The Finder

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 neighborhoods 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 owner of the limo company.

"Where you think I got this sheet?" Victor said calmly, feeling the game with DiLetti engage, the negotiation take bite. "Lem gave us the green light."

"You guys cops?"

This was an interesting question. Because it gave Victor an opportunity. "Let me answer you this way," said Victor. "We have the authority to do what we're doing."

The very ambiguity of the statement seemed to relieve the driver.

"Okay," he said, nodding as if he knew exactly what Victor was referring to. "The pickup was at the Time Warner, like you said. It was four guys, actually. Only one or two spoke any kind of English. One of them translated. So I pick them up and they tell me to go to an address in Bay Ridge. Most of the time they had the partition closed."

"Bay Ridge."

"Yeah. Three guys got out there."

"Tell me something about these guys."

"Big. Very big for Chinese guys, maybe six one."

"Then?"

"Then they go into the house," said DiLetti.

"Address?"

"I don't remember the address. Third or fourth house on the left on Seventy-eighth Street off Ridge Boulevard. Green door. Porch is green, too."

"We can find it." He pointed at his friend Jimmy, who was serving as muscle, the way Richie used to. "Call Violet, tell her to get that address. She can have somebody over there in five, ten minutes, then tell her to check it out." He nodded back to the driver. "Okay. Keep going."

"So the guys go into the house and then two of them come out a few minutes later with something in a cardboard box. One of them stayed in the house. The rest get back in the car. So now there's a total of three Chinese guys in the car. A lot of discussion in Chinese, let me tell you. Very interested. I looked in my mirror but really couldn't see it. Then we go to another address a few minutes away. There's a red truck in the drive-"

"Old-red Ford F-150?" said Vic, remembering the vehicle driven by the man inquiring after Richie in the company trailer.

"Old, yes, Ford, I didn't notice. I don't know trucks."

"Then?"

"Then the three guys go into one house and come out a minute later with nothing and then they go into the house next door, which has lights on, and a couple of minutes later they drag a guy out of there and put him in the car." The driver paused. "This was a white guy, spoke English, so I heard that. They called him Ray."

"This Ray guy, he was in his early thirties, dark hair, good build?"

"Yes." The driver paused.

"You get the feeling he's pretty tough?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

Vic felt a surge of fury go through him. "Go on."

"Yeah, yeah, I will. But I'm starting to wonder something about the information, why it's like, so valuable."

"You're wondering about that," Victor repeated.

The driver smiled nervously, resettled himself, and then worked up his answer. "Yeah, you know, this is something that's, uh, valuable"

"To us."

"That's what I mean."

"You want payment for the information?"

"Well, you know, I mean-"

Victor nodded sagely. "What do you think this information is worth?"

"Well, I don't know, couple of thousand, anyway."

"What?"

"I said, a couple of-"

"No, no, I heard you. I just disagreed with you."

"So-"

"It's not the right amount," said Victor.

"Well, then maybe a thousand, seven fifty?"

Victor shook his head. "Still not right."

"I think-"

"I think you're really selling yourself short here," Victor said, nodding with animated judiciousness. "I mean, we want to be fair, we do want to be reasonable."

"You do?" asked DiLetti, amazed at his luck.

"Oh, sure. Honestly, this information is worth a lot more than a couple of thousand bucks to us."

"It is?" the driver said hopefully, his voice echoing in the empty, dilapidated room.

"Oh, yeah. It's worth-well, maybe a million bucks, actually."

"Really?"

"If you can deliver it accurately."

"Oh, I remember everything, don't have to worry about that."

Victor pointed at Jimmy, who was already smiling, though the driver couldn't see it. "Get Mr. Dick-Leety a million bucks in cash." He waved his hand at the next room, where the ceiling had caved in and runners from vines had stretched across the floor. "Right there in my safe. Small bills, Jimmy."

"You got it, boss."

The driver looked around anxiously. "Wait, wait, I didn't-"

"So go on with your story, okay? We're going to compensate you for your trouble."

Now the driver was actively worried. "So, okay, we took this guy-"

"How's that million bucks coming, Jimmy?"

A voice from the back room. Indistinct. "Can't find it, boss!"

"What? Fucking Jimmy can't do shit," muttered Victor.

"Wait, wait, so we drove into the city-"

"Jimmy, where the fuck is the million bucks! We don't want to keep Mr. Dick-Beetle waiting!"

"I'm looking, boss!"

"What did you find?"

"I found some kinda garden hose and a bag of old charcoal."

"I thought I fucking told you, a million dollars!"

Victor yanked out his gun and fired it over the driver's head, seemingly at Jimmy, who was standing to the side, smoking a cigarette. "Get Beetledick his money or he won't tell us his story!"

He waved the gun around wildly. Fired again, upward. A piece of old horsehair plaster fell out of the ceiling.

The driver dropped to the floor weeping, holding his arms around his head. He told them everything, first about the conversation the Chinese men had with the guy named Ray about some Chinese girl, who it seemed was his girlfriend, how they threw his phone out the window, the arrival back at the Time Warner building, an hour wait until they all piled into the car a second time, then again back to the house in Bay Ridge, then the two Chinese goons taking Ray into the house carrying the thing in the box, then the first Chinese guy coming out of the house not a minute later holding the tip of his nose, another with his hand clapped to a bleeding ear, and the third blinded by paint in his eyes. How they shot into Chinatown to a doctor's office, moan ing and cursing, all of it, blood all over the back of the limo. Victor was fascinated, exhilarated. This was good. He'd hit pay dirt! This was the guy! The guy he was going to kill!

When they were done with the driver, they stood him up on his feet and ignored the smell from his pants and made him drink five straight shots of whiskey at gunpoint. But in a congratulatory sort of way, with a slap on the back. You made it through the rain, pal. Nobody touched you, right? Not a goddamned hair on your head was hurt! The driver was hesitant at first, but by the third slug of whiskey he was enjoying himself again, even cracking a grin.

"We're going to drive you home," Jimmy told him, leading the man outside to the waiting car. Victor had seen this done before; the man's terror was quickly reduced by the drink, you dropped him off somewhere near his home, and if he spoke to anyone he barely made sense, then he fell asleep and when he woke up he felt weird and badly hung-over but realized he was unhurt-and usually decided that it was better not to mention his encounter to anyone of consequence.

Victor's phone rang. It was Violet.

"I got that address over on Seventy-eighth Street. Owner's name is Raymond E. Grant."

"Anybody know him?"

"Sure. He's easy to look up, and a man like you will be interested to know just who he is."

"Who?"

"A retired detective. Something like twenty-seven years as a detective. The red truck's in his name."

He said nothing.

"Victor? That's the kind of thing that worries me, you know?"

A detective. The younger guy named Ray had to be his son.

Victor would know soon enough.