The Stone Monkey (20 page)

Sam Chang sat heavily in a musty chair.

Their possessions gone, his father desperately needing treatment, a ruthless killer their enemy, his own son a renegade and criminal...

So much difficulty around them.

He wanted to blame someone: Mao, the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army soldiers....

But the reason for their present hardship and danger seemed to lie in only one place, where William had assigned it: at Chang's own feet.

Regret would serve no purpose, though. All he could now do was pray that the stories about life here were true, and not myths—that the Beautiful Country was indeed a land of miracles, where evil was brought to light and purged, where the most pernicious flaws within our bodies could quickly be made right, and where generous liberty fulfilled its promise that troubled hearts would be troubled no more.

At 1:30 that afternoon the Ghost was walking quickly through Chinatown, head down, worried as always about being recognized.

To most Westerners, of course, he was invisible, his features blending together into one generic Asian man. White Americans could rarely tell the difference between a Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean. Among the Chinese, though, his features would be distinct and he was determined to remain anonymous. He'd once bribed a traffic magistrate in Hong Kong $10,000 one-color cash to avoid being arrested in a minor brawl some years ago so there would be no picture of him in criminal records. Even Interpol's Automated Search and Archives section and the Analytical Criminal Intelligence Unit didn't have any reliable surveillance photos of him (he knew this because he'd used a hacker in Fuzhou to break into Interpol's database through its supposedly secure X400 email system).

So he now strode quickly, keeping his head down—most of the time.

But not always.

He would lift his eyes to study women, the pretty and young ones, the voluptuous ones, the svelte ones, the coy and flirtatious and the timid. The clerks, the teenage girls, the wives, the businesswomen, the tourists. Eastern or Western made no difference to him. He wanted a body lying beneath him, whimpering—in pleasure or pain (that made no difference either), as he pulsed up and down on top of her, gripping her head tightly between his palms.

A woman with light brown hair passed by, a Western woman. He slowed and let himself be touched by the veil of her perfume. He hungered—though he realized too that his lust wasn't for
her
but for his Yindao.

He had no time for his fantasies, though; he'd come to the merchants association, where the Turks awaited him. He spat on the sidewalk, found the back entrance, which they'd left open, and stepped inside. He made his way up to the top floor. It was time to conduct some important business.

Inside the large office, he found Yusuf and the two other Turks. It hadn't taken much—a few phone calls, a threat and a bribe—to find the name of the man who was sitting, nervous to the point of tears, in a chair in front of his own desk.

Jimmy Mah's eyes fell to the floor when the Ghost walked into the room. The snakehead pulled up a chair and sat beside him. The Ghost took Mah's hand casually—a gesture not unusual among Chinese men—and he felt the trembling of muscles and the pulsing of a frightened heart.

"I didn't know they came in on the
Dragon.
They didn't tell me! I swear that. They lied to me. When they were here I hadn't even
heard
about the ship. I didn't watch the news this morning."

The Ghost continued to hold the man's hand, adding slight pressure to his grip but saying nothing.

"Are you going to kill me?" Mah asked the question in such a whisper that he repeated it though the Ghost had heard perfectly.

"The Changs and the Wus. Where are they?" The Ghost squeezed the man's hand slightly harder and received a pleasant whimper for his effort. "Where are they?"

Mah's eyes glanced at the Turks. He'd be wondering what kind of terrible weapons they'd have on them, knives or garrotes or guns.

But in the end it was simply the faint pressure of the Ghost's palm against poor Jimmy Mah's that loosened his tongue.

"Two different places, sir. Wu Qichen is in an apartment in Chinatown. A broker I use set him up with a place."

"The address?"

"I don't know. I swear! But the broker knows. He'll tell you."

"Where is this broker?"

Mah quickly recited the name and address. The Ghost memorized it.

"And the others?"

"Sam Chang took his family to Queens."

"Queens?" the Ghost asked. "Where?" A particularly delicate squeeze of the hand. He imagined momentarily that he was touching Yindao's breast.

Mah nodded toward the desk. "There! It's on that piece of paper."

The Ghost picked it up, glanced at the address and then pocketed the note. He released the tong leader's hand and slowly rubbed his thumb in the sweat that had poured from Mah's palm. "You won't tell anyone I asked about this," the Ghost murmured.

"No, no, of course not."

The Ghost smiled. "You did me a favor, for which I am thankful. I am indebted to you. Now, I will do you a favor in return."

Mah fell silent. Then cautiously he asked in a shaky voice, "A favor?"

"What other business arrangements do you have, Mr. Mah? What other activities are you involved in? You help piglets, you help snake-heads. But do you run massage parlors?"

"Some." The man was looking calmer. He wiped his hand on his slacks. "Mostly gambling."

"Ah gambling, sure. Much gambling here in Chinatown. I like to gamble. Do you?"

Mah swallowed and wiped his face with a white handkerchief. "Don't we all love to gamble? Yes, yes."

"Tell me then: Who interferes with your gambling operation? Another tong? A triad? Some
Meiguo
gang? The police? I can talk to people. I have connections throughout the government. My connections go very high. I can make sure nobody bothers your gambling parlors."

"Yes, sir, yes. Aren't there always problems? It's not the Chinese, though, or the police. It's the Italians. Why do they cause us such trouble? I don't know. The young men, they firebomb us, beat up our customers, rob the gambling halls."

"The Italians," the Ghost mused. "What are they called? There's a derogatory term. ... I can't think of it."

"Wops," Mah said in English.

"Wops."

Mah smiled. "It's a reference to those in your line of work."

"Mine?"

"Immigration. Wop means 'without passport.' When Italian immigrants came here years ago without documentation they were labeled WOP. It's very insulting."

The Ghost looked around the room, frowning.

"Is there something you need, sir?" Mah asked.

"Do you have a thick marker? Some paint perhaps?"

"Paint?" Mah's eyes followed the Ghost's. "No. But I can call my assistant downstairs. I can have her get some. Whatever you like, I can get. Anything."

"Wait," the Ghost said, "that won't be necessary. I have another thought."

Lou Sellitto looked up from his Nokia and announced to the GHOST-KILL team, "We've got a body in Chinatown. Detective from the Fifth Precinct's on the line." He turned back to his phone.

Alarmed, Rhyme looked up at him. Had the Ghost tracked down and killed another of the immigrants? Who? he wondered. Chang, Wu? The baby?

But Sellitto hung up and said, "Doesn't look related to the Ghost. Vic's name's Jimmy Mah."

"Know him," Eddie Deng said. "Heads a tong."

Coe nodded. "I've heard of him too. Smuggling's not his specialty but he does a little meeting and greeting."

"What's that mean?" Rhyme asked acerbically when Coe explained no further.

The agent answered, "When undocumenteds get to Chinatown there's an official who helps them out—gets them into a safehouse, gives them a little money. Called 'meeting and greeting' the illegals. Most of the meeters work for snakeheads but some do it freelance. Like Mah. It's just that there's not a lot of profit there. If you're corrupt and you want big bucks you'll go with drugs or gambling or massage parlors. That's what Mah's into. Well,
was,
apparently."

Rhyme asked, "Why don't you think it's related?"

Sellitto said, "There was a message painted on the wall behind his desk, where they found the body. It said 'You call us wops, you take our homes.' It was written in Mah's blood, by the way."

Nodding, Deng said, "Major rivalry between the third-generation Mafiosi—you know, the
Sopranos
crowd—and the tongs. Chinese gambling and massage parlors—some drugs too—they've just about kicked the Italians out of Manhattan O.C."

The demographics of organized crime, Rhyme knew, were as fluid as those of the city itself.

"Anyway," Coe said, "those people off the
Dragon,
they're going to dig underground as fast as they can. They'd avoid somebody public like Mah. I would."

"Unless they were desperate," Sachs said. "Which they are." She looked at Rhyme. "Maybe the Ghost killed Mah and made it look like an O.C. hit. Should I run the scene?"

Rhyme debated for a moment. Yes, the families
were
desperate but Rhyme had already seen the immigrants' resourcefulness, presumably the work of Sam Chang. It would leave too many trails to go to somebody like Mah for help, he assessed. "No, I need you here. But send a special team from Crime Scene and tell them to copy us on the crime scene report stat."

To Eddie Deng, Rhyme said, "Call Dellray and Peabody at the Federal Building. Let them know about the killing."

"Yessir," Deng said.

Dellray had gone downtown to arrange for the extra agents from the two relevant federal jurisdictions in New York—the Southern and Eastern, which covered Manhattan and Long Island. He was also wielding his influence to get the SPEC-TAC team on site, which Washington was reluctant to do; the special unit was generally reserved for major hostage standoffs and embassy takeovers, not for manhunts. Still, Rhyme knew, Dellray was a tough man to say no to and if anybody could get the much-needed tactical force up here it'd be the lanky agent.

Rhyme maneuvered the chair back to the evidence and the whiteboards.

Nothing, nothing, nothing...

What else can we do? he wondered. What haven't we exhausted? Scanning the board... Finally he said, "Let's look at the blood some more." He looked over the samples that Sachs had found: that from the injured immigrant, the woman with the broken or gashed arm, hand or shoulder.

Lincoln Rhyme loved blood as a forensic tool. It was easy to spot, it stuck like glue to all kinds of surfaces, it retained its important forensic information for years.

The history of blood in criminal investigation, in fact, largely reflects the history of forensic science itself.

The earliest effort—in the mid-1800s—to use blood as evidence focused simply on
classifying
it, that is, determining if an unknown substance was indeed blood and not, say, dried brown paint. Fifty years later the focus was on
identifying
blood as human, as opposed to animal. Not long after that detectives began looking for a way to
differentiate
blood—break it down into a limited number of categories—and scientists responded by creating the process of blood typing (the A, B, O system as well as the MN and the Rh systems), which narrows down the number of sources. In the sixties and seventies forensic scientists sought to go one step further—to
individuate
the blood, that is, trace it back to a single individual, like a fingerprint. Early efforts at doing this biochemically—identifying enzymes and proteins—could eliminate many individuals as the source, but not all. It wasn't until DNA typing that true individuation was achieved.

Classification, identification, differentiation, individuation ... that's criminalistics in a nutshell.

But there was more to blood than linking it to an individual. The way it fell on surfaces at crime scenes—spatter, it was called—provided great information about the nature of the attack. And Lincoln Rhyme often examined the
content
of blood to determine what it could tell about the individual who'd shed it.

"Let's see if our injured woman's got a drug habit or's taking some rare medicine. Call the M.E.'s office and have them do a complete workup. I want to know everything that's in her bloodstream."

As Cooper was talking to the office Sellitto's phone rang and he took the call.

Rhyme could see in the detective's face that he was receiving some bad news.

"Oh, Jesus ... oh, no..."

The criminalist sensed an odd fibrillation in the core of his body—an area where he could by rights feel nothing at all. People who are paralyzed often feel phantom pain from limbs and parts of their body that cannot have any sensation. Rhyme not only had experienced
this
feeling but he'd felt shock and adrenaline rushes too, when his logical mind knew that this was impossible.

"What, Lon?" Sachs asked.

"Fifth Precinct again. Chinatown," he said, wincing. "Another killing. This time it's
definitely
the Ghost." He glanced at Rhyme and shook his head. "Man, it's not good."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, they're saying it's fucking unpleasant, Linc."

Unpleasant
was not a word that one heard often from an NYPD homicide detective, especially Lon Sellitto, as hardened a cop as you'd ever find.

He wrote down some information then hung up the phone and glanced at Sachs. "Suit up, Officer, you've got a scene to run."

GHOSTKILL

Easton, Long Island, Crime Scene   

• Two immigrants killed on beach; shot in back.

• One immigrant wounded—Dr. John Sung.

• "Bangshou" (assistant) on board; identity unknown.

• Ten immigrants escape: seven adults (one elderly, one injured woman), two children, one infant. Steal church van.