Colin Harrison: The Finder

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."

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 representation of reality. He's on duty, Carlos realized, can't drink.

"I can get those boys a much easier time of it," Blake said.

"If what?"

"If you tell me what's really going on."

"They didn't do anything. Why would they kill a couple of nice Mexican girls? It never makes sense."

"Actually, I'm starting to come around to that idea myself."

Carlos didn't like the cards he was holding. All cops lie, he reminded himself.

"Mr. Montoya," the detective continued, "I got a few old pals in the California immigration system. We can put those guys on ice in a detention center for six months easy and no judge is going to give us a problem. Or I could have them extradited back here and we could offer them a very interesting plea agreement in exchange for a complete description of the Mexican drug distribution channels in the great city of New York. If their information is good enough, helps snag some major players, we can even provide instant United States citizenship as further inducement to complete cooperation. Okay, Mr. Montoya? You don't have a lawyer and this conversation never happened, but you can see I'm not fucking around, right?"

Time to fold, he thought. This cop is hard core. "What I heard is that it was a guy who owns a sewage yard in Marine Park," he said.

"What?"

Carlos explained that his young "cousin" worked there and had seen some things that disturbed him. Sorry, there was no name. Anyway his "cousin" was back in Mexico now.

"Names, I need names," said Blake.

Carlos scratched his head. There was probably money in this somehow, but he didn't want it. You turn into a paid government snitch then go to prison and have everyone know that, then you end up with a sharpened toothbrush in your throat.

"The sewage guy's name is Victor. I spoke to him myself."

"You did?"

He sipped his cold beer. "Called him. Told him I knew. And he threatened to kill my family. I was thinking about what I was going to do to him for that, something he could never forget, you know what I mean?"

Blake touched his own nose with his forefinger. "Hey, Carlos, you gotta tell us these things, okay?"

"I had my utmost concerns, Officer."

Blake was getting up to leave. "I'm going to check this out right now, and if you're wrong, then-"

"Then God strike me down," Carlos interrupted, feeling relieved of his burden. "Because those beautiful girls are in heaven now, the special part, reserved just for Mexican angels."

What a rotten place to die. He'd let her open her eyes and so now she looked around at the small cement-walled room with no windows, perhaps fifteen feet on a side. Next to her was an old porcelain tub with some kind of strange piping going into it. But odder still was the thick brown mixture in the tub; that was what gave off that strong chemical odor, a bad smell that reminded her of the iron yard in Shanghai where she worked one summer in the office doing paperwork while boys just off the train from the countryside worked long hours stripping the paint from old sheet metal. A trickle of water dribbled from the tub hose and emptied into a floor drain. Above her was a solitary incandescent lightbulb, bright, too high to reach and turn off.

She was sitting on an old mattress, her legs still taped and roped at the ankles, as were her wrists again. A thick metal chain was looped tightly around her waist, secured with a lock, and the other end of the chain was locked to a steel ring set into the cement floor. There was enough slack in the chain that she could sit up on the mattress but not enough that she could stand.

This guy is going to rape and kill me, Jin Li thought. This is the kind of place that crazy men torture and slaughter women. There were plenty of these kinds of men in America, she knew, just as there were men like this in China.

She was hungry but, more important, suffered a terrible thirst, perhaps because of the chemical fumes. She needed more water, but the man had climbed up the stairs to go do something, leaving the ceiling hatch open. He was taller than Ray but older and not as fit. Yet she feared him, not just because of what he had already done to her but because he radiated a malevolent potency. He was studying her closely, she knew, like a safecracker trying to figure out the combination, and she had certainly not forgotten his hands on-and inside-her body while in the van. If he did that then, what would he eventually do in the safety and obscurity of this windowless cement room? She could see he was thinking about it. Sort of tasting the idea in his head, his mouth already filled with saliva.

Victor had left the hatch open but he knew she wasn't going anywhere. He needed to concentrate now and dialed the number for Tom Reilly's wife's cell phone.

It picked up. "Is this Mrs. Reilly?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"I'm looking for your husband."

"This is not his number."

"I understand that," he said evenly.

"Who is this?"

"Someone who needs to reach your husband."

"I don't speak to people who don't tell me their name." She hung up.

Victor waited a minute. Then he dialed using another clonephone.

"Hello?" came the cautious voice.

"Mrs. Reilly, give me your husband's number."

"He's in a business meeting tonight."

"I don't care."

"He cares." She hung up again.

He called back on the first phone.

"Listen," she said, "I'm calling the police."

"I wouldn't," said Vic. "That's not a good idea, under the circumstances."

There was a pause as if she was considering something.

"Who shall I say is calling?" she asked, her voice laced with sarcasm.

"Tell him the following words."

"Words?"

"Yes. Here they are. Write them down. The first word is 'CorpServe.' C-O-R-P-S-E-R-V-E. The second word is 'Mexicans.' As in Mexico, the country. Mexicans. The third word is 'dead.' Tell him those three words. He will be eager to speak with me then. I will call you back in three minutes." Vic hung up. This, he told himself, was going to be good.