PROTECTION MUST BE WORN
Bosch stepped around the partition and saw that this space was largely taken up by a large boxlike machine. Attached was a conveyor belt that carried trays into one side of the machine and then out the other side, where the trays would be dumped into bins like the ones he saw in the other room. There were more warning signs on the machine. This was where the larvae were sterilized by radiation.
He moved around to the other side of the room and saw large steel worktables with cabinets overhead. These were not locked and inside he saw boxes of supplies: plastic gloves and the sausagelike casings the larvae were shipped in, batteries and heat sensors. This was the room where the larvae were packed into casings and placed in the environment boxes. The end of the line. There was nothing else here that seemed significant.
Bosch stepped backward toward the door. He turned the flash off and there was only the small red glow from the surveillance camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling. What have I missed, he asked himself. What is left?
He put the light back on and walked back around the partition to the radiation machine. All of the signs in the building were designed to keep people away from this spot. This would be where the secret was. He focused on the floor-to-ceiling stacks of the wide steel trays used for moving larvae. He put his shoulder against one of the stacks and began to slide it on the floor. Beneath was only concrete. He tried the next stack and looked down and saw the edge of a trapdoor.
The tunnel.
But at that moment it hit him. The red light on the surveillance camera. The video panel in Ely’s office had been off. And earlier, when Bosch had visited, he had noticed that the only interior view Ely had on video was of the shipping room.
It meant someone else was watching this room. He looked at his watch, trying to estimate how long he had been in the room. Two minutes? Three minutes? If they were coming from the ranch, he had little time. He looked down at the outline of the door in the floor and then up at the red eye in the darkness.
But he couldn’t take the chance that no one was watching. He quickly pushed the stack back over the door in the floor and moved out of the third room. He retraced his path through the complex, hooking the mask and goggles on the peg by Ely’s office. Then he went through the office and out the window. He quickly put the glass panes back in place, bending the metal strips back with his fingers.
The dogs were still lying in the same spot, their bodies pumping with each breath. Bosch hesitated but then decided to drag them out in case the monitor at the end of the camera’s cable line was not being watched and he hadn’t been seen. He grabbed them by the collars and dragged them out of the pen. He heard one try to growl but it sounded more like a whine. The other did likewise.
He hit the fence on the run, climbed it quickly but then forced himself to go slow over the floor mats. When he was at the top he thought he heard the sound of an engine above the sound of the electric buzz. As he was about to drop over, he jerked the mats up off the razor wire and dropped down with them into the alley.
He checked his pockets to make sure he had not dropped the picks or flashlight. Or his keys. His gun was still in its holster. He had everything. There was the sound of a vehicle now, maybe more than one. He definitely had been seen. As he ran down the alley toward Mexitec, he heard someone shouting “Pedro y Pablo! Pedro y Pablo!” The dogs, he realized. Peter and Paul were the dogs.
He crawled into his car and sat crouched in the front seat watching EnviroBreed. There were two cars in the front lot and three men that he could see. They were holding guns and standing beneath the spotlight over the front door. Then a fourth man came around the corner, speaking in Spanish. He had found the dogs. Something about the man looked familiar but it was too dark and Bosch was too far away to be able to see any tattoo tears. They opened the door and, like cops with their guns up, they went inside the building. That was Bosch’s cue. He started the Caprice and pulled out onto the road. As he sped away he realized he was once again shaking with the release of tension, the high of a good scare. Sweat was running down out of his hair and drying in the cool night air on his neck.
He lit a cigarette and threw the match out of the window. He laughed nervously into the wind.
25
On Sunday morning Bosch called the number Ramos had given him from a pay phone at a restaurant called Casa de Mandarin in downtown Mexicali. He gave his name and number, hung up and lit a cigarette. Two minutes later the phone rang and it was Ramos.
“Qué pasa, amigo?”
“Nothing. I want to look at the mugs you got, remember?”
“Right. Right. Tell you what. I’ll pick you up on my way in. Give me a half hour.”
“I checked out.”
“Leaving, are you?”
“No, I just checked out. I usually do that when somebody tries to kill me.”
“What?”
“Somebody with a rifle, Ramos. I’ll tell you about it. Anyway, I’m in the wind at the moment. You want to pick me up, I’m at the Mandarin in downtown.”
“Half an hour. I want to hear about this.”
They hung up and Bosch went back to his table, where Aguila was still finishing breakfast. They had both ordered scrambled eggs with salsa and chopped cilantro, fried dumplings on the side. The food was very good and Bosch had eaten quickly. He always did after a sleepless night.
The night before, after he drove laughing from EnviroBreed, they had met at Aguila’s small house near the airport and the Mexican detective reported on his findings at the hotel. The desk clerk could offer little description of the man who rented 504 other than to say he had three tears tattooed on his cheek below the left eye.
Aguila had not asked where Bosch had been, seeming to know that an answer would not be given. Instead he offered Harry the couch in his sparsely furnished house. Harry accepted but didn’t sleep. He just spent the night watching the window and thinking about things until bluish gray light pushed through the thin white curtains.
Much of the time Lucius Porter had been in his thoughts. He envisioned the detective’s body on the cold steel table, naked and waxy, Teresa Corazón opening him up with the shears. He thought of the pinprick-sized blood hemorrhages she would find in the corneas of his eyes, the confirmation of strangulation. And he thought of the times he had been in the suite with Porter, watching others be cut up and the gutters on the table filling with their debris. Now it was Lucius on the table, a piece of wood under his neck, propping his head back into position for the bone saw. Just before dawn Harry’s thoughts became confused with fatigue and in his mind he suddenly saw it was himself on the steel table, Teresa nearby, readying her equipment for the cut.
He had sat up then and reached for his cigarettes. And he made a vow to himself that it would never be himself on that table. Not that way.
“Drug enforcement?” Aguila asked as he pushed his plate away.
“Huh?”
Aguila nodded to the pager on his belt. He had just noticed it.
“Yeah. They wanted me to wear it.”
Bosch believed he had to trust this man and that he had earned that trust. He didn’t care what Ramos had said. Or Corvo. All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society’s institutions. But he hoped he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions. He would tell Aguila what was happening when the time was right.
“I’m going over there this morning, look at some mugs and stuff. Let’s get together later.”