The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  He turned on the lights as he moved through the rooms. There were empty glasses on nearly every horizontal surface. The bed was unmade and the sheets were a dingy white. Amidst the glasses on the night table was an ashtray overloaded with butts. There was also a statue of a saint Bosch could not identify. In the bathroom off the bedroom, the bathtub was filthy, a toothbrush was on the floor and in the wastebasket there was an empty bottle of whiskey, a brand either so expensive or so cheap that Harry had never heard of it. But he suspected it was the latter.

  In the kitchen, there was another empty bottle in the trash can. There were also dirty dishes piled on the counters and sink. He opened the refrigerator and saw only a jar of mustard and an egg carton. Porter's place was very much like its owner. It showed a marginal life, if it could be called that at all.

  Back in the living room Bosch picked a framed photograph up off a table next to a yellow couch. It was a woman. Not too attractive, except to Porter maybe. An ex-wife he couldn't get over. Maybe. Harry put the photo back down and the phone rang.

  He traced the noise to the bedroom. The phone was on the floor next to the bed. He picked up on the seventh ring, waited a moment and in a voice designed to appear jerked from sleep said, "Huh?"

  "Porter?"

  "Yeah."

  The line went dead. It hadn't worked. But had Bosch recognized the voice? Pounds? No, not Pounds. Only one word spoken. But, still, the accent was there. Spanish, he thought. He filed it away in his mind and got up off the bed. Another plane crossed above and the trailer shuddered. He went back into the living room where he made a half-hearted search of a one-drawer desk, though he knew that no matter what he found it wouldn't solve the immediate problem: where was Porter?

  Bosch turned all the lights off and relocked the front door as he left. He decided to start in North Hollywood and work his way south toward downtown. In every police division there was a handful of bars that carried a heavy clientele of cops. Then after two, when they closed, there were the all-night bottle clubs. Mostly they were dark pits where men came to drink hard and quietly, as if their lives depended on it. They were havens from the street, places to go to forget and forgive yourself. It was at one of these Bosch believed he would find Porter.

  He began with a place on Kittridge called the Parrot. But the bartender, a one-time cop himself, said he hadn't seen Porter since Christmas Eve. Next, he went to the 502 on Lankershim and then Saint's on Cahuenga. They knew Porter in these places but he hadn't been at either tonight.

  It went like that until two. By then, Bosch had worked his way down into Hollywood. He was sitting in his car in front of the Bullet, trying to think of nearby bottle-club locations, when his pager went off. He checked the number and didn't recognize it. He went back into the Bullet to use the pay phone. The lights in the bar came on after he dialed. Last call was over.

  "Bosch?"

  "Yeah."

  "It's Rickard. Bad time?"

  "Nah. I'm at the Bullet."

  "Hell, man, then you're close by."

  "For what? You got Dance?"

  "Nah, not quite. I'm at a rave behind Cahuenga and south of the boulevard. Couldn't sleep so I thought I'd do some hunting. No Dance but I got my eye on one of his old salesmen. One of the ones that was on the shake cards in the file. Name's Kerwin Tyge."

  Bosch thought a moment. He remembered the name. He was one of the juvies the BANG team had stopped and checked out, tried to scare off the street. His name was on one of the file cards in the ice file Moore had left behind.

  "What's a rave?"

  "An underground. They got a warehouse off this alley. A fly-by-night party. Digital music. They'll run all night, 'til about six. Next week it will be somewhere else."

  "How'd you find it?"

  "They're easy to find. The record stores on Melrose put out the phone numbers. You call the number, get on the list. Twenty bucks to get in. Get stoned and dance 'til dawn."

  "He selling black ice?"

  "Nah, he's selling sherms out front."

  A sherm was a cigarette dipped in liquid PCP. Went for twenty bucks a dip and would leave its smoker dusted all night. Tyge apparently was no longer working for Dance.

  "I figure we can make a righteous bust," Rickard said. "After that, we might squeeze Dance out of his ass. I think Dance has blown, but the kid might know where. It's up to you. I don't know how important Dance is to you."

  "Where do you want me?" Bosch asked.

  "Come west on the Boulevard and just when you pass Cahuenga come south at the very next alley. The one that comes down behind the porno shops. It's dark but you'll see the blue neon arrow. That's the place. I'm about a half block north in a red piece-of-shit Camaro. Nevada plates. I'll be waiting. Hafta figure out a scam or something to grab him with the shit."

  "You know where the dip is?"

  "Yeah. He's got it in a beer bottle in the gutter. Keeps going in and out. Brings his clients outside. I'll think of something by the time you get here."

  Bosch hung up and went back out to the car. It took him fifteen minutes to get there because of all the cruisers on the Boulevard. In the alley he parked illegally behind the red Camaro. He could see Rickard sitting low in the driver's seat.

  "Top of the morning to ya," the narc said when Bosch slipped into the Camaro's passenger seat.

  "Same. Our boy still around?"

  "Oh, yeah. Seems like he's having a good night, too. He's selling shermans like they're the last thing on earth. Too bad we gotta spoil his fun."

  Bosch looked down the dark alley. In the intervals of blue light cast by a blinking neon arrow he could see a grouping of people in dark clothes in front of a door in the brick siding of the warehouse. Occasionally, the door would open and someone would go in or come out. He could hear the music when the door was open. Loud, techno-rock, a driving bass that seemed to shake the street. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the people outside were drinking and smoking, cooling off after dancing. A few of them held blown-up balloons. They would lean on the hoods of the cars near the door, suck from the balloon and pass it on as if it were a joint.

  "The balloons are full of nitrous oxide," Rickard said.

  "Laughing gas?"

  "Right. They sell it at these raves for five bucks a balloon. They can make a couple grand off one tank stolen from a hospital or dentist."

  A girl fell off a car hood and her balloon of gas shot away into the dark. Others helped her up. Bosch could hear their shrieks of laughter.

  "That legal?"

  "It's a flopper. It's legal to possess—a lot of legit uses for it. But it's a misdee to consume recreationally. We don't even bother with it, though. Somebody wants to suck on it and fall down and split their head open, have at it, I say. Why should—there he is now."

  The slight figure of a teenager walked through the warehouse door and over to the cars parked along the alley.

  "Watch him go down," Rickard said.

  The figure disappeared behind a car, dropping down.

  "See, he's making a dip. Now he'll wait a few minutes 'til it dries a little and his customer comes out. Then he'll make the deal."

  "Want to go get him?"

  "No. We take him with just the one sherm, that's nothing. That's personal possession. They won't even keep him overnight in the drunk tank. We need him with his dip if we wanna squeeze him good."

  "So what do we do?"

  "You just get back in your car. I want you to go back around on Cahuenga and come up the alley the other way. I think you can get in closer. Park it and then try to work your way up to be my backup. I'll come down from this end. I got some old clothes in the trunk. Undercover shit. I got a plan."

  Bosch then went back to the Caprice, turned it around and drove out of the alley. He drove around the block and came up from the south side. He found a spot in front of a Dumpster and stopped. When he saw the hunched-over figure of Rickard moving down the alley, Harry got out and started moving. They were closing in on the w
arehouse door from both sides. But while Bosch remained in the shadows, Rickard—now wearing a grease-stained sweatshirt and carrying a bag of laundry—was walking down the center of the alley, singing. Because of the noise from the warehouse Bosch wasn't sure but he thought it was Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman," delivered in a drunken slur.

  Rickard had the undivided attention of the people standing outside the warehouse door. A couple of the stoned girls cheered his singing. The distraction allowed Bosch to move within four cars of the door and about three cars from the spot where Tyge had his dip.

  As he passed the spot, Rickard stopped his song in mid-chorus and acted as if he had just spotted a treasure. He ducked between the two parked cars and came up with the beer bottle in hand. He was about to place it in his bag when the boy moved quickly between the cars and grabbed the bottle. Rickard refused to let go and spun so that the boy's back was now to Bosch. Harry started moving.

  "It's mine, man," Rickard yelled.

  "I put it there, bro. Let it go before it spills."

  "Go get your own, man. This here's mine."

  "Let it go!"

  "You sure it's yours?"

  "It's mine!"

  Bosch hit the boy forcefully from behind. He let go of the bottle and doubled over the trunk of the car. Bosch kept him pinned there, pushing his forearm against the boy's neck. The bottle stayed in Rickard's hand. None of it spilled.

  "Well, if you say so, I guess it's yours," the narc said. "And I guess that makes you under arrest."

  Bosch pulled his cuffs off his belt and hooked the boy up and then pulled him off the trunk. Some of the others were gathering around now.

  "Fuck off, people," Rickard said loudly. "Go back inside and sniff your laughing gas. Go get deaf. This here don't concern you unless you want to go along with this boy to the shit can."

  He bent down to Tyge's ear and said, "Right, bro?"

  When nobody in the crowd moved, Rickard took a menacing step toward them and they scattered. A couple of the girls ran back into the warehouse. The music drowned out Rickard's laugh. He then turned around and grabbed Tyge by the arm.

  "Let's go. Harry, let's take your wheels."

  They drove in silence for a while toward the station on Wilcox. They hadn't discussed it earlier but Harry was going to let Rickard make the play. Rickard was riding in the back with the boy. In the mirror, Harry saw he had greasy, unkempt brown hair that fell to his shoulders. About five years earlier he should have had braces put on his teeth but one look at him and Bosch could tell he came from a home where things like that were not a consideration. He had a gold earring and an uninterested look on his face. But the teeth were what got to Bosch. Crooked and protruding, they more than anything else showed the desperation of his life.

  "How old are you now, Kerwin?" Rickard said. "And don't bother lying. We got a file on you at the station. I can check."

  "Eighteen. And you can wipe your ass with the file. I don't give a shit."

  "Wooo!" Rickard yelped. "Eighteen. Looks like we got ourselves an A-dult here, Harry. No holding hands all the way to the juvie hall. We'll go put this kid in seven thousand, see how quick he starts keeping house with one of the heavies."

  Seven thousand was what most cops and criminals called the county adult detention center, on account of the phone number for inmate information, 555-7000. The jail was downtown and it was four floors of noise and hate and violence sitting atop the county sheriff's headquarters. Somebody was stabbed there every day. Somebody raped every hour. And nothing was ever done about it. Nobody cared, unless you were the one getting raped or stabbed. The sheriff's deputies who ran the place called it an NHI detail. No Humans Involved. Bosch knew if they were going to squeeze this kid that Rickard had picked the right way to go.

  "We got you bagged and tagged, Kerwin," Rickard said. "There's at least two ounces in here. Got you cold for possession with intent to sell, dude. You're gone."

  "Fuck you."

  The kid drew each word out with sarcasm. He was going to go down fighting. Bosch noticed that Rickard was holding the green beer bottle outside the window so the fumes wouldn't fill the car and give them headaches.

  "That's not nice, Kerwin. Especially, when the man driving here is willing to do a deal. . . . Now if it was me, I'd just let you make your deals with the brothers in seven thousand. Couple days there and you'll be shaving your legs and walking 'round in pink underwear they dipped in the Hawaiian Punch."

  "Fuck off pig. Just get me to a phone."

  They were on Sunset, coming up to Wilcox. Almost there and Rickard hadn't even gotten around to what they wanted. It didn't look as if the kid was going to deal, no matter what they wanted.

  "You'll get a phone when we feel like giving you a phone. You're tough now, white boy, but it don't last. Everybody gets broken down inside. You'll see. Unless you want to help us out. We just want to talk to your pal Dance."

  Bosch turned onto Wilcox. The station was two blocks away. The kid said nothing and Rickard let the silence go for a block before giving another try.

  "What do you say, kid? Give an address. I'll dump this shit right now. Don't be one of those fools who think seven thousand makes them the man. Like it's some fucking rite of passage. It ain't, kid. It's just the end of the line. That what you want?"

  "I want you to die."

  Bosch pulled into the driveway that led to the station's rear parking lot. They would have to process the arrest here first, book the evidence, then take the kid downtown. Harry knew they would have to go through with it. The kid wasn't talking. They had to show him that they weren't bluffing.

  Twelve

  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 T
hird 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.