Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

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.

“I don’t know what to take,” she said. “I don’t know how long we’ll be away or what she’ll need. I don’t even know if we’ll ever see her again.”

Her shoulders trembled as she let the tears fall. Bosch put a hand on her left shoulder but she immediately shrugged it off. She would take no comfort from him. She roughly zipped the backpack closed and left the room with it. Bosch was left to look about the room by himself.

Keepsakes from trips to L.A. and other places were on every horizontal surface. Posters from movies and music groups covered the walls. A stand in the corner had several hats, masks and strings of beads hanging on it. Numerous stuffed animals from earlier years were crowded against the pillows on the bed. Bosch couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow invading his daughter’s privacy by being in the room uninvited by her.

On a small desk was an open laptop computer, its screen dark. Bosch stepped over and tapped the space bar and after a few moments the screen came alive. His daughter’s screen saver was a photograph taken on her last trip to L.A. It showed a group of surfers in a line, floating on their boards and waiting for the next set of waves. Bosch remembered that they had driven out to Malibu to eat breakfast at a place called Marmalade and afterward had watched the surfers at a nearby beach.

Harry noticed a small box made of carved bone next to the computer’s mouse. It reminded Bosch of the carved handle of the knife he had found in Chang’s suitcase. It looked like something you would keep important things in, like money. He opened it and found that it contained only a small string of carved jade monkeys-see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil-on red twine. Bosch took it out of the box and held it up to see it better. It was no more than two inches long and there was a small silver ring on the end so that it could be attached to something.

“You ready?”

Bosch turned. Eleanor was in the doorway.

“I’m ready. What is this, an earring?”

Eleanor stepped closer to see it.

“No, the kids hook those things on their phones. You can buy them at the jade market in Kowloon. So many of them have the same phones, they dress them up to be different.”

Bosch nodded as he put the jade string back in the bone box.

“Are they expensive?”

“No, that’s cheap jade. They cost about a dollar American and the kids change them all the time. Let’s go.”

Bosch took a last look around his daughter’s private domain and on the way out grabbed a pillow and a folded blanket off the bed. Eleanor looked back and saw what he was doing.

“She might be tired and want to sleep,” Bosch explained.

They left the apartment and in the elevator Bosch held the blanket and pillow under one arm and one of the backpacks in the other. He could smell his daughter’s shampoo on the pillow.

“You have the passports” Bosch asked.

“Yes, I have them,” Eleanor said.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

He acted like he was studying the pattern of ponies on the blanket he was holding.

“How far can you trust Sun Yee? I’m not sure we should be with him after we get the gun.”

Eleanor answered without hesitation.

“I told you, you don’t have to worry about him. I trust him all the way and he’s staying with us. He’s staying with me.”

Bosch nodded. Eleanor looked up at the digital display that showed the floors clicking by.

“I trust him completely,” she added. “And Maddie does, too.”

“How does Maddie even-”

He stopped. He suddenly understood what she was saying. Sun was the man Madeline had told him about. He and Eleanor were together.

“You get it now?” she asked.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “But are you sure Madeline trusts him?”

“Yes, I’m sure. If she told you otherwise, then she was just trying to get your sympathy. She’s a girl, Harry. She knows how to manipulate. Yes, her life has been…disrupted a bit by my relationship with Sun Yee. But he has shown her nothing but kindness and respect. She’ll get over it. That is, once we get her back.”

Sun Yee had the car waiting in the drop-off circle at the front of the building. Harry and Eleanor put the backpacks in the trunk but Bosch took the pillow and blanket with him into the backseat. Sun pulled out and they went the rest of the way down Stubbs Road into Happy Valley and then over to Wan Chai.

Bosch tried to put the conversation from the elevator out of his mind. It wasn’t important at the moment because it wouldn’t help him get his daughter back. But it was hard to compartmentalize his feelings. His daughter had told him back in L.A. that Eleanor was in a relationship. And he’d had relationships himself since their divorce. But being hit with the reality of it here in Hong Kong was difficult. He was riding with a woman he still loved on some basic level and her new man. It was hard to take.

He was sitting behind Eleanor. He looked over the seat at Sun and studied the man’s stoic demeanor. He was no hired gun here. He had more of a stake than that. Bosch realized that could make him an asset. If his daughter could count on and trust him, then so could Bosch. The rest he could put aside.

As if sensing the eyes on him, Sun turned and looked at Bosch. Even with the blackout shades guarding Sun’s eyes, Bosch could tell he had read the situation and knew there were no secrets any longer.

Bosch nodded. It wasn’t any sort of approval he was giving. It was just the silent message that he now understood they were all in this together.

Wan Chai was the part of Hong Kong that never slept. The place where anything could happen and anything could be had for the right price. Anything. Bosch knew that if he wanted a laser sight to go with the gun they were going to pick up, he could get it. If he wanted a shooter to go with the setup, he could probably get that, too. And this didn’t even begin to address the other things, like drugs and women, that would be available to him in the strip bars and music clubs along Lockhart Road.

It was eight-thirty and full daylight as they cruised down Lockhart. Many of the clubs were still active, shutters closed against the light but neon burning brightly up above in the smoky air. The street was wet and steamy. Fragmented reflections of neon splashed across it and over the windshields of the taxis lining the curbs.

Bouncers stood on post and female hawkers sat on stools waving down pedestrians and motorists alike. Men in rumpled suits, their steps slowed by a night of alcohol or drugs, were moving slowly on the pavement. Double-parked outside the rows of red taxis the occasional Rolls-Royce or Mercedes idled, waiting for the money to run out inside and the journey home to finally begin.

In front of almost every establishment was an ash can for burning offerings to the hungry ghosts. Many were alive with flames. Bosch saw a woman in a silk robe with a red dragon on the back standing outside a club called Red Dragon. She was showering what looked like real Hong Kong dollars into the flames leaping from the can in front of her club. She was hedging her bets with the ghosts, Bosch thought. She was going with the real thing.

The smell of fire and smoke mixed with an underlying scent of fried foods got into the car despite the windows being up. Then a harsh odor Bosch couldn’t identify, almost like one of the cover-up odors he’d pick up from time to time in the coroner’s office, hit him and he started breathing through his mouth. Eleanor flipped down her visor so she could see him in the makeup mirror.