'Let's go outside,' Charlie suggested after he had signed the check. He checked his watch. Seven p.m., which meant Ellie was just waking up in Julia's apartment.
They took the elevator down without speaking, then passed through the revolving door. Charlie turned to Lo. 'A taxi?'
'No, no,' answered Lo. 'You see.'
They walked a block away from the hotel through the carbon-choked dusk. Motorcycle rickshaws puttered by. Lo looked at Charlie and he nodded. Lo signaled one of the rickshaws and said something to the driver. Then they got in, Charlie first, his greater weight sinking the three-wheeled vehicle on his side. The rickshaw clattered forward through the bicycles and other traffic; exhaust fumes filled Charlie's lungs. But, amazingly enough, sitting in the noisy, cramped space didn't hurt his back. Mr. Lo pulled the curtain shut, and so it was just the two of them.
'Okay,' Charlie said. 'How much?'
Lo pulled out a calculator. No one could overhear, no one could see. Nothing was on paper. Lo punched in the number 70,000.
'Dollars?' Charlie said.
Lo nodded.
Charlie took the calculator and punched in 30,000.
'No, no, no.' Lo waved his hand. 'Much appreciation, okay?' He punched in 55,000.
Charlie took the calculator, stared at the sum. Against what was being leveraged here-Teknetrix's market capitalization, Ming's $52 million, Ellie's mental condition-the amount was infinitesimal. Gumball money. The rickshaw lurched back and forth. Lo's face watched impassively. 'I want the job done fast,' Charlie said finally. 'You understand?'
'Yes, number one.'
'No fuck-ups.'
'Yes.'
'You understand the word fuck-ups?'
'Fuck-ups. Fuck- ups.' Lo smiled. 'Very bad.'
'Yes. You are a strong man,' Charlie said.
'I think you are very strong. Too much strong for me.'
'No, no.' Give him face, Charlie thought. This is what he wants from the gweilo, along with the cash. 'I pay you thirty thousand now and twenty-five thousand when the job is done. Six weeks.'
'No, no.'
'What, then?'
Lo punched in 40,000. 'Now. So we can do very number-one job.' Then he cleared the calculator and punched in 15,000. 'Six weeks. U.S. dollar.'
Charlie looked at Lo's face. Old enough to have been a soldier thirty years prior. The Chinese military had helped North Vietnam with almost everything. Much scaffolding required, of course, ha-ha. He held out his hand. 'Forty thousand U.S. now. Fifteen thousand in six weeks, when the job is done.'
Lo shook his hand vigorously. 'Yes, good.'
Twenty envelopes rested in his coat pockets, each with five thousand dollars inside. The manager at the Peace Hotel had nodded at Charlie's request for cash, and merely added the funds and a small fee to the hotel bill. Charlie pulled out eight of the envelopes and handed them to Lo. In the dimness, Lo glanced into each, counting the hundred-dollar bills with a brisk flicking of his fingers that suggested he'd handled quite a bit of yuan in his time. No one on the street could see, and the driver was busy in the noise of the traffic. 'Good,' exclaimed Lo. 'Six weeks. Job finished very good.'
Charlie nodded.
Lo slipped the envelopes into his coat and hollered at the driver, who pulled over. Without a backward look at Charlie, Lo leapt into the street, disappearing quickly into the crowds. A Chinese among Chinese. Impossible to follow, gone. The motorcycle rickshaw jolted forward into the chaos of traffic, and already it was so dark that the men squatting in the street repairing bicycle tires next to the filth that ran in the gutters did not see the American businessman jangling through Shanghai's gloom. Okay, Ellie, he thought, I'm coming home, fast as I can.
Pioneer Hotel 341 Broome Street, Chinatown, Manhattan September 27, 1999
She'd told them her name was Bettina Bedford, but they didn't care. They took her cash through the bulletproof Plexiglas and slid a key back to her. For five days she'd waited for a knock on the door, for Tony Verducci's people to find her. Meanwhile, she'd studied her new cell.
Every surface of the room was painted battleship gray. No windows, the smell of insecticide. The kind of place where the next place might be nowhere. Outside her door, ruined old men glided past, alert to her presence, uncertain of their opportunity. One poured a handful of pennies from palm to palm, another whistled a broken piece of a forgotten tune. Lingering footfalls and inappropriate smiles. Don't talk to anyone, she reminded herself. Just lay low. She did some sit-ups out of boredom, she read the framed fire escape instructions on the back of the door. She looked for a broom in the closet, found only an empty red bucket with fire stenciled on the side. She made her bed, she listened to a man weeping in the next room, she flossed her teeth, she got her period, a relief to her, then washed her underwear in the tiny sink with a bar of soap. Killing time so they can't kill me. Mostly she slept, and the more she slept, the more tired she felt. Once or twice she ventured outside long enough to buy a bag of food and the newspaper. She tried being interested in the editorials but felt too anxious to concentrate. I am nobody, she told herself, I am alone.
After finding the photo of Rick, she'd hurriedly packed a bag, including the black dress, peeked out the front of her apartment building, seen no one, which meant nothing, since she'd seen no one before. At three in the morning it was hard to see who was sitting in the cars along the block. She'd needed to chance it and she had, running along the street until she came to the avenue and hailed a cab. She'd had the driver drop her at the Jim- Jack, where she knocked frantically on the door until the night porter heard her. She bribed him with twenty dollars to let her spend the rest of the night in the storeroom, where she fashioned a bed out of four fifty-pound bags of sugar and lay down, unable to sleep. The next morning, she quit, collected her back pay in cash, $93.56, and took another cab downtown.
She had enough money to live three more days. Her other valuables included Rahul the Freak's cell phone, which she hadn't yet used, and Charlie's business card. What's my goal here? she asked herself. To reach my mother. But she didn't know when her mother would be home. She needed money, soon. How safe was it to get another waitressing job? She hadn't used her real name since leaving prison, and still Tony Verducci's people had found her. She didn't even have enough money for a one-way bus ticket to Florida. Plus, she didn't know if her mother was home. And anyway, her mother's bungalow would now be the first place Tony's guys would look for her. They could be there already.
I'm going crazy here, she thought. I can't just sit around until I have no money. She found the photo of Rick in her bag and examined it again. He looked terrible, but there may have been a flicker of defiance in his face. That was the thing about Rick-he never gave up, never quit, even when he should have. But maybe they'd killed him. Maybe they thought he knew about the boxes she'd taken off the truck on the last job. But of course he didn't. She'd never told him, she'd never told anyone. She looked at the photo one more time and shuddered at the wetness of the wound, at what it would feel like. If they did that to Rick, what would they do to her?
I need Charlie. She just said it. She didn't want to need him, or anybody, but there it was. He was kind and decent and she'd slept with him once and maybe that counted for something. He'd said he wanted to see her when he returned. If she could hold out until then, perhaps she could explain the situation, or part of it, enough so that he would feel for her. She'd ask him for a little money-a loan-so that she could get out of town for a while. He had more than enough. If it was a matter of sleeping with him again, she'd do it and not think anything of it. I like him, she told herself, I really do.
In the meantime, perhaps she could sell Rahul the Freak's cell phone. She'd thrown it in her bag, forgotten about it. She clicked it open, pushed a button. It worked, it was on. Maybe Rahul had not noticed that the phone was missing. Or he really had gone to Germany. Or didn't care that she had it. Or was hoping she'd call him. It was
