The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

"I have not brought you all the honor I should have."

"Yes, you have," the old man said and poured more tea. "I named you well." Chang's given name, Jingerzi, meant "shrewd son."

They lifted their cups and Chang drained his.

Mei-Mei came to the door, glanced at the teacups. "Have you taken rice yet?" she asked, the expression meaning simply, "Good morning." It wasn't a reference to food.

"Wake William," Chang told Mei-Mei. "There are some things I want to say to him."

But his father waved for her to stop. "No." She did.

"Why not?" Chang asked.

"He will want to come with you."

"I'll tell him no."

Chang Jiechi laughed. "And that will stop him? That impetuous son of yours?"

Chang fell silent for a moment then said, "I can't go off like this without talking to him. It's important."

But his father asked, "What is the only reason that a man would do something like you are about to do--something foolhardy and dangerous?"

Chang replied, "For the sake of his children."

His father smiled. "Yes, son, yes. Keep that in mind, always. You do something like this for the sake of your children." Then he grew stern. How well Sam Chang knew this look of his father's. Imperial, unyielding. He had not seen it for some time--ever since the man had grown sick with the cancer. "I know exactly what you intend to say to your son. I will do it. It's my wish that you don't wake William."

Chang nodded. "As you say, Baba." He looked at his wristwatch. The time was seven-thirty. He had to be at the Ghost's apartment in an hour. His father poured him more tea, which Chang drank down quickly. Then he said to Mei-Mei, "I have to leave soon. But I wish that you come sit by me."

She sat beside her husband, lowering her head to his shoulder.

They said nothing but after five minutes Po-Yee began to cry and Mei-Mei rose to take care of the girl. Sam Chang was content to sit in silence and watch his wife and their new daughter. And then it was time to leave and go to his death.

*

Rhyme smelled cigarette smoke.

"That's disgusting," he called.

"What?" asked Sonny Li, the only other person in the room. The Chinese cop was groggy and his hair stuck out comically. The hour was 7:30.

"The cigarettes," Rhyme explained.

"You should smoke," Li barked. "Relaxes you. Good for you."

Mel Cooper arrived with Lon Sellitto and Eddie Deng not far behind him. The young Chinese-American cop walked very slowly. Even his hair was wilted, no stylish spikes today.

"How are you, Eddie?" Rhyme asked.

"You should see the bruise," Deng said, referring to his run-in with a lead slug yesterday during the shoot-out on Canal Street. "I wouldn't let my wife see it. Put on my pajamas in the bathroom."

Red-eyed Sellitto carried a handful of pages from the overnight team of officers who'd been canvassing recent contractors that had installed gray Arnold Lustre-Rite carpet in the past six months. The canvassing wasn't even finished and the number of construction locations was discouragingly large: thirty-two separate installations in and around Battery Park City.

"Hell," Rhyme muttered, "thirty-two." And each one could have multiple floors that had been carpeted. Thirty-two? He'd hoped there'd be no more than five or six.

INS agent Alan Coe arrived, walking brightly into the lab. He didn't seem the least contrite and began asking questions about how the investigation was going--as if the shoot-out yesterday had never happened and the Ghost hadn't escaped thanks to him.

More footsteps in the corridor outside.