Bosch was the second to last out of the van, and the man waiting put a pale green pill into his raised palm. Bosch looked at it as he stepped away from the van and saw the 80 stamped on it. The man he had struggled with came out next, and he got one pill as well.
“No, no, no, wait a minute,” he said. “I need more. I need the two. Give me the two.”
“No, one,” said the distributor. “You fight, you get one, that’s it. Keep moving now.”
His accent was slightly different from that of the men at the clinic back in Pacoima but he was still, Bosch believed, from an Eastern Bloc country.
The addict Bosch had struggled with studied the single pill in his hand with the same look of anguish that Bosch had seen on the faces of the most desperate—refugees he had seen decades earlier in Vietnam, drug addicts he had seen in squats in Hollywood. The look always said the same thing: What am I going to do?
“Please,” he said.
“You keep moving, Brody, or you’re gone,” said the distributor.
“Okay, okay,” said the addict.
They followed the others, forming a line that led into the encampment. Bosch took the last position in line so he could keep an eye on the man called Brody. As he walked, he noticed the woman with stars, who was several spots ahead, pull something out of her pocket. She then put her hands down in front of her body, and Bosch could tell by the way she was working her shoulders that she was turning something in her unseen hands. He knew it was a crusher. She either needed a hit so badly she couldn’t wait or she feared one of the men, maybe Brody, would take her pills away.
Bosch watched as she brought her hands up to her face and cupped her mouth and nose as if she were going to sneeze. She snuffed the powdered pill as she walked.
Brody turned his head as he walked to give Bosch the evil eye. Bosch reached out and pushed him in the center of his back with the rubber-capped tip of his cane, a firm shove.
“Keep going,” Bosch said.
“You owe me an eighty, old man,” Brody said.
“Yeah, come and get it. Anytime.”
“Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see.”
Brody had the sleeves of a windbreaker tied around his waist and a yellowed T-shirt clinging to his bony shoulders. From his rear vantage point Bosch could see tattoos running down both of his triceps but they were blurred and unreadable, made with cell-mixed ink in prison.
The man from the plane as well as the greeter and drug distributor walked them into an open area that appeared to be the center of the encampment. Triangular canvas sails were strung overhead to offer shade during the day, but the sun was now behind the mountains on the horizon and it was starting to cool. There was concrete underfoot and Bosch assumed it was one of the slabs that gave the area its unofficial name.
There was a man sitting at a table beneath one of the shade triangles. The group was followed into the space by the van’s driver. They looked at the man at the table, who gave them a nod. Bosch saw a badge pinned to the seated man’s red shirt. It looked like a tin private security badge. But it apparently made him the sheriff of Slab City. There were two cardboard boxes on the table.
During an intel meeting that morning before the UC operation began, Bosch had viewed the few photos that the DEA had of Santos, and while they were all a minimum of three years old, he was sure that the man at the table was not him. The sheriff stood and looked at the sunken eyes of all those standing in front of him.
“Food is here,” he said. “One each. Take it with you.”
He started opening the boxes on the table. There was no rush from the group as there had been when pills were being distributed. Food was clearly not the most sustaining part of their lives. Bosch moved forward without pushing and when he got to the table, he saw that one box contained power bars and the other contained foil-wrapped burritos. He took a power bar and turned away.
The group started to break up, with people going in different directions. It was clear to Bosch that everybody had a destination but him. Brody threw him another look and then headed toward the open flap of a large yellow-and-black tent that looked like it had been made with tarps previously used for tenting houses for termite treatment.
Using the cover of people moving in different directions, Bosch dropped to one knee, put the cane down and the power bar next to it, and then started retying his work boot. While the hem of the right leg of his jeans contained the doses of Narcan, the left leg had an open slot in the inside hem. It was a place to stash any pills given to him so he could avoid ingesting but still keep them to be used as evidence in an eventual prosecution. He had practiced the boot-tying maneuver several times during the previous day’s training. When he hiked the bottom of his pant leg up to reach the high-top boot’s laces, he slipped the pill through the hole in the inside hem.
As he stood up, the woman with the stars brushed by him and whispered, “Be ready. Brody will come for you tonight.”
And then she was gone, heading to the tent where Brody had gone. Bosch watched her go without saying anything.
“You.”
Bosch turned and looked at the man at the table. He pointed behind Bosch.
“You’re in there,” he said. “Take the open bed and put your shit underneath it. You don’t take that pack with you tomorrow.”
Bosch checked behind him while he finished tying his boot. The sheriff was pointing to the back of an old school bus that looked like it had followed its career in student transport with a decade or two spent moving field-workers. It was painted green back then and now was in shambles. Its paint had long been faded and had oxidized. The windows were either painted over or covered with aluminum foil from the inside.
“It’s got all my stuff,” Bosch said. “I need it.”
“There is no room for it,” the sheriff said. “You leave it here. No one will touch it. You try to take it and it gets tossed outta the fucking plane. You understand?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
Bosch climbed to his feet and walked toward the bus. There were two steps up to the back door and he was in. It was dark inside and the air was dead and sour. It was sweltering. The beds the sheriff was talking about were Army Surplus cots and they were lined end to end down both sides with a narrow aisle in between. Starting to slowly make his way down the aisle, he quickly realized that the cleaner air was near the door he had just entered through and that those cots were already occupied by men who were sleeping or lying there watching Bosch with dead eyes.
The last cot on the right was open and appeared to be unused. Bosch dropped his backpack to the floor and used his foot to push it underneath. He then sat down and looked about. The air was putrid, a combination of body odor, bad breath, and the smell of the Salton Sea, and Bosch remembered something Jerry Edgar had told him years ago, after they had attended an autopsy: that all odors were particulate. Bosch sat there realizing he was breathing in microscopic particles from the drug-addicted men on the bus.
He reached down and pulled the backpack out from under his cot. He unzipped it and dug around in the clothing until he found a bandanna that had been shoved in by one of the DEA undercover tutors. He folded it into a triangle and tied it around his head and across his mouth and nose like a train robber from the Old West.
“Doesn’t do any good.”
Bosch looked around. Because the ceiling of the bus had only rounded corners, the voice could have come from anywhere. Everyone appeared to be asleep or uninterested in Bosch.
“Here.”
Bosch turned and looked the other way. There was a man sitting in the driver’s seat, looking at Bosch through a mirror on the dusty dashboard. Bosch had not noticed him before.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because this place is like cancer,” said the man. “Nothing stops it.”
Bosch nodded. The man was probably right. But still he kept the mask on.
“Is that where you sleep?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the man said. ?
??Can’t lie down. Get vertigo.”
“How long you been here?”
“Long enough.”
“How many people they got here?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“Sorry, just making conversation.”
“They don’t like conversation here.”
“So I heard.”
Bosch put his hands back into his pack. He took out one of the T-shirts and rolled it up to serve as a pillow. He lay down with his feet toward the rear of the bus so he could watch the door. He looked at the power bar. It was a brand he had never seen before. He wasn’t hungry but he wondered if he should eat it to keep his energy up.
“So what’s your name?” he whispered.
“What’s it matter?” said the man in the driver’s seat. “It’s Ted.”
“I’m Nick. What’s the deal here?”
“There you go with the questions again.”
“Just wondering what I’ve gotten into. It feels like a labor camp or something.”
“It is.”
“And you can’t leave?”
“You can leave. But you need a plan. We’re in the middle of nowhere out here. You wait till you’re in the city. You just better be sure you’re clear, because they’ll be watching you. Every one of us is worth a lot of money to them. They ain’t going to just let that go.”
“I knew I should’ve said no.”
“Ain’t really that bad. They keep you in food and pills. You just gotta follow their rules.”
“Right.”
Bosch let his eyes wander down the center aisle to the open back door of the bus. He pulled the bandanna down below his chin and started opening the power bar. He hoped it would keep him awake and on edge.
The natural light was almost gone now. For the first time, Bosch began to feel the tension of fear in his chest. He knew that there was great danger here—from all directions. He knew he couldn’t risk sleeping for five minutes, let alone through the night.
25
Brody came at him in the dead of night. But Bosch was ready for him. Moonlight revealed him as a silhouette in the back doorway of the bus and then as he made his way stealthily down the aisle between the cots where the others slept. Bosch could see an object gripped in one hand. Something small like a knife. Bosch was lying on his right side, the corresponding arm bent at the elbow and seemingly cradling his head. But back behind the end of the cot he gripped the cane tightly.
Bosch didn’t wait to determine if Brody had come to rob or assault him. Before the shadowed figure could make any kind of close-in move, Bosch swung the cane viciously and caught Brody flush at an angle that extended the impact up his jawline and across his ear. The noise was so loud that he thought he might have broken the cane. Brody immediately dropped onto the cot behind him, awakening a sleeping man who groaned and shoved him off. His weapon, a screwdriver, clattered on the floor. Bosch was immediately off the cot and on top of him in the aisle between the cots, straddling him and holding the cane like a crossbar on his neck. Brody put both hands on the cane to try to keep it from crushing his throat.
Bosch held the pressure steady. Enough to seriously impede Brody’s breathing but not cutting it off all the way. He leaned down and spoke in a hard whisper.
“You come at me again and I’m going to kill you. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. Do you understand me?”
Brody couldn’t talk but he nodded as best as he could.
“Now I’m going to let you go and you’re going to go back to your hole, and you’re not going to give me any more problems. Got it?”
Brody nodded again.
“Good.”
Bosch released the pressure but hesitated a moment before getting off the man. He wanted to be ready for the double-cross. Instead, Brody released his grip on the cane and held his hands open, fingers splayed.
Bosch started to get up.
“All right, get out of here.”
Without a word, Brody gathered himself and stood up. He hurried down the aisle to the rear exit of the bus. Bosch didn’t think for one moment that he would hesitate if he got another shot at Bosch.
He picked up the screwdriver and pulled the backpack out from under his cot. While he hid the screwdriver at the bottom of the main compartment, he heard a whisper from the front seat of the bus.
“Nice stick work,” said Ted.
“It’s a cane,” Bosch said.
He waited and listened to hear whether Brody was confronted outside the bus by the sheriff or anyone else who might have heard their struggle. But there was only silence from out there. Bosch crouched down and went into his backpack, quickly changing into a black T-shirt with the Los Angeles Lakers logo on it. He then stuffed the bottle of laxatives into one of his pockets, stood up, and turned toward the exit at the back of the bus.
“Where are you going?” Ted whispered. “Don’t go out there.”
“Where do people go to the bathroom around here?” Bosch said.
“Just follow your nose, man. It’s on the south side of the camp.”
“Got it.”
He moved down the aisle, careful not to run into the human limbs that were extending from some of the cots. When he got to the door, he stayed back in shadow and looked out into the open space where the sheriff had sat upon his arrival. It was empty. Even the table was gone.
Bosch stepped down from the bus and then stood still. The air still carried the odor of the Salton Sea but it was cooler and fresher than any breath taken inside the bus. Bosch pulled the bandanna down over his chin and left it hanging loose around his neck. He listened. The night was cool and quiet, the stars brilliant in the black sky above. He thought he could hear the low hum of an engine coming from somewhere in or near the camp. He just couldn’t place the direction it was coming from.
Asking Ted where he could go to relieve himself had been a front. He had no plan other than to scope out the camp so he could learn its landmarks and dimensions and could later be helpful in drawing up search warrants should that be part of any follow-up to the Dirty Denim operation.
He moved away from the bus and randomly chose a path between the tent where he knew Brody was assigned and a row of shanty structures. He walked quickly and quietly and soon realized he was moving away from the engine sound. He followed the pathway to the southern terminus of the camp, and here the air was fouled by a lineup of four portable toilets on a flatbed trailer. They smelled like they had not been serviced by the clean-out pump in weeks, if not months.
Bosch kept moving, following the circumference of the camp in a clockwise manner. From the outside it looked no different from the homeless encampments that had sprung up in the past few years in almost every empty lot and park in Los Angeles.
As he walked toward the north side of the camp, the low hum of the engine got steadily louder, and soon he was approaching a double-wide trailer with a light on inside and an air conditioner powered by an electric generator placed fifty yards out in the scrub behind it.
Bosch guessed that he was looking at the staff quarters. The sheriff and the distributor, maybe even the pilots of the planes he had seen, were housed in air-conditioned comfort.
His guess was confirmed as he cautiously approached at a passing angle and soon saw two vans parked side by side behind the trailer. He also saw a shadow pass behind the curtain of the one window that was lit. Somebody was moving about inside.
Bosch quickly moved toward the vans so he could use them as cover. Once there, he pressed himself against the back corner of one of them and studied the upper edges of the structure, looking for cameras.
He saw no evidence of cameras but knew it was too dark to be sure. He also knew that there were all kinds of other electronic measures that might be taken to guard against intrusion. Nevertheless, he decided to risk it in order to get an inside look at the double-wide.
He moved in toward the lighted window. The door next to it had a large NO ADMITTANCE sign posted, with a threateni
ng kicker: “Violators Will Be Shot.”
Bosch proceeded undaunted. The curtain had not been closed all the way. There was a two-inch gap that allowed Bosch to visually sweep the room by shifting to his right or left outside.
There were two men in the room. They were white, dark-haired, and both wearing wifebeaters that revealed heavily tattooed arms and shoulders. They were at a table, playing cards and drinking a clear liquid directly from a bottle with no label. In the center of the table was a pile of pale-colored pills, and Bosch realized that the dosage levels of oxycodone pills made up the betting scheme of the game.
One of the men apparently lost a bet, and while his opponent gleefully used his hand to pull the pot to his side, the other angrily swiped some of the cards off the table and to the floor. The arm movement made Bosch’s eyes follow, and it was then that he saw a third person in the room.
There was a nude woman lying on a threadbare couch to the left side. Her face and body were turned in toward the rear cushions and she appeared to be asleep or unconscious. Bosch could not see her face, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. He leaned his head down for a moment as he filled with revulsion. He had avoided undercover work for all his years in law enforcement for this very reason. As a homicide investigator he had seen the worst of what humans can do to one another. But by the time Bosch was a witness, the crime had been committed and the suffering was over. Every case left its psychological mark but it was balanced by the fulfillment of justice. Bosch didn’t solve every case, but there was still accomplishment in giving every case his best work.
But when you went undercover, you moved from the safe confines of justice done and entered the world of the depraved. You saw how humans preyed on one another, and there was nothing you could do about it without blowing cover. You had to take it in and live with it to see the case through. Bosch wanted to charge into the trailer and save that woman from another minute of abuse, but he couldn’t. Not now. There was a greater justice he was looking for.