Was he hurt? No. He wondered if he could move along on his stomach. He tried to lift himself up on his hands and knees to crawl. Pain shot through his torso and he could feel adhesions and stitches pulling. No, that wouldn't work. He rolled onto his back and pushed himself along the floor, his feet paddling him onward as he used his hands to pull himself, grabbing table legs, the doorjamb, anything to help. My hands are still strong, he realized.
The basement stairs. He peered over them. He certainly knew how many there were-nineteen. He had painted them, repaired the treads, fixed loose boards. He slowly swung his feet around and set them in front of himself, like a boy getting into a toboggan, and pushed off the first step. The idea was to do a controlled slide down them, surf them one by one, easing his bony rear end down.
He did okay for the first step, then the second and third. But then he slipped sideways and rolled into a ball and couldn't catch himself-so much stomach muscle had been cut! — and tumbled, heels over head down the last ten steps, not even reaching the bottom but falling sideways under the stair rail where the steps were open to the basement, landing atop a cardboard box of furnace vent filters.
There was a boy named Victor…
I'm okay, he panted. It hurts but I didn't bang my head. His wound was open now, blood seeping into his pajamas in a line on his chest.
Easing to the cool basement floor, he confronted the wall of filing cabinets, organized by year and then within each drawer by letter. What year? What year had he talked to Victor? What did a sullen, beat-up teenage boy and a detective talk about? The Yankees. The Mets. The boy was a few years older than Ray. This would have been in the late eighties. He located the file drawer marked 1989. He stretched his arm upward experimentally. Too far, too difficult to open. He spied a broom and slipped the handle end upward through the filing cabinet's drawer handle and pulled. The drawer slid out an inch on its rollers. Good. But how could he look through the files?
He had no illusion that he would be able to stand. He'd have to haul himself up somehow. He used the broom to pull the wheeled stool from the workbench toward himself, his eyes watching the slow progress of the swivel wheels as they rolled over every minute crack in the basement floor.
Impossible to climb atop it and yet somehow he did, keeping one hand on the file drawer, kicking his feet at the right moment until he lay over the stool, chest down on the cushion, his head hanging over the side. With his left hand, he pulled his torso up and dropped his head atop the files. There they were, in perfect alphabetical order.
The name. How would he find it? Vic, Victor. That was the boy's name. But what was the last name? The case would have been filed by the victim's name. Anthony. Did you see them hit Anthony? Anthony Del-something. Depasso, DeVecchio. Del-something.
His head was in the middle of the drawer. The letter tabs on one side were hidden, so he just grabbed a file at a time and worked his way down the alphabet-H, G, F, E, D. He pulled out the D files-Delancy, Dingel. The next file was Charnoff. No Del-something. Had he got the name wrong?
No, probably the year. One year earlier. One file drawer higher.
An impossibility.
He was panting now, a sour sweat soaking his pajamas. Losing energy. I can't get high enough to read the files in the next drawer, he realized.
But he could open the drawer. And he did, reaching blindly above himself and pulling it out.
He knew what would happen. It did. The file cabinet, its two highest drawers extended with their heavy contents, was destabilized and slowly fell forward, toppling him and spilling its contents across the floor.
I'm okay, he thought. The 1988 D files-? He could see them. Depasso. There it was. He pulled the file. He remembered Depasso. Had a sister named Violet. Beautiful girl. Slim. The file looked extensive; he'd done a lot of work, throwing everything in there, including a copy of the murder file of the Russian found under the Coney Island boardwalk. All his notes on Victor, the DD-5 forms. About his house and the sewerage yard his father ran. The building was some kind of old factory. He'd been all through it with the boy, Vic. Checking on the alibi. Seeing if any of the other Russians might be in there. The father hadn't wanted a cop looking around. Some kind of hidden room, some kind of bunker. Described in his notes, location, everything.
He crabbed his way out from under the files and from beneath the cabinet. The left kidney tube was caught behind him, but he kept pushing, feeling the tube yank deep inside him then rip out. He pushed with his feet along the cool basement floor, making progress foot by foot. In his left hand he held the file.
The stairs. He looked up them-nineteen steps. A mountain. He lifted the file as far as he could go, up two or three steps. Called. Hollered. Screamed. No sound came out.
Not in his bed? She saw the dangling tubes, the pillows on the floor. Her first thought was that he'd gotten outside the house somehow.
Then she found the open door to the basement. Mr. Grant lay atop the bottom stairs, a file of papers in his hand.
"Mr. Grant!"
He heard her, but said nothing. Instead he lifted the papers in his hand and waved them, as if they might be important.
41
He had every number. In his phone, a directory of the private lines belonging to dozens of big players in China. Elliot's staff transferred the numbers to their communications equipment, so the calls would be un-traceable, and after some consultation, they arrived at a sequence, with the men most easily convinced to be called first. They put a headset on Chen, hooked him into the voice delay device, and the translator listened in and more or less simultaneously repeated Chen's words to Martz, in English.
"Terribly sorry to inconvenience you, sir. Yes, I know this is all in a hurry. But I am over in New York and have received a very good tip about the same American pharmaceutical company we shorted about a month ago. Good Pharma, that was it. See it on your screen there? I've just heard something about a major market move up very soon. Big research project to be announced, entirely new markets. You're the first one I called. Price might have started to move already. It has? Good. I think it's going to go a lot more than that. That shows that I know what I'm talking about. How much? Back the truck up, that's how much. Double the usual bet, I'd say, maybe triple. Yes, yes, I see it moving, too. You might want to help your friends out on this, by the way, let them get a piece."
Chen listened intently on the phone, holding the report Tom Reilly had provided.
Hua, translating quietly, glanced at Martz. "This guy is good," he said.
But Martz already knew that. Elliot was at the other table, sipping his coffee and watching his computers. They'd seen a dramatic upward bump in the Good Pharma price. Four points already, with momentum building, the curve getting sharper as the early European traders woke up.
As for the million dollars and Chen's sister, wherever she was, that problem seemed a long time ago now. Phelps had taken Chen's and Tom Reilly's phones-the ones that the blackmailer had called-and turned them off. Chen, meanwhile, hadn't asked how Martz was handling the blackmailer's request for money. Fine. They'd deal with the blackmailer later. Or, given how fast the price of Good Pharma was rising, maybe never.
42
The weight of a father. Terribly light in his arms; he'd carried children who were heavier.
"Thank God you came back when you did," Wendy said.
"Is he hurt?" Ray took each step carefully, turned sideways when he came to the doorway. Settled him in the hospital bed. The nurse first hooked up the hydration IV. Then the Dilaudid. He was panting and almost unconscious.