Nine Dragons (30 page)

“Look, there isn’t a lot of time. Our information is that she is being sold. Most likely today. Maybe right now. I need this information, Dave. Can you get it for me or not?”

This time there was no hesitation.

“Give me the number.”

34

C
hu said he would need at least an hour to run the cell number down through his contacts in the Hong Kong police. Bosch hated the idea of giving up so much time when every minute could be the minute his daughter changed to the next set of hands, but he had no choice. He believed that Chu well understood the urgency of the situation. He closed the phone call by telling Chu not to share Bosch’s request with anyone inside the department.

“You still think there’s a leak, Harry?”

“I know there is but now’s not the time to talk about it.”

“What about me? You trust me?”

“I called you, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think you trust anybody, Harry. You called me because there was no one else.”

“You know what? Just work that number and get back to me.”

“Sure, Harry. Whatever you say.”

Bosch closed the phone and looked at Sun.

“He said it might take as long as an hour.”

Sun remained impassive. He turned the key and started the car.

“You should get food while we wait.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, I can’t eat. Not with her out there and…what happened. My stomach…I couldn’t keep anything down.”

Sun turned the car back off. They would wait there for Chu’s callback.

The minutes went by very slowly and felt very costly. Bosch reviewed his moves going back to the moments he crouched behind the counter at Fortune Liquors and examined the body of John Li. He came to fully realize that his relentless pursuit of the killer had put others in jeopardy. His daughter. His ex-wife. A whole family in faraway Tuen Mun. The burden of guilt he would now carry would be the heaviest of his life and he was not sure he was up to it.

For the first time he put
if
into the equation of his life.
If
he got his daughter back he would find a way to redeem himself.
If
he never saw her again, there could be no redemption.

All things would end.

These realizations made him physically shudder and he turned and opened the car door.

“I’m going to take a walk.”

He stepped out and closed the door before Sun could ask him a question. There was a path that went along the river and he started walking it. He had his head down, his mind on dark thoughts and he did not notice the people who passed him on the path or the boats that moved swiftly by him on the river.

Eventually, Bosch realized he wasn’t helping himself or his daughter by dwelling on things he could not control. He tried to shake off the dark shroud that was coming down on him and focus on something useful. The question about the memory card from his daughter’s phone was still open and bothersome. Why had Madeline stored the cell number marked Tuen Mun on her phone?

After grinding the question down he finally saw an answer that had escaped him earlier. Madeline had been abducted. Therefore, her phone would have been taken away from her. So it was probably her abductor, not Madeline, who had stored the number on her phone. This conclusion led to a cascade of possibilities. Peng had taken the video and sent it to Bosch. So he was in possession of the phone. He could very well have been using it rather than his own phone to complete the abduction and set up the exchange of Madeline for whatever he had bartered her for.

He probably saved the number to the card. Either because he was using it a lot in the negotiations or because he simply wanted to leave a trail just in case something happened. And this would be why he hid the card in the salt. So somebody would find it.

Bosch turned around to take his new conclusion back to Sun. He was a hundred yards away and could see Sun already standing outside the car, excitedly waving him back. Bosch looked down at the phone in his hand and checked the screen. He had not missed a call and there was no way Sun’s excitement could be related to his call to Chu.

Bosch started trotting back.

Sun dropped back into the car and closed the door. Bosch soon jumped in beside him.

“What?”

“Another message. A text.”

Sun held up his phone to show Bosch the message, even though it was in Chinese.

“What’s it say?”

“It says, ‘What problem? Who is this?’”

Bosch nodded. There was still a lot of deniability in the message. The sender was still feigning ignorance. He didn’t know what this was about, yet he had sent this text unbidden, and this told Bosch that they were closing in on something.

“How do we respond?” Sun asked.

Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking.

Sun’s phone started to vibrate. He looked at the screen.

“This is a call. It’s him. The number.”

“Don’t answer,” Bosch said quickly. “That could blow it. We can always call back. Just see if he leaves a message first.”

The phone stopped vibrating and they waited. Bosch tried to think of the next move to make in this very delicate and deadly game. After a while, Sun shook his head.

“No message. It would have alerted me by now.”

“What’s your outgoing message say? Do you give your name on it?”

“No, no name. I use the robot.”

That was good. A generic outgoing message. The caller was probably hoping to pick up a name or a voice or some other sort of intel.

“Okay, send him back a text. Say, no talking on phones or text because it’s not safe. Say you want to meet in person.”

“That’s it? They ask what the problem is. I don’t answer?”

“No, not yet. String it along. The longer we keep this going, the more time we give Maddie. You see?”

Sun nodded once.

“Yes, I see.”

He typed in the message Bosch had suggested and sent it.

“Now we wait again,” he said.

Bosch didn’t need the reminder. But something told him the wait would not be long. The deke was working and they had someone on the other end of the text on the hook. He had no sooner come to this conclusion than another text came in on Sun’s phone.

“He wants to meet,” Sun said, looking at the screen. “Five o’clock at Geo.”

“What’s that?”

“A restaurant at the Gold Coast. Very famous. It will be very crowded on a Sunday afternoon.”

“How far is the Gold Coast?”

“Almost an hour’s drive from here.”

Bosch had to consider that the person they were dealing with was playing them, sending them an hour out of the way. He checked his watch. It had been almost an hour since he had talked to Chu. Before committing to the Gold Coast meeting, he first needed to check on what Chu had come up with. As Sun started the car and headed out of the park, Bosch called Chu’s number again.

“Detective Chu.”

“It’s Bosch. It’s been an hour.”

“Not quite but I’m still waiting. I made the call and haven’t heard back.”

“Did you talk to somebody?”

“Uh, no, I left a message with my guy over there. I guess because it’s so late he might not be—”

“It’s not late, Chu! It’s late there, not here. Did you make the call or not?”

“Harry, please, I made the call. I just got mixed up. It’s late here, it’s Sunday over there. I think maybe because it’s
Sunday,
he isn’t as tied to his phone as he normally is. But I made the call and I will call you as soon as I have something.”

“Yeah, well, it might be too late by then.”

Bosch closed the phone. He was sorry he had trusted Chu in the first place.

“Nothing,” he said to Sun.

They got to the Gold Coast in forty-five minutes. It was a resort on the western edge of the New Territories that catered to travelers from the mainland as well as Hong Kong and the rest of the world. A tall, gleaming hotel rose above Castle Peak Bay and open-air restaurants crowded the promenade that edged the harbor.

The Geo was wisely chosen by the text contact. It was sandwiched between two similar open-air restaurants and all three were heavily crowded. An arts and crafts show on the promenade doubled the number of people in the area and the places from which an observer could hide from view. It would make identifying someone who didn’t want to be identified extremely hard to do.

In accordance with the plan Bosch and Sun hatched on the drive, Bosch was dropped at the entrance to the Gold Coast. The two men synchronized their watches and then Sun drove on. As he walked through the hotel, Bosch stopped in the gift shop and bought sunglasses and a baseball-style hat with the hotel’s golden emblem on it. He also bought a map and a throwaway camera.

By ten of five, Bosch had made his way to the entrance of a restaurant called Yellow Flower, which was next to and afforded a full view of the seating area of Geo. The plan was simple. They wanted to identify the owner of the phone number Bosch had found in his daughter’s contact list and follow him when he left Geo.

Yellow Flower, Geo and a third restaurant on the other side, Big Sur, were crowded with tables under white canopies. The sea breeze kept the patrons cool and the canopies aloft. As he waited to be seated, Bosch alternately checked his watch and surveyed the crowded restaurants.

There were several large parties, whole families joined together for a Sunday afternoon meal. These tables were easy for him to discount in looking for the cell phone contact because Bosch didn’t expect their man to be part of a large party. But even so, he quickly realized how daunting the task of spotting the contact would be. Just because the supposed meeting was set for Geo did not mean the person they were looking for was in the restaurant. He could be in any of the three restaurants doing exactly what Bosch and Sun were doing—looking to surreptitiously identify the other contact.

Bosch had no choice but to continue with the plan. He held up one finger to the hostess and was led to a bad table in a corner that had a view of all three restaurants but no glimpse of the sea. It was a bad table they passed off on singles and that was just what he had hoped for.

He checked his watch again and then spread the map out on the table. He weighted it with the camera and took his hat off. It had been cheaply made and was ill fitting, anyway. He was glad to take it off.

He made one more survey of the restaurants before five o’clock but did not see any likely candidates for the contact. No one like him, sitting by himself or with other mysterious men, wearing sunglasses or any other sort of disguise. He began to think the deke hadn’t worked. That the contact had gotten wise to their charade and had deked them instead.

He checked his watch just as the second hand swept toward the twelve and it would be five o’clock. The first text from Sun would go out exactly at five.

Bosch looked out across the restaurants, hoping to see a quick movement, somebody glancing at a text on their phone. But there were too many people and he saw nothing as the seconds ticked by.

“Hello, sir. Just one?”

A waitress had come up to the side of his table. Bosch ignored her, his eyes moving from person to person at the tables in Geo.

“Sir?”

Bosch answered without looking at her.

“Can you bring me a cup of coffee for now? Black.”

“Okay, sir.”

He could feel her presence move away. Bosch spent another minute with his eyes on the crowd. He expanded the search to include Yellow Flower and Big Sur. He saw a woman talking on a cell phone but nobody else using a phone.

Bosch’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered, knowing it would be Sun.

“He answered the first text. He said, ‘I am waiting.’ That’s all.”

The plan had been for Sun to send a text at exactly five o’clock that said he was caught in traffic and would be late. He had done that and the message was received and responded to.

“I didn’t see anyone,” Bosch said. “This place is too big. He picked the right place.”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“At the bar at the back of Big Sur. I didn’t see anyone.”

“Okay, ready for the next one?”

“Ready.”

“We’ll try again.”

Bosch closed the phone as a waitress brought his coffee.

“Ready to order?”

“No, not yet. I have to look at the menu.”

She went away. Bosch took a quick sip of the hot coffee and then opened the menu. He studied the listings while keeping his right hand on the table so he could see his watch. At 5:05 Sun would send the next text.

The waitress came back and once more asked Bosch to order. The hint was clear. Order or move on. They needed to turn the table.

“Do you have
gway lang go?
”

“That is turtle-shell gelatin.”

She said it in a tone suggesting he had made a mistake.

“I know. The cure for whatever ails you. Do you have it?”

“Not on menu.”

“Okay, then just bring me some noodles.”

“Which noodle?”

She pointed to the menu. There were no pictures on the menu so Bosch was lost.

“Never mind. Bring me fried rice with shrimp in it.”

“That all?”

“That’s all.”

He handed her the menu so she would go away.

The waitress left him and he checked the time again before resuming his watch on the restaurants. The next text was going out. He scanned from table to table quickly. Again he picked up nothing that fit. The woman he had noticed before took another call and spoke briefly to someone. She was sitting at a table with a little boy who looked bored and uncomfortable in his Sunday clothes.

Bosch’s phone vibrated on the table.

“Got another response,” Sun said. “‘If you’re not there in five minutes, the meeting is off.’”

“And you didn’t see anybody?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you send the next one?”

“I will at five-ten.”

“Okay.”

Bosch closed the phone and put it down on the table. They had designed the third text as the one that would finally draw the contact out. The message would say that Sun was canceling the meeting because he had spotted a tail and believed it was the police. He would urge the unknown contact to leave Geo immediately.