Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

Bosch turned and looked down the corridor of Nathan Road. Whether it was a conscious move or not, he didn’t want to see what he no longer had. From behind he heard Eleanor say, “Wait a minute. There’s a pattern here.”

Bosch turned back.

“What do you mean?”

“We can do this, Harry. There’s a pattern that will lead us right to that room.”

Bosch felt a ghost run down his spine. He moved in close to Eleanor so he could see the photo.

“Show it to me,” he said, urgency fueling each word.

Eleanor pointed to the photo and ran her fingernail along a line of air conditioners reflected in the window.

“Not every window has an air-conditioning unit in the building we are looking for. Some, like this room, have open windows. So there is a pattern. We only have part of it here because we don’t know where this room is in relation to the building.”

“It’s probably in the center. The audio analysis picked up muffled voices cut off by the elevator. The elevator is probably centrally located.”

“That’s good. That helps. Okay, so let’s say windows are dashes and AC boxes are dots. In this reflection we see a pattern for the floor she is on. You start with the room she is in-a dash-and then you go dot, dot, dash, dot, dash.”

She tapped her nail on each part of the pattern on the photo.

“So that’s our pattern,” she added. “Looking up at the building, we’d be looking for it going left to right.”

“Dash, dot, dot, dash, dot, dash,” Bosch repeated. “Windows are dashes.”

“Right,” Eleanor said. “Should we split up the buildings? We know because of the subway that we’re close.”

She turned and looked up at the wall of buildings that ran the entire length of the street. Bosch’s first thought was to not trust any of the buildings to anybody else. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he had scanned each building for the pattern himself. But he held back. Eleanor had found the pattern and made this break. He would ride her wave.

“Let’s start,” he said. “Which one should I take”

Pointing, she said, “You take that one, I’ll take this one and, Sun Yee, you check that one. If you get done, you leapfrog to the next building. We go till we find it. Start at the top. We know from the photo, the room is up high.”

She was right, Bosch realized. It would make the search faster than he’d anticipated. He stepped away and went to work on the building he was assigned. He started on the top floor and worked his way down, his eyes scanning back and forth floor by floor. Eleanor and Sun separated and did the same.

Thirty minutes later Bosch was halfway through scanning his third building when Eleanor called out.

“I’ve got it!”

Bosch headed back to her. She had her hand raised and was counting up the floors of the building directly across the street. Sun soon joined them.

“Fourteenth floor. The pattern starts just a little to the right of center. You were right about that, Harry.”

Bosch counted the floors, his eyes rising with his hopes. He got to the fourteenth level and identified the pattern. There were twelve windows across in all and the pattern fit the last six windows to the right.

“That’s it.”

“Wait a minute. This is only one incidence of the pattern. There could be others. We have to keep-”

“I’m not waiting. You keep looking. If you find another match for the pattern, call me.”

“No, we’re not splitting up.”

He zeroed in on the window that would have been the one that caught the reflection in the video. It was closed now.

He lowered his eyes to the building’s entrance. The first two levels of the building were retail and commercial use. A band of signage, including two large digital screens, wrapped the entire building. Above this the building’s name was affixed to the facade in gold letters and symbols:

CHUNGKING MANSIONS

The main entrance was as wide as a double-car garage door. Through the opening Bosch saw a short set of stairs leading to what looked like a crowded shopping bazaar.

“This is Chungking Mansions,” Eleanor said, recognition in her voice.

“You know it” Bosch asked.

“I’ve never been here but everybody knows about Chungking Mansions.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the melting pot. It’s the cheapest place in the city to stay and it’s the first stop for every third- and fourth-world immigrant who comes here. Every couple of months you read about somebody being arrested or shot or stabbed and this is their address. It’s like a postmodern Casablanca-all in one building.”

“Let’s go.”

Bosch started across the street in the middle of the block, wading into slow-moving traffic, forcing taxis to stop and hoot their horns.

“Harry, what are you doing” Eleanor yelled after him.

Bosch didn’t answer. He made it across and went up the stairs into Chungking Mansions. It was like stepping onto another planet.

The first thing that hit Bosch as he stepped up into the first level of the Chungking Mansions was the smell. Intense odors of spices and fried food invaded his nostrils as his eyes became accustomed to the dimly lit third-world farmers’ market that spread before him in narrow aisles and warrens. The place was just opening for the day but was already crowded with shopkeepers and customers. Six-foot-wide shop stalls offered everything from watches and cell phones to newspapers of every language and foods of any taste. There was an edgy, gritty feel to the place that left Bosch casually checking his wake every few steps. He wanted to know who was behind him.

He moved to the center, where he came to an elevator alcove. There was a line fifteen people deep waiting for two elevators, and Bosch noticed that one elevator was open, dark inside and obviously out of commission. There were two security guards at the front of the line, checking to make sure everybody going up had a room key or was with somebody who had a key. Above the door of the one functioning elevator was a video screen that showed its interior. It was crowded to maximum capacity, sardines in a can.

Bosch was staring at the screen and wondering how he was going to get up to the fourteenth floor when Eleanor and Sun caught up to him. Eleanor roughly grabbed him by the arm.

“Harry, enough with the one-man army! Don’t run off like that again.”

Bosch looked at her. It wasn’t anger he saw in her eyes. It was fear. She wanted to be sure she wasn’t without him when she faced whatever there was to face on the fourteenth floor.

“I just want to keep moving,” Bosch said.

“Then move with us, not away from us. Are we going up”

“We need a key to go up.”

“Then we have to rent a room.”

“Where do we do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Eleanor looked at Sun.

“We have to go up.”

That was all she said but the message was transmitted. He nodded and led them away from the alcove and farther into the labyrinth of shop stalls. Soon they came to a row of counters with signs in multiple languages.

“You rent the room here,” Sun said. “There is more than one hotel here.”

“You mean in the building” Bosch asked. “More than one”

“Yes, many. You pick from here.”

He gestured to the signs on the counters. And Bosch realized that what Sun was saying was that there were multiple hotels within the building, all of them competing for the business of the cut-rate traveler. Some, by virtue of the language on their signs, targeted travelers from specific countries.

“Ask which one has the fourteenth floor,” he said.