The Stone Monkey

suggested the Ghost might maintain his safehouse.
    Too much landscaping, though, thought Rhyme. “Trace it to a particular manufacturer?”
    “Nup,” Cooper said. “Generic.”
    Well, this sample alone wouldn’t pin down a particular location. The fact that the mulch was still damp, however, might help. “If we find a number of possible locations we can eliminate the ones that didn’t have mulching done in the past few days. Long shot, but it’s something.” Then Rhyme asked, “How about the body?”
    “Not much,” she said. She explained that the man had had no identification on him—only some cash, about $900, extra ammo for his weapon, cigarettes and a lighter. “Oh, and a knife, which had traces of blood on it.”
    Cooper had already ordered the typing test on the blood. But Rhyme knew it would match Jerry Tang’s or Jimmy Mah’s.
    AFIS results came back on the prints from the Blazer and from the dead man. All negative.
    Sonny Li pointed to a Polaroid of the face of the corpse. “Hey, I got it right, Loaban. His face—check it out. He’s Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uighur. A minority, like I telling you, remember?”
    “I remember, Sonny,” Rhyme said to him. “Call our friend from the tong—Cai. Tell him that we think the gang is of those minorities you mentioned, Sonny. Might help him narrow things down.” Then he asked, “Ballistics?”
    “The Ghost was still using his Model 51,” Sachs said.
    Li offered, “I’m saying, very solid-rock gun.”
    “I found some nine-millimeter casings too.” She held the evidence bag up. “But no distinctive ejection marks. Probably a new Beretta, SIG Sauer, Smittie or Colt.”
    “And the dead guy’s weapon?”
    “I processed it,” she explained. “His prints only. It was an old Walther PPK. Seven-point-six-five.”
    “Where is it?” Rhyme studied the evidence bag and saw no sign of the weapon.
    A look passed between Sachs and Sonny Li—a look decidedly not for Detective Lon Sellitto. She said, “I think the feds have it.”
    “Ah.”
    Li looked away from Rhyme and he knew immediately that Sachs had slipped the Chinese cop the weapon after she was through processing it.
    Well, good for him, the criminalist thought. If not for the Chinese detective, then Deng, Sachs and the Wus’ daughter might’ve been killed tonight. Let him have some protection.
    Sachs gave Cooper the serial number of the Walther and he ran it through the firearms database. “Zip,” he said. “Made in the 1960s. Probably’s been stolen a dozen times since then.”
    Sellitto called, “Just got through to a senior VP at Arnold Textile. Woke him up but he was pretty cooperative, considering. That particular carpeting is for commercial sale only—original developers and installers—and it’s the top of their line. He gave me a list of twelve big developers in the area who buy directly from the manufacturer and twenty-six distributors who market to installers and subcontractors.”
    “Hell,” Rhyme said. It would be a marathon of canvassing to find the addresses of buildings where Lustre-Rite had been installed. He said, “Get somebody on it.”
    Sellitto said, “I’ll have ’em start waking people up. Fuck—I’m awake; why the hell shouldn’t the rest of the world be?” He made a call to the Big Building to line up some detectives to help and faxed the list downtown to them.
    Then Rhyme’s private line rang and he answered it.
    “Lincoln?” a woman’s voice asked through the speakerphone.
    He was thrilled to hear the caller’s voice. “Dr. Weaver.”
    Rhyme’s neurosurgeon, who’d be performing the operation next week.
    “I know it’s late. Am I interrupting anything? You busy?”
    “Not a thing,” Rhyme said and ignored Thom’s exaggerated glance at the whiteboard, which attested to the fact that he was somewhat occupied at the moment.
    “I’ve got the details for the surgery. Manhattan Hospital. Week from Friday at 10 A.M . Neurosurgery pre-op. Third floor.”
    “Excellent,” he replied.
    Thom jotted the information down and Rhyme and the doctor said good night.
    “You going to doctor, Loaban?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “About . . . ” The Chinese cop couldn’t seem to think of a way to summarize Rhyme’s condition and he waved toward his body.
    “That’s right.”
    Sachs said nothing, just stared at the sheet of instructions that Dr. Weaver had dictated to Thom. Rhyme knew that she would prefer he not have the operation. Most of