The Black Ice (hb-2)

Dance is to you.”
    “Where do you want me?” Bosch asked.
    “Come west on the Boulevard and just when you pass Cahuenga come south at the very next alley. The one that comes down behind the porno shops. It’s dark but you’ll see the blue neon arrow. That’s the place. I’m about a half block north in a red piece-of-shit Camaro. Nevada plates. I’ll be waiting. Hafta figure out a scam or something to grab him with the shit.”
    “You know where the dip is?”
    “Yeah. He’s got it in a beer bottle in the gutter. Keeps going in and out. Brings his clients outside. I’ll think of something by the time you get here.”
    Bosch hung up and went back out to the car. It took him fifteen minutes to get there because of all the cruisers on the Boulevard. In the alley he parked illegally behind the red Camaro. He could see Rickard sitting low in the driver’s seat.
    “Top of the morning to ya,” the narc said when Bosch slipped into the Camaro’s passenger seat.
    “Same. Our boy still around?”
    “Oh, yeah. Seems like he’s having a good night, too. He’s selling shermans like they’re the last thing on earth. Too bad we gotta spoil his fun.”
    Bosch looked down the dark alley. In the intervals of blue light cast by a blinking neon arrow he could see a grouping of people in dark clothes in front of a door in the brick siding of the warehouse. Occasionally, the door would open and someone would go in or come out. He could hear the music when the door was open. Loud, techno-rock, a driving bass that seemed to shake the street. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the people outside were drinking and smoking, cooling off after dancing. A few of them held blown-up balloons. They would lean on the hoods of the cars near the door, suck from the balloon and pass it on as if it were a joint.
    “The balloons are full of nitrous oxide,” Rickard said.
    “Laughing gas?”
    “Right. They sell it at these raves for five bucks a balloon. They can make a couple of grand off one tank stolen from a hospital or dentist.”
    A girl fell off a car hood and her balloon of gas shot away into the dark. Others helped her up. Bosch could hear their shrieks of laughter.
    “That legal?”
    “It’s a flopper. It’s legal to process-a lot of legit uses for it. But it’s a misdee to consume recreationally. We don’t even bother with it, though. Somebody wants to suck on it and fall down and split their head open, have at it, I say. Why should-there he is now.”
    The slight figure of a teenager walked through the warehouse door and over to the cars parked along the alley.
    “Watch him go down,” Rickard said.
    The figure disappeared behind a car, dropping down.
    “See, he’s making a dip. Now he’ll wait a few minutes ’til it dries a little and his customer comes out. Then he’ll make the deal.”
    “Want to go get him?”
    “No. We take him with just the one sherm, that’s nothing. That’s personal possession. They won’t even keep him overnight in the drunk tank. We need him with his dip if we wanna squeeze him good.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “You just get back in your car. I want you to go back around on Cahuenga and come up the alley the other way. I think you can get in closer. Park it and then try to work your way up to be my backup. I’ll come down from this end. I got some old clothes in the trunk. Undercover shit. I got a plan.”
    Bosch then went back to the Caprice, turned it around and drove out of the alley. He drove around the block and came up from the south side. He found a spot in front of a Dumpster and stopped. When he saw the hunched-over figure of Rickard moving down the alley, Harry got out and started moving. They were closing in on the warehouse door from both sides. But while Bosch remained in the shadows, Rickard-now wearing a grease-stained sweatshirt and carrying a bag of laundry-was walking down the center of the alley, singing. Because of the noise from the warehouse Bosch wasn’t sure but he thought it was Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” delivered in a drunken slur.
    Rickard had the undivided attention of the people standing outside the warehouse door. A couple of the stoned girls cheered his singing. The distraction allowed Bosch to move within four cars of the door and about three cars from the spot where Tyge had his dip.
    As he passed the spot, Rickard stopped his song in mid-chorus and acted as if he had just spotted a treasure. He ducked between the