Nine Dragons (25 page)

He immediately started counting doors and came up with twelve on the front side of the hall. He moved to the seventh door, room 1514. He felt his heart hit a higher gear as a charge went through him. This was it. This was what he was here for.

He leaned forward, putting his ear to the door’s crack. He listened intently but heard no sounds from within the room.

“Anything?” Eleanor whispered.

Bosch shook his head. He put his hand on the knob and tried to turn it. He didn’t expect the door to be unlocked but he wanted a feel for the hardware and how solid it might be.

The knob was old and loose. Bosch had to decide whether to kick the door in and use the element of complete surprise, or to pick the lock and possibly make a sound that would alert whoever was on the other side of the door.

He dropped to one knee and looked closely at the doorknob. It would be a simple pick but there could be a bolt lock or a security chain inside. He thought of something and reached into his pocket.

“Go to our room,” he whispered. “Find out if there’s a dead bolt or a security chain.”

He handed her the key to room 1504.

“Now?” Eleanor whispered.

“Yeah, now,” Bosch whispered back. “I want to know what’s inside here.”

She took the key and hurried down the hall. Bosch pulled his badge wallet out. Before going through airport security he had slid his two best picks behind the badge. He knew the badge would light up on the X-ray but that the two thin metal strips behind it would likely be mistaken for part of the badge. His plan had worked and now he removed the picks and quietly maneuvered them into the doorknob lock.

It took him less than a minute to turn the lock. He held the knob without pushing the door open until Eleanor came hurrying back down the dimly lit hallway.

“There’s a security chain,” she whispered.

Bosch nodded and stood up, still holding the knob with his right hand. He knew he could easily shoulder the door past a security chain.

“Ready?” he whispered.

Eleanor nodded. Bosch then reached back and under his jacket and pulled the gun. He thumbed off the safety and looked at Eleanor. In unison, they mouthed the words
one, two, three
and he pushed the door open.

There was no security chain in place. The door moved all the way open and Bosch quickly entered the room. Eleanor came in right behind him.

The room was empty.

29

B
osch stepped through the room to the tiny bathroom. He slapped the dirty plastic shower curtain back from a small, tiled shower space but it was empty. He walked back into the room and looked at Eleanor. He said the words he dreaded.

“She’s gone.”

“Are you sure this is even the room?” she asked.

Bosch was. He had already looked at the pattern of cracks and nail holes on the wall over the bed. He took the folded photo print out of his jacket and handed it to her.

“This is the room.”

He put the gun back under his jacket and in the waistband of his pants. He tried to keep the searing sense of futility and dread from engulfing him. But he wasn’t sure where to go from here.

Eleanor dropped the photo on the bed.

“There’s got to be some sign that she was here. Something.”

“Let’s go. We’ll talk to the guy downstairs. We’ll find out who rented the room Friday.”

“No, wait. We have to look around first.”

She dropped down and looked under the bed.

“Eleanor, she’s not under the bed. She’s gone and we need to keep moving. Call Sun and tell him not to come up. Tell him to get the car.”

“No, this can’t be.”

She moved from looking under the bed to kneeling next to it, elbows on top, as if she were a child praying before bedtime.

“She can’t be gone. We…”

Bosch came around the bed and leaned down behind her. He put his arms around her and pulled her up standing.

“Come on, Eleanor, we have to go. We’re going to find her. I told you we would. We just have to keep moving. That’s all. We have to stay strong and keep moving.”

He ushered her toward the door, but she broke free and headed toward the bathroom. She had to see it empty for herself.

“Eleanor, please.”

She disappeared into the room and Bosch heard her pull the shower curtain back. But then she didn’t return.

“Harry!”

Bosch quickly crossed the room and entered the bathroom. Eleanor was leaning over the side of the toilet and lifting the wastebasket. She brought it around to him. At the bottom of the basket was a small wad of toilet paper with blood on it.

Eleanor retrieved it with two fingers and held it up. The blood had made a stain smaller than a dime. The size of the stain and the wadding of the tissue suggested it had been held against a small cut or wound to stanch the flow of blood.

Eleanor leaned into Bosch, and Harry knew that she was assuming that they were looking at their daughter’s blood.

“We don’t know what this means yet, Eleanor.”

His counsel was ignored. Her body language suggested a breakdown was coming.

“They drugged her,” she said. “They put a needle in her arm.”

“We don’t know that yet. Let’s go downstairs and talk to the guy.”

She didn’t move. She stared at the blood and tissue like it was a red-and-white flower.

“Do you have something to put this in?”

Bosch always carried a small quantity of sealable evidence bags in his coat pockets. He pulled one out now and Eleanor placed the wad in it. He closed it and put it into his pocket.

“Okay, let’s go.”

They finally left the room. Bosch had one arm around Eleanor’s back and was looking at her face as they entered the hall. He half expected her to break free and run back to the room. But then he saw some sort of recognition flare in her eyes as she focused down the hall.

“Harry?”

Bosch turned, expecting it to be Sun. But it wasn’t.

Two men were approaching from the end of the hall. They were walking side by side with purpose. Bosch realized that they were the two men who had been the last passengers with them in the elevator going up. They had been going to sixteen.

The moment the men saw Harry and Eleanor enter the hallway, their hands went inside their jackets to their waistbands. Bosch saw one man close his grip and instinctively knew he was pulling a gun.

Bosch brought his right arm up to the center of Eleanor’s back and shoved her across the hall toward the elevator alcove. At the same time, he brought his left hand up behind his back and grabbed his gun. One of the men yelled something in a language Bosch didn’t understand and raised his weapon.

Bosch pulled his own gun and brought it around on aim. He opened fire at the same moment shots were fired from one of the men down the hall. Bosch fired repeatedly, at least ten shots, and continued after he saw both men go down.

Holding his aim, he moved forward on them. One was lying on top of the other’s legs. One was dead, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The other was still alive and breathing shallowly at the same time he was still trying to pull his gun from his waistband. Bosch looked down and saw that the hammer spur had gotten snagged in the waistband of his pants. He had never gotten the gun out.

Bosch reached down and took the man’s hand off the weapon and roughly pulled the gun loose. The man dropped his hand to the floor. Bosch slid the gun across the carpet out of his reach.

There were two wounds in the man’s upper chest. Bosch had gone for body mass and his aim was true. The man was bleeding out quickly.

“Where is she?” Bosch said. “Where is she?”

The man made a grunting sound and blood dripped from his mouth down the side of his face. Bosch knew he would be dead in another minute.

Bosch heard a door open down the hallway and then quickly close. He checked but saw no one. Most people in a place like this wouldn’t want to get involved. Still, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the police stormed the hotel on the report of a shooting.

He turned back to the dying man.

“Where is she?” he repeated. “Where’s my—”

He saw that the man was dead.

“Shit!”

Bosch got up and turned back to the alcove and Eleanor.

“They had to have—”

She was on the floor. Bosch rushed to her and dropped down to the floor.

“Eleanor!”

He was too late. Her eyes were open and just as blank as the man’s in the hallway.

“No, no, please, no.
Eleanor!
”

He couldn’t see any wound but she wasn’t breathing and her eyes were fixed. He shook her by the shoulders and got no response. He put one hand behind her head and opened her mouth with the other. He leaned forward to blow air into her lungs. But then he felt the wound. He pulled his hand out of her hair and it was covered in blood. He turned her head and saw the wound in the hairline behind her left ear. He realized she had probably been hit as he had pushed her into the alcove. He had pushed her into the shot.

“Eleanor,” he said quietly.

Bosch leaned forward and put his face down on her chest between her breasts. He smelled her familiar fragrance. He heard a loud, awful groan and realized it had come from himself.

For thirty seconds he didn’t move. He just held her there. Then he heard the elevator open behind him and finally raised himself up.

Sun stepped off the elevator. He took in the scene and his focus quickly went to Eleanor on the floor.

“Eleanor!”

He rushed to her side. Bosch realized it was the first time he had heard him say her name. He had pronounced it
Eeeleanor
.

“She’s gone,” Bosch said. “I’m sorry.”

“Who did this?”

Bosch started to get up. He spoke in a monotone.

“Over there. Two men fired on us.”

Sun looked into the hallway and saw the two men on the ground. Bosch saw the confusion and horror on his face. He then turned back to Eleanor again.

“No!”

Bosch stepped back into the hall and picked up the gun he had pulled from the man’s waistband. Without examining it, he tucked the weapon into his own pants and went back to the alcove. Sun was on his knees next to Eleanor’s body. He was holding her hand in his.

“Sun Yee, I’m sorry. They took us by surprise.”

He waited a moment. Sun said nothing and didn’t move.

“I have to do something here and then we have to go. I’m sure the police are on their way.”

He put his hand on Sun’s shoulder and pulled him back. Bosch knelt next to Eleanor and picked up her right arm. He wrapped her hand around the gun he had gotten from Sun. He fired a shot into the wall next to the elevator. He then carefully placed her arm back down on the floor, her hand still holding the gun.

“What are you doing?” Sun demanded.

“Gunshot residue. Is the gun clean or will it be traced back to whoever gave it to you?”

Sun didn’t respond.

“Sun Yee, is the gun clean?”

“It’s clean.”

“Then let’s go. We have to take the stairs. There’s nothing we can do for Eleanor now.”

Sun bowed his head for a moment and then slowly stood up.

“They came from the stairs,” Bosch said, referring to the gunmen. “We’ll go that way.”

They moved down the hall but Sun suddenly stopped to examine the two men on the floor.

“Come on,” Bosch prompted. “We have to go.”

Sun finally followed. They hit the stairwell door and started down.

“They’re not triad,” Sun said.

Bosch was two steps ahead. He stopped and looked back up at him.

“What? How do you know?”

“They’re not Chinese. Not Chinese, not triad.”

“Then what are they?”

“Indonesian, Vietnamese—I think Vietnamese. Not Chinese.”

Bosch started down again and picked up the pace. They had eleven flights of stairs to go. As he moved he thought about this piece of information from Sun and couldn’t see how it fit with what was already known.

Sun fell behind the pace. And no wonder, Bosch thought. When he stepped off that elevator, his life irrevocably changed. That would slow anybody down.

Soon Bosch was a whole floor ahead of him. When he got to the bottom, he opened the exit door a crack to get his bearings. He saw that the door opened onto a pedestrian alley that ran between the Chungking Mansions and the building next door. Bosch could hear traffic and sirens close by and knew the exit was very close to Nathan Road.

The door was suddenly pushed closed. Bosch turned and Sun had one hand flat on the door. He pointed angrily at Harry with the other.

“You! You get her killed!”

“I know. I know, Sun Yee. It’s all on me. My case brought all of this—”

“No, they not triad!
I told you
.”

Bosch stared at him for a moment, not comprehending.

“Okay, they’re not triad. But—”

“You show your money and they rob.”

Bosch now understood. He was saying that the two men lying dead on the fifteenth floor with Eleanor had merely been robbers after Bosch’s money. But there was something wrong. It didn’t work. Harry shook his head.

“They were in front of us in the line for the elevator. They didn’t see my money.”

“They were told.”

Bosch considered this and his thoughts turned to the man on the stool. He had wanted to pay that man a visit already. The scenario Sun had spun made the need more immediate.

“Sun Yee, we need to get out of here. The police are going to close all the exits once they get up there and see what they have.”

Sun dropped his hand off the door and Bosch opened it again. It was clear. They stepped out into the alley. Twenty feet to their left was where the alley opened on Nathan Road.

“Where’s the car?”

Sun pointed toward the opposite end of the alley.

“I paid a man to watch it.”

“Okay, get the car and drive around front. I’m going back inside but I’ll be out front in five minutes.”

“What will you do?”

“You don’t want to know.”

30

B
osch walked out of the alley onto Nathan Road and immediately saw the crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the police response to the call inside the Chungking Mansions. Police and fire rescue vehicles were arriving and stopping and causing traffic snarls and confusion. Barricades had not yet been set up, as the arriving officers were probably too busy trying to get up to the fifteenth floor to find out what had happened. Harry was able to join the end of a flow of paramedics carrying a stretcher up the steps and into the first level of the building.