9 Dragons

by Michael Connelly

  Everybody put their windows down and Chu made introductions from the backseat. Herrera was behind the wheel and Tao was riding shotgun. Neither of the Monterey Park officers was close to thirty years old but that was to be expected. The small cop shops in the outlying cities around Los Angeles acted as feeder departments for the LAPD. The cops signed up young, got a few years’ experience and then applied to the LAPD or the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, where carrying the badge was seen as more glamorous and fun and the added experience gave them an inside edge.

  “You IDed Chang?” Bosch asked Tao.

  “That’s right,” Tao said. “I pulled him over on an FI stop six months ago. When Davy came around with the photo, I remembered him.”

  “Where was this?”

  While Tao spoke his partner kept his eyes on Club 88 up the street. Occasionally, he raised a pair of binoculars to check out people going or coming more closely.

  “I ran across him in the warehouse district down at the end of Garvey. It was late and he was driving a panel van. Looked like he was lost. He let us look and the van was empty but I figure he was going to make a pickup or something. A lot of counterfeit goods go through those warehouses. It’s easy to lose your way in there because there’s so many of them and they all look the same. Anyway, the van wasn’t his. It was registered to Vincent Tsing. He lives in South Pasadena but he’s pretty well known to us as a member of Brave Knife. He’s a familiar face. He has a car lot here in MP and Chang works for him.”

  Bosch understood the procedure. Tao had pulled the van over but with no probable cause to search it or to arrest Chang, he was reliant on Chang’s volunteerism. They filled out a field interview card with information he provided and checked the back of the van after being given permission.

  “And what, he just volunteered that he was in the Brave Knife triad?”

  “No,” Tao said indignantly. “We noted his tattoo and the ownership of the vehicle. We put two and two together, Detective.”

  “That’s good. Did he have a DL?”

  “He did. But we already checked that address tonight. It’s no good. He moved.”

  Bosch glanced back at Chu in the backseat. This meant that if the address on Chang’s driver’s license had been correct, they probably would have already encountered the suspect without Bosch.

  Chu looked away from Bosch’s stare. Bosch checked himself and tried to stay cool. If he blew up on them, he would lose all cooperation and the case would suffer for it. He didn’t want that.

  “You have the shake card with you?” he asked Tao.

  Tao handed a 3 × 5 card out the window and across to Bosch. Harry put the overhead light on and read the information handwritten on the card. Since field interviews had been challenged repeatedly over the years by civil rights groups as unwarranted shakedowns, the information forms filled out by officers were universally referred to as “shake cards.”

  Bosch studied the information on Bo-Jing Chang. Most of it had already been relayed to him. But Tao had conducted a very thorough field interview. There was a cell phone number written on the card. It was a watershed moment.

  “This number is good”

  “I don’t know about now-these guys dump phones all the time. But it was good then. I called it right on the spot to make sure he wasn’t fucking with me. So all I can tell you is that it was good back then.”

  “Okay, we have to confirm it.”

  “You’re just going to call the guy up and say, how ya doin?’”

  “No, you are. Block your ID and call the number in five minutes. If he answers, tell him you’ve got a wrong number. Let me borrow the binocs and, Davy, you come with me.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tao said. “What are we doing fucking with the phones”

  “If the number’s still good we can go for a wire. Give me the glasses. You call while I’m watching and we confirm, get it?”

  “Sure.”

  Bosch handed the shake card back to Tao and took the binoculars in return. Chu got out of their car, came around to Bosch’s ride and got in.

  Bosch pulled out onto Garvey and headed toward Club 88. He scanned the parking lots, looking for a place to get close.

  “Where were you parked before?”

  “Up there on the left.”

  He pointed to a lot and Bosch turned in, circled around and killed the lights as he pulled into a space that was facing Club 88 across the street.

  “Take the glasses and see if he answers his phone,” he told Chu.

  As Chu zeroed in on Chang, Bosch studied the entire view of the club, looking for anyone who might be looking out the window in their direction.

  “Which one is Chang?” he asked.

  “He’s at the left end, next to the guy in the hat.”

  Bosch picked him out. But he was too far away for Harry to make any confirmation of Chang as the man in the video from Fortune Liquors.

  “You think it’s him or you just going with Tao’s ID?” he asked.

  “No, it’s a good ID,” Chu said. “It’s him.”

  Bosch checked his watch. Herrera should’ve made the call. He was growing impatient.

  “What are we doing, anyway?” Chu asked.

  “We’re building a case, Detective. We confirm that number, then we get a warrant for a wire. We start listening to him and we find things out. Who he talks to, what he’s up to. Maybe we hear him talk about Li. Maybe we don’t and we spook him and we see who he calls. We start closing in. The point is, we take our time and do it right. We don’t ride in on horses, shooting up the town.”

  Chu didn’t respond. He kept the binoculars locked on his eyes.

  “Tell me something,” Bosch said. “Do you trust those two guys, Tao and Herrera?”

  Chu didn’t hesitate.

  “I trust them. You don’t?”

  “I don’t know them, so I can’t trust them. All I know is that you took my case and my suspect and showed everything all around that police department.”

  “Look, I was trying to make a break in the case and I did. We got the ID.”

  “Yeah, we got the ID and hopefully our suspect doesn’t find out about it.”

  Chu lowered the binoculars and looked at Bosch.

  “I think you’re just pissed because it wasn’t you.”

  “No, Chu, I don’t care who makes the break as long as it’s handled right. Showing my cards to people I don’t know is not my idea of good case management.”

  “Man, don’t you trust anybody?”

  “Just watch the club,” Bosch responded sternly.

  Chu put the binoculars back up as instructed.

  “I trust myself,” Bosch said.

  “I just wonder if this is something to do with me and Tao. Whether that’s the issue.”

  Bosch turned toward him.

  “Don’t start that shit again, Chu. I don’t care what you’re wondering. You can go back to AGU and stay the hell out of my case. I didn’t call you out in the first-”

  “Chang just took a call.”

  Bosch looked at the club. He thought he saw the man Chu had identified as Chang with a phone to his ear. He then dropped his arm.

  “He put it away,” Chu said. “The number’s good.”

  Bosch backed out of the space and started back to the super-market.

  “I still don’t know why we’re fucking around with a phone number,” Chu said. “Why don’t we just go pick the guy up? We got him on tape. Same day, same time. We use it to break him.”

  “And what if he doesn’t break? We’re left with nothing. The DA would laugh us right out the door if we went in with just that tape. We need more. That’s what I’m trying to teach you.”

  “I don’t need a teacher, Bosch. And I still think we can turn him.”

  “Yeah, go home and watch some more TV. Why the fuck would he say a single word to us? These guys are told from day one, you get popped, you say nothing. If you go down, you go down and we’ll take care of you.”
/>   “You told me you never worked a triad case before.”

  “I haven’t but some things are universal and this is one of them. You get one shot at these cases. You have to do it right.”

  “Okay, so we do it your way. What’s next?”

  “We go back to the parking lot and cut your friends loose. We’ll take it from here. It’s our case, not theirs.”

  “They’re not going to like that.”

  “I don’t care if they like it or not. That’s the way it’s going to be. You figure out a way of letting them down nice. Tell them we’ll bring them back in when we’re ready to make a move on the guy.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. You invited them in, you invite them out.”

  “Thanks, Bosch.”

  “Any time, Chu. Welcome to homicide.”

  13

  Bosch, Ferras and Chu sat on one side of the meeting table across from Lieutenant Gandle and Captain Bob Dodds, commander of the Robbery-Homicide Division. Spread across the polished surface between them were the case documents and photographs, most notably the shot of Bo-Jing Chang from the Fortune Liquors security camera.

  “I’m not convinced,” Dodds said.

  It was Thursday morning, just six hours after Bosch and Chu had ended their surveillance of Chang, with the suspect going to an apartment in Monterey Park and apparently retiring for the night.

  “Well, Cap, you shouldn’t be convinced yet,” Bosch said. “That’s why we want to continue the surveillance and get the wire.”

  “What I mean is, I’m not convinced it’s the way to go,” Dodds said. “Surveillance is fine. But a wire is a lot of work and effort for long-shot results.”

  Bosch understood. Dodds had an excellent reputation as a detective but he was now an administrator and about as far removed from the detective work in his division as a Houston oil executive is from the gas pump. He now worked with personnel numbers and budgets. He had to find ways of doing more with less and never allowing a dip in the statistics of arrests made and cases closed. That made him a realist and the reality was that electronic surveillance was very expensive. Not only did it take double-digit man hours to carefully draft a fifty-plus-page affidavit seeking court permission, but once permission was granted, a wiretap room had to be staffed twenty-four hours a day with a detective monitoring the line. Often a single-number tap led to other numbers needing to be tapped and under the law each line had to have its own monitor. Such an operation quickly sucked up overtime like a giant sponge. With the RHD’s OT budget seriously down because of economic constraints on the department, Dodds was reluctant to give any of it up for what amounted to an investigation of the murder of a south side liquor store clerk. He would rather save it for a rainy day-a big-time media case that might come up and that would demand it.

  Dodds, of course, would not say any of this out loud but Bosch knew, just as everyone else in the room knew, that this was the issue the captain wrestled with and which left him unconvinced. It had nothing to do with the particulars of the case.

  Bosch took one last shot at convincing him.

  “This is the tip of the iceberg, Captain,” he said. “We’re not just talking about a liquor store shooting. This is just a doorway. We could take down a whole triad before this is over.”

  “Before this is over? I retire in nineteen months, Bosch. These sorts of things can last forever.”

  Bosch shrugged.

  “We could call in the bureau, go partners. They’re always up for an international case and they’ve got money to spend on wiretaps and surveillance.”

  “But we’d have to share everything,” Gandle said, meaning the spoils of the bust. Headlines, press conferences, everything.

  “I don’t like the idea of doing that,” Dodds said as he held up the photo of Bo-Jing Chang.

  Bosch threw in his last card.

  “What if we did it without overtime?” Bosch asked.

  The captain was holding a pen in his hand. It probably reminded him of his authority. He was the one who signed off on things. He twiddled it now as he considered Bosch’s unexpected question but quickly shook his head.

  “You know I can’t ask you to do that,” he said. “I can’t even know about that.”

  It was true. The department had been sued so many times for unfair labor practices that no one in administration would ever give even tacit approval to detectives working off the clock.

  Bosch’s frustration with budgets and bureaucracy finally got the best of him.

  “Then, what do we do? Bring Chang in. We all know he’s not going to say a word to us and the case will die right there.”

  The captain wiggled his pen.

  “Bosch, you know what the alternative is. You work the case until something breaks. You work the witnesses. You work the evidence. There’s always a link. I spent fifteen years doing what you’re doing and you know there is always something. Find it. A wiretap is a long shot and you know it. Legwork is always the better bet. Now, is there anything else?”

  Harry felt his face growing red. The captain was dismissing him. What burned was that deep down Bosch knew Dodds was right.

  “Thanks, Captain,” he said curtly and stood up.

  The detectives left the captain and the lieutenant in the conference room and convened in Bosch’s cubicle. Bosch threw a pen he was carrying down on his desk.

  “Guy’s an ass,” Chu said.

  “No, he’s not,” Bosch quickly said. “He’s right and that’s why he’s the captain.”

  “Then, what do we do?”

  “We stay with Chang. I don’t care about overtime and what the captain doesn’t know won’t hurt him. We watch Chang and we wait for him to make a mistake. I don’t care how long it takes. I can make a hobby of it if I have to.”

  Bosch looked at the other two, expecting them to decline to participate in a surveillance that would likely go beyond the bounds of the eight-hour day.

  To his surprise, Chu nodded.

  “I already talked to my lieutenant. I’m detached to this case. I can do it.” Bosch nodded and at first considered that he had been wrong to be so suspicious of Chu. His next thought, however, was that the suspicion was valid and that Chu’s commitment to stay with the case was just a means of remaining close to the investigation and monitoring Bosch.

  Harry turned to his partner.

  “What about you?”

  Ferras reluctantly nodded and gestured toward the conference room across the squad room. Through the glass wall, Dodds could be seen still talking with Gandle.

  “You know they know this is what we’re doing,” he said. “They’re not going to pay us and they leave it to us to either step up or let it go. It’s not fucking fair.”

  “Yeah, so?” Bosch said. “Life isn’t fair. Are you in or out?”

  “I’m in, but with a limit. I’ve got a family, man. I’m not sitting on surveillance all night. I can’t do it-especially for nothing.”

  “All right, fine,” Bosch said, even though his tone communicated his disappointment with Ferras. “You do what you can. You handle the inside work and Chu and I will stay with Chang.”

  Noting Bosch’s tone, Ferras put a mild protest in his own tone.

  “Look, Harry, you don’t know what it’s like. Three kids…you try selling it at home. That you’re going to sit in a car all night watching some triad guy and your paycheck is going to look the same no matter how many hours you’re gone.”

  Bosch put his hands up as if to say enough said.

  “You’re right. I don’t have to sell it. I just have to do it. That’s the job.”

  14

  From behind the wheel of his own car, Bosch watched Chang as he performed menial chores at Tsing Motors in Monterey Park. The car lot had formerly been a 1950s-style gas station with two garage bays and an attached office. Bosch was parked a half block away on busy Garvey Avenue and was in no danger of being made. Chu was in his own car half a block past the car lot in the ot
her direction. Using their personal cars for the surveillance was a violation of departmental policy but Bosch had checked with the motor pool and there were no undercover vehicles available. The choice was to use their unmarked detective cruisers, which might as well have been painted black and white for all the camouflage they offered, or to break policy. Bosch didn’t mind breaking policy because he had a six-CD stack in his car. Today he had it loaded with music from his latest discovery. Tomasz Stan´ko was a Polish trumpeter who sounded like the ghost of Miles Davis. His horn was sharp and soulful. It was good surveillance music. It kept Bosch alert.

  For almost three hours they had watched their suspect handle his mundane duties on the lot. He had washed cars, greased tires to make them look new, even taken the one prospective customer on a test drive of a 1989 Mustang. And for the past half hour he had been systematically moving each of the three dozen cars on the lot to new positions in an effort to make it appear that the inventory was changing, that there was sales activity and that business was good.

  At 4 P.M. “Soul of Things” came out of the stack and Bosch couldn’t help but think that even Miles would grudgingly give Stan´ko his due. Harry was following the groove with his fingers on the steering wheel when he saw Chang go into the small office and change his shirt. When he stepped out he was finished for the day. He got into the Mustang and drove by himself off the lot.

  Bosch’s phone immediately buzzed with a call from Chu. Harry killed the music.

  “You got him?” Chu asked. “He’s moving.”

  “Yeah, I see.”

  “Heading up to the ten. You think he’s done for the day?”

  “He changed his shirt. I think he’s done. I’ll take the lead and then you be ready to move up.”

  Bosch followed five car lengths behind and then caught up as Chang headed west on the 10 toward downtown. He was not going home. Bosch and Chu had followed him the night before to an apartment in Monterey Park-also owned by Vincent Tsing-and had watched the place for an hour after the lights had gone out and they felt comfortable with the belief that he was in for the night.

  Now he was heading into L.A. and Bosch’s instincts told him he was carrying out triad business. He sped up and passed by the Mustang, holding his cell phone up to his ear so Chang wouldn’t get a look at his face. He called Chu and told him he was now on point.