Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

“Si?”

“Bosch. It’s Ramos.”

Bosch opened the door on the chain and asked for some identification.

“Are you kidding? I don’t carry ID around here. Let me in. Corvo sent me.”

“How do I know?”

“Because you called L.A. Operations two hours ago and left your address. I tell you, I really get fucking paranoid having to explain all of this while standing out in the hallway.”

Bosch closed the door, flipped off the chain and reopened it. He kept the gun in his hand but down at his side. Ramos walked past him into the room. He walked up to the window and looked out, then he walked away and began pacing near the bed. He said, “Smells like shit out there. Somebody cooking tortillas or some shit. Got any more brew? And by the way, the federales catch you with that piece and you might have trouble trying to get back across. How come you didn’t stay in Calexico like Corvo told you to, man?”

If he had been anyone other than a cop, Bosch would have figured he was coked to the eyelids. But he decided it was probably something else, something he didn’t know about yet, that made Ramos seem wired. Bosch picked up the phone and ordered a six-pack from room service, never taking his eyes off the man in his room. After he hung up, he put the gun in his waistband and sat down in the chair by the window.

“I didn’t want to deal with the lines at the border,” he said in answer to one of Ramos’s many questions.

“You didn’t want to put your trust in Corvo is what you mean. I don’t blame you. Not that I don’t trust him. I do. But I can see the need to want to go your own way. They got better food over here, anyway. But Calexico, there’s a wild little town. It’s one of those places, you never know what kind of shit is going down. You hit that place the wrong way and you go into a slide, man. I like it better over here myself. Did you eat?”

For a moment, Bosch thought about what Sylvia Moore had said about the black ice. Ramos was still pacing the room and Bosch noticed he had two electronic pagers on his belt. The agent was hyped on something. Bosch was sure of it.

“I already ate,” Bosch said and moved his chair near the window because the room had taken on the tang of the agent’s body odor.

“I know the best Chinese food in two countries. We could pop over for-”

“Hey! Ramos, sit down. You’re making me nervous. Just sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

Ramos looked around himself as if seeing the room for the first time. He dragged a chair away from the wall near the door and straddled it backward in the middle of the room.

“What’s going on, man, is that we are not too impressed with the shit you pulled at EnviroBreed today.”

Bosch was surprised the DEA knew so much so fast but tried not to show it.

“That was not cool at all,” Ramos was saying. “So I came here to tell you to quit the one-man show. Corvo told me that was your bag, but I didn’t expect to see it so soon.”

“What’s the problem?” Bosch said. “It was my lead. From what Corvo said, you people didn’t know shit about that place. I went in there to shake ’em up a little bit. That’s all.”

“These people don’t shake, Bosch. That’s what I am saying. Now look, enough said. I just wanted to say my little piece and to see what you have going besides the bug place. What I’m asking is, what are you doing here?”

Before Bosch could answer there was a loud knock on the door and the DEA agent jumped off the chair, coming down in a crouched position.

“It’s room service,” Bosch said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Always get this way before we jam.”

Bosch got up looking curiously at the DEA agent and went to the door. Through the peephole he saw the same man who had delivered the first two beers. He opened the door, paid for the delivery and gave Ramos a bottle from the new bucket.

Ramos chugged half the bottle before sitting back down. Bosch took a beer back to his seat.

“What do you mean by ‘before we jam’?”

“Well,” Ramos said after another swallow. “The stuff you gave Corvo was good info. But then you canceled that out by cowboying it over there today. You nearly fucked things up.”

“You said that. What did you find out?”

“EnviroBreed. We ran down the info and it’s a direct hit. We traced ownership through a bunch of blinds to a Gilberto Ornelas. That’s a known alias for a guy named Fernando Ibarra, one of Zorrillo’s lieutenants. We are working with the federales on getting search approvals. They are cooperating on this one. This new attorney general they got down here is clean and mean. He’s working with us. So it’s going to be a major jam, if we get the approval.”

“When will you know?”

“Any time. One last piece has to fall.”

“What’s that?”

“If he’s moving black ice across the border in EnviroBreed shipments, then how is he getting it from the ranch to the bug house? See, we’ve been watching the ranch and would’ve seen it. And we’re pretty sure it’s not manufactured at EnviroBreed. Too small, too many people around, too close to the road, et cetera, et cetera. All our intelligence says it’s made on the ranch. Underground, in a bunker. We got aerials that show the heat patterns from the ventilation. Anyway, the question is then, how’s he get it across the street to EnviroBreed?”

Bosch thought about what Corvo had said at the Code 7. That Zorrillo was suspected of helping to finance the tunnel that went under the border at Nogales.

“He doesn’t take it across the street. He takes it under.”

“Exactly,” Ramos said. “We are working our informants on it right now. We get it confirmed, we get our approval from the attorney general and we go in. We hit the ranch and EnviroBreed simultaneously. Joint operation. The AG sends the federal militia. We send CLET.”

Bosch hated all the acronyms law enforcement agencies cling to but asked what CLET was anyway.

“Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team. These guys are fuckin’ ninjas.”

Bosch thought this information over. He didn’t understand why it was happening so quickly. Ramos was leaving something out. There had to be new intelligence on Zorrillo.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you? Zorrillo. Or somebody has.”

“You got it. And that other little white squirrel you came down looking for. Dance.”

“Where? When?”

“We have a CI inside the fence who saw the both of them outside the main compound shooting at targets this morning. And then we-”

“How close was he? The informant.”

“Close enough. Not close enough to say ‘Howdy do, Mr. Pope’ but close enough to make the ID.”

Ramos cackled loudly and got up to get another beer. He threw a bottle to Bosch, who wasn’t yet done with his first.

“Where had he been?” Bosch asked.

“Christ, who knows? Only thing I care about is that he is back and he is going to be there when the CLETs come through the door. And by the way, you better not bring that gun with you or the federales will hook you up, too. They are giving a special weapons privilege to the CLETs but that is it. The AG is going to sign it-God, I hope this guy never gets bought off or assassinated. Anyway, like I’m saying, if they want you to have a gun, they’ll give you something from their own armory.”

“And how am I going to know when it goes down?”

Ramos was still standing. He jerked his head back and poured down half the bottle of beer. His odor had totally filled the room. Bosch held his bottle up near his mouth and nose so he’d smell the beer instead of the DEA agent.

“We’ll let you know,” Ramos said. “Take this and wait.”