The Black Echo

central reception area, a hallway running behind it with four doors, including one at the rear that looked like an exit, judging by the double lock. No women. At least four men other than Bok. Two of them looked like hired muscle. They stood up from the reception room couch when Bok walked out of the middle door in the hallway.
    Bosch drove out of the lot and around the block. He cut up the alley that ran behind the shopping plaza. He stopped when he had driven far enough to see a gold stretch Mercedes parked next to a rear door to the complex. There was a double lock on the door.
    “That’s got to be his wheels,” Wish said.
    They decided they would watch the car. Bosch drove on by it to the end of the alley and parked behind a Dumpster. Then he realized it was full of garbage from the restaurant. He backed out and drove out of the alley completely. He parked on the side street so that by looking out the passenger side of the car, they both could see the rear end of the Mercedes. Bosch could also look at Eleanor at the same time.
    “So, I guess we wait,” she said.
    “Guess so. No way of telling whether he’ll do anything after Binh’s warning. Maybe he did something after Binh got ripped off last year and we’re just spinning our wheels.”
    Bosch got a radio callback from the dispatcher: Jimmie Bok had a clean driving record. He lived in Beverly Hills and he had no criminal record. Nothing else.
    “I’m going back to the phone,” Eleanor announced. Bosch looked at her. “I have to check in. I’ll tell Rourke we’re set up on this guy and see if he can’t shake someone loose to maybe call some banks and run his name. To see if he is a customer. I’d also like to run him on the property computer. He said, ‘I buy, I don’t sell.’ I’d like to know what he buys.”
    “Fire a shot if you need me,” Bosch said, and she smiled as she opened the door.
    “You want something to eat?” she asked. “I’m thinking about getting take-out for lunch from one of those restaurants up front.”
    “Just coffee,” he said. He hadn’t eaten Vietnamese food in twenty years. He watched her walk around to the front of the center.
    About ten minutes after she was gone, as Bosch watched the Mercedes, he saw a car pass by the other end of the alley. He immediately made it as a police sedan. A white Ford LTD without wheel covers, just the cheap hubcaps that revealed the matching white wheels. It had been too far away for him to see who was in it. He alternately looked at the Mercedes and then at the rearview mirror to see if the LTD was coming around the block. But in five minutes, he never saw it.
    Wish was back ten minutes after that. She was carrying a grease-stained brown bag from which she pulled one coffee and two goldfish cartons. Steamed rice and crab boh, she said. He passed on her offer and rolled his window down. He sipped the coffee she handed to him and grimaced.
    “Tastes like it was made in Saigon and shipped over,” he said. “Did you get Rourke?”
    “Yeah. He’s going to get somebody to check Bok out and page me if they come up with anything. He wants to know, on a radio patch-through, the minute the Mercedes starts moving.”
    Two hours passed easily as they small-talked and watched the gold Mercedes. Eventually Bosch announced that he was going to break camp and drive around the block just to change the pace. What he didn’t say was that he was bored and his butt was falling asleep and that he wanted to look for the white LTD.
    “Do you think maybe we should call to see if he’s still there, and then hang up if he gets on?” she said.
    “If Binh gave him the warning, a call like that might shake him up, make him think something is going on, make him more cautious.”
    He drove the car up to the corner and along the front of the shopping plaza. Nothing unusual caught his eye. He went around the block and parked in the same spot again. He had not seen the LTD.
    As soon as they were back in position, Wish’s pager sounded and she got out to go to the phone again. Bosch concentrated on the gold Mercedes and forgot about the LTD for the time being. But after Eleanor was gone twenty minutes he began to get nervous. It was after 3P.M. and Bok/Tran had not left as they expected he would. Something didn’t seem right. But what? Bosch looked up at the front corner of the shopping center, studying it and waiting for Eleanor to make the turn around the stucco siding. He heard a sound, like a