The Black Ice

7

The restaurant’s sign had been changed since the last time he had been there. It was now theAll-American Egg and I, which meant it had probably been sold to foreigners. Bosch got out of his Caprice and walked through the back alley, looking at the spot where Juan Doe #67 had been dumped. Right outside the backdoor of a diner frequented by the local narc crew. His thoughts on the implications of this were interrupted by the panhandlers in the alley who came up to him shaking their cups. Bosch ignored them but their presence served to remind him of another shortcoming in Porter’s meager investigation. There had been nothing in the reports about vagrants in the alley being interviewed as possible witnesses. It would probably be impossible to track them down now.

Inside the restaurant, he saw four young men, one of them black, in a rear booth. They were sitting silently with their faces turned down to the empty coffee cups in front of them. Harry noticed a closed manila file on the table as he pulled a chair away from an empty table and sat at the end of the booth.

“I’m Bosch.”

“Tom Rickard,” the black one said. He put out his hand and then introduced the other three as Finks, Montirez and Fedaredo.

“We got tired of being around the office,” Rickard said. “ Cal used to like this place.”

Bosch just nodded and looked down at the file. He saw the name written on the tab was Humberto Zorrillo. It meant nothing to him. Rickard slid the file across the table to him.

“What is it?” Harry asked, not yet touching it.

“Probably the last thing he worked on,” Rickard said. “We were going to give it over to RHD but thought what the hell, he was working it up for you. And those boys down there at Parker are just trying to drag him through the shit. Ain’t going to help with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they can’t let it be that the man killed himself. They hafta dissect his life and figure out exactly why he did this and why he done that. The man fucking killed himself. What else is there to say about it?”

“You don’t want to know why?”

“I already know why, man. The job. It will get us all in the end. I mean, I know why.”

Bosch just nodded again. The other three narcs still hadn’t said anything.

“I’m just letting off steam,” Rickard said. “Been one of those days. Longest fucking day of my life.”

“Where was this?” Harry asked, pointing to the file. “Didn’t RHD already go through his desk?”

“Yeah, they did. But that file wasn’t in it. See, Cal left it in one of the BANG cars-one of those undercover pieces of shit we use. In the pocket behind the front seat. We never noticed it during the week he was missing because today was the first time any of us rode in the back of the car. We usually take two cars out on operations. But today we all jumped in one for a cruise on the Boulevard after we came in and heard the news. I saw it shoved down into the pocket. It’s got a little note inside. Says to give it to you. We knew he was working on something for you ’cause of that night he peeled off early to go meet with you at the Catalina.”

Bosch still hadn’t opened the file. Just looking at it gave him an uneasy feeling.

“He told me that night at the Catalina that the shoeflies were on him. You guys know why?”

“No, man, we don’t know what was going down. We just know they were around. Like flies on shit. IAD went through his desk before RHD. They took files, his phone book, even took the fucking typewriter off the desk. That was the only one we had. But what it was about, we don’t know. The guy had a lot of years in and it burns my ass that they were gunning for him. That’s what I meant before about the job doing him in. It’ll get all of us.”

“What about outside the job? His past. His wife said-”

“I don’t want to hear about that shit. She’s the one who put the suits on him. Made up some story when he walked out and dropped the dime on him. She just wanted to bring him down, you ask me.”

“How do you know it was her?”

“ Cal told us, man. Said the shoeflies might come around asking questions. Told us it came from her.”

Bosch wondered who had been lying, Moore to his partners or Sylvia to himself. He thought about her for a moment and couldn’t see it, couldn’t see her dropping the dime. But he didn’t press it with the four narcs. He finally reached down and picked up the file. Then he left.

He was too curious to wait. He knew that he should not even have the file. That he should pick up a phone and call Frankie Sheehan at RHD. But he unconsciously took a quick look around the car to make sure he was alone and began to read. There was a yellow Post-it note on the first page.

Give to Harry Bosch.

It was not signed or dated. It was stuck to a sheet of paper with five green Field Interview cards held to it with a paper clip. Harry detached the FI cards and shuffled through them. Five different names, all males. Each had been stopped by members of the BANG unit in October or November. They were questioned and released. Each card held little more information than a description, home address, driver license number, and date and location of the shakedown. The names meant nothing to Bosch.

He looked at the sheet the cards had been attached to. It was markedINTERNAL MEMO and had a subheading that said BANG Intelligence Report #144. It was dated November 1 and had aFILED stamp mark on it that was dated two days after that.

In the course of gathering intelligence on narcotics activities in Reporting District 12 officers Moore, Rickard, Finks, Fedaredo and Montirez have conducted numerous field interrogations of suspects believed to be involved in drug sales in the area of Hollywood Boulevard. In recent weeks it has come to these officers’ attention the fact that individuals were involved in the sale of a drug known as “black ice” which is a narcotic combining heroin, cocaine and PCP in rock form. The demand for this drug remains low on the street at this time but its popularity is expected to increase. Officers assigned to this unit believe several transient-type individuals are engaged in the street level sale of “black ice.” Five suspects have been identified through investigation but no arrests have followed. The street sales network is believed to be directed by an individual whose identity is not known to officers at this time. Informants and users of “black ice” have revealed that the predominant form of the drug sold at street level in the reporting zone comes from Mexico, rather than Hawaii where ice originated-refer to DEA advisory 502-and still is imported to the mainland in large quantities. Reporting officers will contact DEA for intelligence on sources of this narcotic and will continue to monitor activities in RD12. Sgt. C. V. Moore #1101

Bosch reread the report. It was a cover-your-ass paper. It said nothing and meant nothing. It had no value but could be produced to show a superior that you were aware of a problem and had been taking steps to attack it. Moore must have realized that black ice was becoming more than a rarity on the street and wanted to file a report to shield himself against future repercussions.

Next in the file was an arrest report dated November 9 of a man named Marvin Dance for possession of a controlled substance. The report said Dance was arrested by BANG officers on Ivar after they watched him make a delivery of black ice to a street dealer. BANG unit officers Rickard and Finks had set up on Dance on Ivar north of the Boulevard. The suspect was sitting in a parked car and the narcs watched as another man walked up and got in.

The report said Dance took something out of his mouth and handed it to the other man, who then got out of the car and walked on. The two officers split up and Finks followed the walker until he was out of Dance’s sight, then stopped him and seized an eightball-eight individually wrapped grams of black ice in a balloon. Rickard kept a watch on Dance, who remained in the car waiting for the next dealer to come for the product. After Finks radioed that he had made his bust, Rickard moved in to take down Dance.

But Dance swallowed whatever else was in his mouth. While he sat cuffed on the sidewalk, Rickard searched the car and found no drugs. But in a crumpled McDonald’s cup in the gutter by the car door, the narc found six more balloons, each containing an eightball.

Dance was arrested for sales and possession with intent to sell. The report said the suspect refused to talk to the arresting officers about the drugs other than to say the McDonald’s cup was not his. He didn’t ask for a lawyer but one arrived at the station within an hour and informed the officers that it would be unconstitutional for them to take his client to a hospital to have his stomach pumped or to search his client’s feces when the time came for him to use the bathroom. Moore, who got involved in processing the arrest at the station, checked with the on-call DA and was told the lawyer was right.

Dance was released on $125,000 bail two hours after his arrest. Bosch thought this was curious. The report said time of arrest was 11:42P.M. That meant that in two hours in the middle of the night, Dance had come up with a lawyer, bail bondsman and the ten percent cash-$12,500-needed to make bail.

And no charges were ever filed against Dance. The next page of the file was a rejection slip from the DA’s office. The filing deputy who reviewed the case determined that there was insufficient evidence linking Dance to the McDonald’s cup that was in the gutter three feet from the car.

So, no possession charge. Next, the sales charge was scuttled because the narcs saw no money change hands when Dance gave the eightball to the man who had gotten in the car. His name was Glenn Druzon. He was seventeen years old and had refused to testify that he had received the balloon from Dance. In fact, the rejection report said, he was ready to testify that he had the balloon with him before he got into the car with Dance. If called he would testify that he had tried to sell it to Dance but Dance was not interested.

The case against Dance was kicked. Druzon was charged with possession and later put on juvenile probation.

Bosch looked away from the reports and down the alley. He could see the circular copper-and-glass Directors Guild building rising at the end. He could just see the top of the Marlboro Man billboard that had been on Sunset for as long as he could remember. He lit a cigarette.

He looked at the DA reject form again. Clipped to it was a mug shot of the blond-haired Dance smirking at the lens. Bosch knew that what had happened was the routine way in which many, if not most, street cases go. The small fish, the bottom feeders, get hooked up. The bigger fish break the line and swim away. The cops knew that all they could do was disrupt things, never rid the streets of the problem. Take one dealer down and somebody takes his place. Or an attorney on retainer springs him and then a DA with a four-drawer caseload cuts him loose. It was one of the reasons why Bosch stayed in homicide. Sometimes he thought it was the only crime that really counted.

But even that was changing.

Harry took the mug shot and put it in his pocket, then closed the file for the time being. He was bothered by the Dance arrest. He wondered what connection Calexico Moore had seen between Dance and Jimmy Kapps that had prompted him to put it in the file for Bosch.

Bosch took a small notebook out of his inside coat pocket and began to make a chronological list. He wrote:

Nov. 9 Dance arrested Nov. 13 Jimmy Kapps dead Dec. 4 Moore, Bosch meet

Bosch closed the notebook. He knew he had to go back into the diner to ask Rickard a question. But first he reopened the file. There was only one page left, another unit intelligence report. This one was a summary of a briefing Moore had gotten from a DEA agent assigned to Los Angeles. This was dated December 11, meaning it had been put together by Moore a week after he and Bosch had met at the Catalina.

Harry tried to figure how this played with everything else and what, if anything, it meant. At their meeting Moore had withheld information, but afterward had gone to the DEA to request information. It was as if he were playing both sides of the fence. Or, possibly, Moore was trying to hotdog Bosch’s case, trying to put it together on his own.

Bosch began reading the report slowly, unconsciously bending the top corners of the file with his fingers.

Information provided this date by DEA asst. special agent in charge Rene Corvo, Los Angeles bureau operations indicates origin of black ice is primarily Baja California. Target 44Q3 Humberto Zorrillo (11/11/54) believed operating a clandestine lab in the Mexicali zone that is producing Mexican ice for distribution in the U.S. Subject lives on a 6,000-acre bull ranch SW Mexicali. State Judicial Police has not moved against Zorrillo for political reasons. Mode of transport used by this operation is unknown. Air surveillance shows no airstrip on ranch property. It is DEA opinion based on experience that the operation uses vehicle routes through Calexico or possibly San Ysidro, however, no shipments intercepted at those crossings at this time. It is believed that subject enjoys support and cooperation of officers with the SJP. He is widely known and revered as a hero in the barrios of SW Mexicali. Subject’s support is based in part on generous donations of jobs, med supplies, barrio dwellings and cook camps in the poor neighborhoods he grew up in. Some of the residents in SW neighborhoods refer to Zorrillo as El Papa de Mexicali. Additionally, Zorrillo’s rancho remains under heavy guard 24-hours. El Papa-The Pope-is rarely seen outside of the rancho. Exception is weekly trips to observe bulls bred on the ranch at bullrings in Baja. SJP authorities advise at this time that their cooperation in any DEA action that focuses on Zorrillo would be impossible. Sgt. C. V. Moore #1101

Bosch stared for a few moments at the file after closing it. He had a jumble of differing thoughts. He was a man who didn’t believe in coincidences, and so he had to wonder about how Cal Moore’s presence had come to throw a shadow across everything on his own plate. He looked at his watch and saw it would soon be time to get going to meet Teresa Corazón. But, finally, all the movement in his mind could not distract him from the thought that was pushing through: Frankie Sheehan at RHD should have the information in the Zorrillo file. Bosch had worked with Sheehan at RHD. He was a good man and a good investigator. If he was conducting a legitimate investigation, he should have the file. If he wasn’t, then it didn’t matter.

He got out of the car and headed back to the diner. This time he walked in through the kitchen door on the alley. The BANG crew was still there, the four young narcs sitting as quietly as if they were in the back room at a funeral home. Bosch’s chair was still there, too. He sat down again.

“What’s up?” Rickard said.

“You read this, right? Tell me about the Dance bust.”

“What’s to tell?” Rickard said. “We kick ass, the DA kicks the case. What’s new? It’s a different drug, man, but it’s the same old thing.”

“What made you set up on Dance? How’d you know he was making deliveries there?”

“Heard it around.”

“Look, it’s important. It involves Moore.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you now. You have to trust me until I put a few things together. Just tell me who got the tip. That’s what it was, right?”

Rickard seemed to weigh the choices he had.

“Yeah, it was a tip. It was my snitch.”

“Who was it?”

“Look, man, I can’t-”

“Jimmy Kapps. It was Jimmy Kapps, wasn’t it?”

Rickard hesitated again and that confirmed it for Bosch. It angered him that he was finding this out almost by accident and only after a cop’s death. But the picture was clearing. Kapps snitches off Dance as a means of knocking out some of the competition. Then he flies back to Hawaii, picks up a bellyful of balloons and comes back. But Dance isn’t in lockup anymore and Jimmy Kapps gets taken down before he can sell even one of his balloons.

“Why the fuck didn’t you come talk to me when you heard Kapps got put down? I’ve been trying to get a line on this and all the-”

“What’re you talking about, Bosch? Moore met you that night on the Kapps thing. He…”

It became apparent to everybody at the table that Moore had not told Bosch everything he knew that night at the Catalina. The silence fell heavy on them. If they hadn’t known it before, they knew it now: Moore had been up to something. Bosch finally spoke.

“Did Moore know your snitch was Kapps?”

Rickard hesitated once more, but then nodded.

Bosch stood up and slid the file across the table to a spot in front of Rickard.

“I don’t want this. You call Frank Sheehan at RHD and tell him you just found it. It’s up to you but I wouldn’t say that you let me look at it first. And I won’t, either.”

Harry made a move to step away from the table but then stopped.

“One other thing. This guy Dance, any of you seen him around?”

“Not since the bust,” Fedaredo said.

The other three shook their heads.

“If you can dig him up, let me know. You got my number.”

Outside the diner’s kitchen door Bosch looked again at the spot in the alley where Moore had found Juan Doe #67. Supposedly. He didn’t know what to believe about Moore anymore. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the connection was between the Juan Doe and Dance and Kapps, if there was a connection at all. He knew the key was to find out who the man with the worker’s hands and muscles had been. Then he would find the killer.