The Stone Monkey

thigh as the heavy bullet spun him around and he landed on his back on the floor. The barbarian hurried toward him. The old man might have fired at the man and possibly hit him. Instead, he turned to the couch and repeatedly fired his gun toward where the Ghost was hiding.
    Then he realized that the weapon had stopped firing.
    He was out of bullets.
    Had he hit the Ghost?
    Oh, please, Guan Yin, goddess of mercy . . . Please!
    But a shadow grew on the wall. The Ghost rose from behind the couch, unhurt, his own pistol in his hand. Breathing heavily, he pointed the black muzzle toward Chang Jiechi and walked around the furniture. A glance at the dead barbarian.
    “You’re Chang’s father.”
    “Yes, and you’re the devil who’s on his way back to hell.”
    “But not,” the Ghost said, “on your ticket.”
    The other barbarian, moaning and whispering hysterically in a language that Chang Jiechi did not understand, hovered over the body of his countryman. He then rose and started toward the old man, pointing the gun at him.
    “No, Yusuf,” the Ghost said impatiently, waving him back. “He’ll tell us where the rest of them are.”
    “Never” was the defiant response.
    The Ghost said to his confederate, “We don’t have much time. Somebody will have heard the shots. We’ll have to leave. Use the stairs. Not the elevator. Have the van waiting by the back door.”
    The agitated man continued to stare at Chang Jiechi with wide eyes, hands shaking in rage.
    “Did you hear me?” the Ghost raged.
    “Yes.”
    “Then go. I’ll join you in a minute. Go!”
    Chang Jiechi began to crawl desperately toward the closest doorway, which led to a dim bedroom. He glanced back. The Ghost was in the kitchen, taking a long filleting knife from a drawer.
    •   •   •
    Just ahead of Amelia Sachs, driving her bee-yellow Camaro at seventy miles an hour, was the building that contained the Ghost’s safehouse apartment. The structure was huge, though, many stories tall and wide. Finding which apartment was the Ghost’s would be a chore.
    A sharp crackle in her Motorola speaker.
    “Be advised, all RMP units in the vicinity of Battery Park City, we have a ten-thirty-four, reports of shots fired. Standby . . . . All units, further to that ten-thirty-four. Have a location. Eight-oh-five Patrick Henry Street. All units in area respond.”
    The very building she was now bearing down on. The Ghost’s. Was it a coincidence? She doubted it, though. What had happened? Did he have the Changs inside the building? Had he lured them there? The families, the children . . . She pushed the accelerator farther down and depressed the button of her mike, pinned to her windbreaker. “Crime Scene Five Eight Eight Five to Central. Approaching scene of that ten-thirty-four. Anything further, K?”
    “Nothing further, Five Eight Eight Five.”
    “No apartment number, K?”
    “Negative.”
    “K.”
    A few seconds later, Sachs’s Camaro was up on the curb, leaving room for the ambulances and other emergency vehicles, which would soon be converging on the building.
    As she ran inside, minding the slick, rosy marble floors, she noted that the flower beds near the front door overflowed with mulch, which was scattered on the sidewalks—undoubtedly the source of the trace that they’d found at the earlier scene.
    There was no security guard or doorman station in the building but several people were standing in the lobby, looking uneasily at the elevators.
    Sachs asked a middle-aged man, wearing workout clothing, “Did you report the shots?”
    “I heard something. I don’t know where from, though.”
    “Anybody?” Sachs asked, glancing at the other tenants.
    “I think it was west,” an elderly woman said. “High up, but I’m not sure where.”
    Two other responding RMPs pulled up out front and the uniformed officers ran inside. Sellitto, Li and Alan Coe were behind them. An ambulance appeared and then two Emergency Services Unit trucks.
    “We heard the ten-thirty-four,” Sellitto said. “This’s his building, right? The Ghost’s?”
    “Yep,” Sachs confirmed.
    “Jesus,” the homicide detective muttered. “There’ve gotta be three hundred units here.”
    “Two hundred seventy-four,” the elderly woman said.
    Sellitto and Sachs conferred. The name on the apartment directory would be fake, of course. The only way to find the Ghost would be a dangerous, door-to-door search.
    Crewcut Bo Haumann strode into the