Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"Sure."

"Don't write any of it down, goddammit. Nothing, not a report or a fax or anything."

"I'll have my handwritten notes."

"Just read them to me and throw them away."

"When?"

He looked at his watch. His headache was going away. He had the meeting with Lo. "Call me at the end of the day. My day. Five p.m."

"That's 5:00 a.m. here."

"Yes," said Charlie in a cold voice.

"Right," answered Towers. "I'll call. I'm terribly sorry about the mix-up."

The tea was working now, helping him think. He wanted to know what Towers's report said, but even more than that, he wanted to get it out of the apartment before Julia arrived. Ellie sounded as if she'd been pretty addled by the time she got to the doctor's, but Julia wouldn't forget a comma. He called the front desk of their building. "This is Charlie Ravich."

"Evening, Mr. Ravich," came the voice of Kelly, the doorman.

Not where I am, he thought. "Listen, is Lionel on duty yet?"

"Just got on."

"Can you switch me to the phone in the elevator? I need to ask him a small favor."

"Very good, Mr. Ravich."

The phone clicked. "Lionel here."

"Lionel, this is Charlie Ravich."

"Mr. Ravich, sir."

"I need a favor, Lionel."

"Sure thing."

"Take the elevator to my floor, please."

"Right away."

Charlie could hear the far hum of the elevator. The elevator stopped and the static with it. "Sir?"

"Lionel, you see the umbrella stand in the corner?"

"Yes."

"There's a key under it."

"You want me to leave my elevator?"

"Yes. Just for a moment."

"I never leave my elevator, sir."

"I realize that. It's a big favor."

"Highly unusual."

"Life is unusual, Lionel. That's why we never know what's going to happen next."

"Yes, sir. But I try to avoid unusual things."

"You need to do this now."

"Mrs. Rosen usually comes down this time."

"Just park the elevator and get the key."

The line was silent. "Okay."

"Here's what I want you to do. Open the front door and look in the dining room and the kitchen for an envelope or a business letter marked with the name of a law firm."

"What do you want me to do with it?"

"Find it first."

Charlie heard the creak of the elevator cage. Then, perhaps, the sound of a door being opened. Then nothing. He was listening to silence being bounced through a satellite. Lionel was probably tiptoeing through the apartment, ogling all of the antique furniture Ellie had bought over the years.

"I'm back."

"Yes?"

"I didn't find anything."

"Please look again. Go into any room. It's probably a few pages and an envelope. Probably opened, too. It was messengered."

"I'll go back."

He heard Lionel walk away.

"I have it," he said. "A letter from a Mr. Towers. Right inside the door."

"Opened?"

"Yes."

"Please read it to me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I want you to read it to me and then-"

"Excuse me. Yes?" Lionel was speaking into the elevator's intercom. "She's waiting? I'll get her. I have to go now, Mr. Ravich."

"No, hang on, Lionel, I don't want to break the connection. Leave the phone off the hook."

"It'll be a few minutes."

"I don't care. I'm calling from China. I don't want to risk losing the connection."

"Yes, sir."

Charlie heard the elevator hum upward to the twelfth floor.

"Evening, Mrs. Rosen," came Lionel's echoey voice.

"Lionel, I was waiting almost ten minutes."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rosen."

"They said you would be right up."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rosen. I-"

"Whatever the reason, surely you could have had them call me and tell me you would be late… That's my only bag."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You know my late husband moved us into this building in 1947. That's more than half a century my family's been in this apartment building. We could have gone other places, we had the money. Some of the other buildings even asked us if we wanted to buy in. We could have done that. We talked about it. Three blocks up they wanted us very badly. But we said no. We said we would put up with the bad elevators and the other problems. The quality of the people changed and we stayed very open-minded."

"Yes, Mrs. Rosen."

"The other buildings very much wanted Mort to buy in," she went on. "He was respected by all of them. They knew his money going into a new place would make people feel comfortable. They knew that if Mort Rosen bought in, then it was solid, it was the gold standard."

"Yes, Mrs. Rosen."

"He was very respected."

"Yes, Mrs. Rosen. Here's the lobby."

The elevator door creaked again.

"Yes, Mr. Ravich. I left the letter upstairs."

"Okay, let's go to it, Lionel."

At the eighth floor, Lionel disappeared from the phone again. "I have it," he said when he came back. "Two pages."

"I want you to read it to me."

"Read it to you?"

"Yes."

"It's not short."

"I'm waiting."

"'Dear Mr. Ravich,'" Lionel began. "Can you hear me okay?"

"Yes."

"'Purse-purse-'"

"Purse?"

"'Purs u ant to your wreck, your wreck-est-'"

"My request?"

"Yes. '-we have compiled an… an anal — '"

" Anal? "

"'Anal-sis-'"

"Analysis," said Charlie.

"'-of the three women you speck, speck-'"

"Speck?"

"'Speck- fied. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Two, we believe, are supper-superior candies to bear you a child, based on persons-personals, family, educational, and financial histories. Both of these candies-candy- dates report that they are eager to-'"

"Okay," Charlie interrupted. "Stop."

"Stop?" Lionel asked.

"Yes." He'd heard enough. "Please destroy it. Please throw that letter down the garbage chute."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Do it now."

"Absolutely."

A pause, a muffled bang. "Did you do it?"

"Yes. Done."

"Forgotten?"

"Forever, Mr. Ravich."

"Thank you, Lionel."

"Goodbye, Mr. Ravich!"

"Hello, Mr. Ravich!" exclaimed Mr. Lo, waving for Charlie to sit in a deep chair with doilies on the arms, the traditional Chinese meeting chair. He and Tom Anderson had arrived at the scaffolding company's offices-new but so poorly constructed as to already seem decades old-and been greeted in the lobby by a trio of Mr. Lo's sons, three skinny men with bad teeth who spoke almost no English.

Charlie sat next to Mr. Lo and accepted a cup of green tea. He looked around in disgust. The chairs were old and soiled, the room barely ventilated. Had Conroy been in the city, this never would have happened. The fact that he was even having the meeting at all testified to Tom Anderson's youth and incompetence. This was a small company that had somehow ended up being the scaffolding subcontractor for the Teknetrix factory. For all he knew, they were in over their heads. Clearly they'd underestimated his status and he had overestimated theirs. Mr. Lo wore a suit, but also had rough hands; he was still out there on the job, his interaction with Western businessmen limited. I'm dealing with a low-level guy here, Charlie thought, the equivalent of a subcontractor from Queens. They've reverted to the traditional Chinese meeting because they don't know how to do it any other way.

A terrified young woman was introduced as the translator, and she sat next to Mr. Lo, who spoke in lengthy pronouncements at the far wall of the meeting room, where his three sons sat studying Charlie's expression. Suddenly he was hearing more about the bamboo scaffolding business than he thought possible. How the bamboo was planted and grown and harvested, selected for its width and cut to ten-foot lengths and tied with thousands of little ribbons, the knots of which were secrets of the trade, passed from master to student. This won't work, he thought to himself, it's too decorous. I need a situation in which I can negotiate. They were feeling him out as much as he was them. The sons had prepared a slide-show presentation, and now Mr. Lo produced a laser-pointer from his pocket and made what were no doubt very interesting observations as the red pin light of the laser jerked across crisp color shots of Mr. Lo's men erecting capacious scaffolding projects, Mr. Lo supervising same, Mr. Lo at the top of a twenty-story scaffold structure, Mr. Lo's sons in hard hats conferring solemnly, the original Lo patriarch, bamboo wise man, a wizened figure in a traditional conical hat, Mr. Lo's sons cutting lengths of plastic knotting twine…