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 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 fuck 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 answer 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 GutierrezLlosa. 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 fucking 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 the 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 waist-band 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 wha
t 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 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 fucked 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?”
The Harry Bosch Novels Page 66