9 Dragons

by Michael Connelly

  There were initials and numbers hand-etched in the black steel siding of the magazine, but time and use-the loading and reloading of the weapon-had nearly worn them away. Angling the surface for better light, Bosch read JFE Sp4, 27th.

  All at once, Bosch remembered the care and protection all tunnel rats had placed in their weapons and ammunition. When all you went down into the black with was your.45, a flashlight and four extra ammo clips, you checked everything twice and then you checked it again. A thousand feet into a line was not where you wanted to find you had a weapon jam, wet ammo or dead batteries. Bosch and his fellow rats marked and hoarded their clips the way surface soldiers guarded their cigarettes and Playboy magazines.

  He studied the etching closely. Whoever JFE was, he had been a spec 4 with the 27th Infantry. That meant he could have been a rat. Bosch wondered if the gun he was holding had been left behind in a tunnel somewhere in the Iron Triangle, and whether it had been taken from JFE’s cold, dead hand.

  “We are here,” Sun said.

  Bosch looked up. Sun had stopped in the middle of the street. There was no traffic behind them. He pointed through the windshield at a government apartment tower so tall that Bosch had to lean down beneath the visor to see its roofline. Open walkways along the front of every floor offered views of the front doors and windows of what must have been three hundred different dwellings. Laundry hung over the walkway railings at different intervals on almost every floor, turning the drab facade of the building into a colorful mosaic that differentiated it from the duplicate buildings on either side of it. A sign in multiple languages over the tunnel-like entrance at center announced incongruously that the place was called Miami Beach Garden Estates.

  “The address is on the sixth floor,” Sun said after double-checking the Chungking Mansions registration form.

  “Park it and we’ll go up.”

  Sun nodded and pulled past the building. At the next intersection he made a U-turn and drove back, pulling to the curb in front of a playground that was surrounded by a ten-foot fence and crowded inside with children and their mothers. Bosch knew he had parked there as an edge against having the car stolen or vandalized while they left it alone.

  They got out and walked along the fence line until turning left toward the entrance to the building.

  The tunnel was lined on both sides with mailboxes, most of which had popped locks and small graffiti insignias scrawled on them. The passageway led to a bank of elevators where two women holding the hands of small children waited. They paid no mind to Sun and Bosch. A security guard sat behind a tiny counter but never looked up from his newspaper.

  Bosch and Sun followed the women onto the elevator. One of the women inserted a key at the bottom of the control board and then pushed two buttons. Before she pulled the key Sun quickly reached over and hit the 6 button.

  The first stop was on six. Sun and Bosch moved down the walkway to the third door on the left side of the building. Bosch noticed that against the railing in front of the door of the next apartment down was a small altar with an ash can that was still smoking following a sacrifice to the hungry ghosts. The odor of burnt plastic was in the air.

  Bosch took a position to the right of the door where Sun had stopped. He swung his arm back underneath his coat and gripped the handgun but didn’t pull it. He felt the clotted blood in the wound on his arm break free with the movement. He was going to start bleeding again.

  Sun looked at him and Bosch nodded that he was ready. Sun knocked on the door and they waited.

  No one answered.

  He knocked again. This time louder.

  They waited again. Bosch glanced out over the playground to the Mercedes and saw that so far it had been left alone.

  No one answered.

  Sun finally stepped back away from the door.

  “What do you wish to do?”

  Bosch looked down at the smoking ash can thirty feet away.

  “There’s somebody home next door. Let’s ask them if they’ve seen this guy around.”

  Sun led the way and knocked on the next door. This time it was opened. A small woman of about sixty peeked out. Sun nodded and smiled and spoke to her in Chinese. Soon the woman relaxed and opened the door a little bit wider. Sun kept talking and soon after that she opened it all the way and stood aside so they could enter.

  As Bosch stepped over the threshold Sun whispered to him.

  “Five hundred Hong Kong dollars. I promised her.”

  “No problem.”

  It was a small two-room apartment. The first room served as kitchen, dining room and living room. It was sparely furnished and smelled like hot cooking oil. Bosch peeled five hundred-dollar bills off his roll without taking it out of his pocket. He put the bills under a dish of salt that was on the kitchen table. He then pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Sun remained standing and so did the woman. He continued his conversation in Chinese, pointing at Bosch for a moment. Bosch nodded and smiled and acted like he knew what was being said.

  Three minutes went by and then Sun broke off the interview so he could summarize for Bosch.

  “She is Fengyi Mai. She lives here alone. She said she has not seen Peng Qingcai since yesterday morning. He lives next door with his mother and his younger sister. She has not seen them either. But she heard them yesterday afternoon. Through the wall.”

  “How old is Peng Qingcai?”

  Sun communicated the question and then translated the response.

  “She thinks he is eighteen. He doesn’t go to school anymore.”

  “What’s his sister’s name?”

  Another back and forth and then Sun reported that the sister’s name was He. But he didn’t pronounce it the way Harry’s daughter had.

  Bosch thought about all of this for a few moments before asking the next question.

  “She’s sure it was yesterday that she saw him? Saturday morning? What was he doing?”

  While Bosch waited for the translation he watched the woman closely. She had maintained good eye contact with Sun during the earlier questions but she began looking away while answering the latest questions.

  “She is sure,” Sun said. “She heard a sound outside her door yesterday morning and when she opened it, Peng was there, burning an offering. He was using her altar.”

  Bosch nodded but he was sure there was something the woman had left out or was lying about.

  “What did he burn?”

  Sun asked the woman. She looked down the whole time she gave her answer.

  “She said he burned paper money.”

  Bosch stood up and went to the door. Outside he turned the ash can over on the walkway. It was smaller than a conventional water bucket. Smoking black ash spread across the walkway. Fengyi Mai had obviously burned a sacrifice within the last hour or so. He grabbed an incense stick from the altar and used it to poke through the hot debris. There were a few pieces of unburned cardboard but for the most part it was all ash. Bosch pushed it around some more and soon uncovered a piece of melted plastic. It was charred black and shapeless. He tried to pick it up but it was too hot.

  He went back inside the apartment.

  “Ask her when she last used the altar and what it was she burned.”

  Sun translated the answer.

  “She used it this morning. She also burned paper money.”

  Bosch was still standing.

  “Ask her why she’s lying.”

  Sun hesitated.

  “Ask her.”

  Sun asked the question and the woman denied lying. Bosch nodded when he received her answer, then walked over to the table. He lifted the dish of salt off the five bills and put them back in his pocket.

  “Tell her we pay nothing for lies, but that I’ll pay two thousand for the truth.”

  The woman protested after hearing Sun’s translation but then Sun’s demeanor changed and he angrily barked at her, and the woman clearly got scared. She put her hands together as if to beg his forgivene
ss and then walked into another room.

  “What did you tell her?” Bosch asked.

  “I told her she must tell the truth or she would lose her apartment.”

  Bosch raised his eyebrows. Sun had certainly kicked it up a notch.

  “She believes I am police officer and you are my supervisor,” he added.

  “How’d she get that idea?” Bosch asked.

  Before Sun could answer, the woman came back carrying a small cardboard box. She went directly to Bosch and handed it to him, then bowed as she backed away. Harry opened it and found the remains of a melted and burnt cell phone.

  While the woman gave Sun an explanation, Bosch pulled his own cell phone and compared it to the burned phone. Despite the damage, it was clear the phone the woman retrieved from her ash can was a match.

  “She said Peng was burning that,” Sun said. “It made a very foul smell that would be displeasing to the ghosts so she removed it.”

  “It’s my daughter’s.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I bought it for her. I’m sure.”

  Bosch opened his own phone and went to the photo files. He scrolled through his photos of his daughter until he found one of her in her school uniform.

  “Show her this. See if she’s seen her with Peng.”

  Sun showed the phone to the woman and asked the question. The woman shook her head as she responded, putting her hands together in prayer to underline that she was telling the truth now. Bosch didn’t need the translation. He stood up and pulled out his money. He put two thousand Hong Kong dollars on the table-less than three hundred American-and headed to the door.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  32

  They knocked on Peng’s door once again but got no answer. Bosch knelt down to untie and retie his shoe. He studied the lock on the doorknob as he did so.

  “What do we do?” Sun asked after Bosch stood back up.

  “I have picks. I can open the door.”

  Bosch could see reluctance immediately cloud Sun’s face, even with the sunglasses.

  “My daughter could be in there. And if she isn’t, there might be something that tells us where she is. You stand behind me and block anyone’s view. I’ll get us in in less than a minute.”

  Sun looked out at the wall of duplicate buildings surrounding them like giants.

  “We watch first?,” he said.

  “Watch?” Bosch asked. “Watch what?”

  “The door. Peng could come back. He could lead us to Madeline.”

  Bosch looked at his watch. It was half past one.

  “I don’t think we have time. We can’t go static here.”

  “What is ‘static?’”

  “We can’t stand still, man. We have to keep moving if we are going to find her.”

  Sun turned from the view and looked directly at Bosch.

  “One hour. We watch. If we come back to open the door, you don’t take the gun.”

  Bosch nodded. He understood. Getting caught breaking and entering was one thing. Getting caught breaking and entering with a gun was about ten years of something else.

  “Okay, one hour.”

  They went down the elevator and out through the tunnel. Along the way Bosch tapped Sun on the arm and asked him which one of the mailboxes had Peng’s apartment number on it. Sun found the box and they saw that the lock had long been punched out. Bosch glanced back through the tunnel to the security guard reading the paper. He opened the mailbox and saw two letters.

  “Looks like nobody got Saturday’s mail,” Bosch said. “I think Peng and his family have split.”

  They returned to the car and Sun said he wanted to move it to a less noticeable spot now that they were back in it. He drove up the street, turned around and then parked by a containment wall that surrounded the trash bins for the building across the street and down one. They still had a view of the sixth-floor walkway and the door to Peng’s apartment.

  “I think we’re wasting our time,” Bosch said. “They’re not coming back.”

  “One hour, Harry. Please.”

  Bosch noted it was the first time Sun had called him by his name. It didn’t placate him.

  “You’re giving him another hour’s lead time, that’s all.”

  Bosch pulled the box out of his jacket pocket. He opened it up and looked at the phone.

  “You watch the place,” he said. “I’m going to work on this.”

  The plastic hinges on the phone had melted and Bosch struggled to open it. Finally, it broke in two when he applied too much pressure. The LCD screen was cracked and partially melted. Bosch put that part aside and concentrated on the other half. The battery compartment cover was melted, its seams fused together. He opened his door and leaned out. He struck the phone on the curb three times, harder each time, until the impacts finally cracked the seams and the compartment cover fell off.

  He pulled back in and closed the door. The phone’s battery appeared to be intact but again the deformed plastic made it difficult to remove. This time he pulled his badge case and removed one of his picks. He used it to pry the battery out. Beneath it was the cradle for the phone’s memory card.

  It was empty.

  “Shit!”

  Bosch threw the phone down into the foot well. Another dead end.

  He looked at his watch. It had only been twenty minutes since he had agreed to give Sun the hour. But Bosch couldn’t remain still. All of his instincts told him he had to get into that apartment. His daughter could be in there.

  “Sorry, Sun Yee,” he said. “You can wait here, but I can’t. I’m going in.”

  He leaned forward and pulled the gun out of his waistband. He wanted to leave it outside the Mercedes in case they were caught in the apartment and the police connected them with the car. He wrapped the gun in his daughter’s blanket, opened the door and got out. He walked through an opening in the containment wall and put the bundle on top of one of the overfull trash bins. He would easily be able to retrieve it when he got back.

  When he stepped out of the containment area, he found Sun out of the car and waiting

  “Okay,” Sun said. “We go.”

  They started back to Peng’s building.

  “Let me ask you something, Sun Yee. Do you ever take those shades off”

  Sun’s answer came without explanation.

  “No.”

  Once again the security guard in the lobby never looked up. The building was big enough that there was always somebody with a key waiting for an elevator. In five minutes they were back in front of Peng’s door. While Sun stood at the railing as a lookout and visual block, Bosch went down to one knee and worked the lock. It took him longer than expected-almost four minutes-but he got it open.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Sun turned away from the railing and followed Bosch into the apartment.

  Before he had even closed the door Bosch knew they would find death in the apartment. There was no overpowering odor, no blood on the walls, no physical indication at all in the first room. But after attending more than five hundred murder scenes over the years as a cop, he had developed what he considered a sense for blood. He had no scientific backing to his theory, but Bosch believed that spilled blood changed the composition of air in an enclosed environment. And he sensed that change now. The fact that it could be his own daughter’s blood made the recognition dreadful.

  He held up his hand to stop Sun from entering further into the apartment.

  “You feel that, Sun Yee?”

  “No. Feel what?”

  “Somebody’s dead. Don’t touch anything, and follow in my steps if you can.”

  The apartment layout was the same as the unit next door. A two-room dwelling, this one shared by a mother with her two teenage children. There was no sign of any disturbance or danger in the first room. There was a sofa that had a sleeping pillow and sheet haphazardly tossed on it and Bosch assumed the boy slept on the couch while the sister and mother took the b
edroom.

  Bosch moved across the room and into the bedroom. A curtain was drawn across the window and the room was dark. With his elbow Bosch pushed up the wall switch and a ceiling light over the bed came on. The bed was unmade but empty. There was no sign of struggle or disturbance or death. Bosch looked to his right. There were two more doors. He guessed one led to a closet and the other led to a bathroom.

  He always carried latex gloves in his coat pocket. He pulled a pair out and put a glove on his left hand. He opened the door on the right first. It was a closet that was packed tightly with clothes on hangers and in stacks on the floor. The overhead shelving was crowded as well with boxes that had Chinese writing on them. Bosch backed up and moved to the second door. He opened it without hesitation.

  The small bathroom was awash in dried blood. It had been splashed over the sink, the toilet and the tiled floor. There were spatter and drip lines on the back wall and on the dirty white plastic shower curtain with flowers on it.

  It was impossible to step into the room without stepping on one of the blood trails. But Bosch didn’t worry about it. He had to get to the shower curtain. He had to know.

  He quickly moved across the room and yanked the plastic back.

  The shower stall was tiny by American standards. It was no bigger than the old phone booths outside Du-Par’s in the Farmers Market. But somehow someone had managed to pile three bodies on top of one another in there.

  Bosch held his breath as he leaned over and in to try to identify the victims. They were fully clothed. The boy, who was the biggest, was on top. He was facedown atop a woman of about forty-his mother-who was sitting slouched against a wall. Their positioning suggested some sort of Oedipal fantasy that probably was not the killer’s intention. Both of their throats had been savagely cut from ear to ear.

  Behind and partially underneath the mother-as if hiding-was the body of a young girl. Her long dark hair was covering her face.

  “Ah, God,” Bosch called out. “Sun Yee!”

  Soon Sun came in behind him and he heard the sharp intake of his breath. Bosch started putting on the second glove.