The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  "Who have you made inquiries with? You called the SJP?"

  "Yeah. They put out a letter to the consulate on the old man. That's how I put it together. I still have to make a formal ID of the body when I'm down there."

  "Yeah, but did you bring up EnviroBreed?"

  "I asked if they ever heard of him working at EnviroBreed."

  Corvo spun back toward the bar with an exasperated sigh.

  "Who did you talk to there?"

  "A captain named Grena."

  "I don't know him. But you've probably spoiled your lead. You just don't go to the locals with this sort of thing. They pick up the phone, tell Zorrillo what you just said and then pick up a bonus at the end of the month."

  "Maybe it's spoiled, maybe it isn't. Grena brushed me off and may think that's it. At least I didn't go walking into the bug place and ask to set up a weather station."

  Neither spoke. Each one thinking about what the other had said so far.

  "I'm going to get down on this right away," Corvo said after a while. "You have to promise me you won't go fucking around with it when you get down there."

  "I'm not promising anything. And so far I've done all the giving here. You haven't said shit."

  "What do you want to know?"

  "About Zorrillo."

  "All you really gotta know is that we've wanted his ass for a long time."

  This time Bosch signaled for two more beers. He lit a cigarette and saw the smoke blur his reflection in the mirror.

  "Only thing you have to know about Zorrillo is that he is one smart fucker and, like I said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he already knows you're coming. Fuckin' SJP. We only deal with the federales. Even them you can trust about as much as an ex-wife."

  Bosch nodded meaningfully, just hoping Corvo would continue.

  "If he doesn't know now, he'll know before you get there. So you've got to watch your ass. And the best way of doing that is not to go. With you, I know, that isn't an option. The second best way is to skip the SJP altogether. You can't trust 'em. The pope has people inside there. Okay?"

  Bosch nodded at him in the mirror. He decided to stop nodding all the time.

  "Now, I know everything I just said went in your ears and out your asshole," Corvo said. "So what I'm willing to do is put you with a guy down there, work it from there. Name's Ramos. You go down, say your howdydos with the local SJPs, act like everything is nice, and then hook up with Ramos."

  "If this EnviroBreed thing pans out and you make a move on Zorrillo, I want to be there."

  "You will. Just hang with Ramos. Okay?"

  Bosch thought it over a few moments and said, "Yeah. Now tell me about Zorrillo. You keep going off on other shit."

  "Zorrillo's been around a long time. We've got intelligence on him going back to the seventies at least. A career doper. One of the bounces on the trampoline, I'd guess you'd call him."

  Bosch had heard the term before but was confident Corvo would get around to explaining it anyway.

  "Black ice is just his latest thing. He was a marijuanito when he was a kid. Pulled out of the barrio by someone like himself today. He took backpacks of grass over the fence when he was twelve, made the truck runs when he was older and just worked his way up. By the eighties, when we had most of our efforts concentrated on Florida, the Colombians contracted with the Mexicans. They flew cocaine to Mexico and the Mexicans took it across the border, using the same old pot trails. Mexicali across to Calexico was one of them. They called the route the Trampoline. The shit bounces from Colombia to Mexico and then up to the states.

  "And Zorrillo became a rich man. From the barrio to that nice big ranch with his own personal guardia and half the cops in Baja on his payroll. And the cycle started over. He pulled most his people out of the slums. He never forgot the barrio and it never forgot him. A lot of loyalty. That's when he got the name El Papa. So once we shifted our resources a little bit to address the cocaine situation in Mexico, the pope moved on to heroin. He had tar labs in the nearby barrios. Always had volunteers to mule it across. For one trip he'd pay one of those poor suckers down there more than they'd make in five years doing anything else."

  Bosch thought of the temptation, that much money for what amounted to so little risk. Even those who were caught spent little time in jail.

  "It was a natural transition to go from tar heroin to black ice. Zorrillo's an entrepreneur. Obviously, this is a drug that is in its infancy as far as awareness in the drug culture goes. But we think he is the country's main supplier. We've got black ice showing up all over the place. New York, Seattle, Chicago, all your large cities. Whatever operation you stumbled over in L.A., that was just a drop in the bucket. One of many. We think he's still running straight heroin with his barrio mules but the ice is his growth product. It's the future and he knows it. He's shifting more and more of his operation into it and he's going to drive Hawaiians out. His overhead is so low, his stuff is selling twenty bucks a cap below the going rate for Hawaiian ice, or glass, or whatever they call it this week. And Zorrillo's stuff is better. He's putting the Hawaiians out of business on the mainland. Then when the demand for this thing really starts to escalate—conceivably as fast as crack did in the mideighties—he'll bump the price and have a virtual monopoly until the others catch up with him.

  "Zorrillo's kinda like one of those fishing boats with the ten-mile net behind it. He's circling around and he's going to pull that sucker closed on all the fish."

  "An entrepreneur," Bosch said, just to be saying something.

  "Yeah, that's what I'd call him. You remember a couple years ago the Border Patrol found the tunnel in Arizona? Went from a warehouse on one side of the border to a warehouse on the other? In Nogales? Well, we think that he was an investor in that. One of them at least. It was probably his idea."

  "But the bottom line is you've never touched him."

  "Nope. Whenever we'd get close, somebody'd end up dead. I guess you'd say he's a violent sort of entrepreneur."

  Bosch envisioned Moore's body in the dingy motel bathroom. Had he been planning to make a move, to go against Zorrillo?

  "Zorrillo's tied in with the eMe," Corvo said. "Word is he can have anybody anywhere whacked out. Supposedly back in the seventies there was all kinds of slaughter going on for control of the pot trails. Zorrillo emerged on top. It was like a gang war, barrio against barrio. He has since united all of them but back then, his was the dominant clan. Saints and Sinners. A lot of the eMe came out of that."

  The eMe was the Mexican Mafia, a Latino gang with control over inmates in most of Mexico's and California's prisons. Bosch knew little about them and had had few cases that involved members. He did know that allegiance to the group was strictly enforced. Infractions were punishable by death.

  "How do you know all of that?" he asked.

  "Informants over the years. The ones that lived to talk about it. We've got a whole history on our friend the pope. I even know he's got a velvet painting of Elvis in his office at the ranch."

  "Did his barrio have a sign?"

  "What do you mean, a sign?"

  "A symbol."

  "It's the devil. With a halo."

  Bosch emptied his beer and looked around the bar. He saw a deputy district attorney he knew was part of a team that rubber-stamped investigations of police shootings. He was sitting alone at a table with a martini. There were a few cops Bosch recognized huddled at other tables. They all were smoking, dinosaurs all. Harry wanted to leave, to go somewhere he could think about this information. The devil with a halo. Moore had it tattooed on his arm. He had come from the same place as Zorrillo. Harry could feel his adrenaline kicking up a notch.

  "How will I get together with Ramos down there?"

  "He'll come to you. Where're you staying?"

  "I don't know."

  "Stay at the De Anza, in Calexico. It's safer on our side of the border. Water's better for you, too."

  "Okay. I'll be there."

&nbs
p; "Another thing is, you can't take a weapon across. I mean, it's easy enough to do. You flash your badge at the crossing and nobody's going to check your trunk. But if something happens down there, the first thing that will be checked is whether you checked your gun in at the police station in Calexico."

  He nodded meaningfully at Bosch.

  "They have a gun locker at Calexico PD where they check weapons for crossing cops. They keep a log, you get a receipt. Professional courtesy. So check a weapon. Don't take it across and then think you can say you left it up here at home. Check it in down there. Get it on the log. Then you don't have a problem. Comprende? It's like having an alibi for your gun in case something happens."

  Bosch nodded. He knew what Corvo was telling him.

  Corvo took out his wallet and gave Bosch a business card. "Call anytime and if I'm not in the office they will locate me. Just tell the operator it's you. I'll leave your name and word that you are to be put through."

  Corvo's speech pattern had changed. He was talking faster. Bosch guessed this was because he was excited about the EnviroBreed tip. The DEA agent was anxious to get on it. Harry studied him in the mirror. The scar on his cheek seemed darker now, as if it had changed color with his mood. Corvo looked at him in the mirror.

  "Knife fight," he said, fingering the scar. "Zihuatenajo. I was under, working a case. Carrying my piece in my boot. Guy got me here before I could get to the boot. Down there they don't have hospitals for shit. They did a bad job on it and I ended up with this. I couldn't go under anymore. Too recognizable."

  Bosch could tell he liked telling the story. He was stoked with bravado as he told it. It was probably the one time he had come close to his own end. Bosch knew what Corvo was waiting for him to ask. He asked anyway.

  "And the guy who did it? What did he get?"

  "A state burial. I put him down once I got to my piece."

  Corvo had found a way to make killing a man who brought a knife to a gunfight sound heroic. At least to his own ears. He probably told the story a lot, every time he caught someone new looking at the scar. Bosch nodded respectfully and slipped off his stool and put money on the bar.

  "Remember our deal. You don't move on Zorrillo without me. Make sure you tell Ramos."

  "Oh, we've got a deal," Corvo said. "But I'm not guaranteeing it will happen when you're down there. We aren't going to rush anything. Besides, we've lost Zorrillo. Temporarily, I'm sure."

  "What are you talking about, you've lost him?"

  "I mean we haven't had a bona fide sighting in about ten days or so. We think he's there on the ranch, though. He's just laying low, changing his routine."

  "Routine?"

  "The pope is a man who likes to be seen. He likes to taunt us. Usually, he rides the ranch in a Jeep, hunting coyotes, shooting his Uzi, admiring his bulls. There is one bull in particular, a champion that once killed a matador. El Temblar, he is called. Zorrillo often goes out to watch this bull. It's like him, I guess. Very proud.

  "Anyway, Zorrillo has not been seen on the ranch or the Plaza de Toros, which was his Sunday custom. He hasn't been seen cruising the barrios, reminding himself of where he came from. He's a well-known figure in them all. He gets off on this pope of Mexicali shit."

  Bosch tried to imagine Zorrillo's life. A celebrity in a town that celebrated nothing. He lit a cigarette. He wanted to get out of there.

  "So when was the last bona fide?"

  "If he is still there, he hasn't come out of the compound since December fifteenth. That was a Sunday. He was at the plaza watching his bulls. That's the last bona fide. After that, we have some informants who move that up to the eighteenth. They say they saw him at the compound, dicking around outside. But that's it. He's either split or he is laying low, like I said."

  "Maybe because he ordered a cop blown away."

  Corvo nodded.

  Bosch left alone after that. Corvo said he was going to use the pay phone. Harry stepped out of the bar, felt the brisk night air and took the last drag on his cigarette. He saw movement in the darkness of the park across the street. Then one of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a marching band in a world somewhere else.

  Eighteen

  THE APARTMENT BUILDING WHERE CAL MOORE had lived was a three-story affair that stuck out on Franklin about the same way cabs do at the airport. It was one of the many stuccoed, post–World War II jobs that lined the streets in that area. It was called The Fountains but they had been filled in with dirt and made into planters. It was about a block from the mansion that was headquarters for the Church of Scientology and the complex's white neon sign threw an eerie glow down to where Bosch was standing on the curb. It was near ten o'clock, so he wasn't worried about anyone offering him a personality test. He stood there smoking and studying the apartment building for a half hour before finally deciding to go ahead with the break-in.

  It was a security building but it really wasn't. Bosch slipped the lock on the front gate with a butter knife he kept with his picks in the glove compartment of the Caprice. The next door, the one leading to the lobby, he didn't have to worry about. It needed to be oiled and showed this by not snapping all the way closed. Bosch went through the door, checked a listing of tenants and found Moore's name listed next to number seven, on the third floor.

  Moore's place was at the end of a hallway that split the center of the floor. At the door, Harry saw the police evidence sticker had been placed across the jamb. He cut it with the small penknife attached to his key chain and then knelt down to look at the lock. There were two other apartments on the hallway. He heard no TV sound or talking coming from either. The lighting in the hall was good, so he didn't need the flashlight. Moore had a standard pin tumbler dead bolt on the door. Using a curved tension hook and sawtooth comb, he turned the lock in less than two minutes.

  With his handkerchief-wrapped hand on the knob ready to open the door, he wondered again how prudent he was in coming here. If Irving or Pounds found out, he'd be back on the street in blue before the first of the year. He looked down the hall behind him once more and opened the door. He had to go in. Nobody else seemed to care what had happened to Cal Moore and that was fine. But Bosch did care for some reason. He thought maybe he would find that reason here.

  Once inside the apartment, he closed and relocked the door. He stood there, a couple of feet inside, letting his eyes adjust. The place smelled musty and was dark, except for the bluish-white glow of the Scientology light that leaked through the sheer curtains over the living room window. Bosch walked into the room and switched on a lamp on an end table next to an old misshapen sofa. The light revealed that the place had come furnished in the same decor it had maybe twenty years ago. The navy blue carpet was worn flat as Astroturf in pathways from the couch to the kitchen and to the hallway that went off to the right.

  He moved farther in and took quick glances in the kitchen and the bedroom and the bathroom. He was struck by the emptiness of the place. There was nothing personal here. No pictures on the walls, no notes on the refrigerator, no jacket hung over the back of a chair. There wasn't even a dish in the sink. Moore had lived here but it was almost as if he hadn't existed.

  He didn't know what he was looking for, so he started in the kitchen. He opened cabinets and drawers. He found a box of cereal, a can of coffee and a three-quarters-empty bottle of Early Times. In another cabinet he found an unopened bottle of sweet rum with a Mexican label. Inside the bottle was a stalk of sugar cane. There was some silverware and cooking tools in the drawers, several books of matches from Hollywood area bars like Ports and the Bullet.

  The freezer was empty, except for two trays of ice. On the top shelf in the refrigerator section below there was a jar of mustard, a half-finished package of now-rancid bologna and a lone can of Budweiser, its plastic six-pack collar still c
hoking it. On the lower shelf on the door was a two-pound bag of Domino sugar.

  Harry studied the sugar. It was unopened. Then he thought, What the hell, I've come this far. He took it out and opened it and slowly poured it into the sink. It looked like sugar to him. It tasted like sugar to him. There was nothing else in the bag. He turned on the hot water and watched as the white mound was washed down the drain.

  He left the bag on the counter and went into the bathroom. There was a toothbrush in the holder, shaving equipment behind the mirror. Nothing else.

  In the bedroom Bosch first went into the walk-in closet. An assortment of clothes was on hangers and more filled a plastic laundry basket on the floor. On the shelf there was a green plaid suitcase and a white box with the word "Snakes" printed on it. Bosch first dumped the basket over and checked the pockets of the dirty shirts and pants. They were empty. He picked through the hanging clothes until he reached the back of the closet and found Moore's dress uniform wrapped in plastic. Once you left patrol, there was really only one reason to save it. To be buried in. Bosch thought saving it was a bad omen, a lack of confidence. As required by the department, he kept one uniform, to be worn in time of civil crisis such as a major earthquake or riot. But he had dumped his dress blues ten years ago.

  He brought down the suitcase; it was empty and smelled musty. It had not been used for some time. He pulled down the boot box but could tell it was empty before he opened it. There was some tissue paper inside it.

  Bosch put it back up on the shelf, remembering how he had seen Moore's one boot standing upright on the tile in the bathroom at the Hideaway. He wondered if Moore's killer had had difficulty pulling it off to complete the suicide scene. Or had he ordered Moore to take it off first? Probably not. The blow to the back of the head that Teresa found meant Moore probably hadn't known what hit him. Bosch envisioned the killer, his identity cloaked in shadow, coming up from behind and swinging the stock of the shotgun against the back of Moore's head. Moore goes down. The killer pulls off the boot, drags him into the bathroom, props him against the tub and pulls both triggers. Wipe off the triggers, press the dead man's thumb against the stock and rub his hands on the barrels to make convincing smears. Then set the boot upright on the tile. Add the splinter from the stock and the scene was set. Suicide.