"What are you getting at?" asked Martz, hearing the door open in the hallway.
"You could read the documents. But it would take a lot of labor and a lot of computing power. Yet in China, both of those things are almost free now. The cost of labor is actually still dropping in some areas, as more and more people come off the farms and search for work. And most computing programs in China have been pirated from Western companies. You literally have small Chinese companies running on software they got for free that cost their original owners millions of dollars." Sims's eyes noticed something behind Martz, something that unsettled his robotic composure. "The government supports, I mean sees, no I did mean supports, this-this activity I am-"
"Hello!" Connie pranced into the room across the Persian carpet on shiny high heels, carrying a shopping bag and wearing a wicked little black cocktail dress that showed her every gigantic and fabulous curve. "Pardon me! I'm so sorry! Bill? What do you think?" She whirled around, displaying her impossible convexities. "Do you just love it? Please say you do!" She looked back coyly at the security men. "Oh, please excuse me, I just had to show my husband." She flung her hands up and bent one leg, an old model's pose. "See?" She pulled the hem up one side of her steel-hard thigh. "Perfect fit. Here, feel." She stepped forward, her leg grazing Martz's yellow robe, touching his pale hairy calf, and took his hand and put it flat on her stomach, made him rub it, his fingers making incidental but not unnoticed contact with the round underside of the firm shelf above. "Nobody produces this kind of silk, no one. Don't you just love it?"
Martz nodded, not sure who in the room was the most humiliated, he or the two men. Connie was capable of this kind of behavior, he knew all too well, and it came in part from her awareness that she would never have children, that her sexiness was her only hold on him, and also from her unacknowledged desire to be attractive to men other than her husband. Younger men, more attractive men, vigorous men. Christ, he'd been married four times and humped sixty or seventy women, he knew a thing or two about female human beings. Connie needed a good banging, really needed it, and he hadn't given her that in a long time. So, no wonder. Poor girl. Now she bent down to his ear, no doubt flashing her perfect rear side at the men waiting patiently. "Oh, Bill, don't be mad," she breathed. "I wanted it for you."
She stood and flounced away. The men sat there a moment, collectively stunned.
Martz broke the silence. "Gentlemen, that was my wife, and after you reel your tongues back in, we may resume."
Sims nodded obediently, his blink rate suggesting a rapid mental rewinding until the point of interruption was found. "As it turns out, computers can recognize shredder patterns and perform best-fit sorting by shape not just by-"
"Stop talking," Martz commanded. He turned to Phelps. "Thus far all you guys have done is waste my time and ogle my wife. The first thing I can't stand, and the second I forgive you for, since you had no choice. Now, get back to Good Pharma's stock price. Can you get any kind of phone logs here?"
"This would require lawsuits and subpoenas, in my opinion," said Phelps. "Even with my connections in the Justice Department and the Southern District's offices, it would take weeks, minimum."
That was too long. Martz wondered about Tom Reilly. Did he know about this Chen? Or did he know there might be a security problem? No wonder he wouldn't talk. And, more to the point, what did Chen know about Good Pharma that Bill Martz did not?
Phelps waited, his eyes bright with secret knowledge.
"Go on, tell me the rest," said Martz.
"The younger sister of Chen is listed on CorpServe's website as the contact person for Manhattan sales."
"Chen's sister works for the shredding company?" Martz asked, voice rising in furious amazement. "Why didn't you say so? It's her!"
Phelps nodded. "It would appear so, yes."
"Can you find this Chen person?"
"We anticipated that question, and using our contacts in the Department of Homeland Security we have traced his movements."
"Where is he? Some casino in Macao raising a toast to all the American investors he's burned?"
"No, sir," said Sims. "Actually, he's here in New York."
"What?" Martz stood up and his robe hung open, revealing the hairy landslide of flesh that was his chest and stomach.
"He received an expedited clearance to travel here, and when one of these requests comes from a Chinese national, we automatically-"
"I don't care about the paperwork, tell me where he is!"
"Short answer, we don't know."
"Why not?"
"It wasn't clear that you might want us to find out, sir."
He flung his open hands at them in exasperation. "I want you to find out! Christ on a cracker, man, I want that information!"
"Yes. We can use our contacts in the U.S. Immigration Service to-"
"Now, today! As soon as possible!"
"We will do everything that-"
He pointed at the door. "Go! Get out! I want the answer as fast as possible! End of day!"
They packed up their equipment and left, though not without, Martz noticed, a furtive pivot of the head by Sims in the hope that he might catch one more eyeful of the bewitching Mrs. Martz.
He stood at the window, thinking of this treacherous Chen and his sister planted in New York. He recognized their type. They were the hungry generation. Every family that ever made a fortune had started with a hungry generation, the one that worked harder, hustled, cut corners, jumped earliest. The Martz family wealth had begun in this way, too. His own grandfather had started the family fortune in 1922 when he and his younger brother went out for a picnic in Central Park, enjoying some hard cider and sandwiches from a basket and watching their wives and children play in the grass. The younger brother, a twenty-three-year-old electrical engineering draftsman, had fallen asleep in the grass because, his wife said, he had been working too hard. What was all the work? Martz's grandfather had famously asked his sister-in-law. His brother, he learned, had been assigned the design of a power station in a copper mine in Chile. The Manhattan engineering firm had ten men working on the drawings around the clock. Enormous power requirements, no one quite understood why. Rush-rush, hush-hush. Inside information, not yet public. Martz's grandfather had woken up his brother, asked him the name of the copper mine. His brother had boozily muttered a word that sounded like "Chuckee-Moma" and fallen asleep again. Martz's grandfather had written the funny word with a fountain pen on his pretzel napkin, excused himself, and walked straight south from Central Park to the New York Public Library. "Chuckee-Moma," he learned, was the closest his brother could get to "Chuquicamata"-the name of the largest copper mine in the world. Two months later it was acquired by the Anaconda Copper Company. But not before Martz's grandfather had purchased or borrowed every last share of Anaconda stock that he could get his hands on. Thus was a fortune created and a family legend born-just as this Chen was doing now.
Martz returned his attention to Good Pharma. It seemed apparent now that Tom Reilly suspected there had been an information breach. He might have had his own analysis of the stock-trading patterns performed. That Reilly had not reported this publicly was grounds for his removal and perhaps prosecution under federal securities law, but Martz was quite happy that Reilly had wisely not upheld any of his legal responsibilities; it meant there might still be a quiet way out of this mess.
The Chen kid had robbed him-millions, right out of his wrinkled hand. Martz was old and tired and it hurt every time he sat down, but he wasn't too far gone not to defend himself. Chen had stolen a mountain of gold from him, and now, with Tom Reilly's help, he was most certainly going to steal it back.