"I asked if they ever heard of him working at EnviroBreed."
Corvo spun back toward the bar with an exasperated sigh.
"Who did you talk to there?"
"A captain named Grena."
"I don't know him. But you've probably spoiled your lead. You just don't go to the locals with this sort of thing. They pick up the phone, tell Zorrillo what you just said and then pick up a bonus at the end of the month."
"Maybe it's spoiled, maybe it isn't. Grena brushed me off and may think that's it. At least I didn't go walking into the bug place and ask to set up a weather station."
Neither spoke. Each one thinking about what the other had said so far.
"I'm going to get down on this right away," Corvo said after a while. "You have to promise me you won't go fucking around with it when you get down there."
"I'm not promising anything. And so far I've done all the giving here. You haven't said shit."
"What do you want to know?"
"About Zorrillo."
"All you really gotta know is that we've wanted his ass for a long time."
This time Bosch signaled for two more beers. He lit a cigarette and saw the smoke blur his reflection in the mirror.
"Only thing you have to know about Zorrillo is that he is one smart fucker and, like I said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he already knows you're coming. Fuckin' SJP. We only deal with the federales. Even them you can trust about as much as an ex-wife."
Bosch nodded meaningfully, just hoping Corvo would continue.
"If he doesn't know now, he'll know before you get there. So you've got to watch your ass. And the best way of doing that is not to go. With you, I know, that isn't an option. The second best way is to skip the SJP altogether. You can't trust 'em. The pope has people inside there. Okay?"
Bosch nodded at him in the mirror. He decided to stop nodding all the time.
"Now, I know everything I just said went in your ears and out your asshole," Corvo said. "So what I'm willing to do is put you with a guy down there, work it from there. Name's Ramos. You go down, say your howdydos with the local SJPs, act like everything is nice, and then hook up with Ramos."
"If this EnviroBreed thing pans out and you make a move on Zorrillo, I want to be there."
"You will. Just hang with Ramos. Okay?"
Bosch thought it over a few moments and said, "Yeah. Now tell me about Zorrillo. You keep going off on other shit."
"Zorrillo's been around a long time. We've got intelligence on him going back to the seventies at least. A career doper. One of the bounces on the trampoline, I'd guess you'd call him."
Bosch had heard the term before but was confident Corvo would get around to explaining it anyway.
"Black ice is just his latest thing. He was a marijuanito when he was a kid. Pulled out of the barrio by someone like himself today. He took backpacks of grass over the fence when he was twelve, made the truck runs when he was older and just worked his way up. By the eighties, when we had most of our efforts concentrated on Florida, the Colombians contracted with the Mexicans. They flew cocaine to Mexico and the Mexicans took it across the border, using the same old pot trails. Mexicali across to Calexico was one of them. They called the route the Trampoline. The shit bounces from Colombia to Mexico and then up to the states.
"And Zorrillo became a rich man. From the barrio to that nice big ranch with his own personal guardia and half the cops in Baja on his payroll. And the cycle started over. He pulled most his people out of the slums. He never forgot the barrio and it never forgot him. A lot of loyalty. That's when he got the name El Papa. So once we shifted our resources a little bit to address the cocaine situation in Mexico, the pope moved on to heroin. He had tar labs in the nearby barrios. Always had volunteers to mule it across. For one trip he'd pay one of those poor suckers down there more than they'd make in five years doing anything else."
Bosch thought of the temptation, that much money for what amounted to so little risk. Even those who were caught spent little time in jail.