The Stone Monkey (39 page)

One of the men was a Chinese-Turkestan immigrant from Queens.

The other was a sixty-nine-year-old Chinese national, believed to have been a passenger on the
Fuzhou Dragon.

Sam Chang had wakened from his heavy sleep, cotton-mouthed and disoriented, a half hour ago. He'd tried to stand but fell, crashing to the floor, bringing the children and his wife running. As soon as he noticed the gun was gone he'd understood what his father had done and stumbled toward the door.

But Mei-Mei had stopped him. "It's too late," she'd said.

"No!" he'd cried, falling back onto the couch.

He'd turned to her. His loss and sorrow tipped him into fury and he raged at her, "You helped him, didn't you? You knew what he was going to do!"

The woman, holding Po-Yee's toy kitten, looked down at it. She said nothing.

Chang had made a fist and drawn back to strike her. Mei-Mei had squinted and turned away, anticipating the blow. William shifted from one foot to the other; Ronald cried. But then Chang had lowered his hand. Thinking: I've taught her and my children to respect their elders, my father most of all. Chang Jiechi would have ordered her to help him and she would have obeyed.

As the pernicious effects of the powerful medicine had worn off, Chang had then sat for a time, racked by worry, hoping for the best.

But the television report confirmed that the worst had come to be.

The Turkestan had been shot to death, the reporter explained, by the elderly man, who had then died of an overdose of morphine, apparently a suicide. The apartment was believed to have been a hideout for Kwan Ang, the human smuggler wanted in connection with the sinking of the
Fuzhou Dragon
early yesterday. Kwan had escaped before the police arrived and was still at large.

Ronald continued to cry and looked back and forth from the TV to his mother then his father. "Yeye," he said. "Yeye..."

Sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth anxiously, William bitterly spat out the translation of the pretty newscaster's words. By coincidence the reporter was Chinese-American.

The story concluded and, as if the televised confirmation of Chang Jiechi's death signaled the moment, Mei-Mei rose and went into the bedroom. She returned with a sheet of paper. She handed it to her husband then hefted Po-Yee onto her hip and wiped the girl's face and hands.

Numb, Sam Chang took the folded piece of paper and opened it. The letter had been written in pencil, not a brush charged with rich ink, but the characters were beautifully drawn; a true artist, the old man had taught his son, can excel in any medium, no matter how base.

My son:

My life has been full beyond my hopes. I am old and I am sick. Seeking a year or two more of life on earth gives me no comfort. Rather, I find solace in my duty to return to the soul of Nature at the hour inscribed for me in
The Register of the Living and the Dead.

And that moment is now.

I could say many things to you, summarize for you all the lessons of my life, all that I have learned from my father and from your mother and from you, son, as well. But I choose not to do so. Truth is unwavering but the path to truth is often a maze that we each must struggle to find on our own. I have planted healthy bamboo and it has grown well. Continue your journey away from the earth and toward the light and nurture your own young crops. Be vigilant, as any farmer, but give them space. I have seen the stock of the plant; they will grow straight.

—
Your father      

Sam Chang was seized with bottomless anger. He rose fast from the couch and, groggy from the drug, struggled to stay upright. He flung the teacup against the wall and it shattered. Ronald shied away from his enraged father.

"I am going to kill him!" he screamed. "The Ghost is going to die!"

His tirade started the baby crying. Mei-Mei whispered something to her sons. William hesitated but then nodded toward Ronald, who hefted Po-Yee. Together they walked into the bedroom. The door closed.

Chang said to her, "I found him once and I'm going to find him again. This time—"

"No," Mei-Mei said firmly.

He turned to face his wife. "What?"

She swallowed and looked down. "You will not."

"Don't speak to me like that. You're my wife."

"Yes," she said to him, her voice quavering, "I
am
your wife. And I'm the mother of your children. And what will happen to us if you die? Have you thought about that? We'd live on the street, we'd be deported. Do you know what life in China would be like for us when we returned? A widow of a dissident with no property, no money? Is that what you want for us?"

"My father is dead!" Chang raged. "The man responsible for that has to die."

"No, he doesn't," she replied breathlessly, working up her courage once again. "Your father was an old man. He was sick. He was not the center of our universe and we must move on."

"How can you say that?" Chang raged, shocked at her impudence. "He's the reason I exist."

"He lived a full life and now he's gone. You live in the past, Jingerzi. Our parents deserve our respect, yes, but nothing more than that."

He realized that she'd used his Chinese given name. He didn't think she'd done so in years—not since they'd been married. When she addressed him, she always used the respectful
zhangfu,
"husband."

In a steadier voice now Mei-Mei said, "You won't avenge his death. You'll stay here with us, in hiding, until the Ghost is captured or killed. Then you and William will go to work at Joseph Tan's printing company. And I'll stay here and teach Ronald and Po-Yee. We'll all study English, we'll make money. ... And, when there's another amnesty, we'll become citizens." She paused for a moment and wiped her face, from which tears streamed. "I loved him too, you know. It's my loss as well as yours." She resumed cleaning up.

Chang fell onto the couch and sat for a long time in silence, staring at the shabby red and black carpet on the floor. Then he walked to the bedroom. William, holding Po-Yee, stared out the window. Chang began to speak to him but changed his mind and silently motioned his younger son out. The boy warily stepped into the living room and followed his father to the couch. They both sat. After a moment Chang composed himself. He asked Ronald, "Son, do you know the warriors of Qin Shi Huang?"

"Yes, Baba."

These were thousands of full-size terra-cotta statues of soldiers, charioteers and horses built near Xi'an by Chinas first emperor in the third century B.C. and placed in his tomb. The army was to accompany him to the afterlife.

"We're going to do the same for Yeye." He nearly choked on his sorrow. "We're going to send some things to heaven so your grandfather will have them with him."

"What?" Ronald asked.

"Things that were important to him when he was alive. We lost everything on the ship so we'll draw pictures of them."

"Will that work?" the boy asked, frowning.

"Yes. But I need you to help me."

Ronald nodded.

"Take some paper there and that pencil." He nodded toward the table. "Why don't you draw a picture of his favorite brushes—the wolf-hair and the goat. And his ink stick and well. You remember what they looked like?"

Ronald took the pencil in his small hand. He bent over the paper, began his task.

"And a bottle of the rice wine he liked," Mei-Mei suggested.

"And a pig?" the boy asked.

"Pig?" Chang asked.

"He liked pork rice, remember?"

Then Chang was aware of someone behind him. And he turned to see William looking down at his brother's drawing. Somber-faced, the teenager said, "When Grandmother died, we burned money."

It was a tradition at Chinese funerals to burn slips of paper printed to look like million-yuan notes, issued by the "Bank of Hell" so that the deceased would have money to spend in the afterworld.

"Maybe I can draw some yuan," William said.

Chang was swept with emotion at his words but he didn't embrace the boy, as he wanted desperately to do. He said simply, "Thank you, son."

The lean boy crouched down beside his brother and began to draw the bills.

When the children had finished their drawings Chang led his family outside into the backyard of their new home and, as if this were Chang Jiechi's actual funeral, he set two burning incense sticks in the ground to mark the spot where the body would have lain and then, setting afire the pictures the sons had drawn, they watched the smoke disappear into the gray sky and the ash melt into black curls.

"Somebody made another move on the Wus," Sellitto said, glancing up at Rhyme from his cell phone.

"What?" Sachs asked, astonished. "In our Murray Hill safehouse?" Rhyme wheeled around to face the detective, who said, "Dark-complected man, slight build, wearing gloves, was spotted on one of the security cameras in the alleyway. He was checking out one of the rear windows. Coincidence, you think?"

Sonny Li laughed bitterly. "With Ghost, there not coincidences." With a concurring nod, Rhyme asked, "What happened?"

"Two of our people went after him but he got away." The criminalist then asked, "How the hell did the Ghost find out where they were?"

"Who'd know?" Sellitto asked.

Sachs considered this. "After the shoot-out on Canal Street, one of his
bangshous
could've followed me to the clinic then followed the Wus to the safehouse. Hard to do but possible." She walked to the whiteboard and tapped an entry. "Or how 'bout this?"

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

"A spy, you thinking?" Sellitto asked.

She said, "Nobody at the bureau knew we sent them to Murray Hill.

Dellray had left by the time I thought of it. That leaves somebody at the INS or NYPD."

"Well," Sellitto said, "we damn well can't keep the Wus there anymore. I'll call the U.S. Marshals and have them taken to a witness protection facility upstate." He looked at the team around him. "And
that
information doesn't leave this room." He placed the call and arranged to have the Wus transported in a bulletproof van.

Rhyme was growing impatient. "Somebody check with the bureau. Where the hell is Dellray's replacement? Eddie, make the call."

Deng got in touch with the bureau's ASAC. It turned out that there'd been some delay with the magical "powwow" that was supposed to result in additional agents to work GHOSTKILL.

"They said everything'll be in place this afternoon."

"What's
'everything'?"
Rhyme asked caustically. "And what fucking
place
does it have to be in before we get the agents? Don't they know there's a killer out there?"

"You want to call them back?"

He snapped, "No. I want to look at the evidence."

Sachs's search of the crime scene at the Ghost's safehouse on Patrick Henry Street had mixed results. One discouraging fact was that the cell phone that had been instrumental in tracking down the Ghost had been abandoned in the high-rise. Had he still been using it, they might have been able to trace him. Moreover, the fact he'd left it meant that he'd probably figured out that this was how they'd found him and would now be far more careful when calling on mobiles.

Unlike the shooter killed on Canal Street, the Uighur in the safehouse did have some identification on him, a driver's license and a card with the address of the Turkestan cultural center in Queens. But Bedding and Saul and a team of tactical agents were at the center now and the head of the organization had said only that he'd heard that some unidentified Chinese man had hired a few people in the neighborhood to move furniture. He didn't know anything else. They would continue to lean on him, the twins assured, but their assessment was that he'd rather go to jail than dime out the Ghost.

The name on the lease of the Ghost's apartment didn't help either: Harry Lee. His Social Security number and references were fake and the certified rental check came from a bank in the Caribbean. "Lee" was the equivalent of "Smith" in English, Deng reported.

The body of the old man found dead from the morphine overdose, though, did reveal some clues. He'd carried in his wallet an ID card, very blurred from the seawater, that identified him as Chang Jiechi. They also found a very old scrap of paper hidden behind the ID. Deng smiled sadly. "Look at that. It's an autograph from Chiang Kai-shek, the nationalist leader. The inscription thanked Chang Jiechi for his efforts to resist the communists and keep the Chinese people free from dictatorship."

Rhyme's gaze then slipped to the row of pictures below the ones of the old man's corpse. They were close-ups of his hands. The criminalist moved his own finger slightly and eased the Storm Arrow up to the board.

"Look at that," he said. "His hands."

"I shot them because of the blotches," Sachs said.

Chang Jiechi's fingers and palms were covered with blue-black stains. Paint or ink. Clearly not the purple shade of postmortem lividity—which in any case wouldn't've occurred so soon after death.

"The fingers!" Rhyme called. "Look at the fingers."

She squinted and walked close. "Indentations!" She pulled the printout of Sam Chang's fingerprints off the wall and held it close to that of the fathers hand. The palms and digits were different sizes—and the old man's were far more wrinkled—but the indentations Rhyme had spotted on Sam Chang's fingers and thumb were similar to the lines clearly evident on his fathers.

They'd assumed that the marks on Sam Chang's fingers were from an injury of some kind. But clearly that wasn't the case.

"What's it mean?" Mel Cooper asked. "Genetic?"

"No, can't be," Rhyme said, his eyes scanning the picture of the old man's hand. He closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind fly—like one of the peregrine falcons lifting off from its bedroom window perch. Ink on his hands, indentations... Then his head jerked back in the chair and he looked at Sachs. "They're painters! Father and son're both artists. Remember the logo of The Home Store on the van? One of them painted it."