at the third counter and waved Eleanor and Bosch over.
“Here.”
Bosch took in the man behind the counter. He looked like he had been there for forty years. His bell-shaped body seemed form-fitted to the stool he sat on. He was smoking a cigarette attached to a four-inch holder made of carved bone. He didn’t like getting smoke in his eyes.
“Do you speak English” Bosch asked.
“Yes, I have English,” the man said tiredly.
“Good. We want a room on the four-the fifteenth floor.”
“All of you? One room”
“Yes, one room.”
“No, you can’t one room. Only two persons.”
Bosch realized that he meant the maximum occupancy of each room was two people.
“Then give me two rooms on fifteen.”
“You do.”
The deskman slid a clipboard across the counter. There was a pen attached with a string and under the clip a thin stack of registration forms. Bosch quickly scribbled his name and address and slid the board back across the counter.
“ID, passport,” the deskman said.
Bosch pulled his passport and the man checked it. He wrote the number down on a piece of scratch paper and handed it back.
“How much?” Bosch asked.
“How long you stay?”
“Ten minutes.”
The deskman moved his eyes over all three of them as he considered what Bosch’s answer meant.
“Come on,” Bosch said impatiently. “How much?”
He reached into his pocket for his cash.
“Two hundred American.”
“I don’t have American. I have Hong Kong dollars.”
“Two room, one thousand five hundred.”
Sun stepped forward and put his hand down over Bosch’s money.
“No, too much.”
He started speaking quickly and authoritatively to the deskman, refusing to let him take advantage of Bosch. But Harry didn’t care. He cared about momentum, not the money. He peeled fifteen hundred off his roll and threw it on the desk.
“Keys,” he demanded.
The deskman disengaged from Sun and swiveled around to the double row of cubbyholes behind him. As he selected two keys from the slots, Bosch looked at Sun and shrugged.
But when the deskman turned back and Bosch put out his hand, he withheld the keys.
“Key deposit one thousand.”
Bosch realized he should never have flashed his roll. He quickly pulled it again, this time holding it below the counter, and peeled off two more bills. He slapped them down on the counter. When the man on the stool finally offered the keys, Harry grabbed them out of his hand and started back to the elevator.
The room keys were old-fashioned brass keys attached to red plastic diamond-shaped fobs with Chinese symbols on them and room numbers. They had been given rooms 1503 and 1504. Along the way back to the alcove, Bosch handed one of the keys to Sun.
“You’re with him or me,” he said to Eleanor.
The line for the elevator had gotten longer. It was now more than thirty men deep and the overhead video showed that the guards were putting eight to ten people on each time, depending on the size of the travelers. The longest fifteen minutes of Bosch’s life were spent waiting to go up. Eleanor tried to calm his growing impatience and anxiety by engaging in conversation.
“When we get up there, what’s the plan?”
Bosch shook his head.
“No plan. We play it like it lays.”
“That’s it? What are we going to do, just knock on doors?”
Bosch shook his head and held up the photo of the reflection again.
“No, we’ll know what room it is. There is one window in this room. One window per room. We know from this that our window is the seventh down on the side that fronts Nathan Road. When we get up there, we hit the seventh room from the end.”
“Hit?”
“I’m not knocking, Eleanor.”
The line moved forward and it was finally their turn. The security guard checked Bosch’s key and passed him and Eleanor toward the elevator door, but then put his arm out behind them and stopped Sun. The elevator was at capacity.
“Harry, wait,” Eleanor said. “Let’s take the next one.”
Bosch pushed onto the elevator and turned around. He looked at Eleanor and then at Sun.
“You wait if you want. I’m not waiting.”
Eleanor hesitated for a moment and then stepped onto the elevator next to Bosch. She called out something in Chinese to Sun as the door closed.
Bosch stared up at the digital floor indicator.
“What did you say to him?”
“That we’d be waiting on fifteen for him.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter to him. He tried to compose himself and slow his breathing. He was readying himself for what he might find or be confronted with on fifteen.
The elevator moved slowly. It stunk of body odor