The Black Ice (hb-2)

who stirred this all up, we go back some. Irving will know. So quit worrying about it. I came to see if you want to have lunch or something.”
    Wrong move. He saw her face turn red with pure anger.
    “Lunch or something? Are you kidding? Are you-you just told me we are the two likely suspects on this leak and you want me to sit with you in a restaurant? Do you know what could-”
    “Hey, Teresa, have a nice press conference,” Bosch cut in. He turned around and headed to the door.

    * * *

    On the way into downtown, his pager went off and Bosch noticed the number was Ninety-eight’s direct line. He must be worried about his statistics, Harry thought. He decided to ignore the page. He also turned the Motorola radio in the car off.
    He stopped at a
mariscos
truck parked on Alvarado and ordered two shrimp tacos. They were served on corn tortillas, Baja style, and Bosch savored the heavy cilantro in the salsa.
    A few yards from the truck stood a man reciting scripture verses from memory. On top of his head was a cup of water that nestled comfortably in his seventies-style Afro and did not spill. He reached up for the cup and took a drink from time to time but never stopped bouncing from book to book of the New Testament. Before each quote, he gave his listeners the chapter and verse numbers as a reference. At his feet was a glass fishbowl half full of coins. When he was done eating, Bosch ordered a Coke to go and then dropped the change into the fishbowl. He got a “God bless you” back.

Chapter 15
    The Hall of Justice took up an entire block across from the criminal courts building. The first six floors housed the sheriff’s department and the top four the county jail. Anyone could tell this from the outside. Not just because of the bars behind the windows, but because the top four floors looked like an abandoned, burned-out shell. As if all the hate and anger held in those un-air-conditioned cells had turned to fire and smoke and stained the windows and concrete balustrades forever black.
    It was a turn-of-the-century building and its stone-block construction gave it an ominous fortresslike appearance. It was one of the only buildings in downtown that still had human elevator operators. An old black woman sat on a padded stool in the corner of each of the wood-paneled cubicles and pulled the doors open and worked the wheel that leveled the elevator with each floor it stopped at.
    “Seven thousand,” Bosch said to the operator as he stepped on. It had been some time since he had been in the Hall and he could not remember her name. But he knew she had been working the elevators here since before Harry was a cop. All of the operators had. She opened the door on the sixth floor where Bosch saw Rickard as soon as he stepped out. The narc was standing at the glass window at the check-in counter, putting his badge case into a slide drawer.
    “Here you go,” Bosch said and quickly put his badge in the drawer.
    “He’s with me,” Rickard said into the microphone.
    The deputy behind the glass exchanged the badges for two visitor clearance badges and slid them out. Bosch and Rickard clipped them to their shirts. Bosch noticed they were cleared to visit the High Power block on the tenth floor. High Power was where the most dangerous criminal suspects were placed while awaiting trial or to be shipped out to state prisons following guilty verdicts.
    They began walking down a hall to the jail elevator.
    “You got the kid in High Power?” Bosch asked.
    “Yeah. I know a guy. Told him one day, that’s all we needed. The kid’s going to be shitless. He’s going to tell you everything he knows about Dance.”
    They took the security elevator up, this one operated by a deputy. Bosch figured it had to be the worst job in law enforcement. When the door opened on ten they were met by another deputy, who checked their badges and had them sign in. Then they moved through two sets of sliding steel doors to an attorneys’ visiting area, which consisted of a long table with benches running down both sides of it. There was also a foot-high divider running lengthwise down the table. At the far end of the table a female attorney sat on one side, leaning toward the divider and whispering to a client, who cupped his ears with his hands to hear better. The muscles on the inmate’s arms bulged and stretched the sleeves of his shirt. He was a monster.
    On the wall behind them was a sign that readNO TOUCHING,KISSING,REACHING ACROSS