The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  CRUCIFIXION THORN NATURAL AREA

  DANGER ABANDONED MINES

  Bosch remembered seeing a reference in the books at the historical society to the turn-of-the-century gold mines that pockmarked the border zone. Fortunes had been found and lost by speculators. The hills had been heavy with bandits. Then the Company came and brought order.

  He lit a cigarette and studied the tower, which was much closer now and rose from behind a walled compound. The stillness of the scene and the tower windows, like soulless eyes, somehow seemed morbid. The tower was not alone on the hill, though. He could see the barrel-tile roofs of other homes. But something about the tower rising singularly above them with its empty glass eyes seemed lonely. Dead.

  Anza Road came up in another half mile. He turned north and the single-lane road curved and bumped and rose along the circumference of the hill. To his right he could look down on the farmland basin extending below. He turned left onto a road marked Coyote Trail and was soon passing large haciendas on sprawling estates. He could see only the second floors of most of them because of the walls that surrounded almost every property.

  Coyote Trail ended in a circle that went around an ancient oak tree with branches that would shade the turnaround in the summer. Castillo de los Ojos was here at the end of the road.

  From the street, an eight-foot-high stone wall eclipsed all but the tower. Only through a black wrought-iron gate was there a fuller view. Bosch pulled onto the driveway and up to the gate. Heavy steel chain and lock kept it closed. He got out, looked through the bars and saw that the parking circle in front of the house was empty. The curtains inside every front window were pulled closed.

  On the wall next to the gate were a mailbox and an intercom. He pushed the ringer but got no response. He wasn't sure what he would have said if someone had answered. He opened the mailbox and found that empty, too.

  Bosch left his car where it was and walked back down Coyote Trail to the nearest house. This was one of the few without a wall. But there was a white picket fence and an intercom at the gate. And this time when he rang the buzzer, he got a response.

  "Yes?" a woman's voice asked.

  "Yes, ma'am, police. I was wondering if I can ask a few questions about your neighbor's house."

  "Which neighbor?"

  The voice was very old.

  "The castle."

  "Nobody lives there. Mr. Moore died some time ago."

  "I know that, ma'am. I was wondering if I could come in and talk to you a moment. I have identification."

  There was a delay before he heard a curt "Very well" over the speaker and the gate lock buzzed.

  The woman insisted that he hold his ID up to a small window set in the door. He saw her in there, white-haired and decrepit, straining to see it from a wheelchair. She finally opened up.

  "Why do they send a Los Angeles police officer?"

  "Ma'am, I'm working on a Los Angeles case. It involves a man who used to live in the castle. As a boy, long ago."

  She looked up at him through squinting eyes, as if she was trying to see past a memory.

  "Are you talking about Calexico Moore?"

  "Yes. You knew him?"

  "Is he hurt?"

  Bosch hesitated, then said, "I'm afraid he's dead."

  "Up there in Los Angeles?"

  "Yes. He was a police officer. I think it had something to do with his life down here. That's why I came out here. I don't really know what to ask . . . He didn't live here long. But you remember him, yes?"

  "He didn't live here long but that doesn't mean I never saw him again. Quite the contrary. I saw him regularly over the years. He'd ride his bicycle or he'd drive a car and come and sit out there on the road and just watch that place. One time I had Marta bring him out a sandwich and a lemonade."

  He assumed Marta was the maid. These estates came with them.

  "He'd just watch and remember, I guess," the old woman was saying. "Terrible thing that Cecil did to him. He's probably paying for it now, that Cecil."

  "What do you mean, 'terrible'?"

  "Sending the boy and his mother away like that. I don't think he ever spoke to that boy or the woman again after that. But I'd see the boy and I'd see him as a man, come out here to look at the place. People 'round here say that's why Cecil put that wall up. Did that twenty years ago. They say it's because he got tired of seeing Calexico in the street. That was Cecil's way of doing things. You don't like what you see out your window, you put up a wall. But I'd still see young Cal from time to time. One time I took a cold drink out to him myself. I wasn't in this chair then. He was sitting in a car, and I asked him, 'Why do you come out here all the time?' and he just said, 'Aunt Mary, I like to remember.' That's what he said."

  "Aunt Mary?"

  "Yes. I thought that was why you came here. My Anderson and Cecil were brothers, God rest their souls."

  Bosch nodded and waited a respectful five seconds before speaking.

  "The man at the museum in town said Cecil had no children."

  "'Course he said that. Cecil kept it a secret from the public. Big secret. He didn't want the company name blemished."

  "Calexico's mother was the maid?"

  "Yes, she—it sounds like you know all of this already."

  "Just a few parts. What happened? Why did he send her and the boy away?"

  She hesitated before answering, as if to compose a story that was more than thirty years old.

  "After she became pregnant, she lived there—he made her—and she had the baby there. Afterward, four or five years, he discovered she had lied to him. One day he had some of his men follow her across when she went to Mexicali to visit her mother. There was no mother. Just a husband and another son, this one older than Calexico. That was when he sent them away. His own blood he sent away."

  Bosch thought about this for a long moment. The woman was staring off at the past.

  "When was the last time you saw Calexico?"

  "Oh, let me see, must have been years now. He eventually stopped coming around."

  "Do you think he knew of his father's death?"

  "He wasn't at the funeral, not that I blame him."

  "I was told Cecil Moore left the property to the city."

  "Yes, he died alone and he left everything to the city, not a thing to Calexico or any of the ex-wives and mistresses. Cecil Moore was a mean man, even in death. Of course the city couldn't do anything with that place. Too big and expensive to keep up. Calexico isn't a boomtown like it once was and can't keep a place like that. There was a thought that it would be used as a historical museum. But you couldn't fill a closet with the history of this town. Never mind the museum. The city sold the place. I heard, for more than a million. Maybe they'll operate in the black for a few years."

  "Who bought it?"

  "I don't know. But they never moved in. They got a caretaker comes around. I saw lights on over there last week. But, nope, nobody's ever moved in as far as I know. It must be an investment. In what I don't know. We're sitting out here in the middle of nowhere."

  "One last question. Was there ever anybody else with Moore when he would watch the place?"

  "Always alone. That poor boy was always out there alone."

  On the way back into town Bosch thought about Moore's lonely vigils outside the house of his father. He wondered if his longings were for the house and its memories or the father who had sent him away. Or both.

  Bosch's mind touched his memory of his brief meeting with his own father. A sick old man on his death bed. Bosch had forgiven him for every second he had been robbed. He knew he had to or he would face the rest of his life wasting his pain on it.

  Twenty-Seven

  THE LINE OF TRAFFIC TO GO BACK INTO MEXico was longer and slower than the day before. Bosch figured this was because of the bullfight, which drew people from the entire region. It was a Sunday evening tradition as popular here as Raiders football was in L.A.

  Bosch was two cars from the Mexican border off
icer when he realized he still had the Smith in its holster on his back. It was too late to do anything about it. When he got to the man, he simply said, "Bullfight," and was waved on through.

  The sky was clear over Mexicali and the air cool. It looked like it would be perfect weather. Harry felt the tingle of anticipation in his throat. It was for two things: seeing the ritual of the fight and maybe seeing Zorrillo, the man whose name and lore had surrounded his last three days so thoroughly that Bosch found himself buying into his myth. He just wanted to see the pope in his own element. With his bulls. With his people.

  Bosch took a pair of surveillance binoculars out of the glove compartment after parking at the Justice Plaza. The arena was only three blocks away and he figured they'd walk. After showing ID to the front-desk officer and being approved to go back, he found Aguila sitting behind the lone desk in the investigators' squadroom. He had several handwritten reports in front of him.

  "Did you get the tickets?"

  "Yes, I have them. We have a box on the sun side. This will not be a problem because the boxes get little sun."

  "Is it close to the pope?"

  "Almost directly across—if he is there today."

  "Yeah, if. We'll see. You done?"

  "Yes, I have completed the reports on the Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa investigation. Until a suspect is charged."

  "Which will probably never happen down here."

  "This is correct. . . . I believe we should go now."

  Bosch held up the binoculars.

  "I'm ready."

  "You will be so close you will not need those."

  "These aren't for looking at bulls."

  As they walked toward the arena they moved into a steady stream of people heading the same way. Many of them carried little square pillows on which they would sit in the arena. They passed several young children holding armfuls of pillows and selling them for a dollar each.

  After entering the gate, Bosch and Aguila descended a set of concrete stairs to an underground level where Aguila presented their box tickets to an usher. They were then led through a catacomblike passageway that curved as it followed the circumference of the ring. There were small wooden doors marked with numbers on their left.

  The usher opened a door with the number seven on it and they went into a room no larger than a jail cell. Its floor, walls and ceiling were all unpainted concrete. The vaulted ceiling sloped downward from the back to a six-foot-wide opening that looked out into the ring. They were directly on the outer ring where matadors, toreros and other players in the fights stood and waited. Bosch could smell the dirt ring, its horse and bull odors, its blood. There were six steel chairs folded and leaning against the rear wall. They opened two and sat down after Aguila thanked the usher and closed and locked the door.

  "This is like a pillbox," Bosch said as he looked through the window slot into the boxes across the ring. He did not see Zorrillo.

  "What is a pillbox?"

  "Never mind," Bosch said, realizing he had never been in one, either. "It's like a jail cell."

  "Perhaps," Aguila said.

  Bosch realized he had insulted him. These were the best seats in the house.

  "Carlos, this is great. We'll see everything from here."

  It was also loud in the concrete box and in addition to the smells from the ring there was the pervasive odor of spilled beer. The little room seemed to reverberate with a thousand steps as the stadium above them filled. A band played from seats high up in the stadium. Bosch looked out into the ring and saw the toreros being introduced. He felt the growing excitement of the crowd and the echo in the room grew louder with the cheers as the matadors bowed.

  "I can smoke in here, right?" Bosch asked.

  "Yes," Aguila said as he stood. "Cervesa?"

  "I like that Tecate if they have it."

  "Of course. Lock the door. I will knock."

  Aguila nodded and left the room. Harry locked the door and wondered if he was doing it to protect himself or simply to keep uninvited observers out of the box. He realized once he was alone that he did not feel protected in the fortresslike surroundings. It was not like a pillbox after all.

  He held the binoculars up and viewed the openings into the other boxes across the ring. Most of these were still empty and he did not see anyone among those already in place who he believed was Zorrillo. But he noticed that many of these boxes were customized. He could see shelves of liquor bottles or tapestries on the back walls, padded chairs. These were the shaded boxes of the regulars. Soon Aguila knocked and Bosch let him in with the beers. And the spectacle began.

  The first two fights were uneventful and uninspired. Aguila called them sloppy. The matadors were heartily booed by those in the arena when their final sword thrusts into each bull's neck failed to kill and each fight became a prolonged, bloody display that had little resemblance to art or a test of bravery.

  In the third fight, the arena came alive and the noise thundered in the box where Bosch and Aguila sat when a bull black as pitch—except for the whitish Z branded on its back—charged violently into the side of one of the picadors' horses. The tremendous power of the beast pushed the horse's padded skirt up to the rider's thigh. The horseman drove his iron-pointed lance down into the bull's back and leaned his weight on it. But this seemed only to enrage the beast further. The animal found new strength and made another violent lunge into the horse. The confrontation was only thirty feet from Bosch, but still he lifted the binoculars for a closer look. In what was like a slow-motion tableau captured in the scope of the binoculars' frame, he saw the horse rear against its master's rein and the picador topple off into the dust. The bull continued its charge, its horns impaling the padded skirt and the horse went over on top of the picador.

  The crowd became even louder, cheering wildly, as the banderilleros flooded the ring, waving capes and drawing the bull's attention from the fallen horse and rider. Others helped the picador to his feet and he limped to the ring gate. He then shrugged their hands away, refusing any further help. His face was slick with sweat and red with embarrassment and the cheers of the arena had a jeering quality. With the binoculars, Bosch felt as though he was standing next to the man. A pillow came down from the stands and glanced off the man's shoulder. He did not look up, for to do that would be to invite more.

  The bull had won this crowd and in a few minutes they respectfully cheered its death. A matador's sword deeply imbedded in its neck, the animal's front legs buckled and its huge weight collapsed. A torero, a man who was older than all the other players, quickly moved in with a short dagger and stabbed it into the base of the bull's skull. Instant death after the prolonged torment. Bosch watched the man wipe the blade on the dead animal's black coat and then walk away, replacing the dagger in a sheath strapped to his vest.

  Three mules in harness were brought into the ring, a rope was looped around the black bull's horns and the body was dragged around in a circle and then out. Bosch saw a red rose fall from above and hit the dead beast as it made a flattened path in the ring's dirt floor.

  Harry studied the man with the dagger. Applying the coup de grace seemed to be his only role in each fight. Bosch couldn't decide if his job was administering mercy or more cruelty. The man was older; his black hair was streaked with gray and his face had a worn, impassive look. He had soulless eyes in a face of worn brown stone. Bosch thought of the man with three tear drops on his face. Arpis. What look did he have when he choked the life out of Porter, when he held the shotgun up to Moore's face and pulled the trigger?

  "The bull was very brave and beautiful," Aguila said. He had said little through the first three fights other than to pronounce the skills of the matadors as expert or sloppy, good or bad.

  "I guess Zorrillo would have been very proud," Bosch said, "if he had been here."

  It was true, Zorrillo had not come. Bosch had found himself checking the empty box Aguila had pointed out but it had remained empty. Now, with one fight to go, it seemed unlikel
y that the man who bred the bulls for this day's fights would arrive.

  "Do you wish to leave, Harry?"

  "No. I want to watch."

  "Good, then. This match will be the finest and most artful. Silvestri is Mexicali's greatest matador. Another cervesa?"

  "Yeah. I'll get this one. What do you—"

  "No. It is my duty, a small means of repaying."

  "Whatever," Bosch said.

  "Lock the door."

  He did. Then he looked at his ticket, on which the names of the bullfighters were printed. Cristobal Silvestri. Aguila had said he was the most artful and bravest fighter he had ever seen. A cheer went up from the crowd as the bull, another huge black monster, charged into the ring to confront his killers. The toreros began moving about him with green and blue capes opening like flowers. Bosch was struck by the ritual and pageantry of the bullfights, even the sloppy ones. It was not a sport, he was sure of this. But it was something. A test. A test of skills and, yes, bravery, resolve. He believed that if he had the opportunity he would want to go often to this arena to be a witness.

  There was a knock on the door and Bosch got up to let Aguila in. But when he opened the door there were two men waiting. One he did not recognize. The other he did but it took him a few moments to place him. It was Grena, the captain of investigations. From what little he could see past their two figures, there was no sign of Aguila.

  "Señor Bosch, may we come in?"

  Bosch stepped back but only Grena entered. The other man turned his back as if to guard the doorway. Grena closed and locked it.

  "So we won't be disturbed, yes?" he said as he scanned the room. He did this at length, as if it were the size of a basketball court and needed careful study in determining there was no one else present.

  "It is my custom to come for the last fight, Señor Bosch. Particularly, you see, when Silvestri is in the ring. A great champion. I hope you will enjoy this."