The Black Ice

22

“Let me ask you a question,” Bosch said. “How come you sent that inquiry to the consul’s office? I mean, you don’t have missing persons down here. Somebody turns up missing, they crossed the border but you don’t send out inquiries. What made you think this was different?”

They were heading toward the range of mountains that rose high above a layer of light brown smog from the city. They were going southwest on Avenida Val Verde and were moving through an area where ranch lands extended to the west and industrial parks lined the roadway to the east.

“The woman convinced me,” Aguila said. “She came to the plaza with the sheriff and made the report. Grena gave me the investigation and her words convinced me that Gutierrez-Llosa would not cross the border willingly-without her. So I went to the circle.”

Aguila said the circle below the golden statue of Benito Juarez on Calzado Lopez Mateos was where men went to wait for work. Other day laborers interviewed at the circle said the EnviroBreed vans came two or three times a week to hire workers. The men who had worked at the bug-breeding plant had described it as difficult work. They made food paste for the breeding process and loaded heavy incubation cartons into the vans. Flies constantly flew in their mouths and eyes. Many who had worked there said they never went back, choosing to wait for other employers to stop at the circle.

But not Gutierrez-Llosa. Others at the circle had reported seeing him get into the EnviroBreed van. Compared to the other laborers, he was an old man. He did not have much choice in employers.

Aguila said that when he learned the product made at EnviroBreed was shipped across the border, he sent out missing-person notices to consulates in southern California. Among his theories was that the old man had been killed in an accident at the plant and his body hidden to avoid an inquiry that could halt production. Aguila believed this was a common occurrence in the industrial sectors of the city.

“A death investigation, even accidental death, can be very expensive,” Aguila said.

“La mordida.”

“Yes, the bite.”

Aguila explained that his investigation stopped when he discussed his findings with Grena. The captain said he would handle the EnviroBreed inquiry and later reported it to be a dead end. And that was where it stood until Bosch called with news of the body.

“Sounds like Grena got his bite.”

Aguila did not answer this. They began to pass a ranch protected by a chain metal fence topped with razor wire. Bosch looked through it to the Sierra de los Cucapah and saw nothing in the vast expanse between the road and mountains. But soon they passed a break in the fence, an entrance to the ranch where there was a pickup truck parked lengthwise across the roadway. Two men were sitting in the cab and they looked at Bosch and he looked at them as he drove by.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s Zorrillo’s ranch.”

“Yes. The entrance.”

“Zorrillo’s name never came up before you heard it from me?”

“Not until you said it.”

Aguila offered no other comment. In a minute they were coming up to some buildings inside the ranch’s fence line but close to the road. Bosch could see a concrete barnlike structure with a garage door that was closed. There were corrals on either side of it and in these he saw a half dozen bulls in single pens. He saw no one around.

“He breeds bulls for the ring,” Aguila said.

“I heard that. Lot of money in that around here, huh?”

“All from the seed of one prized bull. El Temblar. A very famous animal in Mexicali. The bull that killed Meson, the famous torero. He lives here now and roams the ranch at his will, taking the heifers as he wishes. A champion animal.”

“The Tremble?” he said.

“Yes. It is said that man and earth tremble when the beast charges. That is the legend. The death of Meson a decade ago is very well known. A story recalled each Sunday at the plaza.”

“And the Tremble just runs around in there loose? Like a watchdog or something. A bulldog.”

“Sometimes people stand at the fence waiting for a glimpse of the great animal. The bulls his seed produces are considered the most game in all of Baja. Pull over here.”

Bosch turned onto the shoulder. He noticed Aguila was looking across the street at a line of warehouses and businesses. Some had signs on them. Most in English. They were companies that used cheap Mexican labor and paid low taxes to make products for the United States. There were furniture manufacturers, tile makers, circuit board factories.

“See the Mexitec Furniture building?” Aguila said. “The second structure down, with no sign, that is EnviroBreed.”

It was a white building, and Aguila was right. No sign or other indication of what went on there. It was surrounded by a ten-foot fence topped with razor wire. Signs on the fence warned in two languages that it was electrified and there were dogs inside of it. Bosch didn’t see any dogs and decided they were probably only put in the yard at night. He did see two cameras on the front corners of the building and several cars parked inside the compound. He saw no EnviroBreed vans but the two garage doors at the front of the building were closed.

Bosch had to press a button, state his business and hold his badge up to a remote camera before the fence gate automatically rolled open. He parked next to a maroon Lincoln with California tags and they walked across the dusty unpaved lot to the door marked Office. He brushed his hand against the back of his hip and felt the gun under his jacket. A small measure of comfort. The door was opened as he reached for the doorknob and a man wearing a Stetson to shade his acne-scarred and sun-hardened face stepped out lighting a cigarette. He was an Anglo and Bosch thought he might have been the van driver he had seen at the eradication center in L.A.

“Last door on the left,” the man said. “He’s waiting.”

“Who’s he?”

“Him.”

The man in the Stetson smiled and Bosch thought his face might crack. Bosch and Aguila stepped through the door into a wood-paneled hallway. It went straight back with a small reception desk on the left followed by three doors. At the end of the hall there was a fourth door. A young Mexican woman sat at the reception desk and stared at them silently. Bosch nodded and they headed back. The first door they passed was closed and letters on it said USDA. The next two doors had no letters. The one at the end of the hall had a sign that said:

DANGER – RADIATION NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE

Harry saw a hook next to the door that had goggles and breathing masks hanging on it. He opened the last door on the left and they stepped into a small anteroom with a secretary’s desk but no secretary.

“In here, please,” a voice said from the next room.

Bosch and Aguila stepped into a large office that was weighted in the center by a huge steel desk. A man in a light blue guayaberra shirt sat behind it. He was writing something in a ledger book and there was a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee on the desk. Enough light came through the jalousie window behind him so that he didn’t need a desk light. He looked about fifty years old, with gray hair that showed streaks of old black dye. He also was a gringo.

The man said nothing and continued writing. Bosch looked around and saw the four-picture closed-circuit television console on a low shelf against the wall next to the desk. He saw the black-and-white images from the gate and front corners. The fourth image was very dark and was an interior look at what Harry assumed was the cargo-loading room. He saw a white van with its rear doors open, two or three men loading large white boxes into it.

“Yes?” the man said. He still hadn’t looked up.

“Quite a lot of security for flies.”

Now he looked up. “Excuse me?”

“Didn’t know they were so valuable.”

“What can I do for you?” He threw his pen down on the desk to signal that the wheels of international commerce were grinding to a halt because of Bosch.

“Harry Bosch, Los Angeles po-”

“You said that at the gate. What can I do for you?”

“I am here to talk about one of your employees.”

“Name?” He picked up the pen again and went back to work on the ledger.

“You know something? I would think that if a cop had come three hundred miles, crossed the border, just to ask you a few questions, then it might rate a little interest. But not with you. That bothers me.”

The pen went down harder this time and bounced off the desk into the trash can next to it.

“Officer, I don’t care whether it bothers you or not. I have a shipment of perishable material I must get on the road by four o’clock. I can’t afford to show the interest you seem to think you rate. Now, if you want to give me the employee’s name-that is, if he was an employee-I will answer what I can.”

“What do you mean ‘was an employee’?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘was,’ just then.”

“So?”

“So, what’s it mean?”

“You said-you’re the one who came in here with these questions. I-”

“And your name is?”

“What?”

“What is your name?”

The man stopped, thoroughly confused, and drank from the cup. He said, “You know, mister, you have no authority here.”

“You said, ‘even if the guy was an employee,’ and I never said anything about ‘was.’ Makes me think, you already know we are talking about an individual that was. Who is dead now.”

“I just assumed, okay. A cop comes all the way down from L.A., I just assumed we were talking about a dead guy. Don’t try to put words-you can’t come in here with that badge that isn’t worth the tin it’s made of once you cross that border and start pushing me. I don’t have-”

“You want some authority? This is Carlos Aguila of the State Judicial Police here. You can consider that he is asking the same questions as me.”

Aguila nodded but said nothing.

“That’s not the point,” the man behind the desk said. “The point is this typical bullshit American imperialism you bring with you. I find it very distasteful. My name is Charles Ely. I am proprietor of EnviroBreed. I do not know anything about the man you said worked here.”

“I didn’t tell you his name.”

“It doesn’t matter. You understand now? You made a mistake. You played this game wrong.”

Bosch took the morgue photo of Gutierrez-Llosa out of his pocket and slid it across the desk. Ely did not touch the photo but looked down at it. He showed no reaction that Bosch could see. Then Bosch put down the pay stubs. Same thing. No reaction.

“Name is Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa,” Bosch said. “A day laborer. I need to know when he worked here last, what he was doing.”

Ely retrieved his pen from the trash can and flicked the photo back toward Bosch with it.

“Afraid I can’t help. Day laborers we don’t carry records on. We pay them with ‘pay to bearer’ checks at the end of each day. Different people all the time. I wouldn’t know this man from Adam. And I believe we already answered questions about this man. From the SJP. A Captain Grena. I guess I will have to call him now to see why that wasn’t sufficient.”

Bosch wanted to ask whether he meant the payoff Ely had given Grena or the information wasn’t sufficient. But he held back because it would come back on Aguila. Instead he said, “You do that, Mr. Ely. Meantime, somebody else around here might remember this man. I am going to take a look around.”

Ely became immediately agitated. “No, sir, you are not going to have free range of this facility. Portions of this building are used to irradiate material and are considered dangerous and off limits to all but certified personnel. Other areas are subject to USDA monitoring and quarantine and we cannot allow anyone access. Again, you have no authority here.”

“Who owns EnviroBreed, Ely?” Bosch asked.

Ely seemed startled by the change in subject.

“Who?” he sputtered.

“Who is the man, Ely?”

“I don’t have to answer that. You have no-”

“The man across the street? Is the pope the man?”

Ely stood up and pointed at the door.

“I don’t know what you are talking about but you’re leaving. And I will be contacting both the SJP and the American and Mexican authorities. We will see if this is how they want police from Los Angeles to operate on foreign soil.”

Bosch and Aguila moved back into the hall and closed the door. Harry stood there for a moment and listened for the sound of a telephone or steps. He heard nothing and then turned to the door at the end of the hall. He tried it but it was locked.

In front of the door marked USDA, he leaned his head forward and listened but heard nothing. He opened the door without knocking and a man with bureaucrat written all over him looked up from behind a small wooden desk. The room was about a quarter the size of Ely’s suite. The man wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a thin blue tie. He had close-cropped gray hair, a mustache that looked like the end of a toothbrush and small, dead eyes that looked out from behind bifocals that squeezed against his pudgy pink temples. The plastic ink guard in his pocket had his name printed on the flap: Jerry Dinsmore. He had a half-eaten bean burrito on his desk, sitting on oil-stained paper.

“Can I help you?” he said with a mouthful.

Bosch and Aguila moved into the room.

Bosch showed him his ID and let him have a good look at it. Then he put the morgue photo on the desk, next to the burrito. Dinsmore looked at it and folded up the paper around his half-finished meal and put it in a drawer.

“Recognize him?” Bosch said. “Just a routine check. Infectious disease alert. Guy took it with him up to L.A. and croaked. We are retracing him so we can get anybody who had contact inoculated. We still got plenty of time. We hope.”

Dinsmore was chewing his food much slower now. He looked down at the Polaroid and then up over his glasses at Bosch.

“Was he one of the men who worked around here?”

“We think so. We are checking with all the regular employees. We thought you might recognize him. It depends on how close you got as far as whether you need to be quarantined.”

“Well, I never get close to the laborers. I’m in the clear. But what is the disease that you are talking about? I don’t see why LAPD is-this man looks like he was beaten.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dinsmore, that’s confidential until we determine if you are at risk. If you are, well, then we have to put our cards on the table. Now, how do you mean you never get close to the laborers? Are you not the inspection officer for this facility?”

Bosch expected Ely to burst in any moment.

“I am the inspector but I am only interested in the finished product. I inspect samples directly from the travel cases. Then I seal the cases. This is done in the shipping room. You have to remember, this is a private facility and consequently I do not have free reign of the breeding or sterilization labs. Therefore, I do not interface with the workers.”

“You just said, ‘samples.’ So that means you don’t look in all of the boxes.”

“Wrong. I don’t look in all of the larvae cylinders in each of the transport cases, but I do inspect and seal the cases. I don’t see what this has to do with this man. He didn’t-”

“I don’t see it, either. Never mind. You’re in the clear.”

Dinsmore’s small eyes widened slightly. Bosch winked at him to further confuse him. He wondered if Dinsmore was part of what was going on here or whether, like a mole, he was in the dark. He told him to go back to his burrito and then he and Aguila stepped back into the hall. Just at that moment the door at the end of the hall opened and through it stepped Ely. He pulled a breathing mask and goggles off his face and charged down the hall, coffee slopping over the sides of the Styrofoam cup.

“I want you two out of here unless you have a court order.”

He was right up to Bosch now and anger was etching red lines on his face. It was the act he might have used to intimidate others but Bosch was not impressed. He looked down into the shorter man’s coffee cup and smiled as a small piece of the puzzle slipped into place. The stomach contents of Juan Doe #67 had included coffee. That was how he had swallowed the medfly which had brought Bosch here. Ely followed his eyes down and saw the medfly floating on the surface of the hot liquid.

“Fuckin’ flies,” he said.

“You know,” Bosch said, “I’ll probably get that court order.”

He couldn’t think of anything else to say and didn’t want to leave Ely with the satisfaction of throwing him out. He and Aguila headed for the exit.

“Don’t count on it,” Ely said. “This is Mexico. You aren’t jackshit here.”