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 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 reassur—"
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 button. 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 Pagoda in Westminster. Bosch looked over at Eleanor, who looked away.
"Little Saigon," he said.
Bosch and Wish got to the Tan Phu Pagoda from Binh's business in an hour. The pagoda was a shopping plaza on Bolsa Avenue where no sign was printed in English. The building was off-white stucco with glass 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 glass 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?"