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.
34
The profit margin on single-serving bagged potato chips was enormous. Most people had no idea. And that was the key to owning a gas station. You had to have the convenience store with it, because the absolute profit margins on pumped gasoline were very tight, perhaps four cents per gallon. The retail gas market was highly competitive and utterly transparent. People could see the price and literally look across the street to see who had the lower price. The margins on coffee, snacks, and other convenience store items-yes, he would sell porn, which was nothing compared to what kids were looking at on the Internet-were about five times higher. The Turk's place on Flatbush Avenue was a gold mine. Better than he expected. He had all the info now, thanks to the man who did the Turk's business taxes, a Pakistani guy who didn't mind selling out his fellow Islamic brother and making an extra thousand bucks just for photocopying a federal tax return. The accountant knew everything. The Turk was pumping about 125,000 gallons a month. His Dunkin' Donuts franchise, just started a few months earlier, was doing an average $50,000 per month, daily gross increasing every day. The convenience store on the other side of the property was averaging $23,000 per month, with additional income from the ATM, the AirVac machine out in the lot, the paid-in-place cigarette displays (the tobacco companies desperate to hook teenaged buyers), and the prepaid domestic and international phone cards. Two years into a ten-year lease. Blimpie sandwich shop additionally approved for the loca tion. And best of all, it was a great Lotto spot, people coming in and buying a hundred dollars' worth of tickets at a pop, fucking Mexicans and Haitians and Gambians and goddamned everyone, except the Hasidic Jews with their freaky wigged wives, but also including the poor old Italian women living off Social Security. The place was a money machine.
He knew all about the overall business now, too. The big oil companies were getting out of the retail gas station trade. Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil, all selling off thousands of stations. At the same time, the big- box stores were getting into the business. Wal-Mart and Costco. But not in Brooklyn, folks. Very tough to get new gasoline tanks going into the ground, thanks to the state's tough environmental laws. What you see is what you already got, and what he was going to get was the station at Flatbush and Avenue J.
And his new best friend, the Chinese chick, was going to help hima lot. He had not expected to find her at the old detective's house, but hey, he got lucky for once, and as soon as she'd appeared coming out the door he'd known he needed her. Not only had she possibly seen him on the night that he and Richie had attacked the girls in the car, but, more important, he had a feeling that whoever had sent the white limousine looking for her boyfriend had the kind of money that Victor could use. It was just a matter of making a couple of phone calls to the guy and arranging a pickup for the money. He wasn't going to hurt her. A few whacks upside the head were no big deal, didn't count. He did like the way she looked, though, had trouble keeping his hands off her, and the idea that she was his captive, and that he could do anything to her, excited him. She had a legitimately hot body, and he knew what it would feel like beneath him. What a groaning good feeling to slide the beef up into her, especially if she struggled. Hell, she could bite him, kick him, anything. Eventually she'd just have to lie back and take it. Total domination. The idea of this sent some wood down south to where the wild thing lived.
But keep your eyes on the prize here, Vic. Be a businessman, not a sex fiend. His plan, formulated as he'd driven back to the lot, was simple. He had a dozen old clonephones-very hard to get these days because the manufacturers had gotten wise-and he was going to use them to call whoever and get the money from them.
Now he opened the floor door and climbed back down. The porcelain bathtub stood nearly full with the brown liquid, whatever was left of Richie's bones still dissolving away there. The odor was strong. He wondered how badly it bothered Jin Li. Well, she had other things to worry about. He'd loosened her up, and it was time to push things along. Jin Li lay curled in a ball on the mattress, the tape over her eyes. He'd put another piece of tape over her mouth.
What a nasty little room this is, Vic thought.
'Here's a bucket,' he told her. 'And a roll of paper. I want you to keep yourself clean.'
He cut the tape holding her wrists together.
She pointed to the tape over her eyes, meaning that she wouldn't be able to see what she was doing.
This had to be some kind of trick. 'You want me to take off the tape on your eyes?'
She nodded.
'That means you can see me. That might not be good for you.'
She shrugged.
'You saw me before, however?'
She nodded.
