9 Dragons

always be their bond. But he had believed there would be more.
    Now all of that was gone and it was because of the choices he had made. Whether it was because of his case or his momentary lapse in flashing his money didn’t really matter. All roads led back to him and he wasn’t sure how he was going to live with it.
    He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.
    “Sun Yee, I’m sorry…I loved her, too.”
    Sun didn’t respond for a long time and when he spoke, he brought Bosch out of the downward spiral and back into focus.
    “We must find your daughter now. For Eleanor we will do this.”
    Bosch straightened up and nodded. He then leaned forward and pulled the briefcase onto his lap.
    “Pull over when you can. You have to look at this stuff.”
    Sun made several turns and put several blocks between them and Chungking Mansions before pulling to a stop against the curb. They were across the street from a ramshackle market that was crowded with westerners.
    “What’s this place” Bosch asked.
    “This is the jade market. Very famous for westerners. You will not be noticed here.”
    Bosch nodded. He opened the briefcase and handed Sun the unruly stack of hotel registration forms. There were at least fifty of them. Most had been filled out in Chinese and were unreadable to Bosch.
    “What do I look for” Sun asked.
    “Date and room number. Friday was the eleventh. We want that and room fifteen fourteen. It’s got to be in that stack.”
    Sun started reading. Bosch watched for a moment and then looked out the window at the jade market. Through the open entry points he saw rows and rows of stalls, old men and women selling their wares under a flimsy roof of plywood and tenting. It was crowded with customers coming and going.
    Bosch thought of the jade monkeys on red twine that he had found in his daughter’s room. She had been here. He wondered if she had come this far from home on her own or with friends, maybe with He and Quick.
    Outside one of the entrances an old woman was selling incense sticks and had a bucket fire going. On a folding table next to her were rows of papier-mâché items for sale to be burned. Bosch saw a row of tigers and wondered why a dead ancestor would need a tiger.
    “Here,” Sun said.
    He held a registration form up for Bosch to read.
    “What’s it say?”
    “Tuen Mun. We go there.”
    It sounded to Bosch like he had said
Tin Moon
.
    “What’s Tin Moon?”
    “
Tuen Mun
. It is in the New Territories. This man lives there.”
    “What’s his name”
    “Peng Qingcai.”
    Qingcai,
Bosch thought. An easy jump to an Americanized name to use with girls at the mall might be Quick. Maybe Peng Qingcai was He’s older brother, the boy Madeline had left the mall with on Friday.
    “Does the registration have his age or birth date?”
    “No, no age.”
    It was a long shot. Bosch had not put his birth date down when he had rented the rooms, and the deskman had only taken his passport number, none of the other particulars of identity.
    “The address is there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you find it?”
    “Yes, I know this place.”
    “Good. Let’s go. How long?”
    “It is long time in the car. We go north and then west. It will take one hour or more. The train would be faster.”
    Time was at a premium but Bosch knew the car gave them autonomy.
    “No,” he said. “Once we find her we’ll need the car.”
    Sun nodded his agreement and pulled the car away from the curb. Once they were on their way, Bosch shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeve to take a better look at the knife wound on his arm. It was a two-inch slash on the upper inside of his forearm. Blood was finally clotting in the wound.
    Sun looked over at it quickly and then back at the road.
    “Who did this to you?”
    “The man behind the counter.”
    Sun nodded.
    “He set us up, Sun Yee. He saw my money and set us up. I was so stupid.”
    “It was a mistake.”
    He had certainly backed off his angry accusation in the stairwell. But Bosch wasn’t backing off his own assessment. He had gotten Eleanor killed.
    “Yeah, but I wasn’t the one who paid for it,” he said.
    Bosch pulled the switchblade out of the jacket pocket and reached to the backseat for the blanket. He cut a long strip off the blanket and wrapped it around his arm, tucking the end underneath. He made sure it wasn’t too tight but that it would keep blood from running down his arm.
    He rolled his shirtsleeve back down. It was