'Jin Li.'
'Chinese? Real Chinese?'
'Yes.' Ray knew this fact would stick in Blake's brain.
'Off the boat, I mean?'
'So to speak.' He wanted to change the topic. 'So how do you go after the guys who did it?'
'Tough-nobody saw nothing, so far, anyway. Right before dawn. We'll work the drugs, see what we get. Trucks can't go on the Belt Parkway legally, but if it did, we got cameras. Sometimes they work, sometimes they didn't get serviced. Course, if you know the side roads you don't have to take the Belt.' Blake barked a laugh. 'Your father'd be tearing up the parking lot drains, looking for whatever he could find.'
'You do that?'
'Not yet. We can't go into the drains.'
'Why?'
'Federal wetlands. That's a tide zone. Environmental regulations. We screw up the drains, then we can pollute the ocean, something like that.'
Blake was fastidious, Ray remembered, but also methodical. He collected New York subway memorabilia: hats, badges, uniforms, tokens, subway signs, regulation booklets, all displayed in frames or binders. He had a copy of almost every New York City subway map ever published, quite an accomplishment considering the subway had opened in 1904, its maps updated every year or two as the system grew and the original private subway companies consolidated into the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He'd seen Blake's collection: each document was kept in an archival Mylar folder and thoroughly cataloged. A weird pursuit for a middle-aged man. Maybe not so strange for a detective who lived by himself. 'That's the reason, the ocean?'
'Nah, the real reason is that if we tear up that pipe we got a big traffic problem in that parking lot this summer. People can't park, you got flooding, a mess. Also, no cop is ever going to crawl up a drainpipe stuffed with sewage, especially since it will all wash out into the gulley there anyway.' Blake gave a long sigh. 'How's your dad doing?'
'Not too good, Pete.'
'You want me to come around, say hello?'
'He might like that.'
'Honest with you, he told me he was dying and that he was saying good-bye to me. This was like three weeks ago.'
'Drive by in a couple of days. Mornings are better.'
'You got it.'
After the call, Ray stared at an information sheet that came with the Dilaudid going into his father's arm. He'd grabbed it when the nurse wasn't looking. Effects of Dilaudid to the general and central nervous systems, said the flyer, include 'sedation, drowsiness, mental clouding, lethargy, impairment of mental and physical performance, anxiety, fear, dizziness, psychic dependence, mood changes (nervousness, apprehension, depression, floating feelings, dreams), light-headedness, weakness, headache, agitation, tremor, uncoordinated muscle movements, muscle rigidity, paresthesia, muscle tremor, blurred vision, nystagmus, diplopia and miosis, transient hallucinations and disorientation, visual disturbances, insomnia, sweating, flushing, dysphoria, euphoria and increased intracranial pressure.'
I'm going to lose him to drugs faster than the cancer, Ray thought, heading toward his father's bed. But of course Dilaudid was amazing stuff; he'd received it himself, to help with the pain of his stomach burn and the skin grafts. The drug made you feel warm and heavy, removed all hunger and pain. Removed sexual desire, too. Eight times more potent than real morphine. People called it 'drugstore heroin.' He wouldn't mind sampling a tiny bit again sometime, either.
In the living room, his father lay in his hospital bed, now a small body under the sheet, his eyes shut, chest rising and falling faster than was natural. It was his heart working hard at the dying. Ray nodded at the morning shift nurse, a young woman named Wendy, and she left the room.
'Hey, Dad,' he said.
His father opened his eyes, blinked, shifted his gaze toward Ray.
'I'm sorry you suffered so much last night.'
His father shrugged. 'Not suffering now,' he whispered. 'Fine now.'
'Were you asleep?'
No, his father mouthed, eyes falling closed.
'Thinking?'
Yes.
His father opened his eyes, picked at the morphine tube to be sure it was not pinched or bent. There flickered in his expression a serious intent, a flash of concentration that told Ray that his father was still mostly here.
'Thinking about what?' Ray asked.
'Worlds.'
'Worlds?'
'Yes,' his father whispered, 'worlds within worlds.'
Ray glanced at the automatic Dilaudid pump. He had a few minutes before it sent another bolus into his father's bloodstream, knocking him out.
'Dad, the reason that everything happened last night was I have a girlfriend who has disappeared. You haven't met her. She's Chinese. We broke up a few weeks ago. Her brother wants me to find her and what he did was his way of telling me how serious he was.'
His father nodded calmly. 'Threatening.'
'Yeah.'
'Studied you, I think.'
'I think so.'
'Figured out your vulnerability. Me.'
Ray exhaled by way of agreement.
'I was hoping you might meet that nice lady who lives next door there.' He cracked a slow-motion smile. 'She needs a husband, fast.'
'I did meet her.'
'Oh, then-'
'I was talking to her when they grabbed me.'
His father's mouth pulled at one side. 'You had a long talk.'
Ray ignored this. 'These guys weren't messing around.'
'You could call the cops,' his father noted.
'Should I?'
A long pause. His father shook his head weakly. Licked his lips.
Ray handed him a cup of juice. 'But they could maybe protect you.'
'Not me I'm worried about.'
'I think I should move you, Dad. Somewhere safe.'
'Hospital?'
'I was thinking, yeah.'
He sipped his juice. 'People die in hospitals, son.'
'Dad-'
'I want to die in my own house, in this room. And I don't really care how I die, Ray, or when, so long as it's in this room, in this bed.'
This was a speech he'd heard before. 'Yes, but these guys will come back, Dad.'
'Let them. What's the worst they can do? Murder me? They'd be doing me a personal favor.'
Ray hung his head. Six weeks earlier, when he could still walk a bit in the house, Ray's father had told him he wanted to end it sooner rather than later. Did Ray mind if he shot himself? 'Why put you through what's coming?' his father had asked then. 'Why put me through it?'
'Why? I want every minute with you, Dad.'
His father had nodded silently.
