9 Dragons

Lieutenant Gandle.
    “Okay, Doc,” Bosch replied. “Thank you for this.”
    “It will be good to see you, too. Maybe you and I should have a conversation. I know your ex-wife still meant a lot to you.”
    “Let’s take care of my daughter first. Then we can worry about me. I’ll drop her with you and then get out of the way, maybe walk over to Philippe’s or something.”
    “See you then, Harry.”
    He hung up and checked to see if Gandle had left a message. There was none. He headed back inside and saw that his daughter had already assembled the main structure of the desk.
    “Wow, girl, you know what you’re doing.”
    “It’s pretty easy.”
    “Didn’t seem that way to me.”
    He had just gotten back down on the floor when the landline started to ring from the kitchen. He got up and hustled to get it. It was an old wall-mounted phone with no caller ID screen.
    “Bosch, what are you doing?”
    It was Lieutenant Gandle.
    “I told you I was taking a few days.”
    “I need you to come in, and bring your daughter.”
    Bosch was looking down into the empty sink.
    “My daughter? Why, Lieutenant?”
    “Because there are two guys from the Hong Kong Police Department sitting in Captain Dodds’s office and they want to talk to you. You didn’t tell me that your ex-wife is dead, Harry. You didn’t tell me about all the dead bodies they say you left in your wake over there.”
    Bosch paused as he considered his options.
    “Tell them I’ll see them at one-thirty,” he finally said.
    Gandle’s response was sharp.
    “One-thirty? What do you need three hours for? Get down here now.”
    “I can’t, Lieutenant. I’ll see them at one-thirty.”
    Bosch hung the phone up and then pulled his cell from his pocket. He had known that the Hong Kong cops would eventually come, and he had already made a plan for what to do.
    The first call he made was to Sun Yee. He knew it was late in Hong Kong but he couldn’t wait. The phone rang eight times and then went to message.
    “It’s Bosch. Call me when you get this.”
    Bosch hung up and stared at his phone for a long moment. He was concerned. It was one-thirty in the morning in Hong Kong, not a time when he would have expected Sun Yee to be away from his phone. Unless it wasn’t by his choice.
    He next scrolled through the contact list on his phone and found a number he had not used in at least a year.
    He called the number now and this time got an immediate answer.
    “Mickey Haller.”
    “It’s Bosch.”
    “Harry? I didn’t think I’d-”
    “I think I need a lawyer.”
    There was a pause.
    “Okay, when?”
    “Right now.”

42
    G andle came charging out of his office the moment he saw Bosch enter the squad room.
    “Bosch, I told you to get in here forthwith. Why haven’t you been answering your-”
    He stopped when he saw who entered behind Bosch. Mickey Haller was a well-known defense attorney. There wasn’t a detective in the RHD who didn’t know him on sight.
    “This is your lawyer?” Gandle said with disgust. “I told you to bring your daughter, not your lawyer.”
    “Lieutenant,” Bosch said, “let’s get something straight from the start. My daughter is not part of this equation. Mr. Haller is here to advise me and help me explain to the men from Hong Kong that I committed no crimes while I was in their city. Now, do you want to introduce me to them or should I do it myself?”
    Gandle hesitated and then relented.
    “This way.”
    Gandle led them to the conference room off Captain Dodds’s office. Waiting there were the two men from Hong Kong. They stood up upon Bosch’s arrival and handed him business cards. Alfred Lo and Clifford Wu. They both were from HKPD’s Triad Bureau.
    Bosch introduced Haller and handed the cards to him.
    “Do we need a translator, gentlemen?” Haller asked.
    “That is not necessary,” Wu said.
    “Well, that’s a start,” Haller said. “Why don’t we sit down and hash this big old thing around.”
    Everyone, including Gandle, took a seat around the conference table. Haller spoke first.
    “Let me start things off here by saying that my client, Detective Bosch, is not waiving any of his constitutionally guaranteed rights at this time. We are on American soil here and that means he doesn’t have to speak to you gentlemen. However, he is also a detective and he knows what you two men are up against on a daily basis. Against my advice he is willing to talk to you. So the way we will work this is that