Michael Connelly (88 page)

“Christ, who knows? Only thing I care about is that he is back and he is going to be there when the CLETs come through the
door. And by the way, you better not bring that gun with you or the
federales
will hook you up, too. They are giving a special weapons privilege to the CLETs but that is it. The AG is going to sign it
— God, I hope this guy never gets bought off or assassinated. Anyway, like I’m saying, if they want you to have a gun, they’ll
give you something from their own armory.”

“And how am I going to know when it goes down?”

Ramos was still standing. He jerked his head back and poured down half the bottle of beer. His odor had totally filled the
room. Bosch held his bottle up near his mouth and nose so he’d smell the beer instead of the DEA agent.

“We’ll let you know,” Ramos said. “Take this and wait.”

He tossed Bosch one of the pagers off his belt.

“You put that on and I’ll give you a buzz when we are ready to rock. It will be soon. At least before New Year’s, I’m hoping.
We gotta move on this. There is no telling how long the target is going to stay in place this time.”

He finished the beer and put the bottle on the table. He didn’t pick up another. The meeting was done.

“What about my partner?” Bosch asked.

“Who, the Mex? Forget it. He’s state. You can’t tell him about this, Bosch. The pope has the SJP and the other locals wired.
It’s a given. Don’t trust anybody over there, don’t tell anybody over there. Just wear the pager like I said and wait for
the beep. Go to the bullfights. Hang by the pool or something. Hell, man, look at yourself. You could use the color.”

“I know Aguila better than I know you.”

“Did you know he works for a man who is a regular guest of Zorrillo’s at the bullfights each Sunday?”

“No,” Bosch said. He thought of Grena.

“Did you know that to become a detective in the SJP, the promotion is bought for an average of two thousand dollars, not based
on any skill in investigative technique?”

“No.”

“I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is here. You’ve got to understand that. Trust no one. You may be working with the
last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?”

Bosch nodded and said, “One more thing, I want to come in tomorrow and check your mug books. You have Zorrillo’s people?”

“Most of them. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a guy with three tattooed tears. He’s Zorrillo’s hit man. He hit another cop yesterday in L.A.”

“Jesus! Okay, in the morning, call me at this number. We’ll set it up. If you make an ID we’ll get the word to the AG. It’ll
help us get the search approval.”

He gave Bosch a card with a phone number on it, nothing else. Then he was gone. Harry put the chain back on the lock.

Bosch sat on the bed with his beer, thinking about the reappearance of Zorrillo. He wondered where he had been and why he
had left the safety of his ranch in the first place. Harry poked at the idea that maybe Zorrillo had been in L.A. and that
it had taken his presence there to lure Moore to the motel room where he was put down on the bathroom floor. Maybe Zorrillo
was the only one Moore would have gone there for.

The sharp sound of squealing brakes and crashing metal shot through the window. Before he even got up he heard voices arguing
in the street below. The words grew harsher until they were threats being yelled so fast Bosch could not understand them.
He went to the window and saw two men standing chests out beside two cars. One had rear-ended the other.

As he turned away he detected a small flash of blue light to his left. Before he had time to look, the bottle in his hand
shattered and beer and glass exploded in all directions. He instinctively took a step back and launched himself over the bed
and down onto the floor. He braced himself for more shots but none came. His heartbeat rapidly increased and he felt the familiar
rush of mental clarity that comes only in situations of life and death. He crawled along the floor to the table and pulled
the lamp plug out of the wall, dropping the room in darkness. As he reached up to the table for his gun, he heard the two
cars speeding away in the street. A beautiful setup, he thought, but they missed.

He moved beneath the window opening and then stood up while pressing his back to the wall. All the while he was realizing
how stupid he had been to literally pose in the window. He looked through the opening into the darkness where he believed
he had seen the muzzle flash. There was no one there. Several of the windows of the other rooms were open and it was impossible
to pinpoint where the shot had come from. Bosch looked back into his room and saw the headboard of the bed splintered at the
spot where the bullet had impacted. By imagining a line from the impact point though the position he had held the bottle and
then out the window, he focused on an open but dark window on the fifth floor of the other wing. He saw no movement there
other than the curtain swaying gently with the breeze. Finally, he put his gun in his waistband and left the room, his clothes
smelling of beer and with small slivers of glass embedded in his shirt and pricking his skin. He knew he had at least two
slight glass cuts. One on his neck and one on his right hand, which had been holding the bottle. He held his cut hand to his
neck wound as he walked.

He had judged that the open window belonged to the fourth room on the fifth floor. He now had his gun out and pointed in front
of him as he moved slowly down the fifth-floor hallway. He was debating whether he should kick the door open but found the
decision academic. A cool breeze from the open window flowed out through the open door of room 504.

The room was dark and Bosch knew he would be silhouetted by the lighted hallway. So he hit the room’s entrance-light switch
as he moved quickly through the doorway. He covered the room with his Smith and found it empty. The smell of burned gunpowder
hung in the air. Harry looked out the window and followed the imaginary line down to his own third-floor room’s window. It
had been an easy shot. It was then that he heard the screeching of tires and saw the taillights of a large sedan pull out
of the hotel parking lot and then speed away.

Bosch put the gun in his waistband and pulled his shirt out over it. He looked quickly around the room to see if the shooter
had left anything behind him. The glint of copper from the fold of the bedspread where it was tucked beneath the pillows caught
his eye. He pulled the bedspread out straight and lying there was a shell casing that had been ejected from a thirty-two rifle.
He got an envelope out of the desk drawer and scooped the shell inside it.

As he left room 504 and walked down the hallway, no one looked out a door, no house detectives came running and no approaching
sirens blared in the distance. No one had heard a thing, except maybe a bottle breaking. Bosch knew that the thirty-two fired
at him had had a silencer screwed to the end of its barrel. Whoever it had been, he had taken his time and waited for the
one shot. But he had missed. Had that been intentional? He decided it wasn’t, to make a shot that close but intend to miss
was too chancy. He had simply been lucky. His turn from the window at the last moment had probably saved his life.

Bosch headed back to his room to dig the slug out of the wall, bandage his wounds and check out. Along the way he started
running when he realized he had to warn Aguila.

Back in his room, he quickly dug through his wallet for the piece of paper on which Aguila had written his address and phone
number. Aguila picked up almost immediately.

“Bueno.”

“It’s Bosch. Someone just took a shot at me.”

“Yes. Where? Are you injured?”

“I am okay. In my room. They shot through the window. I’m calling to warn you.”

“Yes?”

“We were together today, Carlos. I don’t know if it’s just me or the both of us. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am.”

Bosch realized he didn’t know if Aguila had a family or was alone. In fact, he realized, he knew the man’s ancestry but little
else.

“What will you do?” Aguila asked.

“I don’t know. I’m leaving here…”

“Come here, then.”

“Okay, yes …No. Can you come here? I won’t be here but I want you to come and find out whatever you can about the person who
rented room 504. That’s where the shot came from. You can get the information easier than me.”

“I am leaving now.”

“We’ll meet at your place. I have something to do first.”

• • •

A moon like the smile of the Cheshire cat hung over the top of the ugly silhouette of the industrial park on Val Verde. It
was ten o’clock. Bosch sat in his car in front of the Mexitec furniture factory. He was about two hundred yards from EnviroBreed
and he was waiting for the last car to leave the bug plant. It was a maroon Lincoln that he suspected was Ely’s. On the seat
next to him was a bag containing the items he had bought earlier. The smell of the roasted pork was filling the car and he
rolled down the window.

As he watched the EnviroBreed lot, he was still breathing hard and the adrenaline continued to course through his arteries
like amphetamine. He was sweating, though the evening air was quite cool. He thought of Moore and Porter and the others. Not
me, he thought. Not me.

At 10:15 he saw the door to EnviroBreed open and a man came out, accompanied by the blur of two black figures. Ely. Dogs.
The dark shapes bobbed up and down at his waist as he walked. Ely then scattered something in the lot but the dogs stayed
by his side. He then slapped his hip and yelled, “Chow!” and the dogs scattered and chased each other to varying points in
the lot where they fought over whatever it was Ely had thrown.

Ely got in the Lincoln. After a few moments Bosch saw the taillights flare and the car backed away from its space at the front
of the lot. Bosch watched as the headlights traced a circle in the lot and then led the car to the gate. The gate slowly rolled
open and the car slipped through. Then the driver hesitated on the fringe of the roadway, though it was clear to pull out.
He waited until the gate had trundled closed, the dogs safely inside the fenced compound, and then pulled away. Bosch slipped
down in his seat, even though the Lincoln had headed the other way, north toward the border.

Bosch waited a few minutes and watched. Nothing moved anywhere. No cars. No people. He didn’t expect there to be any DEA surveillance
because they would pull back when planning a raid, so as not to tip their hand. He hoped they would, at least. He got out
with the bag, his flashlight and his lock picks. Then he leaned back into the car and pulled out the rubber floor mats, which
he rolled up and put under his arm.

Bosch’s take on EnviroBreed’s security measures, from when he had been there during the day, were that they were strictly
aimed at deterring entry, not sounding an alert once security had been bridged. Dogs and cameras, a twelve-foot fence topped
with electrified razor wire. But inside the plant Bosch had seen no tape on the windows in Ely’s office, no electric eyes,
not even an alarm key pad inside the front door.

This was because an alarm brought police. The breeders wanted to keep people out of the bug plant, but not if it drew the
attention of authorities. It didn’t matter if those authorities could be easily corrupted and paid to look the other way.
It was just good business not to involve them. So, no alarms. This, of course, did not mean an alert would not be sent somewhere
else — such as the ranch across the street — if a break-in occurred. But that was the risk Bosch was taking.

Bosch cut down the side of the Mexitec factory to an alley that ran behind the buildings that fronted Val Verde. He walked
to the rear of EnviroBreed and waited for the dogs.

They came around quickly but silently. They were sleek black Dobermans and they moved right up to the fence. One made a low,
guttural sound and the other followed suit. Bosch walked along the fence line, looking up at the razor wire. The dogs walked
along with him, saliva dripping from their lagging tongues. Bosch saw the pen they were caged in during the day in the back.
There was a wheelbarrow leaning up against the rear wall of the building and nothing else.

Except the dogs. Bosch crouched to the ground in the alley and opened up the bag. First he took out and opened the plastic
bottle of Sueño Mas. Then he opened the wrapped paper bundle of roast pork he had bought at the Chinese takeout near the hotel.
The meat was almost cold now. He took a chunk about the size of a baby’s fist and pressed three of the extra-strength sleeping
pills into it. He squeezed it in his hand and then lofted it over the fence. The dogs raced to it and one took a position
over it but did not touch it. Bosch repeated the process and threw another piece over. The other dog stood over it.

They sniffed at the pork and looked at Bosch, sniffed some more. They looked around to see if their master might be nearby
to help with a decision. Finding no help, they looked at each other. One dog finally picked his chunk up in its teeth and
then dropped it. They both looked at Bosch and he yelled “Chow!”