Nine Dragons (42 page)
Authors: Michael Connelly
Bosch wondered what Ignacio’s final thoughts were as the bullets ripped through his body. He wondered if his young partner was amazed that lightning could strike twice, the second time finishing the job.
Bosch pushed the vision and the thoughts away. He sat up and looked at his daughter. He saw the burden in her eyes and knew what was coming.
“Dad?”
“What is it, baby?”
“I made a bad mistake, too. Only I’m not the one who paid for it.”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“When I was talking to Dr. Hinojos, she said I have to unburden. I have to tell what’s bothering me.”
Tears started to flow now. Bosch sat sideways on the lounge chair and took his daughter by the hand and guided her to a seat right next to him. He put his arm across her shoulders.
“You can tell me anything, Madeline.”
She closed her eyes and held a hand over them. She squeezed his hand with the other.
“I got Mom killed,” she said. “I got her killed and it should’ve been me.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re not respons—”
“No, wait, listen to me. Listen to me. Yes, I am. I did it, Dad, and I need to go to jail.”
Bosch pulled her into a crushing hug and kissed the top of her head.
“You listen to me, Mads. You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here with me. I know what happened but it doesn’t make you responsible for what other people did. I don’t want you thinking that.”
She pulled back and looked at him.
“You know?
You know
what I did?”
“I think you trusted the wrong person…and the rest, all the rest, is on him.”
She shook her head.
“No, no. The whole thing was my idea. I knew you would come and I thought maybe you’d make her let me go with you back here.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?” she demanded.
Bosch shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you couldn’t have known what Quick would do, that he would take your plan and make it his.”
She bowed her head.
“Doesn’t matter. I killed my mother.”
“Madeline, no. If anybody is responsible, it’s me. She got killed in something that had nothing to do with you. It was a robbery and it happened because I was stupid, because I showed my money in a place I should never have shown it. Okay? It’s on me, not you. I made the mistake.”
She could not be calmed or consoled. She shook her head violently and the force threw tears into Bosch’s face.
“You wouldn’t have even been there, Dad, if we didn’t send that video. I did that! I knew what it would do! That you would be on the very next plane! I was going to escape before you landed. You would get there and everything would be all right but you would tell Mom it wasn’t safe for me there and you would take me back with you.”
Bosch just nodded. He had put roughly the same scenario together a few days before, when he realized Bo-Jing Chang had nothing to do with the murder of John Li.
“But now Mom is
dead!
And they’re
dead!
And everybody’s
dead
and it’s all
my
fault!”
Bosch grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her in toward him.
“How much of this did you tell Dr. Hinojos?”
“None.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted to tell you first. You have to take me to jail now.”
Bosch pulled her into another hug and held her head against his chest.
“No, baby, you’re staying here with me.”
He gently caressed her hair and spoke calmly.
“We all make mistakes. Everybody. Sometimes, like with my partner, you make a mistake and you can’t make up for it. You don’t get the chance. But sometimes you do. We can make up for our mistakes here. Both of us.”
Her tears had slowed. He heard her sniffle. He thought maybe this was why she had come to him. For a way out.
“We can maybe do some good and make up for the things we did wrong. We’ll make up for everything.”
“How?” she said in a small voice.
“I’ll show you the way. I’ll show you and you’ll see that we can make up for this.”
Bosch nodded to himself. He hugged his daughter tightly and wished he never had to let her go.
This book could not have been written without the help of Steven Vascik and Dennis Wojciechowski. Steve showed me whatever I needed in Hong Kong and Wojo found whatever I needed on the Internet. I will always be grateful.
Also of tremendous help to me were Asya Muchnick, Bill Massey, Michael Pietsch, Shannon Byrne, Jane Davis, Siu Wai Mai, Pamela Marshall, Rick Jackson, Tim Marcia, Michael Krikorian, Terrill Lee Lankford, Daniel Daly, Roger Mills, Philip Spitzer, John Houghton and Linda Connelly. Many thanks to you all.
Special thanks to William J. Bratton, LAPD chief of police 2002–2009, for opening so many doors for me and Harry Bosch.
Click
here
to view a video of Michael Connelly on location in Hong Kong, discussing his new thriller,
NINE DRAGONS
.
AUTHOR MICHAEL CONNELLY FIRES OFF
Nine Bullets About
Nine Dragons
“Eight bullets, eight dragons. And then there would be him. Bosch would be the ninth dragon, as unstoppable as a bullet.” Where does the title
Nine Dragons
come from?
Hong Kong has many sections. One of the biggest is called Kowloon, which means ‘Nine Dragons.” It comes from a legend. During one of the old dynasties the emperor was chased by the Mongols into the area that is now Hong Kong. He saw the eight mountain peaks that surrounded the area and protected him and wanted to call the place Eight Dragons. But one of his guards reminded him that the emperor was a dragon too. So they called it Kowloon, meaning nine dragons. I was told this story by a researcher who was showing me around Hong Kong the first time I visited. I loved the story and immediately started thinking of using Nine Dragons as a title. This dictated that a lot of the Hong Kong portion of the story take place in Kowloon, including the most significant moment of the whole novel.
What inspired you to write
Nine Dragons
and to set a third of the book in Hong Kong?
Nine Dragons
is a book long in the making. It is a pivotal story in Harry Bosch’s journey—and his most personal one. While I think it is a book with more action than usual for me, it is also a deeply driven character story for which the inspiration was set about seven years ago when I was writing the novel
Lost Light (2003)
. I think with a series you have to be very careful with what you do with your character. Harry Bosch is built to be of and about L.A. So I have to be careful about taking him out of this environment. Usually when I do, it is never for a whole book. I have him follow a case to Mexico and back. Or to Las Vegas or Florida.
Nine Dragons
starts in Los Angeles, goes to Hong Kong, and then comes back to Los Angeles. Sending him to Hong Kong came out of me wanting to do that again but to really put him in a fish-out-of-water situation. So I planted the seed five or six books ago when I had Harry’s young daughter move there with his ex-wife. When I did that, I knew that I would eventually write a story that would take Harry there and give me the opportunity to explore the character in completely different terrain. So the book has been sort of waiting to be written. In writing, you rely on your instincts in terms of what to do and when to do it. Somehow, I felt it was time to write this story now.
Did you actually spend time in Hong Kong researching the book?
About five years ago I stopped in Hong Kong on my way home from a book tour in Australia. I immediately found what I was looking for; an intriguing new place with a sense that anything could happen. So I’ve made two trips to Hong Kong to research
Nine Dragons
. One was a general knowledge trip. I then refined what I was looking for, had a general sense of the areas the story would take me through, and I went back to more specifically research the story, to more or less follow the trail Harry follows in the book. As it turns out, only about a third of the book is set in Hong Kong, and that segment takes place in one day. There is a lot of movement and action. Like Hong Kong itself, it never slows down.
Why did you wait so long to explore Harry Bosch’s relationship with his daughter Madeline?
In
Lost Light
(2003), Harry got the surprise of his life. He found out he was a father and met his daughter Madeline for the first time. Over the years and stories that followed their meeting, Harry’s relationship with his daughter never moved to the forefront because I wasn’t ready to explore it yet. I wanted her to grow up some and be a character who could communicate with Harry (and the reader) as a young adult before I wrote the story that explored the relationship and what is Harry's ultimate vulnerability.
Are you saying in this book that being a father is Harry’s greatest vulnerability?
Nine Dragons
is about Harry and his daughter. It’s about his hopes for her, his guilt over his poor performance as a father, and most of all it is about his vulnerability as a father. Putting this young person in Harry’s life was done with a lot of thought. Up until Bosch became a father, I had been creating a character who viewed himself as being on a mission. He was someone who was skilled enough and tough enough to go into the abyss and seek out human evil. To carry out this mission, he knew he had to be relentless and bulletproof. By bulletproof, I mean he had to be invulnerable. Nobody could get to him. It was the only way to be relentless. And this idea or belief bled into all aspects of his life. He lived alone, had no friends, and didn’t even know his neighbors. He built a solitary life so that no one could get to him. All that suddenly changed in one moment (one page) when he locked eyes with his daughter in
Lost Light
. Harry suddenly knew he could be gotten to.
Nine Dragons
opens with Bosch investigating the murder of the owner of Fortune Liquors, a small L.A. package store he’s known for years. He still carries in his pocket a matchbook he picked up there on a case years ago. Its motto inside—
Happy is the man who finds refuge in himself
—has been a guiding light through some of his darkest days. How did you come up with this “fortune?” Is it significant thematically to the novel?
What's weird is that I can't remember where that came from. I think it was an actual fortune I received in a Chinese fortune cookie and it sort of spoke to me and so I used it in
Angels Flight
, which is the book in which Harry first visits Fortune Liquours. So that's going back more than a decade and I can't remember the origin. But what I do remember is that I thought it sounded almost like an anthem for a loner like Harry. As somebody who feels he's on a solitary mission in life, this bromide or whatever you want to call it would speak to him and keep him on the path. I think he finds refuge in himself by believing in the cause and remaining relentlessly in pursuit of it. By believing that everybody should count or nobody should count. By believing that no one need know about his mission as long as he believes in it himself. I think that it is not only thematic to this book but to all of the Bosch books.
Do you think readers in Hong Kong will enjoy riding with Harry Bosch through their city?
I don't know. I think they might see a part of their city they haven't seen before. The nature of a crime novel is to explore all areas of a city, good and bad. In this story Harry is on a mission that literally takes him from the highest vistas of the city to some its darkest corners. I think Hong Kong is a vibrant and beautiful place that is full of intrigue. I hope I've gotten that into the book.
The day that Harry Bosch visits Hong Kong the city is in the middle of something called the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. People are burning sacrifices to ancestors all over the city. Is this fiction or does this festival exist?
Yes, it exists. One of the times I was in Hong Kong researching the ghost festival was going on and it was one of the things that linked this amazingly modern city with old ways and beliefs. I thought it was fascinating and something I could use in the book to sort of tilt Bosch's world, to be a constant reminder that he was not in any sort of comfort zone.
What’s next for Harry Bosch, and do you have plans for more Mickey Haller and Jack McEvoy books? Any other projects on the horizon?
I am excited by what
Nine Dragons
does for Harry and the series. It establishes a real relationship with his daughter and that can go in many directions. There is also the half-blood prince, Mickey Haller, out there and I am sure he and Harry will be crossing paths again. I am just starting to write the next book which is another Harry Bosch story, but I think it’s safe to assume all of these characters will be back.
As far back as September 2004, and perhaps even before that, Michael Connelly has known that he would send Harry Bosch to Hong Kong. Five years ago, in fact, the
South China Morning Post
caught up with Connelly when he was doing research in Hong Kong and wrote a story. Here are some photos from one of Michael’s recent trips to Hong Kong.
