9 Dragons

prayer above a coin basket. Bosch was able to avoid her and reached into his pocket at the same time.
    Eleanor quickly put her hand on his arm.
    “No. They say any money you give them is taken by the triads at the end of the day.”
    Bosch didn’t question it. He stayed focused on what was ahead of him. They walked another two blocks and then Bosch saw and heard another piece of the puzzle drop into place. Across the street was an entrance to the Mass Transit Railway. A glass enclosure leading to the escalators down to the underground subway.
    “Wait,” Bosch said, stopping. “We’re close.”
    “What is it?” Eleanor asked.
    “The MTR. You could hear it on the video.”
    As if on cue the growing whoosh of escaping air rose as a train came into the underground station. It sounded like a wave. Bosch looked down at the photo in his hand and then up at the buildings surrounding him.
    “Let’s cross.”
    “Can we just wait a minute for Sun Yee? I can’t tell him where to meet us if we keep moving.”
    “Once we’re across.”
    They hurried across the street on a flashing pedestrian signal. Bosch noticed several ragtag women begging for coins near the MTR entrance. More people were coming up out of the station than were going down. Kowloon was getting more and more crowded. The air was thick with humidity and Bosch could feel his shirt sticking to his back.
    Bosch turned around and looked up. They were in an area of older construction. It was almost like having walked through first class to economy on a plane. The buildings on this block and heading further in were shorter-in the twenty-story range-and in poorer condition than those in the blocks closer to the harbor. Harry noticed many open windows and many individual air-conditioning boxes hanging from windows. He could feel the reservoir of adrenaline inside open up.
    “Okay, this is it. She’s in one of these buildings.”
    He started moving down the block to get away from the crowding and loud conversations surrounding the MTR entrance. He kept his eyes on the upper levels of the buildings surrounding him. He was in a concrete canyon and somewhere up there in one of the crevices was his missing daughter.
    “Harry, stop! I just told Sun Yee to meet us at the MTR entrance.”
    “You wait for him. I’ll be just down here.”
    “No, I’m coming with you.”
    Halfway down the block, Bosch stopped and referred to the photo again. But there was no final clue that helped him. He knew he was close but he had reached a point where he needed help or it would be a guessing game. He was surrounded by thousands of rooms and windows. It was beginning to dawn on him that the final part of his search was impossible. He had traveled more than seven thousand miles to find his daughter and he was about as helpless as the ragtag women begging coins from the pavement.
    “Let me see the photo,” Eleanor said.
    Bosch handed it to her.
    “There’s nothing else,” he said. “All these buildings look the same.”
    “Let me just look.”
    She took her time and Bosch watched her regress two decades to the time she was an FBI agent. Her eyes narrowed and she analyzed the photo as an agent, not as the mother of a missing girl.
    “Okay,” she said. “There’s got to be something here.”
    “I thought it would be the air conditioners but they’re on every building around here.”
    Eleanor nodded but kept her eyes on the photo. Just then Sun came up, his face flushed from the exertion of trying to track a moving target. Eleanor said nothing to him but slightly moved her arm to share the photo with him. They had reached a point in their relationship where words weren’t necessary.
    Bosch turned and looked down the corridor of Nathan Road. Whether it was a conscious move or not, he didn’t want to see what he no longer had. From behind he heard Eleanor say, “Wait a minute. There’s a pattern here.”
    Bosch turned back.
    “What do you mean?”
    “We can do this, Harry. There’s a pattern that will lead us right to that room.”
    Bosch felt a ghost run down his spine. He moved in close to Eleanor so he could see the photo.
    “Show it to me,” he said, urgency fueling each word.
    Eleanor pointed to the photo and ran her fingernail along a line of air conditioners reflected in the window.
    “Not every window has an air-conditioning unit in the building we are looking for. Some, like this room, have open windows. So there is a pattern. We only have part of it