9 Dragons

you can ask him questions and he’ll try to answer them if I think he should. There will be no recording of this session but you can take notes if you like. We hope to end this conversation with you two fellows leaving with a greater understanding of the events of this past weekend in Hong Kong. But one thing that is for certain is that you will not be leaving with Detective Bosch. His cooperation in this matter ends when this meeting ends.”
    Haller punctuated his opening salvo with a smile.
    Before coming into the PAB, Bosch had met with Haller for nearly an hour in the back of Haller’s Lincoln Town Car. They were parked at the dog park near Franklin Canyon and were able to watch Harry’s daughter walk around and pet the sociable dogs while they talked. After they were finished, they took Maddie to her meeting with Dr. Hinojos and then drove over to the PAB.
    They were not operating in complete agreement but had forged a strategy. A quick Internet search on Haller’s laptop had even provided some backup material. They had come in ready to make Bosch’s case to the men from Hong Kong.
    Being a detective, Bosch was walking a thin line. He wanted his colleagues from across the Pacific to know what had happened, but he wasn’t going to put himself, his daughter or Sun Yee in jeopardy. He believed that all his actions in Hong Kong were justified. He told Haller he had been in kill-or-be-killed situations initiated by others. And that included his encounter with the hotel manager at Chung-king Mansions. In each case he had emerged victorious. There was no crime in that. Not in his book.
    Lo took out a pen and notebook and Wu asked the first question, revealing that he was the lead man.
    “First, we would ask, why did you go to Hong Kong on such short trip”
    Bosch shrugged like the answer was obvious.
    “To get my daughter and bring her back here.”
    “On Saturday morning your former wife, she report the daughter missing to police,” Wu said.
    Bosch stared at him for a long moment.
    “Is that a question?”
    “Was she missing?”
    “My understanding is that she was indeed missing but on Saturday morning I was thirty-five thousand feet over the Pacific. I can’t speak to what my ex-wife was doing then.”
    “We believe your daughter was taken by someone named Peng Qingcai. Do you know him?”
    “Never met him.”
    “Peng is dead,” Lo said.
    Bosch nodded.
    “That doesn’t make me unhappy.”
    “Mr. Peng’s neighbor, Mrs. Fengyi Mai, she recall speaking with you at her home Sunday,” Wu said. “You and Mr. Sun Yee.”
    “Yes, we knocked on her door. She wasn’t much help.”
    “Why is this”
    “I guess because she didn’t know anything. She didn’t know where Peng was.”
    Wu leaned forward, his body language easy to read. He thought he was zeroing in on Bosch.
    “Did you go to Peng’s apartment?”
    “We knocked on the door but nobody answered. After a while we left.”
    Wu leaned back, disappointed.
    “You acknowledge that you were with Sun Yee?” he asked.
    “Sure. I was with him.”
    “How do you know this man?”
    “Through my ex-wife. They met me at the airport Sunday morning and informed me that they were looking for my daughter because the police department there did not believe she had been abducted.”
    Bosch studied the two men for a moment before continuing.
    “You see, your police department dropped the ball. I hope you will include that in your reports. Because if I’m dragged into this, I certainly will. I’ll call every newspaper in Hong Kong-doesn’t matter what language-and tell them my story.”
    The plan was to use the threat of international embarrassment to the HKPD to make the detectives move cautiously.
    “Are you aware,” Wu said, “that your ex-wife, Eleanor Wish, died of gunshot wound to the head on fifteenth floor of Chungking Mansions, Kowloon?”
    “Yes, I am aware of that.”
    “Were you present when this happened”
    Bosch looked at Haller and the attorney nodded.
    “I was there. I saw it happen.”
    “Can you tell us how?”
    “We were looking for our daughter. We didn’t find her. We were in the hallway about to leave and two men started to fire at us. Eleanor was hit and she…got killed. And the two men were hit, too. It was self-defense.”
    Wu leaned forward.
    “Who shot these men?”
    “I think you know that.”
    “You tell us, please.”
    Bosch thought of the gun he had put into Eleanor’s dead hand. He was about to tell the