“Good morning, Detective Bosch. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
Bosch turned. It was Chu, arriving with his briefcase.
“Nice hours you guys get to keep over here,” Bosch replied.
“Yeah, we like to keep it light.”
Bosch stepped back so Chu could open the door with a card key.
“Come on in.”
Chu led the way to a small squad room with about a dozen desks and a lieutenant’s office on the right. Chu went behind one of the desks and put his briefcase down on the floor.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “I was already planning to come by RHD at ten when Mrs. Li comes in.”
Chu started to sit down but Bosch stayed standing.
“I got something I want to show you. Do you guys have an AV room here?”
“Yeah, this way.”
The AGU had four interview rooms at the back of the squad room. One had been converted to an AV room with the standard rolling tower of television stacked on top of DVD. But Bosch saw that the stack also had an image printer and that was something they didn’t have yet in the new RHD squad room.
Bosch handed Chu the DVD from Fortune Liquors and he set it up. Bosch took the remote and fast-forwarded the playback to 3 P.M. on the time stamp.
“I wanted you to take a look at this guy who comes in,” he said.
Chu watched silently as the Asian man entered the store, bought a beer and a carton of cigarettes and got the big return on his investment.
“Is that it” he asked after the customer left the store.
“That’s it.”
“Can we play it again”
“Sure.”
Bosch replayed the two-minute episode, then froze the playback as the customer turned from the counter to leave. He then played with it, making slight advances on the playback, until he froze it on the best possible view of the man’s face as he turned from the counter.
“Know him?” Bosch asked.
“No, of course not.”
“What did you see there?”
“Obviously, a payoff of some kind. He got much more back than he gave.”
“Yeah, two hundred sixteen on top of his own twenty. We counted it.”
Bosch saw Chu’s eyebrows rise.
“What’s it mean?” Bosch asked.
“Well, it probably means he’s triad,” Chu said matter-of-factly.
Bosch nodded. He had never investigated a triad murder before but he was aware that the so-called secret societies of China had long ago jumped the Pacific and now operated in most major American cities. Los Angeles, with its large Chinese population, was one of the strongholds, along with San Francisco, New York and Houston.
“What makes you say he’s a triad guy?”
“You said the payoff was two hundred sixteen dollars, correct?”
“That’s right. Li gave the guy his own money back. He also gave him ten twenties, a ten, a five and a one. What’s it mean?”
“The triad extortion business relies on weekly payments from small shop owners seeking protection. The payment is usually one hundred eight dollars. Of course, two sixteen is a multiple of that. A double payment.”
“Why one oh eight? They charge tax on top of the tax? They send the extra eight bucks to the state or something?”
Chu did not register the sarcasm in Bosch’s voice and answered as if lecturing a child.
“No, Detective, the number has nothing to do with that at all. Let me give you a brief history lesson that hopefully will give you some understanding.”
“By all means,” Bosch said.
“The creation of the triads goes back to the seventeenth century in China. There were one hundred thirteen monks in the Shaolin monastery. Buddhist monks. Manchu invaders attacked and killed all but five of the monks. Those remaining five monks created the secret societies with the goal of overthrowing the invaders. The triads were born. But over the centuries, they changed. They dropped politics and patriotism and became criminal organizations. Much like the Italian and Russian mafias, they engage in extortion and protection rackets. To honor the ghosts of the slaughtered monks, the extortion amounts are usually a multiple of one hundred eight.”
“There were five remaining monks, not three,” Bosch said. “Why are they called triads?”
“Because each monk started his own triad. Tian di hui. It means ‘heaven and earth society.’ Each group had a flag in the shape of a triangle symbolizing the relationship between heaven, earth and man. From that they became known as the triads.”
“Great, and they brought it over here.”
“It’s been here a very long time. But they didn’t bring it over. Americans brought it over. It came with Chinese labor brought to build railroads.”
“And they victimize their own people.”
“For the most part, yes. But Mr. Li was religious. Did you see the Buddhist shrine in the storage room yesterday?”
“I missed that.”
“It was there and I talked to his wife about it. Mr. Li was very spiritual. He believed in ghosts. To him, paying the triad might have been like making an offering to a ghost. To an ancestor. You see, you are an outsider looking in, Detective Bosch. If all you knew from day one was that part of your money went to the triad just as simply as money goes to the IRS, then you would not view yourself as a victim. It was simply a given, a part of life.”
“But the IRS doesn’t put three slugs in your chest when you don’t pay.”
“Do you believe that Li was murdered by this man or the triad?”
Pointing at the man on the screen, Chu was almost indignant in asking the question.
“I believe it is the best lead we have at the moment,” Bosch countered.
“What about the lead we developed through Mrs. Li? The gangbanger who threatened her husband on Saturday.”
Bosch shook his head.
“Things don’t match up there. I still want her to look at the books and ID the kid but I think we are spinning our wheels there.”
“I don’t understand. He said he would come back and kill Mr. Li.”
“No, he said he would come back and blow his head off. Mr. Li was shot in the chest. It wasn’t a crime of rage, Detective Chu. It doesn’t fit. But don’t worry, we’ll run it down, even if it’s a waste of time.”
He waited for Chu to respond but the younger detective didn’t. Bosch pointed to the time stamp on the screen.
“Li was killed at the same time on the same day of the week. We have to assume that Li made regular payoffs. We have to assume that this man was there when Li was killed. I think that makes him the better suspect.”
The interview room was very small and they had left the door open. Bosch now stepped over and closed it, then looked back at Chu.
“So tell me you didn’t have any idea about this yesterday.”
“No, of course not.”
“Mrs. Li didn’t say anything about making payments to the local triad”
Chu stiffened. He was much smaller than Bosch but his posture suggested he was ready for a fight.
“Bosch, what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that this is your world and you should have told me. I found this by accident. Li kept that disc because there’s a shoplifter on it. Not because of the payoff.”
They were now facing each other less than two feet apart.
“Well, there was nothing before me yesterday that even suggested this,” Chu said. “I was called out there to translate. You didn’t ask me my opinion about anything else. You deliberately shut me out, Bosch. Maybe if you had included me, I would have seen or heard something.”
“That’s bullshit. You’re not trained as a detective to stand there with your thumb in your mouth. You don’t need an invite to ask a question.”