9 Dragons

little hook on the back side of the table.”
    Chu reached behind the bed table and found the key. He then used it to open the box. A black felt gun bag sat on some folded papers and envelopes. There was a passport and a box of bullets as well. Chu carefully lifted the bag out and opened it, producing a black semiautomatic pistol. He turned it and examined it.
    “One box of Cor Bon nine-millimeter bullets, one Glock Model Nineteen. I think this is it, Harry.”
    He popped the gun’s magazine and studied the bullets through the slot. He then ejected the round from the chamber.
    “Fully loaded and ready to go.”
    Lau took a step toward the door but Bosch immediately put his hand on his chest to stop him and then backed him against the wall.
    “Look,” Lau said, “I don’t know what this is about but you people are freaking me out here. What the fuck is going on?”
    Bosch kept his hand on his chest.
    “Just tell me about the gun, Henry. You had it the night of the first. Has it been out of your possession at any time since then?”
    “No, I…right there is where I keep it.”
    “Where were you last Tuesday, three o’clock in the afternoon?”
    “Um, last week I was here. I think I was here, working. We didn’t start shooting until Thursday.”
    “You work here alone?”
    “Yes, I work alone. Writing is a solitary pursuit. No, wait! Wait! Last Tuesday I was at Paramount all day. We had a read-through of the script with the cast. I was over there all afternoon.”
    “And there will be people who will vouch for you?”
    “At least a dozen. Matthew fucking McConaughey will vouch for me. He was there. He’s playing the lead.”
    Bosch made a jump then, hitting Lau with a question designed to keep him off balance. It was amazing what fell out of people’s pockets when they were being knocked back and forth by seemingly unrelated questions.
    “Are you associated with a triad, Henry?”
    Lau burst out laughing.
    “What? What the fuck are you-look, I’m out of here.”
    He slapped Bosch’s hand away and pushed off the wall in the direction of the door again. It was a move Harry was ready for. He grabbed Lau by the arm and spun him around. He clipped his ankle with a kick and threw him facedown on the bed. He then moved in, kneeling on his back while he cuffed him.
    “This is fucking crazy!” Lau yelled. “You can’t do this!”
    “Calm down, Henry, just calm down,” Bosch said. “We’re going to go downtown and straighten all of this out.”
    “But I’ve got a movie! I have to be on the set in three hours!”
    “Fuck the movies, Henry. This is real life and we’re going downtown.”
    Bosch pulled him up off the bed and pointed him toward the door.
    “Dave, you got all of that secured?”
    “Got it.”
    “Then, lead the way.”
    Chu left the room, carrying the metal box containing the Glock. Bosch followed, keeping Lau in front of him and keeping one hand on the chain between the cuffs. They moved down the hall, but when they got to the top of the stairs, Bosch pulled the cuffs like the reins on a horse and stopped.
    “Wait a minute. Back up here.”
    He walked Lau backwards to the middle of the hall. Something had caught Bosch’s eye as they had passed but it didn’t register until they got to the stairs. Now he looked at the framed diploma from the University of Southern California. Lau had graduated with a liberal arts degree in 2004.
    “You went to SC?” Bosch asked.
    “Yeah, the film school. Why?”
    Both the school and graduation year matched the diploma Bosch had seen in the back office at Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor. And then there was the Chinese connection as well. Bosch knew that a lot of kids went to USC and several thousand graduated every year, many of them of Chinese descent. But he had never trusted coincidences.
    “Did you know a guy at SC named Robert Li-spelled
L-I
”
    Lau nodded.
    “Yeah, I knew him. He was my roommate.”
    Bosch felt things suddenly begin to crash together with an undeniable force.
    “What about Eugene Lam? Did you know him?”
    Lau nodded again.
    “I still do. He was my roommate back then, too.”
    “Where?”
    “Like I told you, a shithole down in gangland. Near the campus.”
    Bosch knew that USC was an oasis of fine and expensive education surrounded by hardscrabble neighborhoods where personal safety would be an issue. A few years back a football player on the practice field had even been hit with a stray round from a nearby gang