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.”
Aguila agreed and said he would go to the Justice Plaza to complete paperwork on the confirmation of Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa’s death. Bosch wanted to tell him about the shovel with the new handle he had seen in EnviroBreed but thought better of it. He planned to tell only one person about the break-in.
Bosch drank coffee and Aguila drank tea for a while without speaking. Bosch finally asked, “Have you ever seen Zorrillo? In person?”
“At a distance, yes.”
“Where was that? The bullfights?”
“Yes, at the Plaza de los Toros. El Papa often attends to see his bulls. But he has a box in the shade reserved each week for him. I have afforded only seats on the sun side of the arena. This is the reason for the distance from which I have viewed him.”
“He pulls for the bulls, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“He goes to see his bulls win? Not the fighters?”
“No. He goes to see that his bulls die honorably.”
Bosch wasn’t sure what that meant but let it go.
“I want to go today. Can we get in? I want to sit in a box near the pope’s.”
“I don’t know. These are expensive. Sometimes they cannot sell them. Even so, they keep them locked…”
“How much?”
“You would need at least two hundred dollars American, I’m afraid. It is very expensive.”
Bosch took out his wallet and counted out $210. He left a ten on the table for the breakfast and pushed the rest across the faded green tablecloth to Aguila. It occurred to him it was more money than Aguila made in a six-day week on the job. He wished he had not been so quick to make a decision that would have taken Aguila hours of careful consideration.
“Get us a box near the pope.”
“You must understand, there will be many men with him. He will be-”
“I just want a look at him, is all. Just get us the box.”
They left the restaurant then and Aguila said he would walk to the Justice Plaza, a couple blocks away. After he left, Harry stood in front of the restaurant waiting for Ramos. He looked at his watch and saw it was eight o’clock. He was supposed to be in Irving’s office at Parker Center. He wondered if the assistant chief had initiated disciplinary action against him yet. Bosch would probably be put on a desk as soon as he got back into town.
Unless… unless he brought back the whole package in his back pocket. That was the only way he would have any leverage with Irving. He knew he had to come out of Mexico with everything tied together.
It dawned on him that it was stupid to be standing like a target on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. He stepped back inside and watched for Ramos through the front door. The waitress approached him and bowed effusively several times and walked away. It must’ve been the three-dollar tip, he thought.
It took Ramos nearly an hour to get there. Bosch decided he didn’t want to be without a car so he told the agent he would follow him. They drove north on Lopez Mateos. At the circle around the statue of Juarez they went east, into a neighborhood of unmarked warehouses. They went down an alley and parked behind a building that had been tagged dozens of times with graffiti. Ramos looked furtively around after he got out of the beat-up Chevy Camaro with Mexican plates he was driving.
“Welcome to our humble federal office,” he said.
Inside, it was Sunday morning quiet. No one else was there. Ramos put on the overhead lights and Bosch saw several rows of desks and file cabinets. Toward the back were two weapons storage lockers and a two-ton Cincinnati safe for storing evidence.
“Okay, let me see what we got while you tell me about last night. You are sure somebody tried to do you, right?”
“Only way to be surer was if I got hit.”
The Band-Aid Bosch had used on his neck was covered by his collar. There was another on his right palm, which also was not very noticeable.
Bosch told Ramos about the hotel shooting, leaving out no detail, including that he had recovered a shell from room 504.