The Black Ice

Twenty-Three
BOSCH STOOD AT THE WINDOW OF HIS THIRD-floor room in the Hotel Colorado on Calzado Justo Sierra and looked out at what he could see of Mexicali. To his left the view was obscured by the other wing of the hotel. But looking out to the right he saw the streets were clogged with cars and the colorful buses he had seen earlier. He could hear a mariachi band playing somewhere. There was the smell of frying grease in the air from a nearby restaurant. And the sky above the ramshackle city was purple and red in the day's dying light. In the distance he could see the buildings of the justice center and, near them to the right, the rounded shape of a stadium. Plaza de los Toros.
He had called Corvo in Los Angeles two hours earlier, left his number and location, and was waiting for a call back from his man in Mexicali, Ramos. He walked away from the window and looked at the phone. He knew it was time to make the rest of the calls but he hesitated. He grabbed a beer out of the tin ice bucket on the bureau and opened it. He drank a quarter of it and sat on the bed next to the phone.
There were three messages on the phone tape at his home, all of them from Pounds saying the same thing. "Call me."
But he didn't. Instead, he called the homicide table first. It was Saturday night but the chances were it would still be all hands on deck because of Porter. Jerry Edgar answered.
"What's the situation?"
"Shit, man, you gotta come in." He was speaking in a very low voice. "Everybody's looking for you. RHD's got the lead on this thing so I don't know exactly what's happening. I'm just one of the gofers. But, I think, uh, . . . I don't know, man."
"What? Say it."
"It's like they think you either did Porter or you might be next. It's hard to gauge what the f*ck they're doing or thinking."
"Who's there?"
"Everybody. This is the command post. Irving's in there in the box with Ninety-eight now."
Bosch knew he couldn't let it go on much further. He had to call in. He might have already damaged himself beyond repair.
"Okay," he said. "I'm going to call them. I have to make one other call first. Thanks."
Bosch hung up and dialed another number, hoping he had remembered it correctly and that she would be home. It was near seven and he thought maybe she had gone out for dinner, but then she picked up on the sixth ring.
"It's Bosch. A bad time?"
"What do you want?" Teresa said. "Where are you? Everybody's looking for you, you know."
"I heard. But I'm outta town. I was just calling 'cause I heard they found my friend Lucius Porter."
"Yeah, they did. Sorry. I just got back from the cut."
"Yeah, I figured you'd do it."
And then silence before she said, "Harry, why do I get the feeling you want—that you aren't calling just because he was your friend?"
"Well . . ."
"Oh, shit, here we go again, right?"
"No. I just wanted to know how he got it is all. He was a friend. I worked with him. Never mind."
"I don't know why I let you do this to me. Shit. Mexican necktie, Harry. There, you happy? Got all you need now?"
"Garrote?"
"Yes. Steel baling wire, wrapped at the ends around two wooden pegs. I'm sure you've seen it before. Do I get to read this in the Times tomorrow, too?"
He was silent until he was sure she was done. He looked from the bed to the open window and saw the daylight was now completely gone. The sky was a deep red wine. He thought of the man at Poe's. Three tears.
"Did you do a compar—"
"Comparison to the Jimmy Kapps case? Yes. We're way ahead of you, but it won't be done for a few days."
"How come?"
"Because it takes that long to do wood-fiber testing between the dowel pegs and alloy-content analysis on the baling wire. We did do a cut analysis on the wire, though. It looks very good."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it looks like the wire on the garrote used to kill Porter was cut from the same length of wire used to kill Kapps. The ends match. It's not one hundred percent because similar pliers will leave similar cut tracings. So we are doing the metal-alloy comparison. We'll know in a few days."
She seemed so matter-of-fact about it all. He was surprised she was still angry with him. The television reports of the night before seemed to be in her favor. He didn't know what to say. He had gone from being at ease in bed with her to being nervous on the phone with her.
"Thanks, Teresa," he finally said. "I'll see you."
"Harry?" she said before he could hang up.
"Yeah?"
"When you get back, I don't think you should call me again. I think we should keep it professional. If we see each other in the suite, then that's fine. But let's leave it there."
He didn't say anything.
"Okay?"
"Sure."
They hung up. Bosch sat without moving for several minutes. Finally, he picked the phone up again and dialed the direct line into the glass box. Pounds picked up immediately.
"It's Bosch."
"Where are you?"
"Mexicali. You left messages?"
"I called the hotel on your tape. They said you never checked in."
"I decided to stay on the other side of the border."
"Never mind the bullshit. Porter is dead."
"What!" Bosch tried his best to make it seem real. "What happened? I just saw him yesterday. He—"
"Never mind the bullshit, Bosch. What are you doing down there?"
"You told me to go where the case followed. It led here."
"I never told you to go to Mexico." He was yelling. "I want you back here ten minutes ago. This does not look good for you. We have a bartender that so help me Christ is ready to put your dick in the dirt on this. He—hang on."
"Bosch," a new voice on the line said. "Assistant Chief Irving here. What is your location?"
"I'm in Mexicali."
"I want you in my office at oh eight hundred tomorrow."
Bosch didn't hesitate. He knew he could not show any weakness.
"Can't do that, Chief. I have some unfinished business here that'll probably take me through tomorrow at least."
"We are talking about a fellow officer's murder here, Detective. I don't know if you realize this, but you could be in danger yourself."
"I know what I am doing. It's a fellow officer's murder that brings me here. Remember? Or doesn't Moore matter?"
Irving ignored that.
"You are refusing my direct order to return?"
"Look, Chief, I don't care what some bartender is telling you, you know I wasn't the doer."
"I never said that. But your conversation already reveals that you know more about this than you should if you were not involved."
"All I'm saying is that the answers to a lot of questions—about Moore, Porter and the rest—are down here. It's all down here. I'm staying."
"Detective Bosch, I was wrong about you. I gave you a lot of rope this time because I thought I detected a change in you. I see now that I was wrong. You fooled me again. You—"
"Chief, I am doing my—"
"Don't interrupt me! You may be unwilling to follow my explicit commands to return but don't you interrupt me. I am telling you that you don't want to return, fine. Don't. But you might as well never return, Bosch. Think about that. What you had before won't be waiting when you get back."
After Irving hung up Bosch picked a second bottle of Tecate from the bucket and lit a cigarette at the window. He didn't care about Irving's threats. Not that much, at least. He'd probably draw a suspension, maybe five days max. He could handle that. But Irving wouldn't move Bosch. Where could he send him? There weren't very many places lower than Hollywood. Instead, Bosch thought about Porter. He had been able to put it off, put it out of his mind. But now he had to think about Porter. Strangled with baling wire, left in a Dumpster. Poor bastard. But something in Bosch refused to let him grant the dead cop sympathy. Nothing about it touched his heart the way he thought it would, or should. It was a pitiful end of life. But he felt no pity. Porter had made fatal mistakes. Bosch promised himself that he would not and that he would go on.
He tried to focus on Zorrillo. Harry was sure that it was the pope who was manipulating things, who had sent the assassin to clean up the loose ends. If it was likely the same man had killed both Kapps and Porter, it was then easy to add Moore in as a victim as well. And possibly even Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa. The man with three tears. Did that leave Dance off the hook? Bosch doubted it. It might have taken Dance to lure Moore to the Hideaway. His thoughts reassured him that he was doing the right thing staying. The answers were here, not in L.A.
He went to his briefcase on the bureau and took out the mug shot of Dance that had been in the file Moore had put together. He looked at the practiced sulk of a young man who still had a boyish face and bleached blond hair. Now he wanted to move up the ladder and had come south of the border to make his case. Bosch realized that if Dance was in Mexicali he would not blend in easily. He'd have to have help.
The knock on the door startled him. Bosch quietly put down the bottle and took the gun off the night table. Through the peephole he saw a man of about thirty with dark hair and a thick mustache. He was not the room service waiter who had brought the beer.
"Si?"
"Bosch. It's Ramos."
Bosch opened the door on the chain and asked for some identification.
"Are you kidding? I don't carry ID around here. Let me in. Corvo sent me."
"How do I know?"
"Because you called L.A. Operations two hours ago and left your address. I tell you, I really get f*cking paranoid having to explain all of this while standing out in the hallway."
Bosch closed the door, flipped off the chain and reopened it. He kept the gun in his hand but down at his side. Ramos walked past him into he room. He walked up to the window and looked out, then he walked away and began pacing near the bed. He said, "Smells like shit out there. Somebody cooking tortillas or some shit. Got any more brew? And by the way, the federales catch you with that piece and you might have trouble trying to get back across. How come you didn't stay in Calexico like Corvo told you to, man?"
If he had been anyone other than a cop, Bosch would have figured he was coked to the eyelids. But he decided it was probably something else, something he didn't know about yet, that made Ramos seem wired. Bosch picked up the phone and ordered a six-pack from room service, never taking his eyes off the man in his room. After he hung up, he put the gun in his waistband and sat down in the chair by the window.
"I didn't want to deal with the lines at the border," he said in answer to one of Ramos's many questions.
"You didn't want to put your trust in Corvo is what you mean. I don't blame you. Not that I don't trust him. I do. But I can see the need to want to go your own way. They got better food over here, anyway. But Calexico, there's a wild little town. It's one of those places, you never know what kind of shit is going down. You hit that place the wrong way and you go into a slide, man. I like it better over here myself. Did you eat?"
For a moment, Bosch thought about what Sylvia Moore had said about the black ice. Ramos was still pacing the room and Bosch noticed he had two electronic pagers on his belt. The agent was hyped on something. Bosch was sure of it.
"I already ate," Bosch said and moved his chair near the window because the room had taken on the tang of the agent's body odor.
"I know the best Chinese food in two countries. We could pop over for—"
"Hey! Ramos, sit down. You're making me nervous. Just sit down and tell me what's going on."
Ramos looked around himself as if seeing the room for the first time. He dragged a chair away from the wall near the door and straddled it backward in the middle of the room.
"What's going on, man, is that we are not too impressed with the shit you pulled at EnviroBreed today."
Bosch was surprised the DEA knew so much so fast but tried not to show it.
"That was not cool at all," Ramos was saying. "So I came here to tell you to quit the one-man show. Corvo told me that was your bag, but I didn't expect to see it so soon."
"What's the problem?" Bosch said. "It was my lead. From what Corvo said, you people didn't know shit about that place. I went in there to shake 'em up a little bit. That's all."
"These people don't shake, Bosch. That's what I am saying. Now look, enough said. I just wanted to say my little piece and to see what you have going besides the bug place. What I'm asking is, what are you doing here?"
Before Bosch could answer there was a loud knock on the door and the DEA agent jumped up off the chair, coming down in a crouched position.
"It's room service," Bosch said. "What's wrong with you?"
"Always get this way before we jam."
Bosch got up looking curiously at the DEA agent and went to the door. Through the peephole he saw the same man who had delivered the first two beers. He opened the door, paid for the delivery and gave Ramos a bottle from the new bucket.
Ramos chugged half the bottle before sitting back down. Bosch took a beer back to his seat.
"What do you mean by 'before we jam'?"
"Well," Ramos said after another swallow. "The stuff you gave Corvo was good info. But then you canceled that out by cowboying it over there today. You nearly f*cked things up."
"You said that. What did you find out?"
"EnviroBreed. We ran down the info and it's a direct hit. We traced ownership through a bunch of blinds to a Gilberto Ornelas. That's a known alias for a guy named Fernando Ibarra, one of Zorrillo's lieutenants. We are working with the federales on getting search approvals. They are cooperating on this one. This new attorney general they got down here is clean and mean. He's working with us. So it's going to be a major jam, if we get the approval."
"When will you know?"
"Any time. One last piece has to fall."
"What's that?"
"If he's moving black ice across the border in EnviroBreed shipments, then how is he getting it from the ranch to the bug house? See, we've been watching the ranch and would've seen it. And we're pretty sure it's not manufactured at EnviroBreed. Too small, too many people around, too close to the road, et cetera, et cetera. All our intelligence says it's made on the ranch. Underground, in a bunker. We got aerials that show the heat patterns from the ventilation. Anyway, the question is then, how's he get it across the street to EnviroBreed?"
Bosch thought about what Corvo had said at the Code 7. That Zorrillo was suspected of helping to finance the tunnel that went under the border at Nogales.
"He doesn't take it across the street. He takes it under."
"Exactly," Ramos said. "We are working our informants on it right now. We get it confirmed, we get our approval from the attorney general and we go in. We hit the ranch and EnviroBreed simultaneously. Joint operation. The AG sends the federal militia. We send CLET."
Bosch hated all the acronyms law enforcement agencies cling to but asked what CLET was anyway.
"Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team. These guys are f*ckin' ninjas."
Bosch thought this information over. He didn't understand why it was happening so quickly. Ramos was leaving something out. There had to be new intelligence on Zorrillo.
"You've seen him, haven't you? Zorrillo. Or somebody has."
"You got it. And that other little white squirrel you came down looking for. Dance."
"Where? When?"
"We have a CI inside the fence who saw the both of them outside the main compound shooting at targets this morning. And then we—"
"How close was he? The informant."
"Close enough. Not close enough to say 'Howdy do, Mr. Pope' but close enough to make the ID."
Ramos cackled loudly and got up to get another beer. He threw a bottle to Bosch, who wasn't yet done with his first.
"Where had he been?" Bosch asked.
"Christ, who knows? Only thing I care about is that he is back and he is going to be there when the CLETs come through the door. And by the way, you better not bring that gun with you or the federales will hook you up, too. They are giving a special weapons privilege to the CLETs but that is it. The AG is going to sign it—God, I hope this guy never gets bought off or assassinated. Anyway, like I'm saying, if they want you to have a gun, they'll give you something from their own armory."
"And how am I going to know when it goes down?"
Ramos was still standing. He jerked his head back and poured down half the bottle of beer. His odor had totally filled the room. Bosch held his bottle up near his mouth and nose so he'd smell the beer instead of the DEA agent. "We'll let you know," Ramos said. "Take this and wait." He tossed Bosch one of the pagers off his belt.
"You put that on and I'll give you a buzz when we are ready to rock. It will be soon. At least before New Year's, I'm hoping. We gotta move on this. There is no telling how long the target is going to stay in place this time."
He finished the beer and put the bottle on the table. He didn't pick up another. The meeting was done.
"What about my partner?" Bosch asked.
"Who, the Mex? Forget it. He's state. You can't tell him about this, Bosch. The pope has the SJP and the other locals wired. It's a given. Don't trust anybody over there, don't tell anybody over there. Just wear the pager like I said and wait for the beep. Go to the bullfights. Hang by the pool or something. Hell, man, look at yourself. You could use the color."
"I know Aguila better than I know you."
"Did you know he works for a man who is a regular guest of Zorrillo's at the bullfights each Sunday?"
"No," Bosch said. He thought of Grena.
"Did you know that to become a detective in the SJP, the promotion is bought for an average of two thousand dollars, not based on any skill in investigative technique?"
"No."
"I know you didn't. But that's the way it is here. You've got to understand that. Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?"
Bosch nodded and said, "One more thing, I want to come in tomorrow and check your mug books. You have Zorrillo's people?"
"Most of them. What do you want?"
"I'm looking for a guy with three tattooed tears. He's Zorrillo's hit man. He hit another cop yesterday in L.A."
"Jesus! Okay, in the morning, call me at this number. We'll set it up. If you make an ID we'll get the word to the AG. It'll help us get the search approval."
He gave Bosch a card with a phone number on it, nothing else. Then he was gone. Harry put the chain back on the lock.