9 Dragons Read online

  Bosch pointed to the time stamp on the top of the screen.

  “This payoff was made exactly one week before the murder. Three o’clock on Tuesday a week ago. This Tuesday at about three Mr. Li gets shot. Maybe this week he decided not to pay.”

  “Or he didn’t have the money to pay,” Ferras offered. “The son told us yesterday that business has been way down and opening the store in the Valley has nearly bankrupted them.”

  “So the old man says no and gets popped,” Gandle said. “Isn’t that a bit extreme? You kill the guy and as they say in high finance, you’ve lost your funding stream.”

  Ferras shrugged.

  “There’s always the wife and the son,” he said. “They’d get the message.”

  “They’re coming in at ten to sign statements,” Bosch added.

  Gandle nodded.

  “So how are you going to handle this?” he asked.

  “We’ll put Mrs. Li with Chu, the guy from AGU, and Ignacio and I will talk to the son. We find out what it’s about.”

  Gandle’s usually dour expression brightened. He was pleased with the progress of the case and the lead that had surfaced.

  “Okay, gentlemen, I want to know,” he said.

  “When we know,” Bosch said.

  Gandle left the meeting room, and Bosch and Ferras were left standing in front of the screen.

  “Nice going, Harry. You made him happy.”

  “He’ll be happier if we clear this thing.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we have some work to do before the Li family gets here. You check with the lab and see what they’ve got done. See if they’re finished with the cash register. Bring it over here if you can.”

  “What about you?”

  Bosch turned the screen off and ejected the disc.

  “I’m going to go have a talk with Detective Chu.”

  “You think he held something back on us?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  6

  The AGU was part of the Gang and Operations Support Division, from which many undercover investigations and officers were directed. As such the GOSD was located in an unmarked building several blocks away from the PAB. Bosch decided to walk because he knew it would take longer to get his car out of the garage, fight the traffic and then have to find another place to park. He got to the front door of the AGU office at eight-thirty, pressed the buzzer but nobody answered. He pulled his phone, ready to try to call Detective Chu, when a familiar voice came from behind him.

  “Good morning, Detective Bosch. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  Bosch turned. It was Chu, arriving with his briefcase.

  “Nice hours you guys get to keep over here,” Bosch replied.

  “Yeah, we like to keep it light.”

  Bosch stepped back so Chu could open the door with a card key.

  “Come on in.”

  Chu led the way to a small squad room with about a dozen desks and a lieutenant’s office on the right. Chu went behind one of the desks and put his briefcase down on the floor.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. “I was already planning to come by RHD at ten when Mrs. Li comes in.”

  Chu started to sit down but Bosch stayed standing.

  “I got something I want to show you. Do you guys have an AV room here?”

  “Yeah, this way.”

  The AGU had four interview rooms at the back of the squad room. One had been converted to an AV room with the standard rolling tower of television stacked on top of DVD. But Bosch saw that the stack also had an image printer and that was something they didn’t have yet in the new RHD squad room.

  Bosch handed Chu the DVD from Fortune Liquors and he set it up. Bosch took the remote and fast-forwarded the playback to 3 P.M. on the time stamp.

  “I wanted you to take a look at this guy who comes in,” he said.

  Chu watched silently as the Asian man entered the store, bought a beer and a carton of cigarettes and got the big return on his investment.

  “Is that it” he asked after the customer left the store.

  “That’s it.”

  “Can we play it again”

  “Sure.”

  Bosch replayed the two-minute episode, then froze the playback as the customer turned from the counter to leave. He then played with it, making slight advances on the playback, until he froze it on the best possible view of the man’s face as he turned from the counter.

  “Know him?” Bosch asked.

  “No, of course not.”

  “What did you see there?”

  “Obviously, a payoff of some kind. He got much more back than he gave.”

  “Yeah, two hundred sixteen on top of his own twenty. We counted it.”

  Bosch saw Chu’s eyebrows rise.

  “What’s it mean?” Bosch asked.

  “Well, it probably means he’s triad,” Chu said matter-of-factly.

  Bosch nodded. He had never investigated a triad murder before but he was aware that the so-called secret societies of China had long ago jumped the Pacific and now operated in most major American cities. Los Angeles, with its large Chinese population, was one of the strongholds, along with San Francisco, New York and Houston.

  “What makes you say he’s a triad guy?”

  “You said the payoff was two hundred sixteen dollars, correct?”

  “That’s right. Li gave the guy his own money back. He also gave him ten twenties, a ten, a five and a one. What’s it mean?”

  “The triad extortion business relies on weekly payments from small shop owners seeking protection. The payment is usually one hundred eight dollars. Of course, two sixteen is a multiple of that. A double payment.”

  “Why one oh eight? They charge tax on top of the tax? They send the extra eight bucks to the state or something?”

  Chu did not register the sarcasm in Bosch’s voice and answered as if lecturing a child.

  “No, Detective, the number has nothing to do with that at all. Let me give you a brief history lesson that hopefully will give you some understanding.”

  “By all means,” Bosch said.

  “The creation of the triads goes back to the seventeenth century in China. There were one hundred thirteen monks in the Shaolin monastery. Buddhist monks. Manchu invaders attacked and killed all but five of the monks. Those remaining five monks created the secret societies with the goal of overthrowing the invaders. The triads were born. But over the centuries, they changed. They dropped politics and patriotism and became criminal organizations. Much like the Italian and Russian mafias, they engage in extortion and protection rackets. To honor the ghosts of the slaughtered monks, the extortion amounts are usually a multiple of one hundred eight.”

  “There were five remaining monks, not three,” Bosch said. “Why are they called triads?”

  “Because each monk started his own triad. Tian di hui. It means ‘heaven and earth society.’ Each group had a flag in the shape of a triangle symbolizing the relationship between heaven, earth and man. From that they became known as the triads.”

  “Great, and they brought it over here.”

  “It’s been here a very long time. But they didn’t bring it over. Americans brought it over. It came with Chinese labor brought to build railroads.”

  “And they victimize their own people.”

  “For the most part, yes. But Mr. Li was religious. Did you see the Buddhist shrine in the storage room yesterday?”

  “I missed that.”

  “It was there and I talked to his wife about it. Mr. Li was very spiritual. He believed in ghosts. To him, paying the triad might have been like making an offering to a ghost. To an ancestor. You see, you are an outsider looking in, Detective Bosch. If all you knew from day one was that part of your money went to the triad just as simply as money goes to the IRS, then you would not view yourself as a victim. It was simply a given, a part of life.”

  “But the IRS doesn’t put t
hree slugs in your chest when you don’t pay.”

  “Do you believe that Li was murdered by this man or the triad?”

  Pointing at the man on the screen, Chu was almost indignant in asking the question.

  “I believe it is the best lead we have at the moment,” Bosch countered.

  “What about the lead we developed through Mrs. Li? The gangbanger who threatened her husband on Saturday.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “Things don’t match up there. I still want her to look at the books and ID the kid but I think we are spinning our wheels there.”

  “I don’t understand. He said he would come back and kill Mr. Li.”

  “No, he said he would come back and blow his head off. Mr. Li was shot in the chest. It wasn’t a crime of rage, Detective Chu. It doesn’t fit. But don’t worry, we’ll run it down, even if it’s a waste of time.”

  He waited for Chu to respond but the younger detective didn’t. Bosch pointed to the time stamp on the screen.

  “Li was killed at the same time on the same day of the week. We have to assume that Li made regular payoffs. We have to assume that this man was there when Li was killed. I think that makes him the better suspect.”

  The interview room was very small and they had left the door open. Bosch now stepped over and closed it, then looked back at Chu.

  “So tell me you didn’t have any idea about this yesterday.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Mrs. Li didn’t say anything about making payments to the local triad”

  Chu stiffened. He was much smaller than Bosch but his posture suggested he was ready for a fight.

  “Bosch, what are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that this is your world and you should have told me. I found this by accident. Li kept that disc because there’s a shoplifter on it. Not because of the payoff.”

  They were now facing each other less than two feet apart.

  “Well, there was nothing before me yesterday that even suggested this,” Chu said. “I was called out there to translate. You didn’t ask me my opinion about anything else. You deliberately shut me out, Bosch. Maybe if you had included me, I would have seen or heard something.”

  “That’s bullshit. You’re not trained as a detective to stand there with your thumb in your mouth. You don’t need an invite to ask a question.”

  “With you I thought I did.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I watched you, Bosch. How you treated Mrs. Li, her son…me.”

  “Oh, here we go.”

  “What was it, Vietnam? You served in Vietnam, right?”

  “Don’t pretend you know anything about me, Chu.”

  “I know what I see and I’ve seen it before. I’m not from Vietnam, Detective. I’m an American. Born right here, like you.”

  “Look, can we just drop this so we can get on with the case”

  “Whatever you say. You’re the lead.”

  Chu put his hands on his hips and turned back to the screen. Bosch tried to back his emotions down. He had to admit Chu had a point. And he was embarrassed that he had been so easily pegged as someone who had come back from Vietnam with a racial prejudice.

  “All right,” he said. “Maybe the way I dealt with you yesterday was a mistake. I’m sorry. But you’re in now and I need to know what you know. No holding back.”

  Chu relaxed too.

  “I just told you everything. The only other thing I was thinking was about the two hundred sixteen.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s a double payment. Like maybe Mr. Li missed a week. Maybe he was having trouble paying. His son said business was bad there.”

  “And so maybe that’s what got him killed.”

  Bosch pointed to the screen again.

  “Can you make me a hard copy?”

  “I would like one myself.”

  Chu moved to the printer and pushed a button twice. Soon two copies of the image of the man turning from the counter were printing.

  “Do you have mug books?” Bosch asked. “Intelligence files?”

  “Of course,” Chu said. “I will try to identify him. I will make inquiries.”

  “I don’t want him to know we’re coming.”

  “Thank you, Detective. But, yes, I assumed that.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. It had been another misstep. He was having a hard time with Chu. He found himself unable to trust him, even though he carried the same badge.

  “I would also like to get a print of the tattoo as well,” Chu said.

  “What tattoo?” Bosch asked.

  Chu took the remote from Bosch and tapped the rewind button. He eventually froze the picture at the moment the man was reaching his left hand out to take the cash from Mr. Li. Chu used his finger to trace a barely visible outline on the inside of the man’s arm. Chu was right. It was a tattoo, but the marking was so light on the grainy image that Bosch had completely missed it.

  “What is that” he asked.

  “It looks like the outline of a knife. A self-administered tattoo.”

  “He’s been in prison.”

  Chu pushed the button to make prints of the image.

  “No, usually these are done on the boat. On the way across the ocean.”

  “What does it mean to you?”

  “Knife is kim. There are at least three triads that have a presence here in Southern California. Yee Kim, Sai Kim and Yung Kim. These mean Righteous Knife, Western Knife and Brave Knife. They are offshoots of a Hong Kong triad called Fourteen K. Very strong and powerful.”

  “Over here or there?”

  “Both places.”

  “Fourteen K? Like fourteen-karat gold”

  “No, fourteen is a bad-luck number. It sounds like the Chinese word for death. K is for kill.”

  Bosch knew from his daughter and his frequent visits to Hong Kong that any permutation of the number 4 was considered bad luck. His daughter lived with his ex-wife in a condominium tower where there were no floors marked with the numeral 4. The fourth floor was marked P for parking and the fourteenth was skipped in the way the thirteenth floor was skipped in most western buildings. The floors in the building that were actually the fourteenth and twenty-fourth contained the residences of English speakers who did not hold the same superstitions as the Han-the Chinese people.

  Bosch gestured to the screen.

  “So you think this guy could be in one of the Fourteen K spinoffs?” he asked.

  “Perhaps yes,” Chu said. “I will begin to make inquiries just as soon as you leave.”

  Bosch looked at Chu and tried to read him again. He believed he understood the message. Chu wanted Bosch out of there so he could go to work. Harry stepped over to the DVD player, ejected the disc, and took it.

  “Stay in touch, Chu,” he said.

  “I will,” Chu responded curtly.

  “As soon as you get something, you give it to me.”

  “I understand, Detective. Perfectly.”

  “Good, and I’ll see you at ten with Mrs. Li and her son.”

  Bosch opened the door and left the tiny room.

  7

  Ferras had the cash register from Fortune Liquors on his desk and had run a wire from its side into the side of his laptop. Bosch put the photo printouts down on his desk and looked across at his partner.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I went over to forensics. They were through with this. No prints other than the victim’s. I’m just getting into the memory now. I can tell you the take for the day up until the murder was under two hundred bucks. The victim would have had a hard time making a payment of two hundred sixteen dollars, if that’s what you think happened.”

  “Well, I’ve got some stuff on that to tell you. Anything else from forensics?”

  “Not much. They’re still processing every-oh, the GSR on the widow came back negative. But I guess we were expecting that.”

  Bos
ch nodded. Since Mrs. Li had discovered her husband’s body, it was routine to test her hands and arms for gunshot residue to determine if she had recently discharged a firearm. As expected, the test came back negative for GSR. Bosch was pretty sure she could now be scratched from the list of potential suspects, even though she was barely on it in the first place.

  “How deep is the memory on that thing?” Bosch asked.

  “It looks like it goes back a whole year. I ran some averages. The gross income on that place was slightly less than three thousand a week. You figure in overhead and cost of goods, insurance and stuff like that, and this guy was lucky if he was clearing fifty a year for himself. That ain’t no way to make a living. Probably more dangerous down there doing what he did than being a cop on those streets.”

  “Yesterday the son said business was down lately.”

  “Looking at this, I don’t see where it was ever up.”

  “It’s a cash business. He could have pulled money out of it in other ways.”

  “Probably. And then there was the guy he was paying off. If he was handing him two bills and change a week, that would add up. That would be ten grand off the top on an annual basis.”

  Bosch told Ferras what he had learned from Chu and that he was hoping the AGU could come up with an ID. They both agreed that the focal point of the investigation was shifting toward the man in the grainy printout from the store’s surveillance camera. The triad bagman. Meanwhile, the possible gangbanger who had argued with John Li the Saturday before his murder still needed to be identified and interviewed, but the contradictions between the crime scene and an anger/revenge-type killing put that lead into second position.

  They went to work on the statements and other voluminous paperwork that accompanied every murder investigation. Chu arrived first at ten o’clock, making his way right to Bosch’s desk unannounced.

  “Yee-ling isn’t here yet?” he asked by way of greeting.

  Bosch looked up from his work.

  “Who’s Yee-ling?”

  “Yee-ling Li, the mother.”

  Bosch realized he had not known the full name of the victim’s wife. This bothered him because it was an indication of how little he really knew about the case.

  “She’s not here yet. You come up with anything over there?”