The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

"Fifteen hundred."

"Yuan?"

Mah laughed. "One-color."

Chang showed no emotion but he thought: Fifteen hundred U.S. dollars! That was insane. In the money belt around his waist he had about five thousand dollars' worth of Chinese yuan. It was all the cash that his family had left in the world. Shaking his head. "No, impossible." After a few minutes of animated haggling they settled on $900 for all the documents.

"You too?" Mah asked Wu.

The gaunt man nodded but added, "Only for myself. That will be less, won't it?"

Mah drew heavily on his cigarette. "Five hundred. I won't go lower than that."

Wu tried to bargain too but Mah held firm. Finally the skinny man grudgingly agreed.

Mah said, "You'll have to get me pictures of everybody for the drivers' licenses and employee cards. Go into an amusement arcade. You can have the pictures made there."

Chang remembered poignantly the night he sat with Mei-Mei in such a booth at a large entertainment center in Xiamen years ago, not long after they'd first met. The pictures were presently in a suitcase sitting within the corpse of the Fuzhou Dragon at the bottom of the dark ocean.

"We also need a van. I can't afford to buy one. Can I rent one from you?"

The tong leader scoffed. "Don't I have everything? Of course, of course." After more bargaining, they agreed on a rental. Mah calculated the total that the men owed and then figured the exchange rate for paying in yuan. He told the men the astonishing sum and they reluctantly agreed. "Give me the names and address for the documents." He turned to his computer and, as Chang dictated the information, Mah typed with fast keystrokes.

Chang himself spent a lot of time on his old laptop computer. The Internet had become the main means for dissidents in China to communicate with the outside world, though doing so was very difficult. Chang's modem was woefully slow and the public security bureaus, as well as agents from the People's Liberation Army, were constantly looking for emails and postings by dissidents. Chang had a firewall on his computer that would often give a beep, signaling that the government was trying to break into his system. He'd log off immediately and have to establish a new service provider account. His laptop too, he thought sadly, was sleeping forever inside the Fuzhou Dragon.

As Chang dictated the address, the tong leader looked up from the keyboard. "So you'll be staying in Queens?"

"Yes. A friend arranged a place for us."

"Is it a big place? Is it comfortable for all of you? Don't you think my broker could do better? I'm thinking he could. I have contacts in Queens."

"He is my best friend's brother. He's already arranged for the lease."

"Ah, friend's brother. Good. Well, we have an affiliated association there. The Flushing Neighborhood and Merchants Association. Very big. Powerful. That's the new Chinatown in the New York area: Flushing. Maybe you won't like your apartment. Maybe the children won't be safe. That's possible, don't you think? Go to the association and mention my name."

"I'll remember that."

Mah nodded toward the computer screen and asked Wu, "You're both at this address?"

Chang started to say that they were but Wu interrupted. "No, no. I want to stay in Manhattan, Chinatown here. Can your broker find us a house?"

"But--" Chang said, frowning.

"You don't mean house, do you?" Mah inquired, amused. "There are no houses." He added, "That you could afford."

"An apartment then?"

Mah said, "Yes, he has temporary rooms. You can get a place today and then stay there until he finds you a permanent home." As Mah typed some more and the hiss of the modem filled the office, Chang put his hand on Wu's arm and whispered, "No, Qichen, you must come with us."

"We're staying in Manhattan."

Leaning closer so that Mah could not hear, Chang whispered, "Don't be a fool. The Ghost will find you."

Wu laughed. "Don't worry about him."

"Don't worry? He just killed a dozen of our friends." Gambling with Wu's own life was one thing but to risk his wife and children was unthinkable.

But Wu was adamant. "No. We are staying here."