Michael Connelly (81 page)

“I was a cop’s wife, remember?”

“Right. So you know. The thing about this is I care. Your husband was putting a file together for me. A file on black ice.
It makes me think like maybe he was trying to do something good. He might have been trying to do the impossible. To cross
back. It might’ve been what got him killed. And if it is, then I’m not letting it go by.”

They were quiet a long time after that. Her face looked pained but her eyes remained sharp and dry. She pulled the suit up
higher on her lap. Bosch could hear a police helicopter circling somewhere in the distance. It wouldn’t be L.A. without police
helicopters and spotlights circling at night.

“Black ice,” she said after a while in a whispery voice.

“What about it?”

“It’s funny, that’s all.” She was quiet a few moments and seemed to look around the room, realizing this was the place her
husband had come to after leaving her. “Black ice. I grew up in the Bay Area — San Francisco mostly — and that was something
we always were told to watch out for. But, you know, it was the other black ice we were told about.”

She looked at him then and must have read his confusion.

“In the winter, on those days when it really gets cold after a rain. When the rain freezes on the road, that’s black ice.
It’s there on the road, on the black asphalt, but you can’t see it. I remember my father teaching me to drive and he was always
saying, ‘Watch out for the black ice, girl. You don’t see the danger until you are in it. Then it’s too late. You’re sliding
out of control.’”

She smiled at the memory and said, “Anyway, that was the black ice I knew. At least while I was growing up. Just like coke
used to be a soda. The meaning of things can change on you.”

He just looked at her. He wanted to hold her again, touch the softness of her cheek with his own.

“Didn’t your father ever tell you to watch out for the black ice?” she asked.

“I didn’t know him. I sorta taught myself to drive.”

She nodded and didn’t say anything but didn’t look away.

“It took me about three cars to learn. By the time I finally got it down, nobody would dare lend me a car. Nobody ever told
me about the black ice, either.”

“Well, I did.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you hung up on the past, too, Harry?”

He didn’t answer.

“I guess we all are. What’s that saying? Through studying the past we learn our future. Something like that. You seem to me
to be a man still studying, maybe.”

Her eyes seemed to look into him. They were eyes with great knowledge. And he realized that for all of his desires the other
night, she did not need to be held or healed of pain. In fact, she was the healer. How could Cal Moore have run from this?

He changed the subject, not knowing why, only that he must push the attention away from himself.

“There’s a picture frame in the bedroom. Carved cherrywood. But no picture. You remember it?”

“I’ll have to look.”

She stood, leaving her husband’s suit on the chair, and moved into the bedroom. She looked at the frame in the top drawer
of the bureau a long time before saying she didn’t recognize it. She didn’t look at Bosch until after she said this.

They stood there next to the bed looking at each other in silence. Bosch finally raised his hand, then hesitated. She took
a step closer to him and that was the sign that his touch was wanted. He caressed her cheek, the way she had done it herself
when she had studied the photograph earlier and thought she was alone. Then he dropped his hand down the side of her throat
and around the back of her neck.

They stared at each other. Then she came closer and brought her mouth up to his. Her hand came to his neck and pulled him
to her and they kissed. She held him and pressed herself against him in a way that revealed her need. He saw her eyes were
closed now and at that moment Bosch realized she was his reflection in a mirror of hunger and loneliness.

They made love on her husband’s unmade bed, neither of them paying mind to where they were or what this would mean the next
day or week or year. Bosch kept his eyes closed, wanting to concentrate on other senses — her smell and taste and touch.

Afterward, he pulled himself back, so that his head lay on her chest between her freckled breasts. She had her hands in his
hair and was drawing her fingers through the curls. He could hear her heart beating in rhythm with his.

It was after one
A.M.
by the time Bosch turned the Caprice onto Woodrow Wilson and began the long, winding ascent to his house. He saw the spotlights
tracing eights on the low-lying clouds over Universal City. On the road he had to navigate his way around cars double-parked
outside holiday parties and a discarded Christmas tree, a few strands of lonely tinsel still clinging to its branches, that
had blown into his path. On the seat next to him were the lone Budweiser from Cal Moore’s refrigerator and Lucius Porter’s
gun.

All his life he believed he was slumming toward something good. That there was meaning. In the youth shelter, the foster homes,
the Army and Vietnam, and now the department, he always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution
and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting
often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that
he was empty. He had learned to fill that hollowness with isolation and work. Sometimes drink and the sound of the jazz saxophone.
But never people. He never let anyone in all the way.

And now he thought he had seen Sylvia Moore’s eyes. Her true eyes, and he had to wonder if she was the one who could fill
him.

“I want to see you,” he had said when they separated outside The Fountains.

“Yes,” was all she said. She touched his cheek with her hand and got into her car.

Now Bosch thought about what that one word and the accompanying touch could mean. He was happy. And that was something new.

As he rounded the last curve, slowing for a car with its brights on to pass, he thought of the way she had looked at the picture
frame for so long before saying she did not recognize it. Had she lied? What were the chances that Cal Moore would have bought
such an expensive frame after moving into a dump like that? Not good, was the answer.

By the time he pulled the Caprice into the carport, he was full of confusing feelings. What had been in the picture? What
difference did it make that she had held that back? If she did. Still sitting in the car, he opened the beer and drank it
down quickly, some of it spilling onto his neck. He would sleep tonight, he knew.

Inside, he went to the kitchen, put Porter’s gun in a cabinet and checked the phone machine. There were no messages. No call
from Porter saying why he had run. No call from Pounds asking how it was going. No call from Irving saying he knew what Bosch
was up to.

After two nights with little sleep, Bosch looked forward to his bed as he did on few other nights. It was most often this
way, part of a routine he kept. Nights of fleeting rest or nightmares followed by a single night when exhaustion finally drove
him down hard into a dark sleep.

As he gathered the covers and pillows about him, he noticed there was still the trace of Teresa Corazón’s powdery perfume
on them. He closed his eyes and thought about her for a moment. But soon her image was pushed out of his mind by Sylvia Moore’s
face. Not the photo from the bag or the night stand, but the real face. Weary but strong, her eyes focused on Bosch’s own.

The dream was like others Harry had had. He was in the dark place. A cavernous blackness enveloped him and his breath echoed
in the dark. He sensed, or rather, he knew in the way he had knowledge of place in all his dreams that the darkness ended
ahead and he must go there. But this time he was not alone. That was what was different. He was with Sylvia, and they huddled
in the black, their sweat stinging their eyes. Harry held her and she held him. And they did not speak.

They broke from each other’s embrace and began to move through the darkness. There was dim light ahead and Harry headed that
way. His left hand was extended in front of him, his Smith & Wesson in its grasp. His right hand was behind him, holding hers
and leading her along. And as they came into the light Calexico Moore was waiting there with the shotgun. He was not hidden,
but he stood partially silhouetted by the light that poured into the passage. His green eyes were in shadow. And he smiled.
Then he raised the shotgun.

“Who fucked up?” he said.

The roar was deafening in the blackness. Bosch saw Moore’s hands fly loose from the shotgun and up away from his body like
tethered birds trying to take flight. He back-stepped wildly into the darkness and was gone. Not fallen, but disappeared.
Gone. Only the light at the end of the passage remained in his wake. In one hand Harry still gripped Sylvia’s hand. In the
other, the smoking gun.

He opened his eyes then.

Bosch sat up on the bed. He saw pale light leaking around the edges of the curtains on the windows facing east. The dream
had seemed so short, but he realized because of the light he had slept until morning. He held his wrist up to the light and
checked his watch. He had no alarm clock because he never needed one. It was six o’clock. He rubbed his face in his palms
and tried to reconstruct the dream. This was unusual for him. A counselor at the sleep dysfunction lab at the VA had once
told him to write down what he remembered from his dreams. It was an exercise, she said, to try to inform the conscious mind
what the subconscious side was saying. For months he kept a notebook and pen by the bed and dutifully recorded his morning
memories. But Bosch had found it did him no good. No matter how well he understood the source of his nightmares, he could
not eliminate them from his sleep. He had 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 Sepul-veda 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.