9 Dragons

message say? Do you give your name on it?”
    “No, no name. I use the robot.”
    That was good. A generic outgoing message. The caller was probably hoping to pick up a name or a voice or some other sort of intel.
    “Okay, send him back a text. Say, no talking on phones or text because it’s not safe. Say you want to meet in person.”
    “That’s it? They ask what the problem is. I don’t answer”
    “No, not yet. String it along. The longer we keep this going, the more time we give Maddie. You see?”
    Sun nodded once.
    “Yes, I see.”
    He typed in the message Bosch had suggested and sent it.
    “Now we wait again,” he said.
    Bosch didn’t need the reminder. But something told him the wait would not be long. The deke was working and they had someone on the other end of the text on the hook. He had no sooner come to this conclusion than another text came in on Sun’s phone.
    “He wants to meet,” Sun said, looking at the screen. “Five o’clock at Geo.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A restaurant at the Gold Coast. Very famous. It will be very crowded on a Sunday afternoon.”
    “How far is the Gold Coast?”
    “Almost an hour’s drive from here.”
    Bosch had to consider that the person they were dealing with was playing them, sending them an hour out of the way. He checked his watch. It had been almost an hour since he had talked to Chu. Before committing to the Gold Coast meeting, he first needed to check on what Chu had come up with. As Sun started the car and headed out of the park, Bosch called Chu’s number again.
    “Detective Chu.”
    “It’s Bosch. It’s been an hour.”
    “Not quite but I’m still waiting. I made the call and haven’t heard back.”
    “Did you talk to somebody?”
    “Uh, no, I left a message with my guy over there. I guess because it’s so late he might not be-”
    “It’s not late, Chu! It’s late there, not here. Did you make the call or not”
    “Harry, please, I made the call. I just got mixed up. It’s late here, it’s Sunday over there. I think maybe because it’s
Sunday,
he isn’t as tied to his phone as he normally is. But I made the call and I will call you as soon as I have something.”
    “Yeah, well, it might be too late by then.”
    Bosch closed the phone. He was sorry he had trusted Chu in the first place.
    “Nothing,” he said to Sun.
    They got to the Gold Coast in forty-five minutes. It was a resort on the western edge of the New Territories that catered to travelers from the mainland as well as Hong Kong and the rest of the world. A tall, gleaming hotel rose above Castle Peak Bay and open-air restaurants crowded the promenade that edged the harbor.
    The Geo was wisely chosen by the text contact. It was sandwiched between two similar open-air restaurants and all three were heavily crowded. An arts and crafts show on the promenade doubled the number of people in the area and the places from which an observer could hide from view. It would make identifying someone who didn’t want to be identified extremely hard to do.
    In accordance with the plan Bosch and Sun hatched on the drive, Bosch was dropped at the entrance to the Gold Coast. The two men synchronized their watches and then Sun drove on. As he walked through the hotel, Bosch stopped in the gift shop and bought sunglasses and a baseball-style hat with the hotel’s golden emblem on it. He also bought a map and a throwaway camera.
    By ten of five, Bosch had made his way to the entrance of a restaurant called Yellow Flower, which was next to and afforded a full view of the seating area of Geo. The plan was simple. They wanted to identify the owner of the phone number Bosch had found in his daughter’s contact list and follow him when he left Geo.
    Yellow Flower, Geo and a third restaurant on the other side, Big Sur, were crowded with tables under white canopies. The sea breeze kept the patrons cool and the canopies aloft. As he waited to be seated, Bosch alternately checked his watch and surveyed the crowded restaurants.
    There were several large parties, whole families joined together for a Sunday afternoon meal. These tables were easy for him to discount in looking for the cell phone contact because Bosch didn’t expect their man to be part of a large party. But even so, he quickly realized how daunting the task of spotting the contact would be. Just because the supposed meeting was set for Geo did not mean the person they were looking for was in the restaurant. He could be in