“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.
Chapter 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 Corazon 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 I
rving 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 Corazon 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 h
ouse, 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.”
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