The Black Ice (hb-2)
questions-about Moore, Porter and the rest-are down here. It’s all down here. I’m staying.”
“Detective Bosch, I was wrong about you. I gave you a lot of rope this time because I thought I detected a change in you. I see now that I was wrong. You fooled me again. You-”
“Chief, I am doing my-”
“Don’t interrupt me! You may be unwilling to follow my explicit commands to return but don’t you interrupt me. I am telling you that you don’t want to return, fine. Don’t. But you might as well never return, Bosch. Think about that. What you had before won’t be waiting when you get back.”
* * *
After Irving hung up Bosch picked a second bottle of Tecate from the bucket and lit a cigarette at the window. He didn’t care about Irving’s threats. Not that much, at least. He’d probably draw a suspension, maybe five days max. He could handle that. But Irving wouldn’t move Bosch. Where could he send him? There weren’t very many places lower than Hollywood. Instead, Bosch thought about Porter. He had been able to put it off, put it out of his mind. But now he had to think about Porter. Strangled with baling wire, left in a Dumpster. Poor bastard. But something in Bosch refused to let him grant the dead cop sympathy. Nothing about it touched his heart the way he thought it would, or should. It was a pitiful end of life. But he felt no pity. Porter had made fatal mistakes. Bosch promised himself that he would not and that he would go on.
He tried to focus on Zorrillo. Harry was sure that it was the pope who was manipulating things, who had sent the assassin to clean up the loose ends. If it was likely the same man had killed both Kapps and Porter, it was then easy to add Moore in as a victim as well. And possibly even Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa. The man with three tears. Did that leave Dance off the hook? Bosch doubted it. It might have taken Dance to lure Moore to the Hideaway. His thoughts reassured him that he was doing the right thing staying. The answers were here, not in L.A.
He went to his briefcase on the bureau and took out the mug shot of Dance that had been in the file Moore had put together. He looked at the practiced sulk of a young man who still had a boyish face and bleached blond hair. Now he wanted to move up the ladder and had come south of the border to make his case. Bosch realized that if Dance was in Mexicali he would not blend in easily. He’d have to have help.
The knock on the door startled him. Bosch quietly put down the bottle and took the gun off the night table. Through the peephole he saw a man of about thirty with dark hair and a thick mustache. He was not the room service waiter who had brought the beer.
“Si?”
“Bosch. It’s Ramos.”
Bosch opened the door on the chain and asked for some identification.
“Are you kidding? I don’t carry ID around here. Let me in. Corvo sent me.”
“How do I know?”
“Because you called L.A. Operations two hours ago and left your address. I tell you, I really get fucking paranoid having to explain all of this while standing out in the hallway.”
Bosch closed the door, flipped off the chain and reopened it. He kept the gun in his hand but down at his side. Ramos walked past him into the room. He walked up to the window and looked out, then he walked away and began pacing near the bed. He said, “Smells like shit out there. Somebody cooking tortillas or some shit. Got any more brew? And by the way, the
federales
catch you with that piece and you might have trouble trying to get back across. How come you didn’t stay in Calexico like Corvo told you to, man?”
If he had been anyone other than a cop, Bosch would have figured he was coked to the eyelids. But he decided it was probably something else, something he didn’t know about yet, that made Ramos seem wired. Bosch picked up the phone and ordered a six-pack from room service, never taking his eyes off the man in his room. After he hung up, he put the gun in his waistband and sat down in the chair by the window.
“I didn’t want to deal with the lines at the border,” he said in answer to one of Ramos’s many questions.
“You didn’t want to put your trust in Corvo is what you mean. I don’t blame you. Not that I don’t trust him. I do. But I can see the need to want to go your own way. They got better food over here, anyway. But Calexico, there’s a wild little town. It’s one of those places, you never know what kind of shit is going down. You
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