The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

The man in the wheelchair noticed the disgust in Li's eyes. He said, "That's right--my observant Thom here spotted you when he took the trash out. And then . . ." He nodded at the computer screen and said, "Command, security. Back door."

On the computer screen a video image of the back door of the building and the alley popped up.

Li suddenly understood how the Coast Guard had located the Fuzhou Dragon floating in the endless ocean: this man. Lincoln Rhyme.

"Judges of hell," he muttered.

The fat officer laughed. "Don'tcha just hate days like this?"

Then the black man pulled Li's wallet out of his pocket. He squeezed the damp leather. "Our li'l skel here been swimming, I de-duce." He opened the wallet and handed it to the Chinese officer.

The fat man pulled out a radio and spoke into it. "Mel, Alan, come on back in. We got him."

Two men, probably the ones Li had heard leaving a few moments ago, returned. A balding, slight man ignored Li and walked to a computer, began to type frantically on it. The other was a man in a suit with striking red hair. He blinked in surprise and said, "Wait, that's not the Ghost."

"His missing assistant then," Rhyme said. "His bangshou."

"No," the red-haired man said. "I know him. I've seen him before."

Li realized that there was something familiar about this man too.

"Seen him?" the black officer asked.

"Some of us from INS were at a meeting last year in the Fuzhou public security bureau--about human smuggling. He was there. He was one of them."

"One of who?" the fat officer grumbled.

The Chinese officer gave a laugh and held up an ID card from Li's wallet, comparing Li's picture with his face. "One of us," he said. "He's a cop."

*

Rhyme too examined the card and the driver's license, both of which had pictures of the man. They gave his name as Li Kangmei, a detective with the Liu Guoyuan Public Security Bureau.

The criminalist said to Dellray, "See if any of our people in China can confirm it." A tiny cell phone appeared in the agent's large hand. And he started punching keys.

Looking over the diminutive man, Rhyme asked, " 'Li' is your first or last name?"

"Last. And I not like 'Kangmei,' " he explained. "I use Sonny. Western name."

"What're you doing here?" Rhyme asked.

"Ghost, he kill three people in my town last year. He had meeting, I'm saying. Had meeting with little snakehead in restaurant. You know what is little snakehead?"

Rhyme nodded. "Go on."

"The little snakehead cheating him. Big fight. Ghost kill him but woman and her daughter also killed and old man sitting on bench. Got in way and Ghost just kill them to escape, I'm saying."

"Bystanders?"

Li nodded. "We try to arrest him but he has very powerful . . . " He sought for a word. Finally he turned to Eddie Deng and said, "Guanxi."

"That means connections," Deng explained. "You pay off the right people and you get good guanxi."

Li nodded. "No one willing testify against him. Then evidence in shooting disappear from headquarters office. My boss lose interest. Case got collectivized."

"Collectivized?" Sellitto asked.

Li smiled grimly. "When something ruined, we say it got collectivized. In old days, Mao's day, when government turn business or farm into commune or collective, it fail pretty fuck fast."