Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

"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."

"But," Rhyme offered, "the case wasn't collectivized to you."

"No," Li said, his eyes hard ebony disks. "He kill people in my town. I want make sure he come to trial."

Dellray asked, "How'dja get on the ship?"

"I have lots informants in Fuzhou. Last month I find out Ghost kill two people in Taiwan, big guys, important guys, and was leaving from China for month until Taiwan NSB stop looking for him. He going to south of France then taking immigrants from Vyborg in Russia to New York on Fuzhou Dragon."

Rhyme laughed. This small, scruffy man's information had been better than the FBI's and Interpol's combined.

"So," Li continued, "I go undercover. Become piglet – immigrant."

Sellitto asked, "You find out anything about the Ghost? Where he stays here? Associates of his?"

"No, nobody talk to me much. Got on deck when crew not looking – mostly for puking." He shook his head, apparently at the unpleasant memory of the voyage. "But not get close to Ghost."

Coe said, "But what were you going to do? We wouldn't extradite him to China."

Perplexed, Li said, "Why I want him extradited? You not listen. Guanxi, I'm saying. In China they let him go. I going to arrest him when we land. Then give him your public security bureau."

Coe laughed. "You're serious, aren't you."

"Yes. I was going to do."

"He had his bangshou with him, the crew of the ship. Little snake-heads to meet and greet here. They would've killed you."

"Risky, you saying? Sure, sure. But that our job, right? Always risk." He reached for the cigarettes Dellray had relieved him of.

Thom said, "No smoking here."

"What you mean?"

"No smoking."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't," the aide said firmly.

"That craziest thing. You not make joke?"

"No."

"Subway stupid enough. But this is house, I'm saying."

"Yes, a house where you can't smoke."

"Very fuck," Li said. He grudgingly put the pack away.

A faint beeping from across the room. Mel Cooper turned to his computer. He read for a moment and then spun the screen around so that everybody could look. The FBI's Singapore office had sent an email confirmation that Li Kangmei was indeed a detective in the Liu Guoyuan Public Security Bureau of the People's Republic of China. He was presently listed as being on undercover assignment but his office would say no more about it. A picture of Li in a navy-blue uniform accompanied the message. It was clearly the man in the room before them.

Li then explained how the Ghost had scuttled the Dragon. Sam Chang and Wu Qichen and their families, along with Dr. Sung, several other immigrants and the baby of a woman on board the ship got away in a life raft. Everyone else drowned. "Sam Chang – he become leader on raft. Good man, smart. Save my life. Pick me up when Ghost shooting people. Wu was father of second family. Wu smart too but not balanced. Liver-spleen disharmony."

Deng saw Rhyme's frown and said, "Chinese medicine. Hard to explain."

Li continued, "Wu too emotion, I'm saying. Does impulse things."

Even the FBI's crack behavioral profiling was out of Rhyme's comfort zone, being the physical scientist that he was; he had no time whatsoever for disharmonious spleens. "Let's stick with facts," he said.

Li then told them how the raft hit the rocks and he, Sung and the others were washed overboard. They were swept down the shoreline. By the time Li made it back to where the raft had beached, the Ghost had killed two of the immigrants. "I hurry to arrest him but by time I get there, he gone. I hide in bushes on other side of road. I saw woman with red hair rescue one man."

"John Sung," Rhyme said.

"Dr. Sung." Li nodded. "Sat next to me on raft. He okay?"

"The Ghost shot him but he'll be all right. Amelia – the woman you saw – is interviewing him now."

"Hongse, I call her. Hey, pretty girl. Sexy, I'm saying."

Sellitto and Rhyme shared a humorous glance. Rhyme was picturing the consequences if Li had said that to Sachs's face.

Li pointed around the town house. "I get address from her car and come here, thinking maybe I get stuff that lead me to Ghost. Information, I'm saying. Evidence."

"Steal it?" Coe asked.

"Yes, sure," he said unabashedly.

"Why'd you do that, you little skel?" Dellray asked menacingly, using a popular cop word, short for "skeleton," meaning basically: worthless little snitch.

"Have to get it for myself. Because, hey, you not let me help you, right? You just send me back. And I going to arrest him. 'Collar,' right? You say 'collar.'"

Coe said, "Well, you're right – you're not helping us. You may be a cop in China. But here you're just one more fucking undocumented. You are going back."

Eyes flashing angrily, Sonny Li stepped close to Coe, who towered over the small man.