9 Dragons

fresh in the morning. Besides, he was knee-deep in the forensic analysis of the financial aspects of the case, trying to determine how bad business had gotten for John Li and how badly he might have been entrenched with the triad.
    Bosch agreed and closed the phone. He had expected his partner to decline the invitation. His fear of the streets was becoming more and more evident and Bosch was just about out of time, waiting for him to come around. But Ferras seemed to go out of his way to find work that could be done inside the squad room. Paperwork, computer runs and financial backgrounding had become his specialties. Oftentimes Bosch had to recruit other detectives to go outside the building with him, even for simple assignments like interviewing witnesses. Bosch had done his best to give Ferras time to recover, but the situation had reached a point where he had to consider the victims who were not getting what they should get. It was hard to conduct a relentless investigation when your partner was tethered to a desk chair.
    Garfield was a main north-south corridor and he got a full view of the city’s commercial district as he headed south. Monterey Park could easily pass for a neighborhood in Hong Kong. The neon, the colors, the shops and the language on the signs were geared toward a Chinese-speaking populace. The only thing missing were the towers rising high above. Hong Kong was a vertical city. Monterey Park was not.
    He turned left on Garvey and pulled his phone to call Chu.
    “Okay, I’m on Garvey. Where are you?”
    “Come down and you’ll see the big supermarket on the south side. We’re in the lot. You’ll pass the club on the north side before you get here.”
    “Got it.”
    He closed the phone and kept driving, his eyes scanning the neon on the left side. Soon he saw the red
88
glowing above the door of a small club with no other demarcation on it. Seeing the numeral rather than hearing the spoken number from Chu prompted a realization. It was not the address of the place. It was a benediction. Bosch knew from his daughter and his many visits to Hong Kong that 8 was a lucky number in Chinese culture. The numeral symbolized -infinity-the infinity of luck or love or money or whatever it was you wanted in life. Apparently, the members of Brave Knife were hoping for double infinity by putting
88
over their door.
    As he drove by he could see light behind the front plate-glass window. The slatted blinds were turned open slightly and Bosch could see about ten men either sitting or standing around a table. Harry kept going and three blocks later pulled into the parking lot of the Big Lau Super Market. He saw a government-model Crown Victoria at the far end of the lot. It looked too new to be LAPD and he figured Chu was riding with the MPPD. He pulled into the space next to it.
    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