The Finder: A Novel Read online

  Jin Li hears a woman's voice talking excitedly in Spanish, and she freezes. Who? She looks at the girls. But the girls appear to be—yes—dead, bodies already sinking softly into themselves. Yes, it's true, she tells herself. Dead! Now comes Latino dance music. The radio is still on in the car and the muck has drained below the dashboard speakers. "Yo te voy a amar hasta el fin de tiempo!" wails a singer's voice.

  The first light of day is on the horizon, showing the rain gusting across the lot.

  Jin Li understands now. Someone knows. Someone knows what she was doing. They saw her get into the car in Manhattan and followed. They wanted her.

  She runs. Fleeing over the pavement, wet black hair streaming behind her, eyes wide, she runs for her life.

  2

  The seats directly behind home plate in Yankee Stadium are so close to the field that the usual metaphysics of baseball spectatorship are warped by reality. What was distant becomes near. What was giant becomes life-size. What was fantasy is observable fact. You are so close that you can see the calm face of Alex Rodriguez as he steps up to home plate. You can watch the clay fall off Derek Jeter's spikes as he taps them with his bat. You can see Jorge Posada, the great Yankee catcher, tighten his meaty fingers around the handle as the pitcher begins his windup. An aisle rises from field level directly behind home plate, perfectly centered. The seats to the immediate left and right of the aisle are thus the best positions from which to judge the perfection of a pitch, especially if one leans into the aisle to get a centered look over the backs of the umpire and catcher crouching behind home. From this perspective it seems that the pitcher is throwing the ball at you, and spectators in these seats find themselves leaning back as the ball pops into the catcher's mitt. It's that close. You are here, you are in the game.

  These seats are also notable for the population that occupies them—the city's power hitters and those whom they favor. Corporations own large blocks. The Yankees management itself doles out tickets to sponsors, celebrities, and major league officials. The half dozen or so eye-level seats on either side of the aisle that afford this opportunity are thus, for true fans, arguably the best seats in the stadium, better than the plush corporate boxes and the media suites above them. The proof can be discovered by who sits here: the select few often include a scout from the archenemy Boston Red Sox, armed with a radar gun to measure pitch speed and a clipboard on which to record the subtle patterns of each player's behavior. That the man sports a fat World Series Championship ring on his hand is a sacrilege to the Yankees fans around him. They remember how the Red Sox stole the championship from the Yanks back in 2004. But these are not the cheap seats high in the upper deck, where men hoot madly when the Yanks score, belly bumping and sloshing their beers in tribal frenzy. No, down here in the realm of money, such an enemy figure is in no danger. Everybody is always safe in the good seats, because the security men in their blue blazers are nearby, always watching—

  Who, exactly? It really isn't celebrities and politicians, not day in and day out. Who, then? The complete game-by-game information as to who possesses the tickets to particular seats is available only to the management of the New York Yankees, but to someone who frequently sits in this area, the season ticket holders would be apparent—there is the Citicorp section, the Time Warner section, the Goldman Sachs section, and so on. Ford, ExxonMobil, HSBC, DuPont, Pfizer, Google, Japan Airlines. This dense clustering of corporate power adds a second layer of prestige to the seats; one is among the elect, which would appear to prove that one is of the elect as well—a pleasant conclusion few can resist. Sprinkled through these official and corporate blocks of seats are smaller blocks—two, three, or four seats, usually—held by wealthy individuals who treat their family, friends, and business associates. The section is also notable for its density of attractive young women, who are not shy about how they bounce up and down the narrow aisles. Indeed, many of these women observe a baseball game dress code, which combines a pink Yankees cap—excellent for holding a ponytail aloft in flirtatious display—sunglasses, and a Yankees shirt insouciantly short about the midriff. Their inhibitions weakened by cups of beer, well aware of the acres of male flesh around them, and frequently harboring not-so-secret fixations on the famous millionaire athletes on the field, these women often perceive the booming musical entertainments on the public address system as an opportunity to stand and dance with unabashed stripperish zeal, arms over their heads, shaking this and grinding that, their collective abandon—dozens! hundreds of dancing girls!—a kind of ritualized female offering within the great echoing male temple of baseball.

  Thus, for the male corporate executive alert to his changeable status in the world—down as well as up—the small patch of real estate behind home plate offers so many rich, interlocking pleasures that it is not unusual to see such men sit back in their seats with a deep sigh of gladness and expectation, eager to receive what they know they so rightly deserve.

  Which was why Tom Reilly used his corporate seats as often as possible. His job was to make rain for Good Pharma and that meant wooing and wowing a steady stream of potential investors. He himself loved the Yankees—though how many baseball games could a man see in a year?—but what he really loved was how great seats at the game put people in a great mood. And he made sure to keep that mood going. After the game he had the limo take his group straight from the stadium to one of the best night spots, maybe a hot little lounge crowded with models, maybe a jazz club downtown. Always something to do in New York, folks. Affable Germans, clever Brits, fake-relaxed Japanese, high-tech cowboys from out west in $7,000 snakeskin boots or gumbo-guzzlers from down south—gimme anybody! They all had a blast with Tom Reilly. Show them a good time, make sure they get back to their hotel exhausted with fun. Good fun. Good Pharma. The first equals the second. They were no longer just a small company. Last year's revenues topped $800 million. Market capitalization now $33.2 billion. Growing steadily. Twenty-eight percent last year. See what happens when you whip that out of your pants! New drugs in the pipeline. Emphasis on lifestyle improvement therapies. Good stuff coming out of Good Pharma. That was the message, and the message was the medium, baby. Good Pharma was a new enough biopharmaceutical company that it needed to keep hustling investors. Nibble on our stock, graze on our bonds, get a taste of it. Rub a little of that surging market penetration on your gums, snuff a bit up into your nostrils. Like that? Taste that . . . feel that—that stream of patents, the awesome products under development? The new applications, the category killers, all aimed at global use? Good stuff, right? Then gobble some of the pills or, better yet, just inject the stock right into your bloodstream. Good Pharma! Nine million dollars spent on branding research, too: respondents liked the postironic pun in the company title. Seemed hip, new, futuristically cool in its faux–Big Brother cleverness. "Big pharma" (derogatory but perceived as powerful and efficacious) plus "good karma" (retrohippyish, naturalish, organic or Hindu or religious or something kind of humane and nice) equals Good Pharma! They had drugs coming along that were going to make the aging baby boomers start cha-cha-ing all over the golf course. Make them remember their sixth-grade homework, hump everything that moved, lose weight while they slept, dunk basketballs. That was true, in fact, even if anecdotal. The Good Pharma researchers in one of the cartilage-therapy trials had enrolled a couple of old NBA players, geezery black giants who felt so good they started dunking the ball again. The stuff was based on some kind of Brazilian tree frog bone cells that they'd cloned. Think of when that hit the market, think of the clip in the webcast commercials when a seventy-year-old black man dunks a basketball! Millions of thick-hipped white women would demand prescriptions! Score with Good Pharma!

  But now it was time for baseball. The pin-striped Yanks were on the field, expertly whipping the ball around, warming up under a soft seven p.m. sky. Tom had the tickets ready in his hand and settled down in the seats with his two guests, a sixtyish Cuban investor from Miami named Jaime "Jim" Martinez and his
protégé, a young man who knew enough to say nada.

  "You were right!" agreed Martinez, seeing how close they were to home plate but expecting no less. "Very good seats."

  "Absolutely," burbled Tom, the message being you guys are worth it. That was half of making a deal, getting that symmetrical rush of greed started. And he should know, he'd made a lot of deals for a guy who was just a few years over forty. Tom Reilly, Senior Executive Vice President for Schmoozing Big Investors. Corporate responsibility for the Manufacture of Extremely Valuable Hype. Skills include Smiling Through the Pain, Showing No Fear, and Lying When Necessary and Sometimes When Not. Good with bankers, researchers, stock analysts, the media, anybody. The public face of the company. Handsome but not too handsome. Not pretty. Manly. Solid. Healthy-looking. Confident. Wife a successful Park Avenue internist in private practice. Children: none yet. Stated reason: Too busy. Real reason: Lazy sperm. Weak, undersexed, insecure sperm. Dud bullets, wet firecrackers. Solution: Maybe in vitro, which his wife, being a doctor, wasn't crazy about; she knew the low odds of success and comparatively higher odds of having preemies. State of marriage: Could be better.

  But why think about such things? There was money to be made! And in Jim Martinez next to him, Tom Reilly sensed worthy prey. Martinez possessed a full head of silver hair slicked back Pat Riley–style and a charmer's smile, no doubt useful as he fronted for a venture-cap group trying to diversify into biotech projects. The group's funding came from Cuban doctors, lawyers, and real estate developers in southern Florida and Latin America. Hard-core capitalists, Castro haters. Many of them were on their third or fourth wives, had boatloads of getting-whiter-with-every-generation grandchildren who'd grown up with BMWs in the driveways and going to private schools. The pressure to make more money never stopped, even for rich men! Especially for rich men! The group was looking to take a $54 million position in Good Pharma's new synthetic skin project, which was also to say they expected to get a discount on a purchase worth more than $62 million—a chunk of business that Good Pharma would prefer to sell for $69 million or so. Thus the purpose of the evening. Martinez and Tom were creating an atmosphere of bogus informality and cold-blooded heartiness in order to facilitate the knife-fight negotiation to follow.

  So it began! The game, the chatter, the corporate foreplay. Three men in blue blazers and good slacks. Tom ordered beers and hot dogs from the attendant and then set about entertaining the Cubans. The first inning blew by, then the second. Yanks up 2–1 over Baltimore. Good tight pitching, a couple of great plays in the infield, one by Jeter.

  Then in the third inning the overpaid Yankee sluggers murdered the Orioles' starting pitcher for five runs. The game suddenly threatened to become a laugher, but now Martinez was on his third beer and had become so relaxed that he'd started to explain how the wealthy Cuban investors in Miami were getting frustrated with all the hurricanes that damaged or slowed their real estate projects and hadn't yet figured out how to wire the post-Castro Cuba for their benefit.

  "We're tired of risk," Martinez admitted. "So maybe we try something else. Maybe we see what your company can do for us."

  "I think you'll find we have a lot to offer," Tom breezed back. "You know, it's not quite public knowledge yet, but some of the early research results coming out of these trials show a very promising—"

  At this moment an attendant appeared at the end of their aisle. He checked something written on an envelope.

  "Tom Reilly?" he asked Martinez.

  "He's right here," Martinez said.

  The messenger handed Tom the envelope. "I was told to give this to you."

  "Thanks," Tom said, quick fingered with a twenty-dollar bill as a tip. The messenger darted away. Tom threw his guests a smile. "Not enough to have e-mail and a phone in your pocket, now they've got to send actual pieces of paper . . ." He tore open the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of yellow stationery with a blue border. He could stand and read his message in the aisle, but that was rude and also suggested a crisis, exactly what he didn't want to suggest. So he unfolded the paper enough to glance quickly at the message, felt it gore him in a soft, private place, and yet had the presence of mind to nod as if merely receiving confirmation of what was expected.

  "Anything good?" the foxy old Cuban from Miami nudged.

  "Better than good," Tom lied, half a smile on his face as he slipped the message into his breast pocket. "We try to avoid using wireless for very sensitive info. My secretary sent a messenger . . . it's a big, big deal that just got approved and we need to keep hush about it—you understand. Can't announce anything yet."

  He nodded conclusively in response to himself and returned his gaze to the game. How convinced were the men? Maybe not enough.

  But he bluffed his way through the end of the inning, then rose to go use the men's room, where he waited urgently in the long line, then bolted to the toilet, closed the door, and sat studying the typed message again.

  Tom, we know that you know there is a problem. We have asked politely but you have not responded to our inquiries.

  We are talking about real money. And real consequences if we don't get it back.

  Tell us now, while you still can.

  For a moment, he felt sick. Hot dogs full of crud, mixing with the beer. A feeling he had too often lately. But he fought back the urge. I still have some good moves to make, he muttered bitterly to himself, a lot of goddamned good moves. Like the New York Giants quarterback ducking out of the rush from a couple of enormous linemen intent on sacking him. A quick step sideways, backpedal to get a moment of safety, then throw long into the end zone. Escape doom with the great play. His mind was a blur of sports images and Good Pharma spreadsheets. He crumpled the yellow paper and threw it into a bin full of beer cups.

  When he returned to his seat, the two men from Miami were—what? Gone? He looked up and down the aisles for them.

  An older man in the row ahead of him turned around.

  "You see those Cuban guys who were here with me?" Tom asked.

  The man nodded. "That messenger came back while you were away. He handed them another letter." The man pointed under the seat and Tom leapt to pick it up.

  Gentlemen, your affable host this evening, Mr. Tom Reilly, is in deep trouble. He may be an accessory to large financial crimes. We suspect that it is not in your best interests to be seen with him in such a public venue.

  A great cheer went up. Rodriguez had lifted a giant homer into the center field seats. The crowd stood, roaring exultantly as the big man loped around the bases. No one saw the pharmaceutical company executive curled in his seat, fetal in his dismay, at last vomiting at what he knew was going to happen.

  3

  Her name is not important here. She was in her late thirties and working as a legal secretary for a firm on Park Avenue. The attorneys there, men and women alike, disgusted her with their self-importance, their preening fatuousness. But she kept this to herself. She had tried the single life and mostly found disappointment. In her early years some of the young associates tried to date her and she let herself be taken to dinner and then into bed, but these men were, whether they knew it or not, auditioning wives. They talked love and devotion but were in truth matrimonial credentialists; they wanted a wife to have a degree from a good college at the very least and an advanced degree as well. And this she did not. Within a few years it got around the firm that she was easy, that she opened her legs after a few dates, and this, of course she knew, was true. So what? If you liked a guy, why wait? Why is it called easy? Why not eager? Yes, eager. Once in an associate's office after a late-night race to prepare a court document. Bent over on the windowsill, watching taxis fly down Park Avenue. It was exciting. So she liked men, eagerly. Liked their muscles and penises and whiskers. Hands and shoulders. Even a man's Adam's apple could be sexy. Who could blame her? But once she'd been labeled, the associates of any promise and discretion steered away from her, and this meant that the younger associates, new to big city life, t
ook their shots, as did some of the older partners, the divorced, almost divorced, and never married. Mostly a disgusting lot, wheezers and nose-hair neglectors. Her boss, one of the most senior partners, pretended not to notice, and in time the associates and the younger secretaries cycled away to other jobs and people forgot who she had been and began to see her as yet another unmarried, now aging, and lonely woman, which, even though she was only thirty-eight, was true.

  As her boss got on in years, he had come to depend on her more and more. She began to catch important errors in his memory and in the letters he wrote, and to his credit he recognized that she was extending his career. But more to his credit, he quietly siphoned off part of his yearly bonus to her—a secret cash arrangement that occurred outside of her regular salary. She worked longer hours and by degrees realized that she did not have the energy and hope necessary to sift and sort through the men still available to her, the thin-fats, the optimistic depressives, the probably/actually gay, the pervomaniacs, all of them. How disappointing! How tiresome! The men in their forties were looking for thirty-two-year-olds, the men in their thirties looking for twenty-five-year-olds. She knew the drill; she'd been those women once, enjoyed the attention of older men. Swooned over their sophistication, their power, their sexy salt-and-pepper hair. Good grief. What was wrong with her now? Her breasts hadn't dropped much. She was still juicy, still wanton—maybe. Some of her unmarried friends who suffered from perenially disappointed ovaries had decided to have babies without men, buying sperm on the Internet, lighting a bunch of candles in a dark room, lying back and inseminating themselves. But she didn't want to be a lonely single mom. She didn't know what she wanted, except that something interesting, anything, had to happen before—before she turned into her mother!