Nine Dragons (33 page)

“Sun Yee? Hey! Down here! Somebody! Down here!”

There was no response, but then the bolt of the upper right seal turned. The door was being unlocked. Bosch stepped back, wiped his face with his sleeves, and waited. The bottom left seal was turned next and then the hatch door slowly began to open. Bosch raised the guns, unsure how many bullets he had left to fire.

In the dim light of the passage he saw Sun’s face. Bosch moved forward and pushed the hatch all the way open.

“Where the fuck you been?”

“I was looking for a boat and—”

“I called you. I told you to come back.”

Once he was in the passageway, Bosch saw the Mercedes man lying facedown on the floor a few feet from the hatch. He quickly moved to him, hoping to find him still alive. Harry turned him over, rolling him into the slop of his own blood.

He was dead.

“Harry, where is Madeline?” Sun asked.

“I don’t know. Everybody’s dead and I don’t know!”

Unless…

One final plan began to work into Bosch’s brain. One final chance. The white Mercedes. Gleaming and new. The car would have all the extras, including a navigation system, and the first address in its stored data would be the Mercedes man’s home.

They would go there. They would go to the home of the Mercedes man and Bosch would do what was necessary to find his daughter. If he had to hold a gun to the head of that bored little boy he had seen at Geo, he would do it. And the wife would tell. She would give Bosch back his daughter.

Harry studied the body in front of him. He presumed he was looking at Dennis Ho, the man behind Northstar. He patted the dead man’s pockets, looking for car keys, but he found none and just as quickly as his plan had formed, Bosch began to feel it disappear. Where were the keys? He needed that computer to tell him where to go and how to find his way.

“Harry, what is it?”

“His keys! We need his keys or we—”

He suddenly stopped. He realized he had missed something. When he had made his run on the pier and ducked for cover behind the white Mercedes, he had heard and smelled the car’s diesel engine. The car had been left running.

At the time it meant little to Bosch because he was sure his daughter was on the crane boat. But now he knew different.

Bosch stood up and started moving down the passageway toward the ladder, his mind racing far ahead of him. He heard Sun following behind him.

There was only one reason why Dennis Ho would have left his car running. He intended to come back to it. Not
with
the girl, because she was not on the boat. But to
get
the girl once the storage compartment in the hull was ready and it was safe to transfer her.

Bosch charged out of the pilothouse and crossed the gangway to the pier. He ran to the driver’s door of the white Mercedes and flung it open. He checked the backseat and found it empty. He then studied the dashboard, looking for a button that would open the trunk.

Finding none, he turned the car off and grabbed the keys. Moving to the back of the car, he pushed the trunk button on the ignition key.

The trunk lid lifted automatically. Bosch moved in, and there lying on a blanket inside the compartment was his daughter. She was blindfolded and gagged. Her arms were pinned to her body with several wrappings of duct tape. Her ankles were taped together as well. Bosch cried out at the sight of her.

“Maddie!”

He almost jumped into the trunk with her as he quickly pulled the blindfold up and went to work on the gag.

“It’s me, baby! It’s Dad!”

She opened her eyes and started blinking.

“You’re safe now, Maddie. You’re safe!”

As the gag came loose, the girl let out a shriek that pierced her father’s heart and would stay with him always. It was at once an exorcism of fear, a cry for help and the sound of relief and even joy.

“Daddy!”

She started to cry as Bosch reached in and lifted her out of the trunk. Sun was suddenly there and helping.

“It’s going to be okay now,” Bosch said. “It will all be okay.”

They stood the young girl up and then Bosch used the teeth of one of the keys to start cutting through the tape. He noticed that Madeline was still wearing her school uniform. The moment her arms and hands were free, she grabbed Bosch around the neck and squeezed with all her life.

“I knew you would come,” she said between gasping sobs.

Bosch didn’t know if he had ever heard words that meant more to him. He held her just as tightly in his own arms. He turned his face down to whisper in her ear.

“Maddie?”

“What, Dad?”

“Are you hurt, Maddie? I mean, physically hurt. If they hurt you we need to get you to—”

“No, I’m not hurt.”

He pushed back from her and put his hands on her shoulders as he studied her eyes.

“You sure? You can tell me.”

“I’m sure, Dad. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Then, we need to go.”

He turned to Sun.

“Can you get us to the airport?”

“No problem.”

“Then, let’s go.”

Bosch put his arm around his daughter and they started to follow Sun off the pier. She held on to him the whole way and it wasn’t until they got to the car that she seemed to acknowledge the meaning of Sun’s presence and asked the question Harry had been dreading.

“Dad?”

“What, Maddie?”

“Where’s Mom?”

38

B
osch didn’t answer her question directly. He simply told his daughter that her mother could not be with them at the moment but had packed a bag for her and that they needed to get to the airport to leave Hong Kong. Sun said nothing and picked up his pace, moving in front of them and removing himself from the discussion.

The explanation seemingly bought Harry some time to consider how and when he would give the answer that would alter the rest of his daughter’s life. When they got to the black Mercedes, he put her in the backseat before going to the trunk to grab the backpack. He didn’t want her to see the bag Eleanor had packed for herself. He checked the compartments of Eleanor’s bag and found his daughter’s passport. He put it in his pocket.

He got in the front passenger seat and handed the backpack to her. He told her to change out of her school uniform. He then checked his watch and gave Sun a nod.

“Let’s go. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

Sun started driving, proceeding out of the waterfront area at a brisk but not attention-getting pace.

“Is there a ferry or train you can drop us at that will get us there direct?” Bosch asked.

“No, they closed the ferry route and you would have to switch trains. It would be better if I take you. I wish to.”

“Okay, Sun Yee.”

They drove for a few minutes of silence. Bosch wanted to turn and talk to his daughter, putting his eyes on her to make sure she was okay.

“Maddie, are you changed?”

She didn’t answer.

“Maddie?”

Bosch turned and glanced back at her. She had changed clothes. She was leaning against the door behind Sun, staring out through the window while hugging her pillow to her chest. There were tears on her cheeks. It did not appear that she had noticed the bullet hole through the pillow.

“Maddie, you all right?”

Without answering or looking away from the window, she said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“What?”

Bosch knew exactly who and what she was talking about but was trying to stretch time, put off as long as possible the inevitable.

“I’m not stupid, you know. You’re here. Sun Yee’s here. She should be here. She would be here but something’s happened to her.”

Bosch felt an invisible punch hit him square in the chest. Madeline was still hugging the pillow in front of her and looking out the window with tear-filled eyes.

“Maddie, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you but this wasn’t the right time.”

“When is the right time?”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re right. Never.”

He reached back and put his hand on her knee but she immediately pushed it away. It was the first sign of the blame he would always carry.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I can say. When I landed this morning your mother was there at the airport, waiting for me. With Sun Yee. She only wanted one thing, Maddie. To get you home safe. She didn’t care about anything else, including herself.”

“What happened to her?”

Bosch hesitated but there was no other way to respond but with the truth.

“She got shot, baby. Somebody was shooting at me and she got hit. I don’t think she even felt it.”

Madeline put her hands over her eyes.

“It’s all my fault.”

Bosch shook his head, even though she wasn’t looking at him.

“Maddie, no. Listen to me. Don’t ever say that. Don’t even think that. It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. Everything here is my fault.”

She didn’t respond. She hugged the pillow closer and kept her eyes on the roadside as it passed by in a blur.

An hour later they were at the drop-off curb at the airport. Bosch helped his daughter out of the Mercedes and then turned to Sun. They had said little in the car. But now it was time to say good-bye and Bosch knew his daughter could not have been rescued without Sun’s help.

“Sun Yee, thank you for saving my daughter.”

“You saved her. Nothing could stop you, Harry Bosch.”

“What will you do? The police will come to you about Eleanor, if not everything else.”

“I will handle these things and make no mention of you. This is my promise. No matter what happens, I will leave you and your daughter out of it.”

Bosch nodded.

“Good luck,” he said.

“Good luck to you, too.”

Bosch shook his hand and then stepped back. After another awkward pause, Madeline stepped forward and hugged Sun. Bosch saw the look on his face, even behind the disguise of the sunglasses. No matter their differences, Bosch knew Sun had found some sort of resolve in Madeline’s rescue. Maybe it allowed him to find refuge in himself.

“I am so sorry,” Madeline said.

Sun stepped back and broke the embrace.

“You go on now,” he said. “You have a happy life.”

They left him standing there and headed into the main terminal through the glass doors.

Bosch and his daughter found the first-class window at Cathay Pacific and Harry bought two tickets on the 11:40
P.M.
flight to Los Angeles. He got a refund for his intended flight the next morning but still had to use two credit cards to cover the overall cost. But he didn’t care. He knew that first-class passengers were accorded special status that moved them quickly through security checks and first onto planes. Airport and airline staff and security were less likely to concern themselves with first-class travelers, even if they were a disheveled man with blood on his jacket and a thirteen-year-old girl who couldn’t seem to keep tears off her cheeks.

Bosch also understood that his daughter had been left traumatized by the past sixty hours of her life, and while he couldn’t begin to know how to care for her in this regard, he instinctively felt that any added comfort couldn’t hurt.

Noting Bosch’s unkempt appearance, the woman behind the counter mentioned to him that the first-class waiting lounge offered showering facilities to travelers. Bosch thanked her for the tip, took their boarding passes and then followed a first-class hostess to security. As expected, they breezed through the checkpoint on the power of their newfound status.

They had almost three hours to kill and though the previously mentioned shower facility was tempting, Bosch decided that food might be a more pressing need. He couldn’t remember when and what he had last eaten and he assumed his daughter had been equally deprived of nourishment.

“You hungry, Mads?”

“Not really.”

“They fed you?”

“No, uh-uh. I couldn’t eat, anyway.”

“When did you last eat something?”

She had to think.

“I had a piece of pizza at the mall on Friday. Before…”

“Okay, we’ve got to eat, then.”

They took an escalator up to an area where there were a variety of restaurants overlooking the duty-free shopping mecca. Bosch chose a sit-down restaurant in the center of the concourse that had good views of the shopping level. His daughter ordered chicken fingers and Bosch ordered a steak and french fries.

“You should never order a steak at an airport,” Madeline said.

“Why’s that?”

“You won’t get good quality.”

Bosch nodded. It was the first time she had said something more than one or two words in length since they had said good-bye to Sun. Harry had been watching her slowly collapse inward as the release of fear that followed her escape wore off and the reality of what she had been through and what had happened to her mother sank in. Bosch had feared she might be going into some form of shock. Her odd observation about the quality of steak in an airport seemed to indicate that she was in a dissociated state.

“Well, I guess I’ll find out.”

She then jumped the conversation to a new place.

“So am I going to live in L.A. with you now?”

“I think so.”

He studied her face for a reaction. It remained unchanged—blank stare over cheeks streaked with dried tears and sadness.

“I want you to,” Bosch said. “And last time you were over, you said you wanted to stay.”

“But not like this.”

“I know.”

“Will I ever go back to get my things and say good-bye to my friends?”

Bosch thought for a moment before responding.

“I don’t think so,” he finally said. “I might be able to get your things sent. But you’re probably going to have to e-mail your friends, I guess. Or call them.”

“At least I’ll be able to say good-bye.”

Bosch nodded and was silent, noting the obvious reference to her lost mother. She soon spoke again, her mind like a balloon caught in the wind, touching down here and there on unpredictable currents.

“Are we, like, wanted by the police here?”

Bosch looked around to see if anyone sitting nearby had heard the question, then leaned forward to answer.