“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.