“Must be tough,” Edson said. “Working homicides.”
Bosch said what he always said when people said that to him.
“Sometimes it’s not so bad. At least the victims I deal with are out of their misery.”
Edson didn’t say anything else. The hall ended at a heavy steel door, which he pushed open. They walked out onto a loading dock that was inside a large hangarlike building. About thirty feet away, there were a half dozen or so workers, all Latinos, placing white plastic boxes on wheeled dollies and then pulling them through a set of double doors on the other side of the unloading area. Bosch noted that each of the boxes was just about the size of a coffin.
The boxes were first being removed from a white van with a mini-forklift. On the side of the van the word “EnviroBreed” was painted in blue. The driver’s door was open and a white man stood watching the work. Another white man with a clipboard was at the end of the truck, bending down to check numbers on the seals of each of the boxes and then making notes on the clipboard.
“We’re in luck,” Edson said. “A delivery in process. The environment boxes are taken into our lab where the M amp;M process, that’s what we call metamorphosis around here, is completed.”
Edson pointed through the open garage doors to a row of six orange pickup trucks parked outside in the lot.
“The mature flies are placed in covered buckets and we use our fleet to take them to the attack areas. They are released by hand. Right now the attack zone is about one hundred square miles. We are dropping fifty million sterile flies a week. More if we can get them. Ultimately, the steriles will overwhelm the wild fly population and breed it out of existence.”
There was a note of triumph in the entomologist’s voice.
“Would you like to speak with the EnviroBreed driver?” Edson said. “I am sure he would be ha-”
“No,” Bosch said. “I just wanted to see how it is done. I’d appreciate it, Doctor, if you kept my visit confidential.”
As he said this, Bosch noticed the EnviroBreed driver was looking right at him. The man’s face was deeply lined and tanned and his hair was white. He wore a straw plantation hat and smoked a brown cigarette. Bosch returned the stare, knowing full well that he had been made. He thought he saw a slight smile on the driver’s face, then the man finally broke away his stare and went back to watching the unloading process.
“Then is there anything else I can do for you, Detective,” Edson said.
“No, Doc. Thanks for your cooperation.”
“I’m sure you know your way out.”
Edson turned and went back in through the steel door. Harry put a cigarette in his mouth but left it unlit. He waved a nattering of flies, probably pink medflies, he thought, away from his face, went down the loading-dock stairs and walked out through the garage door.
Driving back toward downtown, Bosch decided to get it over with and face Teresa. He pulled into the County-USC parking lot and spent ten minutes looking for a spot big enough to put the Caprice in. He finally found one in the back where the lot is on a rise overlooking the old railroad yard. He sat in the car for a few moments thinking about what to say and smoking and looking down at all the rusted boxcars and iron tracks. He saw a group ofcholos in their oversized white T-shirts and baggy pants making their way through the yard. The one carrying a spray can dropped back from the others and along one of the old boxcars sprayed a scrip. It was in Spanish but Bosch understood it. It was the gang’s imprimatur, its philosophy:
LAUGH NOW CRY LATER
He watched them until they had moved behind another line of boxcars. He got out and went into the morgue through the rear door, where the deliveries are made. A security guard nodded after seeing his badge.
Today was a good day inside. The smell of disinfectant had the upper hand over the odor of death. Harry walked past the doors to refrigeration rooms one and two and then through a door to a set of stairs that led up to the second-floor administration offices.
Bosch asked the secretary in the chief medical examiner’s office if Dr. Corazón could see him. The woman, whose pale skin and pinkish hair made her resemble some of the clients around the place, spoke quietly on the phone and then told him to go in. Teresa was standing behind her desk, looking out the window. She had the same view Bosch had of the railroad yard and may have even seen him coming. But from the second floor, she also had a view that spanned the area from the towers of downtown to Mt Washington. Bosch noticed how clear the towers were in the distance. It was a good day outside as well.
“I’m not talking to you,” Teresa announced without turning around.
“C’mon.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why’d you let me in?”
“To tell you I am not talking to you and that I am very angry and that you have probably compromised my position as chief medical examiner.”
“C’mon, Teresa. I hear you have a press conference later today. It will work out.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned around and leaned back against the windowsill. She looked at him with eyes that could’ve carved his name on a tombstone. He could smell her perfume all the way across the room.
“And, of course, I have you to thank for that.”
“Not me. I heard Irving called the press con-”
“Don’t fuck with me, Harry. We both know what you did with what I told you. And we both know that little shit Irving automatically thinks I did it. I now have to consider myself seriously fucked as far as the permanent job goes. Take a good look around the office, Harry. Last time you’ll ever see me here.”
Bosch had always noticed how many of the professional women he encountered, mostly cops and lawyers, turned profane when arguing. He wondered if they felt it might put them on the same level as the men they were battling.
“It will work out,” he said.
“What are you talking about? All he has to do is tell a few commissioners that I leaked information from a confidential, uncompleted investigation to the press and that will eliminate me completely from consideration.”
“Listen, he can’t be sure it was you and he’ll probably think it was me. Bremmer, theTimes guy who stirred this all up, we go back some. Irving will know. So quit worrying about it. I came to see if you want to have lunch or something.”
Wrong move. He saw her face turn red with pure anger.
“Lunch or something? Are you kidding? Are you-you just told me we are the two likely suspects on this leak and you want me to sit with you in a restaurant? Do you know what could-”
“Hey, Teresa, have a nice press conference,” Bosch cut in. He turned around and headed to the door.
On the way into downtown, his pager went off and Bosch noticed the number was Ninety-eight’s direct line. He must be worried about his statistics, Harry thought. He decided to ignore the page. He also turned the Motorola radio in the car off.
He stopped at amariscos truck parked on Alvarado and ordered two shrimp tacos. They were served on corn tortillas, Baja style, and Bosch savored the heavy cilantro in the salsa.