The Stone Monkey

money.”
    “What?” Sellitto asked.
    “Not so much. Only cost you ten thousand. Dollar, not yuan.”
    “No way,” Alan Coe said.
    “Jesus Christ,” Sellitto said. “We haven’t got that in the budget.”
    Rhyme and Sachs looked at each other and laughed.
    Li scoffed, “You a big city, you rich. You got strong dollar, Wall Street, you run World Trade Organization. Hey, Cai want lot more at first.”
    “We can’t pay—” Sellitto began.
    “Come on, Lon,” Rhyme said, “you’ve got your snitch fund. Anyway, technically this’s a federal operation. The INS’ll cough up half of it.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Coe said uneasily, running his hand over his red hair.
    “It’s okay—I’ll sign the chit myself,” Rhyme said and the agent blinked, not sure whether it was appropriate to laugh at this. “Call Peabody. And we’ll get Dellray to contribute too.” He glanced at Li. “What’re the terms?”
    “I did good bargain. He give us names first and then he get paid. Course, he wants pay in cash.”
    “Of course.”
    “Okay, I need a cigarette. I take break for while, Loaban? I need good cigarettes. You got fuck worst ones in this country. Not taste like nothing. Get some food too.”
    “Go ahead, Sonny. You earned it.”
    As the Chinese cop left the room Thom asked, “What do I put down on the chart?” Nodding at the evidence whiteboard. “About Cai and the tongs.”
    “I don’t know,” Sachs said. “I think I’d say ‘Checking out the woo-woo evidence.’ ”
    Lincoln Rhyme, however, opted for something somewhat more helpful. “How ’bout: ‘Suspected accomplices from Chinese ethnic minority,’ ” he dictated. “ ‘Presently pursuing whereabouts.’ ”
    •   •   •
    The Ghost, accompanied by the three Turks, was driving a stolen Chevrolet Blazer into Queens en route to the Changs’ apartment.
    As he drove through the streets, carefully as always so that he wouldn’t get stopped, he reflected on Jerry Tang’s death. He hadn’t for a moment considered letting the man go unpunished for his betrayal. Nor had he considered delaying the retribution. Disloyalty to your superiors was the worst crime in Confucian philosophy. Tang had abandoned him on Long Island—a situation from which he’d escaped only because of the luck of finding that car with the engine running at the restaurant on the beach. So the man’d had to die and to die painfully. The Ghost thought of the Shang emperor Zhou Xin. Once, sensing disloyalty from one of his vassals, the emperor butchered the man’s son and had him cooked and served to the unsuspecting traitor for dinner, after which he cheerfully revealed the primary ingredient of the main course. The Ghost thought such justice was perfectly reasonable, not to mention satisfying.
    A block from the Changs’ apartment he pulled the Blazer to the curb.
    “Masks,” he ordered.
    Yusuf dug into a bag and handed out ski masks.
    The Ghost considered how best to attack the family. Sam Chang had a wife and an elderly father or mother with him, he’d been told. The main risk, though, would be any older children, like teenage boys. Life was for them just a video game and when the Ghost and the others broke in, a teenager might charge them with a knife.
    “Kill any sons first,” he instructed them. “Then theirfather and the old people.” Then he had a thought. “Don’t kill the wife yet. Bring her with us.”
    The Turks apparently understood the reason for this and nodded.
    The Ghost surveyed the quiet street, across which were two long warehouses. Halfway along the block was an alley between the buildings. According to the map, the Changs’ address was just on the other side of the warehouses. It was possible that Chang and his sons or father would be watching the front of the house so the Ghost would speed down the alley to the rear and they would rush in through the back door, while one of the Turks ran to the front door in case the family tried to escape that way.
    He said in English, “Wear the masks on top of your heads like hats until we’re at the house.”
    They nodded and did so. With their dark complexions and the stocking caps they looked like black gangstas in a bizarre rap video.
    The Ghost donned his own mask.
    He felt a moment’s fear, as he often did at times like this, just before going into battle. There was always a chance that Chang had a gun or that the police had found the family first, had taken them