[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

Orlando said nothing, but the look she gave him said, Do you think I'm an idiot? Of course I'll have them check.

Quinn suddenly had the urge to yawn. He tried to stifle it, but was only half successful. It was just a little after 7:30 p.m., but his body wasn't going to let him stay awake much longer. He was beginning to feel a second yawn coming on when he heard a noise from deeper in the apartment. 'What was that?' he asked, sitting up, alert.

Orlando turned and called out, 'Trinh?'

A moment later a young Vietnamese woman appeared in the doorway leading toward the rest of the apartment. Orlando said something to her in Vietnamese. The girl responded, then disappeared the way she had come.

'Housekeeper?' Quinn asked.

'Of a sort.' Orlando stood up, then looked down at Quinn for a moment, apparently contemplating something. 'Come on,' she finally said.

She led him into the hallway, stopping at a door halfway down. It was partially closed, so she pushed it open. The room was dimly lit. Trinh was there, sitting in a chair, mending a shirt. She looked up and bowed slightly as Orlando and Quinn entered, then returned to her work.

It took Quinn's eyes a moment longer to fully adjust to the low light. When they did, he noticed something he should have realized was there from the beginning. To the girl's left, on a small bed, low to the floor, was a sleeping child.

Orlando walked across the room and knelt down next to the bed. She kissed the child lightly on the forehead, then stood and led Quinn back into the hallway.

'What's he doing here?' Quinn asked.

'He's my son,' Orlando said.

'Yeah, I know. But I thought he was with your aunt in San Francisco.' 'My aunt is getting too old to care for him. Her

health isn't what it should be.'

'Is it safe, though? To have him with you?'

She was silent for a moment. Then said, 'He's all I have left.'

Chapter 11

Quinn awoke before the sun. Reaching over to the nightstand, he felt around until he found his watch. Four-thirty a.m.

Sighing, he rolled onto his back. After several minutes of staring into the darkness, he tried closing his eyes again, hoping that maybe he could eke out a little more sleep. But the rest of his body wasn't cooperating. His day had begun, whether he liked it or not.

He reached back over to the nightstand, flipped on the lamp, then got out of bed. The tile floor was cool but not uncomfortable. On the dresser opposite the foot of his bed was a television. He grabbed the remote control off the nightstand next to the lamp and turned the TV on. The business report was running on CNN International. Though Tuesday morning was imminent here in Vietnam, the New York Stock Exchange had just rung its closing bell on Monday afternoon. A financial reporter was running through a list of numbers, but Quinn paid little attention. He didn't play the market. Too risky.

He retrieved his computer, his text pager, and the flash memory stick from his bag on the floor. The stick was attached to an otherwise empty key ring. His everyday keys were in his BMW back in L.A., stowed in a safe compartment few would ever be able to find.

He sat down at a table next to the bed. He opened his computer and turned it on.

The previous evening, before he'd fallen asleep, he'd spent twenty minutes reading Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee. As he read, the lights in his room had dimmed three times. It made him leery of the electrical system in the building, so he'd decided to run his computer off battery power for now. It wasn't a problem. The laptop had a full charge and could run for several hours.

Quinn slipped the memory stick into a port on the side of the computer. The first thing he did was access an encoded document containing information he'd been compiling over the years. The document was a list of locations and bank accounts, a blueprint of potential hideaways and cash deposits that were available to him if needed. He didn't know how long they could stay in Vietnam, so he had to be ready just in case they had to move. From the list, he chose three potential backup destinations.

He closed the document, then opened his modem software. After entering his personal code, he clicked the button labeled 'Connect,' and was promptly greeted with an error message:

Quinn's pager doubled as a wireless, high-speed satellite modem. He turned it over, unhinged a tiny cover in the upper left corner, slid it away, and exposed three small buttons. Using a ballpoint pen, he pushed the middle button, then the one on the left. He flipped the pager back over and opened the cover so he could view the display screen.

blinked on and off for several seconds. Then it was replaced by blinking more rapidly than the first message. Finally held steady on the screen.