Kowloon when it rotated toward the harbor, you would see it backwards. Then in the reflection it would be corrected. That has to be it.”
She tapped the O-N on the photo print.
“Yeah, but where? I don’t see it anywhere.”
“Let me see.”
He handed her the binoculars. She spoke as she looked.
“It’s normally lit up but they probably turn it off a couple hours before dawn to save energy. A lot of the signs are out right now.”
She lowered the binoculars and looked at her watch.
“We’ll be able to see it in about fifteen minutes.”
Bosch took the binoculars back and started searching for the sign again.
“I feel like I’m wasting time.”
“Don’t worry. The sun’s coming up.”
Thwarted in his efforts, Bosch reluctantly lowered the binoculars and for the next ten minutes watched the light creep over the mountains and into the basin.
The dawn came up pink and gray. The harbor was already busy as workboats and ferries crisscrossed paths in what looked like some kind of natural choreography. Bosch saw a low-lying mist clinging to the towers in Central and Wan Chai and across the harbor in Kowloon. He smelled smoke.
“It smells like L.A. after the riots,” he said. “Like the city’s on fire.”
“It is in a way,” Eleanor said. “We’re halfway through Yue Laan.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“The Hungry Ghost festival. It began last week. It’s set to the Chinese calendar. It is said that on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month the gates of hell open and all the evil ghosts stalk the world. Believers burn offerings to appease their ancestors and ward off the evil spirits.”
“What kind of offerings?”
“Mostly paper money and papier-maché facsimiles of things like plasma screens and houses and cars. Things the spirits supposedly need on the other side. Sometimes people burn the real things, too.”
She laughed and then continued.
“I once saw somebody burning an air conditioner. Sending an air conditioner to an ancestor in hell, I guess.”
Bosch remembered his daughter talking about this once. She said she had seen someone burning an entire car.
Bosch gazed down on the city and realized what he had taken as morning mist was actually smoke from the fires, hanging in the air like the ghosts themselves.
“Looks like there’s a lot of believers out there.”
“Yes, there are.”
Bosch raised his gaze to Kowloon and brought up the binoculars. Sunlight was finally hitting the buildings along the harborside. He panned back and forth, always keeping the goalposts on top of the Bank of China in his field of vision. Finally, he found the Canon sign Eleanor had mentioned. It sat atop a glass-and-aluminum-skinned building that was throwing sharp reflections of light in all directions.
“I see the sign,” he said, without looking away.
He estimated the building that the sign was on at twelve floors. The sign sat atop an iron framework that added at least another floor to its height. He moved the binoculars back and forth, hoping to see something else. But nothing grabbed at him.
“Let me see again,” Eleanor said.
Bosch handed over the binoculars and she quickly zeroed in on the Canon sign.
“Got it,” she said. “And I can see that the Peninsula Hotel is across the street and within two blocks of it. It’s one of the helicopter-pad locations.”
Bosch followed her line of sight across the harbor. It took him a moment to find the sign. It was now catching the sun full-on. He was beginning to feel the sluggishness of the long flight breaking off. Adrenaline was kicking in.
He saw a wide road cutting north into Kowloon next to the building with the sign on top.
“What road is that?” he asked.
Eleanor kept her eyes at the binoculars.
“It’s got to be Nathan Road,” she said. “It’s a major north-south channel. Goes from the harbor up into the New Territories.”
“The triads are there?”
“Absolutely.”
Bosch turned back to look out toward Nathan Road and Kowloon.
“Nine Dragons,” he whispered to himself.
“What?” Eleanor asked.
“I said, that’s where she is.”
25
Bosch and his daughter usually took the funicular tram up and back down from the Peak. It reminded Bosch of a sleek and greatly extended version of Angels Flight back in L.A., and at the bottom his daughter liked to visit a small park near the courthouse where she could hang a Tibetan prayer flag. Often the small, colorful flags were strung like laundry on clotheslines across the park. She had told Bosch that hanging a flag was better than lighting a candle in a church because the flag was outside and its good intentions would be carried