“Mexican necktie, right?”

“Right.”

“And the laborer? The one you think got it at the bug house?”

“He could’ve done them all. I don’t know.”

“This guy goes way back. Arpis. Yeah, he just got out of thepenta a year or so ago. He’s a stone-cold killer, Bosch. One of the pope’s main men. An enforcer. In fact, people ’round here call him ‘Alvin Karpis,’ you know, after that killer with the machine gun in the thirties? The Ma Barker gang? Arpis was put away for a couple hits but they say that doesn’t do him service. He’s really down for more than you can count.”

Bosch stared at the photos and said, “That’s all you got on him? This stuff here?”

“There’s more around someplace but that’s all you have to know. Most of it is just he said/she said informant stuff. The main story about Al Karpis is that when Zorrillo first made his move to the top, this guy was a one-man front line doing the heavy stuff. Every time Zorrillo had a piece of work to do, he’d turn to his buddy Arpis from the barrio. He’d get the job done. And like I said, they only bagged him a couple times. He probably paid his way out of the rest.”

Bosch began writing some of the information from the bio in a notebook. Ramos kept talking.

“Those two, they came from a barrio south of here. Some-”

“Saints and Sinners.”

“Yeah, Saints and Sinners. Some of the local cops, the ones I trust about as far as I can throw ’em, said Arpis had a real taste for killing. In the barrio they had a saying.Quien eres? Means who are you? It was a challenge. It means what side are you on, you know? Are you with us or against us? Saint or Sinner? And when Zorrillo rose to power, he had Arpis taking out the people that were against them. The locals said that after they whacked somebody, they’d spread the word around the barrio.El descubrio quien era. Means-”

“He found out who he was.”

“Right. It was good PR, made the natives fall in behind him. Supposedly they really got into it. Got to the point they were leaving messages with the body. You know? They’d kill a guy and write out ‘He found out who he was,’ or whatever and leave it pinned to his shirt.”

Bosch said nothing and wrote nothing. Another piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

“Sometimes you still see it on graffiti around the barrio,” Ramos said. “It’s part of the folklore surrounding Zorrillo. It’s part of what makes him the pope.”

Harry finally closed his notebook and stood up.

“I got what I need.”

“All right. Be careful out there, Bosch. Nothing that says they won’t try again, especially if Arpis is on the job. You just want to hang out here today? It’s safe.”

“Nah, I’ll be okay.” He nodded and took a step toward the door. He touched the pager on his belt. “I will get a call?”

“Yeah, you’re in. Corvo’s coming down for the show so I gotta make sure you’re there. Where you gonna be later today?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m going to make like a tourist. Go to the historical society, take in a bullfight.”

“Just be cool. You’ll get a call.”

“I better.”

He walked out to the Caprice thinking only about the note that had been found in Cal Moore’s back pocket.

I found out who I was.

It took Bosch thirty minutes to get across the border. The line of cars extended nearly half a mile back from the drab brown Border Patrol port of entry. While waiting and measuring his progress in one or two car-length movements, he ran out of change and one-dollar bills as an army of peasants came to his window holding up their palms or selling cheap bric-a-brac and food. Many of them washed the windshield unbidden with their dirty rags and held up their hands for coins. Each progressive washing smeared the glass more until Bosch had to put on the wipers and use the car’s own spray. When he finally made it to the checkpoint, the BP inspector in mirrored shades just waved him through after seeing his badge. He said, “Hose up there on the right if you want to wash the shit off your windshield.”

A few minutes later he pulled into one of the parking spaces in front of the Calexico Town Hall. Bosch parked and looked out across the park while smoking a cigarette. There were no troubadours today. The park was almost empty. He got out and headed toward the door marked Calexico Historical Society, not sure what he was looking for. He had the afternoon to spend and all he knew was that he believed there was a deeper line running through Cal Moore’s death-from his decision to cross to the note in his back pocket to the photo of him with Zorrillo so many years ago. Bosch wanted to find out what happened to the house he had called a castle and the man he had posed with, the one with the hair white as a sheet.

The glass door was locked and Bosch saw that the society didn’t open until one on Sundays. He looked at his watch and saw he still had fifteen minutes to wait. He cupped his hands to the glass and looked in and saw no one inside the tiny space that included two desks, a wall of books and a couple of glass display cases.

He stepped away from the door and thought about using the time to get something to eat. He decided it was too early. Instead, he walked down to the police station and got a Coke from the machine in the minilobby. He nodded at the officer behind the glass window. It wasn’t Gruber today.

While he stood leaning against the front wall, drinking the soda and watching the park, Harry saw an old man with a latticework of thin white hair on the sides of his head unlock the door to the historical society. He was a few minutes early, but Bosch headed down the walk and followed him in.

“Open?” he said.

“Might as well be,” the old man said. “I’m here. Anything in particular I can help you with?”

Bosch walked into the center of the room and explained he was unsure what he wanted.

“I’m sort of tracing the background of a friend and I believe his father was a historical figure. In Calexico, I mean. I want to find their house if it’s still standing, find out what I can about the old man.”

“What’s this fellow’s name?”

“I don’t know. Actually, I just know his last name was Moore.”

“Hell, boy, that name don’t much narrow it down. Moore’s one of the big names around here. Big family. Brothers, cousins all over the place. Tell you what, let me-”

“You have pictures? You know, books with photos of the Moores? I’ve seen pictures of the father. I could pick-”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, let me set you up here with a couple things. We’ll find your Moore. I’m kinda curious now myself. What’re you doing this for your friend for, anyway?”

“Trying to trace the family tree. Put it all together for him.”

A few minutes later the old man had him sitting at the other desk with three books in front of him. They were leather-bound and smelled of dust. They were the size of yearbooks and they wove photographic and written history together on every page. Randomly opening one of the books, he looked at a black-and-white photo of the De Anza Hotel under construction.

Then he started them in order. The first was calledCalexico and Mexicali: Seventy-five Years on the Border and as he scanned the words and photos on the pages, Bosch picked up a brief history of the two towns and the men who built them. The story was the same one Aguila had told him, but from the white man’s perspective. The volume he read described the horrible poverty in Tapai, China, and told how the men facing it gladly came to Baja California to seek their fortunes. It didn’t say anything about cheap labor.

In the 1920s and 1930s Calexico was a boomtown, a company town, with the Colorado River Land Company’s managers the lords of all they surveyed. The book said many of these men built opulent homes and estates on bluffs rising on the outskirts of town. As Bosch read he repeatedly saw the names of three Moore brothers: Anderson, Cecil and Morgan. There were other Moores listed as well, but the brothers were always described in terms of importance and had high-level titles in the company.