The Black Ice (hb-2)

hit that place the wrong way and you go into a slide, man. I like it better over here myself. Did you eat?”
    For a moment, Bosch thought about what Sylvia Moore had said about the black ice. Ramos was still pacing the room and Bosch noticed he had two electronic pagers on his belt. The agent was hyped on something. Bosch was sure of it.
    “I already ate,” Bosch said and moved his chair near the window because the room had taken on the tang of the agent’s body odor.
    “I know the best Chinese food in two countries. We could pop over for-”
    “Hey! Ramos, sit down. You’re making me nervous. Just sit down and tell me what’s going on.”
    Ramos looked around himself as if seeing the room for the first time. He dragged a chair away from the wall near the door and straddled it backward in the middle of the room.
    “What’s going on, man, is that we are not too impressed with the shit you pulled at EnviroBreed today.”
    Bosch was surprised the DEA knew so much so fast but tried not to show it.
    “That was not cool at all,” Ramos was saying. “So I came here to tell you to quit the one-man show. Corvo told me that was your bag, but I didn’t expect to see it so soon.”
    “What’s the problem?” Bosch said. “It was my lead. From what Corvo said, you people didn’t know shit about that place. I went in there to shake ’em up a little bit. That’s all.”
    “These people don’t shake, Bosch. That’s what I am saying. Now look, enough said. I just wanted to say my little piece and to see what you have going besides the bug place. What I’m asking is, what are you doing here?”
    Before Bosch could answer there was a loud knock on the door and the DEA agent jumped off the chair, coming down in a crouched position.
    “It’s room service,” Bosch said. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Always get this way before we jam.”
    Bosch got up looking curiously at the DEA agent and went to the door. Through the peephole he saw the same man who had delivered the first two beers. He opened the door, paid for the delivery and gave Ramos a bottle from the new bucket.
    Ramos chugged half the bottle before sitting back down. Bosch took a beer back to his seat.
    “What do you mean by ‘before we jam’?”
    “Well,” Ramos said after another swallow. “The stuff you gave Corvo was good info. But then you canceled that out by cowboying it over there today. You nearly fucked things up.”
    “You said that. What did you find out?”
    “EnviroBreed. We ran down the info and it’s a direct hit. We traced ownership through a bunch of blinds to a Gilberto Ornelas. That’s a known alias for a guy named Fernando Ibarra, one of Zorrillo’s lieutenants. We are working with the
federales
on getting search approvals. They are cooperating on this one. This new attorney general they got down here is clean and mean. He’s working with us. So it’s going to be a major jam, if we get the approval.”
    “When will you know?”
    “Any time. One last piece has to fall.”
    “What’s that?”
    “If he’s moving black ice across the border in EnviroBreed shipments, then how is he getting it from the ranch to the bug house? See, we’ve been watching the ranch and would’ve seen it. And we’re pretty sure it’s not manufactured at EnviroBreed. Too small, too many people around, too close to the road, et cetera, et cetera. All our intelligence says it’s made on the ranch. Underground, in a bunker. We got aerials that show the heat patterns from the ventilation. Anyway, the question is then, how’s he get it across the street to EnviroBreed?”
    Bosch thought about what Corvo had said at the Code 7. That Zorrillo was suspected of helping to finance the tunnel that went under the border at Nogales.
    “He doesn’t take it across the street. He takes it under.”
    “Exactly,” Ramos said. “We are working our informants on it right now. We get it confirmed, we get our approval from the attorney general and we go in. We hit the ranch and EnviroBreed simultaneously. Joint operation. The AG sends the federal militia. We send CLET.”
    Bosch hated all the acronyms law enforcement agencies cling to but asked what CLET was anyway.
    “Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team. These guys are fuckin’ ninjas.”
    Bosch thought this information over. He didn’t understand why it was happening so quickly. Ramos was leaving something out. There had to be new intelligence on Zorrillo.
    “You’ve seen him, haven’t