Gangsta's Paradise

All sorts of reasons girls ran. Get away from a bad situation at home, that kinda thing, but Greg knew all that, and he'd called me up, and he'd have made his own assessment. He was usually right. He'd been doing this way longer than me. He'd taught me everything I knew, back when I was a rookie cop on his team.

"Yeah, well, she's eighteen, just. Young woman. Older teenager. Take your pick, but she's not a kid. She really is a looker, Mal. Went missing from her high school today. Private school for ex-pat Japs on Assisi Square, no fucking security, let the girls out into the park across the street for recess, the stupid bastards, and she never came back. I mean, fuck, there's stupid, and then there's fucking stupid. Things've changed around here the last few years. Used to be an okay neighborhood, but it's gone downhill fast. You know the story."

I nodded, inhaling again. Yeah, I knew the story. Knew it too fuckin' well.

Jesus, I'd never wanted to smoke, disgusting fucking habit, but here I was, and those fucking Gitanes were awful. But yeah, Greg was right. Fuckin' stupid. I mean, that school, I knew the one he meant. It'd been a real nice area, once upon a time, like, ten, maybe twenty years ago, but the way things were around here with the goddamn rats running things, and the crime and the homeless crazies stumbling around, letting girls out into a park was fucking stupid.

I mean, it wasn't just the crazies. The fucking needles. Shit and piss everywhere, the streets smelt like urinals back of a back alley dive, and as for crime? Jesus, you didn't want to think about carrying a handbag and you needed eyes in the back of your head in case some whacked out nutjob tried to sucker punch you, and they didn't care who you were.

Some poor old Chinese lady, she'd been attacked just down the road, and not just pushed around or knocked down. She'd had the shit kicked out of her when she was down. DOA. Honestly, I'd grown up near here, but fuck, driving through the streets to get here, I'd barely recognized the area. Looked like some third world hellhole, or maybe I shoulda just said a city run by democrats.

Same thing these days, and one day, I was gonna move outta here, maybe live on a boat down in Florida or something, but right now the money was here. Was it ever! Made more over the last year than I'd ever imagined when I'd gotten into this. Who said crime didn't pay? I was making more than I'd ever dreamed I'd make. Mind you, the hours sucked, and so did the job, 'n there were a few bodies here and there too, but whatever.

The money was fucking good.

"Fucking stupid," Greg said, and he did sound fucked off. "Already talked to them about that but Jesus, you can't fix dumb. Anyhow, the girl's a real looker, sent you a few images. Don't think she ran away, but nobody saw what happened. She upped and vanished during recess. Never came back."

"Checked CCTV?"

"Yeah, we checked the school's, at least they have that. We got her crossing the road to the park with all the other girls, but nothing after that, she went off camera, never came back. None of the other girls noticed where she went. Haven't finished yet, but we won't get any CCTV footage from any of the other buildings until tomorrow. If they even have any."

"What's Miss Tokyo's name?" I asked, blowing a smoke ring. Oh yeah! Perfect! I was getting better at doing those. Those Gitanes were still crap though.

"Fumiko Suematsu," he said. "Don't you ever read your fucking messages, Mal? Sent you some images of her as well, links to her social media pages, quick bio. It's all there.

"Hey, I drove right over as soon as you called," I said, pulling out my mobile. "I don't text and drive," I added virtuously. Truth be told, I'd been wiped, drinking my coffee and zombie-driving.

Greg snickered.

I checked out the messages, along with that first image he'd forwarded me, and yeah, she was a real looker. Fucking gorgeous actually. Face you couldn't tear your eyes away from. Kinda looked a lot like me when I was her age, and yeah, well, that was ten years ago. Didn't have that baby-faced innocence anymore, but guys still looked. Not just guys, but whatever, Fumiko Suematsu had it. That "it" the drew guys like a magnet.

Skimmed through the rest. Family photos. Social media? Quite a few selfies, the usual teenage crap that eighteen year old teenage girls posted. Mix of English and Japanese. Seemed like she was pretty fluent in English. Some social media posts. Glanced through and it was all the usual teenage girl shit. A few bikini shots. Tiny little bikinis too. Real tiny. Yeah, Miss Tokyo looked red hot in those bikini shots. Surprised her parents let her wear anything like that, but hey, Japanese. They're weird sometimes. Nice legs. Cute little butt on her. Even looked real good in that school uniform she wore.

No surprises there.

The ones that went missing like this, they usually did look real good. That was generally why they went missing. No point in lifting a girl that looked like a dog, after all, and Miss Tokyo sure wasn't a dog. Far from it, and that uniform made that obvious. Any girl that can look hot in a school uniform's hot.

One of those kinky Jap school uniforms you see in porn movies, 'n I'd actually been real surprised when I found out they really did wear uniforms like that in those Japanese schools. Weird. White shirt, blazer, real short little plaid skirt, as in real short, and white knee socks. Yeah, you saw them all the time in Jap porn movies. Or on bait. Didn't see them that much on actual schoolgirls though, not here, anyhow. Those fucking uniforms fucked me off every time I fucking saw them. I'd had to wear one now and then, back when I'd been bait, and I'd known what I'd looked like when I had.

I'd looked like Fumiko Suematsu back then.

Or maybe she looked like I had. Lotta older guys loved that look. Guess how I knew that? Fucking perverts. Not that I'd ever minded them looking back when I was Miss Tokyo's age. They could look all they liked as long as they kept their hands to themselves. Kind of wondered if Miss Tokyo thought like I had. That skirt was way short, those poses were, well, they were poses, showing herself off, and her bikinis were tiny. Tinier than anything I'd ever worn back when I was her age, and I wasn't exactly shy back then. But then again, teenage fashion and Japan. Things were different there. Maybe she'd known, and maybe like a lot of girls, she just enjoyed being looked at. The way she posed though, she knew what she was doing and she was enjoying herself, but maybe that was just me.

Maybe she had no fucking clue and she just wore her skirt real short because it was the fashion, and she'd worn tiny bikinis because all her friends did. I'd pushed it when I was younger than her, without any idea of the risks I was taking. I'd done quite a few things that'd been a bit stupid or risky when I was her age, and younger for that matter. Eighteen? You think there's nothing out there that'll harm you, or if there is, you think you're street smart. You think you can avoid it.

You're wrong, and I knew that now.

Hadn't known that then, but I'd been lucky.

Guess Fumiko Suematsu hadn't been quite so lucky.

"You thinking what I'm thinking, Mal?" Greg leaned back against the garage wall, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke out into the rain. We both watched as the downpour washed that smoke away in an instant. Kinda like what happens to a teenage girl's life really, when something real bad happens, the bad shit goes down, and her luck runs out.

"Any reason at all that she'd run?" Be harder to track her down, but I'd almost feel better about it if she had. Coz I knew the alternatives.

"Not that I can see. Family moved here from Japan a month ago. Seems to have fitted in at her school, made a few friends already. Talked to them this afternoon, and she seemed fine to them. Happy. Settling in here. No bitching or any of that shit as far as I can tell, but they're all so fucking polite. Nothing wrong with the parents as far as I can tell, either. Hard to tell, they're Japs, not American-Japanese. Bit of an accent, and their English is so-so. They seem totally normal though, nothing weird about them."

"Yeah, well," I said, flatly, slowly, sucking in that smoke, puffing out another smoke ring, watching it dissolve in the rain, and that fucking rain wasn't easing off at all. "Not bad boobs on her and she's eighteen, doesn't look like a total kid, so whoever it was, likely it wasn't a pedo, which means I'm thinking what you're thinking, Greg. When'd she go missing again?"

"Today. Recess, sometime between midday and one. The school called the parents around two, after they'd searched the building and the park themselves. They didn't call us until later, after the parents got there, not that it'd have made any difference if they had. Took them another hour to contact us. She'd been gone four hours by the time we got there.

"

"She'd be wherever they'd planned to take her well before then. Anyone see anything?"

"Nope, and that park's busy. Lots of girls, lotta people taking lunch there as well. Quite a few unhoused citizens and a few of the crazies and zombies hanging out there too, but somebody woulda called if they saw a girl being dragged off. Even here. We checked out the fucking tents too, just on the off chance. Nothing. Nada."

Most people see something happening, they won't get involved. They'll ignore it, but a schoolgirl in uniform, getting dragged away from a park or into some whacked out homeless crazy's tent, people notice that kinda thing and someone woulda called. Someone might even have done something. Especially if she'd screamed.

Less and less these days, but somebody would've, maybe. Still, I wouldn't bet my life on it. Not these days.

Greg's eyes met mine, and yeah, we both knew. However they'd done it, if she'd been snatched, they'd have been blocks away in minutes if it was done right, and the teams that did these things, coz they weren't all guys, there weren't many of them, and they knew what they were doing. Most of the time they did it to meet a takeout order. Good looking Asian girl. Teenager. One. Deliver this week. Don't bother asking what she's for. Not that anybody ever did.

They all knew exactly what she was for.

That kinda takeout order.

We both shrugged. We both inhaled. I coughed. Greg grinned without any humor. Fucking Gitanes. They were awful. I'd have to smoke more of them coz it beat the fuck out of drinking. Seen a few too many cops who hit it hard, 'n I could understand why now. Nicotine? Lesser of the two evils. Fucked if I was buying a Burberry though.

"Probably picked up by someone looking for a fresh girl," I said at last.

There were more and more girls disappearing these days. Fumiko's age or younger, younger mostly, and a lotta cops just shrugged, filed a missing persons report and assumed they'd run away from home. A lot had, but more than a few hadn't. Politicians didn't give a fuck, 'n what could the cops do? Guys like Greg, they tried, but Greg's team was half what it was two years ago. Not just here, either. All over the fucking country, 'n it was getting worse all the time.

They hadn't had enough bodies to respond to the 911 calls after all the defunding, so guess where they got them from, if they hadn't quit, or retired early? Or been kicked out for excessive force, the use of, like me. Took them from the specialist units like Greg's. Defunding those cops had all sorts of side-effects the politicians never expected. Not that the politicians gave a crap as long as they got reelected. So a few kids went missing? Who gave a fuck? Can't change society without breaking a few eggs, right?

Never occurred to them that it wasn't just the kids from one or two of those wealthy families that went missing. Far more kids from families on the bones of their asses went, and not all of them were taken. Sometimes the bodies turned up. More often, they didn't, and nobody even knew they were fuckin' gone to start with. Fucking asshole politicians had no fucking idea, or maybe they did and they just didn't give a shit, which was far more likely.

Fuck, some of them were clients of those pimps that sold those girls.

"Anyone call the social workers?" I had to say it, I just had to.

Greg blew another smoke ring. "Fuck off, Mal."

"Okay, okay. I'll start on it right away."

"The usual suspects?"

I nodded. Didn't need to say the obvious, that if she'd ended up with one of the usual suspects, she was already fucked, because we both knew why the usual suspects wanted girls.

Girls like Fumiko Suematsu.

Greg knew me. Greg knew I'd have a good chance of finding her and getting her back if she was where we both thought she was. That's what I did, been doing it for the last two years, and that's why I was here, standing out of the rain, mostly, and smoking one of his goddamn awful Gitanes.

Awful fucking things, but they were growing on me.

Didn't need to ask if the parents were good to meet the bill. Greg wouldn't have bothered calling me in if they weren't, and if they weren't willing to pay. I wasn't cheap, and the kind of work I did, and the people who paid me, the parents pretty much paid whatever I asked. Greg hardly ever wasted my time.

"Yeah," he said, blowing another of those goddamn smoke rings straight through the center of mine. Asshole. "That's why I called you first, Mal. Already laid it on the line for them, and they understand. They asked me to call you in and they know what you cost. They'll pay."

I kinda felt for him. He had a shit job. Missing girls. Runway teenagers. Not the girls that went off and did something dumb and turned up a few hours later, or maybe after a day or two. The local cops dealt with them if they didn't just turn back up again themselves. Greg dealt with that interface between the missing girls unit and the sex crimes unit. The ones that disappeared in suspicious circumstances, mostly girls, and didn't turn back up at all, or like this one, where you knew right from the get go. No evidence, but you just knew.

She'd been lifted.

There's more of those girls that that happens to than you think. Especially here. Big Asian population. Chinese. Japanese. Korean. Vietnamese. Thai. Cambodian. Malaysian. Burmese. Filipino. Lao. Hmong. Karen. Shan. Rakhine. Ethnic groups you've never fuckin' heard of. Every Asian minority you can imagine, and a few you couldn't because you've never heard of the fuckers. Asian girls, they aren't the only ones that go missing, but girls just aren't that important in most Asian cultures.

Especially where the parents are first generation fresh off the fucking boat refugees or illegals, and haven't assimilated much, if at all. Local Asian girls do go missing. Enough that you know they're not isolated cases. Sometimes they're reported, sometimes not, but whatever the reason for them going missing, most of them eventually end up at the same destination.

The sex trade.

Yeah. that happens a lot more than you think. There's a world of shadow and darkness out there, behind the streetlights and the neon signs. Behind the facades of those expensive downtown condos and the suburban MacMansions. A world people like you never see. A world of sick appetites and hidden desires. A world where desires become obsessions. A world where those obsessions are catered too. A world where nothing is taboo, as long as you can pay for it. Nothing at all.

A world where young girls are a staple commodity for one industry.

The sex trade.

They're a staple commodity because there's a demand, and where there's demand, there's always supply. Simple economics. Police clamp down, the price goes up. Profit margins improve with risk. Those girls that go missing, those girls that run away from home, that're lifted off the street or out of a mall or bought, or taken as payment for a debt, or imported over the southern border, or shipped in illegally, or even fuckin' legally, they're that local supply side of the equation, and there's a huge fucking demand that never stops.

Then there's the other source of supply. Imports. I didn't deal with those, nobody was gonna pay me to get those girls back. I left that to Greg and his team, but there so fucking many of them they didn't have a snowflakes chance in hell. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, came across the southern border every month, unaccompanied, carrying a piece of paper with an address and a phone number, and the fucking Feds released them and shipped them off without a second fucking thought.

You know how many of those girls disappear?

Fucking near all of them, coz they're not being sent to relations or family or shit like that. Nope, their fucking parents already sold them, and they're being shipped in as merchandise by the dealers. Supply and demand. So a few die crossing the border. The cartels who move them and the dealers who own them don't give a fuck about the losses. Not even a blip on their balance sheet. The return on those girls is outta sight, and nobody even knows they're missing. Poor little bitches. Mostly Hispanic, so they didn't end up with the guys I dealt with, although now and then a real looker would pop up. Not my business niche, so I did what I hadda to, and just turned a blind eye.

Wasn't my business to save the fuckin' world.

Just the girls I was paid for.

Then there were the other imports, the ones that DID end up with the guys I dealt with. The girls that were brought in from all over Asia, and fuck, they came in every which way. Some of those snakeheads had deals with the cartels. Fly 'em into Mexico and the cartels ran them up, 'n they got a much better service coz they paid for it. Shipping containers. Load 'em up into a container in an Asian port, some porta potties, water and food, and a three week trans-Pacific ride.

Fuck knows how many of them died along the way. The snakeheads didn't care. Just another overhead to write off as the cost of doing business, and there were always more. Containers washed overboard in a storm, and what a hell of a fucking way to go. Asphyxiation, and that'd happened. I'd been on Greg's team when they called us down to the port once, and the smell, Jesus. I'd taken one look and a whiff and puked my guts out. Thirty odd girls, 'n something had gone wrong. Every single one of them was dead, and fuck, steel container, through the tropics coz that ship'd come from Jakarta, 'n they were liquifying by the time we were brought in.

No ID, no clues, nothing, and what could you do? No way of tracing them back, and the Consulate sure didn't wanna know. Nothing to even prove that's where they were from. At least we made sure the poor little bitches got a decent burial, what was left of them anyhow, but fuck knows how many other bodies went right through, got dumped in a landfill or mixed into the cement on a construction site somewhere, and nobody the wiser. The more upmarket girls, the real high value ones, they mostly came through on commercial passenger flights. Usually on genuine passports, flying in with "mom and dad" or some shit like that. Passed through immigration, got delivered, and that was it for them.

Delivered, auctioned off, handed over, and opened up for business.

Those girls were paid for, and they were expected to deliver.

None of those girls had any choice at all about that.

They delivered whether they wanted to or not.

Nobody cared about those girls at all.

Merchandise, pure and simple.

That's all they were.

Johan picked up girls from auctions where they'd come in that way pretty regularly. I'd seen a few come through, and there wasn't anything I could do for 'em. Nobody was gonna pay me to take them off of Johan's hands, 'n they came, stayed for a few months, 'n on they went to their next owner. That was the way it worked.