Chapter 8

“Okay, Mallory. Doing okay.” Johan never was the talkative one unless there was something he wanted. Not to me, anyhow. Maybe he was more talkative with his clients, making sure they got the services they wanted, and we both knew what that was. “You got my deposit on Miss Tokyo, and the payoff on Miss Bangkok?”

Money. Yep, that really was all Johan was interested in.

“Here you go.” I handed him the two envelopes, the payoff for Miss Bangkok and the deposit on Miss Tokyo, doing my best to ignore the muffled noises coming through those double doors. Must be the master bedroom through there, and from the sounds, the bed behind those doors was getting a serious workout.

More than the bed was getting a serious workout, from those other sounds, but that’s what Johan’s business was all about. Voice was kinda musical if you ignored how she got there and why she was making so much noise.

Johan saw my glance and grinned. “Miss Tokyo’s open for business,” he said.

Cash on the nail made for pretty thick envelopes. Johan tucked them away without checking. We’d been doing business for two years now, and we did this every couple of weeks. Turnover was brisk, and Johan ran a few girls. Not a lot, it was a niche market after all, but enough that he needed a couple of new girls every month, sometimes more, and the other guys in this business were much the same. Kept me fucking busy, that was for sure.

The cash flow Johan had, he must’ve had a pretty slick laundering operation going on, and yeah, I knew he had some legit businesses that the cash went through. Not my job to figure that out. Not anymore, so I didn’t try. I had a good idea though. Never hurt to learn what you could. Might be useful one day.

Me? I had a few financial challenges of my own, but they were legit problems. I took payment every way it came, but I preferred cash, no receipt. IRS never saw those cash transactions, and it wasn’t like I could expense payments like this. I got killed on the tax, and I’d been stiffed once, but I factored all of that into what I charged. Being stiffed, that’d sucked. I’d recovered that piece of merchandise that once, but it’d been cost recovery only, after all the expenses. No profit, and that’d been annoying.

No idea what that dude’d been thinking when he’d pulled that one on me.

Except I did find out, while I was on that case, and for once, it hadn’t been business as usual. Turned out the dude’d been fucking his daughter, and after a couple of years of abuse that’d gotten worse and worse, she broke down on him, and told him she was going to the cops. Silly bitch should’ve just gone without telling him but I guess she never thought of that. Bastard father sold her that same night. Dragged her outta the house, locked her in the trunk, and sold her off to some pimp for three tenths of fuck-all.

Not to Johan.

He’d sold her to some dude I didn’t know and hadn’t dealt with.

His wife sure hadn’t known what’d been happening, or how or why her girl had disappeared. She was the one that’d called the cops in when the girl vanished. For once I hadn’t been called in by Greg. It was the dad that called me, and it turned out he’d paid for me to keep his wife thinking he was doing something. The asshole hadn’t actually wanted the girl found, and he’d cold-called me off my website thinking I was some useless P.I. who’d dick around without any idea about how to find his daughter.

Only customer my website had ever brought in.

None of my contacts had heard of her, but I’d tried to find her anyhow. I mean, I knew the methodology. I had been a cop. In the end, I’d actually tracked her down. One of my contacts had, at least, and he let me know. Doing me a favor, he’d said, and I knew he’d want one in return, eventually. For the kind of favor he’d done me, he’d get whatever he asked for, short of bumping off a competitor, ‘n if the competitor was a prick, well, we’d discuss it, ‘n I wouldn’t rule it out.

I found out the background story too, when I took her off the pimp’s hands. Left the pimp packed in with restaurant kitchen waste and wrapped in garbage bags in half a dozen dumpsters, but that was a problem for the local cops if anybody ever spotted the body parts. Guess they’d never solved that one. Might not ever have known they had a case. Never heard a thing myself. Dead pimp? The cops never worked that hard over them. Why would they?

Plenty of real victims, after all, and what was one more dead pimp?

Mostly just fuckin’ paperwork these days.

That girl, she told me what’d happened, and yeah, well, I’d stashed her away for a coupla days before I returned her home to her mom. That coupla days? I’d killed her dad, quietly. Made sure he knew why, and then I finished him off. He’d bumped into some homeless dude who’d ripped him apart with a knife and left him to die in some industrial wasteland, lying in shit. That was what the cops said after they found what was left a few weeks later. They didn’t find that much. The feral dogs had seen to that. They’d been right about everything except the homeless dude, and the left to die part. I’d waited beside him, and I’d been smiling down at him while he died, and he’d known who did him, and why.

I’d made sure of that. I’d made real sure he was stone cold dead before I walked away, too. The feral dogs had already started hanging around, waiting.

Anyhow, money?

That was Johan, every time, and yeah, we were straight with each other. This was a win-win deal for everyone, and I knew that with that deposit down, Fumiko Suematsu was gonna be returned, just like the Thai girl I was picking up later this morning was gonna be returned. Two or three more hours and Miss Bangkok, she’d be back home with her poppa, coz her momma was back the fuck in Europe somewhere, but Miss Bangkok, she was still in one piece.

Used hard, but still in one piece.

Greg would close the missing persons case when she turned up, and there’d be no mention of what she’d been doing or who’d been pimping her out. No interviews, no investigation, no medicals, no sex crimes reported. Nothing. Nada. Just a missing girl who’d been found and returned home. Case closed. It was only the wealthy families who made a fuss about what’d happened to their little darling that got listened to anyhow. I was pretty good at shutting that down right at the start now.

Explain the alternatives to them, like I had to the Suematsus’, and they shut the fuck up and left it to me. Everyone was happy except the merchandise and, well, the merchandise was gonna be fucked six ways to Sunday whichever way it worked out. That Thai girl I was picking up? She was lucky. Her time was up, she was going home, and taking a girl home from shit like this, that always made me feel better about my day.

“Handle Miss Tokyo the usual way, and as for Miss Bangkok...” Johan said. Didn’t need to say anything else. We both knew the usual way by now. He flicked me a post-it note with an address.

“The apartment’s been sanitized, she’ll be the only one there, and the place’ll look like whoever was there with her did a runner just as the cops arrived. Set it all up earlier this morning.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Johan said. “Shame though. Going to miss her. She’s a real little money spinner, the johns love her, she’s got that squeeze when you shoot off perfected. Pussy or ass, doesn’t matter, and she can fake a climax so good you think it’s real.”

“Enjoy her, did you?” It wasn’t quite professional curiosity.

I’d seen her social media. I knew what she looked like, before she started working for Johan anyhow. Amanda Somri wasn’t right at that low end of Johan’s bell curve. She was fourteen, but you know, Asian girls. Who the fuck can tell how older we are. Amanda Somri was one of those, and she’d have appealed to Johan’s clients across the board.

Poor little bitch.

Johan woulda really enjoyed her. Something I’d known almost from the start. Johan was a dude who enjoyed his fuckin’ work.

Johan chuckled. Water off a duck’s back. He wouldn’t be in this business if he didn’t enjoy his work, and I knew he broke most of them in himself. “You bet I did, Mal. One of the perks of the job. She’s a real little performer and she learns fast. Not as tight as she was though.”

Poor Miss Bangkok. She’d be a very different girl now from that innocent schoolgirl Johan had recruited out of that shopping mall ten weeks ago. You’d think it was safe for a teenage girl to go to the local suburban mall in a nice suburb with minimal crime, and with a dozen friends, wouldn’t you? Their parents all did. Safety in numbers and everything? Well, think again. Those malls are crowded. They’re interwoven with service corridors and there’s emergency exits and loading bays, and if you know them...

All a girl has to do is separate from her friends for a minute or two.

She stops to look in a shop window. She tells her friends she’ll catch them up. A couple of guys have been watching those girls. They see the stray, separated from the herd, and like hyenas, they seize that fleeting opportunity. Block her off, out of sight for just a second. A quick punch to the kidneys to incapacitate her with sudden and overwhelming pain, a pain so intense she pees herself. So intense she can’t even scream. Ten seconds, that’s all it would have taken before she was whisked into a service corridor and out of sight.

Amanda Somri had vanished.

None of her friends even noticed she was missing until their parents arrived to pick them up, four hours later. They all thought she was with the others. By then, she’d been handed over to Johan, and she was already being broken in. By the time it was clear that she wasn’t in that mall, and the police were called in, Amanda Somri had been servicing her first client. One that salivated over untrained teenage Asian girls. He’d enjoyed her. So had the next ... and the next. By the time I was called in, a couple of days later, and I’d run through my list and confirmed that it was Johan who had her, she’d been on the job for two days.

Wide open for business and she’d been working hard.

Now? Eight weeks later?

It was time for Amanda Somri to go home. Johan had made his money from her. She wasn’t new and fresh anymore. She didn’t have that innocence his clients enjoyed so much. She’d been used hard day and night for the last two months. She’d been worked as a whore, and in those ten weeks, she’d been fucked more times than your average twenty year old college girl with years of going at it could ever have imagined herself being fucked. She’d be able to suck water through a ten foot hose. She wouldn’t think for a second about asking if a guy wanted her to swallow, she’d do it like she loved to, she’d swallow every drop and lick it clean the way she’d been trained, and her little pussy wouldn’t be anywhere near as tight as it used to be.

Her ass wouldn’t be, either. Lot of those johns, they liked tight Asian ass almost as much as they liked tight Asian pussy.

Once she got her head back together, and god knows how long that’d take, coz some girls were a bit fucked up by it all, while others just shrugged it off, she’d be a real good fuck for whatever guy she dated. Johan and his team trained their girls well. They made sure those girls knew how to fuck without even having to think about it, they taught them all those little tricks, and they made sure their girls knew how to make a guy feel real good for every second they were fucking them.

She’d likely never forget those lessons. Not the way Johan and his team taught them. She’d be using them without even thinking about them now.

Poor girl, but at least she was going home.

Only good side was, if that recession everyone yapped on about ever turned up, she’d have a useful set of job skills to fall back on, but whatever.

“You want a coffee before you head out to pick her up?” Johan knew me and coffee.

“Might as well,” I said. “I need another one. Say, you know about this one?” I flicked him the image of the Chinese boy. Worth a try.

He looked. “Try Galen,” he said. “Not sure, but I heard something. That’s a freebie.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Favors, they kinda made me uncomfortable. You never knew what was gonna get asked in return. I wouldn’t have thought of Galen though. Not for the Chinese boy. I’d owe Johan one if he was right, ‘n he knew it.

“Chantana, get Mal a coffee with two percent, make it real strong.”

Johan grinned as he flicked a finger at the Asian girl in the little white bikini stretched out on one of the couches, not that there was that much for the bikini top to cover. Thai, she had that look, and she had Thai girl tits too, small and firm and perky.

Smaller than mine, except mine were Chinese, not Thai.

Johan knew how I took my coffee.

“Yes, Mr. Hernandez.” She seemed real chirpy. An act? Or was she happy with what she was doing here. Her accent said Thai from Thailand, not from here, so maybe it was was better than where she came from, ‘n she was another looker, but then, all Johan’s girls were lookers. He wouldn’t have bought them or swapped them in if they weren’t.

“Thanks,” I said, eyeing Chantana, trying to place that face, coz it seemed familiar, and doing my best to keep on ignoring the noises coming through those double doors. Sounded like Miss Tokyo was getting some serious on the job training.

Chantana? Jeez, she looked like my type alright, and if I’d seen her in a club, I’d have tried picking her up. She pushed all my buttons, and she knew it too. She gave me that smile as she poured coffee into a mug on the bar in front of me. That smile? I was pretty much sure it was fake. She’d been broken in and trained up. But even with that, yeah, I might have, except I knew she worked for Johan, and I didn’t like it that it wouldn’t be genuine.

Knew she wasn’t on my pickup list now either. I knew every girl on that list. Johan wouldn’t have kept her hanging around to see me if she was, and looking at her, she still had some market life left in Johan’s business, but that wouldn’t last forever, and I kind of hated to think she’d be sold eventually. Hated to think where she might end up. There were worse things than working for Johan.

Way worse.

“How much milk would you like, Miss?”

Jeez, she even sounded sweet, but I liked my girls willing and eager, and these days I liked breaking them in myself. Nothing like a new girl on the scene, innocent, excited, and a little scared. I liked those new girls timidly walking into one of the clubs I hung out in. Walking in for the first time, shy, uncertain of their sexuality, unsure of themselves, but excited for all that.

Usually college or university students, away from home for the first time, scared about what they were doing, but excited and eager to learn, eager to be taught.

Just like I’d been when I was nineteen, first met Ellie, and discovered I liked girls way more than I liked men. Ellie had picked me up in that club one of my friends had taken me to, and she’d taught me. I must have seemed so young and naive and innocent to her.

That was nine years ago now, but I still preferred girls to men. Not that I didn’t enjoy a guy every now and then. I did, but on the whole, I preferred girls. Girls who looked like Chantana or Fumiko Suematsu, although the odd little Midwest blonde hit the spot now and then. That expression on their faces when they saw that strap-on for the first time and realized what it was for and what I was going to do to them with it. Loved that look, and it was even better if they were a virgin, and some of them actually were.

Chantana sure wouldn’t be.

“Double milk thanks,” I said, smiling.

Maybe I really would talk to Johan about her. He did spot me the occasional freebie, and so did the others now and then. Those kept me sweet with Greg’s team, and they helped keep the heat of everyone.

She smiled back. Looked like a genuine smile this time, but who knew? She pushed the mug across the countertop towards me. I nodded, and took it. Jesus, strong coffee. It was, and I needed that.

“About Miss Tokyo,” I said. “How about we make it four? Her family’s connected and she’s borderline political. Greg’s saying the heat might come down on this one. The Jap Consul’s already involved, he was there last night. Might see the Feds being brought in if it drags too long.”

Johan shrugged. “Let me know if the heat does comes down, Mallory, and if it does, we can move things up right away if we need to. Nobody wants the Feds sniffing around.”

He took the tumbler Chantana passed him. Jesus, Jack Daniels and Coke for breakfast? Well, brunch maybe, coz it was mid-morning already and I’d meant to be here earlier. Fucking traffic.

A staccato flurry of sound carried through those double doors that led into that bedroom. Mattress pounding. Sobbing cries, the odd choked out groan. All loud enough to be heard. The new merchandise didn’t sound like she was enjoying herself too much. Quelle surprise. First day on the job? It was gonna be a long hard day for Miss Tokyo and it’d only just started. Wasn’t even midday yet.

Johan eyed me, and grinned. “That’s the sweet sound of fresh new pussy being turned into cold hard greenbacks,” he said. “I want Miss Tokyo for as long as you can stall on her, Mal. She’s smoking. I mean, I only listed her late last night, and she’s already booked solid for the next week. I upped the rates for her twice, and that didn’t even slow down the bookings coming in.”

“Jesus,” I said. “You’re listing them online or something now?”

“Dark Web,” he said. “Started this new app up a few weeks ago as a trial. We’ve got a good client list, almost all of them are regular repeat customers that love our girls, and this way we can get right in front of them as soon as we get a new girl, it’s not just word of mouth and waiting for them to call. Chantana here, she’s really popular, right Chantana?”

“Yes, Mr. Hernandez,” Chantana said from behind the bar. She smiled when I glanced at her, but I could see the difference. This smile was one she’d been taught to smile. “I like to satisfy my customers.”

That sounded like she was reading from a textbook or something, but Johan liked it. He smiled. “Satisfying customers is what we do here at Asian Fantasies, right, Chantana?”

“Yes, Mr. Hernandez,” Chantana said, not smiling at all.

Guess she’d been taught all about satisfying her customers. After all, that’s what Johan’s business was all about. Satisfied customers. She’d probably been taught the hard way, just like Miss Tokyo was being taught right now. Learning on the job that customer satisfaction was Rule Number One in any business, but especially in this one, because that was everything Johan’s business was about.

Customer satisfaction.

“Jeez,” I said again, halfway surprised, but I guess I shouldn’t have been.

Technology. It was everywhere these days. I even had my own little website, but I’d only ever had that one call because of it. I mean, it was pretty difficult to advertise what I really did. One hundred percent of my business was through Greg, and I really wasn’t sure how to change that. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to change that, either. Being brought in by the cops every time sure covered my ass, and it wasn’t like I needed more business now. I was working as many hours as I was awake, and half the time I wasn’t getting enough sleep.

Wasn’t like I could expand by hiring someone either. Wasn’t that kind of business.

“It’s doing great things for our business volume and revenue growth,” Johan said. “Our clients can jump online, see the girls who’re available and when, check the rates, and book for themselves. We’re notifying them through the app when we add new listings, and the johns can get a good look at the girls right up front, read the reviews on how they perform before they book, and they can take all the time they want deciding. Waitlist themselves too. Kinda cool, the IT guy’s doing a great job. Makes for real customer satisfaction, and it’s working really well. Just about doubled the volume of business over the last month. Might have to onboard a few more girls if it keeps growing like this.”

He sounded happy about that. Didn’t think any girls he onboarded would be, but nothing I could do about that. Be business growth for me too, come to think of it.

I musta made some kinda noise, coz he looked up and grinned.

“Yeah, take Miss Tokyo. Back before we went online, I’d have had to call our customers, and you gotta be really careful how you word it. Takes time to build up business, the guys that can afford us are real busy, so cold calls are a big no-no. Fumiko, I posted her last night, opened her up for bookings once we were confident she was gonna perform to expectations. New girl, Japanese, fourteen, although we never mention the ages. We let them imagine, and a little looker like her, not even broken in thoroughly, still a little feisty, she’s red hot. Listed her as brand new, and they all know what that means.”

He chuckled happily. “You better believe she’s already in demand, and you won’t believe how much those johns pay for a new piece of pussy like her. Got a waiting list for girls like her. She’s not gonna have much downtime for as long as she’s with us. I’ve already got her booked solid from today through into late this time next week, and we’ll do another training session with the team this evening. We’ll open her up for all-night bookings next week, once she’s well and truly broken in and we’re sure she won’t even think about doing a runner.”

He chuckled again. “These old dudes, they love those all-nighters and they’ll pay through the nose for them. We deliver to wherever they want them or we can set them up here or one of the other apartments. They can take their time, take their Viagra, enjoy themselves as many times as they can get it up without worrying about running outta time with their little honey, and I send one of the boys around to pick the girls up in the morning, early, bring ‘em back and freshen ‘em up for the morning clients. Hose ‘em down, redo their makeup, clean ‘em up, make sure they look fresh, then pump ‘em full of lube so the client thinks they’re loving it.”