The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  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 cannot 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 can not 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 Corazón 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 house, 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."

  Bosch smiled in a sad way. Never leave a thing uncovered. That was Irving. His parting shot was a threat, a threat that if Bosch ever used his knowledge against the department, he, too, would go down. Irving would personally see to it.

  "Are you afraid?" Bosch asked.

  "Afraid of what, Detective?"

  "Of everything. Of me. Yourself. That it won't hold together. That I might be wrong. Everything, man. Aren't you afraid of everything?"

  "The only thing that I fear are people without a conscience. Who act without thinking their actions through. I don't think you are li
ke that."

  Bosch just shook his head.

  "So let's get down to it, Detective. I have to rejoin the chief and I see the mayor has arrived. What is it you want, provided it is within my authority to provide?"

  "I wouldn't take anything from you," Bosch said very quietly. "That's what you just don't seem to get."

  Irving finally turned around to face him again.

  "You are right, Bosch. I really don't understand you. Why risk everything for nothing? You see? It raises my concerns about you all over again. You don't play for the team. You play for yourself."

  Bosch looked steadily at Irving and didn't smile, though he wanted to. Irving had paid him a fine compliment, though the assistant chief would never realize it.

  "What happened down there had nothing to do with the department," he said. "If I did anything at all, I did it for somebody and something else."

  Irving stared back blankly, his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth. There was a crooked smile below the gleaming skull. It was then that Bosch recognized the similarity to the tattoos on the arms of Moore and Zorrillo. The devil's mask. He watched as Irving's eyes lit on something and he nodded knowingly. He looked back at Sylvia and then returned his gaze to Bosch.

  "A noble man, is that it? All of this to insure a widow's pension?"

  Bosch didn't answer. He wondered if it was a guess or Irving knew something. He couldn't tell.

  "How do you know she wasn't part of it?" Irving said.

  "I know."

  "But how can you be sure? How can you take the chance?"

  "The same way you're sure. The letter."

  "What about it?"

  Bosch had done nothing but think about Moore on his way back. He had had four hours of driving on the open road to put it together. He thought he had it.

  "Moore wrote the letter himself," he began. "He informed on himself, you could say. He had this plan. The letter was the start. He wrote it."

  He stopped to light a cigarette. Irving didn't say a word. He just waited for the story.

  "For reasons that I guess go back to when he was a boy, Moore fucked up. He crossed and after he was already on the other side he realized there is no crossing back. But he couldn't go on, he had to get out. Somehow.

  "His plan was to start the IAD investigation with that letter. He put just enough in the letter so Chastain would be convinced there was something to it, but not enough that Chastain would be able to find anything. The letter would just serve to cloud his name, put him under suspicion. He had been in the department long enough to know how it would go. He'd seen the way IAD and people like Chastain operate. The letter set the stage, made the water murky enough so that when he turned up dead at the motel the department, meaning you, wouldn't want to look too closely at it. You're an open book, Chief. He knew you'd move quickly and efficiently to protect the department first, find out what really happened second. So he sent the letter. He used you, Chief. He used me, too."

  Irving turned toward the grave site. The ceremony was about to begin. He turned back to Bosch.

  "Go ahead, Detective. Quickly, please."

  "Layer after layer. Remember, you told me he had rented that room for a month. That was the first layer. If he hadn't been discovered for a month decomp would've taken care of things. There would have been no skin left to print. That would leave only the latents he left in the room and he'd've been home free."

  "But he was found a few weeks early," Irving helpfully interjected.

  "Yeah. That brings us to the second layer. You. Moore had been a cop a long time. He knew what you would do. He knew you'd go to personnel and grab his package."

  "That's a big gamble, Bosch."

  "You ask me, it was a better-than-even bet. Christmas night, when I saw you there with the file, I knew what it was before you said. So I can see Moore taking the gamble and switching the print cards. Like I said, he was gambling it would never come to that anyway. You were the second layer."

  "And you? You were the third?"

  "Yeah, the way I figure it. He used me as sort of a last backup. In case the suicide didn't wash, he wanted somebody who'd look at it and see a reason for Moore to have been murdered. That was me. I did that. He left the file for me and I went for it, thought he'd been killed over it. It was all a deflection. He just didn't want anybody looking too closely at who was actually on the tile floor in the motel. He just wanted some time."

  "But you went too far, Bosch. He never planned on that."

  "I guess not."

  Bosch thought about his meeting with Moore in the tower. He still hadn't decided whether Moore had been expecting him, even waiting for him. Waiting for Harry to come kill him. He didn't think he'd ever know. That was Calexico Moore's last mystery.

  "Time for what?" Irving asked.

  "What?"

  "You said he just wanted some time."

  "I think he wanted time to go down there, take Zorrillo's place and then take the money and run. I don't think he wanted to be the pope forever. He just wanted to live in a castle again."

  "What?"

  "It's nothing."

  They were silent a moment before Bosch finished up.

  "Most of this I know you already have, Chief."

  "I do?"

  "Yeah, you do. I think you figured it out after Chastain told you that Moore sent the letter himself."

  "And how did Detective Chastain know that?"

  He wasn't going to give Bosch anything. That was okay, though. Harry found that telling the story helped clarify it. It was like holding it up to inspect for holes.

  "After he got the letter, Chastain thought it was the wife who sent it. He went to her house and she denied it. He asked for her typewriter because he was going to make sure and she slammed the door in his face. But she didn't do it before saying she didn't even have a typewriter. So then, after Moore turns up dead, Chastain starts thinking about things and takes the machine out of Moore's office at the station. My guess is he matched the keys to the letter. From that point, it wouldn't be difficult to figure out the letter came from either Moore or somebody in the BANG squad. My guess is that Chastain interviewed them this week and concluded they hadn't done it. The letter was typed by Moore."

  Irving didn't confirm any of it but didn't have to. Bosch knew. It all fit.

  "Moore had a good plan, Chief. He played us like cheater's solitaire. He knew every card in the deck before it was turned over."

  "Except for one," Irving said. "You. He didn't think you'd come looking."

  Bosch didn't reply. He looked over at Sylvia again. She was innocent. And she would be safe. He noticed Irving turn his gaze on her, too.

  "She's clear," Bosch said. "You know it. I know it. If you make trouble for her, I'll make trouble for you."

  It wasn't a threat. It was an offer. A deal. Irving considered it a moment and nodded his head once. A blunt agreement.

  "Did you speak to him down there, Bosch?"

  Harry knew he meant Moore and he knew he couldn't answer.

  "What did you do down there?"

  After a few moments of silence Irving turned and walked as upright as a Nazi back to the rows of chairs holding the VIPs and top brass of the department. He took a seat his adjutant had been saving in the row behind Sylvia Moore. He never looked back at Bosch once.

  Thirty-Four

  THROUGH THE ENTIRE SERVICE BOSCH HAD watched her from his position next to the oak tree. Sylvia Moore rarely raised her head, even to watch the line of cadets fire blanks into the sky or when the air squad flew over, the helicopters arranged in the missing-man formation. One time he thought she glanced over at him, or at least in his direction, but he couldn't be sure. He thought of her as being stoic. And he thought of her as being beautiful.

  When it was over and the casket was in the hole and the people were moving away, she stayed seated and Bosch saw her wave away an offer from Irving to be escorted back to the limousine. The assistant chief sauntered off, smoothing his collar ag
ainst his neck. Finally, when the area around the burial site was clear, she stood up, glanced once down into the hole, and then started walking toward Bosch. Her steps were punctuated by the slamming of car doors all across the cemetery. She took the sunglasses off as she came.

  "You took my advice," she said.

  This immediately confused him. He looked down at his clothes and then back at her. What advice? She read him and answered.

  "The black ice, remember? You have to be careful. You're here, so I assume you were."

  "Yes, I was careful."

  He saw that her eyes were very clear and she seemed even stronger than the last time they had encountered each other. They were eyes that would not forget a kindness. Or a slight.

  "I know there is more than what they have told me. Maybe you will tell me sometime?"

  He nodded and she nodded. There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other that was neither long or short. It seemed to Bosch to be a perfect moment. The wind gusted and broke the spell. Some of her hair broke loose from the barrette and she pushed it back with her hand.

  "I would like that," she said.

  "Whenever you want," he said. "Maybe you'll tell me a few things, too."

  "Such as?"

  "That picture that was missing from the picture frame. You knew what it was, but you didn't tell me."

  She smiled as if to say he had focused his attention on something unnecessary and trivial.

  "It was just a picture of him and his friend from the barrio. There were other pictures in the bag."

  "It was important but you didn't say anything."

  She looked down at the grass.

  "I just didn't want to talk or think about it anymore."

  "But you did, didn't you?"

  "Of course. That's what happens. The things you don't want to know or remember or think about come back to haunt you."

  They were quiet for a moment.

  "You know, don't you?" he finally said.

  "That that wasn't my husband buried there? I had an idea, yes. I knew there was more than what people were telling me. Not you, especially. The others."

  He nodded and the silence grew long but not uncomfortable. She turned slightly and looked over at the driver standing next to the limo, waiting. There was nobody left in the cemetery.