Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

"No, no, Loaban," Sonny Li interrupted. "You got to find that car. Number one thing you do. Fast."

Rhyme lifted a querying eyebrow.

The Chinese cop continued, "Find it now. Beemer, right? You call them Beemers. Put lots people on it. All your cops, I'm saying. Whole bunch."

"It'll take too much time," Rhyme muttered, irritated at the distraction. "We don't have the manpower. We'd have to find somebody in the corporation who was in charge of buying cars and, if it was leased, talk to the dealer's leasing agent, get the records and half of them wouldn't do it without a court order. I want to concentrate on finding the Changs and the Wus."

"No, Loaban," Li insisted. "The Ghost, he going to kill that driver. That what he doing now, looking for him."

"Nup, I'ma thinking you're wrong," Dellray said. "His pri -ority's killing the wits from the boat."

"What you mean 'wit'?"

"Witnesses," Sellitto explained.

Sachs agreed. "My take is that, sure, he's pissed about the driver leaving him and maybe he'll go after him if he has time later. But not now."

"No, no," Li said, shaking his head emphatically. "Important, I'm saying. Find man in Beemer."

"Why?" Sachs asked.

"Very clear. Very obvious. Get that driver. He lead you to snakehead. Maybe use him as bait to find Ghost."

"And what, Sonny," a testy Lincoln Rhyme muttered darkly, "is your basis for that conclusion. Where're the data to support it?"

"Lots data, I'm saying."

"What?"

The small man shrugged. "When I on bus coming to city this morning I saw sign."

"A road sign?" Rhyme asked. "What do you mean?"

"No, no, what you say it? I don't know…" He spoke in Chinese to Eddie Deng.

The young detective said, "He means an omen."

"An omen?" Rhyme barked, as if he were tasting spoiled fish.

Li reached absently for his cigarettes then left them untouched when he saw Thom's sharp glance. He continued, "I am coming into town on bus, I'm saying. I saw crow on road picking at food. Another crow tried steal it and first crow not just scare other away – he chase and try to peck eyes out. Not leave thief alone." Li raised his palms. This was, apparently, his entire argument.

"And?"

"Not clear, Loaban? What I say?"

"No, what you're saying isn't the least fucking bit clear."

"Okay, okay. I remember that crow now and I start thinking about Ghost and who he is and thinking about driver – man in fancy Beemer – and who he is. Well, he is enemy to Ghost. Like crow stealing food. The families – the Wus, the Changs – they not do anything bad to him personal, I'm saying. The driver…" Li frowned, looked frustrated and spoke again to Deng, who offered, "'Betray'?"

"Yes, betray him. He now Ghost's enemy."

Lincoln Rhyme tried not to laugh. "Noted, Sonny." He turned back to Dellray and Sellitto. "Now -"

"I see your face, Loaban," Li said. "I not saying gods come down and give me sign of crows. But remembering birds make me think different way, open up my mind. Get wind flowing through it. That good, you not think?"

"No, I think it's superstitious," Rhyme said. "It's woo woo and we don't have any time for – What the hell are you laughing at?"

"Woo woo. You say woo woo. You speaking Chinese. 'Woo' mean fog. So you say something woo woo, it foggy, unclear."

"Well, to us it means supernatural bullshit."

Even facing Rhyme's considerable bluster, Li wouldn't back down. "No, this not bullshit. Find that driver. You got to, Loaban."

Sachs's eyes were studying the small, persistent man. "I don't know, Rhyme."

"No way."

"Fuck good idea, I'm saying," Li assured the criminalist.

There was thick silence for a moment.

Sellitto intervened. "How 'bout if we put Bedding and Saul on it, give 'em a half-dozen guys from Patrol, Linc? They can check corporate and lease X5 registrations in Manhattan and Queens, only those – Chinatown here and the one in Flushing. And if there're any other breaks and we need bodies, we'll pull 'em off."

"All right, all right," Rhyme said angrily. "Just get moving on it."

"Half-dozen just six, right?" Li complained. "Need more than that." But Rhyme's glare silenced him. "Okay, okay, Loaban."

Pecking crows, stone monkeys and The Register of the Living and the Dead… Rhyme sighed then looked over the team. "Now, if it's not too much to ask, can we get back to some real police work?"

GHOSTKILL

Easton , Long Island,

Crime Scene

• Two immigrants killed on beach; shot in back.

• One immigrant wounded – Dr. John Sung.

• "Bangshou" (assistant) on board; identity unknown.

• Ten immigrants escape: seven adults (one elderly, one injured woman), two children, one infant. Steal church van.

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative.

• Vehicle awaiting Ghost on beach left without him. One shot believed fired by Ghost at vehicle. Request for vehicle make and model sent out, based on tread marks and wheelbase.

• Vehicle is a BMW X5. Checking registered owners.

• No vehicles to pick up immigrants located.

• Cell phone, presumably Ghost's, sent for analysis to FBI.

• Untraceable satellite secure phone. Hacked Chinese gov't system to use it.

• Ghost's weapon is 7.62mm pistol. Unusual casing.

• Model 51 Chinese automatic pistol.

• Ghost is reported to have gov't people on payroll.

• Ghost stole red Honda sedan to escape. Vehicle locator request sent out.

• Three bodies recovered at sea – two shot, one drowned. Photos and prints to Rhyme and Chinese police.

• Fingerprints sent to AFIS.

• No matches on any prints but unusual markings on Sam Chang's fingers and thumbs (injury, rope burn?).

• Profile of immigrants: Sam Chang and Wu Qichen and their families, John Sung, baby of woman who drowned, unidentified man and woman (killed on beach).

Stolen Van,

Chinatown

• Camouflaged by immigrants with "The Home Store" logo.

• Blood spatter suggests injured woman has hand, arm or shoulder injury.

• Blood samples sent to lab for typing.

• Injured woman is AB negative.

• Fingerprints sent to AFIS.

• No matches.

The family name Chang means archer.

His father, wife and children sitting around him, Sam Chang, with a calligrapher's magic touch, drew the Chinese characters for this name on a slat of broken wood he'd found in the backyard of their new apartment. The silk case holding his prized wolf-, goat- and rabbit-hair brushes, ink stick and stone well, had gone down with the Fuzhou Dragon and he was forced to use a dreadful American plastic pen.

Still, Chang had learned calligraphy from his father when he was young and had practiced the art all his life, so, although the line width of the ink didn't vary, the strokes were perfectly formed – they were, he decided, like the studies by sixteenth-century artist Wan Li, who would do a simple rendering to record a scene he would later paint on ceramic – the sketch was half-formed but beautiful in its own right. Chang took the piece of wood representing the family name and rested it on the impromptu cardboard altar sitting on the fireplace mantel in the living room.

China is a theological shopping mall, a country in which the Buddha is the most recognized traditional deity but where the philosophers Confucius and Lao-tzu stand as demigods, where Christianity and Islam have large pockets of devotees and where the vast majority of people hedge their bets by regularly praying and sacrificing to folk gods so numerous no one knows exactly how many there are.