The Stone Monkey

violently from the impact and fell backward, against Sachs, knocking her to the ground. Deng rolled onto his belly, retching—or coughing blood; she couldn’t tell. The round might’ve pierced the body armor at this range. Stunned, Sachs struggled to her knees. The gunman aimed at her before she could raise her weapon.
    But he hesitated. There was some distraction behind him. The shooter looked back. In the darkness of the alleyway Sachs could make out a man speeding forward, a small figure, holding something in his hand.
    The perp released the girl and spun around, lifting the gun, but before he could shoot, the running figure clocked him in the side of the head with what he was carrying—a brick.
    “Hongse!” Sonny Li called to Sachs, dropping thebrick and pulling the girl away from the stunned assailant. Li pushed her to the ground and turned back to the dark man, who clutched his bleeding head. But suddenly he jumped back and lifted his pistol toward Li, who stumbled back against the wall.
    Three fast shots from Sachs’s gun dropped the attacker like a doll onto the cobblestones and he lay motionless.
    “Judges of hell,” Sonny Li gasped, staring at the body. He stepped forward, checked the man’s pulse then lifted the gun out of his lifeless hand. “Dead, Hongse,” he called. Then Li turned back to the girl, helping her up. Sobbing, she ran down the alley, past Sachs, and into the arms of a Chinese officer from the Fifth Precinct, who began comforting her in their common language.
    Med techs ran to Deng to check him out. The vest had indeed stopped the slug but the impact might have cracked a rib or two. “I’m sorry,” he gasped to Sachs. “I just reacted.”
    “Your first firefight?”
    He nodded.
    She smiled. “Welcome to the club.” The medic helped him up and they took him out to be examined more thoroughly in an EMS bus.
    Sachs and two ESU officers cleared the apartment and found a young, panicked boy, about eight, in the bathroom. With the help of a Chinese-American cop from the Fifth Precinct to translate, the medics checked the siblings out and found that neither of them had been hurt or molested by the Ghost’s partner.
    Sachs glanced back into the alley, where another medic and two uniformed officers stood over the corpse of the assailant. “I have to process the body,” she reminded them. “I don’t want it disturbed more than necessary.”
    “Sure, Officer,” came the reply.
    Nearby, Sonny Li patted his pockets and finally located his pack of cigarettes. If he hadn’t found any she wouldn’t’ve been surprised to see him rifle the dead man’s pockets.
    •   •   •
    Putting on her Tyvek suit to search the crime scenes, Amelia Sachs glanced up to see Li walking toward her.
    She laughed to see the cheery grin on the little man. “How?” she asked.
    “How what?”
    “How the hell d’you figure out the Wus were here?”
    “I ask you same thing.”
    “You tell me first.” She sensed he was eager to brag—and she was happy to let him.
    “Okay.” He finished the cigarette and lit another. “Way I work in China. I go places, talk to people. Tonight I go to gambling halls, three of them. Lose some money, win some money, drink. And talk and talk. Finally meet guy at poker table, carpenter. Fuzhounese. He tell me about man come in earlier, nobody know him. Complaining to everybody about women, about what he had to do for family ’cause wife sick and broke arm. Bragging about money he going make. Then he say he on Dragon this morning and rescue everybody when it sink. Had to be Wu. Liver-spleen disharmony, I’m saying. He say he living nearby. I ask around and find about this block. Lots meet-and-greet snakeheads put people here who just arrive. I come over and look around, ask people, see if anybody know anything and find out family—just like Wus—move in today. I check out building and look through back window and see guy with gun. Hey, you look in back window first, Hongse?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Maybe you should done that. That good rule. Always look in back window first.”
    “I should have, Sonny.” She nodded in the direction of the dead shooter.
    “Too bad he not alive,” Li said glumly. “Could been helpful.”
    “You don’t really torture people to get them to talk, do you?” she asked.
    But the Chinese cop just gave a cryptic smile. He asked, “Hongse, how you find Wus?”
    Sachs explained to Li how they’d found the Wus through