His father had gotten about five good years. The fishing trips, a cruise to Alaska. A couple of girlfriends who kept him busy, insisted he take them to Broadway shows, out to dinner, a few trips to Atlantic City. Companionship, laughs. Ray hadn't asked much about the women. He didn't want or need to know about them. Maybe they would help with his father's loneliness, and if so, then good. He wasn't much use to his father, anyway, being so far away and often out of touch. And in fact it had been one of the old girlfriends who called Ray while he was in Malaysia to say that his father had just had emergency surgery for blocked kidneys except that they had found a rare cancer everywhere and would Ray please come home, it didn't look good.
He didn't tell me he was having problems, Ray had said.
He didn't want to worry you, came the reply.
Ray stood now looking at his father's framed commendations and badges, as well as the inscribed photographs with Mayors Koch, Din
kins, and Giuliani. The letters from men and women thanking him for locating their children or finding the murderer or solving the robbery. His father had once put on a coat and a tie each day and taken the subway into Manhattan, where he'd done most of his tours. He had worked his way steadily through the ranks of the city's four thousand detectives, never accepting a promotion to manage other detectives and become part of the bureaucracy. Never getting caught up in the intrigues and petty betrayals, a relentless fact of police work. Staying out of the cop bars, avoiding any contact with Internal Affairs. Accepting reassignment from precinct to precinct, squad to squad. "Just do the work, son," he'd always said. "Just do the work and the rest takes care of itself." He stayed on foot, in the car, and on the phone. Or free, as he saw it. A bad fall off a wet fire escape when he was in his early fifties had slowed him a bit, but worse, when he was fifty-six, off duty and sitting in a neighborhood bar watching a Yankees game, he tried to step in between two fighting patrons, one a short fat man who had started it. His reflexes were gone and he had taken three punches, one a roundhouse flat to his cheek, a second into his solar plexus, doubling him over, and the third an uppercut beneath his jaw that broke six teeth. He fell over and had the presence of mind not to draw his service revolver, given that he was in no condition to use it properly. The assailant was caught two days later, and it was discovered he been a pretty good club fighter ten years before, in his twenties.
But the bum knee and the bad jaw led Ray's father to have a long think. He had his pension coming to him, he had his rental houses, he was set. More than that, he'd been a cop too long. The cop life was a hard one and had worn him down.
"You could do this, you know," he'd said to Ray many times. "You have the whole package. The judgment. Good with people. Tough. I should know, too."
"I don't think so, Dad," Ray had said every time back. "I'm not ready to do it."
"That's why you'd be good."
"No."
"There's still time—I could call a few—"
"No. I'm not able to—"
Kill people,
he'd never quite been able to say, something police officers very occasionally had to do.
"You'd be surprised what you're able to do."
"Not shooting someone."
"You'd shoot if it meant saving others' lives."
"Maybe not."
And in time his father had let it go, disappointed certainly but perhaps relieved, too. Lot of cops ended up as damaged men, one way or the other. There were some lost years in there, what with what happened to Ray, his mother getting sick, the beating his father took.
Ray climbed the basement stairs with the equipment and dropped it all into a box in the hall.
"Mr. Grant?"
Ray looked up. Wendy stepped into the hall. She wore a trim white nurse's dress and an unbuttoned blue sweater.
"What's up?"
"Your dad is comfortable now, sleeping."
"He seem pretty lucid to you?"
"In and out." She smiled in understanding. "That's normal. We expect that."
"It's the painkiller?"
She nodded vaguely. "Mostly."
"Please just tell me. Tell me the facts."
"Okay. It's a lot of things. The Dilaudid, yes. But the brain is an organ, too, and it's subject to the stresses of the disease. The cancer could be in the brain, in fact. He's not getting enough nutrition and that has its effect. But also there are the emotions. He is dying and he knows he is dying and he is worried about you."
Ray studied her. She was young and earnest, much different from Gloria, the night nurse who'd seen everything.
"It'll be like this, in and out?"
Wendy nodded. "As the pain gets worse, we'll have to increase his Dilaudid, and as that goes up, he'll be out more. He'll sleep a lot, too."
"How much longer?"
"So hard to say." She kept Ray's gaze, almost aggressively, it seemed. "As I said before, his heart is very strong for a man his age and the lungs are clear. It's not in the next few days. But sometimes these things take a turn."
"Yes."
She ducked her head, then lifted it. "I wanted to ask you if you had any family—who might make this easier."
"He outlived his only sister. My mother died years ago. He asked that no friends come. One guy might show up, but that's it."
"I see." The nurse seemed hesitant to conclude the conversation. "So, it's on you."
"Yes."
"If I may, Mr. Grant . . . ," she began, edging a touch closer to him. "I want to say that it is hard to be with a person who is dying and I am just wondering what your sources of emotional support will be in this difficult time."
"Thank you. I'll be fine."
But Wendy persisted, her eyes troubled, even unprofessionally moist. She smoothed her hands along her nurse's dress. "Have you been . . . please pardon me for asking, have you ever been with someone who is dying, Mr. Grant?"
He looked at the young nurse but was unable to answer. Instead a wind of memory passed through him. Mountains. Villages. Fields. Dust. Collapsed cities. Babies crying. Smoke. Years of memory. All the years he had been away.
"Mr. Grant?"
He found her eyes and then he found a bit of his voice. "Yes, miss, yes I have seen human beings die. I have seen my share, anyway."
A minute later Ray eased into the garden with a bundle under his shirt and opened the shed lock. With a glance back at the house, he slipped inside. He hefted the bags of peat moss. His father's guns were right where he'd left them, along with the boxes of ammunition. He lifted the Glock, always surprised by how heavy it was. Swung it around, dry
fired. His father had taught him how to shoot, taken him to the NYPD firing range in Queens. But he'd never liked guns. Nor the men who worshipped them, fetishized their power. He put the Glock back, added the guns he'd taken from the Chinese guys, ammo removed, then reset the bags on top. He thought of the two Mexican girls. Who would do that, what kind of sick person would kill that way? And Jin Li had been in that car? If the killer or killers knew that now, then she was still in danger. What if they had been after her in particular? This hadn't occurred to him before. A wave of protective fury went through him. I will find her, he thought. I'm going to find Jin Li and then I'm going to find the man who wanted to kill her.
The Russian was coming
back for her, climbing the stairs with a slow, ominous tread, and he pushed open the door that led to the room full of boxes. He carried a paper bag with him. Jin Li had moved her small bundle of things to another part of the second floor, far from the window, in case he came looking. And now she was glad she'd done that. She watched him through a crack in the wall of boxes. He was in his fifties with slicked-back hair and the strange tattoos on his hands. She didn't like the tattoos; they looked like bugs. He hoisted his pants and looked about.
"Yes, I know you are in here, Chinese girl," he called. "I know you are hiding. I know you understand English, all these things I say."
The Russian went directly to the spot where she'd been before, inspecting the boxes carefully. He stopped, bent over, and picked up something. "You left something, Chinese girl," he called. He seemed to be holding something between his fingers, but she could not see what it was from across the room. "I have it right here," he called tauntingly. "You left long very nice black hair."
Instinctively she touched her head, as if to feel the hair's absence.
"I like this hair," called the Russian. "It is beautiful thing. But not as beautiful as you."
These words sent a ripple of dread through Jin Li's stomach.
"You see, I remember you, Chinese girl. I remember when you looked at this building. Maybe something like four months ago. You
were wearing fancy clothes and shoes. Big businesswoman clothes. You never give back key. I know that. For most people, okay. But I notice this thing. Of course I do! I notice it because never has pretty Chinese lady come to look at building. Now I know you are here and I know those men are look for you. They told me the place where they stay."
He sat on one of the boxes and lit a cigarette. "I think you need to talk to me. Those men will pay me to tell them you are here. They told me one thousand dollars if I tell them you are here. But they look like bad men to me. And you are pretty girl." He smoked contemplatively, holding the butt up as he spoke, as if he were speaking to the cigarette itself. "Why do they want to find you? There seems to be so much pressures with this Chinese man with the funny tape on his nose, you know? Why are they look for you? I ask myself this interesting question. So I think maybe you want to talk to me a little bit. Talk to lonely Russian man. Russian and Chinese people, it is good thing. I am kind Russian man, you will see." He opened his bag. "There is juice and bagels and apples in here," he said, setting down the bag. "This is good for energy. Help you think a lot. I want you to think about being friendly to lonely Russian man. If you are friendly to me just only one time, then I will tell Chinese man you are gone, you not here. This is good deal for you, I think. I think maybe you liked me a little bit before and so you will think yes, maybe this is good deal. Just one time. There is good mattress downstairs, I put blanket. I am going to come back in a little while, maybe one hour. This time I will lock the door downstairs. You cannot get out now."
She listened to the Russian leave the room, his heavy footsteps making the warped old boards creak. Did she dare to come out? Maybe he was waiting behind the door! How did he know she was hungry? Then she crept over and inspected the bag.
Apples, in a bag. Smelled good. Delicious. And yet the worst thing, too, the saddest thing . . .
She had come such a long way, so far that she no longer remembered every step of the path, dared not think of the distances. Born in the arid plain, on her parents' farm. They did not have running water, only a town pump. Her father had grown up on the farm, never liking
it. And he wasn't much of a farmer, either. The hogs got strange diseases that made their noses drip. Her grandfather was allowed to have three apple trees behind the barn. These he fertilized with chicken droppings he gathered from the road with a shovel. Her father had borrowed money from the town council and then had struck off for Shanghai and sold mealworms in the bird market for three years before sending for her mother. Then, a year later, after her mother had prospered selling mealworms and her father had built a little business hauling bamboo scaffolding from one building site to another, they sent for her and Chen. Her grandmother had wept and taken to her bed, saying she had been abandoned by everyone and it was time for her to join her ancestors. Her grandfather, whom she loved more than anyone,
ever,
more than anyone in the past and anyone she would ever love in the future (except for her children, of course—oh, how she hoped she'd have children someday), had taken Jin Li and Chen in the wagon down to the train station with a little sack full of his own apples, rice balls, and dried pork. He explained that they would be taking a
very
long train trip. Almost three days. He gave Chen some money—a handful of old bills—and told him that he would have to buy them water and sweets during the trip. Then her grandfather asked her brother to check to see if the train was coming, and when he ran excitedly to look, her grandfather showed her the new bills in his hand.
Take off your shoe and sock, quick,
he said, and he slipped the bills into her sock and pulled it back on.
Do not let older brother know you have this money,
he instructed gravely,
or he will take it and lose it. I gave him the old bills for water and sweets. Give this new money to mother. If brother loses all his money and you need money, take only one bill out of your sock and tell him you found it. Do you understand?
her grandfather asked, the skin folded over his old eyes. Yes, she said, eager to please him, anxious he know that she would do anything he asked of her.
This is all the money that I have saved in my life. It is for you and for older brother and for kind mother.
She nodded eagerly but did not want to leave him now. She felt suddenly scared. She saw what was happening.
You are my little bird and you will fly far,
he said, making a little cough.
I will never see you again but you will always be my little bird.
Then the
train came and they rode hard-class on a bench seat for fifty-six hours. It was crowded and the people smelled. The train stopped and you had to go squat in the weeds. Her brother spent all the old bills on sweets and gum and water, but she did not pull out any of the new bills her grandfather had given her. Years later, when she had been a merit student at Harbin Institute of Technology, she had come to understand that each bite of the apples in the bag was the last she'd had of her grandfather. She'd never seen him again. And certainly he was dead now, it had been so long. That was the saddest thing and yet she would never cry about it, ever. She and her brother had lived in a little apartment in a crumbling block in old Shanghai, one room with mold on the window side, long since bulldozed to make way for an elevated highway now clogged with new cars, trucks, city buses. Her mother found work in a factory where she affixed a tiny piece of plastic lettering to the front of DVD players all day long. She used an electric hot-glue gun and had to do eighteen thousand pieces per twelve-hour day if she wanted to be paid at the end of the six-day workweek. About one piece every two seconds. Within two years, as Jin Li and her brother went to school, her father built up the scaffolding company enough that he was able to buy a small plot of ground and build a three-story apartment house. That same year Jin Li's mother became so tired and sick from the long hours of work and the smell of the glue that she fell asleep as she worked and the hot-glue gun shot a long wad of burning adhesive onto her cheek. She was fired from the factory and came home, and Jin Li took care of her. The wound became infected and a doctor they paid came and cut out the infection and cauterized it. It healed but left a jagged, rippling scar and nerve damage that made one side of her mother's mouth droop. Her mother retreated into their house and would not come out. Jin Li and her brother did the shopping. Her father chose to sleep in the fold-out bed in the front room and rarely spoke to her mother. He no longer let her cut his hair and meanwhile began to wear better clothes. Soon her father was dining out with minor government officials, sometimes taking Jin Li's brother to these meetings, where he began to learn the ways of business as it was done in the new China. Meanwhile, Jin Li learned English in
school and studied as hard as she could, without passion, she saw now, but as a way of escaping—escaping something,
everything.
When she was fifteen she received the third highest score on the school tests in all of Shanghai District and that included the children of rich parents who had tutors who knew whom to pay to get a copy of the previous year's test. Her best score was in chemistry. Her mother came to the ceremony, but her father did not. Then came her proudest day: she was admitted to Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the finest universities in all of China, specializing in astronautics, mechatronics and automation, hot-working technology, communication and electronic systems, physical electronics, and optronics. Her team built the first plasma immersion ion implantation equipment in China! But in her third year her professors encouraged her to study American capitalism and information technology. We might need you for something different, Jin Li, they said. And of course her father and now her brother had been behind this, with his government connections. They wanted to use her to make money. Her English, her good looks, her ability to mix. Sometimes we send special people to work in America, they said. Very secret. So she studied American corporations, she read the history of New York City, she translated old copies of
Time
magazine, and she listened to radio broadcasts about traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, the Abraham Lincoln Tunnel. She read a funny, old-fashioned novel about New York called
Bright Lights, Big City
that made no sense to her. She learned about taxis and subways and the Chrysler Building and why Greenwich Village was famous. And then—