The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  “What about it?”

  “Right before Maya’s game, Carver took me somewhere. Do you remember? We got in the pickup and just drove away for several hours.”

  Ronny nodded, slowly, waiting for me to continue.

  “We met the Kid at a motel over in Denver. It was just him in the room, him and his laptop. He said a message had been posted marked specifically for the Man of Wax. The Kid found it, watched it, and called Carver. They debated for a few days whether to even tell me about it, but then Carver decided it was best.”

  “Ben”—Ronny shifted uncomfortably on his feet, his arms crossed—“what was it?”

  I opened my mouth, started to speak, but then went completely still.

  Ronny stared hard at my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Grab your gun.”

  “Why?”

  A familiar high-pitched whine was singing out among the chaotic tumult that was New York City.

  “We have company,” I said, already reaching for my Beretta, and turned toward the street just as the Ducati came screaming our way.

  56

  We were on a side street, only a few vehicles parked along the curb. There was an open spot right beside us and this was where the Ducati came skidding to a halt, its rider once again in black.

  At the same moment, tires screeched behind us.

  I kept my body squared toward the bike, the Beretta now at my side, and tilted my head just enough to see the Escalade now parked askew at the curb. The driver and passenger doors opened, and two Korean men stepped out.

  “Ben?” Ronny said quietly beside me.

  Whoever these guys were, I couldn’t rightfully call them enemies. Not after my last two encounters with them—the rider in Miami Beach, who had saved me and Ian and the girl from the two bent cops, and then in Hope Springs, Arizona, when the rider and the men in this SUV had taken one of Caesar’s men away. We might not necessarily be on the same team, and we certainly weren’t friends, but still I had the sense they weren’t here to do us any harm.

  That isn’t to say my grip on the Beretta didn’t tighten anyway.

  The men kept the Escalade’s doors open as they slowly approached. Both kept their hands, empty, at their sides.

  “Stop right there,” I said.

  Both men stopped at once.

  I watched them a moment, then glanced back at the rider on the bike wearing the black faceplate helmet. Past the rider, down the street, traffic whipped back and forth. Fortunately for now, the street was deserted of innocent bystanders.

  Keeping my body squared toward the Ducati, the gun still at my side, I tilted my head back toward the two men and asked, “What do you want?”

  The passenger said, “For you to come with us.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “We are not.”

  My focus was now on the passenger. He was the one who had spoken to me back in Arizona, who had said he was sorry about my friend.

  I started to ask what it was they wanted when his gaze shifted slightly past me. His eyes narrowed. His face tightened. Then, quite suddenly, he and the driver had guns in their hands.

  “Ronny!” I shouted, and we both brought up our guns, aiming them at the passenger and driver.

  Only the passenger and driver weren’t focused on us. Instead they were focused on the rider.

  Maya, it turned out, was standing behind the Ducati, her gun pointed at the rider’s head. The rider clearly hadn’t heard her or even known she was there until the two men pulled their guns. For a moment nothing happened. Then, at once, the rider jerked back, falling off the bike. The bike thudded hard against the street. The rider popped back up, smacking the gun from Maya’s hand. The rider stepped forward but Maya was already moving, sidestepping the rider, spinning and grabbing the rider’s jacket and jerking backward as she swept out the rider’s feet. The rider hit the pavement hard, and then Maya was on top, keeping a knee pressed against the rider’s chest, a hand held against the rider’s neck, her other hand reaching for the gun which lay only feet away.

  Less than five seconds had passed.

  The passenger and driver still had their guns aimed. The passenger’s eyes shifted to meet mine. Beside me, Ronny kept his gun trained on the two men. I waited a moment, debating, then cleared my throat.

  “Maya, stop.”

  She paused, her hand only inches from the gun. “Who the fuck are these people, Ben?”

  “Good question.” I turned to the passenger and driver. “You guys care to explain?”

  “We are friends,” the passenger said.

  “Is that right?”

  “I would hope by now you realized we are not a threat to you.”

  “Says the guy holding a gun.”

  “You are holding a gun as well.”

  “Fair enough.” I lowered the gun to my side. “You too, Ronny.”

  “Ben.”

  “Just do it.”

  Ronny lowered the gun but didn’t put it back in his pocket.

  “All right, fellas,” I said, “we’ve met you halfway. Your turn.”

  The passenger and driver lowered their weapons.

  I nodded. “So far so good. Maya?”

  She had loosened her hold around the rider’s neck, the rider who just lay on the ground, not even struggling. “What?”

  “Why don’t you stand up for a second?”

  She didn’t move at first, but then leaned back and rose to her feet. She stood straddling the rider for an extra second before she stepped away.

  “Help him up,” I prompted.

  “Her,” the passenger said.

  “What?”

  The passenger just nodded toward the rider, who was being helped up by a reluctant Maya.

  “Are you okay?” the passenger asked.

  The rider tugged the helmet off. I don’t know why, but I had been expecting a young Korean man. Instead it was a young Korean woman, her short hair almost as dark as Maya’s.

  The woman nodded but said nothing.

  Up the block, a panel truck turned down the street. We all waited, silent, until it passed. Then I said to the passenger and driver, “So what do you guys want?”

  “To talk.”

  “Then talk.”

  “Not here. We want you to come with us.”

  “Sorry, but I have a prior engagement tonight.”

  “We know. That is why we need to talk to you.”

  I watched the passenger’s face, searching for anything that might give me a good handle on our current situation. Nothing was there, at least nothing I could see, so I took a deep breath, silently counted to five, and asked, “How long will it take?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “I can’t be gone too long.”

  “You will not.”

  I nodded, still debating, then handed my gun to Ronny and said, “I’ll be back.”

  “Ben”—his voice was a hoarse whisper—“don’t do this.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  I started toward the Escalade. Maya watched me, a helpless look in her eyes, urging me not to go.

  The passenger said, “Please empty your pockets.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “You and your team are careful. That is why it took us a long time to find you. But we are more careful. Now please, empty your pockets.”

  I didn’t have much in my pockets anyway, just a packet of cigarettes, a lighter, the burner, a MetroCard, my eyeglass case, and a few spare bucks. I handed them all to Ronny.

  The passenger opened the back door for me.

  I started to get in the Escalade but paused when I saw both Ronny and Maya watching me. Their eyes stressed the fact they both believed this would be the last time they’d ever see me. I hated to admit it, but right then I was beginning to think the same.

  57

  Neither the driver nor the passenger introduced themselves. They didn’t even speak as the Escalade snaked through the city streets all the way
to a park overlooking the Hudson River. There they let me out, and the passenger pointed at a man sitting on a bench.

  “You guys have any cigarettes?”

  Neither of them spoke.

  “How about some gum?”

  Still nothing.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, and headed toward the bench.

  Surprisingly, the park was mostly deserted. Some children were looked after by a few women—probably nannies—but that was it. I approached the bench slowly, staring first at the back of the man’s head, then, as I neared, the side of his face.

  Before I could speak, he tilted his head and looked up at me.

  “Hello, Ben.”

  Like the other three, he was Korean. He was much older than the others, maybe in his early-fifties. He wore slacks and nice shoes, a dress shirt and sports coat. A wooden cane rested between his legs.

  “Please,” he said, inching over to one side of the bench, “have a seat.”

  I sat down. “You don’t happen to have a spare cigarette, do you?”

  “I do not smoke.”

  “I wouldn’t ask, but your guys made me leave all my worldly possessions behind.”

  “I apologize for that. But as I am sure my men told you, we are very careful.”

  “Of course you are. I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is Bae. The two men who brought you here are Chin and Seung.”

  “And the girl?”

  This he clearly wasn’t expecting. His body tensed slightly, and when he spoke his voice was soft. “She ... her name is Ho Sook.”

  “She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”

  He hesitated. “How do you know?”

  “I used to be a father myself once upon a time.”

  “Yes. I am truly sorry for your loss. For everything you lost because of your game.”

  “What do you know about my game?”

  “I know from what you wrote in your story.”

  I stared out over the water at the trees on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. “I think we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves.”

  “Yes, I believe we are.”

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

  “Very well.” Bae shifted on the bench, cleared his throat. “I was police officer. The city I worked in had major problems with child sex trade. Girls and boys no more than ten years old. I took it on myself to work against this. I wanted to shut it down. I received threats. My family received threats. Child sex trade, you see, is a large commodity. Nobody wanted it to stop. But I would not stop in my work. Then one night my wife was taken. She was taken and beaten and raped. She was left in the middle of the city without her clothes. It was a warning to me. For me to stop. But I could not stop. My wife understood. She knew the work I did was important.”

  Bae closed his eyes, tilted his face down, rested his chin against his collarbone.

  “My wife was beautiful. She gave me two sons. They were four and six. I think ... yes, it was because of them I worked so hard. Every time I thought of those children forced to do their work I thought of my own children, and it made me angry. It made my wife angry also and this is why she would not let me stop, even after what happened to her. So I did not stop. And they—”

  He opened his eyes, raised his chin.

  “They took my children. Both of my boys. They ... they sodomized them. They left them just like my wife in the middle of the city. My sons were in the hospital for a month. I wanted to stop then. I wanted to quit work as a police officer completely. But my wife would not let me. She said I had already come this far. She said we had all come this far. I knew she was right, but I would not risk my family’s safety. I made plans to have them taken away to a safe location while I continued my work.”

  He fell silent then, staring out at the water.

  “How long before you woke up in the game?” I asked.

  He looked at me, his face stone. “The next day.”

  He had woken up in a small room. A cell phone was ringing beside him. A voice said that Bae’s wife and children had been taken hostage and that if Bae ever wanted to see them again he must play a game. Bae, of course, agreed.

  The first task of the game was not something simple like stealing a candy bar or a pack of gum. Told to wear the glasses which had been on the ground when he awoke, Bae was directed to a building. In the basement was a masked man and a boy no older than five. There was a gun in the room, and Bae was told to watch the man sodomize the child and not touch the gun, to not interfere at all. He was to watch the entire time and say nothing, and when it was done to leave and not look back.

  “I could not do this. I knew even then my family was forever gone. I was not going to let this man have his way with the child. So I picked up the gun and aimed it at the man and told him to get away. He came at me. I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. It was empty. That was when the other men came in. They beat me. I tried fighting. They broke this leg”—he lightly touched his right kneecap—“and then left me there. But first the masked man sodomized the boy in front of me. Then killed him.”

  The men left Bae alone with the boy’s dead body. The cell phone rang again. Bae managed to pull it from his pocket—“My clothes were dirty and soaked with blood”—and listened to the voice tell him that his family was now dead and that soon Bae would be too. The police, the voice said, would be coming for him at any moment.

  “They meant to humiliate me, whoever had done this. With my leg broken, I would not be able to go far. I managed to climb to my feet and leave the room and go outside. I went only a block before the first police car arrived. The officers did not see me, but I saw them. They were Chin and Seung.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I shouted their names. They came to me at once. I quickly explained what had happened, about being kidnapped, about my family being abducted, about the dead boy in the basement. Neither of them questioned me. I was their captain for many years. They trusted me deeply. They helped me to their car and drove away before the other officers arrived.”

  “Did they take you to a hospital?”

  Bae shook his head. “I told them it would not be safe. That the men who did this to me were very powerful. I should have known then just what kind of trouble I was putting my own men in. I am responsible for what happened to them.”

  “Their families were killed too, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, by ‘accident.’ ” Bae actually made vague quotation marks with his hands. “Chin’s family died in an automobile crash. Seung’s family died from a gas leak at their home. They happened on the same day. Simple coincidence, no?”

  I said nothing.

  “But at the moment my men took me away from that awful scene, their families were still alive. That ... that only occurred afterward. After I told them to take me to my daughter.”

  The children playing not too far away from us ran and hollered and laughed. One of them tripped and fell and started to cry. One of the women—definitely a nanny—finished whatever story she was telling her friend before lithely extracting herself from the bench and hurrying over to the sobbing child.

  “Your daughter,” I said. “I know she exists, because she saved my life twice already. But didn’t you just say you only had two children?”

  “With my wife, yes. But before we were married I had an affair with a younger woman. I am not proud of what I did. She became pregnant. I could not be associated with her. I told her I would support the child if she remained silent. Nobody knew of our arrangement. Not even my wife.”

  “Your wife never questioned the missing money?”

  Bae smiled again. “I am very careful. I made it so nobody knew about my ... mistake. In my position I could not afford for it to become public. The woman understood. The girl—my daughter—did not care. She never wanted to see me.”

  “Then how did you two cross paths?”

  “One day she was arrested—drugs. Her mother contacted me. I tol
d her there was nothing I could do. She threatened to expose me. I could not let that happen, so I agreed to help. I eventually got Ho Sook released. I told them she was my ... how do you say it in America—a criminal informant. It was the first time we ever saw each other. I immediately recognized her. She had my eyes. She knew who I was, and she did not care.”

  “Kids,” I said. “They always take their parents for granted.”

  Bae ignored this. “Ho Sook had fallen in with some very bad people. I told her it would be best for her to stay away from these people. She told me to go to hell. I did not see her again, but I kept track of her. I knew the people she associated with—drugs dealers and the sort. So when Chin and Seung wanted to take me to the hospital, I told them to take me to Ho Sook instead.”

  Chin and Seung took Bae to Ho Sook. It was in a bad part of town. They were in a police car. As you can imagine, the tension was thick. The gangbangers were about ready to start something with the cops. But Ho Sook intervened. She saw what had happened to her father and came to his side. He explained that he could not go to a hospital. She understood, and took him to one of the doctors that took care of the gangbangers when they were injured.

  “By then it was the next day,” Bae said, “and those men who had killed my family went and killed Chin and Seung’s families as well.”

  It was clear to them then that they could never return to their former lives. They could not even call any of their cop friends, for fear that they might be secretly associated with whoever had done this to their families. When Bae was strong enough, he explained everything to Ho Sook and a few of the other gangbangers who refused to leave Ho Sook’s side. One of these gangbangers offered up a name. It belonged to a man who specialized in the child sex trade. He was, among other things, a businessman. Chin and Seung paid this man a visit along with two of the gangbangers and brought him back. There they forced the information they needed out of him.

  “I am not proud of what we did,” Bae said quietly. “But it was something that needed to be done.”

  I was again staring off at the trees on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. I was thinking about taking the knife and cutting off Edward Stark’s toe. I knew all too well about doing things that needed to be done, though that didn’t make those things right.