The Black Ice (hb-2)

Edson said. “I am sure he would be ha-”
    “No,” Bosch said. “I just wanted to see how it is done. I’d appreciate it, Doctor, if you kept my visit confidential.”
    As he said this, Bosch noticed the EnviroBreed driver was looking right at him. The man’s face was deeply lined and tanned and his hair was white. He wore a straw plantation hat and smoked a brown cigarette. Bosch returned the stare, knowing full well that he had been made. He thought he saw a slight smile on the driver’s face, then the man finally broke away his stare and went back to watching the unloading process.
    “Then is there anything else I can do for you, Detective,” Edson said.
    “No, Doc. Thanks for your cooperation.”
    “I’m sure you know your way out.”
    Edson turned and went back in through the steel door. Harry put a cigarette in his mouth but left it unlit. He waved a nattering of flies, probably pink medflies, he thought, away from his face, went down the loading-dock stairs and walked out through the garage door.

    * * *

    Driving back toward downtown, Bosch decided to get it over with and face Teresa. He pulled into the County-USC parking lot and spent ten minutes looking for a spot big enough to put the Caprice in. He finally found one in the back where the lot is on a rise overlooking the old railroad yard. He sat in the car for a few moments thinking about what to say and smoking and looking down at all the rusted boxcars and iron tracks. He saw a group of
cholos
in their oversized white T-shirts and baggy pants making their way through the yard. The one carrying a spray can dropped back from the others and along one of the old boxcars sprayed a scrip. It was in Spanish but Bosch understood it. It was the gang’s imprimatur, its philosophy:

    LAUGH NOW CRY LATER

    He watched them until they had moved behind another line of boxcars. He got out and went into the morgue through the rear door, where the deliveries are made. A security guard nodded after seeing his badge.
    Today was a good day inside. The smell of disinfectant had the upper hand over the odor of death. Harry walked past the doors to refrigeration rooms one and two and then through a door to a set of stairs that led up to the second-floor administration offices.
    Bosch asked the secretary in the chief medical examiner’s office if Dr. Corazon could see him. The woman, whose pale skin and pinkish hair made her resemble some of the clients around the place, spoke quietly on the phone and then told him to go in. Teresa was standing behind her desk, looking out the window. She had the same view Bosch had of the railroad yard and may have even seen him coming. But from the second floor, she also had a view that spanned the area from the towers of downtown to Mt Washington. Bosch noticed how clear the towers were in the distance. It was a good day outside as well.
    “I’m not talking to you,” Teresa announced without turning around.
    “C’mon.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Then why’d you let me in?”
    “To tell you I am not talking to you and that I am very angry and that you have probably compromised my position as chief medical examiner.”
    “C’mon, Teresa. I hear you have a press conference later today. It will work out.”
    He couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned around and leaned back against the windowsill. She looked at him with eyes that could’ve carved his name on a tombstone. He could smell her perfume all the way across the room.
    “And, of course, I have you to thank for that.”
    “Not me. I heard Irving called the press con-”
    “Don’t fuck with me, Harry. We both know what you did with what I told you. And we both know that little shit Irving automatically thinks I did it. I now have to consider myself seriously fucked as far as the permanent job goes. Take a good look around the office, Harry. Last time you’ll ever see me here.”
    Bosch had always noticed how many of the professional women he encountered, mostly cops and lawyers, turned profane when arguing. He wondered if they felt it might put them on the same level as the men they were battling.
    “It will work out,” he said.
    “What are you talking about? All he has to do is tell a few commissioners that I leaked information from a confidential, uncompleted investigation to the press and that will eliminate me completely from consideration.”
    “Listen, he can’t be sure it was you and he’ll probably think it was me. Bremmer, the
Times
guy