"Frank some other guy who plays hide the salami with you?"
She punched him. "What do you care?"
"Just curious."
"You want to know?" she dared him. "You want me to tell you everything?"
He stood to go.
"Listen to me, Vic. I'm trying to help you. My friend Ronnie, who runs the limo service over in Bay Ridge, I asked him to make the call to the limo company even though it was a Manhattan company, he's got some connections there, you know, and he got through to the manager and the guy said that particular limo had real Chinese guys, from China, I mean, and that the bill went to some kind of Chinese bank or something. He said he charged them three times the usual, just to see what they'd do, and they said fine, whatever, charge it to our company, and he asked his driver, who was not Chinese, where they went and stuff and basically the driver said he didn't understand anything except that they were really looking for the girl who was in that car." Violet played with the edge of her nightgown. "Vic, she's some kind of important person for some Chinese guy with a lot of money, okay?"
He sat on the bed, thinking about it, incidentally rubbing his hand across her large, soft breast. He didn't care if Violet could tell by his silence that this information was important to him. The driver would know more than he pretended, like where the limo went and who else might have been in the car. Vic leaned close and kissed Violet on the cheek. "What would I do without you?" he said.
"Oh, Vic." She took his hand and kissed his fingers. "I just kinda got worried, you know."
He let his other hand caress the back of her head. She liked this, he could see. Ah, his thing with Violet. It was a thing they had, no doubt about it. Sad but real. She was maybe the only person who actually cared about it him. And for all he knew, she might have just saved his life. I've got the advantage now, Vic told himself, I'm going to get this guy.
26
His father was sleeping, and Ray studied him, feeling a stillness come over him. He had known this sensation before, had felt it when he carried out the body of a seven-year-old boy to his own father on a hillside in Kashmir, and though the boy had been dead for more than a day, the weather had been cold and the body was stiff and smelled like the stone dust it had been buried in. Ray had watched the father collapse silently to the ground, struck unconscious with grief, and while someone else ran for water and a blanket, Ray had held the boy in his arms, watching the wind lift his beautiful dark hair. It was a privilege to hold the body of boy for a man who loved his son so much, humbling, too, and Ray had known then he would hold the child as long as was needed. In such moments he had seen that everything he had ever wanted or might want was deeply insignificant, and that the secret to whatever peace might be available was to want as little as possible for yourself and as much as possible for others, especially those who wished no ill toward anyone. In such moments, and others like them—when he spent forty-six straight days carrying the tsunami dead, when he built a city of tents on a Turkish mountainside—he felt old parts of himself disappear. His religious training as a boy, never more than halfhearted, had cracked and fallen away. And one night while having sex with a young Italian nurse, a lovely girl, bouncy and true and seemingly untroubled by the grim work of the day, he had understood that he was fucking a corpse, and so was she. Worms and dust and putrefaction, a terrible thing to know about yourself. Was his lust improved by the scent of death? He did not know. He did not know a lot of things anymore. He did not know, for example, whether he was an American. Of course others would identify him as such, and while he loved America, despite its ills and evils, his love was a sad thing to him, perhaps even an inescapable burden. Americans knew so little about the rest of the world. The expats whom he'd met who'd spent many years abroad admitted that their American essence had started to disappear, whether they wanted it to or not. And so too with Ray. Maybe this was why he had come home. He had come home to be with his father but also to find out if America was still his home. Or could be again.
His father groaned in his sleep, lifted his chin, eased downward again. Here lay the clever Brooklyn boy who became the beefy detective afraid of no one, who then became the near dead, the shade awaiting release. Don't be haunted, Ray told himself. He wanted to grieve but dared not, for if he began he might never stop. You cried for one, you cried for all.
Better to get going again, look for those trucks in Red Hook. He hopped on the Belt Parkway, then the Gowanus, and turned off on Hamilton Avenue. Red Hook, once a place of long wooden docks and brick warehouses, had been more or less abandoned to the disinterest of time. There were still a few old wooden structures on a block or two of cobblestone streets, sailors' and dockworkers' houses, two-story and reshingled a dozen times over the years. Except for some new stores, the urban adventurers hadn't really invaded in full force yet because there was no subway, no good parks, no decent schools. Red Hook was a place where you went if you didn't want to be in the heart of things, even in Brooklyn. One of the motorcycle gangs had a house down there, but things were quiet, very quiet.
He rolled his truck slowly along the streets, searching all the open spaces, until he came to a yard surrounded by twenty-foot galvanized fencing that was itself topped with another ten feet of razor wire. He had seen this wire in every country he'd ever been in, around military bases, police checkpoints, shipping yards, airports, relief camps. Nasty stuff. The lot held seven mobile shredding vehicles, each marked CorpServe and more than forty feet long. Big, new, well-maintained vehicles. Each a quarter million dollars a pop, anyway, and with this realization it was clear to him that CorpServe was a bigger operation than he had realized, than Jin Li had ever intimated. "Just office company," she'd said. "No big deal."
But to buy and maintain such vehicles, to pay the rent on the lot, to pay the insurance—just that portion of the business was a few million. At the end of the lot he saw a low brick building in poor repair. Something was written on the door. He pulled out his binoculars. The lettering was Chinese.
That was good enough for him. He parked and found his way to the gate. The padlock was a good one, would require industrial bolt cutters or a heavy-duty gas-powered saw, neither of which he was carrying around in his truck. He walked the perimeter of the lot, looking for an easier point of entry. There was none. A rotten old water tower stood just a foot outside the fence. He went back to his truck, retrieved an eighty-foot piece of nylon rope, a belayer's carabiner, and a long crowbar. He hung the rope around his neck and hooked the crowbar under his belt.
The water tower was probably condemned; the service ladder up one side looked rusted and weak, but it had to hold him for only a moment or two, he figured. He shimmied up the iron leg beneath the tower, caught the bottom rung of the service ladder, long since frozen in place, pulled himself up, and climbed another twenty feet. The catwalk around the circumference of the tower was rotted out and he jumped over the holes. You fell through, you broke both legs easy. The catwalk on the far side of the water tank rested above and just inside the concertina fence, and he set up a belay on a piece of iron that looked like it would hold and lowered himself down to the fence, where he kicked the concertina wire away from himself as he dropped past it. The rope reached the ground, and he left it hanging there, because that was his way out.
He walked slowly along the fence until he came to the red brick building. The front door was locked and he didn't want to go in that way. He checked the windows for alarm contacts but saw none. The glass itself had embedded chicken wire. Not impossible to get through but certainly a hassle. He found the electric meter on the outside of the building. The service was rated for a thousand amps, a considerable amount of power. Maybe they'd done light manufacturing in there at one point. The meter wheel itself was barely moving. Not much happening inside, from an electrical point of view. The windows on the back of the building were barred and the back door was padlocked from the outside, which, he happened to know, was a violation of New York City fire department regulations. He took the long cr
owbar and slowly pried the lock fixture out of the metal door. He pushed on the door. Locked from the inside too. But with the long bar he was able to get the door open enough to squeeze through. Not a pretty job, he thought, slipping inside.
The building was dark. He pulled out his flashlight and came upon a rolling bin full of paper. He found a light switch. The building was in fact filled with shredded paper, some in rolling bins, some bagged in huge seventy-five-gallon waste bags. The blue bags were tagged, he noticed. The identifying information was in Chinese. At the end of the building, underneath a large clock, stood a desk and lamps and some kind of schedule, all written in Chinese.
CorpServe appeared to have been set up atop a previously abandoned operation: there were yellow lines painted on the floor, which, again, suggested some kind of light manufacturing process—back when America still made things that people in the rest of the world wanted—and these lines showed a parallel series of operations, probably conveyor belts that arrived at the back of the building where the loading dock was.
On the wall, under bright lights, hung a large white marker board, showing about thirty midtown locations and gridded by date for vehicle, staff levels, time, in, time out, supervisor name, and net weight received. Another large board was gridded for vehicles by date, load weight, driver, time in and out, service requirements, and start and finish mileage. Quite an operation, Jin Li, he thought, why didn't you tell me?
He noticed an office, its door locked. Maybe this was the nerve center. He took the crowbar and made quick work of the door, broke it down. One large desk, with huge file cabinets. Each was devoted to a company in midtown. There was a lot of confidential information, he saw, sales reports, office memos, legal reports, all kinds of stuff. What was it doing here?
He continued to paw through the paper on the desktop. He looked quickly at every piece. Nothing much here—except, wait, a faxed form letter from a Norma Powell that said, "Your previous tenant, NAME: Jin Li, has applied to be a tenant in my building, and listed you as her previous landlord. Kindly confirm that—"
He checked the date. Sent just a few days earlier. An address? Yes, in Harlem. The street address was just off Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Jin Li was in Harlem? Okay, he said to himself, I'm coming. Maybe she'd already moved in. It was the best lead he had. He took the paper with him, so that no one else would find it, and hurried through the building, not worrying about turning off the lights, and wedged himself back through the broken door.
He hauled himself up the rope to the water tower, arm over arm, kicking away at the fence again, found the catwalk, and threw the rope and tools down to the ground, then he lowered himself down the rusty ladder and dropped heavily on the other side.
A moment later he was back in his truck, speeding toward Harlem, barely noticing the old Chinese man on a bicycle who had witnessed Ray's impressive penetration of the lot by way of the water tower. The man had spent a few minutes inspecting the truck, too. Seeing Ray's hurry, he wondered whether to pull out the phone in his pocket. Jin Li had told him to call her, so he would.
27
Oh, timing really is everything! Martz waited a second longer, looked back at Phelps, who nodded. Phelps had arranged their entry into the East Side hotel, knew the security manager. It was a very nice place but Martz was surprised that Tom Reilly wasn't using the Pierre, say, or the Peninsula. Or the Ritz Carlton. He'd used it a few times, back in the day. The women always liked that, were enthused by the atmosphere.
Martz knocked on the glossy white door.
No answer.
He knocked again, politely.
The door opened a few inches and the face of a beautiful young woman appeared.
"Yes?"
Martz pushed in.
"Hey!"
Phelps came quickly after him, shut the door, began to gently explain to the young woman that she needed to dress and leave quickly.
The big bed was empty. Martz saw steam coming out a doorway, heard the shower. He stepped into the bathroom, saw Reilly in the large glass-walled shower soaping his dick reverently.
"Not bad," Martz said.
"What? Hello?" cried Reilly at the sound of a man's voice.
Martz pulled open the shower door. "See what you've made me do?"
"Get the fuck out of here!" yelled Reilly.
Phelps stepped into the bathroom doorway.
Martz reached in and turned off the shower, getting his sleeve wet.
"I've been trying to talk to you, Tom. I've called many times. I've had you followed to Yankee Stadium. I've invited you to my house. Which somehow resulted in your wife sticking her fingers in my butt. She and I had a little chat. I'm sure she told you about that. Yes, I've done a lot to get your attention. But you know what?"
"What?" said Reilly in his naked misery.
Martz looked at Reilly's crotch. "You've lost a little of your exuberance. How come? I don't excite you, Tom? Even after all the trouble I've gone to? I don't make your heart go fucking pitter-pat?"
"What did you tell my friend? Where is she?"
"Gone," said Phelps. "Dressed and gone."
"What do you want, Martz?"
Martz looked back at Phelps. "You can leave and close the bathroom door now."
Which he did. Martz leaned into the shower stall. "It's very simple, Tom," he said quietly. "You know there's been a serious security breach at Good Pharma." He stepped into the shower, his eight-hundred-dollar shoes on the wet tile, forcing Tom backward, and then lowered his voice to whisper. "It affected the stock price. But you didn't tell anybody. That was very illegal."
Reilly studied Martz's sun-damaged face, the droopy malevolent eyes.
"The SEC guys in Washington would enjoy buttering their toast with you, Tom," continued Martz. "Take it from me, I've been around long enough to see it happen. Given your behavior, it wouldn't take much to get them started. They butter the toast and then they take a lot of careful bites until the toast is gone. But that's just the government lawyers, Tom. Think of the investors, the lawyers they can afford!" he hissed. "Think of the cost of the lawyers you'd have to hire! That lovely young woman who just left? Some plaintiff's lawyer will want to depose her. See what the pillow talk in the hotel room was. What corporate secrets got mixed in with the juicy stuff. Come on, man, this is New York City! Where blood gets turned into money! Think of the articles in The Wall Street Journal! Think of your wife! The hit to her reputation and practice. The looks her patients will give her. I mean, the multiplier effects just go on and—"
Reilly allowed a slow nod of his wet hair, his eyes never leaving Martz's.
"But—to get back to my point—though it was illegal of you not to immediately tell the many trusting investors who own thirty billion dollars of Good Pharma stock, it was also smart."
"Why do you say that?" asked Tom, surprised.
"Because you have a good friend who can help you with your little problem if only—if only you would talk to him."
"Who, you?"
Martz gave a silent nod. "Me."
Tom exhaled through his nose, studying Martz.
"It's simple," Martz continued. "You and I will revert to our anthropological origins. We either hunt big prey together or we hunt each other until one of us wins."
"You're hunting me now."
"Nope, this is just tracking." Martz smiled a big, fabulous, glad-eyed grin, his teeth bright. "Hunting is when you actually make the kill."
28
Once fair, now foul, someday fair again? The Gowanus Canal in South Brooklyn is a green vein of seepage, a topographic remnant of what was once a burbling creek, and the nineteenth-century brick factory buildings on either side slowly crumbling into its sluggish shallows are the source of endless speculation by local investors who dream that the canal will soon be discovered as the next hot zone in New York's real estate market. No less a man than the great American trickster Donald Trump is rumored to have bought up large swaths on the sly. Indeed, nearby neighb
orhoods have begun to draw people with trendy eyeglasses and laptop computers, but for the canal the question as to who will dredge and remove the thousands of tons of toxic sludge within its banks—mud laced with heavy metals, PCBs, and nearly every other cancer-causing chemical ever dumped by American industry—is a question that no one can quite yet answer.
Which is why the neighborhood is mostly still home to car repair businesses, carpentry shops, a casket company or two, and other not so well specified enterprises that may or may not be legal. A perfect place for a little conversation with the driver of the white limousine that had ferried around the Chinese men.
He was a small man named DiLetti, fat in the middle, thin in the arms, with a dimple in his chin. He sat in a wooden chair in a nearly empty room.
"We know you're nervous," said Victor, standing on the warped floorboards. "That's expectable."
"You guys grabbed me." He looked at Victor in abject bafflement. "What, what did I do?"
"You drive a limo, right?"
"Yeah. But you know that."
"We want some information."
"What?"
"Where you were driving three, four days ago? We know you were driving around in Brooklyn."
"I don't have the log in front of me."
"I do." Victor held out the sheet. It had cost him exactly $100. "You picked up a bunch of Chinese guys at the Time Warner building and then drove them around. I want to know exactly where you went."
The driver's slow response told Victor that he remembered the answer to the question. It had to have been a memorable night, not the usual clientele for a cheesy Manhattan limo company. Not fake rap moguls getting blow jobs from a hire-a-ho, no East Side private school girls in jeans and party shoes on their way to a sixteenth birthday party. But something odd, not hard to recall. "Well, you, ah, you discussed this with Lem?"
The Finder: A Novel Page 25
