9 Dragons

even looking for her.”
    “I told you before, I don’t want the police. The people who have her will see the police coming a mile away. But they won’t see me.”
    “This isn’t L.A., Harry. You don’t know your way like you do there.”
    “I’ll find my way and you’ll help me.”
    There was a long silence before she responded. Bosch was almost back to the PAB.
    “Harry, you have to promise me you’ll get her back.”
    “I will, Eleanor,” he responded without hesitation. “I promise you. I’m going to get her back.”
    He walked into the main lobby, holding his jacket open so the badge on his belt could be seen at the fancy new reception counter.
    “I gotta go up an elevator now,” he said. “I’ll probably lose the connection.”
    “Okay, Harry.”
    But he stopped outside the elevator alcove.
    “I just thought of something,” he said. “Was one of the friends you talked to named He?”
    “He”
    “Yeah,
H-E
. Maddie said it means ‘river.’ She told me that was the name of one of the friends she hangs out with in the mall.”
    “When was this?”
    “You mean when did she tell me? Just a few days ago. Must’ve been Thursday for you. Thursday morning when she was walking to school. I was talking to her and brought up the smoking you mentioned. She-”
    Eleanor interrupted by making some kind of sound of disgust.
    “What?” Bosch asked.
    “That was why she’s treated me like shit lately,” she said. “You ratted me out.”
    “No, it wasn’t like that. I sent her a photo I knew would bait her into calling me and the smoking would come up. It worked. And when I told her that she better not be smoking, she mentioned He. She said sometimes at the mall He’s older brother hangs out to watch over her, and he’s the one that smokes.”
    “I don’t know any of her friends named He, or her brother. I guess that shows how out of touch I am with my own daughter.”
    “Listen, Eleanor, at a time like this we’re both going to be second-guessing everything we ever did or said to her. But it’s a distraction from what we need to be focusing on now. Okay? Don’t get distracted by what you did or didn’t do. Let’s focus on getting her back.”
    “Okay. I’ll go back to her friends that I do know. I’ll find out about He and her brother.”
    “Find out if the brother’s got any connection to a triad.”
    “I’ll try.”
    “I’ve gotta go, but one more thing. Did you find out about that other thing yet?”
    Bosch nodded to a couple other RHD detectives who walked by on the way to the elevator. They were from Open-Unsolved, which had its own squad room, and didn’t appear to look at him like they knew what was going on. This was good, Bosch thought. Maybe Gandle was keeping it under wraps.
    “You mean the gun?” Eleanor asked.
    “Yeah, that.”
    “Harry, it’s not even dawn here. I’ll get on that when I am not calling people in their beds.”
    “Right, okay.”
    “I will call people about He, though. Right now.”
    “Okay, good. Let’s call each other if we get something.”
    “Good-bye, Harry.”
    Bosch closed his phone and went into the alcove. The other detectives were gone and he caught the next elevator. On the way up alone he looked at the phone in his hand and thought about it being the predawn hours in Hong Kong. It had been daylight on the video message that had been sent to him. That meant that his daughter could have been abducted as long as twelve hours ago.
    There had not been a second message. He pushed the speed dial for her and once again the call went directly to the message. He ended the call and put the phone away.
    “She’s alive,” he said to himself. “She’s alive.”
    He managed to get to his cubicle in RHD without drawing any attention. There was no sign of Ferras or Chu. Bosch pulled an address book out of a drawer and opened it to a page where he listed airlines that flew LAX to Hong Kong. He knew there were choices in airlines but not a lot of play on time. All the flights would leave between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. and they would land early Sunday morning. Between the fourteen-plus-hour flight and fifteen-hour time difference, all of Saturday would evaporate during the journey.
    Bosch first called Cathay Pacific and was able to book a window seat on the first flight out. It would land at 5:25 Sunday morning.
    “Harry?”
    Bosch swiveled in his seat and saw Gandle standing in the entrance to the cubicle. Bosch signaled him to stand by