by Adam Brookes
Mangan had come back in, reeking of tobacco smoke. She wanted to talk to him, alone, away from Hopko. And that, she understood, was a dangerous impulse.
The next morning, and the next item on Pearl’s list: a gun show. It was in a hotel in South Columbus. She took a bus down there in a light fall drizzle, arriving early. The men on the door looked her up and down, but took her money anyway. She walked in as some of the vendors were still setting up. She looked around, hardly knowing where to start. At the first stall she went to, the guns all looked big and heavy. Some looked battered and old.
“Do you have any … new guns?” she said. “Or are they all, like, used?”
The seller wore a veteran’s cap, a camouflage jacket. He was grizzled, ponytailed.
“Well, I guess they’re all pretty old, ’cause this here’s World War Two weapons, hon. Some Korea.” He pointed to a sign above his head: Vintage Militaria. He grinned, but not unkindly. “They all work, though. What exactly you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”
“I … I just want something for protection,” she said. “Something small.”
He rubbed his chin, then stood.
“Hey, Gordie,” he called. The man at a stall behind her looked up. “You help this lady? She’s looking for some protection.” He drew out the o, proooootection.
“That’s all I got here,” said Gordie, overweight, sweat patches on his tie-dye T-shirt. “I’ll protect you all the live-long day. C’mon over here, miss.” He made a big, theatrical come here gesture. They act kind, but they just patronise and unsettle me, she thought. She walked over to his stall.
“So, let me guess, you’re looking for something small, discreet, but credible, something you can keep by the bedside, in the glove compartment, something like that? Am I right?”
She nodded.
“What is it, you got an admirer gone a little crazy? You get robbed? Something like that?”
“No, I just feel a bit … I just want to protect myself.”
“Course you do. Everybody should.” He thought for a moment, then reached for a handgun from the dozen or so on the table in front of him. To her eye, they all looked the same: small, black, full of tension.
“Now, this here’s a Sig. Nice little weapon. Good size for those small hands of yours. It’s .380 cal, so not the most powerful. But she’s a beauty. Here’s the baby Glock. Most reliable weapon on the market, for my money. And here’s the Ruger 9mm. Belle of the ball. Got some stopping power. Take her, give her a feel.”
She took the Ruger, wrapped her hand around it, felt a surge of adrenalin that surprised her.
“Oh, yeah,” said Gordie, as if he felt it too.
“Okay, I’ll buy this one. And some bullets,” she said.
“You’ll be needing the bullets,” he said. Then he looked at her. “You should get some practice, you know. Get to a range. Get the feel of her. Also, clean her, okay? Keep her clean and she won’t let you down.”
Is there no ID check? No paperwork? she wondered. Apparently not. Gordie was putting the weapon in a box, rummaging for a box of 9mm ammunition, which he found and put on the table.
“Now, I used to be law enforcement. And I would say you need to make sure you stay within the rules in the state of Ohio. You clear on that?”
She nodded. He frowned, something bothering him.
“You sure you’re okay? Somebody threatening you?”
I’m giving off a signal, she thought. My fear is visible. And he sees it and wants to play saviour.
“I’m okay, but thanks for the advice, and the … protection. I feel better now,” she said, appeasing him. He seemed pleased. She had put nearly five hundred dollars on the table.
“Well, if you’re frightened of something you should tell law enforcement. That’s what we’re here for,” he said.
“Oh, I will,” she said, moving away.
He’ll remember me. He’ll talk about me at the bar, at the football game. There was this tiny Asian girl, wrists like sparrow’s ankles, short-sighted as hell, looked like a baby owl, but real scared, you know? Shoulda seen her gripping that little Ruger like she’s about to blow some guy’s balls off.
What did he see that gave me away? Do others see it?
42
Cal had been assisting at Mechanical Engineering Freshman Lab when the text came in.
Hi Cal. Im a friend of Pearl’s. Can we talk. Its important. Im here on campus.
He had wrapped up and quietly slipped out of the lab, heading for the coffee shop on Pond Road. A woman in her thirties was waiting for him. She was very good-looking. Classy, Cal thought. She wore a blue quilted jacket and a grey scarf of some expensive-looking material. Her legs were long and slender, and she sat with her ankles crossed and tucked to one side, like an actress in a black-and-white movie. She spoke Mandarin to him.
“Cal, thank you so much for meeting me. I apologise for not making an appointment. Very rude of me.”
Cal couldn’t quite place her accent, something coastal, or Taiwan maybe, which confused him.
“Can we speak English?” he said.
“Well, okay,” she said. She was looking around herself, scanning the room.
“You said you’re a friend of Pearl’s?”
“Yes. I’m a friend of the family. And we’re all very concerned about her. And I’m sure you are too. I just wanted to check in with you, see if we can … figure this out.” She spoke really good English.
Cal regarded her. She was laying it on, giving him a wide-eyed, earnest look.
“Figure what out?”
“Well, what’s going on with her. Her parents haven’t heard from her in days. They’re very, very worried. She’s a very special girl. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that. I think I know that better than you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Do you even understand who she is? What she’s capable of? The things she’s going to do?”
“Oh, we understand that very well. And that’s why we’re so concerned that she’s not responding to messages or email. She’s not answering her phone.”
Cal heard that we.
“Well, maybe she doesn’t want to be found right now,” he said.
And just there, he saw her expression change fractionally.
“How do you know that, Cal?”
He shrugged.
“Has she been in touch with you?” she said.
He opened his mouth to speak but she was there first.
“She has, hasn’t she? How did she contact you, Cal?”
“There was a letter, okay? But she gave no details as to where she was.”
“Show me the letter, please.”
He bridled.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
She smiled, a warm, wide, startling smile, the smile of a performer, one who wins hearts for a living. It felt like a lamp being turned on him.
“Of course you don’t. But Cal, you can tell me where the letter was posted, right? We need to know what’s happening with her.”
“The letter is private.”
She cleared her throat, putting her finger to her lips, as if in thought.
“Cal, you’re from Hong Kong, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She nodded, bit her lip.
“Your parents are there, aren’t they? In Hong Kong? And you have two sisters?”
He felt his stomach turn over, a little flash of alarm.
“Why is that relevant?”
“Think about how you would feel if one of them were to disappear. Wouldn’t you want their friends to cooperate in the effort to find them? To get them back? Surely you would.”
She can’t be serious, he thought.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you really need to tell us where that letter came from, Cal. And what was in it. So we can find Pearl. Just the way you would want it if your sister disappeared.�
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“Who are you? Who do you work for?”
“Like I said, I am just a friend of Pearl’s family. I worked with her cousin. In Beijing.”
Beijing? Oh, crap.
“She never talked about a cousin in Beijing.”
“No? Well, her cousin cares about her, a lot. Now, Cal, the letter. Please.”
“I don’t have it with me.”
She leaned forward, and her eyes resembled blades.
“Where was it posted? And really, you need to respond now. Otherwise, things are going to get difficult.” She pursed her lips—a there’ll be nothing I can do expression.
He swallowed, and notions of betrayal, its myriad shapes, flitted across his mind. And he knew that what he was about to do would mark him forever, a lifetime of erosion.
“Columbus, Ohio,” he said.
She was reaching for her phone.
The first girl who wanted to sublet the apartment wasn’t right—too tall, too glamorous—and Pearl had to turn her away, which led to an ugly scene and some insults, but Pearl, having read the instruction manual and figured out how to load the clip and work the slide, had the little Ruger tucked in her waistband, and felt weirdly empowered.
The second girl came with a friend, and they were quieter, more amenable, in T-shirts and jeans. They were both from Qingdao, studying dentistry. Sweet girls. She would have liked to get to know them, she realised.
“You pay in advance,” said Pearl. “In cash.” The girls nodded.
“I’m ordering some new furniture for you. Some kitchen stuff. You can move in the day after tomorrow. When the stuff arrives, you can sign for it. Just say you’re me, okay? Pearl Tao. Just sign Pearl Tao. And then you can use all the stuff.” The girls nodded again.
“Why are you moving?” one of the girls asked.
“Oh, my boyfriend,” said Pearl. “He lives over the other side of campus. I’m moving in with him. We’ve got an apartment together,” she said, sounding proud.
“Ooh, lucky. Is he an American?”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
“Very lucky,” said the girl. “Better hope your parents don’t find out.” And they all giggled.
She bought a cheap laptop in cash from a pawn shop, under a low sky that warned of winter. She spent an hour configuring it to pick up her messages, and then to drop them off in a secure file-sharing site, deep down in darknet. She configured it, also, to allow a remote login. Pearl found a place for it atop one of the kitchen cupboards, just below the ceiling, out of sight. She wired a power supply from an outlet above the counter, ran it up inside the cupboards, so only a few inches of unremarkable wiring remained visible. There the laptop would stay. The apartment was cold, bleak. She’d be glad to be out of it.
She went to the bank and made another large withdrawal.
Then, a trip to the big box store, where she spent a considerable amount of time in the make-up and hair aisles, and made a quick stop in the toy aisle, buying an inflatable plastic ball, like a beach ball, but smaller.
Nothing you can do will be definitive, she told herself. She had read the line in some hard-boiled private investigator’s memoir she found online, and it appealed to her. You’ll never be certain of the outcome. Real action is never definitive. What counts is what you do with the time and resources allotted you.
Pray it’s enough.
On a swampy roadside in southern Virginia, HAMPER 1 knelt, pawing through the grass and scrubby weeds in soft, afternoon light, the traffic roaring past, swearing in German. HAMPER 2 stood over him. Then HAMPER 1 got to his feet, holding something up, a black plastic disc the size of a hockey puck. HAMPER 2 shook his head and tapped at his phone.
43
In as much as Pearl had consciously forged a strategy, she knew it was time now.
That evening she stayed in the apartment until late. At nine, she went out for pizza at a nearby place which, she had discovered, she really liked. It had exposed brick walls covered in posters and was full of students from Ohio State; it was cheerful and a bit ramshackle and a little boozy and she thought that she could enjoy coming to a place like this, if she lived here and had friends who would go with her, someone like Cal who would sit with her and talk earnestly and make her feel like she had something to offer, something feminine and maybe even a little sexy, something beyond her coding and her facility with Partial Differential Equations. She sat alone at the bar and ordered a thin crust with artichokes and prosciutto and a Coke, watching the groups at the tables, talking, touching each other.
Later, back at the apartment, online and in the open, Pearl ordered, from three different retailers, a cheap television, plates, cutlery and glasses for four, tablemats, a blender, a rug, a duvet, two beanbags, some Shanxi black vinegar, a man’s hoodie, three T-shirts in men’s sizes, some men’s pyjamas and an expensive man’s watch. She charged all of it to her credit card.
She took her own phone from the backpack, unwrapped the silver foil, put the SIM card back in and turned it on. She called a number she’d taken from the classified ads site, enquiring about buying a second-hand car, left a message on voicemail giving the number of the burner phone. Next, a restaurant, where she made a reservation for a week’s time. Pearl Tao, for two. Last, she called the twenty-four-hour number on the back of her credit card, checked her balance.
Then she slept.
In Norfolk, Virginia, a strange incident caught the attention of the desk sergeants, and even a crime reporter for the local TV franchise.
The man had showed up at the emergency room, his arm broken in two places, face bloodied up, his scalp opened by what looked like the edge of something hard. He was ranting about a carjacking, and the cops were called. He was well known to police, with a multicoloured record—some pilfering, some drug stuff, basically a harmless white kid, not a bad guy. Ticky, they called him, for the pacing and scratching and endless twitching that the meth set off in him. The resident had stitched his scalp, and now Ticky sat on the gurney in a robe, waiting to have his arm set, fulminating for whoever would listen.
“’Sup, Ticky,” said the barrel-chested cop. “Who did this to you, man?”
Well, there’d been this car, and when the cop asked whose car, Ticky said he “found it.” A red Honda Civic. Just sitting there, keys in ignition. Like it was being given away. And so he’d, well, he’d taken it. The cop sighed. And, well, Ticky was just, like, driving it around, wondering if he should keep it or sell it, pull in some cash. And he was just parking up outside the apartment block in Portsmouth where he was hanging when this guy pulls in next to him, and, like, starts pounding on the window. And Ticky was, like, what the fuck, man, and this guy had the door open, and had Ticky by the arm and this guy was hench, like, made of rebar, and Ticky was thinking this was prolly an instance of mistaken identity, ’cause he’d never seen this dude even one time, but anyway Ticky found himself on the pavement and this guy was busting his balls and saying, like, real quiet, like in this calm voice, Where’s the girl, where’s the girl? And Ticky be all like, Dude, what girl? There ain’t no girl. Ticky didn’t see no girl. And this guy, he didn’t say nothing, he just took Ticky’s arm, and, like, positioned it, and then, crack! And Ticky’s screaming on the pavement ’cause his arm’s hanging all funny and shit and there’s two of them and they’re all over the car, like searching it, ripping shit out of it. Ticky didn’t get a real good look at them, ’cause he was trying to get up and get the fuck out of there, but he’d swear the other one was Asian. But then Mr. Fuckin’ Nuts-of-Rebar was standing in front of him pointing a 9 right between Ticky’s eyes, and he had this look on like a total psycho, like he’ll just do it and give zero fucks, and when Ticky started pleading with him, the guy just brought the piece down on Ticky’s head and that was the last thing Ticky remembered.
And the cop was watching Ticky now, because he’d never seen the kid like this. The kid was terrified, fragile, close to tears, like he’d seen something from way outside his experience,
and Ticky’s experience covered a good deal on the spectrum of human behaviour.
And the cop wondered what the hell this was.
44
Harker, exhausted, glimpsed it all from the end of the street, and signalled. Car found. HAMPER 1 assaults driver. Car searched by HAMPER 1, 2. No sign of CYPRESS. CYPRESS NOT PRESENT.
In the Tyson’s Corner flat, there was silence for a moment, as they worked the implications. Mangan wondered who CYPRESS was, then realised it was Pearl.
“They found her car? But how?” said Patterson.
Hopko shook her head.
“Resources. Commitment,” she said.
Mangan shifted on the sofa.
“They’re dangerous, aren’t they? And they’re on to her. And they’ll find her.”
Patterson took Hopko’s silence for assent.
“Does mean one thing, though, doesn’t it?” Mangan said.
“What? What does it mean?” said Patterson.
“Means we just have to stick to HAMPER,” he said. “To find her.”
Hopko was standing by the window, her glasses in her hand, looking at Patterson.
“I mean,” Mangan said, “rather than launching our own half-arsed search, we just stick to them, and they’ll take us to her.” He sounded uncertain, was looking at the two of them questioningly. Patterson spoke.
“Philip, that is the most stupid, irresponsible—”
“He’s right,” said Hopko.
More help had arrived, a twofer, a married couple in from California, tanned and slim and bright-eyed and utterly out of place in this grey East Coast fall: the Paulsons, regular contractors, competent.