9 Dragons

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Eeeleanor
.
    “She’s gone,” Bosch said. “I’m sorry.”
    “Who did this?”
    Bosch started to get up. He spoke in a monotone.
    “Over there. Two men fired on us.”
    Sun looked into the hallway and saw the two men on the ground. Bosch saw the confusion and horror on his face. He then turned back to Eleanor again.
    “No!”
    Bosch stepped back into the hall and picked up the gun he had pulled from the man’s waistband. Without examining it, he tucked the weapon into his own pants and went back to the alcove. Sun was on his knees next to Eleanor’s body. He was holding her hand in his.
    “Sun Yee, I’m sorry. They took us by surprise.”
    He waited a moment. Sun said nothing and didn’t move.
    “I have to do something here and then we have to go. I’m sure the police are on their way.”
    He put his hand on Sun’s shoulder and pulled him back. Bosch knelt next to Eleanor and picked up her right arm. He wrapped her hand around the gun he had gotten from Sun. He fired a shot into the wall next to the elevator. He then carefully placed her arm back down on the floor, her hand still holding the gun.
    “What are you doing?” Sun demanded.
    “Gunshot residue. Is the gun clean or will it be traced back to whoever gave it to you”
    Sun didn’t respond.
    “Sun Yee, is the gun clean?”
    “It’s clean.”
    “Then let’s go. We have to take the stairs. There’s nothing we can do for Eleanor now.”
    Sun bowed his head for a moment and then slowly stood up.
    “They came from the stairs,” Bosch said, referring to the gunmen. “We’ll go that way.”
    They moved down the hall but Sun suddenly stopped to examine the two men on the floor.
    “Come on,” Bosch prompted. “We have to go.”
    Sun finally followed. They hit the stairwell door and started down.
    “They’re not triad,” Sun said.
    Bosch was two steps ahead. He stopped and looked back up at him.
    “What? How do you know”
    “They’re not Chinese. Not Chinese, not triad.”
    “Then what are they?”
    “Indonesian, Vietnamese-I think Vietnamese. Not Chinese.”
    Bosch started down again and picked up the pace. They had eleven flights of stairs to go. As he moved he thought about this piece of information from Sun and couldn’t see how it fit with what was already known.
    Sun fell behind the pace. And no wonder, Bosch thought. When he stepped off that elevator, his life irrevocably changed. That would slow anybody down.
    Soon Bosch was a whole floor ahead of him. When he got to the bottom, he opened the exit door a crack to get his bearings. He saw that the door opened onto a pedestrian alley that ran between the Chungking Mansions and the building next door. Bosch could hear traffic and sirens close by and knew the exit was very close to Nathan Road.
    The door was suddenly pushed closed. Bosch turned and Sun had one hand flat on the door. He pointed angrily at Harry with the other.
    “You! You get her killed!”
    “I know. I know, Sun Yee. It’s all on me. My case brought all of this-”
    “No, they not triad!
I told you
?.”
    Bosch stared at him for a moment, not comprehending.
    “Okay, they’re not triad. But-”
    “You show your money and they rob.”
    Bosch now understood. He was saying that the two men lying dead on the fifteenth floor with Eleanor had merely been robbers after Bosch’s money. But there was something wrong. It didn’t work. Harry shook his head.
    “They were in front of us in the line for the elevator. They didn’t see my money.”
    “They were told.”
    Bosch considered this and his thoughts turned to the man on the stool. He had wanted to pay that man a visit already. The scenario Sun had spun made the need more immediate.
    “Sun Yee, we need to get out of here. The police are going to close all the exits once they get up there and see what they have.”
    Sun dropped his hand off the door and Bosch opened it again. It was clear. They stepped out into the alley. Twenty feet to their left was where the alley opened on Nathan Road.
    “Where’s the car?”
    Sun pointed toward the opposite end of the alley.
    “I paid a man to watch it.”
    “Okay, get the car and drive around front. I’m going back inside but I’ll be out front in five minutes.”
    “What will you do”
    “You don’t want to know.”

30
    B osch walked out of the alley onto Nathan Road and immediately saw the crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the police response to the call inside the Chungking Mansions. Police and