The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

As she finished the search Sachs was aware of cigarette smoke. She looked up to see Sonny Li standing in the doorway, surveying the room. "I know him from boat," Li said, shaking his head with a sadness in his eyes. "That Sam Chang's father."

"I figured. Why'd he try it? One old man against the Ghost and the others?"

"For family," Li said quietly. "For family."

"I suppose you want to run the scene too?" she asked without any irony. Li's correct prediction about Jerry Tang and his surprise appearance at the Wus' apartment yesterday had bolstered his credibility as a detective.

"What you think I doing now, Hongse? I walking grid."

She laughed.

"Loaban and me talk last night. He tell me about walking grid. Only I walk grid in my mind now."

Sort of like Rhyme does, Sachs reflected. "You finding anything good?"

"Oh, plenty,

I'm saying."

She turned back to the more tangible evidence and wrote out the chain of custody cards and packaged the evidence for transport.

In the corner of the room she noticed a small altar and several statues of Chinese gods. The words from the woman up the hall echoed in her mind.

They use firecrackers in their religion. They're supposed to scare away dragons.

Or maybe it's ghosts.

Chapter Thirty-three

Dozens of flashing lights surrounded the high-rise. The Ghost turned and looked back at them. Yusuf, the silent Turk, drove along Church Street away from the place. He was grim and badly shaken from the loss of yet another comrade but he drove calmly and was careful not to draw attention to the stolen Windstar van.

After the old man had killed himself, without revealing anything (he had nothing in his pockets either), the Ghost had fled down the stairs and sprinted into the parking lot just as he'd heard sirens in front of the building. He was now still struggling to catch his breath and to calm his heart.

The police had arrived too quickly to be responding to the sound of the gunshots; they'd known that he was there. How? Gazing absently at the people on the morning streets, he considered this. The safehouse had absolutely no connection to him. Finally he decided that they had probably tracked the place down through phone calls to and from the Uighur center in Queens. That had given the police his cell phone number and they'd traced the location of the safehouse. Probably there was other evidence too; his intelligence about this Lincoln Rhyme suggested that he was fully capable of making a deduction like that--but he was troubled that he'd gotten no advance warning that the police were on their way there. He'd thought his guanxi was better than this.

Yusuf said something in his native Turkic and the Ghost said in English, "Repeat."

"Where you go?"

The Ghost had several other safehouses in the city but only one nearby. He gave him directions. Then the Ghost handed the man another five thousand in one-color. "Go find somebody else to help us. You'll do that?"

Yusuf hesitated.

"I'm sorry about your friends," the Ghost said, masking the contempt in his voice with as much faux sympathy as he could add. "But they were careless. You're not careless. I need you to help me. There'll be another ten thousand for you. Cash to you alone. You don't have to split it."

He nodded.

"Okay, go find someone else. But not at the Uighur center. Don't go back there. The police will be watching it. And get another cell phone. Call me on mine and give me your new number." He recited the number of his new mobile phone--another one he'd kept in the high-rise and had taken with him, along with the money, when he'd escaped a few minutes before.

"Drop me on the corner, up there."

The Turk rolled to a stop at Canal Street, not far from where they had nearly killed the Wus yesterday. The Ghost climbed out then leaned down and had the Turk reiterate his instructions in English, made sure that he remembered the number of the Ghost's new cell phone.

The van sped off.

The Ghost stretched, his eyes following a Chinese teenager in a tight knit blouse, short skirt and implausibly high heels, which gave her a stuttering gait.

He watched her disappear in the crowd. He wasn't the only man watching her though the Ghost suspected that only he wanted to hurt her very badly before he fucked her.