“Yes?” the man said. He still hadn’t looked up.

“Quite a lot of security for flies.”

Now he looked up. “Excuse me?”

“Didn’t know they were so valuable.”

“What can I do for you?” He threw his pen down on the desk to signal that the wheels of international commerce were grinding to a halt because of Bosch.

“Harry Bosch, Los Angeles po-”

“You said that at the gate. What can I do for you?”

“I am here to talk about one of your employees.”

“Name?” He picked up the pen again and went back to work on the ledger.

“You know something? I would think that if a cop had come three hundred miles, crossed the border, just to ask you a few questions, then it might rate a little interest. But not with you. That bothers me.”

The pen went down harder this time and bounced off the desk into the trash can next to it.

“Officer, I don’t care whether it bothers you or not. I have a shipment of perishable material I must get on the road by four o’clock. I can’t afford to show the interest you seem to think you rate. Now, if you want to give me the employee’s name-that is, if he was an employee-I will answer what I can.”

“What do you mean ‘was an employee’?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘was,’ just then.”

“So?”

“So, what’s it mean?”

“You said-you’re the one who came in here with these questions. I-”

“And your name is?”

“What?”

“What is your name?”

The man stopped, thoroughly confused, and drank from the cup. He said, “You know, mister, you have no authority here.”

“You said, ‘even if the guy was an employee,’ and I never said anything about ‘was.’ Makes me think, you already know we are talking about an individual that was. Who is dead now.”

“I just assumed, okay. A cop comes all the way down from L.A., I just assumed we were talking about a dead guy. Don’t try to put words-you can’t come in here with that badge that isn’t worth the tin it’s made of once you cross that border and start pushing me. I don’t have-”

“You want some authority? This is Carlos Aguila of the State Judicial Police here. You can consider that he is asking the same questions as me.”

Aguila nodded but said nothing.

“That’s not the point,” the man behind the desk said. “The point is this typical bullshit American imperialism you bring with you. I find it very distasteful. My name is Charles Ely. I am proprietor of EnviroBreed. I do not know anything about the man you said worked here.”

“I didn’t tell you his name.”

“It doesn’t matter. You understand now? You made a mistake. You played this game wrong.”

Bosch took the morgue photo of Gutierrez-Llosa out of his pocket and slid it across the desk. Ely did not touch the photo but looked down at it. He showed no reaction that Bosch could see. Then Bosch put down the pay stubs. Same thing. No reaction.

“Name is Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa,” Bosch said. “A day laborer. I need to know when he worked here last, what he was doing.”

Ely retrieved his pen from the trash can and flicked the photo back toward Bosch with it.

“Afraid I can’t help. Day laborers we don’t carry records on. We pay them with ‘pay to bearer’ checks at the end of each day. Different people all the time. I wouldn’t know this man from Adam. And I believe we already answered questions about this man. From the SJP. A Captain Grena. I guess I will have to call him now to see why that wasn’t sufficient.”

Bosch wanted to ask whether he meant the payoff Ely had given Grena or the information wasn’t sufficient. But he held back because it would come back on Aguila. Instead he said, “You do that, Mr. Ely. Meantime, somebody else around here might remember this man. I am going to take a look around.”

Ely became immediately agitated. “No, sir, you are not going to have free range of this facility. Portions of this building are used to irradiate material and are considered dangerous and off limits to all but certified personnel. Other areas are subject to USDA monitoring and quarantine and we cannot allow anyone access. Again, you have no authority here.”

“Who owns EnviroBreed, Ely?” Bosch asked.

Ely seemed startled by the change in subject.

“Who?” he sputtered.

“Who is the man, Ely?”

“I don’t have to answer that. You have no-”

“The man across the street? Is the pope the man?”

Ely stood up and pointed at the door.

“I don’t know what you are talking about but you’re leaving. And I will be contacting both the SJP and the American and Mexican authorities. We will see if this is how they want police from Los Angeles to operate on foreign soil.”

Bosch and Aguila moved back into the hall and closed the door. Harry stood there for a moment and listened for the sound of a telephone or steps. He heard nothing and then turned to the door at the end of the hall. He tried it but it was locked.

In front of the door marked USDA, he leaned his head forward and listened but heard nothing. He opened the door without knocking and a man with bureaucrat written all over him looked up from behind a small wooden desk. The room was about a quarter the size of Ely’s suite. The man wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a thin blue tie. He had close-cropped gray hair, a mustache that looked like the end of a toothbrush and small, dead eyes that looked out from behind bifocals that squeezed against his pudgy pink temples. The plastic ink guard in his pocket had his name printed on the flap: Jerry Dinsmore. He had a half-eaten bean burrito on his desk, sitting on oil-stained paper.

“Can I help you?” he said with a mouthful.

Bosch and Aguila moved into the room.

Bosch showed him his ID and let him have a good look at it. Then he put the morgue photo on the desk, next to the burrito. Dinsmore looked at it and folded up the paper around his half-finished meal and put it in a drawer.

“Recognize him?” Bosch said. “Just a routine check. Infectious disease alert. Guy took it with him up to L.A. and croaked. We are retracing him so we can get anybody who had contact inoculated. We still got plenty of time. We hope.”

Dinsmore was chewing his food much slower now. He looked down at the Polaroid and then up over his glasses at Bosch.

“Was he one of the men who worked around here?”

“We think so. We are checking with all the regular employees. We thought you might recognize him. It depends on how close you got as far as whether you need to be quarantined.”

“Well, I never get close to the laborers. I’m in the clear. But what is the disease that you are talking about? I don’t see why LAPD is-this man looks like he was beaten.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dinsmore, that’s confidential until we determine if you are at risk. If you are, well, then we have to put our cards on the table. Now, how do you mean you never get close to the laborers? Are you not the inspection officer for this facility?”

Bosch expected Ely to burst in any moment.

“I am the inspector but I am only interested in the finished product. I inspect samples directly from the travel cases. Then I seal the cases. This is done in the shipping room. You have to remember, this is a private facility and consequently I do not have free reign of the breeding or sterilization labs. Therefore, I do not interface with the workers.”

“You just said, ‘samples.’ So that means you don’t look in all of the boxes.”

“Wrong. I don’t look in all of the larvae cylinders in each of the transport cases, but I do inspect and seal the cases. I don’t see what this has to do with this man. He didn’t-”

“I don’t see it, either. Never mind. You’re in the clear.”

Dinsmore’s small eyes widened slightly. Bosch winked at him to further confuse him. He wondered if Dinsmore was part of what was going on here or whether, like a mole, he was in the dark. He told him to go back to his burrito and then he and Aguila stepped back into the hall. Just at that moment the door at the end of the hall opened and through it stepped Ely. He pulled a breathing mask and goggles off his face and charged down the hall, coffee slopping over the sides of the Styrofoam cup.