The Stone Monkey

surveyed the lock closely. He called over the noisy wind, “Do you have my knife?”
    “Your knife?”
    “The one I gave you on the ship—to cut the rope holding the raft.”
    “That was yours?” What on earth had his son been doing with a weapon like that? It was a switchblade.
    “Do you have it?” the boy repeated.
    “No, I dropped it getting into the raft.”
    The boy grimaced but Chang ignored the expression—why, it was almost impertinent—and scanned the rain-pelted ground. He found a piece of metal pipe and swung it hard into the window of the van. The glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces of ice. He climbed into the passenger seat and looked through the map box for keys. He couldn’t find any and stepped out onto the muddy ground. Glancing at the building, he wondered if there would be a set inside the church? And if so, where? An office? There might be a caretaker inside; what if the man heard and confronted them? Chang believed that he couldn’t hurt anyone innocent even if—
    He heard a loud snap and spun around in alarm. His son was crouched in the driver’s seat and had shattered the plastic housing of the ignition lock with a kick from his boot. As Chang watched, astonished and dismayed, the boy pulled out wires and began brushing them against each other. Suddenly the radio came on with a blare: “He will always love you, let Our Savior into your heart . . . . ”
    William touched a button on the dash and the volume lowered. He touched other wires together. A spark . . . . The engine fired up.
    Chang stared in disbelief. “How did you know how to do that?”
    The boy shrugged.
    “Tell me—”
    Wu clutched Chang’s arm. “Let’s go! We have to get our families and leave. The Ghost is looking for us.”
    The father pierced his son with a look of shock. He expected the boy to lower his eyes in shame. But William stared back coldly in a way that Chang himself never would have done with his own father, at any age.
    “Please,” Wu begged. “Let’s go back for the rest.”
    “No,” Chang said after a moment. “Have them come here. Follow our path—and make sure they don’t leave any footprints.”
    Wu hurried off to get them.
    In the van William found a booklet of maps of the area and studied them carefully. He nodded, as if memorizing directions.
    Resisting his desire to interrogate his son about hot-wiring the ignition, Chang asked him, “Do you know where to go?”
    “I can figure it out.” The boy looked up. “Do you want me to drive?” Then he added bluntly, “You’re not very good at it.” Like most urban Chinese, Sam Chang’s main means of transportation was a bicycle.
    Chang blinked at these words of his son’s—spoken once again in a tone that approached insolence. Then Wu appeared with the rest of the immigrants and Chang ran forward to help his wife and father into the van, calling back to his son, “Yes, you drive.”

Chapter Seven
    He’d killed two of the piglets on the beach—the injured man and a woman.
    But there’d been about a dozen people in the raft. Where were the rest?
    A horn blared. The Ghost whirled around. It was Jerry Tang, drawing his attention. He held up the police scanner, his gestures frantic. “The police will be here any minute! We have to go!”
    The Ghost turned away and scanned the beach once more, the road. Where had they gotten to? Maybe they’d—
    With a squeal of tires Tang’s four-by-four pulled into the road, accelerating fast.
    “No! Stop!”
    Seized by fury, the Ghost aimed his pistol and fired once. The slug hit the rear door but the vehicle continued, not slowing, to an intersection and then skidded through the turn and disappeared. The Ghost stood frozen, the pistol at his side, staring through the mist at the road where his means of escape had just vanished. He was eighty miles from his safehouses in Manhattan, his assistant was missing and probably dead, he had no money and no cell phone. Dozens of policemen and troopers were on their way. And Tang had just abandoned him. He could—
    He tensed. Not far away a white van suddenly appeared out of a field on the other side of a church and turned onto the road. It was the piglets! The Ghost lifted his pistol again but the vehicle disappeared into the fog. Lowering the gun, the Ghost took several deep breaths. After a moment he grew serene. He was plagued by troubles at the moment, yes, but he’d experienced much adversity in his life, far worse than