9 Dragons

by Michael Connelly

  “When’s it get dark here? What time?”

  “Usually by eight. Why?”

  “The video that was sent to me was shot in daylight. So less than two hours after she walked out of the mall with them she was in Kowloon and they made the video.”

  “I want to see the video, Harry.”

  “I’ll show you in the car. You said you got my message. Did you find out about helicopter pads in Kowloon?”

  Nodding, Eleanor said, “I called the head of client transportation at the casino. He told me that in Kowloon there are seven rooftop helicopter pads available. I have a list.”

  “Good. Did you tell him why you wanted the list?”

  “No, Harry. Give me some credit.”

  Bosch looked at her and then moved his eyes to Sun, who had now opened up a several-pace lead on them. Eleanor got the message.

  “Sun Yee’s different. He knows what’s going on. I brought him in because I can trust him. He’s been my security at the casino for three years.”

  Bosch nodded. His ex-wife was a valuable commodity to the Cleopatra Resort and Casino in Macau. They paid for her apartment and the helicopter that brought her to and from work at the private tables where she played against the casino’s wealthiest clients. Security-in the form of Sun Yee-was part of that package.

  “Yeah, well, too bad he wasn’t watching over Maddie, too.”

  Eleanor abruptly stopped and turned toward Bosch. Unaware, Sun kept going. Eleanor got in Harry’s face.

  “Look, you want to get into this right now? Because I can if you want. We can talk about Sun Yee and we can also talk about you and how your work put my daughter in this…this…”

  She never finished. Instead, she roughly grabbed Bosch by the jacket and started shaking him angrily until she was hugging him and starting to cry. Bosch put his hand on her back.

  “Our daughter, Eleanor,” he said. “Our daughter, and we’re going to get her back.”

  Sun noticed they were not with him and stopped. He looked back at Bosch, his eyes hidden behind the dark glasses. Still in Eleanor’s grasp, Harry raised a hand to signal him to hold for a moment and keep his distance.

  Eleanor finally stepped back and wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand.

  “You need to keep it together, Eleanor. I’m going to need you.”

  “Stop saying that, okay? I will keep it together. Where do we start”

  “Did you get the MTR map I asked for?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it. It’s in the car.”

  “What about the card from Causeway Taxi? Did you check it out”

  “We didn’t have to. Sun Yee already knew about it. Most of the taxi companies are known to hire triad people. Triad people need legitimate jobs to avoid suspicion and keep the police away. Most of them get taxi licenses and work a few shifts here and there as a front. If your suspect was carrying the fleet manager’s card, it was probably because he was going to see him about a job when he got over here.”

  “Did you go to the address?”

  “We went by last night but it’s just a taxi station. It’s where the cars get refueled and serviced and the drivers are dispatched at the start of shift.”

  “Did you talk to the fleet manager?”

  “No. I didn’t want to make a move like that without asking you. But you were in the air and I couldn’t ask. Besides, it looked to me like a dead end. This was a guy who was probably going to give Chang a job. That’s all. That’s what he does for the triads. He wouldn’t be involved in an abduction. And if he was involved, he wasn’t going to talk about it.”

  Bosch thought Eleanor was probably right but that the fleet manager would be someone to come back to if other efforts to locate his daughter didn’t pan out.

  “Okay,” he said. “When’s it going to be light out?”

  She turned to look out the huge glass wall that fronted the main hall, as if to judge her answer by the sky. Bosch checked his watch. It was 5:45 a.m. and he had already been in Hong Kong nearly an hour. It seemed like the time was going by too quickly.

  “Maybe half an hour,” Eleanor said.

  Bosch nodded.

  “What about the gun, Eleanor?”

  She nodded hesitantly.

  “If you’re sure, Sun Yee knows where you can get one. In Wan Chai?.”

  Bosch nodded. Of course that would be the place to get a gun. Wan Chai was where the underside of Hong Kong came to the surface. He had not been there since going there from Vietnam on leave forty years before. But he knew that some things and places never changed.

  “Okay, let’s get to the car. We’re losing time.”

  They stepped through the automatic doors and Bosch was greeted by the warm, wet air. He felt the humidity start to cling to him.

  “Where are we going first” Eleanor asked. “Wan Chai”

  “No, the Peak. We’ll start there.”

  24

  It was known as Victoria Peak during colonial times. Now it was just the Peak, a mountaintop that rose behind the Hong Kong skyline and offered stunning vistas across the central district and the harbor to Kowloon. It was accessible by car and funicular tram and was a popular destination with tourists year-round and with locals in the summer months, when the city below seemed to hold humidity like a sponge holds water. Bosch had been there several times with his daughter, often eating lunch in the observatory’s restaurant or the shopping galleria built behind it.

  Bosch and his ex-wife and her security man made it to the top before dawn broke over the city. The galleria and tourist kiosks were still closed and the lookout points were abandoned. They left Sun’s Mercedes in the lot by the galleria and walked down the path that edged the side of the mountain. Bosch had his backpack over his shoulder. The air was heavy with humidity. The pathway was wet and he could tell there had been an overnight shower. Already his shirt was sticking to his back.

  “What exactly are we doing?” Eleanor asked.

  The question was the first she had spoken in a long time. On the drive in from the airport Bosch had set up the video and handed her his phone. She watched it and Bosch heard her breathing catch. She then asked to watch it a second time and silently handed the phone back after. There was a terrible silence that lasted until they were on the path.

  Bosch swung the backpack around and unzipped it. He handed Eleanor the photo print from the video. He then handed her a flashlight from the bag as well.

  “That’s a freeze-frame from the video. When Maddie kicks at the guy and the camera moves, it catches the window.”

  Eleanor turned on the flashlight and studied the print while they walked. Sun walked several paces behind them. Bosch continued to explain his plan.

  “You have to remember that everything in the window is reflected backwards. But you see the goalposts on top of the Bank of China building? I have a magnifying glass here if you want to use it.”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “Well, between those posts you can see the pagoda down here. I think it’s called the Lion Pagoda or the Lion Lookout. I’ve been up here with Maddie.”

  “So have I. It’s called the Lion Pavilion. Are you sure it’s on here?”

  “Yeah, you need the glass. Wait till we get up here.”

  The path curved and Bosch saw the pagoda-style structure ahead. It was in a prominent position, offering one of the better views from the Peak. Whenever Bosch had been here in the past it was crowded with tourists and cameras. In the gray light of dawn it was empty. Bosch stepped through the arched entrance and out to the viewing pavilion. The giant city spread out below him. There were a billion lights out there in the receding darkness and he knew one of them belonged to his daughter. He was going to find it.

  Eleanor stood next to him and held the printout under the beam of the flashlight. Sun took a bodyguard’s position behind them.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “You think you can reverse this and pinpoint where she is?”

  “That’s
right.”

  “Harry?…”

  “There are other markers. I just want to narrow it down. Kowloon is a big place.”

  Bosch pulled his binoculars from the backpack. They were powerful magnifiers he used on surveillance assignments. He raised them to his eyes.

  “What other markers?”

  It was still too dark. Bosch lowered the binoculars. He would have to wait. He thought maybe they should have gone to Wan Chai to get the gun first.

  “What other markers, Harry?”

  Bosch stepped close to her so he could see the photo print and point out the markers Barbara Starkey had told him about, particularly the portion of the backwards sign with the letters O and N. He also told her about the audio track from a nearby subway and reminded her of the helicopter, which was not on the printout.

  “You add it all up and I think we can get close,” he said. “If I can get close, I’ll find her.”

  “Well, I can tell you right now you are looking for the Canon sign.”

  “You mean Canon cameras? Where?”

  She pointed in the distance toward Kowloon. Bosch looked through the binoculars again.

  “I see it all the time when they fly me in and out over the harbor. There is a Canon sign on the Kowloon side. It’s just the word canon standing free on top of a building. It rotates. But if you were behind it in Kowloon when it rotated toward the harbor, you would see it backwards. Then in the reflection it would be corrected. That has to be it.”

  She tapped the O-N on the photo print.

  “Yeah, but where? I don’t see it anywhere.”

  “Let me see.”

  He handed her the binoculars. She spoke as she looked.

  “It’s normally lit up but they probably turn it off a couple hours before dawn to save energy. A lot of the signs are out right now.”

  She lowered the binoculars and looked at her watch.

  “We’ll be able to see it in about fifteen minutes.”

  Bosch took the binoculars back and started searching for the sign again.

  “I feel like I’m wasting time.”

  “Don’t worry. The sun’s coming up.”

  Thwarted in his efforts, Bosch reluctantly lowered the binoculars and for the next ten minutes watched the light creep over the mountains and into the basin.

  The dawn came up pink and gray. The harbor was already busy as workboats and ferries crisscrossed paths in what looked like some kind of natural choreography. Bosch saw a low-lying mist clinging to the towers in Central and Wan Chai and across the harbor in Kowloon. He smelled smoke.

  “It smells like L.A. after the riots,” he said. “Like the city’s on fire.”

  “It is in a way,” Eleanor said. “We’re halfway through Yue Laan.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “The Hungry Ghost festival. It began last week. It’s set to the Chinese calendar. It is said that on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month the gates of hell open and all the evil ghosts stalk the world. Believers burn offerings to appease their ancestors and ward off the evil spirits.”

  “What kind of offerings?”

  “Mostly paper money and papier-mâché facsimiles of things like plasma screens and houses and cars. Things the spirits supposedly need on the other side. Sometimes people burn the real things, too.”

  She laughed and then continued.

  “I once saw somebody burning an air conditioner. Sending an air conditioner to an ancestor in hell, I guess.”

  Bosch remembered his daughter talking about this once. She said she had seen someone burning an entire car.

  Bosch gazed down on the city and realized what he had taken as morning mist was actually smoke from the fires, hanging in the air like the ghosts themselves.

  “Looks like there’s a lot of believers out there.”

  “Yes, there are.”

  Bosch raised his gaze to Kowloon and brought up the binoculars. Sunlight was finally hitting the buildings along the harborside. He panned back and forth, always keeping the goalposts on top of the Bank of China in his field of vision. Finally, he found the Canon sign Eleanor had mentioned. It sat atop a glass-and-aluminum-skinned building that was throwing sharp reflections of light in all directions.

  “I see the sign,” he said, without looking away.

  He estimated the building that the sign was on at twelve floors. The sign sat atop an iron framework that added at least another floor to its height. He moved the binoculars back and forth, hoping to see something else. But nothing grabbed at him.

  “Let me see again,” Eleanor said.

  Bosch handed over the binoculars and she quickly zeroed in on the Canon sign.

  “Got it,” she said. “And I can see that the Peninsula Hotel is across the street and within two blocks of it. It’s one of the helicopter-pad locations.”

  Bosch followed her line of sight across the harbor. It took him a moment to find the sign. It was now catching the sun full-on. He was beginning to feel the sluggishness of the long flight breaking off. Adrenaline was kicking in.

  He saw a wide road cutting north into Kowloon next to the building with the sign on top.

  “What road is that?” he asked.

  Eleanor kept her eyes at the binoculars.

  “It’s got to be Nathan Road,” she said. “It’s a major north-south channel. Goes from the harbor up into the New Territories.”

  “The triads are there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Bosch turned back to look out toward Nathan Road and Kowloon.

  “Nine Dragons,” he whispered to himself.

  “What?” Eleanor asked.

  “I said, that’s where she is.”

  25

  Bosch and his daughter usually took the funicular tram up and back down from the Peak. It reminded Bosch of a sleek and greatly extended version of Angels Flight back in L.A., and at the bottom his daughter liked to visit a small park near the courthouse where she could hang a Tibetan prayer flag. Often the small, colorful flags were strung like laundry on clotheslines across the park. She had told Bosch that hanging a flag was better than lighting a candle in a church because the flag was outside and its good intentions would be carried far on the wind.

  There was no time to hang flags now. They got back into Sun’s Mercedes and headed down the mountain toward Wan Chai. Along the way, Bosch realized that one route down would take them directly by the apartment building where Eleanor and his daughter lived.

  Bosch leaned forward from the backseat.

  “Eleanor, let’s go by your place first.”

  “Why?”

  “Something I forgot to tell you to bring. Madeline’s passport. Yours, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this won’t be over when we get her back. I want both of you away from here until it is.”

  “And how long is that?”

  She had turned to look back at him from the front seat. He could see the accusation in her eyes. He wanted to try to avoid all of that so that the rescue of his daughter was the complete focus.

  “I don’t know how long. Let’s just get the passports. Just in case there is no time later.”

  Eleanor turned to Sun and spoke sharply in Chinese. He immediately pulled to the side of the road and stopped. There was no traffic coming down the mountain behind them. It was too early for that. She turned fully around in her seat to face Bosch.

  “We’ll stop for the passports,” she said evenly. “But if we need to disappear, don’t think for a minute we will be going with you.”

  Bosch nodded. The concession that she would be willing to do it was enough for him.

  “Then maybe you should pack a couple bags and put them in the trunk, too.”

  She turned back around without responding. After a moment Sun looked over at her and spoke in Chinese. She responded with a nod and Sun started down the mountain again. Bosch knew that she was going to do what he’d asked.

  Fifteen minutes later Sun stop
ped in front of the twin towers commonly known by locals as “The Chopsticks.” And Eleanor, having said not a single word in those fifteen minutes, extended an olive branch to the backseat.

  “You want to come up? You can make a coffee while I pack the bags. You look like you could use it.”

  “Coffee would be good but we don’t have-”

  “It’s instant coffee.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Sun stayed with the car and they went up. The “chopsticks” were actually two interlinked and oval-shaped towers that rose seventy-three stories from the midslope of the mountain above Happy Valley. It was the tallest residential building in all of Hong Kong and as such stuck out at the edge of the skyline like two chopsticks protruding from a pile of rice. Eleanor and Madeline had moved into an apartment here shortly after arriving from Las Vegas six years earlier.

  Bosch gripped the railing in the speed elevator as they went up. He didn’t like knowing that just below the floor was an open shaft that went straight down forty-four floors.

  The door opened on a small foyer leading to the four apartments on the floor, and Eleanor used a key to go in the first door on the right.

  “Coffee’s in the cabinet over the sink. I won’t take long.”

  “Good. You want a cup?”

  “No, I’m good. I had some at the airport.”

  They entered the apartment and Eleanor split off to go to her bedroom while Bosch found the kitchen and went to work on the coffee. He found a mug that said World’s Best Mom on its side and used that. It had been hand-painted a long time before and the words had faded with each cycle the mug had gone through in the dishwasher.

  He stepped out of the kitchen, sipping the hot mixture, and took in the panorama. The apartment faced west and afforded a stunning view of Hong Kong and its harbor. Bosch had only been in the apartment a few times and never tired of seeing this. Most times when he came to visit, he met his daughter in the lobby or at her school after classes.

  A huge white cruise ship was making its way through the harbor and steaming toward the open sea. Bosch watched it for a moment and then noticed the Canon sign sitting atop the building in Kowloon. It was a reminder of his mission. He turned toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He found Eleanor in their daughter’s room, crying as she put clothes into a backpack.