“It was just a guess. It fits with something else I’ve been working on.”
She looked at him oddly and for a moment he was sorry he had spoiled her fun. He drained his beer mug and looked around for the squeamish waiter.
10
She drove him back to get his car near the Red Wind and then followed him out of downtown and up to his home in the hills. She lived in a condo in Hancock Park, which was closer, but she said she had been spending too much time there lately and wanted a chance to see or hear the coyote. He knew her real reason was that it would be easier for her to extricate herself from his place than to ask him to leave hers.
Bosch didn’t mind, though. The truth was, he felt uncomfortable at her place. It reminded him too much of what L.A. was coming to. It was a fifth-floor loft with a view of downtown in a historic residence building called the Warfield. The exterior of the building was still as beautiful as the day in 1911 it was completed by George Allan Hancock. Beaux Arts architecture with a blue-gray terra-cotta facade. George hadn’t spared the oil money and from the street the Warfield, with its fleurs-de-lys and cartouches, showed it. But it was the interior-the current interior, that is-that Bosch found objectionable. The place had been bought a few years back by a Japanese firm and completely gutted, then retrofitted, renovated and revamped. The walls in each apartment were knocked down and each place was nothing but a long, sterile room with fake wood floors, stainless-steel counters and track lighting. Just a pretty shell, Bosch thought. He had a feeling George would’ve thought the same.
At Harry’s house they talked while he lit the hibachi on the porch and put an orange roughy filet on the grill. He had bought it Christmas Eve and it was still fresh and large enough to split. Teresa told him the County Commission would probably informally decide before New Year’s on a permanent chief medical examiner. He wished her good luck but privately wasn’t sure he meant it. It was a political appointment and she would have to toe the line. Why get into that box? He changed the subject.
“So, if this guy, this Juan Doe, was down in Mexicali -near where they make these fruit flies-how do you think his body got all the way up here?”
“That’s not my department,” Teresa said.
She was at the railing, staring out over the Valley. There were a million lights glinting in the crisp, cool air. She was wearing his jacket over her shoulders. Harry glazed the fish with a pineapple barbecue sauce and then turned it over.
“It’s warm over here by the fire,” he said. He dawdled a bit over the filet and then said, “I think what it was is that maybe they didn’t want anybody checking around that USDA contractor’s business. You know? They didn’t want that body connected to that place. So they take the guy’s body far away.”
“Yeah, but all the way to L.A.?”
“Maybe they were… well, I don’t know. That is pretty far away.”
They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments. Bosch could hear and smell the pineapple sizzling as it dripped on the coals. He said, “How do you smuggle a dead body across the border?”
“Oh, I think they’ve smuggled larger things than that across, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Ever been down there, Harry, to Mexicali?”
“Just to drive through on my way to Bahia San Felipe, where I went fishing last summer. I never stopped. You?”
“Never.”
“You know the name of the town just across the border? On our side?”
“Uh uh.”
“Calexico.”
“You’re kidding? Is that where-”
“Yup.”
The fish was done. He forked it onto a plate, put the cover on the grill and they went inside. He served it with Spanish rice he made with Pico Pico. He opened a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. Blood of the gods. He didn’t have any white. As he put everything on the table he saw a smile on her face.
“Thought I was a TV dinner guy, didn’t you?”
“Crossed my mind. This is very nice.”
They clicked glasses and ate quietly. She complimented him on the meal but he knew the fish was a little too dry. They descended into small talk again. The whole time he was looking for the opening to ask her about the Moore autopsy. It didn’t come until they were finished.
“What will you do now?” she asked after putting her napkin on the table.
“Guess I’ll clear the table and see if-”
“No. You know what I mean. About the Juan Doe case.”
“I’m not sure. I want to talk to Porter again. And I’ll probably look up the USDA. I’d like to know more about how those flies get here from Mexico.”
She nodded and said, “Let me know if you want to talk to the entomologist. I can arrange that.”
He watched her as she once again got the far-off stare that had been intruding all night.
“What about you?” he asked. “What will you do now?”
“About what?”
“About the problems with the Moore autopsy.”
“That obvious, huh?”
He got up and cleared the plates away. She didn’t move from the table. He sat back down and emptied the bottle into the glasses. He decided he would have to give her something in order for her to feel comfortable giving him something in return.
“Listen to me, Teresa. I think you and I should talk about things. I think we have two investigations, probably three investigations, here, that may all be part of the same thing. Like different spokes on the same wheel.”
She brought her eyes up, confused. “What cases? What are you talking about?”
“I know that all of what I’m about to say is outside your venue but I think you need to know it to help make your decision. I’ve been watching you all night and I can tell you have a problem and don’t know what to do.”
He hesitated, giving her a chance to stop him. She didn’t. He told her about Marvin Dance’s arrest and its relation to the Jimmy Kapps murder.
“When I found out Kapps had been bringing ice over from Hawaii, I went to Cal Moore to ask about black ice. You know, the competition. I wanted to know where it comes from, where you get it, who’s selling it, anything that would help me get a picture of who might’ve put down Jimmy Kapps. Anyway, the point is I thought Moore shined me on, said he knew nothing, but today I find out he was putting together a file on black ice. He was gathering string on my case. He held stuff back from me, but at the same time was putting something together on this when he disappeared. I got the file today. There was a note. It said ‘Give to Harry Bosch’ on it.”
“What was in it? The file.”
“A lot. Including an intelligence report, says the main source of black ice is probably a ranch down in Mexicali.”
She stared at him but said nothing.
“Which brings us to our Juan Doe. Porter bails out and the case comes to me today. I am reading through the file and I’ll give you one guess who it was that found the body and then disappeared the next day.”
“Shit,” she said.
“Exactly. Cal Moore. What this means I don’t know. But he is the reporting officer on the body. The next day he is in the wind. The next week he is found in a motel room, a supposed suicide. And then the next day-after the discovery of Moore has been in the papers and on TV-Porter calls up and says, ‘Guess what, guys, I quit.’ Does all of this sound aboveboard to you?”
She abruptly stood up and walked to the sliding door to the porch. She stared through the glass out across the pass.
“Those bastards,” she said. “They just want to drop the whole thing. Because it might embarrass somebody.”
Bosch walked up behind her.
“You have to tell somebody about it. Tell me.”
“No. I can’t. You tell me everything.”