The speaker was a squawk box, not a headset; anyone nearby could hear the transmission. "Okay, you all hear that?" Haumann asked his officers.
They nodded.
"We're going to sweep, Rhyme," she said. "I'll call you back."
Haumann divided his officers into three teams, one for each floor--eighteen and nineteen--and one to divide up further and sweep the stairwells.
Sachs noticed Coe nearby. He was checking his own pistol--the large Glock with which he was a proven bad shot--and had sidled over to one of the ESU teams. She whispered to Haumann, "Keep him off the entry. He's trouble in a tac situation."
Sachs had some credibility with the head of ESU--he'd seen her under fire--and Haumann agreed. He walked over to Coe and spoke with him. Sachs didn't hear the exchange but since this was an NYPD operation, Haumann must've pulled jurisdictional rank and ordered the agent to stand down. After a moment of heated discussion, the INS agent's face was nearly as red as his hair. But Haumann had never lost the will--and demeanor--of the drill sergeant he had once been and Coe soon gave up his futile protests. He turned away and stormed out the front door, pulling out his cell phone, undoubtedly to lodge a protest with Peabody or somebody at the Federal Building.
The ESU head left a small team to guard the lobby then he, Sachs and a group of officers stepped into one of the elevators and started up to the eighteenth floor.
They crowded away from the door when it opened and one officer looked out with a metal mirror attached to a wand. "Clear."
Out they stepped, moving cautiously along the carpet, trying to remain quiet though their equipment rang like mountain climbers'.
Haumann gave the hand signals that meant to spread out. Two officers, armed with MP5 machine guns, joined Sachs and together they deployed to start the search. Bracketed by the two large cops, machine guns ready, Sachs picked a door and knocked.
There was an odd sound from inside, a faint clunk, as if something heavy was being set down next to the door. She glanced at the ESU officers, who leveled their weapons at the doorway. With a satisfying zip of Velcro, Sachs drew her pistol from her holster and stood back slightly.
Another clunk from inside, a scraping of metal.
What the hell was that noise?
A chain rattled.
Sachs put a few pounds of nervous pressure on the trigger guard of her weapon, though not on the trigger itself, and tensed as the door opened.
A tiny, gray-haired woman looked up at them. "You're the police," she said. "You're here about those firecrackers I complained about." She stared at the large machine guns the ESU officers carried. "Oh. Well. Look at this."
"That's right, ma'am," Sachs said, noticing that the clunking sound had been a stool, which the woman had apparently set on the floor to be able to look out through the security peephole.
She grew wary. "But you wouldn't have those guns if they were just firecrackers, right?"
"We're not sure what they were, ma'am. We're trying to find out where the sounds came from."
"I think it's 18K, up the hall. That's why I thought they were firecrackers--because an Oriental man lives there. Or Asian, or whatever you're supposed to say nowadays. They use firecrackers in their religion. They're supposed to scare away dragons. Or maybe it's ghosts. I don't know."
"Are there any other Asians on this floor?"
"No, I don't believe so."
"Okay, ma'am, thank you. Could you go back inside and lock your door. Whatever you hear, don't open it."
"Oh, dear." She looked at the men with the guns again and nodded uncertainly. "Could you tell me--"
"Now, please," Sachs said, smiling, but in a firm voice. She pulled the woman's door shut herself. She called in a whisper to Haumann, "Think it's 18K."
Haumann gave hand signals to his team, directing them to the apartment.
He knocked hard on the door. "Police, open the door!"
No response.
Again.
Nothing.
Haumann nodded to the officer who'd lugged the team's large battering ram with him. He and another cop took hold of the handles on the sides of the thick metal tube and looked at Haumann, who nodded.
The officers eased the ram back and then swung it forward hard into the door near the knob. The lock gave way immediately and the door slammed inward. They dropped the ram, chipping the marble floor. A half-dozen officers, guns to their shoulders, raced into the room.
Amelia Sachs moved in fast too, though behind the others, who sported full body armor, Nomex hoods, helmets and visors. Weapon in hand, she paused in the entryway and looked over the luxurious apartment, painted in subtle grays and pinks.
The ESU entry team fanned out and checked every room and any possible hiding places a human being might fit into. Their gruff voices began reverberating through the place. "Clear here . . . clear . . . Clear in the kitchen. No back entrance. Clear . . ."
The Ghost was gone.
But, just like at Easton Beach yesterday, he'd left death in his stead.
In the living room was the body of a man who bore a resemblance to the one she'd shot outside the Wus' apartment last night. Another Uighur, she assumed. He'd been shot at close range. He lay near a leather couch that had been riddled with bullets. A street gun--a cheap chrome automatic with the serial number etched out--lay on the floor in front of the couch.
The other body was in the bedroom.
He was an elderly Chinese man, lying on his back, his eyes glazed. There was a bullet wound in his leg but the slug had missed the major arteries and veins; it hadn't bled much. Sachs could see no other wounds, even though a long kitchen knife lay near his side. She pulled on rubber gloves and felt his jugular. No pulse.
Emergency Medical Services technicians arrived and checked the man over, verifying that he was dead.
"What's the COD?" one of the techs mused.
Sachs studied him. Then leaned forward. "Ah, got it," she said, nodding at the man's hand, in which was clutched a brown bottle. Sachs worked it out of his fingers. The characters on the label were in both Chinese and English. "Morphine," she said. "Suicide."
This might have been one of the immigrants on the Fuzhou Dragon--perhaps Sam Chang's father, who'd come here to kill the Ghost. She speculated about what had happened: The father had shot the Uighur but the Ghost had jumped for cover behind the couch and the old man had run out of ammunition. The Ghost took the knife and was going to torture him to learn where the rest of the family was but the immigrant had killed himself.
Haumann listened into his headset and reported that the rest of the building was clear; the Ghost had escaped.
"Oh, no," she muttered.
Crime Scene arrived--two techs carrying large metal suitcases into the hallway outside the apartment. Sachs knew them and nodded a greeting. She opened the cases, donned the Tyvek suit and then announced to the ESU team, "I need to process the room. Could I have everybody out of here please?"
For a half hour she worked the scene and though she collected some evidence none of it gave an obvious indication of where the Ghost might have gone to.
As she finished the search Sachs was aware of cigarette smoke. She looked up to see Sonny Li standing in the doorway, surveying the room. "I know him from boat," Li said, shaking his head with a sadness in his eyes. "That Sam Chang's father."
"I figured. Why'd he try it? One old man against the Ghost and the others?"
"For family," Li said quietly. "For family."
"I suppose you want to run the scene too?" she asked without any irony. Li's correct prediction about Jerry Tang and his surprise appearance at the Wus' apartment yesterday had bolstered his credibility as a detective.
"What you think I doing now, Hongse? I walking grid."
She laughed.
"Loaban and me talk last night. He tell me about walking grid. Only I walk grid in my mind now."
Sort of like Rhyme does, Sachs reflected. "You finding anything good?"
"Oh, plenty,
I'm saying."
She turned back to the more tangible evidence and wrote out the chain of custody cards and packaged the evidence for transport.
In the corner of the room she noticed a small altar and several statues of Chinese gods. The words from the woman up the hall echoed in her mind.
They use firecrackers in their religion. They're supposed to scare away dragons.
Or maybe it's ghosts.
Chapter Thirty-three
Dozens of flashing lights surrounded the high-rise. The Ghost turned and looked back at them. Yusuf, the silent Turk, drove along Church Street away from the place. He was grim and badly shaken from the loss of yet another comrade but he drove calmly and was careful not to draw attention to the stolen Windstar van.
After the old man had killed himself, without revealing anything (he had nothing in his pockets either), the Ghost had fled down the stairs and sprinted into the parking lot just as he'd heard sirens in front of the building. He was now still struggling to catch his breath and to calm his heart.
The police had arrived too quickly to be responding to the sound of the gunshots; they'd known that he was there. How? Gazing absently at the people on the morning streets, he considered this. The safehouse had absolutely no connection to him. Finally he decided that they had probably tracked the place down through phone calls to and from the Uighur center in Queens. That had given the police his cell phone number and they'd traced the location of the safehouse. Probably there was other evidence too; his intelligence about this Lincoln Rhyme suggested that he was fully capable of making a deduction like that--but he was troubled that he'd gotten no advance warning that the police were on their way there. He'd thought his guanxi was better than this.
Yusuf said something in his native Turkic and the Ghost said in English, "Repeat."
"Where you go?"
The Ghost had several other safehouses in the city but only one nearby. He gave him directions. Then the Ghost handed the man another five thousand in one-color. "Go find somebody else to help us. You'll do that?"
Yusuf hesitated.
"I'm sorry about your friends," the Ghost said, masking the contempt in his voice with as much faux sympathy as he could add. "But they were careless. You're not careless. I need you to help me. There'll be another ten thousand for you. Cash to you alone. You don't have to split it."
He nodded.
"Okay, go find someone else. But not at the Uighur center. Don't go back there. The police will be watching it. And get another cell phone. Call me on mine and give me your new number." He recited the number of his new mobile phone--another one he'd kept in the high-rise and had taken with him, along with the money, when he'd escaped a few minutes before.
"Drop me on the corner, up there."
The Turk rolled to a stop at Canal Street, not far from where they had nearly killed the Wus yesterday. The Ghost climbed out then leaned down and had the Turk reiterate his instructions in English, made sure that he remembered the number of the Ghost's new cell phone.
The van sped off.
The Ghost stretched, his eyes following a Chinese teenager in a tight knit blouse, short skirt and implausibly high heels, which gave her a stuttering gait.
He watched her disappear in the crowd. He wasn't the only man watching her though the Ghost suspected that only he wanted to hurt her very badly before he fucked her.
Turning the opposite way, he started down disheveled Canal Street. He still had a long walk to get to his other safehouse--it was nearly a kilometer east. As he walked he considered what he needed to do: Foremost was a new gun--something big, a SIG or a Glock. It seemed this was going to be a neck-and-neck race to see who got to the Changs first, he or the police, and if it came to a shoot-out he wanted good firepower. He also needed some new clothes. A few other things as well.
The battle was growing more and more challenging. He thought of the days of his youth when he'd hide from Mao's cadres in the junkyard, patiently stalking rats and vicious dogs for food. He thought too of the search for his father's killers in the youth brigade. Those times had taught him a lot about the art of hunting and one lesson he learned was this: The stronger adversary expects you to seek out and exploit his weakness and he prepares his defense accordingly. But the only effective way to prevail against such an enemy is to use his strength against him. And this is what the Ghost now intended to do.
Naixin? he asked himself.
No. The time for patience was over.
*
Chang Mei-Mei set a cup of tea in front of her groggy husband.
He blinked at the pale green cup but his attention, as was that of his wife and sons, was wholly on the television set.
The news story, they learned with the translation assistance of William, was about two men found dead in Lower Manhattan.
One of the men was a Chinese-Turkestan immigrant from Queens.
The other was a sixty-nine-year-old Chinese national, believed to have been a passenger on the Fuzhou Dragon.
Sam Chang had wakened from his heavy sleep, cotton-mouthed and disoriented, a half hour ago. He'd tried to stand but fell, crashing to the floor, bringing the children and his wife running. As soon as he noticed the gun was gone he'd understood what his father had done and stumbled toward the door.
But Mei-Mei had stopped him. "It's too late," she'd said.
"No!" he'd cried, falling back onto the couch.
He'd turned to her. His loss and sorrow tipped him into fury and he raged at her, "You helped him, didn't you? You knew what he was going to do!"
The woman, holding Po-Yee's toy kitten, looked down at it. She said nothing.
Chang had made a fist and drawn back to strike her. Mei-Mei had squinted and turned away, anticipating the blow. William shifted from one foot to the other; Ronald cried. But then Chang had lowered his hand. Thinking: I've taught her and my children to respect their elders, my father most of all. Chang Jiechi would have ordered her to help him and she would have obeyed.
As the pernicious effects of the powerful medicine had worn off, Chang had then sat for a time, racked by worry, hoping for the best.
But the television report confirmed that the worst had come to be.
The Turkestan had been shot to death, the reporter explained, by the elderly man, who had then died of an overdose of morphine, apparently a suicide. The apartment was believed to have been a hideout for Kwan Ang, the human smuggler wanted in connection with the sinking of the Fuzhou Dragon early yesterday. Kwan had escaped before the police arrived and was still at large.
Ronald continued to cry and looked back and forth from the TV to his mother then his father. "Yeye," he said. "Yeye . . ."
Sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth anxiously, William bitterly spat out the translation of the pretty newscaster's words. By coincidence the reporter was Chinese-American.
The story concluded and, as if the televised confirmation of Chang Jiechi's death signaled the moment, Mei-Mei rose and went into the bedroom. She returned with a sheet of paper. She handed it to her husband then hefted Po-Yee onto her hip and wiped the girl's face and hands.
Numb, Sam Chang took the folded piece of paper and opened it. The letter had been written in pencil, not a brush charged with rich ink, but the characters were beautifully drawn; a true artist, the old man had taught his son, can excel in any medium, no matter how base.
My son:
My life has been full beyond my hopes. I am old and I am sick. Seeking a year or two more of life on earth gives me no comfort. Rather, I find solace in my duty to return to the soul of Nature at the hour inscribed for me in The Register of the Living and the Dead.
And that moment is now.
I could say many things to you, summarize for you all the lessons of my life, all that I have learned from my father and from your mother and from you, son, as well. But I choose not to do so. Truth is unwavering but the path to truth is often a maze that we each must struggle to find on our own. I have planted healthy bam
boo and it has grown well. Continue your journey away from the earth and toward the light and nurture your own young crops. Be vigilant, as any farmer, but give them space. I have seen the stock of the plant; they will grow straight.
--Your father
Sam Chang was seized with bottomless anger. He rose fast from the couch and, groggy from the drug, struggled to stay upright. He flung the teacup against the wall and it shattered. Ronald shied away from his enraged father.
"I am going to kill him!" he screamed. "The Ghost is going to die!"
His tirade started the baby crying. Mei-Mei whispered something to her sons. William hesitated but then nodded toward Ronald, who hefted Po-Yee. Together they walked into the bedroom. The door closed.
Chang said to her, "I found him once and I'm going to find him again. This time--"
"No," Mei-Mei said firmly.
He turned to face his wife. "What?"
She swallowed and looked down. "You will not."
"Don't speak to me like that. You're my wife."
"Yes," she said to him, her voice quavering, "I am your wife. And I'm the mother of your children. And what will happen to us if you die? Have you thought about that? We'd live on the street, we'd be deported. Do you know what life in China would be like for us when we returned? A widow of a dissident with no property, no money? Is that what you want for us?"
"My father is dead!" Chang raged. "The man responsible for that has to die."
"No, he doesn't," she replied breathlessly, working up her courage once again. "Your father was an old man. He was sick. He was not the center of our universe and we must move on."
"How can you say that?" Chang raged, shocked at her impudence. "He's the reason I exist."
"He lived a full life and now he's gone. You live in the past, Jingerzi. Our parents deserve our respect, yes, but nothing more than that."
He realized that she'd used his Chinese given name. He didn't think she'd done so in years--not since they'd been married. When she addressed him, she always used the respectful zhangfu, "husband."
In a steadier voice now Mei-Mei said, "You won't avenge his death. You'll stay here with us, in hiding, until the Ghost is captured or killed. Then you and William will go to work at Joseph Tan's printing company. And I'll stay here and teach Ronald and Po-Yee. We'll all study English, we'll make money . . . . And, when there's another amnesty, we'll become citizens." She paused for a moment and wiped her face, from which tears streamed. "I loved him too, you know. It's my loss as well as yours." She resumed cleaning up.
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