Bosch thought about that and said, “Okay, he was probably as corrupt as everything else that went with that war.”

“I don’t suppose, coming from in-country, you know much about the system, the way things worked in Saigon?” Ernst asked.

“Why don’t you tell us about it? Sounds like that was your department. Mine was just trying to keep alive.”

Ernst ignored the shot. He chose to ignore Bosch as well. He looked only at Eleanor as he spoke.

“It operated quite simply, really,” he said. “If you dealt in substances, in flesh, gambling, anything on the black market, you were required to pay a local tariff, a tithe to the house, so to speak. That payment kept the local police away. It practically guaranteed your business would not be interrupted-within certain bounds. Your only worry then was the U.S. military police. Of course, they could be paid off as well, I suppose. There was always that rumor. Anyway, this system went on for years, from the very beginning until after the American withdrawal, until, I imagine, April 30, 1975, the day Saigon fell.”

Eleanor nodded and waited for him to go on.

“The major American military involvement lasted longer than a decade, before that there was the French. We are talking many, many years of foreign intervention.”

“Millions,” Bosch said.

“What’s that?”

“You are talking about millions of dollars in payoffs.”

“Yes, absolutely. Tens of millions when added up over the years.”

“And where does Captain Binh fit in?” Eleanor asked.

“You see,” Ernst said, “our information at the time was that the corruption within the Saigon police department was orchestrated or controlled by a triad called the Devil’s Three. You paid them or you did not do business. It was that simple.

“Coincidentally, or rather not coincidentally, the Saigon police had three captains whose domain corresponded, so to speak, quite nicely with the domain of the triad. One captain in charge of vice. One narcotics. One for patrol. Our information is that these three captains were, in fact, the triad.”

“You keep saying ‘Our information.’ Is that trade and development’s information? Where are you getting this?”

Ernst made a movement to straighten things on the top of his desk again and then stared coldly at Bosch. “Detective, you come to me for information. If you want to know where the source is, then you have made a mistake. You’ve come to the wrong person. You can believe what I tell you or not. It is of no consequence to me.”

The two men locked eyes but said nothing else.

“What happened to them?” Eleanor asked. “The members of the triad.”

Ernst pulled his eyes away from Bosch and said, “What happened is that after the United States pulled military forces in 1973 the triad’s source of revenue was largely gone. But like any responsible business entity they saw it coming and looked to replace it. And our intelligence at the time was that they shifted their position considerably. In the early seventies they moved from the role of providing protection to narcotics operations in Saigon to actually becoming part of those operations. Through political and military contacts and, of course, police enforcement they solidified themselves as the brokers for all brown heroin that came out of the highlands and was moved to the United States.”

“But it didn’t last,” Bosch said.

“Oh, no. Of course not. When Saigon fell in April 1975, they had to get out. They had made millions, an estimated fifteen to eighteen million American dollars each. It would mean nothing in the new Ho Chi Minh City and they wouldn’t be alive to enjoy it anyway. The triad had to get out or they’d face the firing squads of the North Army. And they had to get out with their money…”

“So, how’d they do it?” Bosch said.

“It was dirty money. Money that no Vietnamese police captain could or should have. I suppose they could have wired it to Zurich, but you have to remember you are dealing with the Vietnamese culture. Born of turmoil and distrust. War. These people did not even trust banks in their homeland. And besides it wasn’t money anymore.”

“What?” Eleanor said, puzzled.

“They had been converting all along. Do you know what eighteen million dollars looks like? Would probably fill a room. So they found a way to shrink it. At least, that’s what we believe.”

“Precious gems,” Bosch said.

“Diamonds,” Ernst said. “It is said eighteen million dollars’ worth of the right diamonds would easily fit in two shoe boxes.”

“And into a safe-deposit box,” Bosch said.

“That could be, but, please, I don’t want to know what I don’t need to know.”

“Binh was one of the captains,” Bosch said. “Who were the other two?”

“I am told one of them was named Van Nguyen. And he is believed to be dead. He never left Vietnam. Killed by the other two, or maybe the North Army. But he never got out. That was confirmed by our agents in Ho Chi Minh after the fall. The other two did. They came here. And both had passes, arranged through connections and money, I suppose. I can’t help you there… There was Binh, who it seems you have found, and the other was Nguyen Tran. He came with Binh. Where they went and what they did here, I can’t help you with. It’s been fifteen years. Once they came across they were no longer our concern.”

“Why would you allow them to come across?”

“Who says we did? You have to realize, Detective Bosch, that much of this information was put together after the fact.”

Ernst stood up then. That was all the information he would decompartmentalize for today.

Bosch didn’t want to go back up to the bureau. The information from Ernst was amphetamine in his blood. He wanted to walk. He wanted to talk, to storm. When they got in the elevator he pushed the button for the lobby and told Eleanor they were going outside. The bureau was like a fishbowl. He wanted a big room.

In any investigation, it had always seemed to Bosch, information would come slowly, like sand dropping steadily through the cinched middle of an hourglass. At some point, there was more information in the bottom of the glass. And then the sand in the top seemed to drop faster, until it was cascading through the hole. They were at that point with Meadows, the bank burglary, the whole thing. Things were coming together.

They went out through the front lobby and onto the green lawn where there were eight U.S. flags and a California state flag flapping lazily on poles posted in a semicircle. There were no protestors on this day. The air was warm and unseasonably humid.

“Do we have to walk out here?” Eleanor asked. “I would rather be upstairs, where we’d be near the phones. You could have a coffee.”

“I want to smoke.”

They walked north toward Wilshire Boulevard.

Bosch said, “It’s 1975. Saigon is about to go down the sewer. Police Captain Binh pays people to get him and his share of diamonds out. Who he pays, we don’t know. But we do know that he gets VIP treatment all the way. Most people took boats out, he flew. Four days from Saigon to the States. He is accompanied by an American civilian adviser to help smooth things. That’s Meadows. He-”

“He may have been accompanied,” she said. “You forgot the word ‘may’ there.”

“We’re not in court. I’m saying it the way I see it might’ve been, okay? Afterward, if you don’t like it, you say it your way.”

She raised her arms in a hands-off kind of way and Bosch continued.

“So, Meadows and Binh are together. Nineteen seventy-five. Meadows is working refugee security or something. See, he’s getting out of there, too. He may or may not have known Binh from his old sideline, dealing heroin. The chances are he did. He was probably, in effect, working for Binh. Now, he may or may not have known what Binh was carrying with him to the States. Chances are he at least had an idea.”