The Stone Monkey (16 page)

"Yes. I was going to do."

"He had his
bangshou
with him, the crew of the ship. Little snake-heads to meet and greet here. They would've killed you."

"Risky, you saying? Sure, sure. But that our
job,
right? Always risk." He reached for the cigarettes Dellray had relieved him of.

Thorn said, "No smoking here."

"What you mean?"

"No smoking."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't," the aide said firmly.

"That craziest thing. You not make joke?"

"No."

"Subway stupid enough. But this is
house,
I'm saying."

"Yes, a house where you can't smoke."

"Very fuck," Li said. He grudgingly put the pack away.

A faint beeping from across the room. Mel Cooper turned to his computer. He read for a moment and then spun the screen around so that everybody could look. The FBI's Singapore office had sent an email confirmation that Li Kangmei was indeed a detective in the Liu Guoyuan Public Security Bureau of the People's Republic of China. He was presently listed as being on undercover assignment but his office would say no more about it. A picture of Li in a navy-blue uniform accompanied the message. It was clearly the man in the room before them.

Li then explained how the Ghost had scuttled the
Dragon.
Sam Chang and Wu Qichen and their families, along with Dr. Sung, several other immigrants and the baby of a woman on board the ship got away in a life raft. Everyone else drowned. "Sam Chang—he become leader on raft. Good man, smart. Save my life. Pick me up when Ghost shooting people. Wu was father of second family. Wu smart too but not balanced. Liver-spleen disharmony."

Deng saw Rhyme's frown and said, "Chinese medicine. Hard to explain."

Li continued, "Wu too emotion, I'm saying. Does impulse things."

Even the FBI's crack behavioral profiling was out of Rhyme's comfort zone, being the physical scientist that he was; he had no time whatsoever for disharmonious spleens. "Let's stick with facts," he said.

Li then told them how the raft hit the rocks and he, Sung and the others were washed overboard. They were swept down the shoreline. By the time Li made it back to where the raft had beached, the Ghost had killed two of the immigrants. "I hurry to arrest him but by time I get there, he gone. I hide in bushes on other side of road. I saw woman with red hair rescue one man."

"John Sung," Rhyme said.

"Dr. Sung." Li nodded. "Sat next to me on raft. He okay?"

"The Ghost shot him but he'll be all right. Amelia—the woman you saw—is interviewing him now."

"Hongse, I call her. Hey, pretty girl. Sexy, I'm saying."

Sellitto and Rhyme shared a humorous glance. Rhyme was picturing the consequences if Li had said that to Sachs's face.

Li pointed around the town house. "I get address from her car and come here, thinking maybe I get stuff that lead me to Ghost. Information, I'm saying. Evidence."

"Steal it?" Coe asked.

"Yes, sure," he said unabashedly.

"Why'd you do that, you little skel?" Dellray asked menacingly, using a popular cop word, short for "skeleton," meaning basically: worthless little snitch.

"Have
to get it for myself. Because, hey, you not let me help you, right? You just send me back. And I going to arrest him. 'Collar,' right? You say 'collar.'"

Coe said, "Well, you're right—you're
not
helping us. You may be a cop in China. But here you're just one more fucking undocumented. You
are
going back."

Eyes flashing angrily, Sonny Li stepped close to Coe, who towered over the small man.

Sellitto sighed and tugged Li back by the shirt. "Naw, none of that shit."

Amused at the man's bravado, Coe reached for his cuffs. "Li, you're under arrest for entering the United States—"

But Lincoln Rhyme said, "No, I want him."

"What?" the agent asked in shock.

"He'll be a consultant. Like me."

"Impossible."

"Anybody who goes to this much trouble to nail a perp—I want him working on our side."

"You bet I help, Loaban. Do lots, I'm saying."

"What'd you call me?"

Li explained to Rhyme, "'Loaban.' It mean 'boss.' You got keep me. I can help. I know how Ghost think. We from same world, him and me. I in gang when I boy, like him. And spent lots time as undercover officer, working docks in Fuzhou."

"No way," Coe blurted. "For Christ's sake, he's an undocumented. As soon as we turn our back he'll just run off, get drunk and go to a gambling parlor."

Rhyme wondered if a kung fu match was about to break out. But this time Li ignored Coe and spoke in a reasonable voice. "In my country we got four classes people. Not like rich and poor, stuff like you got here. In China what you
do
more important than money you got. And know what highest honor is? Working for country, working for people. That what I do and I one fuck good cop, I'm saying."

"They're all on the take over there," Coe muttered.

"I not on take, okay?" Li then grinned. "Not on important case like this."

Coe said, "And how do we know he's not really on the Ghost's payroll."

Li laughed. "Hey, how we know
you
not working for him?"

"Fuck you," Coe said. He was furious.

The young INS agent's problem, Rhyme assessed, was that he was too emotional to be an effective law enforcer. The criminalist often heard contempt in his voice when he spoke about the "undocumenteds." He seemed affronted that they would break federal law to sneak into this country and had suggested several times that immigrants were motivated essentially by greed to come here, not by a love of freedom or democracy.

Apart from his derisive attitude toward the aliens, however, he had a troubling personal stake in collaring the Ghost. Several years ago Coe had been stationed in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, running undercover agents in mainland China, trying to identify major snakeheads. During an investigation of the Ghost, one of his informants, a woman, had disappeared and presumably been killed. Later it was learned that the woman had two young children but had so desperately needed money that she was willing to snitch on the Ghost—the INS never would have used her as an informant if they'd known that she had children. Coe was reprimanded—suspended for six months. He'd become obsessed with collaring the Ghost.

But to be a good cop you've got to tuck those personal feelings away. Detachment is absolutely necessary. This was a variation on Rhyme's rule about giving up the dead.

Dellray said, "Listen up. Ain't in the mood t'put you kiddies in a timeout corner so juss settle down. Li stays with us for's long as Lincoln wants him. Make it happen, Coe. Call somebody at the State Department and get him a temporary visa. We all together on that?"

Coe muttered, "No, I'm not all together on that. You can't have one of them on a task force."

"'Them'?" Dellray asked, pivoting on a very long foot. "Who exactly might 'them' be?"

"Undocumenteds."

The tall agent clicked his tongue. "Now, you know, Coe, that word's kinda like marbles in a blender to me. Doesn't sound
respectful.
Doesn't sound
nice.
Specially the way you say it."

"Well, as you folks from the bureau've made clear all along, this isn't really an INS case. Keep him if you want. But I'm not taking any heat for it."

"You make good decision," Sonny Li said to Rhyme. "I help lots, Loaban." Li walked over to the table and picked up the gun he'd been carrying.

"Nup, nup, nup," Dellray said. "Get your hands offa that."

"Hey, I a cop. Like you."

"No, you
ain't
a cop like me or any-single-solitary soul else here. No guns."

"Okay, okay. Keep gun for now, Heise."

"What's that?" Dellray snapped. "Heise?"

"Means black. Hey, hey, don't get offense. Nothing bad, nothing bad."

"Well, can it."

"Sure, I can it. Sure."

"Welcome on board, Sonny," Rhyme said. Then glanced at the clock. It was just noon. Six hours had passed since the Ghost began his relentless pursuit of the immigrants. He could be closing in on the poor families even now. "Okay, let's start on the evidence."

"Sure, sure," Li said, suddenly distracted. "But I need cigarette first. Come on, Loaban. You let me?"

"All right," Rhyme snapped. "But outside. And for Christ's sake, somebody go with him."

Wu Qichen wiped the sweat off his wife's forehead.

Shivering, burning with fever, soaking with sweat, she lay on a mattress in the bedroom of their tiny apartment.

The basement rooms were down an alley off Canal Street in the heart of Chinatown. They'd been provided by the broker that Jimmy Mah had sent them to—a robber, Wu had thought angrily. The rent was ridiculous, as was the fee the slimy man had demanded. The apartment stank, the place was virtually unfurnished and roaches roamed the floor boldly—even now, in the diffuse noon light bleeding in through the greasy windows.

He studied his wife with concern. The raging headache Yong-Ping had suffered on board the
Dragon,
the lethargy, the chills and sweats, which he'd believed were seasickness, had persisted even after they'd landed. She was afflicted with something else.

His wife opened her fever-glazed eyes. "If I die..." she whispered.

"You won't die," her husband said.

But Wu wasn't sure that he believed his own words. He remembered Dr. John Sung in the hold of the
Dragon
and wished he'd asked the man's opinion on his wife's condition; the doctor had treated several of the immigrants for various maladies but Wu had been afraid that he'd charge him money to examine Yong-Ping.

"Sleep," Wu said sternly. "You need rest. You'll be fine if you rest. Why won't you do that?"

"If I die you must find a woman. Someone to take care of the children."

"You won't die."

"Where is my son?" Yong-Ping asked.

"Lang is in the living room."

He glanced through the doorway and saw the boy on the couch and teenage Chin-Mei hanging laundry on a line strung through the room. After they'd arrived the family had. taken turns showering then dressing in the clean clothes that Wu had bought at a discount store on Canal Street. After some food—which Yong-Ping had not taken a single bite of—Chin-Mei had directed her brother to the TV set and washed their saltwater-encrusted clothing in the kitchen sink. This is what she was now hanging up to dry.

Wu's wife looked around the room, squinting, as if trying to remember where she was. She gave up and rested her head on the pillow. "Where ... where are we?"

"We're in Chinatown, in Manhattan of New York."

"But..." She frowned as his words belatedly registered in her feverish brain. "The Ghost, husband. We can't stay here. It's not safe. Sam Chang said we should not stay."

"Ah, the Ghost ..." He gestured dismissively. "He has gone back to China."

"No," Yong-Ping said, "I don't think so. I'm scared for our children. We have to leave. We have to get as far away from here as we can."

Wu pointed out: "No snakehead would risk being captured or shot just to find a few immigrants who'd escaped. Are you foolish enough to think that?"

"Please, husband. Sam Chang said—"

"Forget Chang. He's a coward." He snapped, "We're staying." His anger at her disobedience was tempered by the sight of the poor woman and the pain she must be suffering. He added softly, "I'm going out. I'm going to get you some medicine."

She didn't respond and he rose and walked into the living room.

He glanced at the children, who looked uneasily toward the room where their mother lay.

"Is she all right?" the teenage girl asked.

"Yes. She'll be fine. I'll be back in a half hour," he said. "I'll get some medicine."

"Wait, Father," Chin-Mei said uncertainly, looking down.

"What?"

"May I come with you?" the girl asked.

"No, you will stay with your mother and brother."

"But..."

"What?"

"There is something I need."

A fashion magazine? he thought cynically. Makeup? Hair spray? She wants me to spend our survival money on her pretty face. "What?"

"Please let me come with you. I'll buy it myself." She was blushing fiercely.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"I need some things for ..." she whispered, head down.

"For what?" he asked harshly. "Answer me."

She swallowed. "For my time. You know. Pads."

With a shock Wu suddenly understood. He looked away from the girl and gestured angrily toward the bathroom. "Use something in there."

"I can't. It's uncomfortable."

Wu was furious. It was his
wife's
job to take care of matters like this. No man he ever knew bought those ... things. "All right!" he snapped. "All right. I'll buy you what you need." He refused to ask her what kind she wanted. He'd get the first box of whatever was in the closest store. She'd have to use that. He stepped outside and locked the door behind him.

Wu Qichen walked down the busy streets of Chinatown, hearing a cacophony of languages—Minnanhua, Cantonese, Putonghua, Vietnamese and Korean. English too, laced with more accents and dialects than he'd ever known existed.

He gazed at the stores and shops, the piles of merchandise, the huge high-rises ringing the city. New York seemed ten times bigger than Hong Kong and a hundred times the size of Fuzhou.

I'm scared for our children. We have to leave. We have to get as far away from here as we can....

But Wu Qichen had no intention of leaving Manhattan. The forty-year-old man had nurtured a dream all his life and he wouldn't let his wife's sickness or the faint threat from a bully of a snakehead deter him from it. Wu Qichen was going to become a wealthy man, the richest ever in his family.

In his twenties he'd been a bellboy then a junior assistant manager at the Paradise Hotel on Hundong Road, near Hot Springs Park, in the heart of Fuzhou, waiting on rich Chinese and Europeans. Wu had decided then that he would be a successful businessman. He worked hard at the hotel and, even though he gave his parents a quarter of his income, he managed to save enough to buy a sundries and souvenir shop near the famous statue of Mao Zedong on Gutian Road with his two brothers. With the money they made from that store they bought one grocery then two more. They intended to run the businesses for several years and save as much money as they could then buy a building and make their fortune at real estate.