitchen and
started a pot of coffee. He showered, shaved and dressed in
blue jeans, a green corduroy shirt and a black sport coat.
Driving clothes. He went back to the kitchen and filled his
Thermos with black coffee.
The first thing he took out to the car was his gun. He removed
the rug that lined the trunk and then lifted out the spare tire
and the jack that were stowed beneath it. He placed the Smith
Wesson, which he had taken from his holster and wrapped in
an oilcloth, in the wheel well and put the spare tire back on top
of it. He put the rug back in place and laid the jack down along
the rear of the trunk. Next he put his briefcase in and a duffel
bag containing a few days’ changes of clothes. It all looked
passable, though he doubted anyone would even look.
He went back inside and got his other gun out of the hallway
closet. It was a forty-four with grips and safety configured for
a right-handed shooter. The cylinder also opened on the left
side. Bosch couldn’t use it because he was left-handed. But he
had kept it for six years because it had been given to him as a
gift by a man whose daughter had been raped and murdered.
Bosch had winged the killer during a brief shootout during his
capture near the Sepul-veda Dam in Van Nuys. He lived and
was now serving life without parole. But that hadn’t been
enough for the father. After the trial he gave Bosch the gun
and Bosch accepted it because not to take it would have been
to disavow the man’s pain. His message to Harry was clear;
next time do the job right. Shoot to kill. Harry took the gun.
And he could have taken it to a gunsmith and had it
reconfigured for left-hand use, but to do that would be to
acknowledge the father had been right. Harry wasn’t sure he
was ready to do that.
The gun had sat on a shelf in the closet for six years. Now he
took it down, checked its action to make sure it was still
operable, and loaded it. He put it in his holster and was ready
to go.
On his way out, he grabbed his Thermos in the kitchen and
bent over the phone machine to record a new message.
“It’s Bosch. I will be in Mexico for the weekend. If you want
to leave a message, hang on. If it’s important and you want to
try to reach me, I’ll be at the De Anza Hotel in Calexico.”
···
It was still before seven as he headed down the hill. He took
the Hollywood Freeway until it skirted around downtown, the
office towers opaque behind the early morning mixture of fog
and smog. He took the transition road to the San Bernardino
Freeway and headed east, out of the city. It was 250 miles to
the border town of Calexico and its sister city of Mexicali, just
on the other side of the fence. Harry would be there before
noon. He poured himself a cup of coffee without spilling any
and began to enjoy the drive.
The smog from L.A. didn’t clear until Bosch was past the
Yucaipa turnoff in Riverside County. After that the sky turned
as blue as the oceans on the maps he had next to him on the
seat. It was a windless day. As he passed the windmill farm
near Palm Springs the blades of the hundreds of electric
generators stood motionless in the morning desert mist. It was
eerie, like a cemetery, and Harry’s eyes didn’t linger.
Bosch drove through the plush desert communities of Palm
Springs and Rancho Mirage without stopping, passing streets
named after golfing presidents and celebrities. As he passed
Bob Hope Drive, Bosch recalled the time he saw the comedian
in Vietnam. He had just come in from thirteen days of clearing
Charlie’s tunnels in the Cu Chi province and thought the
evening of watching Hope was hilarious. Years later he had
seen a clip of the same show on a television retrospective on
the comedian. This time, the performance made him feel sad.
After Rancho Mirage, he caught Route 86 and was heading
directly south.
The open road always presented a quiet thrill to Bosch. The
feeling of going someplace new coupled with the unknown.
He believed he did some of his best thinking while driving the
open road. He now reviewed his search of Moore’s apartment
and tried to look for hidden meanings or messages. The ragged
furniture, the empty suitcase, the lonely skin mag, the empty
frame. Moore left behind a puzzling presence. He thought of
the bag of photos again. Sylvia had changed her mind and
taken it. Bosch wished he had borrowed the photo of the two
boys, and the one of the father and son.
···
Bosch had no photographs of his own father. He had told
Sylvia that he hadn’t known him, but that had been only
partially true. He had grown up not knowing and not, at least
outwardly, caring who he was. But when he returned from the
war he came back with a sense of urgency to know about his
origins. It led him to seek out his father after twenty years of
not even knowing his name.
Harry had been raised in a series of youth shelters and foster
homes after authorities took him from his mother’s custody. In
the dormitories at McClaren or San Fernando or the other
halls, he was comforted by his mother’s steady visits, except
during the times she was in jail. She told him they couldn’t
send him to a foster home without her consent. She had a good
lawyer, she said, trying to get him back.
On the day the housemother at McClaren told him the visits
were over because his mother was dead, he took the news
unlike most boys of eleven. Outwardly, he showed nothing. He
nodded that he understood and then walked away. But that day
during the swimming period, he dove to the bottom of the
deep end and screamed so loud and long that he was sure the
noise was breaking through the surface and would draw the
attention of the lifeguard. After each breath on top, he would
go back down. He screamed and cried until he was so
exhausted he could only cling to the pool’s ladder, its cold
steel tubes the arms that comforted him. Somehow he wished
he could have been there. That was all. He somehow wanted to
have protected her.
He was termed ATA after that. Available to Adopt. He began
to move through a procession of foster homes where he was
made to feel as though he was on tryout. When expectations
were not met, it was on to the next house and the next pair of
judges. He was once sent back to McClaren because of his
habit of eating with his mouth open. And once before he was
sent to a home in the Valley, the Choosers, as they were called
by the ATAs, took Harry and several other thirteen-year-olds
out to the rec field to throw a baseball around. Harry was the
one chosen. He soon realized it was not because he exhibited
the sterling virtues of boyhood. It was because the man had
been looking for a lefthander. His plan was to develop a
pitcher and lefthanders were the premium. After two months
of daily workouts, pitching lessons and oral education on
pitching strategies, Harry ran away from the home. It was six
weeks before the cops later picked him up on Hollywood
Boulevard. He was sent back to McClaren to await the next set
of Choosers. You always had to stand up straight and smile
when the Choosers came through the dorm.
He began his search for his father at the county recorder’s
office. The 1950 birth records of Hieronymus Bosch at Queen
of Angels Hospital listed his mother as Margerie Philips Lowe
and his father’s name as his own: Hieronymus Bosch. But
Harry, of course, knew this was not the case. His mother had
once told him he was the namesake of an artist whose work
she admired. She said the painter’s five-hundred-year-old
paintings were apt portraits of present L.A., a nightmarish
landscape of predators and victims. She told him she would
tell him his true father’s name when the time was right. She
was found dead in an alley off Hollywood Boulevard before
that time came.
Harry hired a lawyer to petition the presiding judge of the
juvenile dependency court to allow him to examine his own
custody records. The request was granted and Bosch spent
several days in the county Hall of Records archive. The
voluminous documents given to him chronicled the
unsuccessful lengths his mother had gone to keep custody of
him. Bosch found it spiritually reassuring, but nowhere in the
files was the name of the father. Bosch was at a dead end but
wrote down the name of the lawyer who had filed all the
papers in his mother’s quest. J. Michael Haller. In writing it
down, Bosch realized he knew the name. Mickey Haller had
been one of L.A.’s premier criminal defense attorneys. He had
handled one of the Manson girls. In the late fifties he had won
an acquittal for the so-called Highwayman, a highway patrol
officer accused of raping seven women he had stopped for
speeding on lonely stretches of the Golden State. What was J.
Michael Haller doing on a child custody case?
On nothing more than a hunch, Bosch went to the Criminal
Courts Building and ordered all of his mother’s cases from
archives. In sorting through them, he found that in addition to
the custody battle Haller had represented Margerie P. Lowe on
six loitering arrests between 1948 and 1961. That was well
into Haller’s time as a top trial lawyer.
In his gut, Harry knew then.
The receptionist in the five-name law office on the top floor of
a Pershing Square tower told Bosch that Haller had retired
recently because of a medical condition. The phone book
didn’t list his residence but the roll of registered voters did.
Haller was a Democrat and he lived on Canon Drive in
Beverly Hills. Bosch would always remember the rosebushes
that lined the walkway to his father’s mansion. They were
perfect roses.
The maid who answered the door said Mr. Haller was not
seeing visitors. Bosch told the woman to tell Mr. Haller it was
Margerie Lowe’s son come to pay his respects. Ten minutes
later he was led past members of the lawyer’s family. All of
them standing in the hallway with strange looks on their faces.
The old man had told them to leave his room and send Bosch
in alone. Standing at the bedside, Harry figured him for maybe
ninety pounds now, and he didn’t need to ask what was wrong
because he could tell cancer was eating away at him from the
inside out.
“I guess I know why you’ve come,” he rasped.
“I just wanted to …I don’t know.”
He stood there in silence for quite a time, watching how it
wore the man out just to keep his eyes open. There was a tube
from a box on the bedside that ran under the covers. The box
beeped every once in a while as it pumped pain-killing
morphine into the dying man’s blood. The old man studied
him silently.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Bosch finally said. “I don’t
know, I think I just wanted to let you know I made it by okay.
I’m all right. In case you ever worried.”
“You have been to the war?”
“Yes. I’m done with that.”
“My son — my other son, he …I kept him away from that. …
What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.”
After some more silence the old man seemed to nod. He said,
“You are called Harry. Your mother told me that. She told me a
lot about you. …But I could never….Do you understand?
Different times. And after it went by so long, I couldn’t. …I
couldn’t reverse things.”
Bosch just nodded. He hadn’t come to cause the man any more
pain. More silence passed and he heard the labored breathing.
“Harry Haller,” the old man whispered then, a broken smile on
the thin, peeling lips burned by chemotherapy. “That could
have been you. Did you ever read Hesse?”
Bosch didn’t understand but nodded again. There was a beep
sound. He watched for a minute until the dosage seemed to
take some effect. The old man’s eyes closed and he sighed.
“I better get going,” Harry said. “You take care.”
He touched the man’s frail, bluish hand. It gripped his fingers
tightly, almost desperately, and then let go. As he stepped to
the door, he heard the old man’s rasp.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said I did. I did worry about you.”
There was a tear running down the side of the old man’s face,
into his white hair. Bosch nodded again and two weeks later he
stood on a hill above the Good Shepherd section at Forest
Lawn and watched them put the father he never knew in the
ground. During the ceremony, he saw a grouping that he
suspected was his half brother and three half sisters. The half
brother, probably born a few years ahead of Bosch, was
watching Harry during the ceremony. At the end, Bosch turned
and walked away.
···
Near ten o’clock Bosch stopped at a roadside diner called El
Oasis Verde and ate huevos rancheros. His table was at a
window that looked out at the blue-white sheath called the
Salton Sea and then farther east to the Chocolate Mountains.
Bosch silently reveled in the beauty and the openness of the
scene. When he was done, and the waitress had refilled his
Thermos, he walked out into the dirt parking lot and leaned
against the fender of the Caprice to breathe the cool, clean air
and look again.
The half brother was now a top defense lawyer and Harry was
a cop. There was a strange congruence to that that Bosch
found acceptable. They had never spoken and probably never
would.
He continued south as 86 ran along the flats between the
Salton Sea and the Santa Rosa Mountains. It was agricultural
land that steadily dropped below sea level. The Imperial
Valley. Much of it was cut in huge squares by irrigation
ditches and his drive was accompanied by the smell of
fertilizer and fresh vegetables. Flatbed trucks, loaded with
crates of lettuce or spinach or cilantro, occasionally pulled off
the farm roads in front of him and slowed him down. But
Harry didn’t mind and waited patiently to pass.
Near a town called Vallecito, Bosch pulled to the side of the
road to watch a squad of low-flying aircraft come screaming
over a mountain that rose to the southwest. They crossed 86
and flew out over the Salton. Bosch knew nothing about
identifying war aircraft in the modern era. These jets had
evolved into faster and sleeker machines than those he
remembered from Vietnam. But they had flown low enough
for him to clearly see that beneath each craft’s wings hung the
hardware of war. He watched the three jets bank and come
about in a tight triangle pattern and retrace their path back to
the mountain. After they crossed above him, Harry looked
down at his maps and found blocks marked off to the
southwest as closed to the public. It was the U.S. Naval
Gunnery Range at Superstition Mountain. The map said it was
a live bombing area. Keep out.
Bosch felt a dull vibration rock the car slightly and then the
following rumble. He looked up from the map and thought he
could make out the plume of smoke beginning to rise from the
base of Superstition. Then he felt and heard another bomb hit.
Then another.
As the jets, the silvery skin of each reflecting a diamond of
sunlight, passed overhead again to begin another run, Bosch
pulled back onto the road behind a flatbed truck with two
teenagers in the back. They were Mexican field-workers with
weary eyes that seemed already knowledgeable about the long,
hard life ahead of them. They were about the same age as the
two boys on the picnic table in the photo that had been in the
white bag. They stared at Bosch with indifference.
In a few moments it was clear to pass the slow-moving truck.
Bosch heard other explosions from Superstition Mountain as
he moved away. He went on to pass more farms and mom-
and-pop restaurants. He passed a sugar mill where a line
painted at the top of its huge silo marked sea level.
···
The summer after he had talked to his father Bosch had picked
up the books by Hesse. He was curious about what the old
man had meant. He found it in the second book he read. Harry
Haller was a character in it. A disillusioned loner, a man of no
real identity, Harry Haller was the steppenwolf.
That August Bosch joined the cops.
···
He believed he felt the land rising. The farmland gave way to
brown brush and there were dust devils rising in the open land.
His ears popped as he ascended. And he knew the border was
nearing long before he passed the green sign that told him
Calexico was twenty miles away.
20
Calexico was like most border towns: dusty and built low to
the ground, its main street a garish collision of neon and
plastic signage, the inevitable golden arches being the
recognizable if not comforting icon amid the drive-through
Mexican auto insurance offices and souvenir shops.
In town, Route 86 connected with 111 and dropped straight
down to the border crossroad. Traffic was backed up about
five blocks from the exhaust-stained concrete auto terminal
manned by the Mexican federales. It looked like the five
o’clock lineup at the Broadway entrance to the 101 in L.A.
Before he got caught up in it, Bosch turned east on Fifth
Street. He passed the De Anza Hotel and drove two blocks to
the police station. It was a one-story concrete-block affair that
was painted the same yellow as the tablets lawyers used. From
the signs out front, Bosch learned it was also Town Hall. It
was also the town fire station. It was also the historical society.
He found a parking space in front.
As he opened the door of the dirty Caprice he heard singing
from the park across the street. On a picnic bench five
Mexican men sat drinking Budweisers. A sixth man, wearing a
black cowboy shirt with white embroidery and a straw Stetson,
stood facing them, playing a guitar and singing in Spanish.
The song was sung slowly and Harry had no trouble
translating.
I don’t know how to love you
I don’t even know how to embrace you
Because what never leaves me
Is this pain that hurts me so
The singer’s plaintive voice carried strongly across the park
and Bosch thought the song was beautiful. He leaned against
his car and smoked until the singer was done.
The kisses that you gave me my love
Are the ones that are killing me
But my tears are now drying
With my pistol and my heart
And here as always I spend my life
With the pistol and the heart
At the song’s end, the men at the picnic table gave the singer a
cheer and a toast.
Inside the glass door marked Police was a sour-smelling room
no larger than the back of a pickup truck. On the left was a
Coke machine, straight ahead was a door with an electronic
bolt, and on the right was a thick glass window with a slide
tray beneath it. A uniformed officer sat behind the glass.
Behind him, a woman sat at a radio-dispatch console. On the
other side of the console was a wall of square-foot-sized
lockers.
“You can’t smoke in there, sir,” the uniform said.
He wore mirrored sunglasses and was overweight. The plate
over his breast pocket said his name was Gruber. Bosch
stepped back to the door and flicked the butt out into the
parking lot.
“You know, it’s a hundred-dollar fine for littering in Calexico,
sir,” Gruber said.
Harry held up his open badge and I.D. wallet.
“You can bill me,” he said. “I need to check a gun.”
Gruber smiled curtly, revealing his receding, purplish gums.
“I chew tobacco myself. Then you don’t have that problem.”
“I can tell.”
Gruber frowned and had to think about that a moment before
saying, “Well, let’s have it. Man says he wants to check a gun
has to turn the gun in to be checked.”
He turned back to the dispatcher to see if she thought that he
now had the upper hand. She showed no response. Bosch
noticed the strain Gruber’s gut was putting on the buttons of
his uniform. He pulled the forty-four out of his holster and put
it in the slide tray.
“Foe-dee foe,” Gruber announced and he lifted the gun out and
examined it. “You want to keep it in the holster?”
Bosch hadn’t thought about that. He needed the holster.
Otherwise he’d have to jam the Smith in his waistband and
he’d probably lose it if he ended up having to do any running.
“Nah,” he said. “Just checking the gun.”
Gruber winked and took it over to the lockers, opened one up
and put the gun inside. After he closed it, he locked it, took the
key out and came back to the window.
“Let me see the I.D. again. I have to write up a receipt.”
Bosch dropped his badge wallet into the tray and watched as
Gruber slowly wrote out a receipt in duplicate. It seemed that
the officer had to look from the I.D. card to what he was
writing every two letters.
“How’d you get a name like that?”
“You can just write Harry for short.”
“It’s no problem. I can write it. Just don’t ask me to say it.
Looks like it rhymes with anonymous.”
He finished and put the receipts into the tray and told Harry to
sign them both. Harry used his own pen.
“Lookee there, a lefty signing for a right-handed gun,” Gruber
said. “Somethin’ you don’t see ’round here too often.”
He winked at Bosch again. Bosch just looked at him.
“Just talking is all,” Gruber said.
Harry dropped one of the receipts into the tray and Gruber
exchanged it for the locker key. It was numbered.
“Don’t lose it now,” Gruber said.
As he walked back to the Caprice he saw that the men were
still at the picnic table in the park but there was no more
singing. He got into the Caprice and put the locker key in the
ashtray. He never used it for smoking. He noticed an old man
with white hair unlocking the door below the historical society
sign. Bosch backed out and headed over to the De Anza.
It was a three-story, Spanish-style building with a satellite dish
on the roof. Bosch parked in the brick drive up in front. His
plan was to check in, drop his bags in his room, wash his face
and then make the border crossing into Mexicali. The man
behind the front desk wore a white shirt and brown bow tie to
match his brown vest. He could not have been much older than
twenty. A plastic tag on the vest identified him as Miguel,
assistant front desk manager.
Bosch said he wanted a room, filled out a registration card and
handed it back. Miguel said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Bosch, we have
messages for you.”
He turned to a basket file and pulled out three pink message
forms. Two were from Pounds, one from Irving. Bosch looked
at the times and noticed all three calls had come in during the
last two hours. First Pounds, then Irving, then Pounds again.
“Wait a minute,” he said to Miguel. “Is there a phone?”
“Around the corner, sir, to your right.”
Bosch stood there with the phone in his hand wondering what
to do. Something was up, or both of them wouldn’t have tried
to reach him. Something had made one or both of them call his
house and they heard the taped message. What could have
happened? Using his PacBell card he called the Hollywood
homicide table, hoping someone was in and that he might
learn what was going on. Jerry Edgar answered the call on the
first ring.
“Jed, what’s up? I’ve got phone calls from the weight coming
out my ass.”
There was a long silence. Too long.
“Jed?”
“Harry, where you at?”
“I’m down south, man.”
“Where down south?”
“What is it, Jed?”
“Wherever you’re at, Pounds is trying to recall you. He said if
anybody talks to you, t’tell you to get your ass back here. He
said —”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Porter, man. They found him this morning up at Sunshine
Canyon. Somebody wrapped a wire ‘round his neck so tight
that it was the size of a watchband.”
“Jesus.” Bosch pulled out his cigarettes. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“What was he doing up there? Sunshine, that’s the landfill up
in Foothill Division, right?”
“Shit, Harry, he was dumped there.”
Of course. Bosch should have realized that. Of course. He
wasn’t thinking right.
“Right. Right. What happened?”
“What happened was that they found his body out there this
morning. A rag picker come across it. He was covered in
garbage and shit. But RHD traced some of the stuff. They got
receipts from some restaurants. They got the name of the
hauler the restaurants use and they’ve got it traced to a
particular truck and a particular route. It’s a downtown run.
Was made yesterday morning. Hollywood’s working it with
them. I’m fixing to go start canvassing on the route. We’ll find
the Dumpster he came from and go from there.”
Bosch thought of the Dumpster behind Poe’s. Porter hadn’t
run out on him. He had probably been garroted and dragged
out while Bosch was having his say with the bartender. Then
he remembered the man with the tattooed tears. How had he
missed it? He had probably stood ten feet from Porter’s killer.
“I didn’t go out to the scene but I hear he’d been worked over
before they did him,” Edgar said. “His face was busted up.
Nose broke, stuff like that. A lot of blood, I hear. Man, what a
pitiful way to go.”
It wouldn’t be long before they came into Poe’s with photos of
Porter. The bartender would remember the face and would
gladly describe Bosch as the man who had come in, said he
was a cop, and attacked Porter. Bosch wondered if he should
tell Edgar now and save a lot of legwork. A survival instinct
flared inside him and he decided to say nothing about Poe’s.
“Why do Pounds and Irving want me?”
“Don’t know. All I know is first Moore gets it, then Porter.
Think maybe they’re closing ranks or something. I think they
want everybody in where it’s nice and safe. Word going ‘round
here is that those two cases are one. Word is those boys had
some kinda deal going. Irving’s already doubled them up. He’s
running a joint op on both of them. Moore and Porter.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He was trying to think. This put a
new spin on everything.
“Listen to me, Jed. You haven’t heard from me. We didn’t talk.
Understand?”
Edgar hesitated before saying, “You sure you want to play it
that way?”
“Yeah. For now. I’ll be talking to you.”
“Watch your back.”
Watch out for the black ice, Bosch thought as he hung up and
stood there for a minute, leaning against the wall. Porter. How
had this happened? He instinctively moved his arm against his
hip but felt no reassurance. The holster was empty.
He had a choice now: go forward to Mexicali or go back to
L.A. He knew if he went back it would mean the end of his
involvement in the case. Irving would cut him out like a bad
spot on a banana.
Therefore, he realized, he actually had no choice. He had to go
on. Bosch pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and
went back to the front desk. He slid the bill across to Miguel.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to cancel my room, Miguel.”
“No problem. There is no charge. You never got the room.”
“No, that’s for you, Miguel. I have a slight problem. I don’t
want anybody to know I was here. Understand?”
Miguel was young but he was wise. He told Bosch his request
was no problem. He pulled the bill off the counter and tucked
it into a pocket inside his vest. Harry then slid the phone
messages across.
“If they call again, I never showed up to get these, right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
In a few minutes he was in line for the crossing at the border.
He noticed how the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol building
where incoming traffic was handled dwarfed its Mexican
counterpart. The message was clear; leaving this country was
not a difficulty; coming in, though, was another matter
entirely. When it was Bosch’s turn at the gate he held his
badge wallet open and out the window. When the Mexican
officer took it, Harry then handed him the Calexico P.D.
receipt.
“Your business?” the officer asked. He wore a faded uniform
that had been Army green once. His hat was sweat-stained
along the band.
“Official. I have a meeting at the Plaza Justicia.”
“Ah. You know the way?”
Bosch held up one of the maps from the seat and nodded. The
officer then looked at the pink receipt.
“You are unarmed?” he said as he read the paper. “You leave
your forty-four behind, huh?”
“That’s what it says.”
The officer smiled and Bosch thought he could see disbelief in
his eyes. The officer nodded and waved his car on. The
Caprice immediately became engulfed in a torrent of
automobiles that were moving on a wide avenue with no
painted lines denoting lanes. At times there were six rows of
moving vehicles and sometimes there were four or five. The
cars made the transitions smoothly. Harry heard no horns and
the traffic flowed quickly. He had gone nearly a mile before a
red light halted traffic and he was able to consult his maps for
the first time.
He determined he was on Calzado Lopez Mateos, which
eventually led to the justice center in the southern part of the
city. The light changed and the traffic began moving again.
Bosch relaxed a little and looked around as he drove, careful
to keep an eye on the changing lane configuration. The
boulevard was lined with old shops and industrial businesses.
Their pastel-painted facades had been darkened by exhaust
fumes from the passing river of metal and it was all quite
depressing to Bosch. Several large Chevrolet school buses
with multicolor paint jobs moved on the road but they weren’t
enough to bring much cheer to the scene. The boulevard
curved hard to the south and then rounded a circular
intersection with a monument at its center, a golden man upon
a rearing stallion. He noticed several men, many wearing straw
cowboy hats, standing in the circle or leaning against the base
of the monument. They stared into the sea of traffic. Day
laborers waiting for work. Bosch checked the map and saw
that the spot was called Benito Juarez Circle.
In another minute Bosch came upon a complex of three large
buildings with groupings of antennas and satellite dishes on
top of each. A sign near the roadway announced
AYUNTAMIENTO DE MEXICALI .
He pulled into a parking lot. There were no parking meters or
attendant’s booth. He found a spot and parked. While he sat in
the car, studying the complex, he couldn’t help but feel as
though he were running from something, or someone. The
death of Porter shook him. He had been right there. It made
him wonder how he had escaped and why the killer had not
tried to take him as well. One obvious explanation was that the
killer did not want to risk taking on two targets at once. But
another explanation was that the killer was simply following
orders, a hired assassin instructed to take down Porter. Bosch
had the feeling that if that were so, the order had come from
here in Mexicali.
Each of the three buildings in the complex fronted one side of
a triangular plaza. They were of modern design with brown-
and-pink sandstone facades. All the windows on the third floor
of one of the buildings were covered from the inside with
newspaper. To block the setting sun, Bosch assumed. It gave
the building a shabby look. Above the main entranceway to
this building chrome letters said POLICIA JUDICIAL DEL ESTADO
DE BAJA CALIFORNIA . He got out of the car with his Juan Doe
#67 file, locked the car door, and headed that way.
Walking through the plaza, Bosch saw several dozen people
and many vendors selling food and crafts, but mostly food. On
the front steps of the police building several young girls
approached him with hands out, trying to sell him chewing
gum or wristbands made of colorful threads. He said no
thanks. As he opened the door to the lobby a short woman
balancing a tray on her shoulder that contained six pies almost
collided with him.
Inside, the waiting room contained four rows of plastic chairs
that faced a counter on which a uniformed officer leaned.
Almost every chair was taken and every person watched the
uniform intently. He was wearing mirrored glasses and reading
a newspaper.
Bosch approached him and told him in Spanish that he had an
appointment with Investigator Carlos Aguila. He opened his
badge case and placed it on the counter. The man behind it did
not seem impressed. But he slowly reached under the counter
and brought up a phone. It was an old rotary job, much older
than the building they were in, and it seemed to take him an
hour to dial the number.
After a moment, the desk officer began speaking rapid-fire
Spanish into the phone. Harry could make out only a few
words. Captain. Gringo. Yes. LAPD. Investigator. He also
thought he heard the desk man say Charlie Chan. The desk
officer listened for a few moments and then hung up. Without
looking at Bosch he jerked his thumb toward the door behind
him and went back to his newspaper. Harry walked around the
counter and through the door into a hallway that extended both
right and left with many doors each way. He stepped back into
the waiting room, tapped the desk officer on the shoulder and
asked which way.
“To the end, last door,” the officer said in English and pointed
to the hallway to the left.
Bosch followed the directions and came to a large room where
several men milled around standing and others sat on couches.
There were bicycles leaning on the walls where there was not
a couch. There was a lone desk, at which a young woman sat
typing while a man apparently dictated to her. Harry noticed
the man had a Barretta 9mm wedged in the waistband of his
double-knit pants. He then noticed that some of the other men
wore guns in holsters or also in their waistbands. This was the
detective bureau. The chatter in the room stopped when Bosch
walked in. He asked the man closest to him for Carlos Aguila.
This caused another man to call through a doorway at the back
of the room. Again, it was too fast but Bosch heard the word
Chan and tried to think what it meant in Spanish. The man
who had yelled then jerked his thumb toward the door and
Bosch went that way. He heard quiet laughter behind him but
didn’t turn around.
The door led to a small office with a single desk. Behind it a
man with gray hair and tired eyes sat smoking a cigarette. A
Mexican newspaper, a glass ashtray and a telephone were the
only items on the desk. A man with mirrored aviator glasses
— what else was new? — sat in a chair against the far wall
and studied Bosch. Unless he was sleeping.
“Buenos dias,” the older man said. In English he said, “I am
Captain Gustavo Grena and you are Detective Harry Bosch.
We spoke yesterday.”
Bosch reached across the desk and shook his hand. Grena then
indicated the man in the mirrors.
“And Investigator Aguila is who you have come to see. What
have you brought from your investigation in Los Angeles?”
Aguila, the officer who had sent the inquiry to the Los
Angeles consulate, was a small man with dark hair and light
skin. His forehead and nose were burned red by the sun but
Bosch could see his white chest through the open collar of his
shirt. He wore jeans and black leather boots. He nodded to
Bosch but made no effort to shake his hand.
There was no chair to sit down on so Harry walked up close to
the desk and placed the file down. He opened it and took out
morgue Polaroids of Juan Doe #67’s face and the chest tattoo.
He handed them to Grena, who studied them a moment and
then put them down.
“You also look for a man, then? The killer, perhaps?” Grena
asked.
“There is a possibility that he was killed here and his body
taken to Los Angeles. If that is so, then your department
should look for the killer, perhaps.”
Grena put a puzzled look on his face.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why? Why would this happen?
I am sure you must be mistaken, Detective Bosch.”
Bosch shook his shoulders. He wasn’t going to press it. Yet.
“Well, I’d like to at least get the identification confirmed and
then go from there.”
“Very well,” Grena said. “I leave you with Investigator Aguila.
But I have to inform you, the business you mentioned on the
phone yesterday, EnviroBreed, I have personally interviewed
the manager and he has assured me that your Juan Doe did not
work there. I have saved you that much time.”
Grena nodded as if to say his efforts were no inconvenience at
all. Think nothing of it.
“How can they be sure when we don’t have the ID yet?”
Grena dragged on his cigarette to give him time to think about
that one. He said, “I provided the name Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa
to him. No such employee at any time. This is an American
contractor, we must be careful…. You see, we do not wish to
step on the toes of the international trade.”
Grena stood up, dropped his cigarette in the ash tray and
nodded to Aguila. Then he left the office. Bosch looked at the
mirrored glasses and wondered if Aguila had understood a
word of what had just been said.
“Don’t worry about the Spanish,” Aguila said after Grena was
gone. “I speak your language.”
21
“Let me ask you a question,” Bosch said. “How come you sent
that inquiry to the consul’s office? I mean, you don’t have
missing persons down here. Somebody turns up missing, they
crossed the border but you don’t send out inquiries. What
made you think this was different?”
They were heading toward the range of mountains that rose
high above a layer of light brown smog from the city. They
were going southwest on Avenida Val Verde and were moving
through an area where ranch lands extended to the west and
industrial parks lined the roadway to the east.
“The woman convinced me,” Aguila said. “She came to the
plaza with the sheriff and made the report. Grena gave me the
investigation and her words convinced me that Gutierrez-Llosa
would not cross the border willingly — without her. So I went
to the circle.”
Aguila said the circle below the golden statue of Benito Juarez
on Calzado Lopez Mateos was where men went to wait for
work. Other day laborers interviewed at the circle said the
EnviroBreed vans came two or three times a week to hire
workers. The men who had worked at the bug-breeding plant
had described it as difficult work. They made food paste for
the breeding process and loaded heavy incubation cartons into
the vans. Flies constantly flew in their mouths and eyes. Many
who had worked there said they never went back, choosing to
wait for other employers to stop at the circle.
But not Gutierrez-Llosa. Others at the circle had reported
seeing him get into the EnviroBreed van. Compared to the
other laborers, he was an old man. He did not have much
choice in employers.
Aguila said that when he learned the product made at
EnviroBreed was shipped across the border, he sent out
missing-person notices to consulates in southern California.
Among his theories was that the old man had been killed in an
accident at the plant and his body hidden to avoid an inquiry
that could halt production. Aguila believed this was a common
occurrence in the industrial sectors of the city.
“A death investigation, even accidental death, can be very
expensive,” Aguila said.
“La mordida.”
“Yes, the bite.”
Aguila explained that his investigation stopped when he
discussed his findings with Grena. The captain said he would
handle the EnviroBreed inquiry and later reported it to be a
dead end. And that was where it stood until Bosch called with
news of the body.
“Sounds like Grena got his bite.”
Aguila did not answer this. They began to pass a ranch
protected by a chain metal fence topped with razor wire.
Bosch looked through it to the Sierra de los Cucapah and saw
nothing in the vast expanse between the road and mountains.
But soon they passed a break in the fence, an entrance to the
ranch where there was a pickup truck parked lengthwise across
the roadway. Two men were sitting in the cab and they looked
at Bosch and he looked at them as he drove by.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s Zorrillo’s ranch.”
“Yes. The entrance.”
“Zorrillo’s name never came up before you heard it from me?”
“Not until you said it.”
Aguila offered no other comment. In a minute they were
coming up to some buildings inside the ranch’s fence line but
close to the road. Bosch could see a concrete barnlike structure
with a garage door that was closed. There were corrals on
either side of it and in these he saw a half dozen bulls in single
pens. He saw no one around.
“He breeds bulls for the ring,” Aguila said.
“I heard that. Lot of money in that around here, huh?”
“All from the seed of one prized bull. El Temblar. A very
famous animal in Mexicali. The bull that killed Meson, the
famous torero. He lives here now and roams the ranch at his
will, taking the heifers as he wishes. A champion animal.”
“The Tremble?” he said.
“Yes. It is said that man and earth tremble when the beast
charges. That is the legend. The death of Meson a decade ago
is very well known. A story recalled each Sunday at the
plaza.”
“And the Tremble just runs around in there loose? Like a
watchdog or something. A bulldog.”
“Sometimes people stand at the fence waiting for a glimpse of
the great animal. The bulls his seed produces are considered
the most game in all of Baja. Pull over here.”
Bosch turned onto the shoulder. He noticed Aguila was
looking across the street at a line of warehouses and
businesses. Some had signs on them. Most in English. They
were companies that used cheap Mexican labor and paid low
taxes to make products for the United States. There were
furniture manufacturers, tile makers, circuit board factories.
“See the Mexitec Furniture building?” Aguila said. “The
second structure down, with no sign, that is EnviroBreed.”
It was a white building, and Aguila was right. No sign or other
indication of what went on there. It was surrounded by a ten-
foot fence topped with razor wire. Signs on the fence warned
in two languages that it was electrified and there were dogs
inside of it. Bosch didn’t see any dogs and decided they were
probably only put in the yard at night. He did see two cameras
on the front corners of the building and several cars parked
inside the compound. He saw no EnviroBreed vans but the two
garage doors at the front of the building were closed.
···
Bosch had to press a button, state his business and hold his
badge up to a remote camera before the fence gate
automatically rolled open. He parked next to a maroon Lincoln
with California tags and they walked across the dusty unpaved
lot to the door marked Office. He brushed his hand against the
back of his hip and felt the gun under his jacket. A small
measure of comfort. The door was opened as he reached for
the doorknob and a man wearing a Stetson to shade his acne-
scarred and sun-hardened face stepped out lighting a cigarette.
He was an Anglo and Bosch thought he might have been the
van driver he had seen at the eradication center in L.A.
“Last door on the left,” the man said. “He’s waiting.”
“Who’s he?”
“Him.”
The man in the Stetson smiled and Bosch thought his face
might crack. Bosch and Aguila stepped through the door into a
wood-paneled hallway. It went straight back with a small
reception desk on the left followed by three doors. At the end
of the hall there was a fourth door. A young Mexican woman
sat at the reception desk and stared at them silently. Bosch
nodded and they headed back. The first door they passed was
closed and letters on it said USDA. The next two doors had no
letters. The one at the end of the hall had a sign that said:
DANGER — RADIATION NO UNAUTHORIZED
ADMITTANCE
Harry saw a hook next to the door that had goggles and
breathing masks hanging on it. He opened the last door on the
left and they stepped into a small anteroom with a secretary’s
desk but no secretary.
“In here, please,” a voice said from the next room.
Bosch and Aguila stepped into a large office that was weighted
in the center by a huge steel desk. A man in a light blue
guayaberra shirt sat behind it. He was writing something in a
ledger book and there was a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee
on the desk. Enough light came through the jalousie window
behind him so that he didn’t need a desk light. He looked
about fifty years old, with gray hair that showed streaks of old
black dye. He also was a gringo.
The man said nothing and continued writing. Bosch looked
around and saw the four-picture closed-circuit television
console on a low shelf against the wall next to the desk. He
saw the black-and-white images from the gate and front
corners. The fourth image was very dark and was an interior
look at what Harry assumed was the cargo-loading room. He
saw a white van with its rear doors open, two or three men
loading large white boxes into it.
“Yes?” the man said. He still hadn’t looked up.
“Quite a lot of security for flies.”
Now he looked up. “Excuse me?”
“Didn’t know they were so valuable.”
“What can I do for you?” He threw his pen down on the desk
to signal that the wheels of international commerce were
grinding to a halt because of Bosch.
“Harry Bosch, Los Angeles po —”
“You said that at the gate. What can I do for you?”
“I am here to talk about one of your employees.”
“Name?” He picked up the pen again and went back to work
on the ledger.
“You know something? I would think that if a cop had come
three hundred miles, crossed the border, just to ask you a few
questions, then it might rate a little interest. But not with you.
That bothers me.”
The pen went down harder this time and bounced off the desk
into the trash can next to it.
“Officer, I don’t care whether it bothers you or not. I have a
shipment of perishable material I must get on the road by four
o’clock. I can’t afford to show the interest you seem to think
you rate. Now, if you want to give me the employee’s name —
that is, if he was an employee — I will answer what I can.”
“What do you mean ‘was an employee’?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘was,’ just then.”
“So?”
“So, what’s it mean?”
“You said — you’re the one who came in here with these
questions. I —”
“And your name is?”
“What?”
“What is your name?”
The man stopped, thoroughly confused, and drank from the
cup. He said, “You know, mister, you have no authority here.”
“You said, ‘even if the guy was an employee,’ and I never said
anything about ‘was.’ Makes me think, you already know we
are talking about an individual that was. Who is dead now.”
“I just assumed, okay. A cop comes all the way down from
L.A., I just assumed we were talking about a dead guy. Don’t
try to put words — you can’t come in here with that badge that
isn’t worth the tin it’s made of once you cross that border and
start pushing me. I don’t have —”
“You want some authority? This is Carlos Aguila of the State
Judicial Police here. You can consider that he is asking the
same questions as me.”
Aguila nodded but said nothing. “That’s not the point,” the
man behind the desk said. “The point is this typical bullshit
American imperialism you bring with you. I find it very
distasteful. My name is Charles Ely. I am proprietor of
EnviroBreed. I do not know anything about the man you said
worked here.”
“I didn’t tell you his name.”
“It doesn’t matter. You understand now? You made a mistake.
You played this game wrong.”
Bosch took the morgue photo of Gutierrez-Llosa out of his
pocket and slid it across the desk. Ely did not touch the photo
but looked down at it. He showed no reaction that Bosch could
see. Then Bosch put down the pay stubs. Same thing. No
reaction.
“Name is Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa,” Bosch said. “A day laborer.
I need to know when he worked here last, what he was doing.”
Ely retrieved his pen from the trash can and flicked the photo
back toward Bosch with it.
“Afraid I can’t help. Day laborers we don’t carry records on.
We pay them with ‘pay to bearer’ checks at the end of each
day. Different people all the time. I wouldn’t know this man
from Adam. And I believe we already answered questions
about this man. From the SJP. A Captain Grena. I guess I will
have to call him now to see why that wasn’t sufficient.”
Bosch wanted to ask whether he meant the payoff Ely had
given Grena or the information wasn’t sufficient. But he held
back because it would come back on Aguila. Instead he said,
“You do that, Mr. Ely. Meantime, somebody else around here
might remember this man. I am going to take a look around.”
Ely became immediately agitated. “No, sir, you are not going
to have free range of this facility. Portions of this building are
used to irradiate material and are considered dangerous and off
limits to all but certified personnel. Other areas are subject to
USDA monitoring and quarantine and we cannot allow anyone
access. Again, you have no authority here.”
“Who owns EnviroBreed, Ely?” Bosch asked.
Ely seemed startled by the change in subject.
“Who?” he sputtered.
“Who is the man, Ely?”
“I don’t have to answer that. You have no —”
“The man across the street? Is the pope the man?”
Ely stood up and pointed at the door.
“I don’t know what you are talking about but you’re leaving.
And I will be contacting both the SJP and the American and
Mexican authorities. We will see if this is how they want
police from Los Angeles to operate on foreign soil.”
Bosch and Aguila moved back into the hall and closed the
door. Harry stood there for a moment and listened for the
sound of a telephone or steps. He heard nothing and then
turned to the door at the end of the hall. He tried it but it was
locked.
In front of the door marked USDA, he leaned his head forward
and listened but heard nothing. He opened the door without
knocking and a man with bureaucrat written all over him
looked up from behind a small wooden desk. The room was
about a quarter the size of Ely’s suite. The man wore a short-
sleeved white shirt with a thin blue tie. He had close-cropped
gray hair, a mustache that looked like the end of a toothbrush
and small, dead eyes that looked out from behind bifocals that
squeezed against his pudgy pink temples. The plastic ink
guard in his pocket had his name printed on the flap: Jerry
Dinsmore. He had a half-eaten bean burrito on his desk, sitting
on oil-stained paper.
“Can I help you?” he said with a mouthful.
Bosch and Aguila moved into the room.
Bosch showed him his ID and let him have a good look at it.
Then he put the morgue photo on the desk, next to the burrito.
Dinsmore looked at it and folded up the paper around his half-
finished meal and put it in a drawer.
“Recognize him?” Bosch said. “Just a routine check.
Infectious disease alert. Guy took it with him up to L.A. and
croaked. We are retracing him so we can get anybody who had
contact inoculated. We still got plenty of time. We hope.”
Dinsmore was chewing his food much slower now. He looked
down at the Polaroid and then up over his glasses at Bosch.
“Was he one of the men who worked around here?”
“We think so. We are checking with all the regular employees.
We thought you might recognize him. It depends on how close
you got as far as whether you need to be quarantined.”
“Well, I never get close to the laborers. I’m in the clear. But
what is the disease that you are talking about? I don’t see why
LAPD is — this man looks like he was beaten.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dinsmore, that’s confidential until we
determine if you are at risk. If you are, well, then we have to
put our cards on the table. Now, how do you mean you never
get close to the laborers? Are you not the inspection officer for
this facility?”
Bosch expected Ely to burst in any moment.
“I am the inspector but I am only interested in the finished
product. I inspect samples directly from the travel cases. Then
I seal the cases. This is done in the shipping room. You have to
remember, this is a private facility and consequently I do not
have free reign of the breeding or sterilization labs. Therefore,
I do not interface with the workers.”
“You just said, ‘samples.’ So that means you don’t look in all
of the boxes.”
“Wrong. I don’t look in all of the larvae cylinders in each of
the transport cases, but I do inspect and seal the cases. I don’t
see what this has to do with this man. He didn’t —”
“I don’t see it, either. Never mind. You’re in the clear.”
Dinsmore’s small eyes widened slightly. Bosch winked at him
to further confuse him. He wondered if Dinsmore was part of
what was going on here or whether, like a mole, he was in the
dark. He told him to go back to his burrito and then he and
Aguila stepped back into the hall. Just at that moment the door
at the end of the hall opened and through it stepped Ely. He
pulled a breathing mask and goggles off his face and charged
down the hall, coffee slopping over the sides of the Styrofoam
cup.
“I want you two out of here unless you have a court order.”
He was right up to Bosch now and anger was etching red lines
on his face. It was the act he might have used to intimidate
others but Bosch was not impressed. He looked down into the
shorter man’s coffee cup and smiled as a small piece of the
puzzle slipped into place. The stomach contents of Juan Doe
#67 had included coffee. That was how he had swallowed the
medfly which had brought Bosch here. Ely followed his eyes
down and saw the medfly floating on the surface of the hot
liquid.
“Fuckin’ flies,” he said. “You know,” Bosch said, “I’ll
probably get that court order.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say and didn’t want to
leave Ely with the satisfaction of throwing him out. He and
Aguila headed for the exit.
“Don’t count on it,” Ely said. “This is Mexico. You aren’t
jackshit here.”
23
Bosch sat on the bed with his beer, thinking about the
reappearance of Zorrillo. He wondered where he had been and
why he had left the safety of his ranch in the first place. Harry
poked at the idea that maybe Zorrillo had been in L.A. and that
it had taken his presence there to lure Moore to the motel room
where he was put down on the bathroom floor. Maybe Zorrillo
was the only one Moore would have gone there for.
The sharp sound of squealing brakes and crashing metal shot
through the window. Before he even got up he heard voices
arguing in the street below. The words grew harsher until they
were threats being yelled so fast Bosch could not understand
them. He went to the window and saw two men standing
chests out beside two cars. One had rear-ended the other.
As he turned away he detected a small flash of blue light to his
left. Before he had time to look, the bottle in his hand
shattered and beer and glass exploded in all directions. He
instinctively took a step back and launched himself over the
bed and down onto the floor. He braced himself for more shots
but none came. His heartbeat rapidly increased and he felt the
familiar rush of mental clarity that comes only in situations of
life and death. He crawled along the floor to the table and
pulled the lamp plug out of the wall, dropping the room in
darkness. As he reached up to the table for his gun, he heard
the two cars speeding away in the street. A beautiful setup, he
thought, but they missed.
He moved beneath the window opening and then stood up
while pressing his back to the wall. All the while he was
realizing how stupid he had been to literally pose in the
window. He looked through the opening into the darkness
where he believed he had seen the muzzle flash. There was no
one there. Several of the windows of the other rooms were
open and it was impossible to pinpoint where the shot had
come from. Bosch looked back into his room and saw the
headboard of the bed splintered at the spot where the bullet
had impacted. By imagining a line from the impact point
though the position he had held the bottle and then out the
window, he focused on an open but dark window on the fifth
floor of the other wing. He saw no movement there other than
the curtain swaying gently with the breeze. Finally, he put his
gun in his waistband and left the room, his clothes smelling of
beer and with small slivers of glass embedded in his shirt and
pricking his skin. He knew he had at least two slight glass
cuts. One on his neck and one on his right hand, which had
been holding the bottle. He held his cut hand to his neck
wound as he walked.
He had judged that the open window belonged to the fourth
room on the fifth floor. He now had his gun out and pointed in
front of him as he moved slowly down the fifth-floor hallway.
He was debating whether he should kick the door open but
found the decision academic. A cool breeze from the open
window flowed out through the open door of room 504.
The room was dark and Bosch knew he would be silhouetted
by the lighted hallway. So he hit the room’s entrance-light
switch as he moved quickly through the doorway. He covered
the room with his Smith and found it empty. The smell of
burned gunpowder hung in the air. Harry looked out the
window and followed the imaginary line down to his own
third-floor room’s window. It had been an easy shot. It was
then that he heard the screeching of tires and saw the taillights
of a large sedan pull out of the hotel parking lot and then speed
away.
Bosch put the gun in his waistband and pulled his shirt out
over it. He looked quickly around the room to see if the
shooter had left anything behind him. The glint of copper from
the fold of the bedspread where it was tucked beneath the
pillows caught his eye. He pulled the bedspread out straight
and lying there was a shell casing that had been ejected from a
thirty-two rifle. He got an envelope out of the desk drawer and
scooped the shell inside it.
As he left room 504 and walked down the hallway, no one
looked out a door, no house detectives came running and no
approaching sirens blared in the distance. No one had heard a
thing, except maybe a bottle breaking. Bosch knew that the
thirty-two fired at him had had a silencer screwed to the end of
its barrel. Whoever it had been, he had taken his time and
waited for the one shot. But he had missed. Had that been
intentional? He decided it wasn’t, to make a shot that close but
intend to miss was too chancy. He had simply been lucky. His
turn from the window at the last moment had probably saved
his life.
Bosch headed back to his room to dig the slug out of the wall,
bandage his wounds and check out. Along the way he started
running when he realized he had to warn Aguila.
Back in his room, he quickly dug through his wallet for the
piece of paper on which Aguila had written his address and
phone number. Aguila picked up almost immediately.
“Bueno.”
“It’s Bosch. Someone just took a shot at me.”
“Yes. Where? Are you injured?”
“I am okay. In my room. They shot through the window. I’m
calling to warn you.”
“Yes?”
“We were together today, Carlos. I don’t know if it’s just me or
the both of us. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am.”
Bosch realized he didn’t know if Aguila had a family or was
alone. In fact, he realized, he knew the man’s ancestry but
little else.
“What will you do?” Aguila asked.
“I don’t know. I’m leaving here…”
“Come here, then.”
“Okay, yes …No. Can you come here? I won’t be here but I
want you to come and find out whatever you can about the
person who rented room 504. That’s where the shot came
from. You can get the information easier than me.”
“I am leaving now.”
“We’ll meet at your place. I have something to do first.”
···
A moon like the smile of the Cheshire cat hung over the top of
the ugly silhouette of the industrial park on Val Verde. It was
ten o’clock. Bosch sat in his car in front of the Mexitec
furniture factory. He was about two hundred yards from
EnviroBreed and he was waiting for the last car to leave the
bug plant. It was a maroon Lincoln that he suspected was
Ely’s. On the seat next to him was a bag containing the items
he had bought earlier. The smell of the roasted pork was filling
the car and he rolled down the window.
As he watched the EnviroBreed lot, he was still breathing hard
and the adrenaline continued to course through his arteries like
amphetamine. He was sweating, though the evening air was
quite cool. He thought of Moore and Porter and the others. Not
me, he thought. Not me.
At 10:15 he saw the door to EnviroBreed open and a man
came out, accompanied by the blur of two black figures. Ely.
Dogs. The dark shapes bobbed up and down at his waist as he
walked. Ely then scattered something in the lot but the dogs
stayed by his side. He then slapped his hip and yelled,
“Chow!” and the dogs scattered and chased each other to
varying points in the lot where they fought over whatever it
was Ely had thrown.
Ely got in the Lincoln. After a few moments Bosch saw the
taillights flare and the car backed away from its space at the
front of the lot. Bosch watched as the headlights traced a circle
in the lot and then led the car to the gate. The gate slowly
rolled open and the car slipped through. Then the driver
hesitated on the fringe of the roadway, though it was clear to
pull out. He waited until the gate had trundled closed, the dogs
safely inside the fenced compound, and then pulled away.
Bosch slipped down in his seat, even though the Lincoln had
headed the other way, north toward the border.
Bosch waited a few minutes and watched. Nothing moved
anywhere. No cars. No people. He didn’t expect there to be
any DEA surveillance because they would pull back when
planning a raid, so as not to tip their hand. He hoped they
would, at least. He got out with the bag, his flashlight and his
lock picks. Then he leaned back into the car and pulled out the
rubber floor mats, which he rolled up and put under his arm.
Bosch’s take on EnviroBreed’s security measures, from when
he had been there during the day, were that they were strictly
aimed at deterring entry, not sounding an alert once security
had been bridged. Dogs and cameras, a twelve-foot fence
topped with electrified razor wire. But inside the plant Bosch
had seen no tape on the windows in Ely’s office, no electric
eyes, not even an alarm key pad inside the front door.
This was because an alarm brought police. The breeders
wanted to keep people out of the bug plant, but not if it drew
the attention of authorities. It didn’t matter if those authorities
could be easily corrupted and paid to look the other way. It
was just good business not to involve them. So, no alarms.
This, of course, did not mean an alert would not be sent
somewhere else — such as the ranch across the street — if a
break-in occurred. But that was the risk Bosch was taking.
Bosch cut down the side of the Mexitec factory to an alley that
ran behind the buildings that fronted Val Verde. He walked to
the rear of EnviroBreed and waited for the dogs.
They came around quickly but silently. They were sleek black
Dobermans and they moved right up to the fence. One made a
low, guttural sound and the other followed suit. Bosch walked
along the fence line, looking up at the razor wire. The dogs
walked along with him, saliva dripping from their lagging
tongues. Bosch saw the pen they were caged in during the day
in the back. There was a wheelbarrow leaning up against the
rear wall of the building and nothing else.
Except the dogs. Bosch crouched to the ground in the alley
and opened up the bag. First he took out and opened the plastic
bottle of Sueño Mas. Then he opened the wrapped paper
bundle of roast pork he had bought at the Chinese takeout near
the hotel. The meat was almost cold now. He took a chunk
about the size of a baby’s fist and pressed three of the extra-
strength sleeping pills into it. He squeezed it in his hand and
then lofted it over the fence. The dogs raced to it and one took
a position over it but did not touch it. Bosch repeated the
process and threw another piece over. The other dog stood
over it.
They sniffed at the pork and looked at Bosch, sniffed some
more. They looked around to see if their master might be
nearby to help with a decision. Finding no help, they looked at
each other. One dog finally picked his chunk up in its teeth and
then dropped it. They both looked at Bosch and he yelled
“Chow!”
The dogs did nothing. Bosch yelled the command a few more
times but nothing changed. Then he noticed they were
watching his right hand. He understood. He slapped his hand
on his hip and issued the command again. The dogs ate the
pork.
Bosch quickly made two more drug-laden snacks and threw
them over the fence. They were eaten quickly. Bosch started
pacing alongside the fence in the alley. The dogs stayed with
him. He went back and forth twice, hoping the exercise would
hurry their digestion. Harry ignored them for a while and
looked up at the spiral of thin steel that ran along the top of the
fence. He studied the glint it gave off in the moonlight. He
also saw the electrical circuits spaced every twelve feet along
the top and thought he heard a soft buzzing sound. The wire
would tear a climber up and fry him before he got one leg
over. But he was going to try.
He had to duck behind a Dumpster in the alley when he saw
lights and a car came slowly down the alley. When it got
closer he saw that it was a police car. He froze with
momentary fear of how he would explain himself. He realized
he had left the rolled car mats in the alley by the fence. The car
slowed even more as it went by the EnviroBreed fence. The
driver made a kissing sound at the dogs who still stood by the
fence. The car moved on and Bosch came out of hiding.
The Dobermans stood on their side of the fence watching him
for nearly an hour before one dropped into a sitting position
and the other quickly did the same. The leader then worked its
front paws forward until it was lying down. The follower did
likewise. Bosch watched as their heads, almost in unison,
bowed and then dropped onto their outstretched front legs. He
saw urine forming in a puddle next to one of them. Both dogs
kept their eyes open. When he took the last chunk of pork out
of the wrapper and tossed it over the fence, he saw one of the
dogs strain to raise his head and follow the arc of the falling
food. But then the head dropped back down. Neither dog went
for the offering. Bosch laced his fingers in the fence in front of
the dogs and shook it, the steel making a whining sound, but
the animals paid little attention.
It was time. Bosch crumpled the grease-stained paper and
threw it in the Dumpster. He took a pair of work gloves out of
the bag and put them on. Then he unfurled the front floor mat
and held it by one end in his left hand. He took a high grip on
the fence with his right, raised his right foot as high as he
could and pointed his shoe into one of the diamond-shaped
openings in the fence. He took a deep breath and in one move
pulled himself up the fence, using his left hand and arm to
swing the rubber mat up and over the top, so that it hung down
over the spiral of razor wire like a saddle. He repeated the
maneuver with the rear mat. They hung there side by side,
their weight pressing the spiral of razor wire down.
It took him less than a minute to get to the top and gingerly
swing one leg over the saddle and then pull the other over. The
electric buzz was louder on top and he carefully moved his
hand grips until he was able to drop down next to the still
forms of the dogs. He took the small penlight from his pick set
and put it on the dogs. Their eyes were open and dilated, their
breathing heavy. He stood a moment watching their bodies rise
and fall on the same beat, then he moved the light around on
the ground until he found the uneaten piece of pork. He threw
it over the fence, down the alley. Then, gripping the dogs by
the collars, he dragged their bodies into their pen and latched
the gate. The dogs were no longer a threat.
Bosch ran quietly up the side of the building and looked
around the corner to make sure the parking lot was still empty.
Then he came back down the side to the window of Ely’s
office.
He studied the window, double-checking to be sure he was
correct about there being no alarm. He ran the light along all
four sides of the louvered window and saw no wires, no
vibration tape, no sign of an alarm. He opened the blade on his
knife and pried back one of the metal strips that held the
bottom pane of glass in place. He carefully slid the pane out of
the window and leaned it against the wall. He moved the light
through the opening and swung its beam around inside. The
room was empty. He saw Ely’s desk and other furnishings.
The panel of four video tubes was black. The cameras were
off.
After taking five glass sections out of the window and stacking
them neatly against the outside wall, there was enough room
for him to hoist himself up and crawl into the office.
The top of the desk was clear of paperwork and other clutter.
The glass paperweight took the beam from the penlight and
shot prism colors around the room. Bosch tried the drawers of
the desk but found them locked. He opened them with a hook
pick but found nothing of interest. There was a ledger in one
drawer but it seemed to pertain to incoming breeding supplies.
He directed the light into the wastebasket on the floor inside
the desk well and saw several crumpled pieces of paper. He
emptied the basket on the floor. He reopened each piece of
trash and then recrumpled it and dropped it back into the
basket as he determined it was meaningless.
But not all of it was trash. He found one piece of crumpled
paper that had several scribbles on it, including one that said:
Colorado 504
What to do with this? he thought. The paper was evidence of
the effort to kill Bosch. But Bosch had discovered it during an
illegal search. It was worthless unless found later during a
legitimate search. The question was, when would that be? If
Bosch left the crumpled paper in the trash can, there was a
good chance the can would be emptied and the evidence lost.
He crumpled the paper back up and then took a long piece of
tape off the dispenser on the desk. He attached one piece to the
paper ball, which he then put in the trash can, pressing the
other end of the tape down on the bottom of the can. Now, he
hoped, if the can was emptied the crumpled paper would
remain attached and inside the can. And maybe the person
who emptied the can wouldn’t notice.
He moved out of the office into the hall. By the lab door he
took goggles and a breathing mask off the hook and put them
on. The door had a common three-pin lock and he picked it
quickly.
The doorway opened into blackness. He waited a beat and then
moved into it. There was a cloying, sickly sweet smell to the
place. It was humid. He moved the flashlight beam around
what looked like the shipping room. He heard a fly buzzing in
his ear and another insect was nattering around his masked
face. He waved them off and moved farther through the room.
At the other end of the room, he passed through a set of double
doors and into a room where the humidity was oppressive. It
was lit by red bulbs that were spaced above rows of fiberglass
bug bins. The warm air surrounded him. He felt a squadron of
flies bumping and buzzing around his mask and forehead.
Again, he waved them away. He moved to one of the bins and
put his light into it. There was a brownish-pink mass of insect
larvae moving like a slow-motion sea under the light.
He then cast the light about the room and saw a rack
containing several tools and a small, stationary cement mixer
that he guessed was what the day laborers used to mix the food
paste for the bugs. Several shovels, rakes and brooms hung on
pegs in a row at the back of the room. There were pallets
containing large bags of pulverized wheat and sugar, and
smaller bags of yeast. The markings on the bags were all in
Spanish. He guessed this could be called the kitchen.
He played the light over the tools and noticed that one of the
shovels stood out because it had a new handle. The wood was
clean and light, while all of the other tools had handles that
had darkened over time with dirt and human sweat.
Looking at the new handle Bosch knew that Fernal Gutierrez-
Llosa had been killed here, beaten so hard with a shovel that it
broke or became so blood-stained it had to be replaced. What
had he seen that required his death? What had the simple day
laborer done? Bosch swung the light around again until it
came upon another set of doors at the far side of the room. On
these a sign said:
DANGER ! RADIATION ! KEEP OUT ! PELIGRO ! RADIACION !
He used his picks once again to open the door. He flashed the
light around and saw no other doors. This was the terminus of
the building. It was the largest of the three rooms in the
complex and was divided in two by a partition with a small
window in it. A sign on the partition said in English only:
PROTECTION MUST BE WORN
Bosch stepped around the partition and saw that this space was
largely taken up by a large boxlike machine. Attached was a
conveyor belt that carried trays into one side of the machine
and then out the other side, where the trays would be dumped
into bins like the ones he saw in the other room. There were
more warning signs on the machine. This was where the larvae
were sterilized by radiation.
He moved around to the other side of the room and saw large
steel work-tables with cabinets overhead. These were not
locked and inside he saw boxes of supplies: plastic gloves and
the sausagelike casings the larvae were shipped in, batteries
and heat sensors. This was the room where the larvae were
packed into casings and placed in the environment boxes. The
end of the line. There was nothing else here that seemed
significant.
Bosch stepped backward toward the door. He turned the flash
off and there was only the small red glow from the
surveillance camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling.
What have I missed, he asked himself. What is left?
He put the light back on and walked back around the partition
to the radiation machine. All of the signs in the building were
designed to keep people away from this spot. This would be
where the secret was. He focused on the floor-to-ceiling stacks
of the wide steel trays used for moving larvae. He put his
shoulder against one of the stacks and began to slide it on the
floor. Beneath was only concrete. He tried the next stack and
looked down and saw the edge of a trapdoor.
The tunnel.
But at that moment it hit him. The red light on the surveillance
camera. The video panel in Ely’s office had been off. And
earlier, when Bosch had visited, he had noticed that the only
interior view Ely had on video was of the shipping room.
It meant someone else was watching this room. He looked at
his watch, trying to estimate how long he had been in the
room. Two minutes? Three minutes? If they were coming from
the ranch, he had little time. He looked down at the outline of
the door in the floor and then up at the red eye in the darkness.
But he couldn’t take the chance that no one was watching. He
quickly pushed the stack back over the door in the floor and
moved out of the third room. He retraced his path through the
complex, hooking the mask and goggles on the peg by Ely’s
office. Then he went through the office and out the window.
He quickly put the glass panes back in place, bending the
metal strips back with his fingers.
The dogs were still lying in the same spot, their bodies
pumping with each breath. Bosch hesitated but then decided to
drag them out in case the monitor at the end of the camera’s
cable line was not being watched and he hadn’t been seen. He
grabbed them by the collars and dragged them out of the pen.
He heard one try to growl but it sounded more like a whine.
The other did likewise.
He hit the fence on the run, climbed it quickly but then forced
himself to go slow over the floor mats. When he was at the top
he thought he heard the sound of an engine above the sound of
the electric buzz. As he was about to drop over, he jerked the
mats up off the razor wire and dropped down with them into
the alley.
He checked his pockets to make sure he had not dropped the
picks or flash-light. Or his keys. His gun was still in its holster.
He had everything. There was the sound of a vehicle now,
maybe more than one. He definitely had been seen. As he ran
down the alley toward Mexitec, he heard someone shouting
“Pedro y Pablo! Pedro y Pablo!” The dogs, he realized. Peter
and Paul were the dogs.
He crawled into his car and sat crouched in the front seat
watching Enviro-Breed. There were two cars in the front lot
and three men that he could see. They were holding guns and
standing beneath the spotlight over the front door. Then a
fourth man came around the corner, speaking in Spanish. He
had found the dogs. Something about the man looked familiar
but it was too dark and Bosch was too far away to be able to
see any tattoo tears. They opened the door and, like cops with
their guns up, they went inside the building. That was Bosch’s
cue. He started the Caprice and pulled out onto the road. As he
sped away he realized he was once again shaking with the
release of tension, the high of a good scare. Sweat was running
down out of his hair and drying in the cool night air on his
neck.
He lit a cigarette and threw the match out of the window. He
laughed nervously into the wind.
25
It took Bosch thirty minutes to get across the border. The line
of cars extended nearly half a mile back from the drab brown
Border Patrol port of entry. While waiting and measuring his
progress in one or two car-length movements, he ran out of
change and one-dollar bills as an army of peasants came to his
window holding up their palms or selling cheap bric-abrac and
food. Many of them washed the windshield unbidden with
their dirty rags and held up their hands for coins. Each
progressive washing smeared the glass more until Bosch had
to put on the wipers and use the car’s own spray. When he
finally made it to the checkpoint, the BP inspector in mirrored
shades just waved him through after seeing his badge. He said,
“Hose up there on the right if you want to wash the shit off
your windshield.”
A few minutes later he pulled into one of the parking spaces in
front of the Calexico Town Hall. Bosch parked and looked out
across the park while smoking a cigarette. There were no
troubadours today. The park was almost empty. He got out and
headed toward the door marked Calexico Historical Society,
not sure what he was looking for. He had the afternoon to
spend and all he knew was that he believed there was a deeper
line running through Cal Moore’s death — from his decision
to cross to the note in his back pocket to the photo of him with
Zorrillo so many years ago. Bosch wanted to find out what
happened to the house he had called a castle and the man he
had posed with, the one with the hair white as a sheet.
The glass door was locked and Bosch saw that the society
didn’t open until one on Sundays. He looked at his watch and
saw he still had fifteen minutes to wait. He cupped his hands
to the glass and looked in and saw no one inside the tiny space
that included two desks, a wall of books and a couple of glass
display cases.
He stepped away from the door and thought about using the
time to get something to eat. He decided it was too early.
Instead, he walked down to the police station and got a Coke
from the machine in the minilobby. He nodded at the officer
behind the glass window. It wasn’t Gruber today.
While he stood leaning against the front wall, drinking the
soda and watching the park, Harry saw an old man with a
latticework of thin white hair on the sides of his head unlock
the door to the historical society. He was a few minutes early,
but Bosch headed down the walk and followed him in.
“Open?” he said.
“Might as well be,” the old man said. “I’m here. Anything in
particular I can help you with?”
Bosch walked into the center of the room and explained he
was unsure what he wanted.
“I’m sort of tracing the background of a friend and I believe
his father was a historical figure. In Calexico, I mean. I want
to find their house if it’s still standing, find out what I can
about the old man.”
“What’s this fellow’s name?”
“I don’t know. Actually, I just know his last name was
Moore.”
“Hell, boy, that name don’t much narrow it down. Moore’s one
of the big names around here. Big family. Brothers, cousins all
over the place. Tell you what, let me —”
“You have pictures? You know, books with photos of the
Moores? I’ve seen pictures of the father. I could pick —”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, let me set you up here with a
couple things. We’ll find your Moore. I’m kinda curious now
myself. What’re you doing this for your friend for, anyway?”
“Trying to trace the family tree. Put it all together for him.”
A few minutes later the old man had him sitting at the other
desk with three books in front of him. They were leather-
bound and smelled of dust. They were the size of yearbooks
and they wove photographic and written history together on
every page. Randomly opening one of the books, he looked at
a black-and-white photo of the De Anza Hotel under
construction.
Then he started them in order. The first was called Calexico
and Mexicali: Seventy-five Years on the Border and as he
scanned the words and photos on the pages, Bosch picked up a
brief history of the two towns and the men who built them.
The story was the same one Aguila had told him, but from the
white man’s perspective. The volume he read described the
horrible poverty in Tapai, China, and told how the men facing
it gladly came to Baja California to seek their fortunes. It
didn’t say anything about cheap labor.
In the 1920s and 1930s Calexico was a boomtown, a company
town, with the Colorado River Land Company’s managers the
lords of all they surveyed. The book said many of these men
built opulent homes and estates on bluffs rising on the
outskirts of town. As Bosch read he repeatedly saw the names
of three Moore brothers: Anderson, Cecil and Morgan. There
were other Moores listed as well, but the brothers were always
described in terms of importance and had high-level titles in
the company.
While leafing through a chapter called “A Dirt Road Town
Paves Its Streets in Gold,” Bosch saw the man he was
interested in. He was Cecil Moore. There, amidst the
description of the riches the cotton brought to Calexico, was a
photograph of a man with prematurely white hair standing in
front of a Mediterranean-style home the size of a school. It
was the man in the photo Moore had kept in the crumpled
white bag. And rising like a steeple on the left-hand side of the
home was a tower with two arched windows side by side at its
uppermost point. The tower gave the house the appearance of
a Spanish castle. It was Cal Moore’s childhood home.
“This is the man and this is the place,” Bosch said, taking the
book over to the old man.
“Cecil Moore,” the man said.
“Is he still around?”
“No, none of those brothers are. He was the last to go, though.
Last year about this time, went in his sleep, Cecil did. I think
you’re mistaken though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cecil had no children.”
Bosch nodded.
“Maybe you’re right. What about this place. That gone, too?”
“You’re not working on any family tree, are you now?”
“No. I’m a cop. I came from L.A. I’m tracing down a story
somebody told me about this man. Will you help me?”
The old man looked at him and Bosch regretted not being
truthful with him in the first place.
“I don’t know what it’s got to do with Los Angeles but go
ahead, what else you want to know?”
“Is this place with the tower still there?”
“Yes, Castillo de los Ojos is still there. Castle of the Eyes.
Gets its name from those two windows up in the tower. When
they were lit at night, it was said that they were eyes that
looked out on all of Calexico.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s on a road called Coyote Trail west of town. You take 98
out there past Pinto Wash to an area called Crucifixion Thorn.
Turn onto Anza Road — like the hotel here in town. That’ll
take you to Coyote Trail. The castle’s at the end of the road.
You can’t miss it.”
“Who lives there now?”
“I don’t think anyone does. He left it to the city, you know. But
the city couldn’t handle the upkeep on a place like that. They
sold it — I believe the man came down from Los Angeles,
matter of fact. But as far as I know he never moved in. It’s a
pity. I was hoping to have maybe made a museum out of it.”
Bosch thanked him and left to head out to Crucifixion Thorn.
He had no idea whether Castillo de los Ojos was anything
more than a dead rich man’s estate with no bearing on his case.
But he had nothing else going and his impulse was to keep
moving forward.
State road 98 was a two-lane blacktop that stretched west from
Calexico-town proper, running alongside the border, into
farmland delineated into a huge grid by irrigation ditches. As
he drove, he smelled green pepper and cilantro. And he
realized after running alongside a field planted in cotton that
this wide expanse was all once the Company’s huge acreage.
Ahead, the land rose into hills and he could see Calexico
Moore’s boyhood home long before he was near. Castillo de
los Ojos. The two arched windows were dark and hollow eyes
against the peach-colored stone face of the tower rising from a
promontory on the horizon.
Bosch crossed a bridge over a dry bed that he assumed was
Pinto Wash, though there was no sign on the road. Glancing
down into the dusty bed as he passed, Harry saw a lime-green
Chevy Blazer parked below. He caught just a glimpse of a man
behind the wheel with binoculars held to his eyes. Border
Patrol. The driver was using the bed’s low spot as a blind from
which he could watch the border for crossers.
The wash marked the end of the farmland. Almost
immediately the earth began to rise into brown-brush hills.
There was a turnout in the road by a stand of eucalyptus and
oak trees that were still in the windless morning. This time
there was a sign marking the location:
CRUCIFIXION THORN NATURAL AREA Danger Abandoned Mines
Bosch remembered seeing a reference in the books at the
historical society to the turn-of-the-century gold mines that
pockmarked the border zone. Fortunes had been found and lost
by speculators. The hills had been heavy with bandits. Then
the Company came and brought order.
He lit a cigarette and studied the tower, which was much
closer now and rose from behind a walled compound. The
stillness of the scene and the tower windows, like soulless
eyes, somehow seemed morbid. The tower was not alone on
the hill, though. He could see the barrel-tile roofs of other
homes. But something about the tower rising singularly above
them with its empty glass eyes seemed lonely. Dead.
Anza Road came up in another half mile. He turned north and
the single-lane road curved and bumped and rose along the
circumference of the hill. To his right he could look down on
the farmland basin extending below. He turned left onto a road
marked Coyote Trail and was soon passing large haciendas on
sprawlng estates. He could see only the second floors of most
of them because of the walls that surrounded almost every
property.
Coyote Trail ended in a circle that went around an ancient oak
tree with branches that would shade the turnaround in the
summer. Castillo de los Ojos was here at the end of the road.
From the street, an eight-foot-high stone wall eclipsed all but
the tower. Only through a black wrought-iron gate was there a
fuller view. Bosch pulled onto the driveway and up to the gate.
Heavy steel chain and lock kept it closed. He got out, looked
through the bars and saw that the parking circle in front of the
house was empty. The curtains inside every front window
were pulled closed.
On the wall next to the gate were a mailbox and an intercom.
He pushed the ringer but got no response. He wasn’t sure what
he would have said if someone had answered. He opened the
mailbox and found that empty too.
Bosch left his car where it was and walked back down Coyote
Trail to the nearest house. This was one of the few without a
wall. But there was a white picket fence and an intercom at the
gate. And this time when he rang the buzzer, he got a
response.
“Yes?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes, ma’am, police. I was wondering if I can ask a few
questions about your neighbor’s house.”
“Which neighbor?”
The voice was very old.
“The castle.”
“Nobody lives there. Mr. Moore died some time ago.”
“I know that, ma’am. I was wondering if I could come in and
talk to you a moment. I have identification.”
There was a delay before he heard a curt “Very well” over the
speaker and the gate lock buzzed.
The woman insisted that he hold his ID up to a small window
set in the door. He saw her in there, white-haired and decrepit,
straining to see it from a wheelchair. She finally opened up.
“Why do they send a Los Angeles police officer?”
“Ma’am, I’m working on a Los Angeles case. It involves a
man who used to live in the castle. As a boy, long ago.”
She looked up at him through squinting eyes, as if she was
trying to see past a memory.
“Are you talking about Calexico Moore?”
“Yes. You knew him?”
“Is he hurt?”
Bosch hesitated, then said, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“Up there in Los Angeles?”
“Yes. He was a police officer. I think it had something to do
with his life down here. That’s why I came out here. I don’t
really know what to ask …He didn’t live here long. But you
remember him, yes?”
“He didn’t live here long but that doesn’t mean I never saw
him again. Quite the contrary. I saw him regularly over the
years. He’d ride his bicycle or he’d drive a car and come and
sit out there on the road and just watch that place. One time I
had Marta bring him out a sandwich and a lemonade.”
He assumed Marta was the maid. These estates came with
them.
“He’d just watch and remember, I guess,” the old woman was
saying. “Terrible thing that Cecil did to him. He’s probably
paying for it now, that Cecil.”
“What do you mean, ‘terrible’?”
“Sending the boy and his mother away like that. I don’t think
he ever spoke to that boy or the woman again after that. But
I’d see the boy and I’d see him as a man, come out here to
look at the place. People ’round here say that’s why Cecil put
that wall up. Did that twenty years ago. They say it’s because
he got tired of seeing Calexico in the street. That was Cecil’s
way of doing things. You don’t like what you see out your
window, you put up a wall. But I’d still see young Cal from
time to time. One time I took a cold drink out to him myself. I
wasn’t in this chair then. He was sitting in a car, and I asked
him, ‘Why do you come out here all the time?’ and he just
said, ‘Aunt Mary, I like to remember.’ That’s what he said.”
“Aunt Mary?”
“Yes. I thought that was why you came here. My Anderson
and Cecil were brothers, God rest their souls.”
Bosch nodded and waited a respectful five seconds before
speaking.
“The man at the museum in town said Cecil had no children.”
“’Course he said that. Cecil kept it a secret from the public.
Big secret. He didn’t want the company name blemished.”
“Calexico’s mother was the maid?”
“Yes, she — it sounds like you know all of this already.”
“Just a few parts. What happened? Why did he send her and
the boy away?” She hesitated before answering, as if to
compose a story that was more than thirty years old.
“After she became pregnant, she lived there — he made her —
and she had the baby there. Afterward, four or five years, he
discovered she had lied to him. One day he had some of his
men follow her across when she went to Mexicali to visit her
mother. There was no mother. Just a husband and another son,
this one older than Calexico. That was when he sent them
away. His own blood he sent away.”
Bosch thought about this for a long moment. The woman was
staring off at the past.
“When was the last time you saw Calexico?”
“Oh, let me see, must have been years now. He eventually
stopped coming around.”
“Do you think he knew of his father’s death?”
“He wasn’t at the funeral, not that I blame him.”
“I was told Cecil Moore left the property to the city.”
“Yes, he died alone and he left everything to the city, not a
thing to Calexico or any of the ex-wives and mistresses. Cecil
Moore was a mean man, even in death. Of course the city
couldn’t do anything with that place. Too big and expensive to
keep up. Calexico isn’t a boomtown like it once was and can’t
keep a place like that. There was a thought that it would be
used as a historical museum. But you couldn’t fill a closet with
the history of this town. Never mind the museum. The city
sold the place. I heard, for more than a million. Maybe they’ll
operate in the black for a few years.”
“Who bought it?”
“I don’t know. But they never moved in. They got a caretaker
comes around. I saw lights on over there last week. But, nope,
nobody’s ever moved in as far as I know. It must be an
investment. In what I don’t know. We’re sitting out here in the
middle of nowhere.”
“One last question. Was there ever anybody else with Moore
when he would watch the place?”
“Always alone. That poor boy was always out there alone.”
···
On the way back into town Bosch thought about Moore’s
lonely vigils outside the house of his father. He wondered if
his longings were for the house and its memories or the father
who had sent him away. Or both.
Bosch’s mind touched his memory of his brief meeting with
his own father. A sick old man on his death bed. Bosch had
forgiven him for every second he had been robbed. He knew
he had to or he would face the rest of his life wasting his pain
on it.
27
Bosch came out of the house looking in the dim light for
Aguila and finally saw him standing near the prisoners and the
militia. Bosch realized he probably felt more like an outsider
here than Harry did himself.
“I am going after the Jeep we saw. I think it was Zorrillo.”
“I am ready,” the Mexican said.
Before they could move Corvo came running up. But it was
not to stop them.
“Bosch, I’ve got Ramos in the chopper. It’s all I can spare.”
The silence that followed was punctuated by the sound from
the other side of the hacienda of the helicopter’s rotor
beginning to turn.
“Go!” Corvo yelled. “Or he’ll go without you.”
They ran around the building and climbed back into their spots
in the Lynx. Ramos was in the cockpit with the pilot. The craft
abruptly lifted off and Bosch forgot about the seatbelt. He was
too busy putting on his helmet and night-vision equipment.
There was nothing in the scope yet. No Jeep. No runner. They
were heading southwest from the ranch’s population center. As
he watched the yellow land go by in the night-vision lenses,
Harry realized he still hadn’t informed Aguila of his captain’s
demise. When we are done here, he decided.
In two minutes they came upon the Jeep. It was parked in a
copse of eucalyptus trees and tall brush. A tumbleweed as big
as a truck had blown up against it or been put up against it as a
meager disguise. The vehicle was about fifty yards from the
corrals and barn. The pilot put on the spots and the Lynx began
circling. There was no sign of the driver, the runner. Zorrillo.
Looking between the front seats, Bosch saw Ramos give the
pilot the thumbs down sign and the craft began its descent.
The lights were cut off and until Harry’s eyes adjusted, it felt
like they were dropping through the depths of a black hole.
He finally felt the impact of the ground and his muscles
relaxed slightly. He heard the engine cut and there was just the
chirping and whupping sound of the free-turning rotor winding
down. Through the window Bosch could see the western side
of the barn. There were no doors or windows on this exposure
and he was thinking that they could approach with reasonable
cover when he heard Ramos yell.
“What the — hold on!”
There was a hard impact and the helicopter lurched violently
and began sliding. Bosch looked out his window and could
only see that they were being pushed sideways. The Jeep.
Someone had been hidden in the Jeep. The Lynx’s landing
rails finally caught on something in the earth and the craft
tipped over. Bosch covered his face and ducked when he saw
the still spinning rotor start biting into the ground and
splintering. Then he felt Aguila’s weight crash down on him
and heard yelling in the cockpit that he could not decipher.
The helicopter rocked in this position for only a few seconds
before there was another loud impact, this time from the front.
Bosch heard tearing metal and shattering glass and gunfire.
Then it was gone. Bosch could feel the vibration in the ground
dissipating as the Jeep sped away.
“I think I got him!” Ramos yelled. “Did you see that?”
All Bosch could think of was their vulnerability. The next hit
would probably be from behind where they could not see to
shoot. He tried to reach his Smith but his arms were trapped
under Aguila. The Mexican detective finally began to crawl
off him and they both tentatively moved into crouches in the
now sideways compartment. Bosch reached up and tried the
door, which was now above them. It slid about halfway open
before catching on something, a torn piece of metal. They took
off their helmets and Bosch went out first. Then Aguila
handed him the bullet-proof vests. Bosch didn’t know why but
took them. Aguila followed him out.
The smell of fuel was in the air. They moved to the crushed
front of the helicopter where Ramos, gun in one hand, was
trying to slide through the hole where the front window used
to be.
“Help him,” Bosch said. “I’ll cover.”
He pulled his gun and turned in a full circle but saw no one.
Then he saw the Jeep, parked where he had seen it from the
air, the tumbleweed still pressed against it. This made no sense
to Bosch. Unless —
“The pilot is trapped,” Aguila said.
Harry looked into the cockpit. Ramos was shining a flashlight
on the pilot, whose blond mustache was inked with blood.
There was a deep slash on the bridge of his nose. His eyes
were wide and Bosch could see the flight control apparatus
was crushed in on his legs.
“Where’s the radio?” Bosch said. “We’ve got to get help out
here.”
Ramos stuck his upper body back through the cockpit window
and came back out with the hand-held radio.
“Corvo, Corvo, come up, we’ve got an emergency here.”
While waiting for a response, Ramos said to Bosch, “Do you
believe this shit? That fucking monster comes outta nowhere. I
didn’t know what the —”
“What’s happening?” Corvo’s voice came back on the radio.
“We’ve got a situation here. We need a medevac out here.
Tools. The Lynx is wrecked. Corcoran is pinned inside. Has
injuries.”
“— cation of the crash?”
“It’s not a crash, man. A goddamn bull attacked it on the
ground. It’s wrecked and we can’t get Corcoran out. Our
location is one hundred yards northeast of the breeding center,
the barn.”
“Stay there. Help’s on the way.”
Ramos clipped the radio to his belt, held the flashlight under
his arm and reloaded his handgun.
“Let’s each take a side of a triangle, the chopper in the middle
and watch for this thing. I know I hit it but it didn’t show a
thing.”
“No,” Bosch said. “Ramos, you and Aguila take sides of it and
wait for help. I’m going to clear the barn. Zorrillo’s getting
—”
“No, no, no, we don’t do it like that, Bosch. You aren’t calling
any of the shots here. We wait here and when help —”
He stopped in midsentence and made a full turn. Then Bosch
realized he heard it, too. Or, rather, felt it. A rhythmic
vibration in the ground, growing stronger. It was impossible to
place the direction. He watched Ramos turn in circles with the
flashlight. He heard Aguila say, “El Temblar.”
“What?” Ramos yelled. “What?”
And then the bull appeared at the edge of vision. A huge black
beast, it came at them undeterred by their number. This was
his turf to defend. The bull seemed to Bosch in that moment to
have come from within the darkness, an apparition of death, its
head down and jagged horns up. It was less than thirty feet
away when it locked on a specific target. Bosch.
In one hand he held the Smith. In the other the vest, with the
word POLICE on it in reflective yellow tape. In the seconds he
had left he realized the tape had caught the beast’s attention
and singled him out. He also came to the conclusion that his
gun was useless. He could not fell the animal with bullets. It
was too big and powerful. It would take a perfect shot on a
moving target. Wounding it, as Ramos had, would not stop it.
He dropped the gun and held the vest up.
Bosch heard yelling and shooting from his right side. It was
Ramos. But the bull stayed on him. As it came closer he swept
the vest to his right, its yellow letters catching the light of the
moon. He let it go as the animal closed in. The bull, like a blur
of black in darkness, hit the vest before it left his hand. Bosch
tried to jump out of the way but one of the massive shoulders
of the animal brushed him and sent him tumbling.
From the ground he looked up to see the animal cut to its left
like a gifted athlete and close in on Ramos. The agent was still
firing and Bosch could see the reflection of the moon off the
shells as they were ejected from his gun. But the bullets did
not stop the beast’s charge. They did not even slow it. Bosch
heard the gun’s ejector go dry and Ramos was pulling the
trigger on an empty chamber. His last cry was unintelligible.
The bull hit him low in the legs and then raised its brutish and
bloodied neck up, ejecting him into the air. Ramos seemed to
tumble in slow motion before coming down head-first and
unmoving.
The bull tried to stop its charge but momentum and damage
from bullets finally left it unable to control its huge weight. Its
head dipped and it cartwheeled onto its back. It righted itself
and prepared for another charge. Bosch crawled to his gun,
picked it up and aimed. But the animal’s front legs faltered and
it went down. Then it slowly turned onto its side and lay
unmoving, save for the hesitant rise and fall of its chest. Then
that stopped, too.
Aguila and Bosch took off for Ramos at the same time. They
huddled over him but did not move him. He was on his back
and his eyes were still open and caked with dirt. His head
lolled at an unnatural angle. His neck appeared to have been
cleanly broken in the fall. In the distance they could hear the
sound of one of the Hueys flying their way. Bosch stood up
and could see its spotlight sweeping over the scrubland,
looking for them.
“I’m going to the tunnel,” Bosch said. “When they land, come
in with backup.”
“No,” Aguila said. “I’m going with you.”
He said it in a way that invited no debate. He leaned down and
took the radio off Ramos’s belt and picked up the flashlight.
He gave the radio to Bosch.
“Tell them we are both going.”
Bosch radioed Corvo.
“Where’s Ramos?”
“We just lost Ramos. Me and Aguila are going to the tunnel.
Alert the militia at EnviroBreed that we are coming through.
We don’t want to get shot.”
He turned the radio off before Corvo could reply and dropped
it on the ground next to the dead DEA agent. The other
helicopter was almost on them now. They ran to the barn, their
weapons held up and ready, and moved slowly around the
outside until they were at the front and could see the bay door
had been slid open. Wide enough for a man to pass through.
They went through and crouched in the darkness. Aguila
began to sweep the flashlight’s beam around. It was a
cavernous barn with stalls running along both sides to the
back. There were crates used for trucking bulls to arenas
stacked in the back along with towers made of bales of hay.
Bosch saw a line of overhead lights running down the center
of the building. He looked around and found the switch near
the bay door.
Once the interior was lighted they moved down the aisle
between the rows of stalls, Bosch taking the right and Aguila
the left. The stalls were all empty, the bulls set free to roam the
ranch. It was when they reached the back that they saw the
opening to the tunnel.
A forklift was parked in the corner, holding a pallet of hay
bales four feet off the ground. There was a four-foot-wide hole
in the concrete floor where the pallet had sat. Zorrillo, or
whoever the runner had been, had used the forklift to lift the
pallet but there had been no one to drop it back down to hide
his escape.
Bosch crouched down and moved to the edge of the hole and
looked down. He saw a ladder leading about twelve feet down
to a lighted passageway. He looked up at Aguila.
“Ready?”
The Mexican nodded.
Bosch went first. He climbed a few steps down the ladder and
then dropped the rest of the way, bringing up his gun and
ready to shoot. But there was no one in the tunnel as far as he
could see. It wasn’t even like a tunnel. It was more of a
hallway. It was tall enough to stand in and an electrical conduit
ran along the ceiling feeding lights in steel cages every twenty
feet. There was a slight curve to the left and so he could not
see where it ended. He moved into the passageway and Aguila
dropped down behind him.
“Okay,” Bosch whispered. “Let’s stay to the right. If there is
shooting, I’ll go low and you go high.”
Aguila nodded and they began to move quickly through the
tunnel. Bosch, trying to figure his bearings, believed they were
heading east and slightly north. They covered the ground to
the curve quickly and then pressed themselves hard against the
wall as they moved into the second leg of the passage.
Bosch realized that the bend in the passage was too wide for
them to still be on line with EnviroBreed. He stared down the
last segment of the tunnel and saw that it was clear. He could
see the exit ladder maybe fifty yards ahead. And he knew they
were going somewhere other than EnviroBreed. He wished he
hadn’t left the radio with Ramos’s body.
“Shit,” Harry whispered.
“What?” Aguila whispered back.
“Nothing. C’mon.”
They began to move again, covering the first twenty-five yards
quickly and then slowing to a cautious and quieter approach to
the exit ladder. Aguila switched to the right wall and they
came upon the opening at the same time, both with guns
extended upward, sweat getting in their eyes.
There was no light from the opening above them. Bosch took
the flash-light from Aguila and put its beam through the hole.
He could see exposed wooden rafters of a low ceiling in the
room above. No one looked down at them. No one shot at
them. No one did a thing. Harry listened for any sound but
heard nothing. He nodded to Aguila to cover and holstered his
gun. He started climbing the ladder, one hand holding the
flashlight.
He was scared. In Vietnam, leaving one of Charlie’s tunnels
always meant the end of fear. It was like being born again; you
were leaving the darkness for safety and the hands of
comrades. Out of the black and into the blue. But not this time;
this time was the opposite.
When he reached the top, before rising through the opening,
he flashed the beam around again but saw nothing. Then, like
a turtle, he slowly moved his head out of the opening. The first
thing he noticed in the beam was the sawdust everywhere on
the floor. He climbed farther out, taking in the rest of the
surroundings. It was some kind of storage room. There were
steel shelves stocked with saw blades, boxes of sanding belts
for industrial machinery. There were some hand tools and
carpentry saws. One group of shelves were stacked with
wooden dowel pegs, with different sizes on different shelves.
Bosch immediately thought of the pegs attached to the baling
wire that had been used to kill Kapps and Porter.
He moved fully into the room now and signaled to Aguila that
it was safe to come up. Then Harry approached the storage
room’s door.
It was unlocked and it opened into a huge warehouse with
lines of machinery and work benches on one side and the
completed product — unfinished furniture, tables, chairs,
chests of drawers — stacked on the other. Light came from a
single bulb that hung from a cross support beam. It was the
night-light. Aguila came up behind him then. They were in
Mexitec, Bosch knew.
At the far end of the warehouse were sets of double doors. One
of these was open and they moved to it quickly. It led to a
loading-dock area that was off the back alley Bosch had
walked through the night before. There was a puddle at the
bottom of the parking bay and he saw wet tire tracks leading
into the alley. There was no one in sight. Zorrillo was long
gone.
“Two tunnels,” Bosch said, unable to hide the dejection in his
voice.
···
“Two tunnels,” Corvo said. “Ramos’s informant fucked us.”
Bosch and Aguila were sitting on chairs of unfinished pine
watching Corvo pacing and looking like shit, like a man in
charge of an operation that had lost two men, a helicopter and
its main target. It had been nearly two hours since they had
come up through the tunnel.
“How d’you mean?” Bosch asked.
“I mean the CI had to have known about the second tunnel.
How’s he know about one and not the other? He set us up. He
left Zorrillo the escape route. If I knew who he was I’d charge
him with accessory in the death of a federal agent.”
“You don’t know?”
“Ramos didn’t register this one with me. Hadn’t gotten around
to it.”
Bosch breathed a little easier.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Corvo was saying. “I might as
well never go back. I’m done, man. Done…. Least you got
your cop killer, Bosch. I got a shit sandwich.”
“Have you put out a Telex?” Bosch said to change the subject.
“Already out. To all stations, all law enforcement agencies.
But it doesn’t matter. He’s long gone. He’ll probably go to the
interior, lie low for a year and then start over. Right where he
left off. Probably Michoacan, maybe farther down.”
“Maybe he went north,” Bosch said.
“No way he’d try to cross. He knows if we get him up there,
he’ll never see daylight again. He went south, where’s he’s
safe.”
There were several other agents in the factory with clipboards,
cataloging and searching. They had found a machine that
hollowed out table legs so that they could be filled with
contraband, recapped and sent across the border. Earlier they
had found the second tunnel opening in the barn and followed
it through to EnviroBreed. There had been no explosives on
the trapdoor and they had gone in. The place was empty
except for the two dogs outside. They killed them.
The operation had closed down a major smuggling network.
Agents had left for Calexico to arrest the head of EnviroBreed,
Ely. There were fourteen arrests made on the ranch. Others
would follow. But all of that wasn’t enough for Corvo or
anybody. Not when agents were dead and Zorrillo was in the
wind. Corvo had been wrong if he thought Bosch would be
satisfied that Arpis was dead. Bosch wanted Zorrillo, too. He
was the man who had called the hits.
Bosch got up so he wouldn’t have to witness the agent’s
anguish anymore. He had enough of his own. Aguila must
have felt the same. He, too, stood and began to walk listlessly
around the machines and the furniture. Basically, they were
waiting for one of the militia cars to take them back to the
airport to Bosch’s car. The DEA would be here until well after
sunup. But Bosch and Aguila were finished.
Harry watched Aguila go back into the storage room and
approach the tunnel entrance. He had told him about Grena
and the Mexican had simply nodded. He hadn’t shown a thing.
Now Aguila dropped to his haunches and seemed to be
studying the floor, as if the sawdust were a spread of tea leaves
in which he could read Zorrillo’s location.
After a few moments, he said, “The pope has new boots.”
Bosch walked over and Aguila pointed to the footprints in the
sawdust. There was one that was not from Aguila’s or Bosch’s
shoes. It was very clear in the dust and Harry recognized the
elongated heel of a bulldog boot. Inside it was the letter “S”
formed by a curving snake. The edges of the print were sharp
in the dust, the head of the snake clearly imprinted.
Aguila had been right. The pope had new boots.
31
Bosch pulled his car up to the front gate at the end of Coyote
Trail and saw that the circular driveway in front of Castillo de
los Ojos was still empty. But the thick chain that had secured
the two halves of the iron gate the day before hung loose and
the lock was open. Moore was here.
Harry left his car there, blocking the exit, and slipped through
the gate on foot. He ran across the brown lawn in a crouched,
uneasy trot, mindful that the windows of the tower looked
down at him like the dark accusing eyes of a giant. He pressed
himself against the stucco surface of the wall next to the front
door. He was breathing heavily and sweating, though the
morning air was still quite cool.
The knob was locked. He stood there unmoving for a long
period, listening for something but hearing nothing. Finally, he
ducked below the line of windows that fronted the first floor
and moved around the house to the side of the four-bay garage.
There was another door here and it, too, was locked.
Bosch recognized the rear of the house from the photographs
that had been in Moore’s bag. He saw the sliding doors
running along the pool deck. One door was open and the wind
buffeted the white curtain. It flapped like a hand beckoning
him to come in.
The open door led to a large living room. It was full of ghosts
— furniture covered by musty white sheets. Nothing else. He
moved to his left, silently passing through the kitchen and
opening a door to the garage. There was one car, which was
covered by more sheets, and a pale green panel van. It said
MEXITEC on the side. Bosch touched the van’s hood and found
it still warm. Through the windshield he saw a sawed-off
shotgun lying across the passenger seat. He opened the
unlocked door and took the weapon out. As quietly as he
could, he cracked it open and saw both barrels were loaded
with double-ought shells. He closed the weapon, holstered his
own, and carried it with him.
He pulled the sheet off the front end of the other car and
recognized it as the Thunderbird he had seen in the father-and-
son photo in Moore’s bag. Looking at the car, Bosch wondered
how far back you have to go to trace the reason for a person’s
choices in life. He didn’t know the answer about Moore. He
didn’t know the answer about himself.
He went back to the living room and stopped and listened.
There was nothing. The house seemed still, empty, and it
smelled dusty, like time spent slowly and painfully in wait for
something or someone not coming. All the rooms were full of
ghosts. He was considering the shape of a shrouded fan chair
when he heard the noise. From above, like the sound of a shoe
dropping on a wood floor.
He moved toward the front and in the entry area he saw the
wide stone staircase. Bosch moved up the steps. The noise
from above was not repeated.
On the second floor he went down a carpeted hallway, looking
through the doors to four bedrooms and two bathrooms but
finding each room empty.
He went back to the stairs and up into the tower. The lone door
at the top landing was open and Harry heard no sound. He
crouched and moved slowly into the opening, the sawed-off
leading the way like a water finder’s divining rod.
Moore was there. Standing with his back to the door and
looking at himself in the mirror. The mirror was on the back of
a closet door which was open slightly, angling the glass so that
it did not catch Harry’s reflection. He watched Moore unseen
for a few moments, then looked around. There was a bed in
the center of the room with an open suitcase on it. Next to it
was a gym bag that was zipped closed and already appeared to
be packed. Moore still had not moved. He was intently staring
at the reflection of his face. He had a full beard now, and his
eyes were brown. He wore faded blue jeans, new snakeskin
boots, a black T-shirt and a black leather jacket with matching
gloves. He was Melrose Avenue cool. From a distance he
could easily pass for the pope of Mexicali.
Bosch saw the wood grips and chrome handle of an automatic
tucked into Moore’s belt.
“You going to say something, Harry? Or just stare.”
Without moving his hands or head, Moore shifted his weight
to the left and then he and Bosch were staring at each other in
the mirror.
“Picked up a new pair of boots before you put Zorrillo down,
didn’t you?”
Now Moore turned completely to face him. But he didn’t say
anything.
“Keep your hands out front like that,” Bosch said.
“Whatever you say, Harry. You know, I kinda thought that if
somebody came, you’d be the one.”
“You wanted somebody to come, didn’t you?”
“Some days I did. Some days I didn’t.”
Bosch moved into the room and then took a step sideways so
he was directly facing Moore.
“New contacts, beard. You look like the pope — from a
distance. But how’d you convince his lieutenants, his guardia.
They were just going to stand back and let you move in and
take his place?”
“Money convinced them. They’d probably let you move in
there if you had the bread, Harry. See, anything is negotiable
when you have your hands on the purse strings. And I did.”
Moore nodded slightly toward the duffel bag on the bed.
“How about you? I have money. Not much. About a hundred
and ten grand there.”
“I figured you’d be running away with a fortune.”
“Oh, I am. I am. What’s in the bag is just what I have on hand.
You caught me a little short. But I can get you more. It’s in the
banks.”
“Guess you’ve been practicing Zorrillo’s signature as well as
his looks.”
Moore didn’t answer.
“Who was he?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Half brother. Different fathers.”
“This place. This is what it was all about, wasn’t it? It’s the
castle you lived in before you were sent away.”
“Something like that. Decided to buy it after he was gone. But
it’s falling apart on me. It’s so hard to take care of something
you love these days. Everything is a chore.”
Bosch tried to study him. He looked tired of it all.
“What happened back at the ranch?” Bosch asked.
“You mean the three bodies? Yes, well, I guess you could say
justice happened. Grena was a leech who had been sucking
Zorrillo for years. Arpis detached him, you could say.”
“Then who detached Arpis and Dance?”
“I did that, Harry.”
He said it without hesitation and the words froze Bosch.
Moore was a cop. He knew never to confess. You didn’t talk
until there was a lawyer by your side, a plea bargain in place,
and a deal that was signed.
Harry adjusted his sweating hands on the sawed-off. He took a
step forward and listened for any other sound in the house.
There was only silence until Moore spoke again.
“I’m not going back, Harry. I guess you know that.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as if it was a given, something that
had been decided a long time ago.
“How’d you get Zorrillo up to L.A., and then into that motel
room? How’d you get his prints for the personnel file?”
“You want me to tell you, Harry? Then what?”
Moore looked down at the gym bag briefly.
“Then nothing. We’re going back to L.A. You haven’t been
advised — nothing you can say now can be used against you.
It’s just you and me here.”
“The prints were easy. I was making him IDs. He had three or
four so he could come across when he liked. One time he told
me he wanted a passport and full wallet spread. I told him I
needed prints. Took ’em myself.”
“And the motel?”
“Like I said, he crossed over all the time. He’d go through the
tunnel and the DEA would be out there sitting on the ranch
thinking he was still inside. He liked to come up to see the
Lakers, sit down on court level near that blonde actress who
likes to get on TV. Anyway, he was up there and I told him I
wanted to meet. He came.”
“And you put him down and took his place…. What about the
old man, the laborer? What did he do?”
“He was just in the wrong place. Zorrillo told me he was there
when he came up through the floor on the last trip. He wasn’t
supposed to be in that room. But I guess he couldn’t read the
signs. Zorrillo said he couldn’t take the chance he’d tell
someone about the tunnel.”
“Why’d you dump him in the alley? Why didn’t you just bury
him out in Joshua Tree. Someplace he’d never be found.”
“The desert would’ve been good but I didn’t dump him,
Bosch. Don’t you see? They were controlling me. They
brought him up here and dumped him there. Arpis did. That
night I get a call from Zorrillo telling me to meet him at the
Egg and I. He says park in the alley. I did and there was the
body. I wasn’t going to move the fucking thing. I called it in.
You see it was one more way for him to keep his hold on me.
And I went along. Porter caught the case and I made a deal
with him to take it slow.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He was trying to envision the
sequence Moore had just described.
“This is getting boring, man. You going to try to cuff me, take
me in, be the hero?”
“Why couldn’t you let it go?” Bosch asked.
“What?”
“This place. Your father. The whole thing. You should have let
the past go.”
“I was robbed of my life, man. He kicked us right out. My
mother — How do you let go of a past like that? Fuck you,
Bosch. You don’t know.”
Bosch said nothing. But he knew he was allowing this to go on
too long. Moore was taking control of the situation.
“When I heard he was dead, it did something,” Moore said. “I
don’t know. I decided I wanted this place and I went to see my
brother. That was my mistake. Things started small but they
never stopped. Soon I was running the show for him up there.
I had to get out from under it. There was only one way.”
“It was the wrong way.”
“Don’t bother, Bosch. I know the song.”
Bosch was sure Moore had told the story the way he believed
it. But it was clear to Bosch he had fully embraced the devil.
He had found out who he was.
“Why me?” Bosch asked.
“Why you what?”
“Why did you leave the file for me? If you hadn’t done that, I
wouldn’t be here. You’d be in the clear.”
“Bosch, you were my backup. You don’t see? I needed
something in case the suicide play didn’t work. I figured you’d
get that file and take it from there. I knew with just a little
misdirection you would sound the alarm. Murder. Thing is, I
never thought you’d get this far. I thought Irving and the rest
of them would crush you because they wouldn’t want to know
what it was all about. They’d just want the whole thing to die
with me.”
“And Porter.”
“Yeah, well, Porter was weak. He’s probably better off now,
anyway.”
“And me? Would I be better off if Arpis had hit me with the
bullet in the hotel room?”
“Bosch, you were getting too close. Had to take the shot.”
Harry had nothing more to say or ask. Moore seemed to sense
that they were at a final point. He tried one more time.
“Bosch, in that bag I have account numbers. They’re yours.”
“Not interested, Moore. We’re going back.”
Moore laughed at that notion.
“Do you really think anybody up there gives a rat’s ass about
all of this?”
Bosch said nothing.
“In the department?” Moore said. “No fucking way they care.
They don’t want to know about something like this. Bad for
business, man. But, see, you — you’re not in the department,
Bosch. You’re in it but not of it. See what I’m saying? There’s
the problem. There’s — you take me back, man, and they’re
gonna look at you as being just as bad as me. Because you’ll
be pulling this wagon full of shit behind you.
“I think you’re the only one who cares about it, Bosch. I really
think you are. So just take the money and go.”
“What about your wife? You think she cares?”
That stopped him, for a few moments, at least.
“Sylvia,” he said. “I don’t know. I lost her a long time ago. I
don’t know if she cares about this or not. I don’t care anymore
myself.”
Bosch watched him, looking for the truth. “Water under the
bridge,” Moore said. “So take the money. I can get more to
you later.”
“I can’t take the money. I think you know that.”
“Yeah, I guess I know that. But I think you know I can’t go
back with you, either. So where’s that leave us?”
Bosch shifted his weight on to his left side, the butt of the
shotgun against his hip. There was a long moment of silence
during which he thought about himself and his own motives.
Why hadn’t he told Moore to take the gun out of his pants and
drop it?
In a smooth, quick motion, Moore reached across his body
with his right hand and pulled the gun out of his waistband. He
was bringing the barrel around toward Bosch when Harry’s
finger closed over the shotgun’s triggers. The double-barrel
blast was deafening in the room. Moore took the brunt of it in
the face. Through the smoke Bosch saw his body jerk
backward into the air. His hands flew up toward the ceiling
and he landed on the bed. His handgun fired but it was a stray
shot, shattering one of the panes of the arched windows. The
gun dropped onto the floor.
Pieces of blackened wadding from the shells floated down and
landed in the blood of the faceless man. There was a heavy
smell of burned gunpowder on the air and Bosch felt a slight
mist on his face that he also knew by smell was blood.
He stood still for more than a minute, then he looked over and
saw himself in the mirror. He quickly looked away.
He walked over to the bed and unzipped the duffel bag. There
were stacks and stacks of money inside it, most of it in one-
hundred-dollar bills. There was also a wallet and passport. He
opened them and found they identified Moore as Henry Maze,
age forty, of Pasadena. There were two loose photos held in
the passport.
The first was a Polaroid that he guessed had come from the
white bag. It was a photo of Moore and his wife in their early
twenties. They were sitting on a couch, maybe at a party.
Sylvia was not looking at the camera. She was looking at him.
And Bosch knew why he had chosen this photo to take. The
loving look on her face was beautiful. The second photo was
an old black and white with discoloration around the edges,
indicating it had come from a frame. It showed Cal Moore and
Humberto Zorrillo as boys. They were playfully wrestling,
both shirtless and laughing. Their skin was bronze, blemished
only by the tattoos. Each boy had the Saints and Sinners tattoo
on his arm.
He dropped the wallet and passport back into the duffel bag
but put the two photos in his coat pocket. He walked over to
the window with the broken pane and looked out onto Coyote
Trail and the lowlands leading to the border. No police cars
were coming. No Border Patrol. No one had even called for an
ambulance. The thick walls of the castle had held the sound of
the man dying inside.
The sun was high in the sky and he could feel its warmth
through the triangular opening in the broken glass.
33
Bosch did not begin to feel whole again until he reached the
smogged outskirts of L.A. He was back in the nastiness again
but he knew that it was here that he would heal. He skirted
downtown on the freeway and headed up through Cahuenga
Pass. Midday traffic was light. Looking up at the hills he saw
the charred path of the Christmas-night fire. But he even took
some comfort in that. He knew that the heat of the fire would
have cracked open the seeds of the wildflowers and by spring
the hillside would be a riot of colors. The chaparral would
follow and soon there would be no scar on the land at all.
It was after one. He was going to be too late for Moore’s
funeral mass at the San Fernando Mission. So he drove
through the Valley to the cemetery. The burial of Calexico
Moore, killed in the line of duty, was to be at Eternal Valley in
Chatsworth, the police chief, the mayor and the media
presiding. Bosch smiled as he drove. We gather here to honor
and bury a drug dealer.
He got there before the motorcade but the media were already
set up on a bluff near the entrance road. Men in black suits,
white shirts and black ties, with funeral bands around their left
arms, were in the cemetery drive and signaled him to a parking
area. He sat in the car, using the rearview mirror to put on a
tie. He was unshaven and looked crumpled but didn’t care.
The plot was near a stand of oak trees. One of the armbands
had pointed the way. Harry walked across the lawn, stepping
around plots, the wind blowing his hair in all directions. He
took a position a good distance away from the green funeral
canopy and accompanying bank of flowers and leaned against
one of the trees. He smoked a cigarette while he watched cars
start to arrive. A few had beaten the procession. But then he
heard the approaching sound of the helicopters — the police
air unit that flew above the hearse and the media choppers that
started circling the cemetery like flies. Then the first
motorcycles cut through the cemetery gate and Bosch watched
as the TV cameras on the bluff followed the long line in. There
must have been two hundred cycles, Bosch guessed. The best
day to run a red light, break the speed limit or make an illegal
U-turn in the city was on a cop’s funeral day. Nobody was left
minding the store.
The hearse and attendant limousine followed the cycles. Then
came the rest of the cars and pretty soon people were parking
all over the place and walking across the cemetery from all
directions toward the plot. Bosch watched one of the armbands
help Sylvia Moore out of the limo. She had been riding alone.
Though he was maybe fifty yards away, Harry could tell she
looked lovely. She wore a simple black dress and the wind
gusted hard against it, pressing the material against her and
showing her figure. She had to hold a black barrette in place in
her hair. She wore black gloves and black sunglasses. Red
lipstick. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
The armband led her to a row of folding chairs beneath the
canopy and alongside the hole that had been expertly dug into
the earth. Along the way, her head turned slightly and Bosch
believed she was looking at him but was not sure because the
glasses hid her eyes and her face showed no sign. After she
was seated, the pallbearers, composed of Rickard, the rest of
Moore’s narcotics unit, and a few others Bosch didn’t know,
brought the grayish-silver steel casket.
“So, you made it back,” a voice said from behind.
Bosch turned to see Teresa Corazón walking up behind him.
“Yeah, just got in.”
“You could use a shave.”
“And a few other things. How’s it going, Teresa?”
“Never better.”
“Good to hear. What happened this morning after we talked?”
“About what you expected. We pulled DOJ prints on Moore
and compared them to what Irving had given us. No match.
Two different people. That isn’t Moore in the silver bullet over
there.”
Bosch nodded. Of course, by now he didn’t need her
confirmation. He had his own. He thought of Moore’s faceless
body lying on the bed.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“I’ve already done it.”
“What?”
“I had a little discussion with Assistant Chief Irving before the
funeral mass. Wish you could have seen his face.”
“But he didn’t stop the funeral.”
“He’s playing the percentages, I guess. Chances are Moore, if
he knows what’s good for him, won’t ever show up again. So
he is hoping that all it costs him is a recommendation on the
medical examiner’s office. He volunteered to do it. I didn’t
even have to explain his position to him.”
“I hope you enjoy the job, Teresa. You’re in the belly of the
beast now.”
“I will, Harry. And thanks for calling me this morning.”
“Does he know how you came up with all of this? Did you tell
him I called?”
“No. But I’m not sure I had to.”
She was right. Irving would know Bosch was in the middle of
this somehow. He looked past Teresa to look at Sylvia again.
She was sitting quietly. The chairs on either side of her empty.
No one was going to come near her.
“I’m going over to the group,” Teresa said. “I told Dick Ebart I
would meet him here. He wants to set up a date to call for the
commission’s full vote.”
Bosch nodded. Ebart was a county commissioner of twenty-
five years in office and closing in on seventy years old. He
was her informal sponsor for the job.
“Harry, I still want to keep things on just a professional basis. I
appreciate what you did for me today. But I want to keep
things at a distance, for a while at least.”
He nodded and watched her walk toward the gathering, her
footing unsteady in high heels on the cemetery turf. For a
moment Bosch envisioned her in a carnal coupling with the
aged commissioner whose photos in the newspaper were most
notable because of his drooping, crepe-paper neck. He was
repulsed by the image and by himself for imagining it. He
blanked it out of his mind and watched Teresa mingling in the
crowd, shaking hands and becoming the politician she would
now have to be. He felt a sense of sadness for her.
The service was a few minutes away and people were still
arriving. In the crowd he picked up the gleaming head of
Assistant Chief Irvin Irving. He was in full uniform, carrying
his hat under his arm. He was standing with the chief of police
and one of the mayor’s front men. The mayor was apparently
late as usual. Irving then saw Bosch, broke away and started
walking toward him. He seemed to be taking in the vista of the
mountains as he walked. He didn’t look at Bosch until he was
next to him under the oak tree.
“Detective.”
“Chief.”
“When did you get in?”
“Just now.”
“Could use a shave.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So what do we do? What do we do?”
The way he said it was almost wistful and Bosch didn’t know
whether Irving wanted an answer from him or not.
“You know, Detective, yesterday when you did not come to
my office as ordered, I opened a one-point-eighty-one on
you.”
“I figured you would, Chief. Am I suspended?”
“No action taken at the moment. I’m a fair man. I wanted to
speak with you first. You spoke with the acting chief medical
examiner this morning?”
Bosch wasn’t going to lie to him. He thought this time he held
all of the high cards.
“Yes. I wanted her to compare some fingerprints.”
“What happened down there in Mexico to make you want to
do that?”
“Nothing I care to talk about, Chief. I’m sure it will all be on
the news.”
“I’m not talking about that ill-fated raid undertaken by the
DEA. I am talking about Moore. Bosch, I need to know if I
need to walk over there and stop this funeral.”
Bosch watched a blue vein pop high on Irving’s shaven skull.
It pulsed and then died.
“I can’t help you there, Chief. It’s not my call. We’ve got
company.”
Irving turned around to look back toward the gathering.
Lieutenant Harvey Pounds, also in dress uniform, was walking
toward them, probably wanting to find out how many cases he
could close from Bosch’s investigation. But Irving held up a
hand like a traffic cop and Pounds abruptly stopped, turned
and walked away.
“The point I am trying to make with you, Detective Bosch, is
that it appears we are about to bury and eulogize a Mexican
drug lord while a corrupt police officer is running around
loose. Do you have any idea what embarrass — Damn it! I
can’t believe I just spoke those words out loud. I cannot
believe I spoke those words to you.”
“Don’t trust me much, do you, Chief?”
“In matters like these, I do not trust anyone.”
“Well, don’t worry about it.”
“I am not worried about who I can and cannot trust.”
“I mean about burying a drug lord while a corrupt cop is
running around loose. Don’t worry about it.”
Irving studied him, his eyes narrowing, as if he might be able
to peer through Bosch’s own eyes, into his thoughts.
“Are you kidding me? Don’t worry about it? This is a potential
embarrassment to this city and this department of
unimaginable proportions. This could —”
“Look, man, I am telling you to forget about it. Understand? I
am trying to help you out here.”
Irving studied him again for a long moment. He shifted his
weight to the other foot. The vein on his scalp pulsed with new
life. Bosch knew it would not sit well with him, to have
someone like Harry Bosch keeping such a secret. Teresa
Corazón he could deal with because they both played on the
same field. But Bosch was different. Harry rather enjoyed the
moment, though the long silence was getting old.
“I checked with the DEA on that fiasco down there. They said
this man they believe to be Zorrillo escaped. They don’t know
where he is.”
It was a half-assed effort to get Bosch to open up. It didn’t
work.
“They never will know.”
Irving said nothing to this but Bosch knew better than to
interrupt his silence. He was working up to something. Harry
let him work, watching as the assistant chief’s massive jaw
muscles bunched into hard pads.
“Bosch, I want to know right now if there is a problem on this.
Even a potential problem. Because I have to know in the next
three minutes whether to walk over there in front of the chief
and the mayor and all of those cameras and put a stop to this.”
“What’s the DEA doing now?”
“What can they do? They are watching the airports, contacting
local authorities. Putting his photo and description out. There
is not a lot they can do. He is gone. At least, they say. I want to
know if he is going to stay gone.”
Bosch nodded and said, “They’re never going to find the man
they are looking for, Chief.”
“Convince me, Bosch.”
“Can’t do that.”
“And why not?”
“Trust goes two ways. So does the lack of trust.”
Irving seemed to consider this and Bosch thought he saw an
almost imperceptible nod.
Bosch said, “The man they are looking for, who they believe
to be Zorrillo, is in the wind and he isn’t coming back. That’s
all you need to know.”
Bosch thought of the body on the bed at Castillo de los Ojos.
The face was already gone. Another two weeks and the flesh
would go. No fingerprints. No identification, other than the
bogus credentials in the wallet. The tattoo would stay intact for
a while. But there were plenty who had that tattoo, including
the fugitive Zorrillo.
He had left the money there, too. An added precaution, enough
there maybe to convince the first finder not to bother calling
the authorities. Just take the money and run.
Using a handkerchief, he had wiped the shotgun of his prints
and left it. He locked the house, wrapped the chain through the
black bars of the gate and closed the hasp on the lock, careful
to wipe each surface. Then he had headed home to L.A.
“The DEA, are they putting a nice spin on things yet?” he
asked Irving.
“They’re working on it,” Irving said. “I am told the smuggling
network has been closed down. They have ascertained that the
drug called black ice was manufactured on the ranch, taken
through tunnels to two nearby businesses, then moved across
the border. The shipment would make a detour, probably in
Calexico, where it would be removed and the delivery van
would go on. Both businesses have been seized. One of them,
a contractor with the state to provide sterile medflies, will
probably prove embarrassing.”
“EnviroBreed.”
“Yes. By tomorrow they will finish comparisons between the
bills of lading shown by drivers at the border and the receipt of
cargo records at the eradication center here in Los Angeles. I
am told these documents were altered or forged. In other
words more sealed boxes passed through the border than were
received at the center.”
“Inside help.”
“Most likely. The on-site inspector for the USDA was either
dumb or corrupt. I don’t know which is worse.”
Irving brushed some imaginary impurity off the shoulder of
his uniform. It could not be hair or dandruff, since he had
neither. He turned away from Bosch to face the coffin and the
thick gathering of officers around it. The ceremony was about
to begin. He squared his shoulders and without turning back,
he said, “I don’t know what to think, Bosch. I don’t know
whether you have me or not.”
Bosch didn’t answer. That would be one Irving would have to
worry about.
“Just remember,” Irving said. “You have just as much to lose
as the department. More. The department can always come
back, always recover. It might take a good long time but it
always comes back. The same can’t be said for the individual
who gets tarred with the brush of scandal.”
Bosch smiled in a sad way. Never leave a thing uncovered.
That was Irving. His parting shot was a threat, a threat that if
Bosch ever used his knowledge against the department, he,
too, would go down. Irving would personally see to it.
“Are you afraid?” Bosch asked.
“Afraid of what, Detective?”
“Of everything. Of me. Yourself. That it won’t hold together.
That I might be wrong. Everything, man. Aren’t you afraid of
everything?”
“The only thing that I fear are people without a conscience.
Who act without thinking their actions through. I don’t think
you are like that.”
Bosch just shook his head.
“So let’s get down to it, Detective. I have to rejoin the chief
and I see the mayor has arrived. What is it you want, provided
it is within my authority to provide?”
“I wouldn’t take anything from you,” Bosch said very quietly.
“That’s what you just don’t seem to get.”
Irving finally turned around to face him again.
“You are right, Bosch. I really don’t understand you. Why risk
everything for nothing? You see? It raises my concerns about
you all over again. You don’t play for the team. You play for
yourself.”
Bosch looked steadily at Irving and didn’t smile, though he
wanted to. Irving had paid him a fine compliment, though the
assistant chief would never realize it.
“What happened down there had nothing to do with the
department,” he said. “If I did anything at all, I did it for
somebody and something else.”
Irving stared back blankly, his jaw flexing as he ground his
teeth. There was a crooked smile below the gleaming skull. It
was then that Bosch recognized the similarity to the tattoos on
the arms of Moore and Zorrillo. The devil’s mask. He watched
as Irving’s eyes lit on something and he nodded knowingly. He
looked back at Sylvia and then returned his gaze to Bosch.
“A noble man, is that it? All of this to insure a widow’s
pension?”
Bosch didn’t answer. He wondered if it was a guess or Irving
knew something. He couldn’t tell.
“How do you know she wasn’t part of it?” Irving said.
“I know.”
“But how can you be sure? How can you take the chance?”
“The same way you’re sure. The letter.”
“What about it?”
Bosch had done nothing but think about Moore on his way
back. He had had four hours of driving on the open road to put
it together. He thought he had it.
“Moore wrote the letter himself,” he began. “He informed on
himself, you could say. He had this plan. The letter was the
start. He wrote it.”
He stopped to light a cigarette. Irving didn’t say a word. He
just waited for the story.
“For reasons that I guess go back to when he was a boy,
Moore fucked up. He crossed and after he was already on the
other side he realized there is no crossing back. But he
couldn’t go on, he had to get out. Somehow.
“His plan was to start the IAD investigation with that letter. He
put just enough in the letter so Chastain would be convinced
there was something to it, but not enough that Chastain would
be able to find anything. The letter would just serve to cloud
his name, put him under suspicion. He had been in the
department long enough to know how it would go. He’d seen
the way IAD and people like Chastain operate. The letter set
the stage, made the water murky enough so that when he
turned up dead at the motel the department, meaning you,
wouldn’t want to look too closely at it. You’re an open book,
Chief. He knew you’d move quickly and efficiently to protect
the department first, find out what really happened second. So
he sent the letter. He used you, Chief. He used me, too.”
Irving turned toward the grave site. The ceremony was about
to begin. He turned back to Bosch.
“Go ahead, Detective. Quickly, please.”
“Layer after layer. Remember, you told me he had rented that
room for a month. That was the first layer. If he hadn’t been
discovered for a month decomp would’ve taken care of things.
There would have been no skin left to print. That would leave
only the latents he left in the room and he’d’ve been home
free.”
“But he was found a few weeks early,” Irving helpfully
interjected. “Yeah. That brings us to the second layer. You.
Moore had been a cop a long time. He knew what you would
do. He knew you’d go to personnel and grab his package.”
“That’s a big gamble, Bosch.”
“You ask me, it was a better-than-even bet. Christmas night,
when I saw you there with the file, I knew what it was before
you said. So I can see Moore taking the gamble and switching
the print cards. Like I said, he was gambling it would never
come to that anyway. You were the second layer.”
“And you? You were the third?”
“Yeah, the way I figure it. He used me as a sort of last backup.
In case the suicide didn’t wash, he wanted somebody who’d
look at it and see a reason for Moore to have been murdered.
That was me. I did that. He left the file for me and I went for
it, thought he’d been killed over it. It was all a deflection. He
just didn’t want anybody looking too closely at who was
actually on the tile floor in the motel. He just wanted some
time.”
“But you went too far, Bosch. He never planned on that.”
“I guess not.”
Bosch thought about his meeting with Moore in the tower. He
still hadn’t decided whether Moore had been expecting him,
even waiting for him. Waiting for Harry to come kill him. He
didn’t think he’d ever know. That was Calexico Moore’s last
mystery.
“Time for what?” Irving asked.
“What?”
“You said he just wanted some time.”
“I think he wanted time to go down there, take Zorrillo’s place
and then take the money and run. I don’t think he wanted to be
the pope forever. He just wanted to live in a castle again.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
They were silent a moment before Bosch finished up.
“Most of this I know you already have, Chief.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you do. I think you figured it out after Chastain told
you that Moore sent the letter himself.”
“And how did Detective Chastain know that?”
He wasn’t going to give Bosch anything. That was okay,
though. Harry found that telling the story helped clarify it. It
was like holding it up to inspect for holes.
“After he got the letter, Chastain thought it was the wife who
sent it. He went to her house and she denied it. He asked for
her typewriter because he was going to make sure and she
slammed the door in his face. But she didn’t do it before
saying she didn’t even have a typewriter. So then, after Moore
turns up dead, Chastain starts thinking about things and takes
the machine out of Moore’s office at the station. My guess is
he matched the keys to the letter. From that point, it wouldn’t
be difficult to figure out the letter came from either Moore or
somebody in the BANG squad. My guess is that Chastain
interviewed them this week and concluded they hadn’t done it.
The letter was typed by Moore.”
Irving didn’t confirm any of it but didn’t have to. Bosch knew.
It all fit.
“Moore had a good plan, Chief. He played us like cheater’s
solitaire. He knew every card in the deck before it was turned
over.”
“Except for one,” Irving said. “You. He didn’t think you’d
come looking.”
Bosch didn’t reply. He looked over at Sylvia again. She was
innocent. And she would be safe. He noticed Irving turn his
gaze on her, too.
“She’s clear,” Bosch said. “You know it. I know it. If you
make trouble for her, I’ll make trouble for you.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was an offer. A deal. Irving considered it a
moment and nodded his head once. A blunt agreement.
“Did you speak to him down there, Bosch?”
Harry knew he meant Moore and he knew he couldn’t answer.
“What did you do down there?”
After a few moments of silence Irving turned and walked as
upright as a Nazi back to the rows of chairs holding the VIPs
and top brass of the department. He took a seat his adjutant
had been saving in the row behind Sylvia Moore. He never
looked back at Bosch once.
34
Through the entire service Bosch had watched her from his
position next to the oak tree. Sylvia Moore rarely raised her
head, even to watch the line of cadets fire blanks into the sky
or when the air squad flew over, the helicopters arranged in the
missing-man formation. One time he thought she glanced over
at him, or at least in his direction, but he couldn’t be sure. He
thought of her as being stoic. And he thought of her as being
beautiful.
When it was over and the casket was in the hole and the
people were moving away, she stayed seated and Bosch saw
her wave away an offer from Irving to be escorted back to the
limousine. The assistant chief sauntered off, smoothing his
collar against his neck. Finally, when the area around the
burial site was clear, she stood up, glanced once down into the
hole, and then started walking toward Bosch. Her steps were
punctuated by the slamming of car doors all across the
cemetery. She took the sunglasses off as she came.
“You took my advice,” she said.
This immediately confused him. He looked down at his
clothes and then back at her. What advice? She read him and
answered.
“The black ice, remember? You have to be careful. You’re
here, so I assume you were.”
“Yes, I was careful.”
He saw that her eyes were very clear and she seemed even
stronger than the last time they had encountered each other.
They were eyes that would not forget a kindness. Or a slight.
“I know there is more than what they have told me. Maybe
you will tell me sometime?”
He nodded and she nodded. There was a moment of silence as
they looked at each other that was neither long or short. It
seemed to Bosch to be a perfect moment. The wind gusted and
broke the spell. Some of her hair broke loose from the barrette
and she pushed it back with her hand.
“I would like that,” she said.
“Whenever you want,” he said. “Maybe you’ll tell me a few
things, too.”
“Such as?”
“That picture that was missing from the picture frame. You
knew what it was, but you didn’t tell me.”
She smiled as if to say he had focused his attention on
something unnecessary and trivial.
“It was just a picture of him and his friend from the barrio.
There were other pictures in the bag.”
“It was important but you didn’t say anything.”
She looked down at the grass.
“I just didn’t want to talk or think about it anymore.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Of course. That’s what happens. The things you don’t want to
know or remember or think about come back to haunt you.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“You know, don’t you?” he finally said.
“That that wasn’t my husband buried there? I had an idea, yes.
I knew there was more than what people were telling me. Not
you, especially. The others.”
He nodded and the silence grew long but not uncomfortable.
She turned slightly and looked over at the driver standing next
to the limo, waiting. There was nobody left in the cemetery.
“There is something I hope you will tell me,” she said. “Either
now or sometime. If you can, I mean. … Um, is he … is there
a chance he will be back?”
Bosch looked at her and slowly shook his head. He studied her
eyes for reaction. Sadness or fear, even complicity. There was
none. She looked down at her gloved hands, which grasped
each other in front of her dress.
“My driver …,” she said, not finishing the thought.
She tried a polite smile and for the hundredth time he asked
himself what had been wrong with Calexico Moore. She took
a step forward and touched her hand to his cheek. It felt warm,
even through the silk glove, and he could smell perfume on
her wrist. Something very light. Not really a smell. A scent.
“I guess I should go,” she said.
He nodded and she backed away.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded. He didn’t know what he was being thanked for but
all he could do was nod.
“Will you call? Maybe we could …I don’t know. I —”
“I will call.”
Now she nodded and turned to walk back to the black
limousine. He hesitated and then spoke up.
“You like jazz? The saxophone?”
She stopped and turned back to him. There was sharpness in
her eyes. That need for touch. It was so clear he could feel it
cut him. He thought maybe it was his own reflection.
“Especially the solos,” she said. “The ones that are lonely and
sad. I love those.”
“There is … is tomorrow night too soon?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“I know. I was thinking …I guess it might not be the right
time. The other night — that was …I don’t know.”
She walked back to him and put her hand on his neck and
pulled his face down to hers. He went willingly. They kissed
for a long time and Bosch kept his eyes closed. When she let
him go he didn’t look to see if anyone was watching. He didn’t
care.
“What is a right time?” she asked.
He had no answer.
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
He smiled and she smiled.
She turned for the last time and walked to the car, her high
heels clicking on the asphalt once she left the carpet of grass.
Bosch leaned back against the tree and watched the driver
open the door for her. Then he lit a cigarette and watched as
the sleek black machine carried her out through the ga te and
left him alone with the dead.
Table of Contents
The
Black
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
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