The Finder

25

Violet had called him, a most unusual event. He waited for the buzzer, then climbed the stairs. She was in bed, shades drawn, smoking, a pile of magazines on the bedspread.

"Jesus, Violet, why don't you kind of, you know, get it together a bit, you know?"

She shifted her large bulk under the covers. "Can't, baby."

"Why?"

"Got what I need, more or less."

"So, what did you want?"

"I heard something that's going to interest you a lot."

"What?"

"Just pour me one first, okay?"

He went to the dresser. The bottle he'd brought her the day before was still there, half empty.

"So listen, Victor, I was talking to some people and they were saying about those girls who were found out by the beach-"

"What's this got to do with me?"

"Maybe nothing, all right?"

He brought her the drink and sat down next to her. She sipped the glass.

"I just thought you should know," Violet said, her eyes worried. He hadn't seen her like this in a long time.

"All right, what?"

"There was a third girl in that car."

"What?" But of course that made sense. He thought there might be three people when he was following the car along the Belt Parkway, then later figured he'd been wrong.

"Yes, she came out of the weeds, the grass near the little parking lot they got. Mrs. Polanzi's cousin has a house over there, she doesn't sleep much because her husband uses oxygen. She saw a pretty Chinese girl come running up the road there. It was raining, hard to see. She didn't think about it until later. She told the police about it the next day at the scene and they said thank you for the information, kind of like they knew already. Then a couple of days later she saw a big white limousine out there in the lot with a bunch of Chinese men in good suits. She'd never seen that before. It made her remember the Chinese girl. She wrote down the name of the limo company when the car went past again. She gave it to her cousin Frank, and Frank mentioned it to me and-"

"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.