The Black Ice (hb-2)

said.
    “Yeah. In the stomach content analysis and nasal swabs. But I don’t have time at the moment to discuss this. I’ve got four impatient men in the autopsy suite waiting for me. And only one of ’em is dead.”
    “I guess that would make the live ones Irving, Sheehan and Chastain, the three musketeers.”
    She laughed and said, “You got it.”
    “Okay. When and where do you want to meet?”
    He looked at his watch. It was almost three.
    “Maybe around six?” she said. “That would give me time to finish here and look through this package on your Juan Doe.”
    “Should I come there?”
    His pager began to chirp. He cut it off with a well-practiced move with his right hand to his belt.
    “No, let’s see,” she said. “Can you meet me at the Red Wind? We can wait out the rush hour.”
    “I’ll be there,” Harry said.
    After hanging up he checked the number on his pager, recognized it as a pay phone exchange and dialed it.
    “Bosch?” a voice said.
    “Right.”
    “Rickard. I worked with Cal Moore. The BANG unit?”
    “Right.”
    “I got something for you.”
    Bosch didn’t say anything. He felt the hairs on the top of his hands and forearms begin to tingle. He tried to place the name Rickard with a face but couldn’t. The narcs kept such odd hours and were a breed unto themselves. He didn’t know who Rickard was.
    “Or, I should say, Cal left something for you,” Rickard spoke into the silence. “You wanna meet? I don’t want this to go down in the station.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’ve got my reasons. We can talk about that when I see you.”
    “Where’s that gonna be?”
    “You know a place on Sunset, the Egg and I? It’s a diner. Decent food. The hypes don’t hang out here.”
    “I know it.”
    “Good. We’re in the last booth in the back, right before the kitchen door. The table with the only black guy in the place. That’s me. There’s parking in the back. In the alley.”
    “I know. Who’s ‘we’?”
    “Cal’s whole crew is here.”
    “That where you guys always hang out?”
    “Yeah, before we hit the street. See ya soon.”

Chapter 7
    The restaurant’s sign had been changed since the last time he had been there. It was now the
All-American
Egg and I, which meant it had probably been sold to foreigners. Bosch got out of his Caprice and walked through the back alley, looking at the spot where Juan Doe #67 had been dumped. Right outside the backdoor of a diner frequented by the local narc crew. His thoughts on the implications of this were interrupted by the panhandlers in the alley who came up to him shaking their cups. Bosch ignored them but their presence served to remind him of another shortcoming in Porter’s meager investigation. There had been nothing in the reports about vagrants in the alley being interviewed as possible witnesses. It would probably be impossible to track them down now.
    Inside the restaurant, he saw four young men, one of them black, in a rear booth. They were sitting silently with their faces turned down to the empty coffee cups in front of them. Harry noticed a closed manila file on the table as he pulled a chair away from an empty table and sat at the end of the booth.
    “I’m Bosch.”
    “Tom Rickard,” the black one said. He put out his hand and then introduced the other three as Finks, Montirez and Fedaredo.
    “We got tired of being around the office,” Rickard said. “Cal used to like this place.”
    Bosch just nodded and looked down at the file. He saw the name written on the tab was Humberto Zorrillo. It meant nothing to him. Rickard slid the file across the table to him.
    “What is it?” Harry asked, not yet touching it.
    “Probably the last thing he worked on,” Rickard said. “We were going to give it over to RHD but thought what the hell, he was working it up for you. And those boys down there at Parker are just trying to drag him through the shit. Ain’t going to help with that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean they can’t let it be that the man killed himself. They hafta dissect his life and figure out exactly why he did this and why he done that. The man fucking killed himself. What else is there to say about it?”
    “You don’t want to know why?”
    “I already know why, man. The job. It will get us all in the end. I mean, I know why.”
    Bosch just nodded again. The other three narcs still hadn’t said anything.
    “I’m just letting off steam,” Rickard said. “Been one of those days.