The Stone Monkey (33 page)

"How does he know them?"

The director explained, "He's the brother of a friend of Changs in China."

The Ghost considered. "Tell him I'll pay one hundred thousand one-color for the information."

The director asked Tan if this was acceptable. He said immediately that it was. Some people you do not buy-sell with.

Keeping a straight face, despite his pleasure at this sum, the director added delicately to the Ghost, "He's agreed to pay us a fee. Perhaps, sir, if it wouldn't be too much trouble ..."

"Yes, I'll pay you your portion directly. If the information's accurate. What is your cut?"

"Thirty percent."

"You're a fool," the Ghost scoffed. "You were robbed. I would've taken sixty-five percent if I'd been you."

The director flushed and began to defend himself but the Ghost cut him off. "Send him to see me tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. You know where." He hung up.

The director told Tan the arrangement and they shook hands.

In the Confucian order of duty to others, friendships were on the lowest rung—after ruler-subject, father-son, husband-wife and older brother-younger brother. Still, there was something abhorrent, the director thought, about this kind of betrayal.

But no matter. Whenever he arrived in hell, Tan would be judged for his acts. And as for the director and his associates—well, $30,000 was not bad for an hour's work.

His hands shaking, his breath fast, Sam Chang left the storefront of the East Broadway Workers' Association and had to walk three blocks before he found a bar, which are rare in Chinatown. He sat on an uneven stool and ordered a Tsingtao beer. He drank it fast and ordered another.

He was still surprised—no, astonished—that the three men at the tong had believed that he was Joseph Tan and had actually told him where he could meet the Ghost in the morning.

He laughed to himself. What an appalling idea—he was actually bargaining with these men over the price of his family's life.

Sitting in their dark apartment in Brooklyn several hours before, Chang had been thinking: So this is to be our life. Darkness and fear...

And his father's keen eyes had narrowed. "What are you thinking of doing?" he'd asked his son.

"The Ghost is looking for us."

"Yes."

"He won't expect me to be looking for
him."

Chang Jiechi's eyes remained on his son for a long moment then slid to the name plaque on the improvised altar.
Chang ...
archer. "And what would you do if you found him?"

He said to the old man, "Kill him."

"Why not go to the police?"

Chang laughed sourly. "Do you trust the police here any more than in China?"

"No," his father answered.

"I will kill him," Chang repeated. He had never in his life disobeyed his father and he wondered if the man would now forbid him to do what he'd decided must be done.

But, to his surprise, his father asked only, "You would be able to do that?"

"Yes, for my family. Yes." Chang then pulled his windbreaker on. "I'll go to Chinatown. I'll see what I can do to find him."

"Listen to me," his father said, whispering. "Do you know how to find a man?"

"How, Baba?"

"You find a man through his weaknesses."

"What's the Ghost's weakness?"

"He cannot accept failure," Chang Jiechi said. "He must kill us or his life will suffer from great disharmony."

And so Sam Chang had done just what his father had suggested—offered the Ghost the chance to find his prey. And it had worked.

Holding the cold beer bottle to his face, Chang now reflected that he himself would probably die. He'd shoot the Ghost immediately—as soon as he opened the door. But the man would have associates and bodyguards, who would in turn kill him.

And thinking this, the first image in his mind was William, his firstborn son, the young man who would, sooner than anyone thought, inherit the mantle of the Changs.

The father now heard the son's insolence, saw the contempt in his eyes...

Oh, William, he thought. Yes, I neglected you. But if only you understood that I did so solely in the hopes of making a better homeland for you and your children. And when it grew too dangerous in China I brought you here, leaving my beloved country behind, to give you what I couldn't back home.

Love, son, is not manifest in the gift of gadgets or coddling foods or rooms of one's own. Love shows itself in discipline and example and sacrifice—even giving up one's life.

Oh, my son...

Sam Chang paid for the beer and left the bar.

Though the hour was late some stores were still open to tempt the last of the tourists. Chang went into a variety and gift shop and bought a small shrine box, a brass plate, electric candles with red bulbs, some incense. He spent some time trying to find the right Buddha statue. He picked a smiling one because—even though he would kill a man tomorrow and would himself die—a cheerful Buddha would bring comfort and solace and ultimately good fortune to the family he was leaving behind.

"The thing is, Amie..."

Amelia Sachs was driving downtown, uncharacteristically close to the posted speed limit.

"The thing is, honey," her father had said to her in his dissipated state, ravaged by the greedy cells that were dismantling his body, "you got to look out for yourself."

"Sure, Pop."

"Naw, naw, you say, 'Sure,' but you don't really mean 'sure.' You mean I'm agreeing with the old man 'cause he looks like you know what."

Even lying in West Brooklyn Hospice on Fort Hamilton Parkway, near death, the man hadn't let her get away with a single thing.

"I don't think I mean that at all."

"Ah, listen, Amie, listen."

"I'm listening."

"I hear your stories about walking the beat."

Sachs, like her father, had been a "portable" at the time, a beat patrolman. In fact her nickname was "PD," for the Portable's Daughter.

"I make up a lot of stuff, Pop."

"Be serious."

Her smile faded and she indeed grew serious, feeling the dusty summer breeze flow through the half-open window, tousling her unencumbered red hair and her father's overwashed sheets as they sat, and lay, in that difficult place.

"Go on," she said.

"Thank you. ... I hear your stories about your beat. You don't look out for yourself enough. But you've got to, Amie."

"Where's all this coming from, Pop?"

They both knew it was coming from the cancer that would soon kill him and from the urgency to pass along to his only child something more substantive than an NYPD shield, a nickel-plated Colt pistol and an old Dodge Charger in need of a transmission and cylinder heads. But his role as father required him to say, "Humor an old man."

"So let's tell jokes."

"Remember the first time you flew?"

"We went to see Grandma Sachs in Florida. It was a hundred and eighty degrees by the pool and a chameleon attacked me."

Unfazed, Herman Sachs continued. "And the stewardess, or whatever you call them nowadays, said, 'In case of emergency put
your
oxygen mask on and then assist anyone who needs help.' That's the rule."

"They say that," she conceded, buffeted by the emotions she felt.

The old cop, with stains of axle grease permanently seated in the lattice of his hands, continued. "That's gotta be a patrolman's philosophy on the street. You first, then the vic. And it's gotta be your personal philosophy too. Whatever it takes, look out for yourself first. If you're not whole, you'll never be able to take care of anybody else."

Driving now through the faint rain, she heard her fathers voice fade and another replace it. The doctor from several weeks ago.

"Ah, Ms. Sachs. Here you are."

"Hello, Doctor."

"I've just been meeting with Lincoln Rhyme's physician."

"Yes?"

"I've got to talk to you about something."

"You're looking like it's bad news, Doctor."

"Why don't we sit down over there in the corner?"

"Here's fine. Tell me. Let me have it straight."

Her whole world in turmoil, everything she'd planned for the future altered completely.

What could she do about it?

Well, she reflected, pulling to a stop at the curb, here's one thing...

Amelia Sachs sat for a long moment. This is crazy, she thought. But then, impulsively, she climbed out of the Camaro and, head down, walked quickly around the corner and into an apartment building. She climbed the stairs. And knocked on the door.

When it opened she smiled at John Sung. He smiled back and nodded her inside.

Whatever it takes, look out for yourself first. If you're not whole, you'll never be able to take care of anybody else.
...

Suddenly she felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders.

Midnight.

But, despite the exhausting day, which had led him from a sinking ship to a Central Park West apartment half the globe away from his home, Sonny Li didn't seem tired.

He walked into Lincoln Rhyme's bedroom, carrying a shopping bag. "When I down in Chinatown with Hongse, Loaban, I buy some things. Got present for you."

"Present?" Rhyme asked from his throne, the new Hill-Rom Flexicair bed, which—he'd been told—was exceedingly comfortable.

Li took an object from the bag and began unwrapping a small wad of paper. "Look what I got here." In his hands was a jade figurine of a man with a bow and arrow and looking fierce. Li looked around the room. "Which way north?"

"That's north." Rhyme nodded.

Li put the figurine on top of a table against the wall. Then returned to the bag and took out some sticks of incense.

"You're not going to burn that in here."

"Have to, Loaban. Not kill you."

Despite Li's assertion that Chinese have a difficult time saying no, this was not a trait the cop apparently shared.

He set the incense into a holder and lit it. He then found a Dixie cup in the bathroom and filled it with some liquor from a light green bottle, which had also appeared from the shopping bag.

"What're you doing, making a temple?"

"Shrine, Loaban. Not a temple." Li was amused by Rhyme's failure to miss the obvious distinction.

"Who is that? Buddha? Confucius?"

"With a bow and arrow?" Li scoffed. "Loaban, you know so much about so little, and so little about so much."

Rhyme laughed, thinking that when he'd been married his wife had often said much the same, though at a higher volume and less articulately.

Li continued. "This is Guan Di—god of war. We make sacrifice to him. He like sweet wine and that what I bought for him."

Rhyme wondered how Sellitto and Dellray, not to mention Sachs, would react when they saw the transformation of his room into a shrine to the god of war.

Li bowed toward the icon and whispered some words in Chinese. He extracted a white bottle from the shopping bag and sat in the rattan chair by Rhyme's bed. He filled a Dixie cup for himself and then fiddled with one of Rhyme's tumblers, taking off the lid, filling it halfway up and then replacing the lid and fitting a straw inside.

"And that?" Rhyme asked.

"Good stuff, Loaban.
Chu yeh ching chiew.
We make sacrifice to
us
now. This stuff good. Like whisky."

No, it wasn't like whisky at all, definitely not delicately peat-smoked eighteen-year-old scotch. But, although the taste was pretty bad, it had one hell of a kick to it.

Li nodded toward the impromptu sacristy. "I find Guan Di at store in Chinatown. He very popular god. Thousands shrines all over China devoted to him. But I not buy him because of war. He is god of detectives too, I'm saying."

"You're making that up."

"Joke? No, I'm saying, is true. Every security bureau I ever been in has Guan Di there. Case don't go so good, detectives burn offerings, just like we do." Another shot of the liquor. Li sniffed. "That strong stuff, I'm saying. The
baijiu."

"The what?"

He nodded at the bottle
of chu yeh ching chiew.

"What was your prayer?" Rhyme asked.

"I translate: 'Guan Di, please let us find the Changs and catch the fuck Ghost."'

"That's a good prayer, Sonny." Rhyme drank more of the liquor. It grew better with every sip—or maybe it was that you tended to forget how bad it was.

The Chinese cop continued, "That surgery you talk about. That make you better?"

"It might. A little. I won't be able to walk but I could regain a little movement."

"How it work?"

He explained to Li about Dr. Cheryl Weaver, whose neurology unit at a branch of the University of North Carolina was performing experimental surgery on spinal cord injury patients. He could still remember almost verbatim the doctor's explanation of how the technique worked.

The nervous system is made up of axons, which carry nerve impulses. In a spinal cord injury those axons're cut or crushed and they die. So they stop carrying impulses and the message doesn't get from the brain to the rest of the body. Now, you hear that nerves don't regenerate. That's not completely true. In the peripheral nervous system
—
like our arms or legs
—
damaged axons can grow back. But in the central nervous system
—
the brain and the spinal cord
—
they don't. At least they don't on their own. So, when you cut your finger, your skin grows back and you regain your sense of touch. In the spinal cord that doesn't happen. But there are things that we're learning to do that can help regrowth.

Our approach at the Institute here is an all-out assault on the site of the injury. We attack SCI on all fronts. We use traditional decompression surgery to reconstruct the bony structure of the vertebrae themselves and to protect the site where your injury occurred. Then we graft two things into the site of the injury: one is some of the patient's own peripheral nervous system tissue and the other substance we graft is some embryonic central nervous system cells.