everyone will know and it'll be ruined.'
'Won't tell, promise.'
'You know how to meet this guy?'
'Sure. He comes by the building.'
'When next? I want to-' She heard the building intercom buzzing. 'Sorry, I got to go do this. Hold on.'
The roof terrace was reached by a private elevator within their apartment. She'd insisted they put it in so that she didn't have to use the regular elevator, which, after all, had an operator in it all the time, and she liked to go up to the roof in a bathing suit to exercise or sunbathe. The intercom buzzed again and she opened the door and was surprised to see five men in business suits, each carrying a briefcase. One of them was that little old man named Elliot she'd met years ago.
'Must be quite a party you guys have planned,' she noted as he politely shook her hand. 'But I guess girls aren't invited.'
Elliot smiled in distant amusement. 'Your husband is a remarkable man,' he said. 'And I cherish his friendship.'
'Bill is up on the roof with a certain Mr. Chen, who's here from China.'
Elliot looked her in the eye. 'Mrs. Martz, I can assure you we are very familiar with this Mr. Chen.'
She took them inside the apartment and down the hall to the other elevator, watched them get in, then remembered-the wheelchair gigolo! — and hurried back to the phone.
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.
32
He didn't suspect yet. Still thought he was enjoying a social visit. Still thought this was a polite mating ritual between wealthy men. Brandy and cigars. Bragging about China's economy, its foreign-currency reserves, its deep-water navy, its planned moon shot. Well, this wasn't a mating ritual, but one of them was certainly going to get fucked. And it's not me, thought Martz. They were sitting out in teak lawn chairs, the Manhattan skyline blazing around them. Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, the bridges to Brooklyn, the lighted windows far and near both intimate and grand. Even Chen, with his pumped-up self-importance, seemed impressed.
'How much does this kind of building cost?' Chen asked.
An amazingly ill-mannered question. 'The whole building?' said Martz evenly. 'Tough to answer.'
'I am having-I have apartment in Time Warner Center.'
'Yes, I hear those are very good.' Martz made sure he didn't appear to be mocking Chen. 'The best in the city.'
The elevator doors opened. The men filed out, one by one, carrying their briefcases.
Chen, surprised, looked back at Martz. 'Who are these people?'
