The Stone Monkey (35 page)

He seemed serious. But then Sonny Li laughed and said what they were both thinking. "No, no, too late for that. Lots too late ... No, we get the Ghost, I go home and keep being fuck good detective. Guan Di and I solve big crime and get my picture in paper in Fuzhou. Maybe chairman give me medal. Maybe my father watch news and see and he think I not be such bad son." He drained the cup of scotch. "Okay, I drunk enough now—you and me, we play game, Loaban."

"I don't play games."

"But what that game on your computer?" Li said quickly. "Chess. I saw it."

"I don't play very
often,"
Rhyme qualified.

"Games improve you. I am show you how to play best game." He returned to the magic shopping bag.

"I can't play most games, Sonny. Can't exactly hold the cards, you know."

"Ah, card games?" Li said, sneering. "They games of chance. Only good for make money. See, those, you keep secrets by turning cards away from opponents. Best games are games where you keep secrets in head, I'm saying.
Wei-chi?
You ever hear it? Also called
Go."

Rhyme believed he had. "Like checkers or something?"

Li laughed. "Checkers, no, no."

Rhyme surveyed the board that Li took from the shopping bag and set up on the table beside the bed. It was a grid with a number of perpendicular lines on it. He then took out two bags, one containing hundreds of tiny white pebbles, the other black ones.

Suddenly Rhyme had a huge desire to play and he forced himself to pay careful attention to Sonny Li's animated voice as he explained the rules and object of
wei-chi.

"Seems simple enough," Rhyme said. Players alternated putting their stones on the board in an attempt to surround the opponent's and eliminate them from play.

"Wei-chi
like all great games: rules simple but winning hard." Li separated the stones into two piles. As he did he said, "Game go back many years. I am study best player of all time. Name was Fan Si-pin. Lived in 1700s—your dates. There nobody better than him ever live. He have match after match with Su Ting-an, who was almost as good. The games were usually draws but Fan had few points more so he was overall better player. Know why he better?"

"Why?"

"Su was defense player—but Fan ... he play always offense. He charge forward always, was impulsive, crazy, I'm saying."

Rhyme felt the man's enthusiasm. "Do you play much?"

"I am in club at home. I play much, yes." His voice faded for a moment and a wistfulness came over him. Rhyme wondered why. Then Li swept his oily hair back and said, "Okay, we play. You see how you like. Can last long time."

"I'm not tired," Rhyme said.

"Not either," Li said. "Now, you never play before so I give advantage. Give you three piece extra. Seem like not much but big, big advantage in
wei-chi."

"No," Rhyme said. "I don't want any advantages."

Li glanced at him and must have thought this had to do with his disability and added gravely, "Only give you advantage because you not play before. That only reason. Experience players do that always. Is customary."

Rhyme understood and appreciated Li's reassurance. Still, he said adamantly, "No. You make the first move. Go ahead." And watched Li's eyes lower and focus on the wooden grid between them.

Wednesday, the Hour of the Dragon, 7 A.M.,    

to the Hour of the Rooster, 6:30 P.M.

In Wei-Chi the more equally matched two players are, the more interesting the game.

—
The Game of Wei-Chi     

On the morning of the day he was to die, Sam Chang awoke to find his father in the back courtyard of their Brooklyn apartment going through the slow movements of tai-chi.

He watched the elderly man for a few moments and a thought occurred to him: Chang Jiechi's seventieth birthday was in three weeks. In China they'd been so poor and so persecuted the family had not been able to have the man's sixtieth birthday celebration, traditionally a huge party that signified the move into old age, the time for veneration. But his family would do so for the seventieth.

Sam Chang's animate body would not make it to the party but his spirit perhaps would.

He gazed at the old man, who moved like a leisurely dancer in the small backyard.

Tai-chi was beneficial to the body and to the soul but it always saddened Chang to watch the exercise. It reminded him of a humid night in June years ago. Chang and a cluster of students and fellow teachers had been sitting together in Beijing, watching a group of people nearby engaged in the balletic movements. It was after midnight and they were all enjoying the pleasant weather and the exhilaration of being among like-minded friends in the center of what was becoming the greatest nation on earth, the new China, the enlightened China.

Chang had turned to a young student next to him to point out a spry elderly woman lost under the spell of tai-chi, when the boy's chest exploded and he dropped to the ground. The People's Liberation Army soldiers had begun firing on the crowd in Tiananmen Square. The tanks came through a moment later, driving the people in front of them, crushing many beneath the treads (the famous televised image of the student stopping the tank with a flower was the rare exception that terrible night).

Chang could never watch tai-chi without thinking of that moment, which solidified his stance as an outspoken dissident and changed his life—and that of his father and family—forever.

He now looked down at his wife and, next to her, the little girl, who slept with her arm around the white stuffed cat Mei-Mei had sewn for her. He gazed at them for a moment. Then walking into the bathroom, he turned the water on full. He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower, resting his head against the tiles that Mei-Mei had somehow found the time to scrub last night.

He showered, shut off the scalding water and dried himself with a towel. He cocked his head, hearing the sounds of clanking metal in the kitchen.

Mei-Mei was still asleep and the boys knew nothing of cooking. Alarmed, he climbed out of bed and pulled the pistol from beneath the mattress and walked cautiously into the main room of the apartment. He laughed. His father was making tea.

"Baba," he said, "I'll wake Mei-Mei. She can do that."

"No, no, let her sleep," the old man said. "When your mother died I learned to make tea. I can cook rice too. And vegetables. Though not very well. Let us take tea together." Chang Jiechi lifted the iron pot, the handle wrapped with a rag, and took cups and hobbled into the living room. They sat and he poured the tea.

Last night, when Chang had returned, he and his father had taken a map and located the Ghost's apartment building, which was not, to their surprise, in Chinatown but farther to the west, near the Hudson River.

"When you get to the Ghost's apartment," his father now asked, "how will you get inside? Won't he recognize you?"

Chang sipped the tea. "I don't think he will, no. He only came to the hold of the ship once. It was dark too."

"How will you get in?"

"If there is a doorman I'll tell him I'm there on business and give the name Tan. I practiced my English all night. Then I'll just take the elevator up to his door and knock on it."

"And if he has bodyguards?" Chang Jiechi said. "They'll search you."

"I'll hide the gun in my sock. They won't search carefully. They won't be expecting me to be armed." Chang tried to picture what would happen. He knew they would have guns too. Even if they shot him as soon as they saw the gun he would still be able to shoot one or two bullets into the Ghost. He realized that his father was gazing at him and he looked down. "I will come back," he said firmly. "I will be here to take care of you, Baba."

"You are a good son. I could not have asked for a better one."

"I have not brought you all the honor I should have."

"Yes, you have," the old man said and poured more tea. "I named you well." Chang's given name, Jingerzi, meant "shrewd son."

They lifted their cups and Chang drained his.

Mei-Mei came to the door, glanced at the teacups. "Have you taken rice yet?" she asked, the expression meaning simply, "Good morning." It wasn't a reference to food.

"Wake William," Chang told Mei-Mei. "There are some things I want to say to him."

But his father waved for her to stop. "No." She did.

"Why not?" Chang asked.

"He will want to come with you."

"I'll tell him no."

Chang Jiechi laughed. "And that will stop him? That impetuous son of yours?"

Chang fell silent for a moment then said, "I can't go off like this without talking to him. It's important."

But his father asked, "What is the only reason that a man would do something like you are about to do—something foolhardy and dangerous?"

Chang replied, "For the sake of his children."

His father smiled. "Yes, son, yes. Keep that in mind, always. You do something like this for the sake of your children." Then he grew stern. How well Sam Chang knew this look of his father's. Imperial, unyielding. He had not seen it for some time—ever since the man had grown sick with the cancer. "I know exactly what you intend to say to your son. I will do it. It's my wish that you don't wake William."

Chang nodded. "As you say, Baba." He looked at his wristwatch. The time was seven-thirty. He had to be at the Ghost's apartment in an hour. His father poured him more tea, which Chang drank down quickly. Then he said to Mei-Mei, "I have to leave soon. But I wish that you come sit by me."

She sat beside her husband, lowering her head to his shoulder.

They said nothing but after five minutes Po-Yee began to cry and Mei-Mei rose to take care of the girl. Sam Chang was content to sit in silence and watch his wife and their new daughter. And then it was time to leave and go to his death.

Rhyme smelled cigarette smoke.

"That's disgusting," he called.

"What?" asked Sonny Li, the only other person in the room. The Chinese cop was groggy and his hair stuck out comically. The hour was 7:30.

"The cigarettes," Rhyme explained.

"You should smoke," Li barked. "Relaxes you. Good for you."

Mel Cooper arrived with Lon Sellitto and Eddie Deng not far behind him. The young Chinese-American cop walked very slowly. Even his hair was wilted, no stylish spikes today.

"How are you, Eddie?" Rhyme asked.

"You should see the bruise," Deng said, referring to his run-in with a lead slug yesterday during the shoot-out on Canal Street. "I wouldn't let my wife see it. Put on my pajamas in the bathroom."

Red-eyed Sellitto carried a handful of pages from the overnight team of officers who'd been canvassing recent contractors that had installed gray Arnold Lustre-Rite carpet in the past six months. The canvassing wasn't even finished and the number of construction locations was discouragingly large: thirty-two separate installations in and around Battery Park City.

"Hell," Rhyme muttered, "thirty-two." And each one could have multiple floors that had been carpeted. Thirty-two? He'd hoped there'd be no more than five or six.

INS agent Alan Coe arrived, walking brightly into the lab. He didn't seem the least contrite and began asking questions about how the investigation was going—as if the shoot-out yesterday had never happened and the Ghost hadn't escaped thanks to him.

More footsteps in the corridor outside.

"Hey," Sachs said in greeting, entering the room. She kissed Rhyme. He started to tell her about the list of recently carpeted buildings but Sellitto interrupted. "Get some rest last night?" he asked her. The detective's voice had a definite edge to it.

"What?" she asked.

"Rest? Sleep? You get plenty of rest?"

"Not exactly," she replied cautiously. "Why?"

"I tried you at home about one. Had some questions for you."

Rhyme wondered what the reason for the interrogation was.

"Well, I got home at two," she answered, a flare in her eyes. "I went to see a friend."

"Did you?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Well, I couldn't get in touch with you."

"You know, Detective," she said, "I can let you have my mother's phone number. She can give you some pointers on checking up on me. Even though she hasn't done it for about fifteen years."

"Ho, boy, that was good," said Sonny Li.

"Watch yourself, patrolman," Sellitto said to Sachs.

"Watch
what?"
she snapped. "You got a point to make, make it."

The homicide cop backed down. He muttered, "I couldn't get in touch with you, that's all. Your cell phone was off."

"Was it? Well, I had my pager. Did you try to page me?"

"No."

"Then?" she asked.

The argument mystified Rhyme. True, when she was working, Rhyme insisted that she be instantly available. But after hours it was different. Amelia Sachs was independent. She liked to go for fast drives, she had interests and friends other than him.