“This was that thing in Upper Bucks, right? It was on the news.”
“Somebody with an interest in the place shows up just as we’re leaving. We see him, he sees us. Plus, he finds a walkie- talkie we left on the ground, starts talking to us. Telling us how easy it’s going to be to find us. Two guys ripping off dealers.”
“He got a good look?”
Ray shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was dark, it was raining. But man…”
Ho took the bag off the table and knelt by the safe.
“He said something?”
“He was just so fucking sure of himself. Like it was a matter of time.”
“That’s our game, though, isn’t it?” Ho turned the dial on the safe with small, precise movements, then pulled the steel handle and opened it. He took a canvas sack out of the safe and began transferring the dope from the bag Ray had brought to the sack. “What we do, how we make money. In what I do, in what you do. It’s the image you project. You play a role, right? It’s what keeps people from doing something stupid, at least most of the time.” He put the canvas sack in the safe next to some neat stacks of currency from different countries. “But it’s all an illusion. The illusion of reputation, the illusion of control.” He pulled a colorful bill from the stack and put it on the table between them. “Even this, when you think about it.”
Ray bent over and looked at the bill closely. It was beautiful in the way foreign money was often beautiful next to the monochromatic green of U.S. bills. He picked it up and turned it over. One side was a subtle pink and showed some kind of government building and had “1000” printed on it, the only thing Ray understood. The other side, a soft blue, showed men riding elephants.
“Where’s it from? Looks like Asia?”
Ho smiled ruefully. “ Vietnam. Actually South Vietnam, about 1975.” Ray held it out to Ho, who waved it away. “Keep it.”
“What’s it worth?”
“About five bucks, to a collector. Which is my point. Even money is just a note from the government saying, ‘We promise this piece of paper is worth something.’ It’s just a bet, right? On that illusion, or projection or what ever it is.” Ray folded the note and put it carefully in his shirt pocket. Ho pointed back up the stairs. “My old man left South Vietnam with a couple million dong. That’s what the note is, it’s a thousand South Viet nam ese dong. By the time he got to the States the money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. He talked to a guy from the State Department and the guy told him to wipe his ass with it.”
“But he kept it.”
“I guess it’s a reminder. At the end of the day you can’t depend on anything. Everything changes, everything ends. All you got is what you got up here.” He pointed to his head. The sound of high voices in argument bled through the ceiling. Ho smiled. “And family.”
Ray knew how Ho felt about family. He remembered Ho telling him about his parents taking him out of Vietnam right after the war, when he was barely a year old, his mother and father carrying him in their arms in a leaky boat across the China Sea. His father had been a colonel in the army, and they were on a boat with about fifty people who wanted him dead. The army and navy dissolved, and deserters were cruising around in stolen patrol boats and one of them attacked the boat and machine- gunned everyone. Ho’s parents hid with him among the dead. They drifted around the ocean for days with no water until a Taiwanese trawler picked them up.
Ray tried to picture the ferocity of that kind of love, and he thought about his father and mother and about how maybe family could be one of those things that just ends. Maybe it was all six kinds of bullshit, and you just made a choice about what illusion to believe.
RAY ASKED IF Ho had any idea who the guys were, running a dope lab in a farm house in Bucks County. Ho shook his head.
“I have two guys I ask about that shit. It’s not an exact science, I just ask them what you ask me, if you go to a certain cor-ner on a certain street, does anyone have a problem with that? They tell me no, or yes, and if it happens I down some of the money I take off you to them. Usually, they’re happy to have less competition.” Ray described what he had seen of the guy and the car, the New En gland accent. Ho nodded and said he’d quietly ask around.
Ray put his hand up. “For Christ’s sake don’t let this get back to you. Maybe it was all talk, but this guy sounded crazy. All I need is enough information to get to this guy before he can get to me and Manny.”
“You need anything? Guns, ammunition?”
“Guns I got. My old man used to say you didn’t need more guns than you got hands, and I got more than that.”
Ho looked thoughtful for a minute, then held a finger in the air. He went to a closet with a steel door and pulled a ring of keys out of his pockets. After a second he found the right one and snapped open the door, stepped inside, and was gone for a minute. When he came out he had what looked like two dark blue sleeveless sweaters, each wrapped in plastic. He handed them to Ray, and he felt how heavy they were. Bulletproof vests.
“Yikes. I don’t know, man. If it comes to this…”
“If you’re not going to run, then you’re going to find him or he’s going to find you. What else could it come to?”
RAY WENT OUT to the 4Runner and put the vests in the back and covered them with a gray blanket. Manny was smoking and keeping his eyes on the street.
“Ho will pull the money together in a few days. If he moves it first there’s more for us than if he has to front it.”
“Is that Kevlar vests?” Ray nodded, and Manny sighed. “Great. Well, at least we know Ho’s on our side. That’s something.”
“He’s going to ask around, see if he can find anything out about these guys.”
“Where to now?”
“Let’s swing by and see Theresa and keep trying to get ahold of Danny, or someone who knows him.”
Manny started up the car, and they moved down the street. Manny looked at Ray and then back at the street.
Ray watched him. “What?”
“He had a black eye.”
“Who?”
“Danny. He had a black eye when I saw him. It just came into my head. I didn’t think of it before.”
Ray looked away, thinking. “So maybe…”
“Maybe he had a beef with the guys he put us onto. Maybe he thought why not make a few bucks putting me onto them ’cause he was in some kind of scrape with them. They ripped him off and threw him a beating or something. Or they just pushed him around ’cause he’s kind of a punk, Danny.”
Ray put his hands over his eyes, suddenly tired. “Maybe. Or maybe he just fell down ’cause he’s a stone junkie and a thoroughgoing dipshit.”
“Maybe.” Manny laughed and shook his head. “You know, I’m starting to have more respect for the police. This is some Sherlock Holmes shit.”
THERESA WAS SITTING in the living room talking on the phone when Ray came in carrying a plastic bag under his arm. Manny was sitting in the backseat of the 4Runner, trying on the vest and watching the street.
“How long will that take?” she was saying, making notes on a yellow pad. She had a cigarette going and had the phone book open and papers spread out on the coffee table. When she noticed him come in, she waved and made a motion with her hand, opening and closing like a mouth flapping. “And how much will that cost?” She made more notes and shook her head. After another minute of listening she hung up the phone.
“What gives, Ma? Looks like big business.”
“The fucking government and fucking lawyers.” She picked up her cigarette and squinted at him through the smoke. “I’m about ready to unscrew somebody’s head.”
“What is it? You got tax problems?” She made a small motion with her head, like she didn’t want to talk about it. “You need more money, Ma? You just gotta ask.”
“Well, yeah, I’m going to need more money, but it’s not for me.”