Read Online Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly - Free Book Online Page A

it—”
    “What? How dare you!”
    “—could be very useful to my investigation.”
    “I am holding nothing back! I don’t know this man. I don’t know his name and I have never seen him before! That is the goddamn truth!”
    Li’s face grew flushed. Bosch waited a moment and then spoke calmly.
    “You might be telling the truth. You might not know his name and maybe you’ve never seen him before. But you know who he is, Robert. You know your father was making payoffs. Maybe you are, too. If you think there is any danger involved in talking to us, then we can protect you.”
    “Absolutely,” Chu chimed in.
    Li shook his head and smiled like he couldn’t believe the situation he had found himself in. He started breathing heavily.
    “My father just died—he was killed. Can’t you leave me alone? Why am I being badgered? I’m a victim here, too.”
    “I wish we could leave you alone, Robert,” Bosch said. “But if we don’t find the party responsible, there’s nobody else who will. You don’t want that, do you?”
    Li seemed to compose himself and shook his head.
    “Look,” Bosch continued. “We have a signed statement here. Nothing you tell us now has to go beyond this room. No one will ever know what you tell us.”
    Bosch reached over and ticked the printout with his finger. Li was still holding it.
    “Whoever killed your father took the disc out of the recorder in the back but left the old discs. This guy was on it. He took a payment from your father at the same time and on the same day a week before the murder. Your father gave him two hundred sixteen dollars as a payoff. The guy is triad and I think you know it. You have to help us out here, Robert. There’s nobody else who can.”
    Bosch waited. Li put the printout on the desk and rubbed his sweating palms down the thighs of his blue jeans.
    “Okay, yes, my father paid the triad,” he said.
    Bosch breathed slowly. They had just made a big step. He wanted to keep Li talking.
    “For how long?” he asked.
    “I don’t know, all his life—all my life, I guess. It was just something he always did. To him, it was part of being Chinese. You paid.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Thank you, Robert, for telling us this. Now, yesterday you told us that with the economy and everything, things were not going so well at the store. Do you know, was your father behind on his payments?”
    “I don’t know, maybe. He didn’t tell me. We didn’t see eye to eye on that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I didn’t think he should pay. I told him a million times. This is America, Pop, you don’t have to pay them.”
    “But he still paid.”
    “Yeah, every week. He was just old school.”
    “So you don’t pay here?”
    Li shook his head but his eyes darted to the side a moment. An easy giveaway.
    “You do pay, don’t you?”
    “No.”
    “Robert, we need the—”
    “I don’t pay, because he paid for me. Now I don’t know what will happen.”
    Bosch leaned closer to him.
    “You mean your father paid for both stores.”
    “Yes.”
    Li’s eyes were cast down. He rubbed his palms on his pants again.
    “The double payment—one oh eight times two—was to cover both stores.”
    “That’s right. Last week.”
    Li nodded and Bosch thought he saw tears welling in his eyes. Harry knew the next question was the most important one.
    “What happened this week?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But you have an idea, right, Robert?”
    He nodded again.
    “Both stores are losing money. We expanded at the wrong time—right before the downturn. The banks get the government bailout but not us. We could lose everything. I told him…I told my father we couldn’t keep paying. I told him we were paying for nothing and we were going to lose the stores if we didn’t stop.”
    “Did he say he would stop making the payments?”
    “He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. I thought that meant he was going to keep on paying until we were out of business. It was adding