The Finder

by Colin Harrison

  But if now he had a problem, he also had an opportunity. He took the service elevator to the nineteenth floor, had a quick word with the Mexican housekeeper counting out fancy little bottles of shampoo and bars of perfumed soap that the hotel guests threw by the handfuls into their suitcases, and then, using his hotel custodian's passkey, entered the room of a British Airways executive in the city on business at JFK International Airport. Carlos touched nothing, not the minibar, the nice clothes on the hangers, the fat wad of pounds and dollars on the dresser. You touch nothing, nothing touches you. Instead he picked up the phone to make a call, the cost of which would be buried in the airline executive's charges and perhaps look like a call to the airport. The hotel had almost three thousand phones, which were routed through four hundred lines by a computer on a next-free-line basis. Then the call was tagged with a dummy phone number so that people receiving the call who had caller ID could not get a number inside the hotel that they could call directly. If you called the dummy number you got a not-in-service message. (Very smart, these Indian phone guys, Mexicans should learn from them.) Carlos had thought this out long ago. The log matching the room phone to the trunk line was maintained in Bangalore by the hotel information services vendor. It would require a subpoena and weeks of digging to produce the actual room where any given call had been made from. Meanwhile, the guest who had used the room was long gone and would have to be located in order to be asked about the call that he didn't make. Meanwhile, too, the room would have been vacuumed and cleaned thoroughly fifty times. No fingerprints, mami! The room maids were instructed to wipe each phone once a day to control for germs that might cause an outbreak of sickness in the hotel-one of hotel management's nightmares.

  He dialed the Brooklyn sewage service.

  "I would like to speak with your owner, please." No trace of an accent, when he wanted. He'd learned by watching Lou Dobbs on CNN.

  A minute passed.

  "Yeah, who is this?"

  "I am someone who knows you," said Carlos.

  "Who?"

  "I am very familiar with your business," he said.

  "Oh?"

  "I am very familiar with what you put in your overflow tank. What you put in and when you took it out."

  "What d'you want?"

  "I think you might know."

  "Fuck off." The phone went dead.

  Carlos called back. The man answered.

  "Why do you hang up on a polite caller?" Carlos asked in his best CNN voice.

  "You call back, I'm going to hunt you down and kill you," snarled the voice. "Then I'm going to rape your wife and children."

  Now it was Carlos who hung up. I think I have a little project now, he told himself, savoring a nasty happiness in himself. Yes, I have a little game with a white man who kills Mexican girls.

  14

  Okay, so I panicked, thought Jin Li as she waited for the ferry. I never should have hidden in that old building downtown. She wore big sunglasses and a Yankees cap pulled low, on the assumption there were security cameras in the terminal. Well, she had been scared. Instead, she should have first done exactly what she had just accomplished the previous night, which was to rent a room and private bath in Harlem from an old black woman named Norma Powell who owned a five-story brownstone carved up into a boardinghouse. Jin Li's room was just large enough for a bed, a dresser, and a wall mirror. The paint was no good and a mold stain that looked like Australia stretched across the ceiling. But the room had a good door made of real wood and a brass dead-bolt lock. But even better was the fact that Norma Powell's middle-aged son sat in the front room all day watching television. He appeared to live in the front room, in fact. He weighed perhaps four hundred pounds, more than half of that fat, but he projected a kind of elephantine protectiveness toward his mother that Jin Li found reassuring. Anyone breaking into the house would have to get by or over him. On the other hand Jin Li didn't really like Harlem, which was also her way of admitting that she felt uncomfortable in a black neighborhood, but that was its advantage. Harlem wasn't where you'd first look for a Chinese woman.

  Jin Li had said that she was a Korean exchange student at Columbia University, an explanation that had seemed unnecessary to the widow Powell as soon as she counted Jin Li's cash: $300, per week, payable every Monday morning, put your envelope in my mailbox, honey, and no gentlemen callers after seven p.m. or it's out you go. But Norma Powell did want the phone number of the previous landlord, so she could follow up and confirm that Jin Li had been a good tenant. Fine, whatever, as she'd heard the American teenagers say; feeling only somewhat sly, she gave Norma her own phone number in her office in CorpServe's Red Hook building. If she really bothered to call, Norma would find this number useless, since it had no greeting on it and after three rings automatically kicked over to a fax machine-set that way so Chen could send her written information that avoided the Internet. As for her name, Jin Li had actually given her real one, since it matched her forms of identification, but said her hometown was Seoul, South Korea, where her father worked in a Kia Motors factory. It was both amusing and a little disgusting that she was pretending to be a Korean, especially since her name was in no way Korean sounding, but Norma Powell didn't know that. Anyway, there was an American phrase for this she liked: Ya do what ya gotta do. That's me, Jin Li thought, I'm doing what I gotta do. She had unpacked her meager belongings from her suitcase and taken a very nice long hot bath in her bathroom, attended by three cockroaches. They didn't bother her; in Shanghai their building had been infested with Asian water bugs, which were much worse. She'd scrubbed her face and later done her nails and altogether felt a lot more determined about everything. Maybe the police had caught the men who killed the Mexican girls. Or maybe she would call them up anonymously, not using her cell phone, and describe what had happened.

  Maybe, but not yet, because she had a plan. After all, she had been trained to think, trained well at Harbin Institute of Technology, by professors in logic, systems analysis, data management, and probability analysis. CorpServe had many crews leaving jobs the night she was attacked, yet the crew singled out was the one carrying Jin Li. Why? The only plausible reason was that she was the person who knew exactly which offices were being plundered for information. The response by the assailants, or rather by whoever had hired them, was crude, indeed, stupid. There were many other approaches they could have taken. They could have changed the access to their facilities. They could have fired CorpServe. They could have called law enforcement or a private investigation agency. They could have spoken to her in person, called, written, or threatened legal action. Such actions would be morally and legally defensible, would have created a useful paper trail, and had the benefit of remaining controllable from an executive position. When two guys dump shit into a car in the dark in Brooklyn, she reflected, a corporate executive is not there to supervise. The actions may not be what he ordered, what he would accept, or what he is subsequently informed about. He has almost no control. Executives, she knew from reading thousands of pages of their correspondence, craved control, because they believed it was the essence of power. The attack in Brooklyn, from a corporate perspective, was insane, almost suicidal. It created negative information and initiated events outside the corporation.

  It was the action of someone who had panicked.

  Who? With this question she had a distinct advantage. Whoever had ordered the attack could not know that she alone knew which eight companies CorpServe was actively probing. In three of them, the stock price had recently gone up, creating great wealth for her brother and his associates. In another four, the stock price had drifted sideways for several months, awaiting developments. The last one was a relatively small pharmaceutical company, Good Pharma, which had suffered significant erosion in its stock price, something like 30 percent, in the last few weeks. She'd been feeding Chen information about the bad news regarding its synthetic skin product, which was due to receive FDA approval. The expected market for the product was enormous;
it wasn't just burn victims who needed new skin-at this her thoughts traveled to Ray's stomach, the grafts and scars there that formed some kind of mysterious, erotic calligraphy on him, an accidental tattoo she had come to love-not just burn victims, no, but old people with wrinkled, sun-damaged skin that was thin now and tore like tissue paper. The product wasn't for vanity but for health. As the baby boomers aged, the nursing homes and life-care facilities would be crowded with people confined to their beds, where bedsores were a major issue. Bedsores were simply spots of necrotic tissue-skin that had died from being under continuous pressure, which cut off the circulation of blood. Existing techniques for avoiding bedsores, frequent turning and shifting of the bedridden, couldn't prevent them. The synthetic skin product, which did not yet have a trademarked name, was meant to be grafted atop the fragile, thin skin of the bedridden, providing an extra layer of protection, and causing a minimal immune system rejection response. But the product was not working very well in clinical trials, a fact that Jin Li had reported to Chen.

  Her brother, ambitious pig-man that he was, did not really understand America, she realized. Now that Chen was here, Jin Li knew, he would probably blunder about, intimidating the CorpServe employees, making clumsy inquiries. He'd be a little too excited to be in America, would run around feeling important. And spend a lot of money, too. Just because you were big in Shanghai didn't mean anybody even held the door for you in New York. The people of New York considered themselves to be living in the center of the known universe. They generally loved the other great cities of the world, especially London, Paris, Berlin, and so on, but they were quite opinionated about New York. You had to prove yourself in New York, she'd seen, prove you belonged, were good enough. Smart people came to New York from all over America to compete with one another for the city's riches and pleasures. This was how the Americans did it. Chen might not understand. Much as she hated the responsibility, he probably needed her help.

  Now the gate opened and she was allowed to walk onto the ferry to Staten Island. She'd never taken it but it seemed familiar to her, one of the old ones with wooden benches-a lot like the creaking, romantic ferries that churned back and forth between Kowloon and the island of Hong Kong. She'd been there with her father, who'd gone to look for financing for one of his projects.

  The time was nearly five p.m., a late spring evening when the air was fresh and cool, the season that the city renewed itself, and she watched the early commuters find their favorite spots and open their newspapers or handheld devices. The ride was certainly long enough for her to accomplish her plan and take the return ferry to Manhattan.

  The announcement came over the speaker and the ferry moved. From her seat at the open stern she could see the skyline of Lower Manhattan shrink before her. Where had the World Trade Center been? She didn't really know, could sort of picture the two boxy towers. That seemed so long ago now. She'd watched the first reports on the television monitors in the university's dining hall, along with a knot of other students, some of whom cheered at the sight of Americans being incinerated.

  When the ferry reached halfway across the harbor, she took out her cell phone, planning to activate it for the first time since the morning before the attack. Should she really do this? Her hands trembled. She knew that as soon as the phone went on, its signal pinged the nearest cell phone towers and that the police could at any later time identify its location, which was why she wanted to check the phone while moving across New York Harbor. Should she do it? Maybe not. But she felt so cut off now, so alone. She pushed the On button, heard the trill as the phone powered up. She had three messages. The first was from her brother, who said, "Jin Li, you must call me so I know you are fine. Mother and father have asked about you and I said you were good but they know I am not telling them something. Also, of course, we must keep the business going and I want to talk about that. I am paying your boyfriend, Mr. Ray, to help find you. All he cares about is money, he asked for so much. I had to pay double. I am at the new apartment in the Time Warner building. Call me, Jin Li."

  Before she had a chance to figure out how many lies her brother had told her, the next message came on: "Jin Li, this is Ray, the guy who used to be your boyfriend. I'm not calling to talk about what happened between us. I'm just worried about you, okay? Your brother is in New York and found me. He's got a bunch of guys with him and he's looking for you…" She listened to the rest of the message, something about calling him at his father's home. She turned off the cell phone, unnerved by the sound of his voice, almost crying now. I miss you, Ray, she thought, I want to be with you. Why had she ever listened to her brother and let herself be told to break it off with Ray? On the night of the attack she probably would have been with Ray instead of riding in the little car with the two girls. Ray took her places, they ate all over the city, they walked in Central Park. He never probed too much, asked her why she worked so hard for CorpServe. He didn't want to possess her, she realized. She liked that. He never asked for any promises from her, either. They always had sex in her apartment. A wave of sad desire ran through her. She liked it when he turned her over onto her stomach, lifted up her hips, and began that way, his big hands holding her, sometimes running his finger up and down her backbone. One night as he did this, she'd said, do you count the strokes in and out? And he laughed and said, why do you ask? Well, it goes on for a long time, she said playfully. Yes, he answered, sometimes I do count the strokes, just to see. I knew it, she said. How many tonight? You tell me, he said, beginning again. No, you tell me, she'd answered, beginning to breathe hard. Fine, he'd said, hundreds, that's all I'm saying. She dropped her head down on the sheet, felt dizzy and a bit crazy, too, like she didn't exactly know who she was. Not exactly a bad feeling. Maybe she whispered go slow. Maybe she didn't.

  Jin Li sighed and squirmed a little on the bench. What had she been thinking? Now she was living in a room in Harlem, afraid to go back to her apartment or work. There was one more message on her phone, she remembered, and maybe it was from Ray.

  A strong male voice, not Ray's: "Hello, this is Detective Peter Blake of the Brooklyn Homicide Division of the New York City Police Department. I am looking for Jin Li, and I believe this is her phone number. Jin Li, you are a person of interest in a case involving the homicide of two Mexican women. We know that you were the supervisor of these women and may have seen them shortly before their deaths. I would personally appreciate a call from you at your earliest convenience at the following number." Which he gave, then added, "It would be in your best interests if you found me before I found you. Thank you very much."

  The police? She snapped the phone shut in terror, looked around suddenly as if they could see her. How did the police get her name? Chen would not contact them; he wanted to find her first. But he and Ray had spoken. Each had referred to the other. Chen must have told Ray about what happened in the car.

  And Ray-Ray had told the NYPD. She couldn't believe this but it was true. He'd betrayed her.

  15

  He remembered her foot, her ankle, her thigh. He set the little yellow sneaker on his truck's dashboard, a shiver of misery going through him. Oh, God, I miss Jin Li, Ray thought, every part of her. He sat parked in the lot of a check-cashing operation across the street from Victorious Sewerage, which was no more than an odd-shaped muddy lot surrounded by a twenty-foot fence topped with concertina wire, all this protecting a battered construction trailer at the rear and ten enormous, virtually identical sewage trucks parked in a haphazard line, including the one that Richie had driven into the lot twenty minutes earlier. A hulking cement-block building lay behind the trailer but it wasn't clear whether this was part of the operation. The day was done, past six p.m., and time was passing, he knew, clocks ticking everywhere, one on Jin Li, another on his father, a third on how long it would take Richie to get deeply paranoid.

  A small Mexican man-a boy, really-with a red hose was standing atop one of the trucks, running steaming water into a valve. Murky water ran out of
another valve at the bottom. Richie emerged from the trailer, walked over to a pickup truck, a certain spring in his step, like he was a man with a plan, and rolled out of the lot — with Ray following him. At the light, Ray pulled up close enough to jot down the license plate number. Then he saw Richie looking up at his rearview mirror. Ray pulled down his windshield shade. The idea was to follow Richie home.

  The light was still red but now Richie sped across the intersection, barely missing three teenage girls on foot, each talking on a cell phone. Richie turned at the next corner. Ray was disgusted with himself. When the light changed he sped to the corner, turned, looked for Richie's truck-it was gone.

  His father opened his eyes dully. "The report, please."

  Ray ran through it.

  "I thought you knew to sit back on a tail."

  "At least I got the plate."

  "Give me the phone. No, first get me some illegal coffee."

  A few minutes later, his father had on his old half-frame glasses that he hadn't worn in a month and pointed a bony finger at a phone number for Ray to dial. He held the phone near his head and closed his eyes, summoning a voice he hadn't used in a long time. "Ellen, this is Ray Grant… no, no I'm doing great, thanks." The coffee sharpened him up fast, thought Ray. "A little chemo and that's it, but thanks for asking. Listen, this is the thing, I'm on a private job here and could use a little… we got a plate number and need the registration address. Yeah, yeah, sure." He read her the plate number then waited. "I've known her thirty years," he said to Ray. He returned to the phone. "Number two Sixth Street? South Jamesport? All the way out there?" He nodded. "Great. Hi to everyone."