The Finder

31

Longest trip of her life. They'd lurched along some kind of avenue in Brooklyn-she could tell by the stop-and-go traffic, the honking and sirens-then made a turnoff across bumpy ground and then she heard a truck engine and smelled shit, a cosmic enveloping gust of it. Like the van was tunneling through a mountain of the stuff. Then the van stopped a few seconds later, a garage door of a building was slid upward, and the van pulled inside. Now she just waited. She had an uncomfortable feeling between her legs where his thumb had been, and she could smell her own sweat and fear. Her neck ached from the struggle. But it was the tape over her eyes that hurt most. It was stuck to her eyebrows and lashes, and every time she blinked, the tape pulled. She breathed through her nose, the sound of it in the plastic bucket close to her face. Tough to hear much else than that, but now she could feel the van's engine switch off, and she heard the van's front door open and close, then the side door slide open.

"All right," his voice came to her, low and mean and firm, "I'm taking you out. Don't fight me."

She wanted to fight but didn't have it in her.

"Nod your head to show me you understand."

She did this, the bucket hitting her chest.

She felt his big hands grab her like a piece of cargo and drag her awkwardly across the metal floor of the van.

Then he picked her up and flopped her over at the waist, his shoulder in her stomach. He was carrying her- down, she thought. She heard a creaking noise. A strange abrasive chemical smell filled her nostrils, sickened her.

He put her down on something, a bed or sofa.

"You're pretty light," he said. She didn't know what this meant. "Now hold still, I got to do something to you."

She tensed, expecting the worst. But he was only wrapping something metal and heavy around her waist that settled against her hips. She heard a key click.

"I'm going to take off the bucket."

She felt the tugging of the tape at her clothes and hair, and when the bucket came off she no longer heard herself breathing through her nose.

His fingers touched her face and she started to struggle and cry.

"Hey! I'm just taking the tape off your mouth!"

She forced herself to be still. The chemical smell really bothered her, made her want to vomit, actually. Or maybe it was him-how close he was to her. She felt his fingernails picking at the end of the tape and the tape itself pulling away from her left cheek, her lips, then her right cheek. Stung as it was pulled away. She worked her face muscles a bit.

"Here's a bottle of water."

Something touched her lips. She shook her head violently.

He cuffed her. "Drink it. Don't be stupid."

She did, opening her mouth blindly, trying not to choke. It was regular water, so far as she could tell.

"All right," he began. "I know your name is Jin Li, however it gets pronounced. But who are you, anyway?"

She cleared her throat. She wished she could see him. "Why should I tell you?"

"Because I fucking told you to tell me!"

"Who are you?"

"Me?" He followed the question with a snort.

In that one word she heard an entire philosophy: a combative pride, utter disbelief that the universe so ignored him, and beneath that, the unmoored fury of self-hatred.

"Yeah, who are you?" she said brazenly.

"Me, I'm one who wins. That's what my name literally means, in fact."

"What is it?"

He hit her, hard. "I'm asking the questions. Don't forget that."

Her head spun and she fell backward, expecting to be hit again. But she did not forget what he'd said, not for a moment.

"All right, I got some questions. Were you in that car with the Mexican girls?"

I don't want to be hit again, Jin Li thought.

"No."

He hit her again. "Yes, you were. Now I know you are a liar and now you know that I know it. Got that? Okay? Don't fuck with me, right? All right-the limousine. Who were the Chinese guys in the limousine looking for you?"

Oh, Jin Li thought, he knows things. I'm going to have to be careful about everything I say.