Harry Bosch 02 - The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  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 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?"

  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 fuckin' 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?"

&nb
sp; "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.

  Twenty-Four

  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 through 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 imbedded 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, was that they were strictly aimed at deterring entry, not sounding an alert once security had been breached. 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.