The Harry Bosch Novels Vol I Part 66

"Is he still around?"

"No, none of those brothers are. He was the last to go, though. Last year about this time, went in his sleep, Cecil did. I think you're mistaken though."

"Why's that?"

"Cecil had no children."

Bosch nodded.

"Maybe you're right. What about this place. That gone, too?"

"You're not working on any family tree, are you now?"

"No. I'm a cop. I came from L.A. I'm tracing down a story somebody told me about this man. Will you help me?"

The old man looked at him and Bosch regretted not being truthful with him in the first place.

"I don't know what it's got to do with Los Angeles but go ahead, what else you want to know?"

"Is this place with the tower still there?"

"Yes, Castillo de los Ojos is still there. Castle of the Eyes. Gets its name from those two windows up in the tower. When they were lit at night, it was said that they were eyes that looked out on all of Calexico."

"Where is it?"

"It's on a road called Coyote Trail west of town. You take 98 out there past Pinto Wash to an area called Crucifixion Thorn. Turn onto Anza Road - like the hotel here in town. That'll take you to Coyote Trail. The castle's at the end of the road. You can't miss it."

"Who lives there now?"

"I don't think anyone does. He left it to the city, you know. But the city couldn't handle the upkeep on a place like that. They sold it - I believe the man came down from Los Angeles, matter of fact. But as far as I know he never moved in. It's a pity. I was hoping to have maybe made a museum out of it."

Bosch thanked him and left to head out to Crucifixion Thorn. He had no idea whether Castillo de los Ojos was anything more than a dead rich man's estate with no bearing on his case. But he had nothing else going and his impulse was to keep moving forward.

State road 98 was a two-lane blacktop that stretched west from Calexico-town proper, running alongside the border, into farmland delineated into a huge grid by irrigation ditches. As he drove, he smelled green pepper and cilantro. And he realized after running alongside a field planted in cotton that this wide expanse was all once the Company's huge acreage.

Ahead, the land rose into hills and he could see Calexico Moore's boyhood home long before he was near. Castillo de los Ojos. The two arched windows were dark and hollow eyes against the peach-colored stone face of the tower rising from a promontory on the horizon.

Bosch crossed a bridge over a dry bed that he a.s.sumed was Pinto Wash, though there was no sign on the road. Glancing down into the dusty bed as he pa.s.sed, Harry saw a lime-green Chevy Blazer parked below. He caught just a glimpse of a man behind the wheel with binoculars held to his eyes. Border Patrol. The driver was using the bed's low spot as a blind from which he could watch the border for crossers.

The wash marked the end of the farmland. Almost immediately the earth began to rise into brown-brush hills. There was a turnout in the road by a stand of eucalyptus and oak trees that were still in the windless morning. This time there was a sign marking the location: CRUCIFIXION THORN NATURAL AREA Danger Abandoned Mines Bosch remembered seeing a reference in the books at the historical society to the turn-of-the-century gold mines that pockmarked the border zone. Fortunes had been found and lost by speculators. The hills had been heavy with bandits. Then the Company came and brought order.

He lit a cigarette and studied the tower, which was much closer now and rose from behind a walled compound. The stillness of the scene and the tower windows, like soulless eyes, somehow seemed morbid. The tower was not alone on the hill, though. He could see the barrel-tile roofs of other homes. But something about the tower rising singularly above them with its empty gla.s.s eyes seemed lonely. Dead.

Anza Road came up in another half mile. He turned north and the single-lane road curved and b.u.mped and rose along the circ.u.mference of the hill. To his right he could look down on the farmland basin extending below. He turned left onto a road marked Coyote Trail and was soon pa.s.sing large haciendas on sprawlng estates. He could see only the second floors of most of them because of the walls that surrounded almost every property.

Coyote Trail ended in a circle that went around an ancient oak tree with branches that would shade the turnaround in the summer. Castillo de los Ojos was here at the end of the road.

From the street, an eight-foot-high stone wall eclipsed all but the tower. Only through a black wrought-iron gate was there a fuller view. Bosch pulled onto the driveway and up to the gate. Heavy steel chain and lock kept it closed. He got out, looked through the bars and saw that the parking circle in front of the house was empty. The curtains inside every front window were pulled closed.

On the wall next to the gate were a mailbox and an intercom. He pushed the ringer but got no response. He wasn't sure what he would have said if someone had answered. He opened the mailbox and found that empty too.

Bosch left his car where it was and walked back down Coyote Trail to the nearest house. This was one of the few without a wall. But there was a white picket fence and an intercom at the gate. And this time when he rang the buzzer, he got a response.

"Yes?" a woman's voice asked.

"Yes, ma'am, police. I was wondering if I can ask a few questions about your neighbor's house."

"Which neighbor?"

The voice was very old.

"The castle."

"n.o.body lives there. Mr. Moore died some time ago."

"I know that, ma'am. I was wondering if I could come in and talk to you a moment. I have identification."

There was a delay before he heard a curt "Very well" over the speaker and the gate lock buzzed.

The woman insisted that he hold his ID up to a small window set in the door. He saw her in there, white-haired and decrepit, straining to see it from a wheelchair. She finally opened up.

"Why do they send a Los Angeles police officer?"

"Ma'am, I'm working on a Los Angeles case. It involves a man who used to live in the castle. As a boy, long ago."

She looked up at him through squinting eyes, as if she was trying to see past a memory.

"Are you talking about Calexico Moore?"

"Yes. You knew him?"

"Is he hurt?"

Bosch hesitated, then said, "I'm afraid he's dead."

"Up there in Los Angeles?"

"Yes. He was a police officer. I think it had something to do with his life down here. That's why I came out here. I don't really know what to ask ...He didn't live here long. But you remember him, yes?"

"He didn't live here long but that doesn't mean I never saw him again. Quite the contrary. I saw him regularly over the years. He'd ride his bicycle or he'd drive a car and come and sit out there on the road and just watch that place. One time I had Marta bring him out a sandwich and a lemonade."

He a.s.sumed Marta was the maid. These estates came with them.

"He'd just watch and remember, I guess," the old woman was saying. "Terrible thing that Cecil did to him. He's probably paying for it now, that Cecil."

"What do you mean, 'terrible'?"

"Sending the boy and his mother away like that. I don't think he ever spoke to that boy or the woman again after that. But I'd see the boy and I'd see him as a man, come out here to look at the place. People 'round here say that's why Cecil put that wall up. Did that twenty years ago. They say it's because he got tired of seeing Calexico in the street. That was Cecil's way of doing things. You don't like what you see out your window, you put up a wall. But I'd still see young Cal from time to time. One time I took a cold drink out to him myself. I wasn't in this chair then. He was sitting in a car, and I asked him, 'Why do you come out here all the time?' and he just said, 'Aunt Mary, I like to remember.' That's what he said."

"Aunt Mary?"

"Yes. I thought that was why you came here. My Anderson and Cecil were brothers, G.o.d rest their souls."

Bosch nodded and waited a respectful five seconds before speaking.

"The man at the museum in town said Cecil had no children."

"'Course he said that. Cecil kept it a secret from the public. Big secret. He didn't want the company name blemished."

"Calexico's mother was the maid?"

"Yes, she - it sounds like you know all of this already."

"Just a few parts. What happened? Why did he send her and the boy away?" She hesitated before answering, as if to compose a story that was more than thirty years old.

"After she became pregnant, she lived there - he made her - and she had the baby there. Afterward, four or five years, he discovered she had lied to him. One day he had some of his men follow her across when she went to Mexicali to visit her mother. There was no mother. Just a husband and another son, this one older than Calexico. That was when he sent them away. His own blood he sent away."

Bosch thought about this for a long moment. The woman was staring off at the past.

"When was the last time you saw Calexico?"

"Oh, let me see, must have been years now. He eventually stopped coming around."

"Do you think he knew of his father's death?"

"He wasn't at the funeral, not that I blame him."

"I was told Cecil Moore left the property to the city."

"Yes, he died alone and he left everything to the city, not a thing to Calexico or any of the ex-wives and mistresses. Cecil Moore was a mean man, even in death. Of course the city couldn't do anything with that place. Too big and expensive to keep up. Calexico isn't a boomtown like it once was and can't keep a place like that. There was a thought that it would be used as a historical museum. But you couldn't fill a closet with the history of this town. Never mind the museum. The city sold the place. I heard, for more than a million. Maybe they'll operate in the black for a few years."

"Who bought it?"

"I don't know. But they never moved in. They got a caretaker comes around. I saw lights on over there last week. But, nope, n.o.body's ever moved in as far as I know. It must be an investment. In what I don't know. We're sitting out here in the middle of nowhere."

"One last question. Was there ever anybody else with Moore when he would watch the place?"

"Always alone. That poor boy was always out there alone."

On the way back into town Bosch thought about Moore's lonely vigils outside the house of his father. He wondered if his longings were for the house and its memories or the father who had sent him away. Or both.

Bosch's mind touched his memory of his brief meeting with his own father. A sick old man on his death bed. Bosch had forgiven him for every second he had been robbed. He knew he had to or he would face the rest of his life wasting his pain on it.

CHAPTER 27

The line of traffic to go back into Mexico was longer and slower than the day before. Bosch figured this was because of the bullfight, which drew people from the entire region. It was a Sunday evening tradition as popular here as Raiders football was in L.A.

Bosch was two cars from the Mexican border officer when he realized he still had the Smith in its holster on his back. It was too late to do anything about it. When he got to the man, he simply said, "Bullfight," and was waved on through.

The sky was clear over Mexicali and the air cool. It looked like it would be perfect weather. Harry felt the tingle of antic.i.p.ation in his throat. It was for two things: seeing the ritual of the fight and maybe seeing Zorrillo, the man whose name and lore had surrounded his last three days so thoroughly that Bosch found himself buying into his myth. He just wanted to see the pope in his own element. With his bulls. With his people.

Bosch took a pair of surveillance binoculars out of the glove compartment after parking at the Justice Plaza. The arena was only three blocks away and he figured they'd walk. After showing ID to the front-desk officer and being approved to go back, he found Aguila sitting behind the lone desk in the investigators' squadroom. He had several handwritten reports in front of him.

"Did you get the tickets?"

"Yes, I have them. We have a box on the sun side. This will not be a problem because the boxes get little sun."

"Is it close to the pope?"

"Almost directly across - if he is there today."

"Yeah, if. We'll see. You done?"

"Yes, I have completed the reports on the Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa investigation. Until a suspect is charged."

"Which will probably never happen down here."

"This is correct. ...I believe we should go now."

Bosch held up the binoculars.

"I'm ready."

"You will be so close you will not need those."

"These aren't for looking at bulls."

As they walked toward the arena they moved into a steady stream of people heading the same way. Many of them carried little square pillows on which they would sit in the arena. They pa.s.sed several young children holding armfuls of pillows and selling them for a dollar each.

After entering the gate, Bosch and Aguila descended a set of concrete stairs to an underground level where Aguila presented their box tickets to an usher. They were then led through a catacomblike pa.s.sageway that curved as it followed the circ.u.mference of the ring. There were small wooden doors marked with numbers on their left.

The usher opened a door with the number seven on it and they went into a room no larger than a jail cell. Its floor, walls and ceiling were all unpainted concrete. The vaulted ceiling sloped downward from the back to a six-foot-wide opening that looked out into the ring. They were directly on the outer ring where matadors, toreros and other players in the fights stood and waited. Bosch could smell the dirt ring, its horse and bull odors, its blood. There were six steel chairs folded and leaning against the rear wall. They opened two and sat down after Aguila thanked the usher and closed and locked the door.

"This is like a pillbox," Bosch said as he looked through the window slot into the boxes across the ring. He did not see Zorrillo.

"What is a pillbox?"

"Never mind," Bosch said, realizing he had never been in one, either. "It's like a jail cell."