The Black Ice (hb-2)

State. What was J. Michael Haller doing on a child custody case?
    On nothing more than a hunch, Bosch went to the Criminal Courts Building and ordered all of his mother’s cases from archives. In sorting through them, he found that in addition to the custody battle Haller had represented Margerie P. Lowe on six loitering arrests between 1948 and 1961. That was well into Haller’s time as a top trial lawyer.
    In his gut, Harry knew then.
    The receptionist in the five-name law office on the top floor of a Pershing Square tower told Bosch that Haller had retired recently because of a medical condition. The phone book didn’t list his residence but the roll of registered voters did. Haller was a Democrat and he lived on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. Bosch would always remember the rosebushes that lined the walkway to his father’s mansion. They were perfect roses.
    The maid who answered the door said Mr. Haller was not seeing visitors. Bosch told the woman to tell Mr. Haller it was Margerie Lowe’s son come to pay his respects. Ten minutes later he was led past members of the lawyer’s family. All of them standing in the hallway with strange looks on their faces. The old man had told them to leave his room and send Bosch in alone. Standing at the bedside, Harry figured him for maybe ninety pounds now, and he didn’t need to ask what was wrong because he could tell cancer was eating away at him from the inside out.
    “I guess I know why you’ve come,” he rasped.
    “I just wanted to… I don’t know.”
    He stood there in silence for quite a time, watching how it wore the man out just to keep his eyes open. There was a tube from a box on the bedside that ran under the covers. The box beeped every once in a while as it pumped pain-killing morphine into the dying man’s blood. The old man studied him silently.
    “I don’t want anything from you,” Bosch finally said. “I don’t know, I think I just wanted to let you know I made it by okay. I’m all right. In case you ever worried.”
    “You have been to the war?”
    “Yes. I’m done with that.”
    “My son– my other son, he… I kept him away from that… What will you do now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    After some more silence the old man seemed to nod. He said, “You are called Harry. Your mother told me that. She told me a lot about you… But I could never… Do you understand? Different times. And after it went by so long, I couldn’t… I couldn’t reverse things.”
    Bosch just nodded. He hadn’t come to cause the man any more pain. More silence passed and he heard the labored breathing.
    “Harry Haller,” the old man whispered then, a broken smile on the thin, peeling lips burned by chemotherapy. “That could have been you. Did you ever read Hesse?”
    Bosch didn’t understand but nodded again. There was a beep sound. He watched for a minute until the dosage seemed to take some effect. The old man’s eyes closed and he sighed.
    “I better get going,” Harry said. “You take care.”
    He touched the man’s frail, bluish hand. It gripped his fingers tightly, almost desperately, and then let go. As he stepped to the door, he heard the old man’s rasp.
    “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
    “I said I did. I did worry about you.”
    There was a tear running down the side of the old man’s face, into his white hair. Bosch nodded again and two weeks later he stood on a hill above the Good Shepherd section at Forest Lawn and watched them put the father he never knew in the ground. During the ceremony, he saw a grouping that he suspected was his half brother and three half sisters. The half brother, probably born a few years ahead of Bosch, was watching Harry during the ceremony. At the end, Bosch turned and walked away.

    * * *

    Near ten o’clock Bosch stopped at a roadside diner called El Oasis Verde and ate huevos rancheros. His table was at a window that looked out at the blue-white sheath called the Salton Sea and then farther east to the Chocolate Mountains. Bosch silently reveled in the beauty and the openness of the scene. When he was done, and the waitress had refilled his Thermos, he walked out into the dirt parking lot and leaned against the fender of the Caprice to breathe the cool, clean air and look again.
    The half brother was now a top defense lawyer and Harry was a cop. There was a strange congruence to that that Bosch found acceptable. They had never spoken and probably never would.
    He continued south as 86 ran