The Black Echo Part 26

"Mr. Binh, we've got your package," Bosch said. "We know all about you. We know what you were in Saigon, what you did. We know what you took with you when you came here. I don't know what you are into now-it all looks legit, but we don't really care. What we do care about is who ripped off that bank. And they ripped it off because of you. They took the collateral for all this and everything else you've got. Now, I don't think we are telling you something that you probably haven't figured out or thought about on your own. In fact, you might have even thought your old partner Nguyen Tran was behind it because he knew what you had and maybe where it was. Not a bad guess, but we don't think so. In fact, we think he is next on the list."

Not a crack formed on the stone that was Binh's face.

"Mr. Binh, we want to talk to Tran," Bosch said. "Where is he?"

Binh looked down through the coffee table in front of him to the three-headed dragon on the rug beneath it. He put his hands together on his lap, shook his head and said, "Who is this Tran?"

Eleanor glared at Bosch and tried to salvage what rapport she had had with the man before he b.u.t.ted in.

"Captain Binh, we're not interested in taking any action against you. We simply want to stop another vault break-in before it happens. Can you help us, please?"

Binh didn't answer. He looked down at his hands.

"Look, Binh, I don't know what you've got going on this," Bosch said. "You might have people out there trying to find the same people we are, I don't know. But I'm telling you right now, you are out of it. So tell us where Tran is."

"I don't know this man."

"We are your only hope. We have to get to Tran. The people that ripped you off, they are in the tunnels again. Right now. If we don't get to Tran this weekend, there won't be anything left for you or him."

Binh remained a stone, as Bosch expected. Eleanor stood up.

"Think about it, Mr. Binh," she said.

"We're running out of time, and so is your old partner," Bosch said as they headed for the door.

After walking through the showroom door Bosch looked both ways for traffic and ran across Vermont to the car. Eleanor walked it, anger making her strides stiff and jerky. Bosch got in and reached to the floor behind the front seat for the Nagra. He turned it on and set the recording speed at its fastest level. He didn't think the wait would be long. He hoped all the electronic equipment in the store would not skew the reception. Eleanor got in the pa.s.senger side and started to complain.

"That was magnificent," she said. "We'll never get anything out of that guy now. He's just going to call up Tran and-what the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Something I picked up from the shooflies. They dropped a bug in my phone. Oldest trick in the IAD book."

"And you just put it in . . ." She pointed across the street and Bosch nodded.

"Bosch, do you realize what could happen to us, what this means? I'm going back in there and getting-"

She opened the car door but he reached across and pulled it closed.

"You don't want to do that. This is our only way to get to Tran. Binh wasn't going to tell us, no matter how we handled the interview, and deep down behind those angry eyes you know it. So it's this or nothing. Binh warns Tran and we never know where he is, or we use this to maybe find him. Maybe. We'll probably know soon enough"

Eleanor looked straight forward and shook her head.

"Bosch, this could mean our jobs. How could you do this without consulting me?"

"For that reason. It could mean my my job. You didn't know." job. You didn't know."

"I'd never prove it. The whole thing looks like a setup. I keep him occupied while you do your little charade on the phone."

"It was a setup, only you didn't know. Besides, Binh and Tran are not the targets of our investigation. We are not gathering evidence against them, just from them. This will never go in a report. And if he finds the bug, he can't prove I put it there. There was no register number. I looked. The suits weren't stupid enough to make it traceable. We're clear. You're clear. Don't worry."

"Harry, that is hardly rea.s.sur-"

The red light on the Nagra flicked on. Someone was using Binh's phone. Bosch checked to make sure the tape was rolling.

"Eleanor, you make the call," Bosch said, holding the recorder up on the palm of his hand. "Turn it off if you want. Your choice."

She turned and looked at the recorder, then at Bosch. Just then the dialing stopped and it was silent in the car. A phone began to ring at the other end of Binh's call. She turned away. Someone answered the phone. A few words were exchanged in Vietnamese and then more silence.

Then a new voice was on the line and a conversation began, also in Vietnamese. Bosch could tell one of the voices belonged to Binh. The other sounded like a man about Binh's age. It was Binh and Tran, together again. Eleanor shook her head and forced a short laugh.

"Brilliant, Harry, now who do we get to translate? We aren't letting anyone else know about this. We can't risk it."

"I don't want to translate it." He turned the receiver off and rewound the tape. "Get out your little pad and pen."

Bosch adjusted the recorder to its slowest speed and hit the play b.u.t.ton. When the dialing started, it was slow enough that Bosch could count the clicks. Bosch called the numbers out to Eleanor, who wrote them down. They had the number Binh had dialed.

The phone number was a 714 area code. Orange County. Bosch switched the receiver on; the telephone conversation between Binh and the unknown man was continuing. He turned it off and picked up the radio microphone. He gave a dispatcher the phone number and asked for the name and address that went with it. It would take a few minutes while someone looked it up in a reverse directory. Meantime, Bosch started the car and headed 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 PaG.o.da in Westminster. Bosch looked over at Eleanor, who looked away.

"Little Saigon," he said.

Bosch and Wish got to the Tan Phu PaG.o.da from Binh's business in an hour. The paG.o.da was a shopping plaza on Bolsa Avenue where no sign was printed in English. The building was off-white stucco with gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 PaG.o.da 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 gla.s.s 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 j.a.panese 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 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 pa.s.senger 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 takeout 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.t 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 3 P.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 m.u.f.fled impact. Two or three of them. Shots? He thought of Eleanor, and his heart was pushed by a fist up into his throat. Or had the sound been car doors closing? He looked at the Mercedes but could only see the trunk and taillights. He saw no one around the car. Back at the front corner; no Eleanor. Then back at the Mercedes, and he saw the brake lights go on. Bok was leaving. Bosch started the car and drove up to the corner, his rear tires spitting gravel as he gunned it forward. At the corner he saw Eleanor walking along the sidewalk toward him. He honked the horn and signaled for her to hurry. Eleanor trotted to the car and was just getting in when the Mercedes appeared in Bosch's rearview mirror and turned out of the alley toward them.

"Get down," he said and pulled Eleanor down on the seat.

The Mercedes floated by and turned onto Bolsa. He released his grip on her neck. "What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?" she demanded as she came up.

Bosch pointed at the Mercedes, which was heading away. "They were coming by. You would've been made because you went in the office today. What took you so long?"

"They had to track down Rourke. He wasn't in his office."

Harry pulled out and started following the Mercedes from a distance of about two blocks. After a long moment composing herself, Eleanor said, "Is he by himself?"

"I don't know. I didn't see him get in. I was looking up at the corner for you. I think I heard more than one car door close. I'm sure I did."

"But you don't know if Tran was one of them who got in?"

"Right. Don't know. But it's getting late. I figure it's gotta be him."

Bosch realized then that he might have fallen for the oldest ruse in the surveillance book. Bok, or Tran, or whoever he was, could have simply sent one of his minions in the hundred-thousand-dollar car to draw away the tail.

"What do you think, go back?" he said.

Wish didn't answer until he looked over at her. "No," she said. "Go with what we got. Don't second-guess yourself. You're right about the time. A lot of banks close at five before a holiday weekend. He had to get going. He was warned by Binh. I think it's him."

Bosch felt better. The Mercedes turned west and then north again on the Golden State Freeway toward Los Angeles. The traffic crept slowly into downtown, and then the gold car went west on the Santa Monica Freeway, exiting on Robertson at twenty minutes before five. They were heading into Beverly Hills. Wilshire Boulevard was lined with banks from downtown to the ocean. As the Mercedes turned west, Bosch felt they had to be close. Tran would keep his treasure at a bank near his home, he thought. The gamble had been right. He relaxed a bit and finally got around to asking Eleanor what Rourke had said when she called in.

"He confirmed through the Orange County clerk's office that Jimmie Bok is Nguyen Tran. They had a fict.i.tious name filing. He changed his name nine years ago. We should've checked Orange County. I forgot about Little Saigon.

"Also," she said, "if this guy Tran had diamonds, he might have used them all up already. Property recs show he owns two more shopping centers like that one back there. In Monterey Park and Diamond Bar."

Bosch told himself it was still possible. The diamonds could be the collateral for the real estate empire. Just like with Binh. He kept his eyes on the Mercedes, only a block ahead now because rush hour was in full force and he didn't want to get cut off. He watched the black windows of the car move along the rich street, and he told himself it was heading to the diamonds.

"And I saved the best for last," Wish announced then. "Mr. Bok, also known as Mr. Tran, controls his many holdings through a corporation. The t.i.tle of said corporation, according to the records check by Special Agent Rourke, is none other than Diamond Holdings, Incorporated."

They pa.s.sed Rodeo Drive and were in the heart of the commercial district. The buildings lining Wilshire took on more stateliness, as if they knew they had more money and cla.s.s in them. Traffic slowed to a crawl in some areas, and Bosch got as close as two car lengths behind the Mercedes, not wanting to lose the car on a missed light. They were almost to Santa Monica Boulevard and Bosch was beginning to figure they were headed to Century City. Bosch looked at his watch. It was four-fifty. "If this guy is going to a bank in Century City, I don't think he's going to make it."

Just then the Mercedes made a right turn into a parking garage. Bosch slowed to the curb and without saying a word Wish jumped out and walked into the garage. Bosch took the next right and went around the block. Cars were pouring out of office parking lots and garages, cutting in front of him again and again. When he finally got around, Eleanor was standing at the curb at the same spot where she had jumped out. He pulled up and she leaned into the window.

"Park it," she said, and she pointed across the street and down half a block. There was a rounded structure that was built out to the street from the first floor of a high-rise office building. The walls of the semicircle were gla.s.s. And inside this huge gla.s.s room Bosch saw the polished steel door of a vault. A sign outside the building said Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. He looked at Eleanor and she was smiling.

"Was Tran in the car?" he asked.

"Of course. You don't make mistakes like that."

He smiled back. Then he saw a s.p.a.ce open up at a meter just ahead. He drove up and parked.