by H L Stephens
"In their world, not really," Oz replied. "Do you know how they get those tattoos, Jane?"
"Yeah, needle and ink."
Oz shook his head.
"Those are prison tattoos, as in they are gotten while in prison," Oz said. "Kovalski and his ilk didn't go to some parlor in Kiev and have a guy wearing gloves using sanitary tools and needles give them their tattoos. They had someone in prison with a lot of time and infinite patience give them these tattoos. The ink is typically made of melted rubber from someone's shoe, mixed with soot or ash and combined with urine. The urine helps keep infection down. The tattoo artist then punctures the skin with whatever instruments they can rig together, and then they inject the broken skin with the makeshift ink. The process is tedious, it is time consuming, and it is incredibly painful for the one getting the tattoos. The larger and more intricate the tattoo, the more it says to other inmates the bearer of the tattoo is impervious to pain. It has a psychological impact on anyone who sees them, including law enforcement; in some cases, especially law enforcement."
"They are pretty intimidating," I replied.
"Only if you allow them to be," Oz said. "Remember those Bratva in the alley?"
I nodded.
"They were covered in the same kind of tattoos Kovalski has," Oz said. "You just didn't have the time or the luxury to notice them. You were too busy trying to survive. You kicked their butts pretty good regardless of what bragging rights they might have inscribed on their bodies. Don't be dazzled by the ink, Jane. You are trained now. Most of them are not. They are street thugs. Strong as oxen, perhaps, but they are still just street thugs. Don't allow yourself to lose your nerve or forget what we have taught you just because of a little tinting on the skin."
I still wasn't entirely convinced, but I smiled and nodded at Oz as though I believed what he had said. He wasn't the one who was going to be facing the herd of tattooed oxen alone.
The day of reckoning came at last when it was time for me to transform into the kind of Oriental flower Kovalski could pluck from the proverbial garden. Marcus had overheard chatter that Kovalski's Eastern itch had returned, and he was looking to scratch it that evening.
Kovalski liked to hunt for his "tasties" at a club named Lucky Chang's which was not far from his usual stomping ground. Clubs like Lucky Chang's were magnets for the sex workers Kovalski picked up for his long parties. He typically collected half a dozen girls at a time for his festivities so my chances of being included within that number were pretty high.
I could feel my nerves begin to vibrate as the day wore on, and it was beginning to show in my interactions with the crew. Dorthia recommended that I take a break from the preparations and spend part of the day with Meiqiang.
"It will be a nice distraction for you Jane," Dorthia said as she ushered me from the warehouse. "There will be time enough for you to prepare this evening. Kovalski never begins his binging until eleven or so. Besides, we need a few items from Chinatown to finish off your look." Dorthia shoved a list into my hand along with some spending money. "Have a good time, but be back by five. We need to get you wired up and in place just after Kovalski arrives. We want your entrance to be one he won't miss."
Meiqiang was thrilled to see me, just as I was glad to see her. Triad connection or not, I liked her. She begged her parents for a few hours to walk around town. At first, they were reluctant to let her leave, but at the last minute, Meiqiang's mother gave her blessing.
Painting the town with my new friend was the most fun I had had in a while. We ate too much, laughed more than was decent, and spent every last dime that Dorthia gave me, with the exception of the cab fare home. I even forgot for a time that I would soon be in the clutches of a sex crazed monster. It was wonderful.
During our time together, I learned a little bit more about Meiqiang and her family. The family itself was very small and consisted of Meiqiang, her mother, her father, and her grandmother, whom I had yet to meet. Her grandfather was killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and her grandmother had been arrested shortly after his death under suspicions of conspiring with the protestors. Her grandmother spent ten years in a labor camp before she was finally released into her daughter's custody.
The family finally managed to immigrate to the United States when Meiqiang was very small, using every last penny they had to open the restaurant. It had started as nothing more than a hole in the wall but had grown over the years into one of the most popular and well respected authentic Chinese restaurants in all of Chinatown. Meiqiang took great pride in the fact that everything they offered was made according to traditional methods.
The more time I spent with Meiqiang, the more I questioned the Triad connection. I trusted the crew, however, and the knowledge they acquired. If I had learned nothing else with my experience with Agent Howard, I had discovered that things weren't always what they seemed and appearances could be very deceptive. Meiqiang and I were just getting to know one another, and regardless of who she was as a person, it didn't necessarily reflect who her parents were. I still had to be careful and play my cards close to my chest until I knew for certain.
When it was time for me to leave, I dropped Meiqiang off at the restaurant, paid my respects to her parents, and returned to the warehouse to get ready for my big night out.
I had never envisioned myself as a woman of the night. Even at Halloween, I had always chosen to wrap myself in the garb of ghoulish monsters and creatures of shadow. I was far more comfortable dragging a foot behind me and moaning loudly than I was primping and parading in glitter and gossamer. Put aside the fact that my mom was a Cheeky's favorite with her false eyelashes and rouged cheeks. I preferred my fake hump and droopy eye on October 31st.
As Dorthia applied the layers of cosmetic disguise that transformed me plain Jane MacLeod into the seductive undercover Asian hooker we named YanMei, I witnessed parts of my innocence become buried beneath the almond shaped eyes and the sultry lips that began to emerge with each stroke of her practiced hand.
The Jane from Ironco, Texas, who sang badly to country music and loved nothing more than working on cars with her dad and cooking yummy food in the kitchen with her mom, was beginning to disappear. In less than a week, I would be fifteen, celebrating with people who, by some dark fate, had become a motley crew of adopted relations with disreputable talents that would never be part of polite conversation anywhere but in this warehouse. My life was different now. I wondered as the final vestiges of my face disappeared beneath the facade of YanMei whether my life could ever go back to anything that resembled what I had once called normal. Something deep within me whispered that normalcy had never been within my reach.
I donned my miniscule dress, and then allowed Dorthia to adhere my wig in place. She added a few finishing touches to complete the overall look, which included the odds and ends she had sent me to Chinatown to fetch. When all was as it should be by way of my metamorphosis, Dorthia and I joined the others.
The dress, though shorter than I liked, was a perfect fit; like a finely sewn leather glove custom made for a single hand. It was crafted from a pearly white silk whose property it was to trick the eye with ripples of other colors that shimmered across the surface of the white every time I moved, much like a pearl when held up to the light. Embroidered in vibrant shades of silky threads around the edges of the dress and up the hips were dragons, entwined in deadly battle. Tongues of fire curled around me, accentuating the curves of my body as if the maker of the dress had known my exact dimensions and could anticipate the perfect locations to draw the eye.
Jameson was the first to speak when I walked into the room behind Dorthia, after the others finished with their whistles and mock cat calls.
"Dorthia you have outdone yourself," he said. "Are you quite sure our little Jane is in there?"
"It's me alright, Jameson," I said as I tried to pull the dress down a bit to cover the areas that were feeling a bit too much airflow. "Though where Marcus is going to find a plac
e to put his wires beneath this skintight glove is beyond me," I added.
"You're already wired for sound," Marcus said. He had a sparkle in his eyes. "The threads on your dress are intermingled with an ultrafine type of wiring. It looks and feels just like silk, but it's not. The way that it winds around your body as part of the decoration basically turns you into one giant transceiver, but because of the material it is made of, it is undetectable if you get swept for bugs. Another one of my unknown inventions. We will be able to hear everything that happens to you. Plus, the eyes of each one of your dragons are mini-cams so we can record your surroundings from every angle no matter where you are. You are basically a walking surveillance unit."
"What about me communicating with you?" I asked.
"Well, for starters, anything you say, we will hear," Marcus said, "but the pearl ear cuff you are wearing is retro-fitted with an ear bud. There is a short acrylic wire you can feed into your ear canal. You will hear everything we say, but no one will know you are wearing an ear piece."
I reached up and touched my right ear where the decorative ear cuff was. I could feel a fine filament within the elaborate pearl decoration, near the lower part of my tragus. I bent the filament into my ear canal and asked if we could do a sound check.
Once we got the volume down to something wouldn't blow out my eardrums, we went over the various removable bugs and sensors that were built into the decorations on the dress, which I was instructed to deposit wherever and whenever I could once I was in Kovalski's stronghold.
"Is there going to be anything left of this dress when I am done?" I asked.
"That would depend on whether you decide to use everything I tell you about or not," Marcus said with a chuckle.
"Well is there anything on here I can use to defend myself if the need arises?" I asked of my too short, luminous body glove that seemed to offer me no personal tactical advantage.
"That would be my department," Avery said. "Follow me if you will." He walked toward a table strewn with an assortment of goodies just waiting to be shared.
Avery loved his job, and any opportunity which allowed him to stretch his wings in the area of weapons and protective artillery was an occasion worth celebrating.
The first thing Avery reached for was a white handgun, with a pearlized finish to match my dress. A matching leather holster with thigh straps just long enough to go around my leg lay next to it on the table.
"This little beauty is a remake of the all-steel, single stack K9 DAO 9mm," Avery said. "The difference is that this one has a polymer construction. It makes it lightweight and virtually undetectable. The holster is designed to be worn on your upper thigh. It may not be comfortable when you walk at first, but it won't be seen, and it will guarantee you will have access to a weapon if the need arises. The holster has a place for two additional clips. Plus, your handbag has two full clips built into each end. That gives you six extra clips besides the one in the gun. You won't run out of ammo unless you start acting like you are at a shooting gallery. Now, if something should happen to the polymer gun, you have a backup in the lining of your handbag. The beadwork has lead paint so if they try to scan what you are carrying, it won't register. You only have one clip for the gun in your purse so make every shot count. Now, on to your lipstick and perfume."
I looked at Oz thinking I would see some sort of eye rolling or manly disappointment at the mention of lipstick in the same sentence as personal protection, but when our eyes met, all he said under his breath was, "This is so cool." I never thought I would see the day that Oz would grow weak in the knees over toiletries.
Avery held up a regular looking tube of lipstick and what appeared to be a bottle of perfume.
"To the average person, these are the types of items anyone would expect to see in a young woman's purse," Avery said. "If you smelled the nozzle on the perfume bottle, you would detect the faintest whiff of lilacs. If you opened the lipstick and twisted the bottom, you would see what appeared to be a normal tube of lipstick. You could even squirt yourself with the perfume and be fine, though I wouldn't advise applying the lipstick if I were you. Combine the two on any surface and you have one of the newest and most corrosive super acids in the world. Whatever you do, don't breathe the fumes or touch the elements once they have combined. They will seriously mess you up. Allow me to demonstrate their effectiveness."
Avery produced a slab of glass that was one inch thick and set it on the cement floor near one of the open bay doors. He used the lipstick to draw a line on its surface. He sprayed the line with the perfume and ran like the devil back towards the rest of us. Sickly fumes began to rise from the surface of the glass, and within seconds, a hole formed on the surface of the glass where the lipstick had been. The acid quickly ate its way through the entire thickness of the glass, and within a matter of seconds, the cement beneath the glass slab began to score and bubble as well.
Jameson said, "You better do something about that."
Avery put on a respirator and ran back to the bubbling cement with a bag of white powder in hand. He dumped the contents on the glass and cement and then ran back to us.
"What the heck is that stuff?" I asked.
Jameson beamed a great smile.
"I am calling it XM-486 right now until I have a more exciting chemically-sounding name. It will burn through just about any substance known to man. If you get locked in a room, this will get you out; no explosives needed. Now it is caustic to human flesh, will cause untreatable chemical pneumonia if inhaled and could potentially cause cardiac arrest if ingested or if it gets into your bloodstream so be careful with it. Other than that, it's pretty cool, don't you think? The hardest part was stabilizing the components enough to combine them into some semblance of a cosmetic. Getting it to stay in a mold was the real challenge, but here you go. The one and only XM-486 lipstick."
"What is in the perfume?" I dreaded asking.
"Believe it or not, it is just scented water," Jameson replied. "The components in the lipstick ionize in an aqueous solution just like other common acids, but this one is a bit more potent and a tad more unstable."
"I'm feeling better and better about all of this with every moment," I mumbled. Dorthia gave me a worried look but said nothing.
"What else do you have for me Avery?" I asked.
"Shoes," Avery said, holding up a pair of pearly white high heels that looked remarkably like the ones I was wearing.
"I already have shoes, and they are uncomfortable enough as they are," I replied.
"Trust me Jane, you will like these."
Avery held up one of the shoes, gave the high heel a twist, and out from the back of the shoe, just above where the heel attached, popped the handle of a small throwing knife.
"Holy smokes," I exclaimed, leaning forward for a closer look. "Those are awesome."
Avery handed me the blade so I could feel the balance of them for myself. They were lighter than what I was used to but I thought they might have enough oomph to get the job done.
"Trust me when I say they will sink in deep enough to do the trick," Avery said as if answering my unspoken question. "Those blades will hit a man's heart if you put enough into your throw but don't overcompensate for the lightness of the blade. Let me show you what I mean."
I handed the blade back to Avery who tossed it at a nearby pallet. It struck true to mark. He retrieved the blade and said, "Now you try."
I gave the lightweight blade a few tentative tosses into the air before hurling it at the pallet myself. My aim was a little low but not by much. Again Avery retrieved the blade.
"Release the blade on the straightaway here," he said setting my hand and wrist into the proper position for blade release, "and you will hit your mark with these blades every time."
"Thanks Avery," I said.
"Don't mention it," Avery said and replaced the blade back in its silken sheath, hidden it away from unsuspecting eyes. He handed me the heels to put on. They were more comfortable than I antici
pated and more stable than the ones I had been wearing.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"Just one more thing," Avery said. He held up a large hair pin with a beautiful lotus flower at the top, carved from a single pearl of jade. "In this position, the end of the hair pin is blunt and harmless, twist the lotus flower and voila. A fine hypodermic needle pops out. Stab the needle into any exposed flesh of an attacker, depress the lotus flower, and 5cc's of a very powerful nerve agent is delivered directly into their system, rendering them unconscious in a matter of seconds. You have six solid doses here; five to deal with Kovalski's entourage and one to take him down with."
"How long does the nerve agent last?" I asked.
"A few hours," Jameson said. "At least I think. I haven't field tested it yet, so this will be our first chance to see it in action, but I am pretty certain we will have a few hours at least to collect our prize once you have tranquilized him."
"Do we have a backup plan just in case this stuff doesn't work?" I asked. I could feel my armpits suddenly begin to sweat.
"No worries Jane," Jameson said. "This stuff could bring down an ox. I would bet my life on it."
The reality was it wasn't Jameson's life that was on the line. Had Dorthia not palmed me a syringe full of something else when no one was looking - something that actually worked - my life as a would-be assassin might have been very short-lived.
When everything was strapped and glued and shimmied in place, Dorthia said, "It's time, Jane. Your limo awaits you."
I said goodbye to the crew, stepped out into the night air, and into my uncertain destiny.
Lucky Chang's
Just as sweet nectar is certain to draw a swarm of bees, eager to taste the sugary delight, so too does a den of iniquity have its allure to those so drawn to such temptations. The line of hopefuls outside of Lucky Chang's wrapped around the block; all of them eager to enter the pulsating, shimmering, sinful underworld of Chinatown's hottest nightclub. The doorway to unbridled vice was guarded by four of the largest Asian men I had ever seen. They sorted through the crowd before them like flesh peddlers at a meat market, allowing only the wealthiest and most beautiful individuals to pass.