her left shoulder but she immediately shrugged it off. She would take no comfort from him. She roughly zipped the backpack closed and left the room with it. Bosch was left to look about the room by himself.
Keepsakes from trips to L.A. and other places were on every horizontal surface. Posters from movies and music groups covered the walls. A stand in the corner had several hats, masks and strings of beads hanging on it. Numerous stuffed animals from earlier years were crowded against the pillows on the bed. Bosch couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow invading his daughter’s privacy by being in the room uninvited by her.
On a small desk was an open laptop computer, its screen dark. Bosch stepped over and tapped the space bar and after a few moments the screen came alive. His daughter’s screen saver was a photograph taken on her last trip to L.A. It showed a group of surfers in a line, floating on their boards and waiting for the next set of waves. Bosch remembered that they had driven out to Malibu to eat breakfast at a place called Marmalade and afterward had watched the surfers at a nearby beach.
Harry noticed a small box made of carved bone next to the computer’s mouse. It reminded Bosch of the carved handle of the knife he had found in Chang’s suitcase. It looked like something you would keep important things in, like money. He opened it and found that it contained only a small string of carved jade monkeys-see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil-on red twine. Bosch took it out of the box and held it up to see it better. It was no more than two inches long and there was a small silver ring on the end so that it could be attached to something.
“You ready?”
Bosch turned. Eleanor was in the doorway.
“I’m ready. What is this, an earring?”
Eleanor stepped closer to see it.
“No, the kids hook those things on their phones. You can buy them at the jade market in Kowloon. So many of them have the same phones, they dress them up to be different.”
Bosch nodded as he put the jade string back in the bone box.
“Are they expensive?”
“No, that’s cheap jade. They cost about a dollar American and the kids change them all the time. Let’s go.”
Bosch took a last look around his daughter’s private domain and on the way out grabbed a pillow and a folded blanket off the bed. Eleanor looked back and saw what he was doing.
“She might be tired and want to sleep,” Bosch explained.
They left the apartment and in the elevator Bosch held the blanket and pillow under one arm and one of the backpacks in the other. He could smell his daughter’s shampoo on the pillow.
“You have the passports” Bosch asked.
“Yes, I have them,” Eleanor said.
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
He acted like he was studying the pattern of ponies on the blanket he was holding.
“How far can you trust Sun Yee? I’m not sure we should be with him after we get the gun.”
Eleanor answered without hesitation.
“I told you, you don’t have to worry about him. I trust him all the way and he’s staying with us. He’s staying with me.”
Bosch nodded. Eleanor looked up at the digital display that showed the floors clicking by.
“I trust him completely,” she added. “And Maddie does, too.”
“How does Maddie even-”
He stopped. He suddenly understood what she was saying. Sun was the man Madeline had told him about. He and Eleanor were together.
“You get it now?” she asked.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “But are you sure Madeline trusts him?”
“Yes, I’m sure. If she told you otherwise, then she was just trying to get your sympathy. She’s a girl, Harry. She knows how to manipulate. Yes, her life has been…disrupted a bit by my relationship with Sun Yee. But he has shown her nothing but kindness and respect. She’ll get over it. That is, once we get her back.”
Sun Yee had the car waiting in the drop-off circle at the front of the building. Harry and Eleanor put the backpacks in the trunk but Bosch took the pillow and blanket with him into the backseat. Sun pulled out and they went the rest of the way down Stubbs Road into Happy Valley and then over to Wan Chai.
Bosch tried to put the conversation from the elevator out of his mind. It wasn’t important at the moment because it wouldn’t help him get his