“It’ll take forever to get a search warrant for their house,” said Chen. “And the drugs won’t be there anyway. All I’m left with is intercepting these guys on the street when they try to unload. At least we’ve got some idea of who their contacts are and roughly where they’ll be, thanks to that list you made.”
“Then you’d better toss the net now,” I suggested. “Start whatever process you need for your warrant and go pick up the pushers.”
“Better believe it! And you’re coming with.”
“Me?”
“You recognize these clowns,” he reminded me. “You know the ones in the group who will deliver the stuff. Plus you might be able to persuade them to give up their buddies. I have a feeling they won’t take too kindly to finding out they’re about to exterminate their customers—and who they’re really working for.”
“Let’s go, then.”
He escorted me to the station house, which, I kid you not, looked like a stage set out of a sequel to Blade Runner. Glass and chrome and writing in Chinese, overhead fan blades yet state-of-the-art computer terminals with very large rectangle screens. Several white officers, many Chinese in plain clothes, only a couple in uniform. And not one African-American. Big surprise there. The wanted posters on the cork bulletin board advertised several unwelcome guests from Hong Kong.
Violet.
Think about her later.
It’s not disloyal to put her out of your mind for now. You’ve got a job to do. You’ve got to help.
There will be time for grief.
From a distance, I watched Chen brief a potbellied white guy with a loosened necktie, and then he sauntered back and told me, “Let’s get moving.” His superior, he said, would wrangle with the DAs. They actually did call them DAs. I always thought that was just television dialogue.
Back in Chinatown after dark. This was Chen’s show for the most part, and an hour and a half went by of him saying, “Stay in the car,” and me watching him jump out here and there to talk to an informant. Or the guy minding the tubs of fish and the eel in the tanks. Or the leathery woman who ignored the cigarette ash she dropped on her vegetables. Or the skateboard kid. Or the busboy smoking on a corner.
I can’t whistle very well, but I must have done it loudly enough for Chen to turn his head. Then he spotted what I saw.
White panel truck.
Now, lots of white panel trucks were in the district, but only one had four Asian guys—and Trey.
As I opened the car door, I heard Chen yell to the two plainclothes detectives who had tagged along—they were closer. Then the white guys in suits were bearing down on them, and the Asians knew they were cops even before they raised their voices to shout. So did Trey.
“Stop! Police!”
Wait a minute. Trey wouldn’t have come alone—
Guns out. Guns out from both sides. Trey ducking for cover while the Asian dealers aimed their mean mother barrels sideways.
“John!” I yelled.
Gordon behind us all, putting us in the turkey shoot between him and Trey’s pals. He was firing wild. Too much going on: shots and tinny music and angry yells, a knocked-over table full of incense sticks and cheap pencil sets, a firecracker bedlam even as I heard wind chimes ring.
This poor frightened mother and her little girl were staring at me. She screamed because a crazy black woman was running headlong to tackle them, push them down. Don’t let them get hit. No more innocents please. Anna, Craig, Kelly Rawlins. Violet.
Violet.
John Chen’s a New York police detective. That means he practices shooting a gun. It means he has to shoot it better than a civilian.
He turned, and I heard bang bang bang bang, and two of the Asian guys at the van dropped. It was enough to scare Gordon into doing a full-out sprint. He ran, stumbled into an innocent Chinese guy in a baseball cap, and pushed past him. Chen couldn’t fire anymore as Gordon melted into the crowd. Damn it.
Bangkok flashback. You know how they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? I say insanity is running for the second time in a half year after a man with a loaded gun, expecting you will not be shot.
Chance favors the prepared mind. And occasionally the oblivious idiot.
“Knight! Knight!” Chen shouting. Made sense to nobody else on the street, not even Gordon and Trey, who didn’t know my real last name.
Gordon tried to slow down as he hit Mulberry Street. When he turned back to check if he was being followed, he finally recognized me.
“Teresa?”
I watched it hit him like waves—all of it happening in mere seconds. First, bewilderment that I could be here, could have escaped my fate, then the impossible coincidence, then logic, anger, the spur to action. And a raised fist. He didn’t think to lift his gun. When he lurched a counter to my punch, the gun came back to him like an afterthought, but my shuto—my knife hand—sent it skittering away.
Felt like blocking crowbars. Jeez, what did he do every morning with his forearms? Put them on a lathe? Ow.
I heard quick footsteps in the distance—had to be Chen—and once more Gordon knew he had to cut and run. Well, at least I’d got the gun away from him.
I followed him down a side street.
Chatter of dialects coming from the main avenue, the noise of traffic, and someone hit me from behind, but it only rocked me a few steps forward. I got out of the way before a kick hit my lower spine, and as I swung around there was Jimmy.
His face as always was serene, his body poised in classical stance.
Gordon? Where was Gordon? I couldn’t take them both at once, and when Jimmy flicked his eyes nervously to the right, I knew Gordon wasn’t coming. Though I had lost him, Chen must have got him in his sights. Hoped so.
I put up my guard but tried anyway. “Jimmy, listen to me.”
“Please.”
As if he needed to do one of his submissive duties, changing me, washing me.
“Jimmy, the pills are laced with poison. Do you know that? Fuck, Jimmy! Do you give a damn?”
And as his fist shot out inches from my head and his kicks aimed for my ribs, he kept on saying, “Please…” I ducked back and then backed up some more. He sent a nasty side-thrust kick to my knee. “Please…”
Dodged it and jabbed him in the nose. “Now say thank you!” I barked.
Getting sick of this.
An Asian guy, pockmarked skin, white shirttails out, smoked calmly in the well of one of those loading shafts they have for stores here. Oh, no.
“Please…” The voice staying gentle.
It takes only one punch. Popped me right in the gut. Got behind me and did a sleeper hold—yeah, maybe they call it that, but it feels like blacking out for the rush of death.
Stupidly, my brain registered my heels dragging along the cement. Then the Chinese guy was helping Jimmy pull me into the basement of the shop, and the doors clanged shut. The hole in the ground closed. Chen wouldn’t have a clue if he rushed back into this alley.
I lost consciousness with the final thought: You’ve failed. You’ve failed them all—Anna, Craig, Oliver, Violet. Violet.
I woke up to hands tearing and pulling my clothes off. Groggy, didn’t fight back until—
“Chain her!” barked Isaac.
I was in a dungeon. A larger, far better furnished one than Oliver’s. Soft-glow lights in fixtures to look like torches. Cages and a wooden rack. All of it disturbingly authentic. With the faithful standing around me, I could only assume I must be back in the mansion.
I kicked the first two guys that came my way, punched another one hard into next Wednesday, but there were forty of them. They didn’t even need to hit me. They just needed to close the distance like a swarm of ants. Five hands on each of my wrists, more bodies behind me kneeling to grab my legs, and it was hopeless, hopeless. I swore like a banshee; I actually tried to bite one of them. The silly fool liked it.
They shackled
my wrists and ankles to a chain that was bolted to the stone wall. Enough slack in the chains that I could raise my arms a couple of feet above my head, part my legs a little to ground myself better and maybe step forward about five feet, but that was it. Just to be able to offer enough resistance to turn them on. Very medieval. And it scared the bloody hell out of me, I don’t mind saying now, though I did my best not to show it.
Danielle stood by, watching them restrain me, and she wasn’t smiling smugly as she had in the park. I expected her to, but she didn’t, and that was also scary. I had caused her too much trouble.
She licked her lips, her mouth opening in an expression of mild wonder and her neck flushed a vivid red. I realized what was happening with her. They were planning to kill me but hurt me bad first, and it excited the crazy bitch. She was getting turned on by all the creepy ideas that popped into her head.
She walked up casually, like a bad actress in a B movie, and I seriously contemplated spitting in her face. She held up a leather cat o’ nine tails, let her index finger and thumb ride up the length of a single strand, and I saw the flash of metal at its tip. Oh, God.
With sudden sharp fury, she dug it into my thigh and tore it out, making me scream.
“Bitch!”
“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this!” she laughed.
She walked away and idly flicked the cat toward a corner—the whip crack had a metallic ring with the steel barbs. Panic was forcing a shudder out of me. I knew those barbs would rip my skin off in strips.
“And when my arm gets tired, Teresa, honey, I’m going to pass you around to the boys.”
“So I can take them to the next level, right?” I asked. “Show them what they’re really all about.”
“Sure,” laughed Danielle. “Whatever.”
“You won’t need Isaac after tomorrow,” I said, needing to get it in quick. “You’ll capture the whole market, and then you can finally indulge yourself out in the open with whatever guy you fancy.”
“What—what is she talking about?” asked Anwar.
“Forget it!” snapped Danielle. “It’s desperate bullshit to get out of here. She betrayed us.”
No explanation of how I had betrayed the group. Some fool story she must have fed them. They couldn’t all be involved in the drugs, and I’d bet half of them still thought we were playing out a scene.
She launched the cat o’ nine tails, and I dodged as best I could. The chain in the wall offered little escape.
One mercy, just one. Anwar moved forward on impulse to stop her, his hand breaking her stroke so that the zinging metal barbs flew past and missed. Most of them.
I yelped in agony. Two of them had made shallow slices across my left thigh and near my hip. I doubted I could take another lash.
“Wait, wait!” shouted Anwar.
“Is this a scene?” I yelled to everyone. “This look like play to you? You think I’d give myself up for this?”
“Shut up!” ordered Danielle, and to Anwar she said, “Let go of me!”
“Look who’s giving the orders,” I said. “You fine Nubian princes! You masculine wonders! You hear Isaac calling the shots?”
“You will be punished,” barked Isaac. “Whip her now.”
“Took you a while, oh, Great and Powerful Oz,” I sneered. Blood was trickling down my hip and thigh. “Why don’t you give it up and let ’em know who’s really in charge?”
Isaac began to rise from his throne. “I think I’ll whip you myself, you—”
“BUI DOI!” I yelled.
It hit him like a shock wave. He slumped back into his chair as if I’d pushed him. Danielle froze and stared at me. Isaac stared at me. But Anwar and the others—they weren’t looking in my direction. They wanted to know what was going on.
Their gods were about to crumble right in front of them.
“What?” asked Eve Baker. “What did you just say?”
“Why don’t you explain it to them, Danielle?” I demanded. “After all, you’re in charge.”
She was seething. “Shut! Up!”
I thought she might get two lashes in before someone intervened, and I steeled myself for the agony to come. But before she could raise the cat, one of the guys twisted her arm to stop her from flaying me alive. He tore the cat away from her.
I was panting hard, my body now covered in nervous sweat, still trapped, still chained, not out of trouble yet.
“Why are you listening to her?” raged Danielle.
“Tell them what you did to Violet,” I said.
I heard her name whispered around the chamber. Violet. What happened to Violet? Violet was gone. What was she saying? Violet—
“Teresa killed Violet! She stabbed her to death in the park!”
“You murdered her,” I said.
“You want people to believe that because you’re a crazy dyke!” she shot back. “You killed her out of jealousy for being with men! I was with Isaac in the house when you stabbed her in the park!”
Getting sloppy and stupid with her panic, trying to improvise.
“If you were here, how could you even know I stabbed Violet? Or where she was killed?”
She couldn’t think of a response. And the devotees were watching.
“Listen!” I called out to the others. “I was with a police detective when Danielle phoned my cell and asked me to come to Central Park. He heard it! And Danielle and I are both on closed-circuit-TV footage from this afternoon—right where Violet’s body is.”
“That’s a lie!” she protested. “You know me! All of you know me! I was with Isaac.”
“Isaac will say whatever you want him to,” I scoffed.
“Isaac leads us!”
“Who do you think you’ve been working for all this time?” I asked the faithful. “Who do you think you’ve catered to? You buy that bloody nonsense that Isaac understands higher monogamy so he fucks only Danielle? You guys screw every girl here, and you never stop to wonder. You think Isaac chooses to be monogamous? What a joke!”
None of them could say anything. They were working it through. For the very first time, they were working it through.
“Big cocksmen!” I went on. “Big princes! When you finally, finally, finally get a chance to screw Danielle, you think you’ve won something. Score! She played you. Each and every one! What did you guys do? Some of you kept your mouths shut, and some of you actually got attacks of guilt and confessed to Isaac. Didn’t you? And lo and behold, the big man understood. Didn’t he? Instead of you walking out and thinking you got something over on him, he turned it around and made you feel like he was still smarter than you. Again.”
“You don’t know anything!” piped up Anwar. Feeling the shame like all the rest. “Isaac understands! He knows how a man—”
“He knows nothing,” I cut him off. “He knows what she tells him. You think it’s some higher morality that he lets you fuck his ‘wife’? Who are you kidding? You’re not special. You think you’re the only one? How many of you guys have actually had Danielle?”
It would have been comical if it weren’t so pathetic. Danielle couldn’t look any of them in the eye. I watched the girls. They wore the expressions of the betrayed. Their eyes said it. What is this shit? What’s really going on? Some were balling their small fists, others, ashamed of their gullibility, crossed their arms across their breasts. Even Eve Baker aka Kelly Rawlins looked mightily pissed.
“So who do you think really is in charge?” I pressed on. “News flash, folks! Isaac’s her sub.”
“She is my wife!” shouted Isaac. “She does as I allow!”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “So if you let her have every guy here, I assume it must be okay for you to indulge yourself once in a while, right?” I turned to the girls. “Be honest. Has any one of you ever slept with Isaac?”
They all looked to one another. And now the guys were watching the women.
“Either you’re a real saint or you’re something else,” I said.
“Ev
eryone get out of here now!” ordered Isaac. “I should have kept this matter a private affair—”
“It’s too late!” I interrupted him. “They’re going to know all of it!”
He leapt out of his chair and charged at me. The others, even Danielle, were statues.
He was out of his mind with panic, and I don’t think he even knew what he wanted to do before he committed himself. He balled his fist and punched me in the stomach.
I tensed for this, but he hit me again, and that knocked some of the wind out of me so I dropped to my knees and dry-heaved a little. I heard the others gasp.
“They’re going to know, Isaac.”
“Shut up!” he yelled. Pleading with me like an angry child. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
He slapped his open hands at my head, and they were all shouting at him. All I could do was try to protect my skull, but a few blows got through. It was genuine violence, not the ritual blows they had dulled their emotions to. Isaac’s hands were around my throat—
“Isaac!”
Anwar.
Isaac would have killed me in front of them. And still Anwar couldn’t bring himself to physically push his leader aside. But the revolt had started.
“Tell them what you are!” I yelled, still on my knees, not knowing if this would provoke another mad-dog rage.
“We’ll let you go,” said Isaac. “You can get out of here. We don’t need your trouble!”
“No!” shouted Danielle. “We can’t!”
“It’s too late for that,” I answered. “You two murdered Violet. And they’re going to know what you are. You’re one of them. Bui doi.”
“Don’t you…! Don’t you say…!” He couldn’t finish it.
“What is that?” asked Eve, her voice irritable, impatient.
“It means ‘children of the dust,’” I said. And every one of them looked blankly at me. Except for Isaac. And Danielle. “You don’t see it, do you? But Danielle did. She caught it, and she used it.”
They still didn’t understand.
I hadn’t either, not for the longest time.
“It’s an ugly, pejorative term for mixed-race kids from the Vietnam War,” I explained. “Isaac’s father was a black American soldier. His mother was a peasant girl from a village outside Saigon. The man did his best to try to get his wife and their baby out, but they got caught in the bureaucracy….”
Beg Me Page 24