The Stone Monkey

then pulled Coe roughly to his feet. The Ghost rolled down his window and nodded toward the apartment. “Do you want me to talk to the Changs?”
    “That’s not their place,” Yindao said. “It’s still a few blocks from here. I lied—I had to keep Coe off guard. I picked it because there’s a police precinct house around the corner. They’re going to hold him for the FBI to pick up.”
    The Ghost looked Coe over and added a dismayed tone to his voice as he said, “You were going to tell the Ghost where they were. Those children . . . you were going to let him kill those children. You’re despicable.”
    The agent stared back angrily for a moment—until Yindaoroughly led him to the corner, where she was met by three uniformed officers, who took him into custody. The Ghost glanced behind him and saw, at the end of the block, Yusuf’s van idling at the curb.
    Five minutes later Yindao returned, climbed in the car, fired up the engine. They resumed their drive. She looked at the Ghost and shook her head with a grim laugh. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?” Although the incident had shaken her some, she now seemed more like herself. Relaxed and confident.
    “Yes.” The Ghost laughed too. “You handled that perfectly. You’re quite an artist at your profession.” His smile faded. “A traitor within the INS?”
    “All that crap about the Ghost killing his informant. He suckered us.” She picked up her cell phone and made a call. “Okay, Rhyme, Coe’s in custody at the precinct . . . . No, no problems. John and I are going on to the Changs’ now . . . .Where’re the teams? . . . Okay, I’ll be there in three minutes. We’re not going to wait for ESU. The Ghost could be on his way there right now.”
    He could indeed, the snakehead reflected.
    Yindao hung up.
    So they would be there before everyone else. His liaison with Yindao would not have to wait after all. He’d kill the Changs, get Yindao into the Turks’ van and escape. The Ghost’s hand went to her shoulder and squeezed it. He felt his erection grow even more powerful.
    “Thanks for coming along, John.” She smiled at him. “What do I say for ‘friend,’ ‘Yindao’?”
    He shook his head. “That’s what a man would say to a woman. You would say, ‘ Yinjing .’ ”
    This was the word for male genitals.
    “ Yinjing,” she said.
    “I’m honored,” he said, bowing his head slightly. He looked over her red hair, her pale skin, her long legs . . . “Your friend Rhyme is quite a detective. I would like to visit him after all this is over.”
    “I’ll give you a card. I have one in my purse.”
    “Good.”
    Rhyme would have to die too. Because the Ghost knew that he also was a man who would never stop until he’d defeated his enemies. Po fu chen zhou.  . . . Break the cauldrons and sink the boats. Too dangerous to stay alive. She’d told him that he was paralyzed. How could one torture him, the Ghost wondered. His face, eyes, tongue . . . There would be ways, depending on how much time he had. Fire was always good.
    Yindao turned abruptly down a one-way street and stopped. She examined the address numbers and then continued halfway down the block. She double-parked and left a police ID on the dashboard.
    “That’s the house there.” She pointed to a three-story, redbrick house several doors away, the lights on in the ground-floor apartment. Modest but, the Ghost reflected, far more luxurious than the yellow-and-beige clapboard or cinder-block houses for which so many Chinese have Mao to thank.
    They climbed out of the car and walked to the sidewalk, paused. “Stay out of sight,” she whispered and led him close to a line of boxwood hedges. The Ghost glanced back. Yusuf had parked and, through the faint dusk light, the Ghost could just see him and the other Turk.
    He leaned close and smelled scented soap on her skin and sweat. He found his arousal unabated and he pressed against her arm and hip as she examined the house. She nodded at the bay window in front. “We’ll go through theback door—if it’s unlocked. They’d be able to see us from the front and might run.”
    She gestured him to follow her around the back of the house nearest them, then together they cut through the backyards to the Changs’. They moved slowly, so they wouldn’t knock into anything in the near-dark and announce their presence.
    At the back door of the piglets’ apartment they paused and Yindao looked into