The Black Ice (hb-2)

stood and began to walk listlessly around the machines and the furniture. Basically, they were waiting for one of the militia cars to take them back to the airport to Bosch’s car. The DEA would be here until well after sunup. But Bosch and Aguila were finished.
    Harry watched Aguila go back into the storage room and approach the tunnel entrance. He had told him about Grena and the Mexican had simply nodded. He hadn’t shown a thing. Now Aguila dropped to his haunches and seemed to be studying the floor, as if the sawdust were a spread of tea leaves in which he could read Zorrillo’s location.
    After a few moments, he said, “The pope has new boots.”
    Bosch walked over and Aguila pointed to the footprints in the sawdust. There was one that was not from Aguila’s or Bosch’s shoes. It was very clear in the dust and Harry recognized the elongated heel of a bulldog boot. Inside it was the letter “S” formed by a curving snake. The edges of the print were sharp in the dust, the head of the snake clearly imprinted.
    Aguila had been right. The pope had new boots.

Chapter 31
    All the way to the border crossing, Bosch contemplated how it had been done, how all the parts now seemed to fit, and how it might have gone unnoticed if not for Aguila noticing the footprint. He thought about the Snakes box in the closet of the apartment in Los Feliz. A clue so obvious, yet he had missed it. He had seen only what he wanted to see.
    It was still early, just the first hint of dawn’s light was fighting its way up the eastern horizon, and there was not yet much of a line at the crossing. Nobody was cleaning windshields. Nobody was selling junk. Nobody was there at all. Bosch badged the bored-looking Border Patrol agent and was waved through.
    He needed a phone and some caffeine. He drove two minutes to the Calexico Town Hall, got a Coke from the machine in the police department’s cramped lobby and took it out to the pay phone on the front wall. He looked at his watch and knew she would be at home, probably awake and getting ready for work.
    He lit a cigarette and dialed, charging the call to his own PacTel card. While he waited for it to go through he looked across the street into the fog. He saw the shapes of sleeping figures under blankets scattered about the park. The ground fog gave the images a ghostly, lonely resonance.
    Teresa picked up after two rings. She sounded like she had been awake already.
    “Hi.”
    “Harry? What is it?”
    “Sorry to wake you up.”
    “You didn’t. What’s the matter?”
    “Are you getting dressed up to go to Moore’s funeral today?”
    “Yes. What is this? You called me at ten minutes before six to ask-”
    “That isn’t Moore they’ll be putting in the ground.”
    There was a long silence during which Bosch looked into the park and saw a man standing there, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, staring back at him in the fog. Harry looked away.
    “What are you saying? Harry, are you all right?”
    “I’m tired but never better. What I’m saying is he’s still alive. Moore. I just missed him this morning.”
    “Are you still in Mexico?”
    “At the border.”
    “That doesn’t make sense. What you said. There were matches made on the latents, we got dental, and his own wife ID’d a photograph of the tattoo on the body. His identification was confirmed.”
    “It’s all bullshit. He set it up.”
    “Why, Harry, are you calling me now and telling me this?”
    “I want you to help me, Teresa. I can’t go to Irving. Only you. You help me and you’ll help yourself. If I’m right.”
    “That’s a big if, Harry.”
    Bosch looked back into the park and the man in the blanket was gone.
    “Just tell me how it could be possible,” she said. “Convince me.”
    Bosch was silent a moment, like a lawyer composing himself before a cross-examination. He knew that every word he spoke now had to stand the test of her scrutiny or he would lose her.
    “Besides the prints and dental, Sheehan told me they also matched his handwriting to the I-found-out-who-I-was note. He said they compared it to a change-of-address card Moore had put in his personnel file a few months ago after he and his wife separated.”
    He took a deep drag on the cigarette and she thought he had finished.
    “So? I don’t see-what about it?”
    “One of the concessions the protective league won a few years back during contract negotiations was guaranteed access to your personnel file. So cops could