“You have been to the war?”
“Yes. I’m done with that.”
“My son — my other son, he …I kept him away from that. …What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.”
After some more silence the old man seemed to nod. He said, “You are called Harry. Your mother told me that. She told me a lot about you. …But I could never….Do you understand? Different times. And after it went by so long, I couldn’t. …I couldn’t reverse things.”
Bosch just nodded. He hadn’t come to cause the man any more pain. More silence passed and he heard the labored breathing.
“Harry Haller,” the old man whispered then, a broken smile on the thin, peeling lips burned by chemotherapy. “That could have been you. Did you ever read Hesse?”
Bosch didn’t understand but nodded again. There was a beep sound. He watched for a minute until the dosage seemed to take some effect. The old man’s eyes closed and he sighed.
“I better get going,” Harry said. “You take care.”
He touched the man’s frail, bluish hand. It gripped his fingers tightly, almost desperately, and then let go. As he stepped to the door, he heard the old man’s rasp.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said I did. I did worry about you.”
There was a tear running down the side of the old man’s face, into his white hair. Bosch nodded again and two weeks later he stood on a hill above the Good Shepherd section at Forest Lawn and watched them put the father he never knew in the ground. During the ceremony, he saw a grouping that he suspected was his half brother and three half sisters. The half brother, probably born a few years ahead of Bosch, was watching Harry during the ceremony. At the end, Bosch turned and walked away.
• • •
Near ten o’clock Bosch stopped at a roadside diner called El Oasis Verde and ate huevos rancheros. His table was at a window that looked out at the blue-white sheath called the Salton Sea and then farther east to the Chocolate Mountains. Bosch silently reveled in the beauty and the openness of the scene. When he was done, and the waitress had refilled his Thermos, he walked out into the dirt parking lot and leaned against the fender of the Caprice to breathe the cool, clean air and look again.
The half brother was now a top defense lawyer and Harry was a cop. There was a strange congruence to that that Bosch found acceptable. They had never spoken and probably never would.
He continued south as 86 ran along the flats between the Salton Sea and the Santa Rosa Mountains. It was agricultural land that steadily dropped below sea level. The Imperial Valley. Much of it was cut in huge squares by irrigation ditches and his drive was accompanied by the smell of fertilizer and fresh vegetables. Flatbed trucks, loaded with crates of lettuce or spinach or cilantro, occasionally pulled off the farm roads in front of him and slowed him down. But Harry didn’t mind and waited patiently to pass.
Near a town called Vallecito, Bosch pulled to the side of the road to watch a squad of low-flying aircraft come screaming over a mountain that rose to the southwest. They crossed 86 and flew out over the Salton. Bosch knew nothing about identifying war aircraft in the modern era. These jets had evolved into faster and sleeker machines than those he remembered from Vietnam. But they had flown low enough for him to clearly see that beneath each craft’s wings hung the hardware of war. He watched the three jets bank and come about in a tight triangle pattern and retrace their path back to the mountain. After they crossed above him, Harry looked down at his maps and found blocks marked off to the southwest as closed to the public. It was the U.S. Naval Gunnery Range at Superstition Mountain. The map said it was a live bombing area. Keep out.
Bosch felt a dull vibration rock the car slightly and then the following rumble. He looked up from the map and thought he could make out the plume of smoke beginning to rise from the base of Superstition. Then he felt and heard another bomb hit. Then another.
As the jets, the silvery skin of each reflecting a diamond of sunlight, passed overhead again to begin another run, Bosch pulled back onto the road behind a flatbed truck with two teenagers in the back. They were Mexican field-workers with weary eyes that seemed already knowledgeable about the long, hard life ahead of them. They were about the same age as the two boys on the picnic table in the photo that had been in the white bag. They stared at Bosch with indifference.
In a few moments it was clear to pass the slow-moving truck. Bosch heard other explosions from Superstition Mountain as he moved away. He went on to pass more farms and mom-and-pop restaurants. He passed a sugar mill where a line painted at the top of its huge silo marked sea level.
• • •
The summer after he had talked to his father Bosch had picked up the books by Hesse. He was curious about what the old man had meant. He found it in the second book he read. Harry Haller was a character in it. A disillusioned loner, a man of no real identity, Harry Haller was the steppenwolf.
That August Bosch joined the cops.
• • •
He believed he felt the land rising. The farmland gave way to brown brush and there were dust devils rising in the open land. His ears popped as he ascended. And he knew the border was nearing long before he passed the green sign that told him Calexico was twenty miles away.
20
Calexico was like most border towns: dusty and built low to the ground, its main street a garish collision of neon and plastic signage, the inevitable golden arches being the recognizable if not comforting icon amid the drive-through Mexican auto insurance offices and souvenir shops.
In town, Route 86 connected with 111 and dropped straight down to the border crossroad. Traffic was backed up about five blocks from the exhaust-stained concrete auto terminal manned by the Mexican federales. It looked like the five o’clock lineup at the Broadway entrance to the 101 in L.A. Before he got caught up in it, Bosch turned east on Fifth Street. He passed the De Anza Hotel and drove two blocks to the police station. It was a one-story concrete-block affair that was painted the same yellow as the tablets lawyers used. From the signs out front, Bosch learned it was also Town Hall. It was also the town fire station. It was also the historical society. He found a parking space in front.
As he opened the door of the dirty Caprice he heard singing from the park across the street. On a picnic bench five Mexican men sat drinking Budweisers. A sixth man, wearing a black cowboy shirt with white embroidery and a straw Stetson, stood facing them, playing a guitar and singing in Spanish. The song was sung slowly and Harry had no trouble translating.
I don’t know how to love you
I don’t even know how to embrace you
Because what never leaves me
Is this pain that hurts me so
The singer’s plaintive voice carried strongly across the park and Bosch thought the song was beautiful. He leaned against his car and smoked until the singer was done.
The kisses that you gave me my love
Are the ones that are killing me
But my tears are now drying
With my pistol and my heart
And here as always I spend my life
With the pistol and the heart
At the song’s end, the men at the picnic table gave the singer a cheer and a toast.
Inside the glass door marked Police was a sour-smelling room no larger than the back of a pickup truck. On the left was a Coke machine, straight ahead was a door with an electronic bolt, and on the right was a thick glass window with a slide tray beneath it. A uniformed officer sat behind the glass. Behind him, a woman sat at a radio-dispatch console. On the other side of the console was a wall of square-foot-sized lockers.
“You can’t smoke in there, sir,” the uniform said.
He wore mirrored sunglasses and was overweight. The plate over his breast pocket said his name was Gruber. Bosch stepped back to the door and flicked the butt out into the parking lot.
“You know, it’s a hundred-dollar fine for littering in Calexico, sir,” Gr
uber said.
Harry held up his open badge and I.D. wallet.
“You can bill me,” he said. “I need to check a gun.”
Gruber smiled curtly, revealing his receding, purplish gums.
“I chew tobacco myself. Then you don’t have that problem.”
“I can tell.”
Gruber frowned and had to think about that a moment before saying, “Well, let’s have it. Man says he wants to check a gun has to turn the gun in to be checked.”
He turned back to the dispatcher to see if she thought that he now had the upper hand. She showed no response. Bosch noticed the strain Gruber’s gut was putting on the buttons of his uniform. He pulled the forty-four out of his holster and put it in the slide tray.
“Foe-dee foe,” Gruber announced and he lifted the gun out and examined it. “You want to keep it in the holster?”
Bosch hadn’t thought about that. He needed the holster. Otherwise he’d have to jam the Smith in his waistband and he’d probably lose it if he ended up having to do any running.
“Nah,” he said. “Just checking the gun.”
Gruber winked and took it over to the lockers, opened one up and put the gun inside. After he closed it, he locked it, took the key out and came back to the window.
“Let me see the I.D. again. I have to write up a receipt.”
Bosch dropped his badge wallet into the tray and watched as Gruber slowly wrote out a receipt in duplicate. It seemed that the officer had to look from the I.D. card to what he was writing every two letters.
“How’d you get a name like that?”
“You can just write Harry for short.”
“It’s no problem. I can write it. Just don’t ask me to say it. Looks like it rhymes with anonymous.”
He finished and put the receipts into the tray and told Harry to sign them both. Harry used his own pen.
“Lookee there, a lefty signing for a right-handed gun,” Gruber said. “Somethin’ you don’t see ’round here too often.”
He winked at Bosch again. Bosch just looked at him.
“Just talking is all,” Gruber said.
Harry dropped one of the receipts into the tray and Gruber exchanged it for the locker key. It was numbered.
“Don’t lose it now,” Gruber said.
As he walked back to the Caprice he saw that the men were still at the picnic table in the park but there was no more singing. He got into the Caprice and put the locker key in the ashtray. He never used it for smoking. He noticed an old man with white hair unlocking the door below the historical society sign. Bosch backed out and headed over to the De Anza.
It was a three-story, Spanish-style building with a satellite dish on the roof. Bosch parked in the brick drive up in front. His plan was to check in, drop his bags in his room, wash his face and then make the border crossing into Mexicali. The man behind the front desk wore a white shirt and brown bow tie to match his brown vest. He could not have been much older than twenty. A plastic tag on the vest identified him as Miguel, assistant front desk manager.
Bosch said he wanted a room, filled out a registration card and handed it back. Miguel said, “Oh, yes, Mr. Bosch, we have messages for you.”
He turned to a basket file and pulled out three pink message forms. Two were from Pounds, one from Irving. Bosch looked at the times and noticed all three calls had come in during the last two hours. First Pounds, then Irving, then Pounds again.
“Wait a minute,” he said to Miguel. “Is there a phone?”
“Around the corner, sir, to your right.”
Bosch stood there with the phone in his hand wondering what to do. Something was up, or both of them wouldn’t have tried to reach him. Something had made one or both of them call his house and they heard the taped message. What could have happened? Using his PacBell card he called the Hollywood homicide table, hoping someone was in and that he might learn what was going on. Jerry Edgar answered the call on the first ring.
“Jed, what’s up? I’ve got phone calls from the weight coming out my ass.”
There was a long silence. Too long.
“Jed?”
“Harry, where you at?”
“I’m down south, man.”
“Where down south?”
“What is it, Jed?”
“Wherever you’re at, Pounds is trying to recall you. He said if anybody talks to you, t’tell you to get your ass back here. He said —”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Porter, man. They found him this morning up at Sunshine Canyon. Somebody wrapped a wire ‘round his neck so tight that it was the size of a watchband.”
“Jesus.” Bosch pulled out his cigarettes. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“What was he doing up there? Sunshine, that’s the landfill up in Foothill Division, right?”
“Shit, Harry, he was dumped there.”
Of course. Bosch should have realized that. Of course. He wasn’t thinking right.
“Right. Right. What happened?”
“What happened was that they found his body out there this morning. A rag picker come across it. He was covered in garbage and shit. But RHD traced some of the stuff. They got receipts from some restaurants. They got the name of the hauler the restaurants use and they’ve got it traced to a particular truck and a particular route. It’s a downtown run. Was made yesterday morning. Hollywood’s working it with them. I’m fixing to go start canvassing on the route. We’ll find the Dumpster he came from and go from there.”
Bosch thought of the Dumpster behind Poe’s. Porter hadn’t run out on him. He had probably been garroted and dragged out while Bosch was having his say with the bartender. Then he remembered the man with the tattooed tears. How had he missed it? He had probably stood ten feet from Porter’s killer.
“I didn’t go out to the scene but I hear he’d been worked over before they did him,” Edgar said. “His face was busted up. Nose broke, stuff like that. A lot of blood, I hear. Man, what a pitiful way to go.”
It wouldn’t be long before they came into Poe’s with photos of Porter. The bartender would remember the face and would gladly describe Bosch as the man who had come in, said he was a cop, and attacked Porter. Bosch wondered if he should tell Edgar now and save a lot of legwork. A survival instinct flared inside him and he decided to say nothing about Poe’s.
“Why do Pounds and Irving want me?”
“Don’t know. All I know is first Moore gets it, then Porter. Think maybe they’re closing ranks or something. I think they want everybody in where it’s nice and safe. Word going ‘round here is that those two cases are one. Word is those boys had some kinda deal going. Irving’s already doubled them up. He’s running a joint op on both of them. Moore and Porter.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He was trying to think. This put a new spin on everything.
“Listen to me, Jed. You haven’t heard from me. We didn’t talk. Understand?”
Edgar hesitated before saying, “You sure you want to play it that way?”
“Yeah. For now. I’ll be talking to you.”
“Watch your back.”
Watch out for the black ice, Bosch thought as he hung up and stood there for a minute, leaning against the wall. Porter. How had this happened? He instinctively moved his arm against his hip but felt no reassurance. The holster was empty.
He had a choice now: go forward to Mexicali or go back to L.A. He knew if he went back it would mean the end of his involvement in the case. Irving would cut him out like a bad spot on a banana.
Therefore, he realized, he actually had no choice. He had to go on. Bosch pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and went back to the front desk. He slid the bill across to Miguel.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d like to cancel my room, Miguel.”
“No problem. There is no charge. You never got the room.”
“No, that’s for you, Miguel. I have a slight problem. I don’t want anybody to know I was
here. Understand?”
Miguel was young but he was wise. He told Bosch his request was no problem. He pulled the bill off the counter and tucked it into a pocket inside his vest. Harry then slid the phone messages across.
“If they call again, I never showed up to get these, right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
In a few minutes he was in line for the crossing at the border. He noticed how the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol building where incoming traffic was handled dwarfed its Mexican counterpart. The message was clear; leaving this country was not a difficulty; coming in, though, was another matter entirely. When it was Bosch’s turn at the gate he held his badge wallet open and out the window. When the Mexican officer took it, Harry then handed him the Calexico P.D. receipt.
“Your business?” the officer asked. He wore a faded uniform that had been Army green once. His hat was sweat-stained along the band.
“Official. I have a meeting at the Plaza Justicia.”
“Ah. You know the way?”
Bosch held up one of the maps from the seat and nodded. The officer then looked at the pink receipt.
“You are unarmed?” he said as he read the paper. “You leave your forty-four behind, huh?”
“That’s what it says.”
The officer smiled and Bosch thought he could see disbelief in his eyes. The officer nodded and waved his car on. The Caprice immediately became engulfed in a torrent of automobiles that were moving on a wide avenue with no painted lines denoting lanes. At times there were six rows of moving vehicles and sometimes there were four or five. The cars made the transitions smoothly. Harry heard no horns and the traffic flowed quickly. He had gone nearly a mile before a red light halted traffic and he was able to consult his maps for the first time.
He determined he was on Calzado Lopez Mateos, which eventually led to the justice center in the southern part of the city. The light changed and the traffic began moving again. Bosch relaxed a little and looked around as he drove, careful to keep an eye on the changing lane configuration. The boulevard was lined with old shops and industrial businesses. Their pastel-painted facades had been darkened by exhaust fumes from the passing river of metal and it was all quite depressing to Bosch. Several large Chevrolet school buses with multicolor paint jobs moved on the road but they weren’t enough to bring much cheer to the scene. The boulevard curved hard to the south and then rounded a circular intersection with a monument at its center, a golden man upon a rearing stallion. He noticed several men, many wearing straw cowboy hats, standing in the circle or leaning against the base of the monument. They stared into the sea of traffic. Day laborers waiting for work. Bosch checked the map and saw that the spot was called Benito Juarez Circle.