Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor was something completely different from its counterpart in South L.A. This store was at least five times bigger and it was brimming with the high-end touches that befit its neighborhood.
There was a do-it-yourself coffee bar. The wine aisles had overhead signs displaying varietals and world regions of wine, and there were no gallon jugs stacked at the end. The cold cases were well lighted with open shelves instead of glass doors. There were aisles of specialty foods and hot and cold counters where customers could order fresh steaks and fish or precooked meals of roast chicken, meatloaf and barbecued ribs. The son had taken his father’s business and advanced it several levels. Bosch was impressed.
There were two checkout stations and Chu asked one of the women behind them where Robert Li was. The detectives were directed to a set of double doors that led to a stockroom with ten-foot-high shelves against all the walls. To the far left was a door marked OFFICE. Bosch knocked and Robert Li promptly answered the door.
He looked surprised to see them.
“Detectives, come in,” he said. “I am so sorry about not getting downtown today. My assistant manager called in sick and I can’t leave the place without a supervisor. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Bosch said. “We’re only trying to find your father’s killer.”
Bosch wanted to put the kid on the defensive. Interviewing him in his own surroundings put him at an advantage. Bosch wanted to bring some discomfort to the situation. If Li was on the defensive he’d be more forthcoming and willing to try to please his interviewers.
“Well, I am sorry. I thought all I needed to do was sign my statement, anyway.”
“We have your statement but it’s a little more involved than signing papers, Mr. Li. It’s an ongoing investigation. Things change. More information comes in.”
“All I can do is apologize. Have a seat, please. I’m sorry the space is so tight in here.”
The office was narrow and Bosch could tell it was a shared office. There were two desks side by side against the right wall. Two desk chairs and two folding chairs, probably for sales representatives and job interviews.
Li picked up the phone on his desk, dialed a number and told someone he was not to be disturbed. He then made an open-hands gesture, signaling he was ready to go.
“First of all, I’m a little surprised that you are working today,” Bosch said. “Your father was murdered yesterday.”
Li nodded solemnly.
“I am afraid that I have been given no time to grieve for my father. I must run the business or there will be no business to run.”
Bosch nodded and signaled to Chu to take over. He had typed up Li’s statement. As he went over it with Li, Bosch looked around the office. On the wall over the desks were framed licenses from the state, Li’s 2004 diploma from the business school at the University of Southern California and an honorable-mention certificate for best new store of 2007 from the American Grocers Association. There were also framed photos of Li with Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of the Dodgers, and a teenage Li standing at the steps of the Tian Tan Buddha in Hong Kong. Just as he had recognized Lasorda, Bosch recognized the one-hundred-foot-high bronze sculpture known as the Big Buddha. He had once journeyed with his daughter to Lantau Island to see it.
Bosch reached across and straightened the cockeyed frame of the USC diploma. In doing so he noticed that Li had graduated from the school with honors. He thought for a moment about Robert going off to the university and getting the opportunity to take his father’s business and turn it into something bigger and better. Meantime, his older sister dropped out of school, came home and made the beds.
Li asked for no changes to his statement and signed the bottom of each page. When he was finished he looked up at a wall clock hung over the door and Bosch could tell he thought they were done.
But they weren’t. Now it was Bosch’s turn. He opened his briefcase and removed a file. From it he took the photo print of the bagman who had collected money from Li’s father. Bosch handed it to Li.
“Tell me about this guy,” he said.
Li held the printout in both hands and knitted his eyebrows as he looked at it. Bosch knew that people did this to show they were earnestly concentrating, but it usually was a cover for something else. Bosch knew that he had probably taken a call in the last hour from his mother and had known that he might be shown the printout. However Li responded, Bosch knew he would not be truthful.
“I can’t tell you anything,” Li said after a few seconds. “I don’t recognize him. I’ve never seen him.”
He handed the printout back to Bosch but Harry didn’t take it.
“But you know who he is, don’t you.”
It wasn’t really said as a question.
“No, actually, I don’t,” Li said, mild annoyance in his voice.
Bosch smiled at him but it was one of those that carried no warmth or humor.
“Mr. Li, did your mother call you and tell you we would be showing you that picture?”
“No.”
“We can check the phones, you know.”
“So what if she did? She didn’t know who it was and neither do I.”
“You want us to find the person who killed your father, right?”
“Of course! What kind of question is that?”
“It’s the kind of question I ask when I know somebody is holding something back from me and that 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.”
“Wh
at 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 up. Eight hundred dollars a month is a lot in a business like this. My old man, he thought if he found other ways…”
His voice trailed off.
“Other ways of what, Robert?”
“Other ways of saving money. He became obsessed with catching shoplifters. He thought if he stopped the losses he’d make a difference. He was from a different time. He didn’t get it.”
Bosch leaned back in his chair and looked over at Chu. They had broken through and gotten Li to open up. It would now be Chu’s turn to move in with specific questions relating to the triad.
“Robert, you have been very helpful,” Chu said. “I want to ask you a few questions in regard to the man in the photo.”
“I was telling the truth. I don’t know who he is. I never saw him before in my life.”
“Okay, but did your father ever talk about him when, you know, you were discussing the payments?”
“He never used his name. He just said he would be upset if we stopped the payments.”
“Did he ever mention the name of the group he paid? The triad?”
Li shook his head.
“No, he never—wait, yes, he did once. It was something about a knife. Like the name came from a kind of knife or something. But I don’t remember it.”
“Are you sure? That could help us narrow it.”
Li frowned and shook his head again.
“I’ll try to remember it. I can’t right now.”
“Okay, Robert.”
Chu continued the interview but his questions were too specific and Li continually answered that he didn’t know. All that was okay with Bosch. They had made a big breakthrough. He saw the case coming together with a stronger focus now.
After a while Chu finished up and passed the baton back to Bosch.
“Okay, Robert,” Harry said. “Do you think the man or men your father was paying will now come to you for the money?”
The question prompted a deep frown from Li.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you want protection from the LAPD?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Well, you have our numbers. If someone shows up, cooperate. Promise him the money if you have to.”
“I don’t have the money!”
“That’s the point. Promise him the money but say it will take you a day to get it. Then call us. We’ll take it from there.”
“What if he just takes it out of the cash registers? You told me yesterday that the cash drawer was empty in my father’s store.”
“If he does that, let him and then you call us. We’ll get him when he comes back the next time.”
Li nodded and Bosch could see he had thoroughly spooked the young man.
“Robert, do you have a gun in the store?”
It was a test. They had already checked gun records. Only the gun in the other store was registered.
“No, my father had the gun. He was in the bad area.”
“Good. Don’t bring a gun into this. If the guy shows up, just cooperate.”
“Okay.”
“By the way, why did your father buy that gun? He had been there for almost thirty years and then six months ago he buys the gun.”
“The last time he was robbed, they hurt him. Two gangbangers. They hit him with a bottle. I told him if he wouldn’t sell the store, then he had to get a gun. But it didn’t do him any good.”
“They usually don’t.”
The detectives thanked Li and left him in his office, a twenty-six-year-old who somehow seemed a couple decades older now. As they walked through the store Bosch checked his watch and saw it was now after one. He was starving and wanted to grab something before heading to the medical examiner’s office for the autopsy at two. He stopped in front of the hot case and zeroed in on the meatloaf. He pulled a service number out of the dispenser. When he offered to buy Chu a slice, he said he was a vegetarian.
Bosch shook his head.
“What?” Chu asked.
“I don’t think we could make it as partners, Chu,” Bosch said. “I don’t trust a guy who doesn’t eat a hot dog every once in a while.”
“I eat tofu hot dogs.”
Bosch cringed.
“They don’t count.”
He then saw Robert Li approaching them.
“I forgot to ask. When will my father’s body be released to us?”
“Probably tomorrow,” Bosch said. “The autopsy is today.”
Li looked crestfallen.
“My father was a very spiritual man. Do they have to desecrate his body?”
Bosch nodded.
“It’s a law. There’s an autopsy after any homicide.”
“When will they do it?”
“In about an hour.”
Li nodded in acceptance.
“Please don’t tell my mother this was done. Will they call me when I can have his body?”
“I’ll make sure they do.”
Li thanked them and headed back to his office. Bosch heard his number called by the man behind the counter.
9
On the way back downtown Chu informed Bosch that after fourteen years on the job he had yet to witness an autopsy and didn’t care to change course. He said he wanted to get back to the AGU office to continue efforts to identify the triad bagman. Bosch dropped him off and then headed over to the county coroner’s office on Mission Road. By the time he checked in, gowned up and got into suite 3, the autopsy of John Li was well under way. The coroner’s office performed six thousand autopsies a year. The autopsy suites were tightly scheduled and managed and the medical examiners didn’t wait for late-arriving cops. A good one could knock off a surgical autopsy in an hour.
All of this was fine with Bosch. He was interested in the findings of the autopsy, not the process.
John Li’s body was lying naked and violated on the cold stainless-steel autopsy table. The chest had been opened and the vital organs removed. Dr. Sharon Laksmi was working at a nearby table where she was putting tissue samples on slides.
“Afternoon, Doctor,” Bosch said.
Laksmi turned from her work and glanced back at him. Because of the mask and hair cap Bosch was wearing, she could not readily identify him. Long gone were the days when the detectives could just walk
in and watch. County health regs required the full protection package.
“Bosch or Ferras?”
“Bosch.”
“You’re late. I started without you.”
Laksmi was small and dark. What was most noticeable about her was that her eyes were heavily made-up behind the plastic shield of her mask. It was as if she realized that her eyes were the only feature people saw behind all the safety garb she wore most of the time. She spoke with a slight accent. But who didn’t in L.A.? Even the outgoing chief of police sounded like he was from South Boston.
“Yes, sorry. I was with the victim’s son and it ran kind of long.”
He didn’t mention the meatloaf sandwich that had cost him some time as well.
“Here’s what you are probably looking for.”
She tapped the blade of her scalpel on one of four steel specimen cups lined up to her left on the counter. Bosch stepped over and looked down into them. Each held one piece of evidence extracted from the body. He saw three deformed bullets and a single bullet casing.
“You found a casing? Was it on the body?”
“In it, actually.”
“In the body?”
“That’s right. Lodged in the esophagus.”
Bosch thought of what he had discovered while looking at the crime scene pictures. Blood on the victim’s fingers, chin and lips. But not on his teeth. He had been right about his hunch.
“It appears you are looking for a very sadistic killer, Detective Bosch.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because either he shoved a casing down your victim’s throat or the ejected casing somehow landed in his mouth. Since the latter would be a million-to-one shot, I would go with the former.”
Bosch nodded. Not because he subscribed to what she was saying. But because he was thinking of a scenario Dr. Laksmi hadn’t considered. He thought he now had a bead on what had happened behind the counter at Fortune Liquors. One of the ejected casings from the shooter’s gun had landed on or near John Li as he lay dying on the floor behind the counter. Either he saw the shooter collecting the casings or knew they might be valuable evidence in the investigation of his own murder. With his last moment Li had grabbed the casing and tried to swallow it, to keep it from the shooter.