Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

He tossed Bosch one of the pagers off his belt.

“You put that on and I’ll give you a buzz when we are ready to rock. It will be soon. At least before New Year’s, I’m hoping. We gotta move on this. There is no telling how long the target is going to stay in place this time.”

He finished the beer and put the bottle on the table. He didn’t pick up another. The meeting was done.

“What about my partner?” Bosch asked.

“Who, the Mex? Forget it. He’s state. You can’t tell him about this, Bosch. The pope has the SJP and the other locals wired. It’s a given. Don’t trust anybody over there, don’t tell anybody over there. Just wear the pager like I said and wait for the beep. Go to the bullfights. Hang by the pool or something. Hell, man, look at yourself. You could use the color.”

“I know Aguila better than I know you.”

“Did you know he works for a man who is a regular guest of Zorrillo’s at the bullfights each Sunday?”

“No,” Bosch said. He thought of Grena.

“Did you know that to become a detective in the SJP, the promotion is bought for an average of two thousand dollars, not based on any skill in investigative technique?”

“No.”

“I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is here. You’ve got to understand that. Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?”

Bosch nodded and said, “One more thing, I want to come in tomorrow and check your mug books. You have Zorrillo’s people?”

“Most of them. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a guy with three tattooed tears. He’s Zorrillo’s hit man. He hit another cop yesterday in L.A.”

“Jesus! Okay, in the morning, call me at this number. We’ll set it up. If you make an ID we’ll get the word to the AG. It’ll help us get the search approval.”

He gave Bosch a card with a phone number on it, nothing else. Then he was gone. Harry put the chain back on the lock.

Bosch sat on the bed with his beer, thinking about the reappearance of Zorrillo. He wondered where he had been and why he had left the safety of his ranch in the first place. Harry poked at the idea that maybe Zorrillo had been in L.A. and that it had taken his presence there to lure Moore to the motel room where he was put down on the bathroom floor. Maybe Zorrillo was the only one Moore would have gone there for.

The sharp sound of squealing brakes and crashing metal shot through the window. Before he even got up he heard voices arguing in the street below. The words grew harsher until they were threats being yelled so fast Bosch could not understand them. He went to the window and saw two men standing chests out beside two cars. One had rear-ended the other.

As he turned away he detected a small flash of blue light to his left. Before he had time to look, the bottle in his hand shattered and beer and glass exploded in all directions. He instinctively took a step back and launched himself over the bed and down onto the floor. He braced himself for more shots but none came. His heartbeat rapidly increased and he felt the familiar rush of mental clarity that comes only in situations of life and death. He crawled along the floor to the table and pulled the lamp plug out of the wall, dropping the room in darkness. As he reached up to the table for his gun, he heard the two cars speeding away in the street. A beautiful setup, he thought, but they missed.

He moved beneath the window opening and then stood up while pressing his back to the wall. All the while he was realizing how stupid he had been to literally pose in the window. He looked through the opening into the darkness where he believed he had seen the muzzle flash. There was no one there. Several of the windows of the other rooms were open and it was impossible to pinpoint where the shot had come from. Bosch looked back into his room and saw the headboard of the bed splintered at the spot where the bullet had impacted. By imagining a line from the impact point though the position he had held the bottle and then out the window, he focused on an open but dark window on the fifth floor of the other wing. He saw no movement there other than the curtain swaying gently with the breeze. Finally, he put his gun in his waistband and left the room, his clothes smelling of beer and with small slivers of glass embedded in his shirt and pricking his skin. He knew he had at least two slight glass cuts. One on his neck and one on his right hand, which had been holding the bottle. He held his cut hand to his neck wound as he walked.

He had judged that the open window belonged to the fourth room on the fifth floor. He now had his gun out and pointed in front of him as he moved slowly down the fifth-floor hallway. He was debating whether he should kick the door open but found the decision academic. A cool breeze from the open window flowed out through the open door of room 504.

The room was dark and Bosch knew he would be silhouetted by the lighted hallway. So he hit the room’s entrance-light switch as he moved quickly through the doorway. He covered the room with his Smith and found it empty. The smell of burned gunpowder hung in the air. Harry looked out the window and followed the imaginary line down to his own third-floor room’s window. It had been an easy shot. It was then that he heard the screeching of tires and saw the taillights of a large sedan pull out of the hotel parking lot and then speed away.

Bosch put the gun in his waistband and pulled his shirt out over it. He looked quickly around the room to see if the shooter had left anything behind him. The glint of copper from the fold of the bedspread where it was tucked beneath the pillows caught his eye. He pulled the bedspread out straight and lying there was a shell casing that had been ejected from a thirty-two rifle. He got an envelope out of the desk drawer and scooped the shell inside it.

As he left room 504 and walked down the hallway, no one looked out a door, no house detectives came running and no approaching sirens blared in the distance. No one had heard a thing, except maybe a bottle breaking. Bosch knew that the thirty-two fired at him had had a silencer screwed to the end of its barrel. Whoever it had been, he had taken his time and waited for the one shot. But he had missed. Had that been intentional? He decided it wasn’t, to make a shot that close but intend to miss was too chancy. He had simply been lucky. His turn from the window at the last moment had probably saved his life.

Bosch headed back to his room to dig the slug out of the wall, bandage his wounds and check out. Along the way he started running when he realized he had to warn Aguila.

Back in his room, he quickly dug through his wallet for the piece of paper on which Aguila had written his address and phone number. Aguila picked up almost immediately.

“Bueno.”

“It’s Bosch. Someone just took a shot at me.”

“Yes. Where? Are you injured?”

“I am okay. In my room. They shot through the window. I’m calling to warn you.”

“Yes?”

“We were together today, Carlos. I don’t know if it’s just me or the both of us. Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am.”

Bosch realized he didn’t know if Aguila had a family or was alone. In fact, he realized, he knew the man’s ancestry but little else.

“What will you do?” Aguila asked.

“I don’t know. I’m leaving here…”

“Come here, then.”

“Okay, yes… No. Can you come here? I won’t be here but I want you to come and find out whatever you can about the person who rented room 504. That’s where the shot came from. You can get the information easier than me.”

“I am leaving now.”

“We’ll meet at your place. I have something to do first.”