“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?”