The Finder

33

Harlem had changed, yo. Now white people lived there! He knocked on the door of Norma Powell's house on 146th Street. It was well past the dinner hour; he'd be lucky if someone answered. The traffic up the FDR Drive had been a disaster; nearly two hours from Red Hook to west Harlem. 1010 WINS radio said the body of a mobster had been discovered dumped between two cement traffic barriers. The roadway in both directions crawled with cops and evidence technicians. Now Ray saw movement behind the curtain, and a moment later an enormous black man came to the door, with some kind of delicious smell of Italian cooking following him.

"This Norma Powell's place?" Ray asked.

"She's my mother. What's up?"

"I'm looking for a Chinese girl. Name's Jin Li."

"We don't say who lives here, mister. Especially eight o'clock at night."

Ray held out the fax he'd found in Red Hook.

The man inspected the piece of paper, handed it back. Tough to argue with that.

"You a cop?"

"No."

"Then we ain't got something to talk about."

She could be in her apartment or room right now. "How about you call her for me, find out if she'll see me?"

"You got a phone?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Long story."

The man pulled out his own phone.

"You have her number?" Ray asked.

"Do I look like a chump?"

"No, you do not look like a chump."

The man dialed, listened, a look of patient disgust on his face. "Message," he said, snapping the phone shut.

"You should have said that-"

"Wait a minute there, Cool Breeze. I thought you answered my question."

"What?"

"That I wasn't a chump. Didn't you say something like that? Just because I'm calling her don't mean some funky white guy gets to talk to her, especially on my dime."

Ray tipped back his head. He hates you, he thought. But it's not personal. Don't react. Seek the elegant solution. What next? Stalling, he looked up the front of the building. Which gave him an idea. "Fine. Good-bye and thanks. By the way, whatever you're cooking smells good."

Maybe because it was burning? The man frowned in worry and shut the door. Ray could see him hurry toward the kitchen.

Ray examined the name slots on the buzzer. The one for 5F was empty. That would be Jin Li's. Fifth floor front. He stepped off the stoop ledge right onto the fire escape. Norma Powell and her son seemed to run things by the book. The New York City fire code stipulated that every room in which a person slept had to have a least two forms of egress, which meant, usually, a door and a window. He knew Jin Li would never rent a room without a window; she was a bit claustrophobic. He climbed up the fire escape to the fifth floor, his boots kicking a shower of paint chips beneath him. The iron-slatted landing on the fifth floor stretched across three windows, and he peered inside each dwelling. In the first an old black man was in a chair watching a baseball game on television. He had his hand around a forty-five-ounce bottle of beer. The next window was dark; Ray saw no one inside. The last window revealed an overly skinny young woman in a bra, jeans, and an air filter mask waving one arm around. She looked like a human praying mantis. What was she doing? He leaned close. She was spray-painting a giant canvas. Dangerous as hell. He knocked loudly on the window.

"What? Who are you?" She seemed neither surprised nor scared that he stood outside her window.

"Fire department inspection."

She opened the window two inches, leaving a screen between them. "What?"

"Fire department. That's an illegal industrial use of aerosol propellants in a multiunit residential dwelling," he said. "But I'm not going to write you a violation if you promise me one thing."

"What? Sorry."

"Keep your room ventilated, miss. Keep this window open."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"Are there illegal activities taking place in the next door apartment?"

"The room, you mean? No, she just moved in. I don't know what she does."

"Where is the occupant now?"

"I think I saw her getting into a taxi like a couple of hours ago. She lives in Korea or something."

"Was she alone?"

"I don't know."

A couple of hours ago? In a taxi? Ray climbed down the fire escape and headed toward his truck. The fact that Jin Li left in a cab meant something, since reaching lower Manhattan from Harlem was a lot more easily done by subway. You would take a cab from Harlem to someplace more difficult to reach. Like the airports. Or Queens. Brooklyn? He had a bad feeling. I've got to be smarter, he told himself. He'd come to a dead end. But just because he hadn't found her didn't mean no one else had.