Chapter 3 - Merchandise, That's What They Are

That teacher had got them outta their hotel in small groups. I’d seen the CCTV clips. Little white minibus with tinted windows rolled up real early in the morning and it’d been real well planned. They’d had a few early morning starts, but not that morning. Not officially, but I guess the girls didn’t know that. Maybe that teacher told them it was a mistake or something, but whatever she’d said, it’d worked.

Four in the morning and only a single dozy night manager and he hadn’t even looked up as nine or ten sleepy looking girls in tracksuits walked out with a teacher and climbed into that first minibus, totally unsuspecting. The minibus pulled away, that teacher walked back in, and that was it. Gone. Another minibus rolled in twenty minutes later, another group of schoolgirls walked out. Three mini buses over an hour and that last group of girls, the teacher climbed in with them.

Nobody knew until later in the morning. None of the girls showed for breakfast at eight and by nine the rest of the teachers and the parents that were along as escorts started panicking. Four or five hours too late for the girls, they were long gone by then. Coulda been two, three hundred miles away by then. They’d be open for business in a day or so more, and we never did track down a single one of them. They’d disappeared without a trace. Every single fuckin’ one of them. Vanished. Fuck knows what happened to them, although I could guess, ‘n I didn’t want to even think about it.

Poor kids. Trip of their lives, ‘n they ended up being sold as whores. If they were lucky they ended up as whores, coz I was sure some of those girls were bought for single use only. There’s guys who pay for that kinda shit. Pay through the nose, use and dispose of whatever’s left. There’s sick bastards out there who enjoy it and who can afford it.

We did find that teacher a year or so later.

Found her body anyhow, ‘n we found the perp too. Not us, another police force, halfway across the country, ‘n they got some of the story from the perp. Asshole cut himself a deal, but they were still working on that when I got the bum’s rush. I did hear about it later though, from one of the guy’s I’d worked with, coz, well, we still worked together.

Unofficially.

“That teacher, silly bitch thought she was getting a new ID and a green card, as well as being paid. Snakeheads sold her along with the girls, ‘n that body we found, she’d been put to work in Vegas, hooked on drugs by the dude who was running her, went fucking bugnuts ‘n took the dude’s handgun ‘n tried to plug the asshole. She missed, and he hit the bitch a bit too hard. Last I heard he was doing his best to identify the dude he bought her from but you know how that goes...”

Yeah, I did. All too fucking well. Fucking no chance at all.

Those girls, they’re a commodity. The outfits that deal in those girls, fuck, they even have online brochures on the dark web listing them. Images. Age. Whether they’re used or new. Trained or untrained. Virginity status, coz virgins, fuck, some of those johns, they’ll pay a small fortune for a pretty young Asian virgin. Any virgin really, but those Asian girls are in demand, and everyone knows what they are.

Merchandise.

Merchandise that gets listed in online brochures on the dark web. Merchandise that’s auctioned off and delivered all over the fucking country. Hand delivered, and then opened for business, whether they like it or not, and fucking near none of them like it, but what the fuck can they do?

Asian girls, teenagers? Most of us are petite, and I’ll tell you what they can do. Not a fucking thing, ‘n I’d seen a couple of those brochures. The sorta young girls that shoulda been happily at home, doing shit with their friends at the local mall, going to girl scouts, just doing the things girls do, except maybe in Asian countries it was a bit different, but whatever.

Instead, they were listed for sale in those fucking brochures.

Page after page of girls listed, and some of them were so young they didn’t even have boobs, ‘n I’d cried. I’d fucking sat there shaking and crying and wishing I could kill every single one of those evil motherfuckers that did this to those young girls. Any girls, really, but it was worse seeing the kids. Worse knowing a lot of their parents, and the girls too, had been tricked into this. The parents sold them thinking they were going to be adopted into some wealthy family, or they were getting a modeling opportunity, or shit like that.

I’d seen those photos of them posing so earnestly, doing their best for the photographer, thinking they were gonna really become models, or get to act in movies, or go to live with some wealthy family that wanted to adopt a pretty young Asian girl, ‘n fuck, it broke my fucking heart. That eager hope on their faces, that excitement and anticipation of a new life, and then there was gonna be that awful fucking realization that it was all a fucking lie, that they’d been tricked and lied too, and all they were gonna be for the rest of their lives were whores, and not just whores, but fucking slaves.

Sex slaves.

It broke my fuckin’ heart and it left me filled with helpless rage, but in the end, what the fuck could I do?

Those girls, they’re expensive, and the younger they are, the more expensive they get, but it’s all relative. They’re cheap merchandise relative to the return, even the virgins are cheap, relatively speaking, because those girls, they don’t get paid. Fuck no. You think there’re no slaves in America? Well, there fucking are. Sex slaves. Thousands upon thousands of sex slaves, all over the fuckin’ country. Girls and young women, boys too, and they generate a huge fucking return for their owners. Coz that’s what they are. Owners. Slave owners, however you wanna pretty it up.

That’s the imports, but getting back to my niche, the local girls I was paid to recover, more often than not, those girls start off working locally. In a large urban sprawl like this, one huge fucking urban sprawl with a population in the millions, there’s always a lot of demand for girls. Always plenty of openings that need to be filled, and more often than not, no-one’s actively looking for them when they go missing, if they’re even reported at all, and a lot of them aren’t, and that’s where they end up.

Supply and demand.

There’s a niche market for attractive young Asian girls all across North America. Worldwide for that matter. Lotta older guys with money like young girls. You think Epstein was an anomaly? Fuck no. Epstein was just way too public. Thought he could get away with being as blatant as he was because he was rolling in it and and connected, but most of them aren’t that fucking stupid. They’re discrete, they’re careful, and they use cutoff’s like Johan’s little business.

Those guys, the guys that love young Asian girls, the ones with the money, they’ll pay whatever they need to, and yeah, I knew that from personal experience. My old boyfriend, back when I’d been at high school, he’d liked young Asian girls.

Girls like me.

That old boyfriend, he’d liked me a lot and he’d bought me anything I looked sideways at. Yeah, I’d been fourteen, just, and it’d been consensual, but he’d used me. Used the fuck out of me and back then, I’d loved it. Loved the way he spent money on me like it was water or something, bought me clothes, took me places, and I kinda thought that, well, he was paying and maybe he was a little weird, and maybe he was way too rough and he hurt me sometimes, but he said he loved me and he spent all that money on me so I kinda went with it and mostly I enjoyed it, ‘n I just used makeup to cover the bruises so my mom and dad didn’t see.

Now?

Well, I knew a bit more about him, and can’t say I was happy about what’d happened back then, but it wasn’t like I’d said no or anything, and he had bought me a lotta shit. I’d been all for it at the time, and it’d mostly been yes yes yes, ‘n I pretty much did anything he wanted coz I thought I loved him, and I was sure he loved me.

He’d said he did, anyhow, and that, along with all the money he spent on me, was enough back then to persuade me to do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted? Let’s just say he liked a good hard fuck and he liked to slap me around a bit and hurt me and leave it at that. Those girls, the girls that went into the trade, they were real popular, they were used hard, just like I’d been, but unlike me back then, they didn’t get any choice about saying yes or no.

The clientele, the ones that like young Asian girls, they loved ‘em and they didn’t care whether they said yes or no either. A lot of them preferred young Asian girls that said no. Got their thrills and their kicks outta the screaming and squealing and struggling. They’d pay big bucks for some fresh young Asian teenager who was hot looking, and for the traffickers, those girls, they’re real easy to move on, you can resell them, and there’s a good profit margin.

I’d see these images on the dark web, on those websites, and you could tell. The pose was there, but it was the face and the eyes, the sadness, the resignation. Those girls knew what they were for, and they knew there was nothing they could do about it. Absolutely fucking nothing. They knew they were there to be used. There to be enjoyed, but for most of them there wasn’t any enjoyment in it. Not for them. They were there to be used and they knew it.

Used again and again and again.

Those girls were walking talking cash registers, although not too many of the clients were interested in the talking. Or the walking for that matter, even if they liked the legs. As far as those clients were concerned, legs were for spreading, not walking, and feet were for waving in the air.

If they’re snatched off the street, like it looked like Miss Tokyo had been, the ROI, the return on investment, it’s huge. The people that snatch them, or acquire them, they know what they’re doing and they’re smooth. A girl on her own, out on some suburban street, walking home from the bus stop, she can disappear in, literally, seconds. Old white van marked up as a utility vehicle, Bell or something, no-one looks twice. A door slides open, some guy in overalls steps out, girl’s whisked in so fast she can’t even scream, door shuts, van drives off while she’s being zip-tied and duct-taped and stacked and racked in the back.

Thirty seconds and she’s vanished, just like that. She might not be the only one in the back either. Sometimes they’d pick up three or four in one run. Racked and stacked, literally. Half the time they’re snatching them to meet an order, because the buyers know exactly what they want, and most of the time the people that pick them up, they have a girl or girls identified already. It’s not opportunistic. It’s targeted, and they know what they want. They know where to pick them up from. They’ve been watching.

It’s planned, not opportunistic.

They’ll spot them, get their routine, and they’ll wait. They’re predators, and those girls are prey. They find them at their watering holes. Malls. Schools. Cinemas. The places girls go. That’s where the predators go too, and if you lurk there yourself, you can spot them sometimes. It’s hard, coz they blend in, the way predators do. No proof, but you know that’s what they are, and they’re successful predators too. It’s easy when the prey has no idea it’s being hunted, and all too many of those girls had no idea that they were prey.

No idea at all. They believed all that shit they were taught.

They really weren’t stupid little bitches. They’d been indoctrinated. Brainwashed. The cult that told them women could do anything, be anything, the movies that showed women fighting men twice their size and winning, the movies that portrayed men as wimps, the schools dominated by women teachers that belittled and emasculated the boys, those girls grew up blinded by all that shit.

When they met an Alpha predator like Johan who really didn’t give a flying fuck for what they believed, didn’t give a flying fuck for society or its rules, then they were totally fucked. Not just that, they found out they were prey for real, as helpless as a fawn when a lion has it by its throat, and they were about as fucked as that fawn was.

So yeah, those girls were easy meat and they were gone in seconds, gone the way a fawn is when a crocodile drags it down into a waterhole. Vanished like that fawn. Forever. Meat for the predators and any attempt they made to fight was about as effective as a fawn fighting off a crocodile.

The buyers that those girls go to, they’re generally looking locally for fresh merchandise for their stables, although locally is all relative. Whatever they pay, their investment’s going to generate a huge return, even for the girls they pay a higher price for because they dealt with a supplier or they paid to have them picked up. Most of the time, they’re not taking risks picking up the girls themselves, they’re taking a delivery, and by then the girls have already disappeared. It’s not often that the guys that run those stables actually lift a girl off the street, not themselves, that’s way too risky for the guys that run the businesses those girls are a staple of.

They prefer to buy her and it doesn’t cost that much to have a girl snatched, and compared to the return, it’s small change.

Sometimes the guys that deal in these girls, the brokers, they’ll buy her from her family, that’s safer. They know she’ll never be reported, and that happens more often than you think. Those old-style fresh-off-the-boat Asian families, illegals from the rice fields, straight out of the old days? Girls are a useless mouth, and if selling them helps the family, some of them will sell. Asian culture. For a lot of fresh-off-the-boat Asians, those girls are nothing more than property, and if they’re a real looker, they can make good money selling them. If they can earn that money from selling them, some of them will. Nowhere near all of course, but enough that you know it happens more than just now and then.

Sometimes buyers pick up the girl in payment for a debt. Gambling usually. Never figured out why, but a lot of Asian men are gambling addicts, and they’ll run up huge debts in those illegal gambling dens. Sometimes they’re illegals as well, and their payments on the debt for bringing them in have fallen behind, and then they owe even more. You owe money? Got a good looking daughter? We’ll take her for the arrears in interest. Better not be under next month or we’ll take the other one.

Sometimes it’s drugs. Their boyfriend introduces them to those drugs, they get addicted, they need the money, and once they’re desperate for the drugs, they’ll do anything for it. Those ones don’t last long. Meth or whatever other shit they’re hooked on fucks them up, and you’ll see those hookers that look like they’re fifty fucking years old, but they’re actually in their twenties or younger, and then they’re dead. Once they’re on drugs, it pretty much takes a miracle to get them back, and yeah, every now and then a miracle happens, but not often.

When I was a cop, we’d try. Some of us would anyway. Nowhere near all coz you just don’t have the time. Try and get those girls into one of the places that’d help them, but they hardly ever stayed. Sometimes you’d try again and again, and then one day a body would turn up and you’d notify the parents. Asian parents? Girls? Some of them cried, and some of them shrugged.

Either way, the girl was dead.

Sometimes it’s their “boyfriends” that sell them, especially if they get involved with gangs. Asian gangs view girls the same way their families do. They’re a financial asset, and hey, she might be your girlfriend, but if the gang can sell her and make money on the deal ... goodbye Suzy Wong, you’ve been sold, and you belong to this dude now. Spread wide for him, and no, you’re not going to get to say goodbye to your momma or your poppa. You’ve been sold.

Oh yeah, and sayonara, honey. You weren’t a bad fuck.

Yeah, that happens more often than you think. Sucks, and you can warn those girls what’s gonna happen until you’re blue in the face, but they won’t believe you.

“He loves me. He’d never do anything like that.”

I’d heard that when I was a cop, doing those talks in the middle schools and the high schools with a lotta Asian girls, time after time, and I’d tell those girls that whatever she thinks, the gang comes first for him, and by the time she finds that out, it’s gonna be too fucking late, and pretty little Suzy Wong is gonna be well and truly fucked.

They hardly ever believed me, and it wasn’t like you could lock the poor misguided little bitches up, not these days. Nope, you can’t, and when they disappeared, which a few of them did, everybody shrugged. “No idea. Who?”

Too late by then.

After that, what the fuck could you do except open a missing persons docket and move on? Because you knew that wherever those girls were, they were long gone by the time you started looking, and maybe they’d turn up somewhere, some day. Maybe they’d even turn up alive. Wasn’t like you could bust in anywhere without a warrant, and if you had no idea where they were, no judge was gonna give you one of those just to bust doors down on the off-chance.

They were gone, and they were never coming home.

Sometimes it was their own choice, especially the girls from poor families who see the easy money. They see guys who pay big bucks for sex, and after some guy’s scored with them and they liked it, and they’ve done it with a couple more guys, it’s lost its romance, it’s just sex, and they figure it’s not that big a deal if they do it with another guy, so why not, it’s way easier and more fun than working like a slave for their families back of the restaurant or the dry cleaning service or whatever, and they’re in business.

The smart ones end up working through escort agencies and in clubs that more or less make sure things are okay, and they’re the lucky ones. I always figured those girls knew what they were doing, and why, and good for them. Making the most of what they had, which is what most girls do when you get down to it, whether they want to admit it or not.

The not so lucky ones, they’d end up working for a pimp in his stable, and enough said on that one. They’d survive, but they didn’t have too many choices. But at least they had choices, sort of, and they could get away from that life if they wanted to, badly enough. Some of them even did.

Then there were the real runaways. The girls that weren’t so much missing as abused so badly that they’d done a runner on their parents and didn’t want to go home, and in Asian families, that was almost always girls, coz they got the shit end of everything. You could usually spot those ones. The parents’ who were real assholes, and there were a lot of them. Especially Asian parents. Real assholes to girls. Me, I was American-Chinese, I came from that culture. I knew. I’d seen girls I knew take the sort of shit from their parents that would’ve had me running myself.

One or two that I’d known back at high school had. Run, that is.

Most of the ones that ran ended up in the sex trade, regardless of whether that was what they intended or not, coz where the fuck else did they have to run too? Most of them, they came from tight families, insular, not too many friends outside the family, and they didn’t know who else they could turn to.

Teenage girl out there on her own on the streets with no idea where to go? An Asian teenage girl at that? They were defenseless. They were prey, and there were predators out there with about as much mercy in them as a hyena. Those girls more often than not found out the hard way that what they were running away from really hadn’t been quite so bad, but by then it was too fucking late for most of them. Then again, for some of those girls, what they found was actually better than what they’d had, and when that happened, well, you knew things musta been real fucking bad back at home, if you could call what they ran from a home.

And then you got the ones like Miss Tokyo.

Taken off the street, and that wasn’t that common. It wasn’t actually that risky, not for the professionals who knew what they were doing, and when they were snatched like Miss Tokyo probably had been, there was always a reason. Sometimes, not very often, it was a straight out opportunistic sex crime. Rape, and sometimes murder, but this one just didn’t have that feel. What it did feel like was a pickup to meet an order. Someone had wanted a girl like Fumiko Suematsu, and there were a lot of reasons for that.

Reasons that Greg and I knew all too well, and that was why I was here.