The Stone Monkey (15 page)

She handed the amulet back to him. He replaced it and the charm dropped back against his muscular, hairless chest. The bandages from the Ghost's gunshot wound were just visible under the blue work shirt. Suddenly she was keenly aware of Sung's presence, inches away from her. She could smell disinfectant soap and harsh laundry detergent from his clothes. She felt an inexplicable comfort coming from him—this man who was virtually a stranger.

She told him, "We're leaving a patrol car outside your apartment."

"To protect
me?"

"Yes."

This amused Sung. "The public security bureau officers in China wouldn't do that—they'd only park outside your door to spy or intimidate you."

"You're not in Kansas anymore, John."

"Kansas?"

"An expression. I have to get back to Lincoln."

"To—?"

"The man I work with. Lincoln Rhyme."

She rose, felt a stab of pain in her knee.

"Wait," Sung said. He took her hand. She felt a serene power radiating from his touch. He said, "Open your mouth."

"What?" She laughed.

"Lean forward. Open your mouth."

"Why?"

"I'm a doctor. I want to look at your tongue."

Amused, she did and he examined her mouth quickly. "You have arthritis," he said, releasing her hand and sitting back.

"Chronic," she said. "How did you know that?"

"As I said, I'm a doctor. Come back and I will treat you."

She laughed. "I've been to dozens of doctors."

"Western medicine, Western doctors, they have their place. Chinese medicine is best for curing chronic pains and discomfort—problems that seem to arise for no apparent reason. There always is a reason, though. There are things I can do that will help. I'm indebted to you. You saved my life. I would be shamed if I didn't repay that."

"That was two big guys in black rubber suits."

"No, no, if not for you I would have drowned. I know that. So, please, you will come back and let me help you?"

She hesitated for a moment.

But then, as if prodding her to act, a bolt of pain shot through her knee. She gave no outward reaction to the twinge but kept a placid face as she took out her pen and gave Sung her cell phone number.

Standing on Central Park West, Sonny Li was confused.

What was with the public security bureau here? Hongse drove that fast yellow car, bang, bang, like a TV cop, and now, it seemed, the officers were hunting the Ghost from a building as luxurious as
this?
No PSB officer in China could afford such an apartment, even the most corrupt (and there were some pretty damn corrupt public security officers).

Li tossed his cigarette away, spat on the grass and then, with his head down, walked quickly across the street into the alley that led to the back of the building. Even the alley was spotless! In Li's home of Liu Guoyuan—which was richer than most towns in China—an alley like this would have been piled high with trash and discarded appliances. He paused, looked around the corner and found the back door of the building open. A young man, with perfectly trimmed blond hair, wearing dark slacks, a light shirt and a flowery tie, stepped out. He carted two green plastic trash bags with him, which he carried to a large blue metal container and tossed inside. The man glanced around the alley, picked up a few stray pieces of paper and threw those out too. He brushed his hands together then returned inside, pulling the door closed. It didn't, however, latch.

Thank you, sir.

Sonny Li slipped into the basement, smelling the powerful musty scent of the place, listening for sounds. The young man's footsteps ascended the stairs. Li waited behind a stack of large cartons for him to return but the man had apparently gone on to other chores. There were creaks from upstairs and the sound of running water. Li glanced into cardboard boxes on the floor. Some were filled with clothes, others seemed to be memorabilia. Plaques, awards, degrees from schools. University of Illy-noise, Li pronounced the English to himself. The American Institute of Forensic Science Achievement Award, a Federal Bureau of Investigation Letter of Commendation signed by the director himself. Dozens of others.

The recipient of all of these commendations was Lincoln Rhyme.

The blond man was apparently not bringing any more trash downstairs and Li left his hiding place. Up a flight of stairs, walking slowly. The wood was old and he stepped carefully to avoid creaks. He paused behind the door at the top and pushed it open slightly.

Then loud footsteps came toward him, several people, it seemed like. Li pressed himself back against the wall, beside some mops and brooms.

Voices calling: "We'll be back in a couple of hours, Linc. We'll have forensics call..." Some other things that Li couldn't understand.

The footsteps stopped and Li heard another man ask, "Hey, Lincoln, you want one of us to stay?"

Another voice, irritated, responded. "Stay? Why would I want somebody to
stay?
I want to get some
work
done. And I don't want any interruptions!"

"I'm just saying it might be better to have somebody with a weapon. The Ghost's fucking vanished. His assistant too. You said yourself to watch our backs."

"But how's he going to find
me?
How's he going to know where on God's green earth I live? I don't need anyone to baby-sit me. I need you to get me that goddamn information I wanted."

"Okay, okay."

From above: the sounds of people walking, a door opening and closing. Then silence. Sonny Li listened for a moment. He pushed the door open fully and glanced out. In front of him was a long corridor that led to the front door, the one through which the men—presumably other security bureau officers—had just left.

To Li's right was an entryway to what must have been a living room. Staying close to the baseboards to keep his footsteps quiet, Li moved through this hallway. He paused outside the living room then looked in quickly. An odd sight: the room was filled with scientific equipment, computers, tables, charts and books of all kinds. Which was the last thing one would expect to find in this fine old building.

But what was more curious was the dark-haired man sitting in a complicated red wheelchair in the middle of the room, leaning forward, looking at a computer screen, talking to himself, it seemed. Then Li realized that, no, the man was talking into a microphone near his mouth. The mike must have been sending signals to the computer, telling it what to do. The screen responded to his commands.

So, was this creature Lincoln Rhyme?

Well, it hardly mattered who he was and, besides, Li had no time to speculate. He didn't know when the other officers would return.

Lifting the gun, Sonny Li stepped into the room.

One meter forward. Another. Sonny Li was a slight man and he moved silently.

Sneaking closer to the back of the wheelchair, looking on the tabletops for any evidence or information about the Ghost. He would—

Li had no idea where the men came from.

One of them—far taller than Li—was black as coal and wearing a suit and bright yellow shirt. He'd been hiding against the wall inside the room. In a seamless motion he swept the gun from Li's hand and pressed a pistol against his temple.

Another man, short and fat, flung Li to the ground and knelt on his back, pushing the air from his lungs as sharp pain coursed through his belly and sides. Handcuffs were ratcheted on fast as an eel.

"English?" the black man asked.

Li was too shocked to answer.

"I'ma ask you once more, skel. Do. You. Speak. English?"

A Chinese man, who'd also been hiding in the room, stepped forward. He wore a stylish dark suit and had a badge dangling from a chain around his neck. He asked the same question in Chinese. It was the Cantonese dialect but Li was able to understand.

"Yes," Li responded breathlessly. "I talk English."

The man in the wheelchair spun around. "Let's see what we've caught."

The black man hauled him to his feet, nearly off the ground, ignoring Li's moans and gasps of pain. Holding him with one hand he began patting his pockets with the other. "Listen here, you little skel, I find any needles in your pockets? I find anything that's gonna poke me unpleasantly?"

"Answer the question now and tell the truth. 'Cause if I get poked, you gonna get poked too." He shook Li by the collar and shouted, "Needles?"

"You saying drug stuff? No, no."

The man pulled the cash out of his pockets, his cigarettes, ammunition, the sheet of paper he'd stolen from the beach. "Ah, looks like this boy here borrowed something he shouldn'ta from Aye-melia. An' while she was busy savin' lives, no less. Shame on him."

"That's how he found us," Lincoln Rhyme said, eyeing the sheet of paper with his card attached. "I
was
wondering."

The trim blond man appeared in the doorway. "So you got him," he said without surprise. And Li understood then that this young man had spotted him in the alley when he'd taken out the bags, and had left the door open on purpose. To draw him upstairs. And the other men had made a noisy show of departing, pretending to leave Lincoln alone.

So
you got him. ...

The man in the wheelchair noticed the disgust in Li's eyes. He said, "That's right—my observant Thorn here spotted you when he took the trash out. And then ..." He nodded at the computer screen and said, "Command, security. Back door."

On the computer screen a video image of the back door of the building and the alley popped up.

Li suddenly understood how the Coast Guard had located the
Fuzhou Dragon
floating in the endless ocean: this man. Lincoln Rhyme.

"Judges of hell," he muttered.

The fat officer laughed. "Don'tcha just hate days like this?"

Then the black man pulled Li's wallet out of his pocket. He squeezed the damp leather. "Our li'l skel here been swimming, I
de-duce."
He opened the wallet and handed it to the Chinese officer.

The fat man pulled out a radio and spoke into it. "Mel, Alan, come on back in. We got him."

Two men, probably the ones Li had heard leaving a few moments ago, returned. A balding, slight man ignored Li and walked to a computer, began to type frantically on it. The other was a man in a suit with striking red hair. He blinked in surprise and said, "Wait, that's not the Ghost."

"His missing assistant then," Rhyme said. "His
bangshou."

"No," the red-haired man said. "I know him. I've seen him before."

Li realized that there was something familiar about this man too.

"Seen him?" the black officer asked.

"Some of us from INS were at a meeting last year in the Fuzhou public security bureau—about human smuggling. He was there. He was one of them."

"One of who?" the fat officer grumbled.

The Chinese officer gave a laugh and held up an ID card from Li's wallet, comparing Li's picture with his face. "One of
us,"
he said. "He's a cop."

Rhyme too examined the card and the driver's license, both of which had pictures of the man. They gave his name as Li Kangmei, a detective with the Liu Guoyuan Public Security Bureau.

The criminalist said to Dellray, "See if any of our people in China can confirm it." A tiny cell phone appeared in the agent's large hand. And he started punching keys.

Looking over the diminutive man, Rhyme asked, "'Li' is your first or last name?"

"Last. And I not like 'Kangmei,'" he explained. "I use Sonny. Western name."

"What're you doing here?" Rhyme asked.

"Ghost, he kill three people in my town last year. He had meeting, I'm saying. Had meeting with little snakehead in restaurant. You know what is little snakehead?"

Rhyme nodded. "Go on."

"The little snakehead cheating him. Big fight. Ghost kill him but woman and her daughter also killed and old man sitting on bench. Got in way and Ghost just kill them to escape, I'm saying."

"Bystanders?"

Li nodded. "We try to arrest him but he has very powerful ..." He sought for a word. Finally he turned to Eddie Deng and said,
"Guanxi."

"That means connections," Deng explained. "You pay off the right people and you get good
guanxi."

Li nodded. "No one willing testify against him. Then evidence in shooting disappear from headquarters office. My boss lose interest. Case got collectivized."

"Collectivized?" Sellitto asked.

Li smiled grimly. "When something ruined, we say it got collectivized. In old days, Mao's day, when government turn business or farm into commune or collective, it fail pretty fuck fast."

"But," Rhyme offered, "the case wasn't collectivized to you."

"No," Li said, his eyes hard ebony disks. "He kill people in my town. I want make sure he come to trial."

Dellray asked, "How'dja get on the ship?"

"I have lots informants in Fuzhou. Last month I find out Ghost kill two people in Taiwan, big guys, important guys, and was leaving from China for month until Taiwan NSB stop looking for him. He going to south of France then taking immigrants from Vyborg in Russia to New York on
Fuzhou Dragon."

Rhyme laughed. This small, scruffy man's information had been better than the FBI's and Interpol's combined.

"So," Li continued, "I go undercover. Become piglet—immigrant."

Sellitto asked, "You find out anything about the Ghost? Where he stays here? Associates of his?"

"No, nobody talk to me much. Got on deck when crew not looking—mostly for puking." He shook his head, apparently at the unpleasant memory of the voyage. "But not get close to Ghost."

Coe said, "But what were you going to do? We wouldn't extradite him to China."

Perplexed, Li said, "Why I want him extradited? You not listen.
Guanxi,
I'm saying. In China they let him go. I going to arrest him when we land. Then give him
your
public security bureau."

Coe laughed. "You're serious, aren't you."