Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

As he stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor he checked his watch and saw that it was time to call his daughter. She would be walking down Stubbs Road to the Happy Valley Academy. If he didn’t get to her now he would have to wait until after school was out. He stopped in the hallway outside the squad room, pulled his phone and hit the speed dial. The transpacific call took thirty seconds to connect.

“Dad! What’s with the picture of a dead person?”

He smiled.

“Hello to you, too. How do you know he’s dead?”

“Um, let’s see. My dad investigates murders and he sends me bare feet on a steel table. And what is this other picture? The guy’s lungs? That is so gross!”

“He was a smoker. I thought you should see that.”

There was a moment of silence and then she spoke very calmly. There was no little girl in her voice now.

“Dad, I don’t smoke.”

“Yeah, well, your mother told me you smell like smoke when you come home from hanging out with your friends at the mall.”

“Yeah, that might be true, but it’s not true that I smoke with them.”

“Then who do you smoke with?”

“Dad, I don’t! My friend’s older brother hangs out sometimes to watch over her. I don’t smoke and neither does He.”

“He? I thought you said your friend was a her.”

She said the name again, this time putting a heavy Chinese accent on it. It sounded like He-yuh .

“He is a her. He is her name. It means ‘river.’”

“Then why don’t you call her River?”

“Because she’s Chinese and so I call her by her Chinese name.”

“Must get like Abbott and Costello. Calling a she He.”

“Like who?”

Bosch laughed.

“Never mind. Forget the lungs, Maddie. If you tell me you don’t smoke, I believe you. But that’s not why I’m calling. The tattoos on the ankles, could you read them?”

“Yes, it’s gross. I have a dead guy’s feet on my phone.”

“Well, you can delete it as soon as you tell me what the tattoos mean. I know you study that stuff in school.”

“I’m not going to delete it. I’m showing my friends. They’ll think it’s cool.”

“No, don’t do that. It’s part of a case I’m working and nobody else should see it. I sent it to you because I thought you could give me a quick translation.”

“You mean in all of the LAPD you don’t have one person who can tell you? You have to call your daughter in Hong Kong for such a simple thing?”

“At the moment, that’s about right. You do what you have to do. Do you know what the symbols mean or not?”

“Yes, Dad. They were easy.”

“Well, what do they mean?”

“It’s like a fortune. On the left ankle the symbols are Fu and Cai, which mean ‘luck’ and ‘money.’ Then on the right side you have Ai and Xi, which is ‘love’ and ‘family?.’”

Bosch thought about this. It seemed to him the symbols were the things that were important to John Li. He had hoped that these things would always walk with him.

Then he thought about the fact that the symbols were located on either side of Li’s Achilles tendons. Perhaps Li had placed the tattoos there intentionally, realizing that the things he hoped for also made him vulnerable. They were also his Achilles heel.

“Hello, Dad?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just thinking.”

“Well, does it help? Did I crack the case?”

Bosch smiled but immediately realized she couldn’t see this.

“Not quite but it helps.”

“Good. You owe me.”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re a pretty smart kid, aren’t you? How old are you now, thirteen going on twenty?”

“Please, Dad.”

“Well, your mother must be doing something right.”

“Not much.”

“Hey, that’s no way to talk about her.”

“Dad, you don’t have to live with her. I do. And it’s not so much fun. I told you when I was in L.A.”

“She’s still seeing somebody?”

“Yeah, and I’m yesterday’s news.”

“It’s not like that, Maddie. It’s just that it’s been a long time for her.”

A long time for me, too, Bosch thought.

“Dad, don’t take her side. To her I’m just in the way all the time. But when I say, fine, I’ll live with Dad, she says no way.”

“You should be with your mother. She’s raised you. Look, in a month I’ll be coming over for a week. We can talk about all of this then. With your mother.”

“Whatever. I gotta go. I’m here at school.”

“All right. Say hello to He the she for me.”

“Funny, Dad. Just don’t send me any more pictures of lungs, okay?”

“Next time it will be a liver. Or maybe a spleen. Spleens photograph real nice.”

“Daaaadd!”

He closed the phone and let her go. He thought about what had been said during the conversation. It seemed to him that the weeks and months between seeing Maddie were getting more difficult. As she became her own person and grew more bright and communicative, he loved her more and missed her all the time. She had just been out to L.A. in July, taking the long flight for the first time on her own. Barely a teenager and already a world traveler, she was wise beyond her years. He’d taken off work and they’d enjoyed two weeks of doing things together, exploring the city. It had been a wonderful time for him and at the end it was the first time she had ever mentioned wanting to live in Los Angeles. With him.

Bosch was smart enough to realize that these sentiments were expressed after two weeks of full-time attention from a father who began each day by asking what she wanted to do. It was far different from the full-time commitment of her mother, who raised her day after day while making a living for them. Still, the toughest day Bosch had ever had as a part-time father was the day he took his daughter back to the airport and put her on the plane to fly home alone. He half expected her to bolt and run, but she got on under protest and then was gone. He’d felt a hollowness inside ever since.

Now his next vacation and trip to Hong Kong wasn’t scheduled for another month and he knew it was going to be a long, tough wait until then.

“Harry, what are you doing out here?”

Bosch turned. His partner, Ferras, was standing there, having come out of the squad room, probably to use the restroom.

“I was talking to my daughter. I wanted some privacy.”

“She all right?”

“She’s fine. I’ll meet you back in the squad.”

Bosch headed toward the door, putting his phone back in his pocket.

Bosch got home at eight that night, coming through the door with a to-go bag from the In-N-Out down on Cahuenga.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called out as he struggled with the key, the bag and his briefcase.

He smiled to himself and went directly into the kitchen. He put his briefcase down on the counter, grabbed a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and went out to the deck. Along the way he turned on his CD player, leaving the sliding door open so the music could mingle on the deck with the sound of the 101 Freeway down in the pass.

The deck was positioned with a northeasterly view stretching across Universal City, Burbank and on to the San Gabriel Mountains. Harry ate his two hamburgers, holding them over the open bag to catch drippings, and watched the dying sun change the colors of the mountain slopes. He listened to “Seven Steps to Heaven” off Ron Carter’s Dear Miles album. Carter was one of the most important bassists of the last five decades. He had played with everybody and Bosch often wondered about the stories he could tell, the sessions he’d sat in on and the musicians he knew. Whether on his own recordings or on somebody else’s, Carter’s work always stood out. Harry believed this was because as a bassist he could never really be a sideman. He was always the anchor. He always drove the beat, even if it was behind Miles Davis’s horn.