The Black Ice (hb-2)

saw an old man with a latticework of thin white hair on the sides of his head unlock the door to the historical society. He was a few minutes early, but Bosch headed down the walk and followed him in.
    “Open?” he said.
    “Might as well be,” the old man said. “I’m here. Anything in particular I can help you with?”
    Bosch walked into the center of the room and explained he was unsure what he wanted.
    “I’m sort of tracing the background of a friend and I believe his father was a historical figure. In Calexico, I mean. I want to find their house if it’s still standing, find out what I can about the old man.”
    “What’s this fellow’s name?”
    “I don’t know. Actually, I just know his last name was Moore.”
    “Hell, boy, that name don’t much narrow it down. Moore’s one of the big names around here. Big family. Brothers, cousins all over the place. Tell you what, let me-”
    “You have pictures? You know, books with photos of the Moores? I’ve seen pictures of the father. I could pick-”
    “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, let me set you up here with a couple things. We’ll find your Moore. I’m kinda curious now myself. What’re you doing this for your friend for, anyway?”
    “Trying to trace the family tree. Put it all together for him.”
    A few minutes later the old man had him sitting at the other desk with three books in front of him. They were leather-bound and smelled of dust. They were the size of yearbooks and they wove photographic and written history together on every page. Randomly opening one of the books, he looked at a black-and-white photo of the De Anza Hotel under construction.
    Then he started them in order. The first was called
Calexico and Mexicali: Seventy-five Years on the Border
and as he scanned the words and photos on the pages, Bosch picked up a brief history of the two towns and the men who built them. The story was the same one Aguila had told him, but from the white man’s perspective. The volume he read described the horrible poverty in Tapai, China, and told how the men facing it gladly came to Baja California to seek their fortunes. It didn’t say anything about cheap labor.
    In the 1920s and 1930s Calexico was a boomtown, a company town, with the Colorado River Land Company’s managers the lords of all they surveyed. The book said many of these men built opulent homes and estates on bluffs rising on the outskirts of town. As Bosch read he repeatedly saw the names of three Moore brothers: Anderson, Cecil and Morgan. There were other Moores listed as well, but the brothers were always described in terms of importance and had high-level titles in the company.
    While leafing through a chapter called “A Dirt Road Town Paves Its Streets in Gold,” Bosch saw the man he was interested in. He was Cecil Moore. There, amidst the description of the riches the cotton brought to Calexico, was a photograph of a man with prematurely white hair standing in front of a Mediterranean-style home the size of a school. It was the man in the photo Moore had kept in the crumpled white bag. And rising like a steeple on the left-hand side of the home was a tower with two arched windows side by side at its uppermost point. The tower gave the house the appearance of a Spanish castle. It was Cal Moore’s childhood home.
    “This is the man and this is the place,” Bosch said, taking the book over to the old man.
    “Cecil Moore,” the man said.
    “Is he still around?”
    “No, none of those brothers are. He was the last to go, though. Last year about this time, went in his sleep, Cecil did. I think you’re mistaken though.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Cecil had no children.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Maybe you’re right. What about this place. That gone, too?”
    “You’re not working on any family tree, are you now?”
    “No. I’m a cop. I came from L.A. I’m tracing down a story somebody told me about this man. Will you help me?”
    The old man looked at him and Bosch regretted not being truthful with him in the first place.
    “I don’t know what it’s got to do with Los Angeles but go ahead, what else you want to know?”
    “Is this place with the tower still there?”
    “Yes, Castillo de los Ojos is still there. Castle of the Eyes. Gets its name from those two windows up in the tower. When they were lit at night, it was said that they were eyes that looked out on all of Calexico.”
    “Where is it?”
    “It’s on a road called Coyote Trail west of