The Black Ice (hb-2)

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 embedded 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