“Today’s turning out to be a good day,” she said. “So far, every girl has cleared at least four clients, and we still got the night, our rush hour.”
“Maybe we should jack up the price from three hundred dollars an hour to three fifty,” Lim said. “We can still give the girls the same cut and just keep the additional fifty.”
“Our strategy with these girls is quantity,” Chow said. “If we keep raising the price, the average Joe will go elsewhere to get laid.”
“I don’t know, man. SF is a tech town. There’s a lot of money to throw around,” Lim said.
“He’s got a point,” Sticks added.
“Okay, let’s do some split testing,” Chow said. “Raise the price on our five most popular girls. If their numbers drop, we’ll reduce the price. If not, we’ll keep raising it in fifty-dollar increments until we find the sweet spot. Oh, and let’s not get too greedy. We’ll give those girls their fair share of the price increase.”
“If it works, we’ll be able to put those other containers into operation sooner,” Sticks said.
“Why don’t we just keep pimping the girls for a while and make tons of money?” Lim said. “We’re learning that side of the business anyway, right? I mean, we’ll stick to our original plan of building a shipping business, perfecting it, and then selling it. But if we keep the girls to ourselves, we can double our money. Ain’t that right, Sticks?”
Sticks nodded. “Sure, it’ll allow us an early exit.”
Oyster’s initial plan had been to build the trafficking business and stockpile a bunch of cash for a legitimate, yet-to-be-determined start-up. Once those goals were accomplished, they would sell the operation to the highest bidder. None of the four were interested in becoming career criminals.
“I for one would be happier the sooner we’re out of this racket,” Lim said.
“What’s got you so spooked today?” Chow asked.
“I’m not spooked; it’s just that the longer we’re in this game, the greater the chance we’ll get popped. Don’t get me wrong… I think we’ve thought everything through well enough, but we can’t really anticipate the unknown. Those guys we hired at the docks. They’re the ‘unknown’ I’m talking about. They could drop the ball for us.”
“He’s right,” Sticks said. “It’s simple math. At some point in time, those guys will fuck up.”
“And then there’s the girl we let go,” Lim continued. “That totally deviated from our plans. I know we got paid way above our asking price, but we have no control over what happens to her. At least we can control the girls we have with us. Let’s face it. We’re book smart not gangster smart. We don’t know all the tricks of evading law enforcement.”
“I hear you,” Chow said. “But if our goal is to be a shipping company, we won’t question what the girls are used for, and who is sending or receiving them anyway. Our job will be strictly transport. The only reason we’re pimping now is because we’re still beta-testing our operation. We’ll never have complete control, especially once we start transporting for our customers.”
Even with that said, Chow had felt a little uncomfortable with the instructions the customer had given for the girl, but he squashed whatever reservations he had with the belief that their customers would eventually have all sorts of shipping requests.
“Angie, what are your thoughts?” Chow asked.
“The sooner we get those other containers into operation, the sooner we meet our capital goal and can walk away. I like risk but good risk. And Albert’s right—we lack the experience that comes with years of being a criminal.”
“Okay, here’s what we do. We’ll only guarantee safe delivery from port to port. The customer is responsible for drop-off and pick-up. If we feel we can expand our services beyond that at a later date, then we’ll do that. How does that sound?”
Everyone nodded.
Lim looked at his watch. “It’s past lunchtime. I’ll ask the girls what they’re craving.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
With Chow added to the equation, Kang and I decided to sit on his apartment for a little bit. His DNA was found on the suitcase, and we needed to rule out whether he was involved. Kang sent the photo we had of Chow to Agent House and asked her to pass the picture on to Customs so they could be on the lookout for him. Also, they currently had Medina and Watts in custody and could show the photo to both of them.
“What about Xiaolian? We can swing by your house and then circle back here after?”
I glanced at my watch. We were only a ten-minute drive away. I thought about just texting the picture to Po Po and asking her to show it to Xiaolian but reconsidered when I looked at the picture again. I didn’t want to send Po Po a mug shot.
“Let’s take a ride there.”
When we got there, Po Po was preparing lunch: egg drop soup with won ton. Of course once Kang and I got a sniff, we decided we could spare a bit more time and slurp soup.
Xiaolian was on the third floor watching TV in the entertainment room. Since the soup needed ten more minutes on the stove, I went up there to talk to her.
“Hi, Xiaolian. What are you watching?”
“I don’t know the name of this show, but these people have so many things.”
It was a show about people who hoard items. I switched off the television and took a seat next to her on the couch. “I want to show you a picture.” I held out my phone. “Do you recognize this man?”
She looked at Chow’s photo briefly before shaking her head. “No. Who is he?”
“We think he’s one of the men who took you out of the container. Take a closer look.”
She stared at the picture.
“Nothing looks familiar? His nose or chin?” I pressed.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. I think lunch is ready. Let’s go downstairs.”
We ate quickly and didn’t dilly-dally, as we were keen on returning to Chow’s apartment. I would have asked Hansen and Pratt to sit on the apartment, but they were busy pursuing the Craigslist angle, which I thought could be extremely helpful.
On the drive back to Chow’s place, House called, and I put her on speakerphone.
“Neither Medina nor Watts recognizes Chow,” she said.
“You think they’re covering?”
“I don’t think so. The best I got was a ‘maybe’ from Medina. Even though he saw all four individuals, he said he always made sure to avoid looking directly at any of them. Watts only spoke with the driver of the van, and he simply gave me a shrug. Any luck with Xiaolian?”
“No.”
“So where does that leave us with Chow?” House asked.
“Unless we can place him at the port, nowhere,” I said. “Nothing at his apartment suggested he’s involved. It might be a different story if we question him. We’re sitting on his apartment for a bit to see if he turns up.”
Kang parked across the street from Chow’s apartment.
“I’m getting a coffee. You want some hot water?”
“Please.”
While Kang went on a beverage run, I removed a pen and small notebook from my purse and started making a list of what we knew so far, to keep my thinking straight.
Xiaolian and eleven girls were trafficked from Taiwan to the US via a cargo ship.
The ship stopped in Honolulu. Two men refreshed supplies.
Corey Watts allowed two black vans with three men and one woman to enter the port.
Carlos Medina moved the container to a remote location inside the port.
Three men and one woman unloaded the girls from the container and into two vans.
One of those individuals might be Darren Chow. One of them has a dragon tattoo.
Xiaolian was singled out from the group.
She was stuffed in a suitcase and left outside the FBI offices.
The whereabouts of the four individuals and the girls they took are unknown.
Xiaolian’s memory is limited to the container and the four individu
als. She remembers nothing about her family or home or anything personal with the exception of a “doctor.”
The click of the door handle jolted me out of my thought process. Kang opened the door and passed me my cup of hot water before taking his seat.
“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” he asked as he shifted to a comfortable position.
“Nah, I was just thinking about what we know so far.”
“And?”
“It’s not much.”
I handed Kang my notes and then dug into my purse for my tin of tea leaves. Two pinches into the cup before sealing the lid back on.
Kang nodded as he read what I wrote. “Looks dismal.”
He handed me back my notebook and then removed his cell phone from his pocket. “SFPD emailed me the file of Triad tattoos they have. Maybe we’ll have some luck there.” He scrolled through pictures while slurping his coffee.
“Anything?”
“None of them seem to match the description that Xiaolian gave you. You think she might have remembered wrong?”
“It’s a possibility. You said there were eight dragon tattoos on file?”
“Yeah.”
“Email them to me. I’ll show them to her later.”
“How extensive is HKP’s collection of tattoos?” Kang asked.
“It’s pretty big, but it’s categorized. A keyword search for dragon and teacup is all that’s needed. I should receive what they have sometime tonight.”
We sat there for a solid three hours before my stomach grumbled. I remembered being a newbie on stakeouts. I didn’t mind doing them. The anticipation that something exciting could happen, like a foot chase, kept me focused. That thrill had slowly disappeared over the years.
I was about to ask Kang if he wanted to get something to eat when my phone rang. It was Hansen.
“I’m with Kang,” I said. “I’m putting you on speakerphone.”
“So we had a promising breakthrough with our search. We’ve located a building that appears to house a number of Asian girls. Pratt and I made appointments with different girls from Craigslist, and they were both from the same location. Plus we both spoke to the same girl to confirm the appointments. It’s obvious the same person is managing both of them.”
“Were they Chinese?” Kang asked.
“I think so.”
“You mean you can’t tell the difference between a Chinese girl, a Japanese girl, and a Korean girl?” Kang asked.
There was silence on the other end as Kang and I muffled our laughter.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “Go on.”
Hansen let out a nervous laugh. “Uh, okay. Neither girl could speak any English. And the apartments were small studios, just a bed and bathroom. Nothing else.”
“No sign of a man?” I asked.
“I passed a young Asian man in the hall on my way to the elevator. He had exited an apartment, and he was heading toward the apartment I had just come from. I tried to slow down to see if he would go in, but he eyed me until I got in the elevator. He didn’t look like Darren Chow.”
“You didn’t happen to notice if he had a dragon/teacup tattoo on his arm?”
“The hall was dimly lit, and we passed each other fairly fast. With that said, we think it’s worth hitting the place. Two of the eleven apartments were housing the girls.”
Just then Pratt came on the line “Hey, this is Pratt speaking. I also heard moaning from another apartment on the way out, which makes three apartments servicing men. We’re willing to bet every apartment on the floor is doing the same thing. Worst-case scenario, we break up a prostitution ring.”
“I agree. Let’s rally the troops and figure out a plan of attack.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was a little after five in the afternoon. The tactical team, Kang, Hansen, Pratt, and I had been conducting surveillance on the building for roughly two hours. During the course of that time, we noted twelve different men entering the building and staying inside anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. The last one was out in ten.
“Speedy he is,” Pratt said over the comms in a Yoda-like voice.
We saw enough to confirm what Hansen and Pratt suspected that I gave the tactical unit the go-ahead to move into place. Once SFPD secured a perimeter around the building, we entered and made our way up the stairwell.
Two men were assigned to each apartment. On the commander’s go, the teams breached the doors at the same time.
“FBI! Open up!” The phrase echoed repeatedly, followed by battering rams smashing into doors.
After the commotion died down, we surveyed our catch: eleven Chinese girls who all looked eighteen or under, two customers, and four other individuals, one who looked extremely familiar to me.
I walked up to that person. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He wore a gray hoodie. I pushed up both sleeves to reveal a tattoo on his right forearm: a dragon coiled around a teacup.
We took everyone into custody and then transferred the group to the holding center at our offices. According to the IDs we collected, the little prostitution gang was made up of Darren Chow, Albert Lim, Angie Dickson, and Clifton Wong.
I entered the room where Chow was being held. His hands were in cuffs and resting on the table in front of him. I sat down opposite him.
“I’m Agent Kane. I already know you’re Darren Chow.”
I opened the file folder I had brought with me. “Let’s see… charged with illegal gaming at age sixteen and received misdemeanor probation.” I glanced briefly at him. “I suppose you were only working for the mahjong parlor and nothing more. Maybe saw it as an easy way to put some extra cash into your pockets.”
Chow looked away from me and stared at the wall.
“It also says here you attended Stanford University. One would think that you turned your life around and were making a productive go of it. But after two years you left, and now you’re facing a whole slew of federal charges that include trafficking of a minor, kidnapping of a minor, forced prostitution of a minor, conspiracy to accept money to smuggle a minor into the United States… The list goes on.”
I closed the folder. Chow still wouldn’t look at me.
“It’s clear to us that you and your gang are prostituting these girls, but we also know you’re responsible for smuggling them into the country. We have your high-tech shipping container. Did you know that, or were you under the impression it was on a boat heading back to Taiwan? Pretty impressive, I must say. Everyone around here took a look.”
Still Chow said nothing.
“We know Carlos Medina, a forklift operator at the port, works for you. He moves your container to an area where you can safely unload your human cargo. We also know Corey Watts, a port security guard, allows you access to the grounds. And now we know all about your prostitution ring involving illegally smuggled minors. Anything you want to say? No? Nothing? Okay I’ll continue. Thanks to that tattoo you have on your arm, we have someone who identified you as the person who took her out of the container and later gave her an injection of propofol. And lastly, which is the capper to all of this, we recovered your DNA from a suitcase that was stuffed with a living girl and left outside of our offices. If you want, we can show you the video footage for refresher.”
Chow finally shifted his gaze to me. “Lawyer.”
I smiled. “You can have your lawyer, but it won’t help. You see, right now, my colleagues are talking to your friends. I’m pretty sure they’re spilling their guts and pointing the finger at you in hopes of maximizing their deals. I would offer you a deal, but I really don’t see what you could offer us in return. Honestly, I have no idea why I’m even talking to you. You’re so screwed.”
A smile formed on Chow’s face; actually, it was more like a smug smirk.
“You have no idea how wrong you have it, Agent Kane.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I exited the room that held Chow. Kang was next door questioning one of the o
ther individuals running the operation. Hansen and Pratt had each taken one as well. I was about to check on the young ones when Kang appeared.
“What’s the story?” he asked.
“He’s not talking. Wants a lawyer.”
“He knows he’s screwed.”
“Pretty much. I laid it out neatly for him. What about your guy?”
“His name is Clifton Wong, a.k.a. Sticks. Apparently he’s been a friend of Chow since they were knee high. Both attended Stanford and dropped out around the same time. He’s starting to talk. So far he’s admitted that he’s the money guy, does all the accounting/cost control stuff. Might be a good idea to play Chow off of him, considering their relationship.”
We entered the room together. Sticks sat at the table, with his head down and legs bouncing relentlessly.
“Hello, Sticks. I’m Agent Kane.”
“Uh, hello.”
“That’s an interesting nickname.”
“I like chopsticks.”
“I see. Well, Agent Kang tells me you attended Stanford University.”
“Yeah, for two years.”
“You didn’t finish?”
He shook his head. “I got bored.”
“I see. So you were eager to get out into the world and make your mark rather than sit cooped up in a classroom.”
“Um, I guess you could say that.”
“And heading up an international human trafficking conglomerate was your idea of contributing to society.”
“Wait, what do you mean? I didn’t head anything up.”
“You’re the brains, right? Everyone knows the money guy is the smartest and the one who really runs an operation. So…”
“I’m not the one in charge, I mean, yeah, I’m the money guy, if that’s what you want to call it, but—”
“Your friend next door, Darren, says you’re the one who dreamed all of this up. You were the one who figured out how to make everything work. The container… you singlehandedly put that together. Not in the physical sense, but you know what I mean.”
“No, that’s not true.”
[Abby Kanem - SG 01.0] Suitcase Girl Page 12