The Black Ice (hb-2)

dropped out of the sleep deprivation counseling program years ago.
    Now, he could not recapture the dream. Sylvia’s face disappeared in the mist. Harry realized he had been sweating heavily. He got up and pulled the bed sheets off and dumped them in a basket in the closet. He went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He showered, shaved and dressed in blue jeans, a green corduroy shirt and a black sport coat. Driving clothes. He went back to the kitchen and filled his Thermos with black coffee.
    The first thing he took out to the car was his gun. He removed the rug that lined the trunk and then lifted out the spare tire and the jack that were stowed beneath it. He placed the Smith Wesson, which he had taken from his holster and wrapped in an oilcloth, in the wheel well and put the spare tire back on top of it. He put the rug back in place and laid the jack down along the rear of the trunk. Next he put his briefcase in and a duffel bag containing a few days’ changes of clothes. It all looked passable, though he doubted anyone would even look.
    He went back inside and got his other gun out of the hallway closet. It was a forty-four with grips and safety configured for a right-handed shooter. The cylinder also opened on the left side. Bosch couldn’t use it because he was left-handed. But he had kept it for six years because it had been given to him as a gift by a man whose daughter had been raped and murdered. Bosch had winged the killer during a brief shootout during his capture near the Sepulveda Dam in Van Nuys. He lived and was now serving life without parole. But that hadn’t been enough for the father. After the trial he gave Bosch the gun and Bosch accepted it because not to take it would have been to disavow the man’s pain. His message to Harry was clear; next time do the job right. Shoot to kill. Harry took the gun. And he could have taken it to a gunsmith and had it reconfigured for left-hand use, but to do that would be to acknowledge the father had been right. Harry wasn’t sure he was ready to do that.
    The gun had sat on a shelf in the closet for six years. Now he took it down, checked its action to make sure it was still operable, and loaded it. He put it in his holster and was ready to go.
    On his way out, he grabbed his Thermos in the kitchen and bent over the phone machine to record a new message.
    “It’s Bosch. I will be in Mexico for the weekend. If you want to leave a message, hang on. If it’s important and you want to try to reach me, I’ll be at the De Anza Hotel in Calexico.”

    * * *

    It was still before seven as he headed down the hill. He took the Hollywood Freeway until it skirted around downtown, the office towers opaque behind the early morning mixture of fog and smog. He took the transition road to the San Bernardino Freeway and headed east, out of the city. It was 250 miles to the border town of Calexico and its sister city of Mexicali, just on the other side of the fence. Harry would be there before noon. He poured himself a cup of coffee without spilling any and began to enjoy the drive.
    The smog from L.A. didn’t clear until Bosch was past the Yucaipa turnoff in Riverside County. After that the sky turned as blue as the oceans on the maps he had next to him on the seat. It was a windless day. As he passed the windmill farm near Palm Springs the blades of the hundreds of electric generators stood motionless in the morning desert mist. It was eerie, like a cemetery, and Harry’s eyes didn’t linger.
    Bosch drove through the plush desert communities of Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage without stopping, passing streets named after golfing presidents and celebrities. As he passed Bob Hope Drive, Bosch recalled the time he saw the comedian in Vietnam. He had just come in from thirteen days of clearing Charlie’s tunnels in the Cu Chi province and thought the evening of watching Hope was hilarious. Years later he had seen a clip of the same show on a television retrospective on the comedian. This time, the performance made him feel sad. After Rancho Mirage, he caught Route 86 and was heading directly south.
    The open road always presented a quiet thrill to Bosch. The feeling of going someplace new coupled with the unknown. He believed he did some of his best thinking while driving the open road. He now reviewed his search of Moore’s apartment and tried to look for hidden meanings or messages. The ragged furniture, the empty suitcase, the lonely skin mag, the