'I'll think about it.'
She shook her head. Combative.
He pressed the bucket and toilet paper into her hands. 'I think you'll be able to figure out what to do.'
She was silent. He leaned forward and ran his hand over her breasts. She jumped back in surprise and fear.
'You worried that I'll rape you?'
She didn't move. Not a muscle. But her breathing quickened. 'Answer the question. Are you afraid I'll rape you?'
She nodded.
'Good. You should be afraid. It's a distinct possibility. I'm actively fantasizing about it. On the other hand, I need you to be mentally composed for my purposes.'
She made no answer.
'Now, let's call your brother. You realize, of course, that no one, and I mean no one, has any idea that you are here or that this room exists.' He watched her. He could see that behind the tape her forehead had lifted. She was crying-but making no sound.
He took the tape off her mouth in one rip. 'Tell me the number.'
She did.
'That's a weird freaky number.'
'It's a global number,' she said, coughing.
He dialed on the clonephone. A greeting came on, in Chinese. He didn't leave a message.
'He doesn't speak English,' she said. 'You need to speak in Chinese.'
The language difference. You didn't think of that, Vic. You assume everyone speaks English. He could kick himself-or worse. But he was in it now. No aborting the mission. He redialed and handed the Chinese girl the phone.
'Tell him you are kidnapped and he needs to get his hands on five hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow morning at ten a.m.'
When the message came on, Jin Li quickly said in Chinese, 'Chen, I need help. I am a prisoner in some kind of sewage place in Brooklyn. The man's name is an English word for winner. I am in the place where the shit trucks are parked, I think. This guy wants a lot of money.'
He snatched the phone away. 'That's plenty enough.' He tried calling back. No answer. 'We're going to have to wait. Meanwhile we will explore other promising opportunities.'
The Chinese girl fell back on the old mattress, dragged down there originally for sexual purposes. He and Violet, when they were seventeen, eighteen.
Yes, she was going to be very useful. He had by now emptied out all of the contents of the girl's purse and found, among other things, her business card. She was the vice president and manager, American operations, of some outfit called CorpServe. A big deal. Whoa! But more interesting was the call sheet that he'd found in her purse. It was on the stationery of a company called Good Pharma, which had headquarters in midtown Manhattan, close to where he'd waited for the car driven by the Mexican girls. Dated from the day before, the sheet had been generated by a specialized spreadsheet desktop application; at the top of the page was the recipient of the calls, one Thomas Reilly, and for him the secretary had typed in the name and a message; below it appeared the person's title, phone number, and identifying detail, such as the names of wife and children, and record of the last call made to or received from that person:
NAME: James Tonelli. Apologized for not calling sooner. Knows you wanted to speak to him urgently.
NAME: Ann Reilly [clearly the wife of Thomas Reilly]. Calling from her cell. Bill Martz called for you at home, please deal with him, she says.
NAME: William Martz, chairman and CEO of Martz New Century Partners Fund. Five calls. Tom, he is insistent you call him. He was making the call himself, not secretary. Frankly, he sounded sort of abusive.
NAME: Christopher Paley, in-house counsel, Good Pharma Corp. We have received an inquiry from the NYPD regarding the death of the two Mexican workers in our CorpServe cleaning service.
NAME: Ann Reilly. Martz again.
He was putting something together. The two Mexican girls had been employed by CorpServe, where this Jin Li also worked, as a boss of some sort. The two Mexican girls had serviced the Good Pharma offices. Jin Li had been in the Good Pharma offices yesterday. The Good Pharma big shot named Tom Reilly had been called by Tonelli and a guy named Martz. Maybe that was related, maybe not. All these folks, Vic knew, had access to a lot of money, and some of it was going to become his. He looked at Jin Li cowering. I'm going to turn this hot Chinese girl into a gas station on Flatbush Avenue, he told himself. He saw her watching him.
'Open your mouth,' he said.
'Why?' she asked fearfully.
'Just open your mouth.'
She did.
'Wider, all the way.'
She did.
'I'm taking the tape off.' He reached forward and pulled it away in one quick motion. 'There. Keep your eyes shut!'
'I am,' she breathed fearfully.
'Stick your tongue out.'
She didn't.
'Do it!' he yelled.
The sound of his voice scared her, making her blink. But she did as he had commanded, eyes closed, mouth wide open, tongue out.
'Move your tongue, like you're licking something.'
She did, tears appearing from beneath her eyelashes.
'Good,' Vic said. 'Very, very good.'
35
A man likes a drink at the end of the day. Especially me, thought Carlos Montoya as he passed through the strings of red beads in the entrance of his Queens bar. How many loads of laundry can you supervise before going mad? If the number was knowable, he'd nonetheless passed it a long time ago. He sat down at his regular table. I'm tired and fat, he thought, what else is new? The place seemed quiet, muted. Someone had turned off the music. Where were all the regulars, the Mexicans and Guatemalans and Ecuadorians who came here to spend a few of their hard-earned bucks and drink beer?
His waiter, Manny, eased up to him with a glass and bottle. 'Hey, boss.'
'The place is dead.'
Manny jerked his head down the bar where an older man, lanky and quiet, sat. 'Boss, you got a new friend.'
The other man slid over a few chairs. He handed Carlos a card.
'Mr. Montoya,' he said, 'my name is Detective Peter Blake.'
'Good evening, Officer.'
'Let's get to it. I know you've had a hard day pretending to be an upstanding citizen. California Highway Patrol picked up two of your boys a few hours ago, snagged them on the bulletin we put out when they left the city so fast.'
'They didn't do nothing.'
'Then why did they run after I questioned them?'
'I told them to go have a great adventure. They're good clean young men, need to see this great country of ours.'
Blake chewed on a swizzle straw, apparently reminding himself not to argue with such an erroneous
