The Stone Monkey

troubled Harold Peabody and asked, “Could you give me the cuff keys, please? If you want the shackles back after he’s booked I’ll leave them at Men’s Detention for you.”

Chapter Fifty
    Several days later the Ghost had been arraigned and was being held without bail.
    The laundry list of offenses was long: state and federal charges for murder, human smuggling, assault, firearms possession, money laundering.
    Dellray and his bosses at Justice had pulled some strings at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and, in exchange for his testimony against the Ghost, Sen Zi-jun, captain of the late Fuzhou Dragon, was given immunity from prosecution on the charges of human smuggling. He would testify at the Ghost’s trial and, following that, be deported to China.
    Rhyme and Sachs were presently alone in his bedroom and the policewoman was looking herself over in a full-length mirror.
    “You look fine,” the criminalist called. She was due to make an appearance in court in an hour. It was an important session and she was preoccupied, thinking about her impending performance before the judge.
    She shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know.” Amelia Sachs, who’d never looked back when she gave up modeling, called herself a “jeans and sweats girl.” Presently she was dressed in a crisp blue suit, white blouse and, my God, Rhyme now observed, a pair of highly sensible navy-blueJoan & David’s with heels that boosted her height to over six feet. Her red hair was perfectly arranged on top of her head.
    Still, she remained his Sachs; her silver earrings were in the shape of tiny bullets.
    The phone rang and Rhyme barked, “Command. Answer phone.”
    Click .
    “Lincoln?” a woman’s voice asked through the speaker.
    “Dr. Weaver,” Rhyme said to the neurosurgeon.
    Sachs turned her attention away from couture and sat down on the edge of the Flexicair bed.
    “I got your phone call,” the doctor said. “My assistant said it was important. Is everything all right?”
    “Fine,” Rhyme said.
    “You’re following the regimen I gave you? No alcohol, plenty of sleep?” Then she added with some humor, “No, you tell me, Thom. Are you there?”
    “He’s in the other room,” Rhyme responded, laughing. “No one’s here to blow the whistle on me.”
    Except Sachs, of course, but she wasn’t going to snitch.
    “I’d like you to come into the office tomorrow for the final checkup before the surgery. I was thinking—”
    “Doctor?”
    “Yes?”
    Rhyme held Sachs’s eye. “I’ve decided not to have the operation.”
    “You’re—”
    “I’m canceling. Forfeiting my room deposit,” he joked, “and down payment.”
    Silence for a moment. Then: “You wanted this more than any patient I’ve ever had.”
    “I did want it, that’s true. But I’ve changed my mind.”
    “You’ll recall I’ve told you all along that the risks were high. Is that why?”
    He looked at Sachs. He said only, “In the end, I guess, I don’t see that much of a benefit.”
    “I think this’s a good choice, Lincoln. It’s the wise choice.” She added, “We’re making a lot of progress with spinal cord injuries. I know you read the literature . . . . ”
    “I keep my finger on the pulse, true,” he responded, enjoying the irony of the metaphor.
    “But there’re new things happening every week. Call me whenever you like. We can think about options in the future. Or just call me to talk if you want to.”
    “Yes. I’d like that.”
    “I’d like it too. Goodbye, Lincoln.”
    “Goodbye, Doctor. Command, disconnect.”
    Silence filled the room. Then a flutter of wings and a shadow disturbed the peace as a peregrine falcon landed on his window ledge. They both stared at the bird. Sachs asked, “Are you sure about this, Rhyme? I’m with you a hundred percent if you want to go ahead with it.”
    He knew that she would be.
    But he knew too, without a doubt, that he didn’t want the surgery now.
    “Embrace your limitations  . . . Fate make you this way, Loaban. And make you this way for purpose. Maybe you best detective you can be because of what happen. Your life balanced now, I’m saying.”
    “I’m sure,” he told her.
    She squeezed his hand. Then looked out the window again at the falcon. Rhyme watched the oblique, pale light hitting her face with the demure illumination of a Vermeer painting. Finally he asked, “Sachs, are you sure you want to do this?”
    He nodded toward the file on the table nearby,