“Shut up,” he said, and then said something in Spanish to the driver.

“Where’s Lisa?” I said, pretending to be brave, and I sort of fooled myself in that I actually felt sort of brave.

“I told you to shut up.”

We pulled into a garagelike warehouse, not too big, but room enough for the car and a van that was already parked and which had C & L BEVERAGES stenciled on its side. Toward the back of the garage there were dozens of piled-up cases of soda and water and beer.

We got out of the car. G pushed me toward the far-left corner, where there was a battered steel door. He stayed behind me, and I didn’t feel the knife, but I knew it wasn’t far away. His fat friend followed after us. We went through the door and into a crowded office that had more cases of water and soda stacked along its walls. On a little couch was Lisa Weiss, with thick gray tape over her mouth, and her wrists and ankles were also bound by tape. She was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse, which was dirty and ripped by the right shoulder, like she had been yanked, and because of the tape around her ankles her knees were close together and prim-looking. The hollows of her eyes were darkened from exhaustion and smeared mascara, and she stared at me.

There was a battered desk next to the couch, and behind it was a squat, older man with gray in his short, close-cropped hair. He had a black moustache, also with traces of gray, and like G and the fat boy, he was Hispanic, with yellow-brown skin. He appeared to be in his midfifties and was wearing a blue short-sleeved sport shirt, with only two buttons and an open collar. He was smoking a cigarette and had a thin-lipped ugly mouth underneath his moustache. G pushed me forward so that I was standing right by the edge of the desk. The older man spoke to me.

“Where’s Vincent?”

“I told G here that I found him dead last night of an overdose. At the Senton Hotel.” The girl kicked out her legs, but nobody paid attention to her.

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” said the old man.

“I’m not, I swear… He had just shot up. He OD’d. I’m just looking for this girl.” I pointed to Lisa. She kicked her legs again. “Her sister asked me to find her and I tracked down Vincent and found him dead.”

“Are you fucking with me?” the old man asked, and G stuck me in the back with the knife, just enough so that I could feel the point coming through my sport coat.

“I’m not. I promise. I just want to take this girl and leave. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Your friend Vincent owes me seventy-five thousand dollars, one key. I told him he had to have it to me by today.’”