The Finder

3

Her name is not important here. She was in her late thirties and working as a legal secretary for a firm on Park Avenue. The attorneys there, men and women alike, disgusted her with their self-importance, their preening fatuousness. But she kept this to herself. She had tried the single life and mostly found disappointment. In her early years some of the young associates tried to date her and she let herself be taken to dinner and then into bed, but these men were, whether they knew it or not, auditioning wives. They talked love and devotion but were in truth matrimonial credentialists; they wanted a wife to have a degree from a good college at the very least and an advanced degree as well. And this she did not. Within a few years it got around the firm that she was easy, that she opened her legs after a few dates, and this, of course she knew, was true. So what? If you liked a guy, why wait? Why is it called easy? Why not eager? Yes, eager. Once in an associate's office after a late-night race to prepare a court document. Bent over on the windowsill, watching taxis fly down Park Avenue. It was exciting. So she liked men, eagerly. Liked their muscles and penises and whiskers. Hands and shoulders. Even a man's Adam's apple could be sexy. Who could blame her? But once she'd been labeled, the associates of any promise and discretion steered away from her, and this meant that the younger associates, new to big city life, took their shots, as did some of the older partners, the divorced, almost divorced, and never married. Mostly a disgusting lot, wheezers and nose-hair neglectors. Her boss, one of the most senior partners, pretended not to notice, and in time the associates and the younger secretaries cycled away to other jobs and people forgot who she had been and began to see her as yet another unmarried, now aging, and lonely woman, which, even though she was only thirty-eight, was true.

As her boss got on in years, he had come to depend on her more and more. She began to catch important errors in his memory and in the letters he wrote, and to his credit he recognized that she was extending his career. But more to his credit, he quietly siphoned off part of his yearly bonus to her-a secret cash arrangement that occurred outside of her regular salary. She worked longer hours and by degrees realized that she did not have the energy and hope necessary to sift and sort through the men still available to her, the thin-fats, the optimistic depressives, the probably/actually gay, the pervomaniacs, all of them. How disappointing! How tiresome! The men in their forties were looking for thirty-two-year-olds, the men in their thirties looking for twenty-five-year-olds. She knew the drill; she'd been those women once, enjoyed the attention of older men. Swooned over their sophistication, their power, their sexy salt-and-pepper hair. Good grief. What was wrong with her now? Her breasts hadn't dropped much. She was still juicy, still wanton — maybe. Some of her unmarried friends who suffered from perenially disappointed ovaries had decided to have babies without men, buying sperm on the Internet, lighting a bunch of candles in a dark room, lying back and inseminating themselves. But she didn't want to be a lonely single mom. She didn't know what she wanted, except that something interesting, anything, had to happen before-before she turned into her mother!

So she moved from her cozy, so-totally-hip apartment on Twelfth Street in Greenwich Village, where everyone white under the age of fifty was addicted to the Internet, to a three-bedroom house in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, one of the many little tribal neighborhoods that fed the city each day. Still largely Italian but now everybody was living there-Brazilians, Chinese, Russians, Indians, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Africans, even Iraqis. All working crazy hours trying to squeeze onto the jammed, hot-breathed dance floor called American turbo capitalism. Rang your doorbell, asked if you had work. Painting, roofing, cut grass, you need car washed, lady? Bay Ridge was also the same neighborhood where her parents lived, so she could keep an eye on them. She bought the house using the money the old partner had funneled to her, and this pleased her. She could walk to the subway and always get a seat going into work. Easy, a little shopping on the way home. But her life became quieter and even lonelier. She paid her bills, she planted marigolds and peas and lettuce in the spring, she drank a glass of wine with the news and another before going to bed. The months flew by. She perused the newspaper but forgot what she read, she never remembered her dreams, she bought sensible shoes, she didn't bother to masturbate. Nothing was happening. She considered actually going to church, for the social interaction. How terrible was that?

Certainly she never expected to meet anyone. But one warm Saturday afternoon she opened her door and saw a man in a baseball cap and green T-shirt standing in the yard next door. He was shielding his eyes and inspecting the roof, a short yellow pencil and clipboard in one hand. Meanwhile, she inspected him. "Hi!" she suddenly called, surprising herself. He turned toward her and slipped his pencil into his breast pocket. They got to talking. His father owned the house, he said, and he was just taking care of it, for now. His old red pickup truck sat in the driveway and she realized she'd seen it there a few times before. His name was Ray Grant, he told her. She liked Ray, liked him in the way women will sometimes like a certain man. He seemed unaware of how his shoulders and arms looked in the T-shirt, the way his jeans hung on his hips. She didn't see a wedding ring. His fingernails were clean. His eyes were the bluest blue, which she always loved, and she saw both confidence and aloofness in him. He wasn't going to tell her anything, or not much, even.

Okay-she threw herself at him! Invited him in for coffee, and she heard his heavy boots behind her as they went up the stairs into her kitchen. Coffee became a late lunch. He wasn't in a hurry, didn't check his watch. Didn't say much, either. She just talked and talked, got herself more excited.

"So your dad owns the place next door?" she repeated, when the conversation paused. "Maybe I've seen him a few times, come to think of it, but not in a while."

Ray nodded. "He's sick, so I came back to be with him."

"Sick?"

"Very sick."

"I'm sorry-is he, will he get better, I mean?"

At this Ray cut his eyes to the floor in quiet sorrow. Lifted his baseball cap and put it on again. Full head of hair, she noticed. She could see the pain in him, how he tried to keep it inside. I kinda love this guy, she told herself, what's wrong with me?

"No," Ray finally said. "He's not going to get better."

She just looked into those blues eyes. "I'm so sorry."

"It's a rare blood-vessel cancer. Angiosarcoma. They went in looking, thinking it was something in his kidneys. But it was all through him. He's got, I don't know, a few weeks maybe. Hard to judge."

She'd just met this man. Don't pry, she told herself.

"Came back?" she said anyway. "I mean you. You came back from where?"

He looked at her in a way that meant he wasn't going to tell her. "I was away," he said. "I've been back about three months."

"Oh."

"I've been mostly overseas the last five years or so," he added. "Don't need to say much more than that."

"Even if I'm dying to know?"

"Even then," he said, but gently.

She played with the edge of the tablecloth, folding it back, smoothing it, folding it again. "Sounds sort of glamorous."

"It's in no way glamorous."

Time to change the topic, she thought, time to stop acting like a schoolgirl. "What did your dad do before he got sick?"

"He's been retired a long time. Before that, a cop."

"Are you a cop?"

"Nope."

But there was something in the way he said this, a pause that meant something. "You just look after your father's house?"

"Yes."

"He has just one rental?"

"Six."

"All kind of like the one next door?"

"He kept buying them, back in the eighties when they were cheap."

She did the math. The houses probably weren't fancy, but with the staggering rise in real estate prices in New York City, the sick father was a wealthy man by everyday standards.

"Six rentals?"

"Yes."

"So you're here in the city," she ventured. "Are you trying to find gainful employment, are you dating five girls at once, are you reading any good books lately?"

Ray smiled. "You want those answers?"

"Girl doesn't mind knowing a few things."

He nodded playfully. Game on. "Okay, sure. I'm not looking for work. I'm taking care of my father, nothing more than that. I'm not dating five girls at once. I was seeing someone but she told me we were over a few weeks ago-"

"Was your heart totally broken?"

He studied the question. "It presented an opportunity to think."

"That sounds like a lot of you know what."

"It might be. But I try not to be too attached to anybody or anything. I fail but I try."

"Are you Buddhist?"

"No, but they have interesting ideas."

She just studied him, this Ray Grant. He was earnest. No spin, no attitude. She liked this.

"And as for the books, yes, I'm reading a couple of good books right now. Does that answer your questions?"

"Yes, thank you."

He nodded. "So," he said matter-of-factly, "what are we doing here?"

"What are we doing here?" she repeated, knowing exactly what he meant.

Ray looked at her, into her. She saw his intensity, the thing she had sensed the first moment she saw him. Now it was focused on her. She wanted this but it scared her.

"What do you want to do?" he said.

"What-do what?"

He just gazed into her. She couldn't lie to him.

"You seem like you want to do something now," he went on, more softly. "I could be wrong, though."

"Yes," she whispered, then nodded. "I do. Yes."

There was a silence in the kitchen, a silence through which many messages traveled. Outside the afternoon had become cloudy and the kitchen was shadowed. She felt nervy and excited now.

"Go take your clothes off and get in your bed," Ray told her.

She couldn't even manage a little ironic smile, like who do you think you are? He was being truthful. He knew who he was and he knew who she was-and in her case that was somehow already naked. "What are you going to do?" she began, breathing a little too quickly. "I mean, what are you going to do while I'm removing all my clothes and becoming even more vulnerable?"

"I'm going to make a phone call and then I'm going to walk straight into your bedroom and we will get to know each other, is my guess."

"Then what?"

He smiled. "Then-what do you think?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

Maybe she was joking, maybe not. Actually she wasn't.

"No," he said.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Okay then." She tried to sound breezily confident. "I'm trusting you, Ray Grant."

She stood up slowly, then turned into the hallway. I must be crazy, she told herself. This is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. She pretended to walk down the hall but stopped. She heard the little musical chime of his cell phone being turned on.

"Hi," came Ray's voice, echoing from the kitchen. "I'm going to be late… no, no, the house is fine. The roof has a few years to go. I'll be there before nine… Did she clean you?… Good. How's the pain?… Remember, the doctor said you could-I'll come home now, Dad, if it hurts too-… well, okay, but I want you to please please take it if-there's no reason to-okay?… I think they're playing Baltimore again, just turn it on… Yeah, okay, I'll see you then."

She heard him snap the phone shut and she hurried to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes, pulled back the covers.

"Hey there," Ray said in the doorway.

"Hi." She turned around. It had been years since she'd been undressed in front of a man. She didn't look as good as she used to, no getting around it. "You promised, remember?"

He flicked off the light. They kissed in the darkness, then she pulled away and sat on the bed to finish undressing. "Honestly, I never do this," she protested aloud. "It's not like me at all."

He didn't say anything.

"Is your silence judgmental?"

"Nope."

"What is it?"

"Confessional," Ray said.

"That's a funny word. What are you confessing to?"

"My own weaknesses."

"You don't look weak to me."

He had undressed and came now and stood before her. She put her hands on his chest first and felt the warm firmness of the muscles there. He was relaxed, which relaxed her.

"You surprised me," came his voice. "Didn't see it coming."

"You might be lying," she whispered. "But I appreciate the attempt." She leaned into him and kissed his belly and drew her hands down the rippled flank of his stomach and felt a long section of puckered, knotty flesh.

"Oh," she said. "What?"

"Scar," he answered in the dark, voice soft. "Old scar."

"What did it?"

"Something very hot."

But she barely heard this. She drew her hands around the hard arc of his buttocks, felt the muscle there. Now her eyes were closed. She felt a little dizzy. Someday I will be an old woman and will need things to remember, she told herself. This makes me happy. She moved her hands again.

"That's good," he said.

Later, after he had not killed her, she rolled in the damp sheets. Rolled ecstatically, as if at the edge of a far dream. I had forgotten, she thought, I'd actually forgotten.

"You hungry?" she murmured. "We never had dinner."

"Absolutely."

They stood languidly, in no hurry. In the half-light she saw the scar on Ray's stomach. Patchy skin grafts, maybe a couple of operations. What did it feel like to have the front of your stomach burned off? Don't ask him, she told herself, he doesn't want to talk about it.

She pulled on a robe as he slipped into his pants. In the kitchen he sat in a wooden chair while she made pasta and a quick salad. He also knotted his shoes, slipped his cell phone into his pocket, and put his baseball cap back on. For a moment she worried that he was eager to leave, that she had disappointed him somehow. But then he leaned back in the chair and her anxiety passed. She lit a candle and opened a bottle of wine. I'm going to make a little toast to the pleasures of sexual intercourse, she thought. She took out two glasses, poured wine in them, and set the table, feeling better than she had felt in-oh, God, in years. Maybe we'll do it again tonight, she hoped. I'm going to keep this guy here to the last minute. She glanced at the clock, knowing her mother would call before too long, exactly what she didn't want. This reminded her of Ray's father.

"Do you need to call your dad?" she asked.

"He's probably watching the Yankees game. I'll need to check in, though."

By phone? Or did he have to go back to his father's house? She was about to ask when she noticed car lights slide up her driveway.

"Weird."

"What?" asked Ray.

Holding the steaming pot of pasta, she glanced out her kitchen door.

"It's a limousine in the driveway. A man is getting out. More men."

She took a step backward.

"You're not expecting anyone?"

"No." She looked again. "They're checking out your truck."

"I forgot to lock it."

"They're not opening the-they're coming here, I think!"

The large figure knocked on the glass of the door. Ray stood up. Now a hand pounded the glass.

"Hello?" she called anxiously. "Who is it?"

The pane of glass above the door handle shattered. She screamed and jumped back behind the kitchen table.

A gloved hand reached in past the broken glass and unlocked the door. The hand disappeared. In stepped a big Chinese man in a black suit. He moved to one side and three more Chinese men came in.

"Ray," said the first man, pointing. "You go with us."

Ray moved between her and the men, protecting her. "Who are you guys?"

They didn't answer. The first Chinese man pulled back his coat to show his gun. Two of the others slipped behind Ray.

"Miss lady," said the Chinese man. "Do not call the police. Or we will come back here and"-he saw the pot of pasta in her hand-"and we will eat up your bad noodles."

The two men put their hands on Ray's shoulders. A tremor ran through him, she sensed, a desire to respond violently that he repressed right away. He looked at her. "It's all right," he said. "Don't call the police. I mean it."

But she knew it wasn't all right. She stood at the kitchen door as they dragged Ray down the steps and into the limo.

Was this really happening?

She wanted to scream, she needed to scream. They were taking him away! The doors shut, and the long car reversed smoothly out of the driveway, then disappeared.

What to do? Shouldn't she do something? She gazed down at the broken glass on her kitchen floor. Her hands shook. They could have hurt her. What were they going to do to Ray? He didn't know the men, but-but what? He accepted their presence, she realized, as if he had quickly figured out who they were. She picked up the phone. Ray said don't call, so I won't, she thought. No, actually I will. She started to dial the police. But stopped… maybe it would make things worse for Ray, and she couldn't take that chance.

Instead she slipped the phone in her robe pocket and went out the kitchen door. Ray's red truck sat in the same place in the driveway parallel to hers, and she tried the passenger door. It opened. She stepped up high and climbed inside, aware that the cab light inside illuminated her to anyone driving by or looking out a window. She was expecting to find fast-food wrappers, coffee cups, all the usual guy-in-a-truck junk. Instead she found a clipboard with Ray's father's name and address on it and notes Ray had taken on the house. She inspected his tight, careful handwriting. Under the clipboard lay three books, one on the effect China was having on the global economy, another a philosophical treatise on death and consciousness, and the last a thick history of Afghanistan published in London in 1936. I have absolutely no idea who this guy is, she told herself. She popped open the glove compartment. Engine repair records, clipped carefully together. Beneath them lay a ten-inch bowie knife, the handle worn and taped over. She slipped the knife out of the sheath an inch or two. The blade gleamed. It scared her and she slipped it back.

From there she looked under the seats. Beneath the driver's side was a standard roadside emergency kit, with flares, flashlight, and jumper cables. Under the passenger's seat she pulled out a girl's yellow canvas tennis shoe. Everything about it suggested flirty sexiness. She set it next to her own foot. Too small for her. A fine dainty foot. A thin sexy foot attached to thin sexy ankles. Not worn at all, new. She felt a little jealous now, a little mad. Ray had definitely had sex with the woman who'd lost this shoe. You just knew these things. That was what he meant when he said the word "confessional." Maybe this woman was the one who'd broken it off. But why? Who would dump a guy like Ray? she thought. She suddenly remembered the gasping noises she'd been making in bed, her hands clutching the sheets.

Frantic to know something, to do something, she swept her hand all the way under the truck seat. Her fingers found a Tupperware container. She popped open the top. Inside was what-a dead animal? No, it was hair, thick and curly and black. How disgusting! A note was tucked inside. She pinched it up, careful not to touch the hair. The note said:

Hey Ray-Gun, I told you I'd send you my beard. What did you do with yours? I'm riding the surf here in Melbourne. Come visit me if you want. I'm with you-given up e-mail. It's too fast. I need to slow down, a lot. I'm just waiting for the next assignment. Also I got some weird head pains from those pills they made us take. I am having my usual postmission meltdown. It's the little bodies that do it to me most. You understand, I know you do. Sorry to hear about your dad. I know you love him so much. Not sure if I can keep doing this. Will drink and whore my way to higher consciousness. Maybe you survive it better than me. Maybe not. I don't have many ideas anymore, not sure if I'm actually a genuine American. Might not be. Can't see myself going home, just too weird. You get any good ideas, send them to me. Let me know if you get a new assignment. All right, surf's up in like an hour.

Beneath the scruffy hair was a photograph of two muscular men with long beards. Ray and another man, presumably Z, the one who'd written the letter. Deeply tanned, in dirty T-shirts, mountains behind them. Soldiers? she wondered. She didn't see any weapons. Her eyes lingered on Ray's arms and shoulders, their obvious strength. She knew what they felt like against her fingers.

The phone in her pocket rang, startling her. She folded up the note and shoved it and the photo back into the Tupperware and the shoe back under the seat, as if the caller might be able to see her. It was her mother, ready to have the usual conversation. She hopped down from the truck and went back into the kitchen.

"Mom, let me call you back."

But her mother wouldn't. They got into it from there. The doctor's visit. Your father's arthritis. Another ten minutes of her life gone to this. She found herself drifting into the bedroom to look at the rumpled bed. The sheets seemed to still have some of Ray in them. But he was gone.

"You sound like you're crying," her mother said. "You crying? What's the matter?"

She hung up. All right, she was crying. She meets a great-looking guy in her driveway, lets him screw her brains out for an hour, and she's happily cooking him dinner when- hello? — a bunch of gangster-ish Chinese men drag him out the door? Who wouldn't be freaked out by that? Of course I'm going to cry! In the kitchen, she found a flashlight in the drawer. Maybe there was more stuff in Ray's truck. She went to the kitchen door and opened it.

The old red pickup truck was gone, like it had never been there. Like Ray had never been there, never been with her… and she knew, with that odd true knowledge that sometimes reaches far beyond oneself, that she would never see him again.

They took the Belt Parkway toward Manhattan, gliding at a smooth seventy, the open water to their left. One of the big ocean liners was leaving the harbor, portholes lit up in the dark, a silent enormity. The four Chinese men around him didn't seem to notice. They appeared lost in their own thoughts, as if Ray were an inanimate package they were transporting. He told himself to relax. What were they going to do-kill him? He doubted it. There was just the beginning of a logic to all this. Jin Li had told him one night at dinner she couldn't see him anymore, that she was very sorry, there were things she couldn't explain. Yes, it had to do with her brother Chen, she admitted, the one who lived in Shanghai and considered himself a big-deal businessman. She'd sounded anxious. Ray had tried calling. They hadn't fought. He'd been worried about her, cursed himself, and called a few more times. But nothing, no communication, for two weeks. Long enough that you think it really is over. Long enough to get lonely. Maybe the men knew why Jin Li hadn't answered her phone. How had they found him? They must have located his father's house, forced him to tell them where Ray was, gone to that address, seen the truck, seen the lights in the nice woman's kitchen. Seen Ray sitting at the table.

"Guys," he said. "I need to call my father, that okay?"

The men looked at him silently.

Ray pulled out his phone. "He's sick and I have to check-"

One of the men grabbed the phone and handed it to the man who had spoken to Ray in the kitchen. He scrolled through the numbers. He looked up at the others and said something about Jin Li.

"Yes, her number is in there," Ray admitted. "I've called her a lot."

"Who else did you call?" asked the man.

"Not too many people," said Ray. He waited. "So let me call my father, guy."

They didn't answer him and he counseled himself to be patient, not to overreact to what was obviously some kind of kidnapping. He hoped that his father had pushed the button on the little electronic box that delivered a preset bolus of Dilaudid, which was synthetic morphine only much stronger. The machine, which had a tube that went straight into his father's arm, provided dosages at regular intervals but also allowed his father to receive a limited number of optional doses when the pain became too great, which happened more frequently now. Ray prayed his father had taken the extra doses and been knocked out, would sleep through Ray's absence. He'd said he'd be home before nine, and that wasn't going to happen. His father got anxious when Ray wasn't there and pawed the blankets in worry, twisting his head painfully toward the doorway. Ray was just going to have to assume that Gloria, the night nurse who had cared for hundreds of terminal patients, would be sure his father was comfortable. He'd set up the hospital bed in the living room, which had more space for equipment and chairs for visitors. Ray was paying for private-duty hospice nurses around the clock, $10,000 a week to care for his father. The policemen's medical insurance didn't do enough. The six houses together were worth at least a couple of million. So spend it. All those windows fixed, crummy bedrooms repainted and repainted again, more than twenty-five years of dealing with deadbeat tenants, busted water pipes, broken refrigerators. Now it was payback time. His dad deserved the best. Ray had gone down to the local bank where his father had first gotten his mortgages, long paid off now, and explained the situation. He'd cashed out one of the houses, and even at $10,000 a week, the money would last many months. It was his father's time that was running out.

"Hey," Ray tried again. "What about the phone?"

The Chinese man in the suit looked at Ray, pushed a button that made the window drop, and flipped the phone into the rushing darkness outside. The cool air swirled around inside the car, then the window went up.

The permanent government of New York City, the true and lasting power, is found in the quietly firm handshake between the banking and real estate industries. Nearly every other business-television, publishing, advertising, law firms, hospitals-is comparatively insubstantial. Only the banks and the developers can tear out a section of the city and replace it with something new. Can alter the feel of a neighborhood, where people walk, eat, and live, and thus actually change what New Yorkers say and feel about themselves, remap their minds even as their city is remapped beneath their feet. The developers destroy the past to improve the future, they make nothing into something, they push away humans they can't use and pull in new ones they can. Who else could gouge a hole large enough for five thousand swimming pools at the southwest corner of Manhattan's Central Park, then erect the Time Warner building, a garish twin-towered, tuning fork of an edifice, stuff it at the lower levels with the very same luxury-junk stores found elsewhere, then charge $40 million for enormous apartments above it?

Of course the apartments were all quickly bought by aging movie stars who didn't care about being hip anymore, Saudi princes with dyed beards, London speculators, the newly rich Spanish, Russian oilmen who'd gotten their money out before Putin stopped them, computer company execs from India. Moguls near and far, not all of whom realized that the "eightieth-floor" penthouses were quite an achievement for a building only sixty-nine stories high.

The limo pulled to a stop outside this building and the men walked Ray to an unmarked side entrance manned by two guards. The intercom buzzed them through and a moment later they stood in an enormous elevator. The men kept the floor display panel hidden from Ray, so he counted seconds. He knew from his training that they were rising about forty feet per second, which put them close to the forty-eighth floor when the elevator stopped. They proceeded to a marbled foyer and arrived in a huge living room with a view over Columbus Circle and northeast to Central Park.

A Chinese man of about thirty, very slender in a tailored black suit, emerged from another room. His eyes flicked over Ray's work boots, old jeans, and green T-shirt.

"Thank you Mr. Ray for coming to see me," he said, waving at the sofas, an enormous gold watch around his wrist.

They sat. The other men moved to the back of the room and stood.

"My name is Chen," said the man. "I have big problem. And I want you to fix this problem."

Ray was silent.

"This is my problem," he went on. "You were boyfriend for my sister, Jin Li. She works for me in New York City. She tells us about you. Everything about you. She loves you very much, everything like that. Then maybe four days ago, she not appear."

"Disappeared?" said Ray. "How do you know?"

"Let me finish talking to you."

"Fine."

"That's right," Chen growled. "Fine for you, fine for me."

Ray started to say something, thought better of it.

"So I will talk now. You listen. Jin Li calls me in China. Very upset. Like that. Two girls that they are with her get killed in their car. The men in the Brooklyn village, they put the shit in the car. But not my sister. Nobody find her. This does not surprise me too much, Mr. Ray. She is, what do you say, self-reliant. Too self-reliant, maybe you know. She leave our family and come to United State. I give her job running my company here and then she not appear. That is my problem. The American police do not know who kill the two girls."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

"I am sure. I pay people to tell some things."

"You can pay people, but that doesn't mean they know."

"I am paying a man who knows all these things!"

Ray shrugged.

"Do you know about this bad thing that happened?"

Ray shook his head. He wasn't following the news much these days.

"The American police do not know my sister was in that car. I read the New York City Daily News on the Internet in my country. You can still do that if you know what to do. China government say one big thing, everybody do the other thing, the little thing. The paper only say two Mexico girls, where they put the shit into the car. Very bad. Jin Li, she call me and then she does not go to work, like I say before. I have to tell somebody to run my business. That is big problem just like that. Where is Jin Li, I say. She is good at the business for me. I talk with my lawyer in Chinatown. He say if you ask American police to look for Jin Li they will ask too many question. Just like China! I do not like too many question. I am boss, I have the question. In China we do not like the police. We do not trust them. I do not trust polices anywhere. I want to know where is Jin Li but I cannot find her in this city."

"I'm sure there are plenty of good Chinese private investigators in the city, retired detectives, people like that."

"That is what my lawyer say. Are you a lawyer, too?"

"No," answered Ray.

"So my lawyer get some man to look in her apartment, look at her bank, look at her money, and everything. We do this, we do what he say. Nothing. She is really really hiding, you know what I mean? Or maybe she is dead but how come they do not find the body? I do not think she is dead. She call us, like I say to you. She is upset. This is what she is. Then she did not call anymore to us. But I ask myself why her white boyfriend does not look too much for her? Why he not asking her friends, where is Jin Li? Have you seen her? Maybe he does not love her so much today. That is what my lawyer say. White boy, Chinese girl, no big deal, right?"

"You want me to talk now?" Ray asked.

"No." Chen pointed at one of his men and said something in Chinese. The man left the room. Then Chen turned back to Ray. "Here is what I think. She is hiding somewhere-place and you know where, Mr. Ray, you help her now."

"I don't. I have no idea where she is."

"Then why you do not ask about her and everything like that?"

"I didn't know she was missing."

"I do not believe you."

"I haven't spoken to her for a couple of weeks, and she stopped returning my calls. In America, we call this getting dumped. And you know, we only saw each other a few months. She didn't tell me much about herself."

Chen smiled hatefully. "Maybe you were too busy fucking my sister in the pussy to ask so many question."

"She didn't seem to mind."

"You like the Chinese pussy? You like how tight it is, Mr. Ray? Not like the big fat white-" Chen's interest was distracted by the return of the man who had departed; he carried a cardboard box. The man set it down in front of Chen, who inspected its contents, nodded, and then looked back at Ray. "Let me tell you some extra things. We know many informations about you, Mr. Ray Grant. We pay lot of money to retired NYPD detectives who tell us about you. We know your father was New York City detective. Sixty-three Precinct. There are many people who do not like him. Right now someone could walk into his room and shoot him."

"He's dying. He might even prefer to be shot."

"Maybe yes. But you do not. You want to be with him," Chen ventured, watching Ray's expression. "You need this man, your father, I think to myself."

They'd been watching him for the last few days, Ray realized, running groceries, in and out of the house. Knew when he was there and when he wasn't. Did they also know he was with the woman, then put their plan into motion? Possibly. Barged in to find his father peacefully in bed watching the Yankees game, Gloria sitting next to him. Ray had let himself get distracted. How he hated himself for that now. "I can't help you," he said. "I'm just the guy who was banging your sister, no more, no less."

"I am going to pay you to find her."

"Sorry, not interested."

Chen's right hand played with the gold watch on his left wrist, his small index finger rubbing an intimate circle on the face. "I will pay lot of money. I have lot of money and I will pay lot of money to find her."

Ray looked at Chen directly. "Not interested."

"What will motivation you?"

"Nothing will motivation me. I'm not interested." This wasn't true; he was now quite interested in finding Jin Li, but on his terms, not her brother's.

Chen didn't respond. Instead he pulled a toothpick from his breast pocket and picked at his teeth. Finished, he inspected the toothpick for dental residue, then laid it carefully on the glass table. One of the beefy men standing at the back of the room came forward with a waste-basket and plucked the toothpick up and dropped it into the basket. Then he took out a tissue and wiped the glass table clean.

Chen pointed over Ray's head. "When they sell me this apartment they say the window do not open too much. They say something about cold air-conditions and the architect design. Special glass that is shiny. I say I pay so much American money for this apartment, you say I cannot have window that is open? Everybody say New York is big deal, number-one city. I say no. New York no big deal, too old. Not too smart. China smarter. Shanghai much more smarter. You come to my country, you find out. In Shanghai I get window that is open when I push it. I say this to big New York architects. They say this is one-billion-dollar building, most expensive in New York City ever. I say one billion dollars is very small piece of money in China. They say okay we will fix, we will make you special window, just for you. So now I have special window."

Chen nodded to the men behind Ray. They slid open one of the panels of glass. The night air swirled coldly into the room and the sounds of traffic drifted up from the street.

"We throw you out the window now."

Ray looked at him. "I don't know where your sister is."

"Yes, I possibly believe you."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem, Mr. Ray, is you say you will not look for her."

"I don't think I can find her."

"We know you can find her. Jin Li say you have very big military training."

"I don't."

"Jin Li say your passport is stamped Afghanistan, Turkey, Malaysia, places like this."

"She interpreted those facts incorrectly."

"You will look for my sister?"

"No," he said.

"I see. Okay, like I say, okay." Chen pointed at the window. "Out."

"Can I tell you why this is a very stupid idea?"

Chen spoke to his men in Chinese. They stopped.

"This building is new," said Ray. "It's full of extremely rich people like you, Chen. It certainly has one of the best security camera systems in the city. The Saudis and Israelis would never buy in unless the security was good. They have things to worry about these days. Cameras watched you all the way up the elevator. If you throw me off the building, I will hit the street and die-instantly, I hope. Many people will notice this. My death flight might even be captured on video, which means it would be on the Internet an hour later. They will use their cell phones and call the police. One of the Midtown North rolling units will be here within a minute. Meanwhile you will have to escape, going right past all those cameras. The police will probably seal off the building, which is standard procedure when someone falls out of a window, especially when the place is loaded with celebrities and rich people. But let's say you get out of the building. Are you going to escape by limousine? I don't think so. So you would have to take a cab, a hired car, or even walk. Where would you and all your men go? A hotel? The airport? Central Park? You see, there's no-"

"Out!" said Chen.

He didn't bother fighting them. They lifted him up and carried him to the window, then threw him headfirst out of it, face up, his knees bent over the sill, with each man holding one of his feet. His baseball cap fell off. By instinct he grasped the edge of the window. One of the men smashed his hand with the butt of a gun.

"Don't break window!" yelled Chen from within the room.

The men lifted him and pushed him farther out, so that only the heels of his shoes touched the building. He felt their tight grip around his ankles. He weighed about 190 pounds. How long could they hold that? His hands fell below him, blood rushed to his head. His back touched the face of the building, the sheer clean line of windows, most lit, a few dark, dropping below him. I'm upside down, he thought stupidly. Some change in his pockets shook loose and he watched it tumble brightly toward the lighted streets below, taxis flowing around an upside-down Columbus Circle. The yellow pencil fell from his breast pocket. He closed his eyes to calm himself, slowed his breathing. Release your desire, he chanted, for desire causes you to struggle and be fearful. You desire not to die. He'd been in worse jams than this one. Far worse.

"Do you agree?" shouted an angry voice.

He said nothing and instead concentrated on his breathing. They wouldn't drop him. It was a matter of outwaiting them, not letting himself be terrorized.

"Mr. Ray! Listen to me. Listen now!"

Something touched his face. He kept his eyes closed. Don't break, he told himself, don't you break.

"You see, you look!"

His eyes stayed closed. He breathed through his nose to slow his heartbeat. It worked. He knew from experience that he could last five minutes upside down if necessary.

"You look!" they screamed. "You see this!"

The thing brushed his face again. He opened his eyes.

"Do you see what that is?" he heard Chen yelling from above.

At first he did not. A box with tubes, hard to focus on while hanging upside down, swinging back and forth in front of his eyes, the tip of one of the tubes attached to a bloody needle.

Then he understood.

His father's morphine pump.

They'd taken it, yanked it right out of the vein in his father's right arm. He needed a forty-milligram bolus of Dilaudid every hour, or the pain was "Yes, yes!" Ray screamed. "I'll do it! Yes, get me up!"

When the limousine returned Ray to his father's semidetached house in Brooklyn, two of the three men got out slowly, watching him, but as soon as he was free he bolted toward the front door, carrying the Dilaudid pump. His red truck was back in the driveway, he noticed. He flew in through the cluttered entrance, past all of his father's gardening equipment and landlord supplies, and into the living room, surprising the guard, who jumped to his feet and drew a. 45 pistol.

Ray froze, raising his hands. The other men arrived in the room and the guard lowered his gun. The nurse, Gloria, sat next to the hospital bed holding his father's head in both her old hands, bent close to him, lips on his forehead, whispering lovingly to him as he arced his back in pain, digging fitfully at the bed with his shrunken legs. His upper lip was drawn back, showing his old worn teeth, and the lids of his closed eyes fluttered in torment, the brows above raised in disbelief and wonder at the canyon of pain through which he traveled. Ray had seen his father suffer, but this was different; this was an old man on a steel hook.

"Oh!" cried Gloria, seeing that Ray held the drug pump. He handed it to her. "He's been so good, so brave. God has been helping him in this terrible hour."

She plugged in the machine, keyed in the restricted access code, checked the drug supply, and quickly inserted a new intravenous line into his father's arm. The two other Chinese men appeared in the doorway.

"You are the one who did this to my father?" Ray asked the guard.

"He is old," said the guard.

"Would you do this to your own father?" said Ray, smelling alcohol on the man.

"Father never get old."

"We are leaving now," said one of the others. He pointed at Ray and then at the front door. "You go first."

He felt the three men behind him as he walked to the front door. As he passed through the cluttered hallway, Ray let his right hand trail to the side and find a spray can of rust-preventative paint. The left hand grabbed a pair of hedge clippers he'd dropped into the umbrella stand the day before.

He popped the top off the paint, found the spray button with his finger, wheeled, and sprayed the first man behind him right in the eyes. The man screamed and clawed at his face. Ray clubbed him with the paint can and he went down.

As the second man reacted, Ray grabbed the clippers with both hands and clipped savagely at the man's face, taking off the tip of his nose-he cried out and instinctively covered his face with his hands. Ray clipped again, this time sinking the blades into the man's fingers. The man fell to his knees, blood streaming onto the floor.

The third man had his gun out now and fired wildly past Ray, shattering the light fixture. Ray clipped at the outstretched hand holding the gun, missed, then went low and tackled the man, pinning the gun with one hand. His other hand pulled down the hall table and he swept his fingers blindly through its contents. The man was punching Ray in the head with his free hand, grunting with the effort. Ray found a roll of cellophane tape. No good. Loose batteries, a box of tacks. Nothing he could use. He took several blows to the head. The guy was really hitting him. Then his fingers felt a narrow key used to open paint cans that the hardware store on Eighty-sixth Street gave away for free when you bought paint. Shaped like a curved screwdriver. This Ray jammed into the man's ear, the first time into the cartilage, the second time right into the auditory canal. He buried it to the hilt, pounded it with his palm. The pain of a burst eardrum was such that the man went slack, urinated, and began to weep. Ray pulled the gun from his hand, jumped up dizzily, and swept the gun at the three men, all of them balled up in pain.

"No kill! No kill!" the one with the missing nose tip begged.

Ray put the gun to the neck of the third guard. "You understand English?" he screamed.

The man nodded.

"Don't hurt my father! Do not ever hurt my father!"

"Okay, boss, okay," the man coughed.

Ray yanked the man to his feet, took the guns from the other two, and kicked them out the front door. The limo driver, a white man, no doubt hired with the car, stared ahead, studiously ignoring the injured men stumbling into it. Their wounds were not life-threatening, Ray knew. He'd seen nearly every kind of injury a human being could suffer, and these were not serious. A phone call would be made, a private doctor found, perhaps in Chinatown in Manhattan but just as likely in one of the enclaves of Chinese doctors in Queens or Brooklyn.

Ray quickly retreated into the living room and saw that the Dilaudid had pulled his father into a deep sleep. Gloria looked up from her book, noticed the guns in his hands, then found his eyes. "I gave him double. He's fine now."

"You?"

She pointed at her Bible. "I got my reading."

Ray checked the window. Two blocks away, the limo sped through a red light. Already the men would be calling Chen and Chen would be calculating his response, wondering if Ray's actions confirmed him for the task of finding Jin Li or whether such sudden violence suggested a reckless lack of judgment. In either case, Ray had revealed himself to Chen, and this in itself constituted Ray's first disadvantage, his first mistake.

Stupid, he berated himself, you can't be so stupid and expect to survive.