another misstep. He was having a hard time with Chu. He found himself unable to trust him, even though he carried the same badge.
“I would also like to get a print of the tattoo as well,” Chu said.
“What tattoo?” Bosch asked.
Chu took the remote from Bosch and tapped the rewind button. He eventually froze the picture at the moment the man was reaching his left hand out to take the cash from Mr. Li. Chu used his finger to trace a barely visible outline on the inside of the man’s arm. Chu was right. It was a tattoo, but the marking was so light on the grainy image that Bosch had completely missed it.
“What is that” he asked.
“It looks like the outline of a knife. A self-administered tattoo.”
“He’s been in prison.”
Chu pushed the button to make prints of the image.
“No, usually these are done on the boat. On the way across the ocean.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“Knife is kim. There are at least three triads that have a presence here in Southern California. Yee Kim, Sai Kim and Yung Kim. These mean Righteous Knife, Western Knife and Brave Knife. They are offshoots of a Hong Kong triad called Fourteen K. Very strong and powerful.”
“Over here or there?”
“Both places.”
“Fourteen K? Like fourteen-karat gold”
“No, fourteen is a bad-luck number. It sounds like the Chinese word for death. K is for kill.”
Bosch knew from his daughter and his frequent visits to Hong Kong that any permutation of the number 4 was considered bad luck. His daughter lived with his ex-wife in a condominium tower where there were no floors marked with the numeral 4. The fourth floor was marked P for parking and the fourteenth was skipped in the way the thirteenth floor was skipped in most western buildings. The floors in the building that were actually the fourteenth and twenty-fourth contained the residences of English speakers who did not hold the same superstitions as the Han-the Chinese people.
Bosch gestured to the screen.
“So you think this guy could be in one of the Fourteen K spinoffs?” he asked.
“Perhaps yes,” Chu said. “I will begin to make inquiries just as soon as you leave.”
Bosch looked at Chu and tried to read him again. He believed he understood the message. Chu wanted Bosch out of there so he could go to work. Harry stepped over to the DVD player, ejected the disc, and took it.
“Stay in touch, Chu,” he said.
“I will,” Chu responded curtly.
“As soon as you get something, you give it to me.”
“I understand, Detective. Perfectly.”
“Good, and I’ll see you at ten with Mrs. Li and her son.”
Bosch opened the door and left the tiny room.
7
Ferras had the cash register from Fortune Liquors on his desk and had run a wire from its side into the side of his laptop. Bosch put the photo printouts down on his desk and looked across at his partner.
“What’s happening?”
“I went over to forensics. They were through with this. No prints other than the victim’s. I’m just getting into the memory now. I can tell you the take for the day up until the murder was under two hundred bucks. The victim would have had a hard time making a payment of two hundred sixteen dollars, if that’s what you think happened.”
“Well, I’ve got some stuff on that to tell you. Anything else from forensics?”
“Not much. They’re still processing every-oh, the GSR on the widow came back negative. But I guess we were expecting that.”
Bosch nodded. Since Mrs. Li had discovered her husband’s body, it was routine to test her hands and arms for gunshot residue to determine if she had recently discharged a firearm. As expected, the test came back negative for GSR. Bosch was pretty sure she could now be scratched from the list of potential suspects, even though she was barely on it in the first place.
“How deep is the memory on that thing?” Bosch asked.
“It looks like it goes back a whole year. I ran some averages. The gross income on that place was slightly less than three thousand a week. You figure in overhead and cost of goods, insurance and stuff like that, and this guy was lucky if he was clearing fifty a year for himself. That ain’t no way to make a living. Probably more dangerous down there doing what he did than being a cop on those streets.”
“Yesterday the son said business was down lately.”
“Looking at this, I don’t see where it was ever up.”
“It’s a cash business. He