9 Dragons

times. This is America, Pop, you don’t have to pay them.”
    “But he still paid.”
    “Yeah, every week. He was just old school.”
    “So you don’t pay here?”
    Li shook his head but his eyes darted to the side a moment. An easy giveaway.
    “You do pay, don’t you?”
    “No.”
    “Robert, we need the-”
    “I don’t pay, because he paid for me. Now I don’t know what will happen.”
    Bosch leaned closer to him.
    “You mean your father paid for both stores.”
    “Yes.”
    Li’s eyes were cast down. He rubbed his palms on his pants again.
    “The double payment-one oh eight times two-was to cover both stores.”
    “That’s right. Last week.”
    Li nodded and Bosch thought he saw tears welling in his eyes. Harry knew the next question was the most important one.
    “What happened this week?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But you have an idea, right, Robert?”
    He nodded again.
    “Both stores are losing money. We expanded at the wrong time-right before the downturn. The banks get the government bailout but not us. We could lose everything. I told him…I told my father we couldn’t keep paying. I told him we were paying for nothing and we were going to lose the stores if we didn’t stop.”
    “Did he say he would stop making the payments”
    “He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. I thought that meant he was going to keep on paying until we were out of business. It was adding up. Eight hundred dollars a month is a lot in a business like this. My old man, he thought if he found other ways…”
    His voice trailed off.
    “Other ways of what, Robert?”
    “Other ways of saving money. He became obsessed with catching shoplifters. He thought if he stopped the losses he’d make a difference. He was from a different time. He didn’t get it.”
    Bosch leaned back in his chair and looked over at Chu. They had broken through and gotten Li to open up. It would now be Chu’s turn to move in with specific questions relating to the triad.
    “Robert, you have been very helpful,” Chu said. “I want to ask you a few questions in regard to the man in the photo.”
    “I was telling the truth. I don’t know who he is. I never saw him before in my life.”
    “Okay, but did your father ever talk about him when, you know, you were discussing the payments?”
    “He never used his name. He just said he would be upset if we stopped the payments.”
    “Did he ever mention the name of the group he paid? The triad”
    Li shook his head.
    “No, he never-wait, yes, he did once. It was something about a knife. Like the name came from a kind of knife or something. But I don’t remember it.”
    “Are you sure? That could help us narrow it.”
    Li frowned and shook his head again.
    “I’ll try to remember it. I can’t right now.”
    “Okay, Robert.”
    Chu continued the interview but his questions were too specific and Li continually answered that he didn’t know. All that was okay with Bosch. They had made a big breakthrough. He saw the case coming together with a stronger focus now.
    After a while Chu finished up and passed the baton back to Bosch.
    “Okay, Robert,” Harry said. “Do you think the man or men your father was paying will now come to you for the money?”
    The question prompted a deep frown from Li.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Do you want protection from the LAPD?”
    “I don’t know that either.”
    “Well, you have our numbers. If someone shows up, cooperate. Promise him the money if you have to.”
    “I don’t have the money!”
    “That’s the point. Promise him the money but say it will take you a day to get it. Then call us. We’ll take it from there.”
    “What if he just takes it out of the cash registers? You told me yesterday that the cash drawer was empty in my father’s store?.”
    “If he does that, let him and then you call us. We’ll get him when he comes back the next time.”
    Li nodded and Bosch could see he had thoroughly spooked the young man.
    “Robert, do you have a gun in the store”
    It was a test. They had already checked gun records. Only the gun in the other store was registered.
    “No, my father had the gun. He was in the bad area.”
    “Good. Don’t bring a gun into this. If the guy shows up, just cooperate.”
    “Okay.”
    “By the way, why did your father buy that gun? He had been there for almost thirty years and then six months ago he buys the gun.”
    “The last time he was robbed, they hurt him. Two gangbangers. They