The Stone Monkey (23 page)

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 in calming a patient and helping the healing process.

"You know our language is based on pictograms. The Chinese character for the word 'love' is brushstrokes that represent a mother holding a child."

She felt an urge to tell him more, to tell him that, yes, she wanted children very badly. But suddenly she felt like crying. Then controlled it fast. None of that. No bawling when you're wearing one of Austria's finest pistols on one hip and a can of pepper spray on the other. She realized that they'd been gazing at each other silently for a moment. She looked down, sipped more tea.

"Are you married?" Sung asked.

"No. I have someone in my life, though."

"That's good," he said, continuing to study her. "I sense he's in the same line of work. Is he by any chance that man you were telling me about? Lincoln..."

"Rhyme." She laughed. "You're pretty observant."

"In China, doctors are detectives of the soul." Then Sung leaned forward and said, "Hold your arm out."

"What?"

"Your arm. Please."

She did and he rested two fingers on her wrist.

"What?"

"Shhh. I'm taking your pulse."

After a moment he sat back. "My diagnosis is correct."

"About the arthritis, you mean?"

"Arthritis is merely a symptom. We think it's misguided to merely cure symptoms. The goal of medicine should be to rebalance harmonies."

"So what's unbalanced?"

"In China we like our numbers. The five blessings, the five beasts for sacrifice."

"The ten judges of hell," she said.

He laughed. "Exactly. Well, in medicine we have
liu-yin:
the six pernicious influences. They are dampness, wind, fire, cold, dryness and summer heat. They affect the organs of the body and the
qi
—the spirit—as well as the blood and essence. When they are excessive or lacking they create disharmony and that causes problems. Too much dampness must be dried out. Too much cold must be warmed."

The six pernicious influences, she reflected. Try putting
that
on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield form.

"I see from your tongue and pulse that you have excessive dampness on the spleen. That results in arthritis, among other problems."

"Spleen?"

"It is not just your actual spleen, according to Western medicine," he said, noting her skepticism. "Spleen is more of an organ system."

"So what does my spleen need?" Sachs asked.

"To be less damp," Sung answered as if it were obvious. "I got you these." He pushed a bag toward her. She opened it and found herbs and dried plants inside. "Make them into tea and drink it slowly over the course of two days." Then he handed her a small box as well. "These are Qi Ye Lien tablets. Herbal aspirin. There're instructions in English on the box." Sung added, "Acupuncture will also help a great deal. I'm not licensed for acupuncture here and I don't want to risk any trouble before my INS hearing."

"I wouldn't want you to."

"But I can do massage. I think you call it acupressure. It's very effective. I'll show you. Lean toward me. Put your hands in your lap."

Sung leaned forward over the table, the stone monkey swinging away from his strong chest. Beneath his shirt she could see the fresh bandages over the wound from the Ghost's gunshot. His hands found spots on her shoulders and pressed into her skin hard for five seconds or so, then found new places and did the same.

After a minute of this he sat back.

"Now lift your arms."

She did and, though there was still some pain in her joints, she believed it much less than she'd been feeling lately. She said a surprised, "It worked."

"It's only temporary. Acupuncture lasts much longer."

"I'll think about it. Thank you." She glanced at her watch. "I should be getting back."

"Wait," Sung said, an urgency in his voice. "I'm not through with my diagnosis." He took her hand, examining the torn nails and worried skin. Normally she was very self-conscious about these bad habits of hers. But she didn't feel the least embarrassed by this man's perusal.

"In China doctors look and touch and talk to determine what is ailing a patient. It's vital to know their frame of mind—happy, sad, worried, ambitious, frustrated." He looked carefully into her eyes. "There's more disharmony within you. You want something you can't have. Or you
think
you can't have it. It's creating these problems." He nodded at her nails.

"What harmony do I want?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps a family. Love. Your parents are dead, I sense."

"My father."

"And that was difficult for you."

"Yes."

"And lovers? You've had trouble with lovers."

"I scared 'em off in school—I could drive faster than most of them." This was meant as a joke, though it was true, but Sung didn't laugh.

"Go on," he encouraged.

"When I was a model the worthwhile men were too scared to ask me out."

"Why would a man be scared of a woman?" Sung asked, genuinely bewildered. "It's like yin being scared by yang. Night and day. They should not compete; they should complement and fulfill each other."

"Then the ones who had the guts to ask me out wanted pretty much only one thing."

"Ah, that."

"Yeah, that."

"Sexual energy," Sung said, "is very important, one of the most important parts of
qi,
spiritual power. But it's only healthy when it comes out of a harmonized relationship."

She laughed to herself. Now there's a phrase to try out on the first date: You interested in a harmonized relationship?

After a sip of tea she continued, "Then I lived with a man for a while. On the force."

"The what?" Sung asked.

"He was a cop too, I mean. It was good. Intense, challenging, I guess I'd say. We'd have dates at the small-arms range and try to outshoot each other. Only he got arrested. Taking kickbacks. You know what I mean?"

Sung laughed. "I've lived in China all my life—of course I know what kickbacks are. And now," he added, "you're with that man you work with."

"Yes."

"Maybe this is the source of the problem," Sung said quietly, studying her even more closely.

"Why d'you say that?" she asked uneasily.

"I would say you are yang—that word means the side of a mountain with the sun on it. Yang is brightness, movement, increase, arousal, beginnings, soft, spring and summer, birth. This is clearly you. But you seem to inhabit the world of the yin. That means the shadowy side of the mountain. It is inwardness, darkness, introspection, hardness and death. It is the end of things, autumn and winter." He paused. "I think perhaps the disharmony is that you aren't being true to your yang nature. You have let the yin too far into your life. Could that be the trouble?"

"I... I'm not sure."

"I've just been meeting with Lincoln Rhyme's physician."

"Yes?"

"I've got to talk to you about something."

Her cell phone rang and Sachs jumped at the sound. As she reached for the phone she realized that Sung's hand was still resting on her arm.

Sung eased back into the booth bench and she answered, "Hello?"

"Officer, where the hell are you?" It was Lon Sellitto.

She was reluctant to say but she glanced at the patrol car across the street and had a feeling that they might have told the detective where she was. She said, "With that witness, John Sung."

"Why?"

"Just needed to follow up on a few things."

Not a lie, she thought. Not exactly.

"Well, finish following up," the man said gruffly. "We need you here, at Rhyme's. There's evidence to look at."

Jesus, she thought. What's eating him?

"I'll be right there."

"Make sure you are," the detective snapped.

Perplexed at his attitude, she disconnected the line and said to Sung, "I have to go."

A hopeful expression on his face, the doctor asked, "Have you found Sam Chang and the others from the ship?"

"Not yet."

As she rose he startled her by asking quickly, "I'd be honored if you would come back to see me. I could continue my treatment." Sung pushed the bag of herbs and pills toward her.

She hesitated only a moment before saying, "Sure. I'd like that."

"Hope we didn't interrupt anything important, Officer," Lon Sellitto said gruffly when she walked into Rhyme's living room.

She began to ask the detective what he meant but the criminalist himself began sniffing the air. Sachs responded with a querying glance.

"Recall my book, Sachs? 'Perfumes should not be worn by crime scene personnel because—'"

"'—odors not native to the scene may help identify individuals who have been present there.'"

"Good."

"But it's not perfume, Rhyme."

"Incense maybe?" he suggested.

"I met John Sung at a restaurant in his building. There was some incense burning."

"It stinks," Rhyme concluded.

"No, no," Sonny Li said. "Peaceful. Very peaceful."

No, it stank, petulant Rhyme thought. He glanced at the bag she carried and wrinkled his nose. "And what is
that?"

"Medicine. For my arthritis."

"That stinks even more than the incense. What do you do with it?"

"Make it into tea."

"Probably tastes so vile that you forget about the pain in your joints.

Hope you enjoy it.
I'll
stick to scotch." He examined her closely for a moment. "Enjoy your visit with Dr. Sung, Sachs?"

"I—" she began uneasily, troubled by his edgy tone.

"How's he doing?" Rhyme asked blithely.

"Better," she answered.

"Talk much about his home in China? Where he travels? Whom he spends time with?"

"What're you getting at?" she asked cautiously.

"I'm just curious if what occurred to
me
occurred to
you?"

"And that would be?"

"That
Sung
was the Ghost's
bangshou.
His assistant. His
co
-conspirator."

"What?" she gasped.

"Apparently it didn't," Rhyme observed.

"But there's no way. I've spent some time talking to him. He
can't
have any connection with the Ghost. I mean—"

"As a matter of fact," Rhyme interrupted, "he
doesn't.
We just got a report from the FBI office in Singapore. The Ghost's
bangshou
on the
Dragon
was Victor Au. The prints and picture match one of the three bodies the Coast Guard found this morning at the site of the sinking." He nodded toward the computer.

Sachs looked at the picture on Rhyme's screen and then glanced at the whiteboard on which were taped the Coast Guard's pictures of the bodies. Au was the one who'd drowned, not been shot.

Rhyme said sternly, "Sung's clean. But we didn't
know
that until ten minutes ago. I told you to be careful, Sachs. And you just dropped by Sung's to socialize. Don't go getting careless on me." His voice rose, saying, "And that goes for everybody!"

Search well but watch your back.
...

"Sorry," she muttered.

What
was
distracting her? Rhyme wondered again. But he said only, "Back to work, boys and girls." Then nodded at the electrostatic shoe-prints from the Tang crime scene that Thorn had mounted on the evidence board. There was not much they could tell except that the Ghost's shoeprints, though an average size shoe, about an 8 in America, were larger than the three prints of his accomplices.

"Now, what about the trace that was in the Ghost's shoes, Mel?"

"Okay, Lincoln," the tech said slowly, looking over the screen of the chromatograph. "We've got something here. Very old oxidized iron flakes, old wood fibers and ash and silicon—looks like glass dust. And then the main act is a dark, low-luster mineral in large concentrations—montmorillonite. Alkaline oxide too."

Okay, Rhyme mused. Where the hell did it come from? He nodded slowly then closed his eyes and began, figuratively, to pace.

When he'd been head of IRD—the Investigation and Resources Division of the NYPD, the forensic unit—Rhyme had walked everywhere in New York City. He carried small bags and jars in his pockets for the samples of soil and concrete and dust and vegetation he'd collect to add to his knowledge of the city. A criminalist must know his territory in a thousand different ways: as sociologist, cartographer, geologist, engineer, botanist, zoologist, historian.

He realized that there was something familiar about the trace that Cooper was describing. But what?

Wait, there's a thought. Hold on to it.

Damn, it slipped away.

"Hey, Loaban?" a voice called, but from a distance. Rhyme ignored Li and continued to walk intently through, then fly over, the various neighborhoods of the city.

"Is he—?"

"Shhhhh," Sachs said firmly.

Freeing him to continue on his journey.

He sailed over the Columbia University tower, over Central Park with its loam and limestone and wildlife excrement, through the streets of Midtown coated with the residue of the tons of soot that fall upon them daily, the boat basins with their peculiar mix of gasoline, propane and diesel fuel, the decaying parts of the Bronx with their lead paint and old plaster mixed with sawdust as filler....