The Black Ice

14

The Medfly Eradication Project Center was at the edge of East L.A., on San Fernando Road not far from County-USC Med Center, which housed the morgue. Bosch was tempted to drop by to see Teresa but he figured he should give her time to cool. He also figured that decision was cowardly but he didn’t change it. He just kept driving.

The project center was a former county psychiatric ward which had been abandoned to that cause years earlier when Supreme Court rulings made it virtually impossible for the government-in the form of the police-to take the mentally ill off the streets and hold them for observation and public safety. The San Fernando Road ward was closed as the country consolidated its psych centers.

It had been used since for a variety of purposes, including a set for a slasher movie about a haunted nuthouse and even a temporary morgue when an earthquake damaged the facility at County-USC a few years back. Bodies had been stored in two refrigerated trucks in the parking lot. Because of the emergency situation, county administrators had to get the first trucks they could get their hands on. Painted on the side of one of them had been the words “Live Maine Lobsters!” Bosch remembered reading about it in the “Only in L.A. ” column in theTimes.

There was a check-in post at the entry manned by a state police officer. Bosch rolled down the window, badged him and asked who the head medfly eradicator was. He was directed to a parking space and an entrance to the administration suite.

The door to the suite still said No Unescorted Patients on it. Bosch went through and down a hallway, nodding to and passing another state officer. He came to a secretary’s desk where he identified himself again to the woman sitting there and asked to see the entomologist in charge. She made a quick phone call to someone and then escorted Harry into a nearby office, introducing him to a man named Roland Edson. The secretary hovered near the door with a shocked look on her face until Edson finally told her that would be all.

When they were alone in the office, Edson said, “I kill flies for a living, not people, Detective. Is this a serious visit?”

Edson laughed hard and Bosch forced a smile to be polite. Edson was a small man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pale green tie. His bald scalp had been freckled by the sun and was scarred by misjudgments. He wore thick, rimless glasses that magnified his eyes and made him somewhat resemble his quarry. Behind his back his subordinates probably called him “The Fly.”

Bosch explained that he was working a homicide case and could not tell Edson a lot of the background because the investigation was of a highly confidential nature. He warned him that other investigators might be back with more questions. He asked for some general information about the breeding and transport of sterile fruit flies into the state, hoping that the appeal for expert advice would get the bureaucrat to open up.

Edson responded by giving him much of the same information Teresa Corazón had already provided, but Bosch acted as if it was all new to him and took notes.

“Here’s the specimen here, Detective,” Edson said, holding up a paperweight. It was a glass block in which a fruit fly had been perpetually cast, like a prehistoric ant caught in amber.

Bosch nodded and steered the interview specifically toward Mexicali. The entomologist said the breeding contractor there was a company called EnviroBreed. He said EnviroBreed shipped an average of thirty million flies to the eradication center each week.

“How do they get here?” Bosch asked.

“In the pupal stage, of course.”

“Of course. But my question is how?”

“This is the stage in which the insect is nonfeeding, immobile. It is what we call the transformation stage between larva and imago-adult. This works out quite well because it is an ideal point for transport. They come in incubators, if you will. Environment boxes, we call them. And then, of course, shortly after they get here metamorphosis is completed and they are ready to be released as adults.”

“So when they get here, they have already been dyed and irradiated?”

“That is correct. I said that.”

“And they are in the pupal stage, not larva?”

“Larvae is the plural, Detective, but, yes, that is essentially correct. I said that, also.”

Bosch was beginning to think Edson was essentially an officious prick. He was sure they definitely called him The Fly around here.

“Okay,” Harry said. “So what if, here in L.A., I found a larvae, I mean a larva, that was dyed but not irradiated? Is that possible?”

Edson was silent a moment. He didn’t want to speak too soon and be wrong. Bosch was getting the idea that he was the type of guy who watched “Jeopardy” on the tube each night and barked out the answers ahead of the contestants even if he was alone.

“Well, Detective, any given scenario is possible. I would, however, say the example you just gave is highly unlikely. As I said, our suppliers send the pupae packages through an irradiation machine before they are shipped here. In these packages we often find larvae mixed with the pupae because it would generally be impossible to completely separate the two. But these larvae samplings have been through the same irradiation as the pupae. So, no, I don’t see it.”

“So if I had a person who on their body carried a single pupa that had been dyed but not irradiated, that person would not have come from here, right?”

“Yes, that would be my answer.”

“Would?”

“Yes, Detective, thatis my answer.”

“Then where would this person have come from?”

Edson gave it some thought first. He used the eraser end of a pencil he had been fiddling with to press his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

“I take it this person is dead, you having introduced yourself as a homicide detective and obviously being unable to ask the person this question yourself.”

“You should be on ‘Jeopardy,’ Mr. Edson.”

“It’s Doctor. Anyway, I couldn’t begin to guess where the person would have picked up this specimen you speak of.”

“He could have been from one of the breeders you mentioned, down in Mexico or over in Hawaii, couldn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s a possibility. One of them.”

“And what’s another?”

“Well, Mr. Bosch, you saw the security we have around here. Frankly, there are some people who are not happy with what we are doing. Some extremists believe nature should take its course. If the medfly comes to southern California, who are we to try to eradicate it? Some people believe we have no business being in this business. There have been threats from some groups. Anonymous, but nevertheless, threats to breed nonsterile medflies and release them, causing a massive infestation. Now, if I were going to do that, I might dye them to obfuscate my opponent.”

Edson was pleased with himself on that one. But Bosch didn’t buy it. It did not fit with the facts. But he nodded, indicating to Edson that he would give it some consideration and thought. Then he said, “Tell me, how do these deliveries from the breeders get here? For example, how do they get here from the place down in Mexicali you deal with?”

Edson said that at the breeding facility thousands of pupae were packed into plastic tubes resembling six-foot-long sausages. The tubes were then strung in cartons complete with incubators and humidifiers. The environment boxes were sealed at the EnviroBreed lab under the scrutiny of a USDA inspector and then trucked across the border and north to Los Angeles. The deliveries from EnviroBreed came two to three times a week, depending on availability of supply.

“The cartons are not inspected at the border?” Bosch asked.

“They are inspected but not opened. It could endanger the product if the cartons were opened. Each carton contains a carefully controlled environment, you understand. But as I said, the cartons are sealed under the eye of government inspectors, and each carton is reinspected upon the breaking of such seals at the eradication center to make sure there has been no tampering. Um, at the border, the Border Patrol checks the seal numbers and cartons against the driver’s bill of lading and our separate notification of transport crossing. It’s very thorough, Detective Bosch. The system was all hashed out at the highest levels.”

Bosch said nothing for a while. He wasn’t going to debate the security of the system, but he wondered who designed it at the highest levels, the scientists or the Border Patrol.

“If I was to go down there, to Mexicali, could you get me into EnviroBreed?”

“Impossible,” Edson said quickly. “You have to remember these are private contractors. We get all our bred flies from privately owned facilities. Though we have a state USDA inspector at each facility and state entomologists, such as myself, make routine visits, we cannot order them to open their doors to an inquiry by police or anyone, for that matter, without showing notice of an infraction of our contract.

“In other words, Detective Bosch, tell me what they did and I will tell you if I can get you in there.”

Bosch didn’t answer. He wanted to tell Edson as little as possible. He changed the subject.

“These environment boxes that the bug tubes come in, how big are they?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re a pretty decent size. We generally use a forklift when unloading deliveries.”

“Can you show me one?”

Edson looked at his watch and said, “I suppose that is possible. I don’t know what has come in, if anything.”

Bosch stood up to force the issue. Edson finally did, too. He led Harry out of the office and down another hallway past more offices and labs that had once been the holding pens for the insane, the addicted and the abandoned. Harry recalled that once while a patrolman he had walked down this same hallway escorting a woman he had arrested on Mount Fleming, where she was climbing the steel frame behind the firstO of the Hollywood sign. She had a nylon cord with her, already tied into a noose at one end. A few years later he read in the newspaper that after getting out of Patton State Hospital she had gone back to the sign and done the job he had interrupted.

“Must be tough,” Edson said. “Working homicides.”

Bosch said what he always said when people said that to him.

“Sometimes it’s not so bad. At least the victims I deal with are out of their misery.”

Edson didn’t say anything else. The hall ended at a heavy steel door, which he pushed open. They walked out onto a loading dock that was inside a large hangarlike building. About thirty feet away, there were a half dozen or so workers, all Latinos, placing white plastic boxes on wheeled dollies and then pulling them through a set of double doors on the other side of the unloading area. Bosch noted that each of the boxes was just about the size of a coffin.

The boxes were first being removed from a white van with a mini-forklift. On the side of the van the word “EnviroBreed” was painted in blue. The driver’s door was open and a white man stood watching the work. Another white man with a clipboard was at the end of the truck, bending down to check numbers on the seals of each of the boxes and then making notes on the clipboard.

“We’re in luck,” Edson said. “A delivery in process. The environment boxes are taken into our lab where the M amp;M process, that’s what we call metamorphosis around here, is completed.”

Edson pointed through the open garage doors to a row of six orange pickup trucks parked outside in the lot.

“The mature flies are placed in covered buckets and we use our fleet to take them to the attack areas. They are released by hand. Right now the attack zone is about one hundred square miles. We are dropping fifty million sterile flies a week. More if we can get them. Ultimately, the steriles will overwhelm the wild fly population and breed it out of existence.”

There was a note of triumph in the entomologist’s voice.

“Would you like to speak with the EnviroBreed driver?” Edson said. “I am sure he would be ha-”

“No,” Bosch said. “I just wanted to see how it is done. I’d appreciate it, Doctor, if you kept my visit confidential.”

As he said this, Bosch noticed the EnviroBreed driver was looking right at him. The man’s face was deeply lined and tanned and his hair was white. He wore a straw plantation hat and smoked a brown cigarette. Bosch returned the stare, knowing full well that he had been made. He thought he saw a slight smile on the driver’s face, then the man finally broke away his stare and went back to watching the unloading process.

“Then is there anything else I can do for you, Detective,” Edson said.

“No, Doc. Thanks for your cooperation.”

“I’m sure you know your way out.”

Edson turned and went back in through the steel door. Harry put a cigarette in his mouth but left it unlit. He waved a nattering of flies, probably pink medflies, he thought, away from his face, went down the loading-dock stairs and walked out through the garage door.

Driving back toward downtown, Bosch decided to get it over with and face Teresa. He pulled into the County-USC parking lot and spent ten minutes looking for a spot big enough to put the Caprice in. He finally found one in the back where the lot is on a rise overlooking the old railroad yard. He sat in the car for a few moments thinking about what to say and smoking and looking down at all the rusted boxcars and iron tracks. He saw a group ofcholos in their oversized white T-shirts and baggy pants making their way through the yard. The one carrying a spray can dropped back from the others and along one of the old boxcars sprayed a scrip. It was in Spanish but Bosch understood it. It was the gang’s imprimatur, its philosophy:

LAUGH NOW CRY LATER

He watched them until they had moved behind another line of boxcars. He got out and went into the morgue through the rear door, where the deliveries are made. A security guard nodded after seeing his badge.

Today was a good day inside. The smell of disinfectant had the upper hand over the odor of death. Harry walked past the doors to refrigeration rooms one and two and then through a door to a set of stairs that led up to the second-floor administration offices.

Bosch asked the secretary in the chief medical examiner’s office if Dr. Corazón could see him. The woman, whose pale skin and pinkish hair made her resemble some of the clients around the place, spoke quietly on the phone and then told him to go in. Teresa was standing behind her desk, looking out the window. She had the same view Bosch had of the railroad yard and may have even seen him coming. But from the second floor, she also had a view that spanned the area from the towers of downtown to Mt Washington. Bosch noticed how clear the towers were in the distance. It was a good day outside as well.

“I’m not talking to you,” Teresa announced without turning around.

“C’mon.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why’d you let me in?”

“To tell you I am not talking to you and that I am very angry and that you have probably compromised my position as chief medical examiner.”

“C’mon, Teresa. I hear you have a press conference later today. It will work out.”

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned around and leaned back against the windowsill. She looked at him with eyes that could’ve carved his name on a tombstone. He could smell her perfume all the way across the room.

“And, of course, I have you to thank for that.”

“Not me. I heard Irving called the press con-”

“Don’t fuck with me, Harry. We both know what you did with what I told you. And we both know that little shit Irving automatically thinks I did it. I now have to consider myself seriously fucked as far as the permanent job goes. Take a good look around the office, Harry. Last time you’ll ever see me here.”

Bosch had always noticed how many of the professional women he encountered, mostly cops and lawyers, turned profane when arguing. He wondered if they felt it might put them on the same level as the men they were battling.

“It will work out,” he said.

“What are you talking about? All he has to do is tell a few commissioners that I leaked information from a confidential, uncompleted investigation to the press and that will eliminate me completely from consideration.”

“Listen, he can’t be sure it was you and he’ll probably think it was me. Bremmer, theTimes guy who stirred this all up, we go back some. Irving will know. So quit worrying about it. I came to see if you want to have lunch or something.”

Wrong move. He saw her face turn red with pure anger.

“Lunch or something? Are you kidding? Are you-you just told me we are the two likely suspects on this leak and you want me to sit with you in a restaurant? Do you know what could-”

“Hey, Teresa, have a nice press conference,” Bosch cut in. He turned around and headed to the door.

On the way into downtown, his pager went off and Bosch noticed the number was Ninety-eight’s direct line. He must be worried about his statistics, Harry thought. He decided to ignore the page. He also turned the Motorola radio in the car off.

He stopped at amariscos truck parked on Alvarado and ordered two shrimp tacos. They were served on corn tortillas, Baja style, and Bosch savored the heavy cilantro in the salsa.

A few yards from the truck stood a man reciting scripture verses from memory. On top of his head was a cup of water that nestled comfortably in his seventies-style Afro and did not spill. He reached up for the cup and took a drink from time to time but never stopped bouncing from book to book of the New Testament. Before each quote, he gave his listeners the chapter and verse numbers as a reference. At his feet was a glass fishbowl half full of coins. When he was done eating, Bosch ordered a Coke to go and then dropped the change into the fishbowl. He got a “God bless you” back.