The Black Echo

at them until Eleanor showed her badge and federal ID card.
    “You wait here,” the woman said and then disappeared through a door located behind the cash counter. There was a small mirrored window in the door that reminded Bosch of the interview room back at Wilcox. He looked at his watch. He had eight minutes.

    ***

    The man who emerged from the door behind the cash register looked to be about sixty years old. He had white hair. He was short but Bosch could tell he had once been physically powerful for his size. Built wide and low to the ground, he now was softened by an easier life than he had had in his native land. He wore silver-framed glasses with a pink tint and an open-collar shirt and golf slacks. His breast pocket sagged with the weight of almost a dozen pens and a clip-on pocket flashlight. Ngo Van Binh was low key all the way.
    “Mr. Binh? My name is Eleanor Wish. I am from the FBI. This is Detective Bosch, LAPD. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
    “Yes,” he said, the stern expression on his face unchanging.
    “It’s about the break-in at the bank where you had a safe-deposit box.”
    “I reported no loss, my deposit box had sentimental occupants only.”
    Diamonds ranked fairly high up there on the sentimental range, Bosch thought. “Mr. Binh, can we go back to your office and talk privately?” he said instead.
    “Yes, but I suffered no loss. You look. It is in the reports.”
    Eleanor held her hand out, urging Binh to lead the way. They followed him through the door with the mirror window and into a warehouselike storage room. There were hundreds of boxes of electronic appliances on steel shelves going to the ceiling. They passed through into a smaller room that was a repair or assembly shop. There was a woman sitting at a tool bench with a bowl of soup held to her mouth. She did not look up as they passed. There were two doors at the back of the shop, and the procession went through one into Binh’s office. It was here that Binh shed his peasant trappings. The office was large and plush, with a desk and two chairs to the right and a dark leather L-shaped couch to the left. The couch was at the edge of an Oriental rug that featured a three-headed dragon poised to strike. The couch faced two walls of shelves filled by books and stereo and video equipment, much finer than what Bosch had seen out front. We should have braced him at his home, Bosch thought. Seen how he lived, not how he worked.
    Bosch quickly scanned the room and saw a white telephone on the desk. It would be perfect. It was an antique, the kind where the handset was cradled above a rotary dial. Binh moved toward his desk but Bosch quickly spoke up.
    “Mr. Binh? Would it be okay if we sat over here on the couch? We’d like to keep this as informal as possible. We sit at desks all day, to tell you the truth.”
    Binh shrugged his shoulders as though it made no difference to him, that they were inconveniencing him no matter where they sat. It was a distinctly American gesture, and Bosch believed his seeming difficulty with English was a front used to better insulate him. Binh sat down on one side of the L-shaped couch and Eleanor and Bosch took the other. “Nice office,” Bosch said and looked around. He saw no other phone in the room.
    Binh nodded. He offered no tea or coffee, no small talk. He just said, “What do you want, please?”
    Bosch looked at Eleanor.
    She said, “Mr. Binh, we are just retracing our steps. You reported no financial loss in the vault break-in. We-”
    “That is right. No loss.”
    “That is correct. What did you keep in the box?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Papers and such, no value. I told this to everyone already.”
    “Yes, we know. We are sorry to bother you again. But the case remains open and we have to go back and see if we missed anything. Could you tell me in specific detail what papers you lost? It might help us, if we make a recovery of property and can identify who it belongs to.”
    Eleanor took a small notebook and pen out of her purse. Binh looked at his two visitors as if he could not possibly see how his information could help. Bosch said, “You’d be surprised sometimes what little things can-”
    His pager tone sounded and Bosch pulled the device off his belt and looked at the number display. He stood up and looked around, as if he was just noticing the room for the first time. He wondered if he was overdoing it.
    “Mr. Binh, can I use your phone?