The Stone Monkey (36 page)

Whatever drove her to scratch her skin, to mourn her father, to mourn her former lover, a cop busted for being one of the most crooked in recent history, whatever drove her at the crime scenes—the same force drove her off by herself at times.

Just as there were times when he booted her out, sometimes asking nicely, sometimes ordering her away. A crip needs time alone. To gather strength, to let the aide take care of the piss 'n' shit stuff and to consider little questions like Do I want to kill myself today?

Rhyme called the Federal Building and asked for Dellray but he was in Brooklyn checking out leads to the attempted bombing last night. Then he spoke to the assistant special agent in charge and was told that they were meeting that morning about assigning another FBI agent to GHOSTKILL to replace Dellray. Rhyme was angry; he'd assumed the bureau had already picked an SSA for the team.

"What about SPEC-TAC?"

The ASAC replied, "That's on the scroll for the powwow this morning too."

The scroll for the powwow?

"Well, we need people and we need them now," Rhyme snapped.

The slick man said, "We're prioritized."

"Oh, that's fucking reassuring."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Rhyme? I missed that."

"I said, call us as soon as you know something. We need more people."

Just after he disconnected, the phone rang again. Rhyme snapped, "Command, answer phone."

There was a click and a Chinese-accented voice asked, "Mr. Li, please."

Li sat down, absently pulled out a cigarette, which Thom swooped by and lifted from his hand. Li leaned toward the speaker and began to talk rapidly in Chinese. There was an explosive exchange between him and the caller. Rhyme thought they were arguing but Li finally sat back, jotting notes in Chinese. Then he hung up and smiled. "Okay, okay," Li said, "here I got something. That was Cai, from the tong. "He ask around about minorities. There this group of Chinese called Uighurs. They Muslims, Turks. Tough guys. They got take over by China—like Tibet—and don't like it so good. Treated bad. Cai find that Ghost hire people from Turkestan Community and Islamic Center of Queens. The guy Hongse shot, he one of them. Here address and phone number. Hey, was I right, Loaban? I say he from minority."

"You sure were, Sonny."

Eddie Deng translated the information into English on a second slip of paper.

"Should we raid it?" Sellitto asked.

"Not yet. Might tip off the Ghost," Rhyme said. "I've got a better idea."

Deng was right with him. "Pen register."

"Yep."

These were phone company records of incoming and outgoing calls for a particular number. Since they didn't record the content of a conversation, it was far easier for law enforcers to access these records than to monitor the actual transmissions under a Title 3 or state wiretap.

"What's that going to do?" Coe asked.

"The Ghost got to town yesterday morning and called the center at some point—presumably to arrange for his muscle. We'll check out all incoming and outgoing calls to the number of the place after, say, 9 A.M. yesterday."

In a half hour the phone company had provided a list of about thirty numbers into and out of the Uighur center in Queens in the past two days. Most of those numbers they could eliminate immediately—like those called before the Ghost arrived, as Rhyme had pointed out—but four were cell phones with local exchanges.

"And they're hot phones, right? The mobiles?"

"Stolen as bad as the Mets' second base," Sellitto said.

Because the phones were stolen, this meant there was no billing address where the Ghost might be. But the cell phone providers were able to give the team information about where the callers were located when each call had been made or received. One phone had been in the Battery Park City area and, as the security chief from the company dictated intersections to delineate the cell zone, Thorn drew them on the map. The result was a wedge about a half mile square downtown near the Hudson River.

"Now," Rhyme shouted to Sachs, feeling the excitement of narrowing in on his prey, "did any of the buildings in that area have Arnold Lustre-Rite carpet installed?"

"Crossing my fingers," Eddie Deng said.

Finally Sachs looked up from the list and shouted, "Yes! Got one."

"That's the Ghost's safehouse," Rhyme announced.

She said, "A new building. Eight-oh-five Patrick Henry Street. Not far from the river." She circled it on the map. Then she sighed, looking over the information from the Arnold company. "Hell," she muttered. "They installed carpet on nineteen floors. Lots of apartments to check."

"Then," Rhyme said impatiently, "you better get going."

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.

• Uighurs from Turkestan Community and Islamic Center of Queens.

• Cell phone calls lead to 805 Patrick Henry Street, downtown.

Canal Street Shooting Crime Scene     

• Additional trace suggesting safehouse is in Battery Park City area.

• Stolen Chevrolet Blazer, untraceable.

• No match on prints.

• Safehouse carpet: Arnold company's Lustre-Rite, installed in past six months; calling contractors to get list of installations.

• Location of installations determined: 32 near Battery Park City.

• Fresh gardening mulch found.

• Body of Ghost's accomplice: ethnic minority from west or northwest China. Negative on prints. Weapon was Walther PPK.

• Details on immigrants:

• The Changs: Sam, Mei-Mei, William and Ronald; Sam's father, Chang Jiechi, and infant, Po-Yee. Sam has job arranged but employer and location unknown. Driving blue van, no make, no tag number. Changs' apartment is in Queens.

• The Wus: Qichen, Yong-Ping, Chin-Mei and Lang.

You are part of the old. Do you repent?

The Ghost stood at the window of his high-rise apartment on Patrick Henry Street in Lower Manhattan and watched the boats sailing through the harbor, fifty meters below him, a mile away.

Some streaking fast, some bobbing awkwardly.

Some pristine, some rusty like the
Fuzhou Dragon.

...part of the old. Your decadent way of life is disgusting....

He greatly enjoyed watching the panorama below him. He rarely had such views in China; once away from Beijing and the big cities in Fujian and Guangdong there were few towering buildings. Because there were few elevators.

Which was a condition that the Ghost's father came close to rectifying in the 1960s.

His father was a man blessed with the rare combination of careening ambition backed up by sensible schemes. The stocky businessman had his hands in many ventures: selling military products to the Vietnamese, who were gearing up to defeat the Americans in their appendix of a country to the south, operating junkyards, lending money, building private housing and importing Russian machinery—the most lucrative of which were Lemarov elevators, which were cheap, functional and rarely killed anyone.

Under the auspices of a Fuzhou collective, Kwan Baba—the given nickname meaning "father"—had signed contracts to buy thousands of these elevators, sell them to the building collectives and bring in Russian technicians to install them. He had every reason to believe that his efforts would change the skylines of China and make him even wealthier than he was.

And why wouldn't he succeed? He wore conformist unisex suits, he attended every CCP rally he possibly could, he had
guanxi
throughout the southeast and his cooperative was one of the most successful in the province of Fujian, sending a cascade of yuan to Beijing.

But his career was doomed. And the reason for this was simple: a solid, humorless soldier-turned-politician named Mao Zedong, whose capricious 1966 Cultural Revolution incited students across the country to rise up and destroy the four olds: old culture, customs, ideas and habits.

The house of the Ghost's father in an elegant part of Fuzhou was one of the first targets of the rampaging young men who took to the streets, practically shivering with idealism, on the orders of the Great Helmsman.

"You are part of the old," the leader raged. "Do you repent? Do you confess to clinging to the old values?"

Kwan Baba had met them in his living room, which had shrunk to the size of a prison cell due to the number of shouting youths surrounding the family, and had gazed at them not only in fear but in bewilderment too; he honestly hadn't been able to see the evil in what he'd done.

"Confess and seek reeducation and we will spare you!" another cried.

"You are guilty of old thought, old values, old culture...."

"You have built a lackey's empire on the backs of the people!"

In fact, the students had no idea what Kwan Baba did for a living or whether the cooperative he headed was based on the purest principles of J. P. Morgan capitalism or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist communism. They knew only that his house was nicer than theirs and that he could afford to buy art from an abhorred "old" era—art that did nothing to inform the people's struggle against the oppressive forces of the West.

Kwan and his wife, along with the twelve-year-old Ang and his older brother, stood speechless before the seething crowd.

"You are part of the old..."

Much of that night was a terrible, confused blur to young Ang.

But one part was permanently branded into his memory and he thought of it now, standing in his luxurious high-rise overlooking the harbor, awaiting the Changs' betrayer.

The tall student leader of the cadre stood in the middle of the living room, wearing black-rimmed glasses, lenses slightly askew because they'd been made at one of the local collectives. Spittle flying from his mouth, he engaged in a furious dialectic with young Kwan Ang, who hovered meekly beside the kidney-shaped coffee table on which his father had taught him to use the abacus years before.

"You are part of the old," the student raged into the boy's face. "Do you repent?" For emphasis, with every line he spoke he swung the thick baton—heavy as a cricket bat—to the floor between them; it landed with a loud thud.

"Yes, I repent," the boy said calmly. "I ask the people to forgive me."

"You will reform your decadent ways."

Thud.

"Yes, I will reform my ways," he said, though he didn't know what "decadent" meant. "The old ways are a threat to the collective good of the people."

"You will die if you retain your old beliefs!"

Thud.

"Then I will reject them."

Thud, thud, thud...

So it continued for endless minutes—until the blows the student rained down finally stole the life from what the student had been striking with the iron-tipped baton: the Ghost's parents, who lay bound and gagged on the floor at their feet.

The boy gave not a single glance at the bloody forms as he recited the catechism the students thirstily sought to hear. "I repent my ways. I reject the old. I regret that I have been seduced by unbeneficial and decadent thought."

He was spared, but not his older brother, who fled to the gardener's shed and returned with a rake—the only weapon the foolish boy could find. Within minutes the students reduced him to a third bloody pile on the carpet, as lifeless as his parents.