The Stone Monkey

from another officer. Li looked relieved he wouldn’t be riding with her.
    Sachs slipped out of the Tyvek suit and packed it away in the CS bus.
    As she dropped into the driver’s seat she glanced into the warehouse in which she could clearly see the body of Jerry Tang, his ever-open eyes staring at the ceiling.
    Another corpse at the hand of the Ghost. Another name transferred from one balance sheet column to the other in The Register of the Living and the Dead.
    No more, she thought to the ten judges of hell. Please no more.

Chapter Nineteen
    Amelia Sachs, nursing the crime scene bus through the narrow streets of Chinatown, pulled into an alley near John Sung’s apartment.
    Climbing out, she glanced at a hand-painted sign in the florist shop on the ground floor of his building, next to the restaurant. NEED LUCK IN YOUR LIFE—BUY OUR LUCKY BAMBOO!
    She then noticed Sung through the window of the restaurant. He waved, smiling.
    Inside, he winced as he rose to greet her.
    “No, no,” Sachs said. “Don’t get up.”
    She sat opposite him in a large booth.
    “Would you like some food?”
    “No. I can’t stay long.”
    “Tea, then.” He poured it and pushed the small cup toward her.
    The restaurant was dark but clean. Several men sat hunched together in various booths, speaking in Chinese.
    Sung asked, “Have you found him yet? The Ghost?”
    Disinclined to talk about an investigation, she demurred and said only that they had some leads.
    “I don’t like this uncertainty,” Sung said. “I hear footsteps in the hall and I freeze. It’s like being in Fuzhou. Someone slows down outside your home and you don’tknow if they’re neighbors or security officers the local party boss sent to your house to arrest you.”
    An image of what had happened to Jerry Tang came to her and she glanced out the window for a reassuring look at the squad car parked across the street in front of his building, guarding him.
    “After all the press about the Fuzhou Dragon,” she said, “you’d think the Ghost’d go back to China. Doesn’t he know how many people’re looking for him?”
    Sung reminded, “ ‘Break the cauldrons—’ ”
    “ ‘—and sink the boats.’ ” She nodded. Then she added, “Well, he’s not the only one who’s got that motto.”
    Sung assessed her for a moment. “You’re a strong woman. Have you always been a security officer?”
    “We call them police. Or cops. Security officers are private.”
    “Oh.”
    “Naw, I went to the police academy after I’d been working for a few years.” She told him about her stint as a model for a Madison Avenue agency.
    “You were a fashion model?” His eyes were amused.
    “I was young. Interesting to try for a while. Was mostly my mother’s idea. I remember once I was working on a car with my dad. He was a cop too but his hobby was cars. We were rebuilding an engine in this old Thunderbird. A Ford? A sports car. You know it?”
    “No.”
    “And I was, I don’t know, nineteen or something, I’d been doing freelance work for a modeling agency in the city. I was under the car and he dropped a crescent wrench. Caught me on the cheek.”
    “Ouch.”
    A nod. “But the big ouch was when my mother saw thecut. I don’t know who she was madder at—me, my father or Ford Motor Company.”
    Sung asked, “And your mother? Is she who watches your children when you work?”
    A sip of tea, a steady gaze. “I don’t have any.”
    He frowned. “You . . . I’m sorry.” Sympathy flooded his voice.
    “It’s not the end of the world,” she said stoically.
    Sung shook his head. “Of course not. I reacted badly . . . . East and West have different ideas about families.”
    Not necessarily, she thought, but wouldn’t let her mind go any further than that.
    Sung continued. “In China children are very important to us. Sure, we have the overpopulation problem but one of the most hated parts of the central government is the one-child rule. That only applies to the Han—the majority race in China—so we actually have people in borderline areas claiming to be racial minorities to have more than one child. I will have more someday. I will bring my children over here and then, when I meet someone, have two or three more.”
    He watched her when he said this and she felt that comfort radiating from his eyes again. From his smile too. She knew nothing of his competence as a practitioner of Chinese medicine but his face alone would go a long way