Chapter 5

Standing there outside the Suematsu’s house, a phone in each hand, looking out into the rain and the darkness, I had one of those moments where you kinda wonder if maybe you should have taken a different career path. I mean, I dealt with this sorta shit every day, day after day, and I had more business than I could handle. Girls like Miss Tokyo, in a city this size, they went missing all the time, and it was hard, standing there, knowing what was happening to her right this moment. Knowing I could go in and bring her back to her family, right now. Tonight.

It was harder still knowing I wasn’t going to do it.

I mean, I wasn’t Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe in some fucking old noir movie, or Mike Hammer in some cheap Mickey Spillane thriller, smacking dames and dolls around and saving the day. I wasn’t some Bronson or Eastwood vigilante putting down the bad guys and getting away with murder. Well, not often, anyhow.

There’d only been three or four.

Okay okay. Half a dozen, but they deserved it.

I was just an ex-cop running my own little niche business, doing my job, making the tradeoffs that let me get those girls back to their mommas and their poppas. They’d be a bit used, a bit the worse for wear, they might have a few issues, but they’d be back home eventually. Their life, it’d go back to being as close to normal as it would ever be after you’ve been kidnapped, broken in, put to work as a high class hooker and fucked by a couple of hundred different guys in every orifice a girl has, whether you wanted to be or not.

It sucked, but fuck, the alternatives, they all sucked far worse.

Coz there were fucking hundreds of those young teenage girls, who knew how many, a couple of thousand, five thousand, maybe more, maybe less, out there at any one time just in this single big fucking urban sprawl. I’d already recovered quite a few over the two years I’d been in business, and if I stayed in this business, there’d be hundreds more. If I called Greg out of that house, and we went in and got Fumiko Suematsu back, I’d be condemning those girls I could’ve returned back home to a lifetime of what Fumiko Suematso would only have to endure for a few weeks.

For Fumiko Suematsu, it was a nightmare that was just starting, but it’d end after a few weeks, she’d go home, and all it’d be was a fucking nightmare in her past. There wasn’t anything else I could do for her, not and stay in business. Not and get back all those other girls in future, not to mention the other girls I already had deposits on. If I didn’t get back those other girls, they’d go through what Fumiko Suematsu was going through, but without any end. They’d live that nightmare, on and on, until the day they died. Yeah, it was a tradeoff, it was always a tradeoff, but I’d made my decision on that tradeoff when I went into this business.

It was a tough decision to live with, but I’d managed so far.

I mean, I could sympathize with what she was going through, and what she would be going through, but sympathy and empathy, they destroy your objectivity. Detachment and logic, that’s what you need in a job like this, and you gotta stay divorced from the emotional aspects of the job. You have to. It was hearing them being broken in that made it hard, though. Hard to ignore that. Hard to stay objective when you could hear them being broken in. Hard to think of it as business when you could hear them screaming and sobbing and pleading and being smacked around and terrorized, and you knew what was happening to them.

Yeah, it was real fuckin’ hard.

Fumiko Suematsu didn’t know I’d be getting her outta there eventually. She likely didn’t know she was gonna be an integral part of Johan’s business soon either, giving Johan’s clientele the services they expected. She’d find that out soon enough if she didn’t know already, like, tomorrow morning, and it wouldn’t be great for her, finding that out, but at least I’d get her back. Hearing those background sounds on Johan’s phone, knowing what was happening, knowing she had no idea yet what she was gonna be doing, yeah, well, it was fucking difficult to take. I knew that. I’d rather have put four mags into Johan myself, left him looking like a colander, and taken her home right away, and fuck, I could do Johan without a qualm but I knew the consequences of handling it that way too, and I told myself what I always told myself.

What I’d been telling myself for two years in this fuckin’ business.

Telling myself what I told myself every time I heard this.

Fumiko Suematsu would have to tough it out.

It was business. Just business.

Business as usual.

Johan, he’d keep her in reasonably good shape now that he knew I’d be paying for her when it was time to hand her over. No permanent damage, physically at least. The parents, they’d get their girl back in a few weeks. Heavily used, maybe a little fucked up psychologically, but most of the girls I brought home survived without being too fucked in the head. Even the ones at low end of that bell curve of Johan’s. Actually, those ones quite often handled it better.

Mostly, and if their parents could afford me, they could afford the therapy.

Returned after being used hard was way better than not being returned at all, and that was the only alternative. Johan? He was happy. Dude was sitting on a little Japanese cash register for the next few weeks. Johan’s wealthy clients, and they had to be wealthy because Johan charged big bucks for his services, just like I charged big bucks for mine, they’d be real happy with their fresh little Japanese honey, and they’d pay through the nose to use her. Me, I’d get my money. Greg, he’d take his cut from what I was paid. The family, they’d get their little darling back alive and maybe a little fucked up, but intact. Well, except for her hymen, but what the fuck. That clinic I referred them to could have that fixed too.

Everyone was happy.

Everyone except the merchandise.

That clinic had drugs that looked after that.

Me, I was making sure the merchandise got home intact, and I could feel good about that. That’s what I told myself every time, and I almost had myself convinced. Almost. Coz the alternative was I’d be frozen out, if someone didn’t put a bullet into me when I was looking the wrong way. No more girls returned. No more work for Mallory Kwon, maybe no more Mallory Kwon, and fuck, I had no idea what else I could do.

Barista? Waitress? Job in Walmart?

Go fuck yourself.

Maybe private security, but Jesus, I couldn’t face some corporate job, and who’d take someone like me seriously. Not when you had ex-SEALS and cops that actually looked like cops, guys with a hundred years of experience, applying. And what was my job experience? Sex crimes, and working as bait, and I might be twenty eight, but even on a bad day I still looked like jailbait. Nope, I had a niche, I had my own business, I was good at it, and I was doing good work saving those girls. I had to think of it as business. I had to.

Girls like Fumiko Suematsu?

I had to think of them as merchandise. Just another commodity to be moved, nothing I could do to change that. There’d always be others, and they were gonna be moved forever, whatever I did. They had been for thousands of years. Oldest profession in the world. This little Japanese honey, she was gonna be a cash register for Johan for as long as he had her. He’d work her hard, get every buck he could out of her while he had her, but whatever, there was fuck all I could do about that except pick her up and get her outta there when her time was up.

Poor little bitch.

Nope. Fumiko Suematsu was gonna have to take it for a few weeks, just like all the others. She’d live. Can’t say I felt that good about that, but I did feel better about it, knowing that after I’d contacted Johan, he’d hold her for me, and I was getting her back. Think about it for a moment. If you were one of those girls, would you rather disappear into the sex trade permanently, or be returned home after a few weeks, a little the worse for wear?

I knew what I’d choose.

Not to mention, if I actually put Johan or one of those other dudes down, that prick of a DA would put me away, and you don’t wanna know what happens to cops or ex-cops in the slammer. I’d heard stories, and there was no way I was risking that. Fuck that DA. I’d known the prick far too well, and I swear he had a hard-on for crims, and he got off on fucking the victims and the cops too. He’d sure got off on fucking me, back when I was in high school.

Wouldn’t have minded putting four mags into that asshole either.

Yeah, well, I knew the choices sucked, but I was in the business I was in, and I did get the merchandise returned, the ones I was paid to find anyhow, and more often than not, I did return them. The guys like Johan, they knew me. They knew I paid the market rates, no questions asked, and they knew I didn’t snitch. They knew if they turned them over to me, there wasn’t any risk to them either, not over the girls I got returned, and not over any other girls they ran, coz that was what made me real special.

Greg looked after that side.

No questions asked by the cops. No follow-ups. No medical exams, not by the cops anyhow. That clinic I got my cut from looked after all my referrals, and they were real discreet. Good, too. The dudes like Johan, they got their payoff, and they sure didn’t lose out. Sometimes they even gave me a freebie or two to use to help keep the cops sweet. Me, I got the girl. The cops got to close another case. The family got their girl back.

Trade offs.

After listening to that poor little Japanese bitch being broken in, I wasn’t happy about some of those tradeoffs, but all the other options were worse, so I did what I always did. I walked out into the street and the rain, tossed the burner phone into the storm water drain, turned, and headed back in towards the front door. Time to lay it on the line for the Suematsu’s and bank that deposit.

I was doing this three or four times a week now, sometimes more, and business was good. Real good, and I knew what to say to my clients, and how to say it. Yeah, time to toughen up and quit with the fucking around second guessing myself. Fumiko Suematsu was gonna be business as usual.

For everyone except her and her family.

When a teenage girl, a girl like Fumiko Suematsu, when she disappears, the space she used to occupy is filled right away. It varies a bit, depending on where the epicenter is, and right now, the epicenter was the lounge of their house. The Suematsu’s. Someone from the consulate. Greg. One of the guys from Greg’s team. Me. No friends. No relations. They were all back in Japan. No reporters, thank Christ, but even with that, it wasn’t quiet. The family’s always talking. Asking questions. Weeping and wailing, although Mrs. Suematsu was weeping quietly. Whatever, there’s noise, but nothing is louder than the silence of the missing girl. It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes.

The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you gotta get used to. But the silence of a missing daughter, a daughter that’s gone missing like Fumiko Suematsu had gone missing, that isn’t something anybody wants to get used to; the family refuses to accept it, and they scream at you. They plead at you. They beg. They question. They don’t want to believe she’s gone. They don’t want to believe what’s happening.

They want hope.

They want their little girl back.

You gotta make them believe it’s happened, and then you gotta try and give them that hope. Give them something to cling to. Something to keep them going, and I could do that because I knew Fumiko Suematsu was coming back to them. Not always, but this was one of those times when I knew, and Greg went along. After a coupla years, he knew my track record. He believed in me, coz I got results. He knew how I got those results, and I knew that too. We just never talked about it.

Not even when Greg took the cut from me for him and his team.

“Gonna be blunt with you, Mr. and Mrs. Suematsu,” I said, introductions done, platitudes expressed, dripping rain on the carpet. Hadn’t bothered with the commiserations. Be a bit pointless. Hadn’t bothered taking my Doc Martens off either. Just have to put them on again.

“There’s about a ninety nine percent chance she was snatched for the sex trade, and right now they’re already breaking her in. She’s a good looking girl, and she’s gonna be used hard, and you’re gonna have to accept that and deal with it. I can’t do a thing about that, but I can get her back for you. That I can guarantee. She won’t have been moved on yet, likely she won’t be, not for a few months. She’s a looker and she’ll make them a lot of money, so they won’t be keen to move her on too fast, they’ll want to make as much out of her as they can first, and if I move quickly, I should be able to find her. It’s not going to be that fast though. Weeks, not days. It takes time to track a missing girl down.”

Well, I knew I was right about all of that, but no way I could say that, was there? I’d lay it on the line though, and I wasn’t going to sugar-coat it. Fumiko Suematsu was fucked, whatever way you wanted to look at it. Well, I knew she was being fucked right now, but I couldn’t exactly share that with her parents, could I?

“Breaking her in? Used hard? What does that mean please, Miss Kwon?” Mrs. Suematsu sat there looking at me, tears trickling down her cheeks, leaving trails in her no longer immaculate makeup.

Her husband and the Consul looked at each other, and I knew they knew. Japanese? Male? They’d probably both been on those sex tours Jap dudes went on to places like Bangkok and Manila. Yeah, I saw that look on their faces. They both understood exactly what I meant.

Fucking pigs.

“If it’s what I think it is, and I’m ninety nine percent sure it is, she’s being trained up to work in the sex trade, and she’s being used for sex non-stop by half a dozen men right now, Mrs Suematsu,” I said, not bullshitting her. Better to just lay it all out there. She’d have to face up to it. Might as well face up now.

“That’s how they do it with a new girl when they want to break her in for the trade.” I shrugged. “She was taken this afternoon. The way she vanished, I can pretty much guarantee that’s what happened and they’re gonna have been taking turns fucking her all today and probably tonight, and after they’ve fucked her non-stop and slapped her around a bit until she’s too scared to say no to anything they want, they’re gonna make a hooker out of her. She’s a sex slave, being blunt about it, and that’s what she’ll be doing until I can find her and get her back for you.”

Didn’t make me feel good saying it, but you had to lay it out for them, make them understand and the best way to get it through was to be blunt. Set some expectations, because it was pointless pretending. She’d be pretty fucked in the head when she made it home. Most of them were, the ones like Fumiko Suematsu who’d never had sex before, let alone a boyfriend. Most of them recovered, eventually, but yeah, well, most girls never really got over it, not completely, and what I was telling them was pretty much the best case scenario, not the worst.

I’d seen the worst more than a couple of times back when I’d been a cop. and I still had nightmares. Won’t share those, or you’d be having nightmares too. Sure as shit I wouldn’t ever share those with Mr. and Mrs. Sumatsu. I aimed to give them hope, hope that I could pretty much guarantee, not nightmares.

“They’ll put her to work starting tomorrow. She’ll be servicing as many johns as they want to put through her every day, seven days a week, until I get her back. Nothing’s gonna change that, like I said. You pay me, I’ll track her down, I’ll find out who has her, and I’ll get her back as fast as I can, however I can, but however fast I can find her and get her back, she’s gonna have been worked as a hooker. She’ll have been used for sex, and used real hard, right up until I get her outta wherever she is. It’s that simple.”

Greg kinda winced, but then, he always did when I laid it out.

Nope, I didn’t bullshit. I laid it on the line for them.

Better they understood up front.

Greg already knew.

Mrs. Suematsu sure understood now, and she sat on the couch, her face even paler than it had been, sobbing soundlessly. For her, it was the worst nightmare any parent could imagine.

Except she was wrong.

It could be worse.

Worse?

That was when Greg called up and asked them to come in and identify the body.

Worse than that?

Yeah, that was when they vanished, and you just never knew. Were they alive? Were they dead? What was happening to them? That uncertainty was way worse. No closure, and you had no idea what’d happened to them. No closure at all, that was by far the worst. At least when they were dead, when there was a body, you knew, you could grieve, you could put it behind you, as best you could.

Me, I laid it on the line, and I was blunt about it, but I offered hope, and for Fumiko Suematsu, I knew I could deliver on that hope. The Suematsu’s would get their girl back. Used, yeah. Used hard, but she’d be back, she’d be alive, and she’d have learned to be a real good fuck once she got her head back together. Most of them did, eventually. That clinic I referred them to had real good therapists and they had a lotta experience now with the girls I referred to them. They weren’t cheap either, but I got a good kickback from them.

Didn’t get much better than that in this business.

“Keep this away from the press, leave it to me. I’ll find her. I’ll get her back as fast as I can, I promise you that, and no-one will ever know unless you want them to.”

Well, no-one but us here in this room, every man that got to fuck her, and of course, Fumiko Suematsu. She’d know all too well. It wasn’t going to be a fun-filled few weeks for her. Mind you, it wasn’t going to be quite as bad as I made it out to be. Johan’s clientele paid big bucks for hot looking young Asian girls, and most of his clientele were older dudes with money. Businessmen. Execs. Politicians.

A lotta money, and some of those guys weren’t just old. They were pretty fucking ancient. Those older guys just didn’t get it up as fast or as often as younger guys, and they liked the girls to do a lot of the work. A lot of them preferred it slow and easy, and they liked the whole dating experience. They liked to delude themselves that the girl was enjoying it. They liked to take their time with a girl, dose themselves up on viagra, and have her a few times, slow and gentle, preferably without a heart attack along the way.

They liked a girl for a lot more than a quickie, they liked to take their time about it, they were willing to pay, and I did think that after she was broken in and trained, Fumiko Suematso would be doing a lot of overnight room service calls. She wouldn’t be one of those poor bitches out on the streets or locked in a room turning one trick an hour all day and night. She’d be way too pricey for that kind of shit.

Wasn’t telling the Suematsu’s that though.

“No media?” I knew what Mr. Suematsu was thinking.

“No media at all. Nothing. No charges.” I eyed Greg, and he nodded. “No police investigation. No police medical exams,” I went on. “I work with an excellent medical clinic that’s discreet and will take care of any medical and psychological issues after we get her back. No police charges filed. Nothing. Keep it private, keep it within the family, and us here. Make sure nothing gets out. Agree to all that, and I’m one hundred percent positive I can get her back, but I need all that to negotiate with whoever’s got her. They need to know there’ll be no repercussions if they deal with me, and I can use that to help deal with them and get her back. No-one will ever know. Except you.”

And Fumiko Suematsu.

And every man that fucked Fumiko Suematsu.

Not that they’d ever be talking to the media about that.

I knew what Mrs. Suematsu was thinking. I could see it on her face, the way I’d seen it on my mom’s face when I’d been back in high school and she’d walked in on my boyfriend bending me facedown and ass up over the back of the family couch, fucking me like I was some Chinese hooker.

My mom, she’d had that same look.

Her precious daughter was gonna be used goods.

Difference was, Fumiko Suematsu was gonna be really heavily used goods. My mom, she’d called me a little whore. Big difference between what I’d done, and an actual whore though, and there were times I wished my mom actually knew and understood the difference. Times like this, I wished girls like Fumiko Suematsu and their moms never found out the difference.

“Fumiko won’t be physically damaged,” I said. Well, not much anyhow, but time to try and soften it a bit now that they understood. “These guys that do this kinda thing, it’s a business for them. They keep the girls in good shape for their clients. She’ll be used for sex, anally and orally as well as everything else, but they’ll make sure she’s not damaged.”

Maybe a few bruises, but nothing broken. Nothing disfiguring. She’d be slapped around a bit, maybe hit a few times where it hurt, but no physical scars. No physical damage. Johan’s clients didn’t like that, most of the clients didn’t. They liked their fantasy girls unblemished, smiling, happy to be fucked, and the girls were taught and then encouraged to put on an eager, happy and willing show. A real good show.