“Who?”
“The word I have is that they went to the Vo brothers. The Vo would do it. The Vo will do anything, as you know.”
Tran paused and waited for his heart to slow to its normal rhythm. It was somewhat of an effort to control his voice as he asked, “It was not a. . water contract, was it?”
Phat shook his head. “Not that they said, only a simple lift and hold. I believe they wished to frighten rather than harm and also to find out what she knows about certain events.”
“I see.” Tran pulled out a chair and sat down. Phat thought he looked older than he had a few minutes ago. Tran looked across the table at the dai lo. “I will need your help to find her, all of your people, and immediately.” When he saw Phat hesitate, he added, “The usual rates, of course.”
Phat made a dismissive gesture. “No, it is not that. We would be happy to be of service. But this is, as I understand it, a tong matter. The Da Qan Zi has been mentioned.”
“And so you are afraid.”
“I am prudent. We are very small here, and the Chinese are very large. We do business with our own people and so they allow it, but if we intruded in a tong matter. .”
“You already have, the other day. Have you forgotten?”
“No, but at that time I didn’t know what I know now.” Phat was conscious of Tran’s gaze, that famous gun-barrel stare. He felt the first prickles of sweat start on his forehead. He said, “Let me do this. I will set my boys to watch their house in Brooklyn and that place they use on Hester Street and other places where they are known. If we see the Vo boys or the cousin, we will follow. I will call you as soon as the girl turns up.”
After a pause, Tran nodded sharply and stood up. At the door he turned and said, “If she is found safely in this way, I will owe you a debt.”
And what if not? wondered Freddie Phat, and shuddered, as a miasma of the old war seemed to drift through the room, and he recalled some of the stories about Major Pham and the fate of those he disliked.
Lucy surprised herself by not being more frightened. The worst thing really about the abandoned building was when she had to go to the bathroom, and they took her to what used to be one, but there were no fixtures in it and she had to go in a smelly hole in the floor where the toilet had been.
Being kidnapped by Vietnamese gangsters was no joke, of course, but it was also the most interesting thing that had happened to her recently, and she was fascinated with her captors. They did not know that she could understand Vietnamese and therefore spoke freely among themselves in her presence, there in the ruined room. Early on she had learned that they were not going to harm her, but had been hired to hold her for a man they called “the Chinese.” Lucy knew whom they meant, and the knowledge buoyed her, for she also knew that Tran was watching Leung and that he would very shortly learn what had happened to her and take appropriate measures. Lucy’s faith in Tran’s powers was in the same ballpark as her faith in the Deity; in Heaven, God disposed, in New York, Tran. With respect to the former power, she had a fine sense of what sort of prayers would be most effective, and so she did not pray for release from her captivity but for courage and endurance and also that when Tran found her, he would not be too awful to her captors.
These were two brothers, surnamed Vo and a cousin, surnamed Nguyen, and they all had adopted, in the usual way, gang nicknames. The smaller of the two brothers, a rat-face with brown teeth, was called Needlenose. The larger, beefy for a Vietnamese, and with coarse long hair and dark skin, was Sharkmeat. The cousin was Cowboy, hardly more than a boy, delicate-boned, wiry and nervous. Lucy gathered that he had been in the country for less time than the others had, and they bossed him around roughly.
“Hey, Cowboy, we’re going to call Kenny again,” said Sharkmeat. “You watch her.”
“Yeah,” said Needlenose, “watch, but don’t touch. We know you go for hairless pussy.”
“He is a hairless pussy,” said Sharkmeat, and laughing, they stomped out.
Some minutes passed. Nguyen spent the waiting time ripping a hole in the plaster wall with a large, heavy butterfly knife, but Lucy felt his eyes on her and when she turned her head, he was staring at her. She returned his gaze. Nguyen stopped his hacking at the wall and picked up Lucy’s bag. He examined her wallet, her notebook, the various odds and ends she had accumulated. He riffled through a French-English and a Vietnamese-English dictionary, and a paperback of Kim. He picked up The Tale of Kieu, studied it briefly, and then stared again at Lucy. He walked over to her, holding the book.
“You read this book?” he asked in English.
“No,” she answered, “I only look at the pictures.”
“But the book has no pictures,” he replied in Vietnamese, and then did a double-take when he realized that the girl had also spoken in that language.
“You speak Vietnamese!” he exclaimed.
“All Americans speak a little Vietnamese.”
He gaped at her. She said, “That was a joke.”
“But where did you learn it?”
“From a friend.” She indicated the book. “Have you read this?”
He looked down, flushing. “No, I had to leave school. To work, and then. . but I know this. .” and here he declaimed in a singsong voice, “ ‘The breeze blows cool, the moon shines clear, but in my heart still burns a thirst unquenched.’ ”
“Yes, that’s from where Kieu and Kim are on their first date and she plays her lute for him. It’s so beautiful. I wish I could read it better, it’s still hard for me. How old are you?”
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” she lied. “How long have you been in America?”
“Oh, six months, something like that.”
“And do you like this kind of work? Kidnapping people?”
He shrugged. “I have no choice. My family brought me over here, and I have to do what they say.”
They heard footsteps approaching. Lucy put her hand on his arm, which was warm and smooth. “Brother,” she said urgently, “please don’t tell them I speak your language. I think they would get angry if they knew.”
Cowboy stared at the little white hand on his arm. He nodded sharply and moved away as the other two men came back into the room. Kenny Vo, their leader, had apparently been contacted and was on his way. They sat back against the wall, chain-smoking, and talking about women and gambling and teasing Cowboy. Lucy shut her ears to that and returned to her translating, turning, as the poem recommends, the “scented leaves by lamplight to read the tale of love recorded upon green chronicles.” She had progressed to where the sisters Van and Kieu (both beauties, but Lucy decided to forgive them that, and besides, Kieu was possessed of a deeper charm and talented as well) were lamenting over the grave of a famous beauty of the past who had been betrayed and died of it, when Kenny Vo walked in and started barking orders. Vo had a family resemblance to his brothers, bearing a version both of Needlenose’s sharp features and Sharkmeat’s muscular bulk. He moved and spoke with casual brutality, and when he looked at Lucy it was as if he were looking at some inanimate and unappealing package, a sack of elderly chicken parts in need of rapid disposal, for example.
“Get her in the trunk,” he ordered. “Cowboy, watch the street.”
This was frightening. Lucy had always disliked enclosed places, and the dark, and being constrained, and so her control gave way, and she fought, and having been trained in boxing from an early age, she got a few good shots in before she was slapped silly by Sharkmeat and stuffed in the trunk of a Lincoln. Her bag was gone, but she had Tran’s book shoved down her waistband. An interminable, painful ride over New York’s infamously ragged paving, and then they popped the lid and threw a stinking blanket over her and hauled her indoors. She ended up on a mattress in what looked like the finished basement of a suburban house, a windowless room, panelled in cheap pine-look sheeting, with red and black linoleum on the floors. There were two doors, one locked, the other leading, delightfully, to a tiny bathroom. She used the toilet and then checked herself out in the medicine-cabinet mirror. Bruises on cheek and jawline, and a big smear of blood down her chin and spattered on her T-shirt from where her nose had bled: a mess. She washed her face gingerly and dried off with wads of toilet paper.