Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

"Hongse!" Sonny Li called to Sachs, dropping the brick and pulling the girl away from the stunned assailant. Li pushed her to the ground and turned back to the dark man, who clutched his bleeding head. But suddenly he jumped back and lifted his pistol toward Li, who stumbled back against the wall.

Three fast shots from Sachs's gun dropped the attacker like a doll onto the cobblestones and he lay motionless.

"Judges of hell," Sonny Li gasped, staring at the body. He stepped forward, checked the man's pulse then lifted the gun out of his lifeless hand. "Dead, Hongse," he called. Then Li turned back to the girl, helping her up. Sobbing, she ran down the alley, past Sachs, and into the arms of a Chinese officer from the Fifth Precinct, who began comforting her in their common language.

Med techs ran to Deng to check him out. The vest had indeed stopped the slug but the impact might have cracked a rib or two. "I'm sorry," he gasped to Sachs. "I just reacted."

"Your first firefight?"

He nodded.

She smiled. "Welcome to the club." The medic helped him up and they took him out to be examined more thoroughly in an EMS bus.

Sachs and two ESU officers cleared the apartment and found a young, panicked boy, about eight, in the bathroom. With the help of a Chinese-American cop from the Fifth Precinct to translate, the medics checked the siblings out and found that neither of them had been hurt or molested by the Ghost's partner.

Sachs glanced back into the alley, where another medic and two uniformed officers stood over the corpse of the assailant. "I have to process the body," she reminded them. "I don't want it disturbed more than necessary."

"Sure, Officer," came the reply.

Nearby, Sonny Li patted his pockets and finally located his pack of cigarettes. If he hadn't found any she wouldn't've been surprised to see him rifle the dead man's pockets.

Putting on her Tyvek suit to search the crime scenes, Amelia Sachs glanced up to see Li walking toward her.

She laughed to see the cheery grin on the little man. "How?" she asked.

"How what?"

"How the hell d'you figure out the Wus were here?"

"I ask you same thing."

"You tell me first." She sensed he was eager to brag – and she was happy to let him.

"Okay." He finished the cigarette and lit another. "Way I work in China. I go places, talk to people. Tonight I go to gambling halls, three of them. Lose some money, win some money, drink. And talk and talk. Finally meet guy at poker table, carpenter. Fuzhounese. He tell me about man come in earlier, nobody know him. Complaining to everybody about women, about what he had to do for family 'cause wife sick and broke arm. Bragging about money he going make. Then he say he on Dragon this morning and rescue everybody when it sink. Had to be Wu. Liver-spleen disharmony, I'm saying. He say he living nearby. I ask around and find about this block. Lots meet-and-greet snakeheads put people here who just arrive. I come over and look around, ask people, see if anybody know anything and find out family – just like Wus – move in today. I check out building and look through back window and see guy with gun. Hey, you look in back window first, Hongse?"

"No, I didn't."

"Maybe you should done that. That good rule. Always look in back window first."

"I should have, Sonny." She nodded in the direction of the dead shooter.

"Too bad he not alive," Li said glumly. "Could been helpful."

"You don't really torture people to get them to talk, do you?" she asked.

But the Chinese cop just gave a cryptic smile. He asked, "Hongse, how you find Wus?"

Sachs explained to Li how they'd found the Wus through the wife's injury.

Li nodded, impressed with Rhyme's deductions. "But what happen to Ghost?"

Sachs explained about the premature gunshot and the snakehead's escape.

"Coe?"

"That's right," she agreed.

"Big fuck… I not like that man, I'm saying. When he over in China at meeting in Fuzhou we not trust him much. Walk into room and not like us, nobody there. Talk like we children, want to do case against Ghost by himself. Talk bad about immigrants. Disappear at times when we need him." Li looked over the Tyvek overalls. He frowned. "Why you wear that suit, Hongse?"

"So I don't contaminate the evidence."

"Bad color. Shouldn't wear white. Color of death in my country, color of funerals, I'm saying. Throw it out. You get red suit. Red is good-luck color in China. Not blue either. Get red suit."

"It's enough of a target in white."

"Not good," he said. "Bad feelings." He remembered a word that Deng had taught him earlier. "Bad omen, I'm saying."

"I'm not superstitious," Sachs said.

"I am," Li said. "Lots people in China are. Always saying prayers, sacrificing, cutting demon's tail -"

"Cutting what?" she interrupted.

"Called cutting demon's tail. See, demons follow you always so when you cross traffic you run fast in front of car. That cut off demon's tail and take his power away."

"Don't people ever get hit?"

"Sometimes."

"Then don't they know it doesn't work?"

"No, only know that sometimes you cut his tail, sometimes demon get you."

Cutting the demon's tail…

Sachs got Li to promise he'd stay out of the crime scene – at least until she was finished – and then processed the dead gunman's body, walked the grid inside the apartment and finally searched the Ghost's bullet-riddled SUV. She bagged and tagged all the evidence and finally stripped off the space suit.

Then she and Li drove back to the clinic, where she found the Wu family reunited in a room guarded by two uniformed cops and a stony-faced woman INS agent. With Li and the agent translating, Sachs got as much information as she could. Though Wu Qichen knew nothing about the Ghost's whereabouts in the city, the scrawny, embittered man gave her some information about the Changs, including the name of the infant with them, Po-Yee, which meant Treasured Child.

What a lovely name, thought Amelia Sachs.

She said to the INS agent, "They're going to detention?"

"Right. Until the hearing."

"Do you have a problem putting them in one of our safehouses?" The NYPD had several nondescript, high-security town houses in the city, used for witness protection. INS detention centers for illegal immigrants were notoriously lax. Besides, the Ghost would be expecting them to go to an Immigration facility and, with his guanxi, might pay someone in the detention center to let him or a bangshou inside to try to kill the family again.

"Fine with us."

The town house in Murray Hill was free, Sachs knew. She gave the agent the address and the name of the NYPD officer who oversaw the houses.

The INS agent then looked at Wu and, like a bad-tempered schoolteacher, said, "Why don't you people just stay at home? Fix your problems there. You almost got your wife and family killed."

Wu's English wasn't good but apparently he understood her. He rose from his wife's bedside and gestured broadly. "Not our fault!" he snapped, leaning toward the sour woman. "Coming here not our fault!"

Amused, the INS agent asked, "Not your fault? Who do you want to blame?"

"You country!"

"How do you figure that?"

"You not see? Look around! All you money and richnesses, you advertising, you computers, you Nikes and Levis, cars, hair spray… You Leonardo DiCaprio, you beautiful women. You pills for everything, you makeup, you television! You tell whole world you got fuck everything here! Meiguo is all money, all freedom, all safe. You tell us everybody how good is here. You take our money, but you say to us mei-you, go away! You tell us our human rights terrible, but when we try come here you say mei-you!"