The Black Ice (hb-2)

wanted flyers and carried the station’s duty roster clipped to it. He doubted that it would have been updated in the last week and he was correct. He found Moore’s name and address in Los Feliz on the page listing sergeants. He copied the address into his notebook and then headed out.

Chapter 17
    Bosch dragged deeply on a cigarette and then dropped the butt into the gutter. He hesitated before pulling the billy club that was the door handle of the Code Seven. He stared across First Street to the grass square that flanked City Hall and was called Freedom Park. Beneath the sodium lights he saw the bodies of homeless men and women sprawled asleep in the grass around the war memorial. They looked like casualties on a battlefield, the unburied dead.
    He went inside, walked through the front restaurant and then parted the black curtains that hid the entrance to the bar like a judge’s robes. The place was crowded with lawyers and cops and blue with cigarette smoke. They had all come to wait out the rush hour and either gotten too comfortable or too drunk. Harry went down to the end of the bar where the stools were empty and ordered a beer and a shot. It was seven on the dot according to the Miller clock over the bar. He scanned the room in the mirror behind the bar but saw nobody he could assume was the DEA agent Corvo. He lit another cigarette and decided he would give it until eight.
    The moment he decided that he looked back in the mirror and saw a short, dark man with a full black beard split the curtain and hesitate as his eyes focused in the dim bar. He wore blue jeans and a pullover shirt. Bosch saw the pager on his belt and the bulge the gun made under his shirt. The man looked around until their eyes met in the mirror and Harry nodded once. Corvo came over and took the stool next to him.
    “So you made me,” Corvo said.
    “And you made me. I guess we both need to go back to the academy. You want a beer?”
    “Look, Bosch, before you start getting friendly on me, I gotta tell you I don’t know about this. I don’t know what this is about. I haven’t decided whether to talk to you.”
    Harry took his cigarette from the ashtray and looked at Corvo in the mirror.
    “I haven’t decided if Certs is a breath mint or a candy.”
    Corvo slid back off his stool.
    “Have a good one.”
    “C’mon Corvo, have a beer, why don’t you? Relax, man.”
    “I checked you out before I came over. The line on you is that you’re just another head case. You’re on the fast track to nowhere. RHD to Hollywood, the next stop probably riding shotgun in a Wells Fargo truck.”
    “No, the next stop is Mexicali. And I can go down there blind, maybe walk in on whatever you got going with Zorrillo, or you can help me and yourself by telling me what’s what.”
    “What’s what is that you aren’t going to do anything down there. I leave here I pick up the phone and your trip is over.”
    “I leave here and I’m gone, on my way. Too late to stop. Have a seat. If I’ve been an asshole, I’m sorry. It’s the way I am sometimes. But I need you guys and you guys need me.”
    Corvo still didn’t sit down.
    “Bosch, what are you gonna do? Go down to the ranch, put the pope over your shoulder and carry him back up here? That it?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Shit.”
    “Actually, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m just going to play it as it comes. Maybe I never see the pope, maybe I do. You want to risk it?”
    Corvo slid back onto the stool and signaled the bartender. He ordered the same as Bosch. In the mirror Bosch noticed a long, thick scar cutting through the right side of Corvo’s beard. If he had grown the beard to cover the purplish-pink slug on his cheek, it hadn’t worked. Then again, maybe he didn’t want it to. Most DEA agents Bosch knew or had worked with had a macho swagger about them. A scar couldn’t hurt. It was a life of bluffing and bluster. Scars were worn like badges of courage. But Bosch wondered if the guy could do much undercover work with such a recognizable physical anomaly.
    After the bartender put down the drinks, Corvo threw back the shot like a man used to it.
    “So,” he said. “What are you really going down there for? And why should I trust you the least bit?”
    Bosch thought about it for a few moments.
    “Because I can give you Zorrillo.”
    “Shit.”
    Bosch didn’t say anything. He had to give Corvo his due, had to let him run out his string. After he was