Beg Me

by Lisa Lawrence

  The rest of them stood spellbound as Isaac retreated to his chair. To escape, he would have had to shove past the gauntlet of his followers, who were seeing him properly for the first time. But that wouldn’t save his face.

  Anwar moved toward me as if he were sleepwalking, unlocking my chains.

  I looked at Isaac. “You grew up there. You’re fluent in the language, of course. How do I pronounce your name, anyway? The one your mother gave you.”

  He couldn’t answer me.

  “That’s why you hate Asians so much, isn’t it?” I demanded. “That’s why the drugs are supposed to be blamed on the triads, right? Because they treated you like shit, this little brown boy who was a half-caste to them, and they treated you worse than dirt.”

  “Oh, my God,” whispered one of the girls.

  Isaac’s head made a slight palsied shake, his eyes dark bottomless chasms of loathing and secret pain. “You all talk to me about what it’s like to be put down. You—don’t—know—anything!”

  He was pitiful. But I couldn’t pity him. He disgusted me, not because of what he was but because of the result. He let it define him in the worst way imaginable: He stewed and stewed and turned himself into a killer. It could be understood but not tolerated.

  “Oh, so we’re supposed to compare suffering and you win?” I sneered. “That gives you a license to kill and cheat and screw people over? Fuck you!”

  Anwar stared at him. “Isaac, you’re Vietnamese?”

  Isaac laughed cruelly, a laugh at himself as much as at Anwar.

  “They wouldn’t call him Vietnamese over there,” I explained. “In their culture, children like him, especially black kids, are treated like shit. He lived in the worst poverty, was on the lowest social rung, always.”

  I ran it down quickly. How the young Isaac had once had his arm broken in a savage beating by other kids in his village. The names he would have been called. Too black for Vietnam, and feeling like a complete alien when he was among his brothers in the U.S. Too many scars on his psyche to just live, to just be. The name, his Vietnamese name, had helped Chen and me uncover it all.

  How he had first applied for an immigration visa to the U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, and how he had got an astonishing letter that dared to tell him he didn’t have sufficient Amerasian features to be allowed into the United States under the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987. How an obliging “auntie”—probably in cahoots with a corrupt official at the legation—had bled him out of thousands of dollars for a visa.

  “So you come to the States, and you change your name to your dad’s so no one will know,” I went on, staring him down. “But you’re still so full of self-loathing. Let me guess. You were sexually abused as well, weren’t you?”

  “No,” he whispered. Too quickly.

  “Yes, you were. It explains a lot. You were spoken to like a thing, abused, mistreated. You’ve never had real loving intimacy with anyone in your life, have you? What happened, Isaac? You learn about the power dynamics from relying on prostitutes? It’s only natural. Because you grew up thinking that if anyone talks to you, if anyone gets close, they must want something. So you’ve learned how to manipulate people.”

  “I’m not like that,” he said weakly. “That is not what my philosophy is—”

  “Your philosophy!” I sneered. “You don’t have a philosophy. She has a philosophy—” I pointed at Danielle in the corner, who was trying to look smaller and smaller.

  “You’re the bad boy she found on a street corner, Isaac. She’s the true master manipulator. And she saw your potential. As a tool. As a front. Because nobody’s sophisticated enough when it comes right down to it, are they? Not over sex, and not over power. Not yet. Everyone needs a king. The girls want a fantasy, and the guys want an alpha male wolf to defer to. And your big chip on your shoulder is how she keeps you under her thumb.”

  “No…No…” Chanting it in denial.

  Fathers. That was the missing link between Nigeria and Vietnam. Oliver and Isaac. The devastating ruin to families caused by war. Danielle knew all about Jackson Senior and probably overheard Oliver confiding about his dad to Isaac. When she discovered what happened to Anyanike, she saw the opportunity to screw around with Oliver’s head to keep him in line. She knew what had worked with Isaac, what haunted her lover, so she must have reckoned that a father’s ghost would prove just as effective with Oliver.

  And I’d bet she also did it just for fun. Not a gal into sadomasochism. A pure genuine sadist.

  Evil. She really was.

  “I bet you always come when you’re with her, don’t you?” I suggested to Isaac. “She builds up your ego when you need it, but she never, ever, lets you forget what you are. Is that what it is? You’re really intimidated by Asian chicks or black women? So you go for nice safe vanilla?”

  “I don’t care about that!” he shouted, his eyes flicking to the others nervously.

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “You can barely stand to live with yourself. But you actually were attracted to Anna, weren’t you? And that just fucked you up more! When she figured out what you were doing, she had to go. Let me guess: Danielle came up with the whole drug-buy-gone-bad scenario. And then, because you hate what you are, you hate that you’re black and Asian, you wanted to rub her brother’s nose in it! Look what you can do to the nice, prim Asian girl. Look what you can do to those people who scarred you!”

  “They can all rot in hell,” he growled.

  “That’s how you gave yourself away,” I said, twisting the knife. “Why go to all that meticulous care and then blow it by gloating? Danielle’s the careful one, but you—you had to gloat. Those pictures you sent Ah Jo Lee. You might as well have autographed them!”

  He stared at me, dumbfounded by the extent of my knowledge. Impossible for him, so much of the dead past and the recent past, now dredged up from its slime to grab his leg and pull him in.

  “They didn’t get him, by the way,” I said to Danielle. “Anna’s brother. We stopped your assassins. You sent them when you realized what Isaac did, right? It’s the only thing that explains the schizo attitude toward Jeff Lee—taunting him and then sending men to kill him. You knew Isaac’s porn-o-gram might help Jeff Lee track you down. And you were right. He hired me to find you. By the way, you should thank me—I told him I wouldn’t kill you.”

  Danielle stared at me too, in disbelief. Shaking her fists, looking like she wanted to jump out of her own skin, she screamed helplessly, “How can you know all this? How can you know where he’s from? How can you know?”

  Free of the chains, I stepped forward and socked her one in the nose. As she fell on her ass, I replied, “You gave me library privileges, remember?”

  For the benefit of the others, I added, “It’s what I do.”

  They all stared at me, shamed, contrite, feeling foolish. I wish I could have taken the time to assure them that I didn’t judge what they liked or did. How could I when I had been part of it? It was Isaac and Danielle who came along and played on their sexual desires, who warped them into a movement for their own ends.

  “You’re some kind of detective or something?” asked a shy girl.

  “No, I just solve problems. And Anna was my friend. They killed her….”

  The tattoo on Anna’s thigh, taken from a Vietnamese gang motto. Isaac’s contribution to the staging of the cover-up.

  “And they killed Anna’s boyfriend, a guy in London named Craig Padmore.”

  Craig, who purchased a book, searching for Isaac’s father, but found Isaac between the lines instead. The references to GIs hooking up with young Vietnamese girls and setting up their own informal domestic arrangements—Craig Padmore had put it together. All because Isaac was ashamed of his mother’s roots so he compensated by inventing on his dad’s side.

  “Just like they killed Violet,” I went on.

  “I didn’t kill Violet!” protested Isaac.

  “No, your stupid dom bitch murdered Violet just for fun.
And she’s spiked your drug cocktail. It’ll massacre thousands, and I bet you don’t give a damn about that because it’ll kill more Asian men, right?”

  Now the princes and princesses were muttering words of shock, oh, my God, stuff like that, and a few had the good sense to grab hold of Danielle and keep her restrained.

  But nobody had moved on Isaac.

  He shouted something like “Ungrateful bastards!” And bodychecked his devotees out of the way, fleeing the room. They watched him go, paralyzed with indecision, hardly knowing what to think anymore.

  I did.

  He’d been their object of worship. So many of them had secretly, privately resented Danielle, and I knew I didn’t have to worry about her going anywhere. But Isaac. Couldn’t let him escape.

  I ran up out of the deep cellar and into the ground-floor hallways, listening for which direction he’d gone. Then I stopped at one of the guest rooms to grab a robe to throw on. I was naked and in chains a minute ago, and I had had enough of that.

  “Isaac!” I yelled.

  The door was flung open.

  I ran out in bare feet, instantly regretting that I hadn’t donned a pair of shoes, too late now. He was a silhouette up ahead in a field, his back to me, panting. I suspected his labored breathing was more from mental breakdown than physical exhaustion. He turned to me yards away, and though I couldn’t see his face, I heard a guttural wail, terrifying in its anguish. It wasn’t me who destroyed him. I know I wasn’t the one to do it. It was the culmination of a process that had started forty years ago.

  Oh, God, he’s wearing—

  “Isaac! Isaac, no! NO!”

  Wearing a collar. I’d seen one like it before.

  “Isaac!”

  In Bangkok.

  The same grotesque studs, barbs on the inside of the leather. I watched helplessly as he dropped to the ground and pulled the cord taut with his legs. I didn’t have a prayer of reaching him. He sent the studs shooting out, and they did their gruesome work on his carotid artery. Dead in seconds.

  My guess was that it would probably turn out he’d designed the stupid thing. Had been meaning to do it off and on for ages.

  I turned around and walked back to the mansion, which flickered in strobe lights from the police cruisers. Red, red, blue—red, red, blue. Chen stood in the doorway, a couple of patrolmen with him, already asking me if I was all right and where was Jackson. I briefed them on how I’d been captured and brought here, the whole scene in the dungeon.

  I remembered what Jeff Lee had asked me before I flew out. Hurt them for me. That’s what he had wanted me to do.

  Too late, I thought.

  “Tell me you didn’t let that bitch slip away,” I said to Chen.

  “Sitting in the back of a cruiser at this very moment,” he answered. “We got the others in the street—that Gordon guy and your sparring partner too. Even better, those guys already gave up Danielle as the one who killed your friend—they left her body in the park. The murder plus the drugs plus the poison—she’s going to sit in a hole for a long time.”

  That gave me some satisfaction, to think Danielle would find out what a real dungeon was like.

  And I relished the idea that the sneaky little bastard Jimmy got dragged away in cuffs, still saying, “Please…Please…” He could say it all the way to Rikers Island.

  “You know Danielle’s damn lucky we do have her,” said Chen. “I can’t stop every leak, and word’s already made it to the triads. They’ve put out a contract on her. Her and Jackson.”

  “They don’t have to worry about Jackson anymore. What about the drugs?”

  “We think we managed to intercept most of them. I know that sounds piss poor at the moment, but we’re spreading the word. With the media’s help and more raids in the next couple of weeks, we’ll hopefully prevent any tragedies.”

  “Yeah…”

  “You sound tired, Teresa. Plus it looks like the paramedics ought to take a look at you.”

  “I’ll be okay. What about the minor royalty back there?”

  “Take ’em all in for questioning. Probably have to let ’em go in a few hours—unless you want to add them as accomplices to your formal complaint of kidnapping.”

  I shook my head. “You’ll want to question a girl called Eve Baker. But I doubt most of the others knew anything about the drugs. I didn’t recognize all the faces at the lab. Those here who were in on it…I’m sure you can sniff them out and break them.”

  “But they must know,” Chen complained. “Come on! You’re telling me all these people didn’t know something?”

  “It’s a cult,” I said, a slight edge in my voice. Nerves after the ordeal. “Just because they’re black and go in for kink doesn’t mean they’re criminals, too. These guys deluded themselves into making that couple their heroes.” I let out a heavy sigh, couldn’t help it. “Listen, John, if justice is blind so is faith. And I know Violet didn’t know anything. Violet was innocent.”

  He wasn’t going to contradict me. Certainly not about Violet.

  “Fair enough,” he answered. “They’ll still have to answer subpoenas and appear in court to testify about Isaac and Danielle. Won’t be fun for them telling an open court about their sex lives.”

  “Speaking of testifying…”

  I wasn’t crazy about the idea either. Maybe they’d call me a hero for helping to bring down an ecstasy drug ring, but my dad could probably do without a Reuters story describing how his little girl went on all fours naked in a doggy collar.

  Chen’s lip curled in what could pass for a smile. “Yeah, I thought you might ask me about that. Short answer: We don’t need you. We got the drugs. We got the key street personnel. We’ve got Danielle and the testimony against her—and she’s most of the financial connections.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “How does it feel to know you’ve earned the gratitude of major triad operations in New York City?” he teased. “Must be good for a couple of favors from them.”

  “Let’s hope I don’t have to call any in,” I said. “Look, John, if you can, try to spare most of those people in the house from court, will you? They were sucked in and used, and they don’t really know anything. Their private lives…”

  “It won’t be my call, to be honest. But if we can get the guys on the street to testify against Danielle, all the sex stuff is kinda beside the point. It’ll probably come out. I mean, Jesus! They’ve got all that BDSM gear, for Christ’s sake. But maybe the lawyers won’t need everyone.”

  “Do your best,” I said.

  “Go see the paramedic,” he ordered. “Then come find me.”

  “What for?”

  “I think I owe you a really good Chinese meal.”

  14

  Ah Jo Lee heard about the case even before I phoned him to make a report. I guess I had John Chen to thank for that. Lee was so grateful, he deposited a bonus in my account. That just left some loose ends to tie up, and I knew that I had become one of them. What I was going to do now. What kind of person I had turned into.

  To catch Isaac and Danielle, I had temporarily left myself. I had come to Oliver and willingly handed my mind and body over to him, let him train me and condition me, mold me into a supposed tool for someone else, even though I was a knife waiting for a back. I couldn’t lie about what I felt. The pleasures, the sensations…I had to admit that I got lost in them.

  But, then, they counted on that, didn’t they? Isaac and Danielle. The pool doesn’t feel so warm and cozy anymore as you slip under the water, but still you go quietly down, and you’re not breathing. It’s such a quiet slow-motion sinking slide down, personal identity floating away as if that was more vain affectation.

  Violet. The sensible, the tangible became Violet, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we would have had a chance of lasting if we had met outside. I was going to bleed from that wound for quite a while. Oh, God, Violet.

  I had left a piece of myself behind in that mansion, and when I cam
e back to the bookshop, I knew there was no future with Oliver.

  “But I left them, babe!” he insisted. “Goddammit, Teresa, you’re not being fair.”

  “We never talked about having a future,” I reminded him. “I don’t want to be with someone who’s always going to remind me of that case.”

  “That’s a fucking cop-out!”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “I got into it for a job. This…stuff. It’s in you. You repress it, Oliver. You blow hot and cold on me. You’ve got demons I can’t help you with.”

  I heard the resentment in his voice. “Who are you trying to fool, Teresa? You really think I couldn’t have done what I did to you unless you had a need?”

  I looked at him and didn’t respond. What would be the point? I could never convince him, and while it sounds callous, I didn’t have strong enough feelings for him that I cared about his good opinion of me. I think he tried. Hey, he would always try to be a loving partner to someone. But give him enough rope…He had desires that I didn’t want to share anymore. Not that I was ashamed of them, but I didn’t need them, not really. I threw out the big philosophical question once about what was normal. And I knew what normal was now.

  It was what I wanted to feel, what I longed to feel with someone that lasted beyond seconds of shock-pleasure. Genuine tenderness.

  And the undeniable, unspeakable truth that made him completely wrong about me was Violet.

  I told him we should keep things on a professional level. There was one last piece of business I could do to avenge his father, and it meant him picking up the tab for a few expenses, including a British Airways ticket back to Europe.

  “Okay,” he said. He didn’t hesitate to bring out his checkbook.

  Bishop. Time to settle up with that destroyer of lives.

  Simon had come through days ago, but I didn’t learn that he had found Bishop’s whereabouts until I’d wrapped up all the police stuff with Chen and had gone through my saved messages. Simon said he hadn’t confronted him yet. He thought I might want to…He didn’t say participate. He used the simple words be there. I might like to be there. So he would wait awhile.