The Stone Monkey (27 page)

"Which is?" Rhyme asked.

"'Let somebody else fuckin' handle it. I made that up, butcha get the picture." The SPEC-TAC team too was still cooling their heels down in Quantico, the agent glumly added.

And they were having no better luck with the evidence from any of the crime scenes.

"Okay, what about the Honda he stole at the beach?" Rhyme barked. "It's in the system. Isn't anybody in the hinterland looking for it? I mean, it
is
on an emergency vehicle locator."

"Sorry, Linc," Sellitto said, after he checked with downtown. "Nothing."

SorryLincnothing...

It was a hell of a lot easier to find a ship in a port in Russia than it was to find ten people in his own backyard.

Then the preliminary crime scene report from the Mah killing came back. Thorn held the notes up for Rhyme and turned the pages for him. There was nothing to suggest that the Ghost was behind the killing; no evidence "associated" the Ghost with the scene, the forensics term for "connected." No ballistics were involved—Mah's throat had been cut—and the carpet in his office and the hallways hadn't yielded any footprints. The techs had lifted hundreds of latents and three dozen samples of trace evidence but it would take hours to analyze them all.

All the remaining AFIS requests from the fingerprints that Sachs had lifted at the prior scenes had come back negative, with the exception of Jerry Tang's—but his identity was hardly an issue any longer, of course.

"I want a drink," Rhyme said, discouraged. "It's cocktail hour. Hell, it's
after
cocktail hour."

"Dr. Weaver said no alcohol before the operation," Thorn pointed out.

"She said
avoid
it, Thorn. I'm sure she said avoid. Avoidance is not abstention."

"I'm not going to argue Webster's here, Lincoln. No booze."

"The operation isn't until next week. Give me a goddamn drink."

The aide was adamant. "You've been working way too hard on this case. Your blood pressure's up and your schedule's shot to hell."

Rhyme said, "We'll compromise. A small glass."

"That's not a compromise. That would be a win for you and a loss for me. You can drink after the surgery." He disappeared into the kitchen.

Rhyme closed his eyes, pushed his head back into the chair angrily. Imagining—a moment of absurd fantasy—that the operation would actually fix the nerves that operated his entire arm. He told no one this—not even Amelia Sachs—but, though walking was out of the question, he often fantasized that the surgery would actually let him lift things. He now pictured grabbing the Macallan and taking a hit directly from the bottle. Rhyme could almost feel his hand around the cool, round glass.

A clink on the table beside him made him blink. The astringent smoky smell of whisky rose up and engulfed his head. He opened his eyes. Sachs had placed a small glass of scotch on the wheelchair armrest.

"It's not very full," the criminalist muttered to her. But the subtext of the comment, both Lincoln and she understood, was: thank you.

She winked in reply.

He drank deeply through the straw and felt the warm burn of the liquor in his mouth and throat.

Another sip.

He enjoyed the liquor but found that it did little to dull the urgency and frustration he felt at the slow pace of the case. His eyes fell on the whiteboard. One entry caught his eye.

"Sachs," he called. "Sachs!"

"What?"

"I need a phone number. Fast."

The Ghost held his Model 51 pistol against his cheek.

The hot metal, redolent of oil and sweet grease, gave him reassurance. Yes, he wanted a new weapon, something bigger and more dependable—like the Uzi and the Beretta he'd lost on the
Dragon.
But this was a good-fortune gun, one he'd had for years. He believed it was lucky because he'd come by the pistol in this way: near Taipei once, he'd gone to a temple to pray. Someone had tipped the police that he was inside and two officers stopped him as he came down the stairs. One of them, though, had hesitated to pull a gun at a Buddhist temple and, flustered, he'd dropped this very weapon on the grass. The Ghost had scooped it up, shot both of the young policemen to death then escaped.

From that day on this gun had been his good-luck charm, a present from his bowman god, Yi.

It had been nearly an hour since Kashgari had gone inside to make sure the Wus' children stayed put. The shops had closed along this part of Canal—the armed guards were gone, he was sure, and the sidewalks were largely deserted. Let's get on with it, the Ghost thought and stretched. He was tired of waiting. Yusuf and the other Turk were too. They'd been complaining about hunger but he guessed that even some of the restaurants and delis here had security cameras and the Ghost was not going to let himself or any associate be recorded on tape for something as frivolous as food. They'd have to—

"Look," he whispered, glancing up the street.

At the end of the block, he saw two people climb from a cab, nervously keeping their heads down. The Wus. The Ghost recognized them clearly from the cheap running suits they wore. They paid the driver and walked into a drugstore on the corner, the husband clutching his wife around the waist. Her arm was in a cast or was wrapped with thick bandages. He carried a shopping bag.

"Get the masks ready. Check your weapons."

The two Turks complied.

Five minutes later the Wus left the drugstore. They were walking as quickly as they could, considering the wife's condition.

He said to Hajip, "You stay with the car. Keep the engine running. He and I"—a nod toward Yusuf—"will follow the Wus inside. We push them into their apartment and close the door. We'll use pillows for silencers. I want to bring the daughter with us. We'll keep her for a while."

Yindao would, he knew, forgive this infidelity.

The Wus were now five meters from their doorway, shuffling fast, heads down, oblivious to the gods of death who fluttered nearby.

The Ghost found his cell phone and called the Turk in the Wus' apartment.

"Yes?" Kashgari answered.

"The Wus're close to the building. Where are the children?"

"The boy's in the bathroom. The girl's with me."

"As soon as they walk into the alley we'll come in right behind them."

He shut off the power to the phone—so there'd be no distracting ring at inopportune moments. The Ghost and Yusuf pulled their masks down over their faces and climbed out. The other Turk slipped behind the wheel of the Blazer.

The Wus were moving closer to the door.

The Ghost stepped off the curb and walked straight toward his victims.

Afraid, you can be brave.
...

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.

• Assistant confirmed as drowned body found near site where
Dragon
sank.

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

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative. Requesting more information about her blood.

• Vehicle awaiting Ghost on beach left without him. One shot believed fired by Ghost at vehicle. Request for vehicle make and model sent out, based on tread marks and wheelbase.

• Vehicle is a BMW X5.

• Driver—Jerry Tang.

• No vehicles to pick up immigrants located.

• Cell phone, presumably Ghost's, sent for analysis to FBI.

• Untraceable satellite secure phone. Hacked Chinese gov't system to use it.

• Ghost's weapon is 7.62mm pistol. Unusual casing.

• Model 51 Chinese automatic pistol.

• Ghost is reported to have gov't people on payroll.

• Ghost stole red Honda sedan to escape. Vehicle locator request sent out.

• No trace of Honda found.

• Three bodies recovered at sea—two shot, one drowned. Photos and prints to Rhyme and Chinese police.

• Drowned individual identified as Victor Au, the Ghost's
bangshou.

•
Fingerprints
sent to AFIS.

• No matches on any prints but unusual markings on Sam Chang's fingers and thumbs (injury, rope burn?).

• Profile of immigrants: Sam Chang and Wu Qichen and their families, John Sung, baby of woman who drowned, unidentified man and woman (killed on beach).

Stolen Van, Chinatown     

• Camouflaged by immigrants with "The Home Store" logo.

• Blood spatter suggests injured woman has hand, arm or shoulder injury.

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative. Requesting more information about her blood.

• Fingerprints sent to AFIS.

• No matches.

Jerry Tang Murder Crime Scene     

• Four men kicked door in and tortured him and shot him.

• Two shell casings—match Model 51. Tang shot twice in head.

• Extensive vandalism.

• Some fingerprints.

• No matches except Tang's.

• Three accomplices have smaller shoe size than Ghost, presumably smaller stature.

• Trace suggests Ghost's safehouse is probably downtown, Battery Park City area.

• Suspected accomplices from Chinese ethnic minority. Presently pursuing whereabouts.

The Wus in the doorway.

The children in the apartment.

The Ghost and Yusuf, masks over their faces and guns at their sides, were sprinting across Canal Street. He felt the rush of excitement he always did before a kill. His hands vibrated slightly but would grow still when he lifted the gun to shoot.

He thought again about Wu's daughter.
Seventeen, eighteen
...
pretty enough.
He would—

It was at this moment that a loud crack echoed through the street and a bullet slammed into a parked car just behind the Ghost. The alarm began braying.

"Jesus," a man's voice called from somewhere. "Who fired?"

The Ghost and Yusuf stopped and crouched. They lifted their weapons, scanning the street for their attacker.

"Hell," came another voice. "Cease-fire!"

And another: "Who the fuck—"

The Wus too stopped, crouching down on the pavement.

The Ghost's head was swiveling. He gripped Yusuf's arm.

A man's voice cried through a loudspeaker, "Kwan Ang! Stop. This is the United States Immigration Service!" Followed immediately by a second gunshot—from the man who'd called out, it seemed—and a side window of a nearby parked car exploded in a cloudburst of glass.

His heart vibrating from the shock, the snakehead scrabbled backward, his lucky gun up, as he looked for a target. The INS was here? How?

"It's a trap," he raged to Yusuf. "Back to the car!"

Chaos now filled Canal Street. More shouting, passersby and store clerks diving for cover. Up the block the doors of two white vans opened and men and women in black uniforms, carrying guns, leapt out.

And what was
this?
The Wus themselves were drawing weapons! The husband pulled a machine pistol from the plastic bag he'd held. The wife was lifting a weapon from her running suit pocket.... And then the Ghost realized that they weren't the Wus at all. They were decoys—Chinese-American police officers or agents wearing the Wus' clothing. Somehow the police had found the couple and sent these people back in their place to lure him out of cover. "Drop your weapons!" the man masquerading as Wu shouted.

The Ghost fired five or six shots at random, to keep people down and stoke the panic. He shot out a window in a jewelry store, adding another siren to the tumult of sounds on the street and bolstering the chaos.

The Turk in the driver's seat opened the door and began firing at the white vans. Running, looking for cover and looking for targets, the police scattered on the far side of Canal.

As he crouched beside their four-by-four, the Ghost heard: "Who fired? ... Backups aren't in position ... What the fuck happened? ... Watch the bystanders, for Christ's sake!"

A panicked driver in a car in front of the Wus' apartment started to speed up to get out of the line of fire. The Ghost fired two shots into the front seat. The window glass vanished and the car skidded into a row of parked vehicles with a huge bang.

"Kwan Ang," came an electronic shout from a bullhorn or vehicle loudspeaker, a different voice this time. "This is the FBI. Put down—"

He shut up the agent by firing twice more in his direction and climbed into the Blazer. The Uighurs climbed into the back. "Kashgari! He is inside," Yusuf cried and nodded toward the Wus' apartment, where the third Turk waited.

"He's dead or captured," the Ghost snapped. "Understand? We're not waiting."

Yusuf nodded. But just as the Ghost turned the key and started the engine he noticed a police officer step from a line of cars, motioning bystanders to get back and take cover. He lifted his pistol, aimed toward the front of the four-by-four.

"Get down!" the Ghost cried as the officer fired repeatedly. The three men ducked, expecting the windshield to shatter.

But instead they heard loud ring after loud ring as the bullets struck the front of the vehicle. Eight or nine of them. Finally there was a huge clanging as fan blades were knocked out of alignment and jammed into other parts of the engine, which gave a huge squeal, steam pouring from the pierced radiator. Finally it went silent.

"Out!" the Ghost ordered, jumping out and firing several shots at the officer to drive him under cover behind a row of cars.

The three men crouched on the sidewalk. For a moment there was a lull. The police and agents were holding their fire, probably waiting for the arrival of the backup officers—more emergency cars, sirens howling, were racing down Canal Street toward them right now.