The Black Echo

south toward Interstate 10. He had already connected with the 5 and was heading into Orange County when the dispatcher got back to him.
    The phone number belonged to a business called the Tan Phu Pagoda in Westminster. Bosch looked over at Eleanor, who looked away.
    “Little Saigon,” he said.

    ***

    Bosch and Wish got to the Tan Phu Pagoda from Binh’s business in an hour. The pagoda was a shopping plaza on Bolsa Avenue where no sign was printed in English. The building was off-white stucco with glass fronts on the half-dozen shops that lined the parking lot. Each was a small establishment that sold mostly unneeded junk like electronic equipment or T-shirts. There were competing Vietnamese restaurants on either end. Next to one of the restaurants was a glass door that led to an office or business without a front display window. Though neither Bosch nor Wish could decipher the words on the door, they immediately figured it was the entrance to the shopping center office.
    “We need to get in there and confirm that’s Tran’s place, see if he’s there and if there are other exits,” Bosch said.
    “We don’t even know what he looks like,” Wish reminded him.
    He thought a moment. If Tran wasn’t using his real name, it would tip him off to go in asking for him.
    “I’ve got an idea,” Wish said. “Find a pay phone. Then I’ll go in the office. You dial the number you got off the tape and when I’m in there I’ll see if it rings. If I hear a phone we have the right place. I’ll also try to scope out Tran and the exits.”
    “Phones might be ringing in there every ten seconds,” Bosch said. “It might be a boiler room or a sweatshop. How will you know it’s me?”
    She was silent a moment.
    “Chances are they don’t speak English, or at least not well,” she said. “So you ask whoever answers to speak English or get someone who can. When you get someone who understands, say something that will get a reaction I’ll be able to see.”
    “You mean if the phone rings in a place where you will see.”
    She shrugged, her eyes showing him she was tired of his shooting down every suggestion she made. “Look, it’s the only thing we can do. Come on, there’s a phone, we don’t have a lot of time.”
    He drove out of the parking lot and a quarter block down to a pay phone out front of a liquor store. Wish walked back to the Tan Phu Pagoda and Bosch watched until she reached the door of the office. He dropped a quarter in the phone and dialed the number he had written on his pad in front of Binh’s. The line was busy. He looked back at the office door. Wish was gone from view. He dropped the quarter and dialed again. Busy. He did it in quick succession two more times before he got a ring. He was thinking that he had probably dialed the wrong number, when the call was answered.
    “Tan Phu,” a male voice said. Young, Asian, probably early twenties, Bosch thought. Not Tran.
    “Tan Phu?” Bosch asked.
    “Yes, please.”
    Bosch could not think of what to do. He whistled into the phone. The comeback was a staccato verbal attack of which Bosch could not understand a single word or sound. Then the phone at the other end was slammed down. Bosch walked back to the car and drove back toward the shopping plaza and into the narrow parking lot. He was cruising through it slowly when Wish appeared at the glass door with a man. An Asian. Like Binh, he had gray hair and had the aura; unspoken power, unflexed muscle. He held the door open for Eleanor and nodded to her as she said thanks. He watched her walk off and then disappeared inside again.
    “Harry,” she said as she got in the car, “what did you say to the guy on the phone?”
    “Not a word. So it was that office?”
    “Yeah. I think that was our Mr. Tran who held the door for me. Nice guy.”
    “So what did you do to become such great pals?”
    “I told him I was a real estate lady. When I went in I asked to see the boss. Then Mr. Gray Hair came out of a back office. He said his name was Jimmie Bok. I said I represented Japanese investors and asked if he was interested in taking an offer on the shopping center. He said no. He said, in very fine English, ‘I buy, I don’t sell.’ Then he escorted me out. But I think that was Tran. Something about him.”
    “Yeah, I saw it,” Bosch said. Then he picked up the radio and asked dispatch to run the name Jimmie Bok on the NCIC and DMV computers.
    Eleanor described the inside of the office. A