Gangsta's Paradise

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.

"You sure she was taken, Mal?" Greg said, and he didn't sound like he was trying to convince himself.

"Got all the signs," I said. "Unlikely she ran away by herself. No reason, from what you said, and she just vanished from that park in the middle of the day, nobody noticed a thing. That was smooth, somebody who knew what they were doing. From that private school, they had to know she'd be missed right away, and they'd only take a risk like that if there was an order they wanted to fill."

I shrugged. "She's eighteen, but you saw her social media. She's not the sort of girl anyone would miss."

Nah, she was a looker. No way anyone who saw her would forget her. Not with a face and a figure like hers.

"Yeah, you're right about that," Greg said, blowing another smoke ring.

That Jap school uniform, those looks? She was exactly the sorta girl that the sex trade had another little niche all of its own for. Yeah, there's a real select niche market for fresh young Asian schoolgirls. The ones like Miss Tokyo, if they'd been snatched and they looked like her, they don't work in the bars or clubs or the escort agencies like the usual hookers do. They're part of that up-market boutique sector of the sex trade, the one that caters to the high-end of the market, the guys with a lotta money and a taste for fresh, hot and young Asian girls. That's a real niche, coz there's a market for young girls in general, but fresh young Asian girls that're hot lookers, that's a real specialized niche all of its own.

That clientele, they were the guys with the big bucks who'd pay as much as it took to enjoy what they wanted, and what they wanted, they wanted kept private coz they'd never get it legally. No bars or clubs or agencies for them. The girls that worked in those places, they had to be legit, more or less. They did get checked out, now and then and not even the cops on the take would ignore girls that were way too young. Besides, those bars and clubs, they had plenty of business, they didn't need or want that risk, and the clients that wanted a girl like Miss Tokyo, they didn't go to those places anyhow. Not their scene.

Discreet apartments, upmarket, maybe even elegant, the girls tucked away out of sight, ready and waiting in their lingerie or their schoolgirl uniforms or whatever else the client wanted them dressed in, visited by appointment or delivered as room service in their little evening dresses and fashionable clothes, then picked up afterwards and discreetly whisked away. That's what those clients wanted when they wanted to indulge their tastes. Tastes? Yeah, well, there's other things you don't want to read about that some of those clients will pay even more for, and yeah, I knew the rumors about those too. There's a dark dark underworld out there that most of you aren't even aware of, and believe me, you just do not want to know.

Not the details, anyway.

"Someone who wanted to rape her'd be more likely to grab her on the way home from high school," I said, "and one guy by himself? Would've been hard to get her outta that park quietly, so no one noticed a thing. She musta gone with them, they conned her somehow."

I thought about it for just a second more. "Wouldn't be someone she knew. She's a Jap, used to doing what she's told. Someone conned her, or just grabbed her so quick no-one noticed. Professional job."

Greg nodded, blowing another long plume of cigarette smoke out into the rain.

"Wish I was wrong," I said, inhaling, and jeez, that smoke was soothing. Kinda knew why all the old cops I worked with smoked now. It was that or drink, and me, I wasn't a drinker. Not much, anyhow. "But I'm not wrong. No way that girl's a runaway, and if it's what I think it is, she's gonna be open for business in a day or two."

Greg knew that as well as I did. He'd trained me, after all, back when I worked on his team.

There were a few businesses around the city that catered for those sort of tastes, the sort of tastes that ran to girls like Fumiko Suematsu, two, maybe three dozen, coz even in this huge fucking urban sprawl, it was a niche market with a limited clientele who wanted and could afford what those businesses sold, and I was pretty sure I knew almost all of them. The businesses that is, not the clientele. Those guys, the clientele, they were real careful. None of them wanted to be on a perp walk on primetime news.

None of them wanted to be the next Epstein either.

Might have missed a couple of those local businesses, but if I had, they were real small and quiet. I knew what those businesses provided, and after two years in my own little niche business doing what I did, almost all of them talked to me. Almost. Fumiko Suematsu was the sorta merchandise those businesses marketed, and yeah, well, those looks? If one of them had her, she was gonna be a busy girl, and I don't need to tell you what she was gonna be busy doing, do I? Well, maybe not her. She was gonna be done too, not doing, but whatever, she'd be real popular.

Fumiko Suematsu was the kind of sweet young Asian package that the clientele wanted.

Lotta those parents, their girl goes missing, they waste time running around calling all her friends, or driving around looking for her, figuring she's done something stupid or something, but not these parents. Them and the school, they'd done the right thing this time, not that it'd make any difference for Fumiko Suematsu. Those parents and the school, they'd called the cops almost right away, and the local cops had been on the ball.

They'd read the signs, and they'd called in Greg. Sometimes it was days before that happened, but not this time. Wouldn't change anything though, not for Fumiko Suematsu.

She'd be open for business real soon, if she wasn't already.

Greg was on the interface between the Sex Crimes Unit, and the Missing Persons unit. A girl like Fumiko Suematsu goes missing, yeah, that's where that interface comes into play, coz she's missing and all you had to do was take a quick look at those images on her social media to come up with a pretty good idea of why. Jumping to conclusions, I know, but ninety five percent of this shit is real straightforward. Finding that missing girl isn't straightforward, not generally speaking, but knowing just why she's missing, ninety percent of the time that's a no-brainer, and yeah, assumptions, but I'd been doing this for a while, and Greg'd been doing this for a while longer.

Quite a while longer.

Yeah, there was a real small chance it was some weirdo, but Greg knew that too, and if I didn't turn up anything, that's the path the investigation would likely go. Me, I could usually get back to Greg within a day or two at the most, and I was sure he knew how. He'd helped me get started in business, after all, and he knew the guys I dealt with. He just didn't ask questions, coz his recovery rate was real good these days. Him and me, we knew what each of us did. We never talked about it though, coz what I did was that kinda gray area.

Real fuckin' gray.

Greg, he dealt with the parents with money and influence. Money talks. Influence talks. With missing girls as well as everything else. When girls from families like this went missing, Greg was the guy that the local cops called in right away, and he didn't have the time to fuck around.

Missing girls? Greg was honest with the parents.

Brutally honest sometimes. You had to be, coz a lot of them refused to believe shit like this really happened. Cocooned in their secure compounds and shielded by their money from the shit that went down out there as the fabric of society burned to ashes around them, out of their sight and understanding, they lived in a different world until reality intruded, and their little darling vanished. That was when they found out what it was like for the rest of us.

That was when Greg and I walked into their lives.

Greg and I, we brought that reality home, coz neither of us were part of their secure and protected lifestyle, guarded by security in their office towers or their compounds with the walls and the guards, kids going to those upmarket schools, and neither of us gave a flying fuck for those parents. Not most of the time. It was the girls we wanted to get back, and when shit like this went down, it was Greg and I who were out there dealing with the shit and the dregs of society, the criminals, the perverts, the hyenas that preyed on the edges of civilization. We were out there protecting people like them from what they'd turned society into.

Fucking assholes.

It was only when the shit went down and reality intruded into their lives that we walked in, and when we walked in, we didn't waste time. We were honest with them. Brutally honest. Painfully honest. We told it like it was, and we didn't fuck around.

There was only one thing those girls were good for. There was almost always only one business they ended up in, whether they were bought, sold, ran, or taken. Those parents didn't like it when you told them what the odds were about where their little darling had ended up and what she'd be doing there, but what the fuck? Better to lay it on the line up front and help them get serious real quick, because the quicker they got serious and paid that deposit into my bank account, the quicker me or someone like me could help them.

Well, not them. Their little darling.

Yep, getting serious meant bringing in someone like me, and Greg knew what I specialized in. Of course he did. He'd got me started.

That's why I was standing outside in the rain with him smoking one of his fucking godawful Gitanes. Cops didn't have enough people to deal with these types of cases, and a lot of cops shrugged off girls that went missing. Happened all the time. Girls run away from home every day, and if they're over eighteen, they're actually adults, legally, and a lot of cops, they'll just shrug, file a missing persons case, and do fuck all.

Maybe they'd turn up. Maybe not, but once that case was filed on the system, that cop'd done their job and they could move on to filing the next report. Wasn't like you went door to door looking for them, was it? Not in a city like this. Half the time you couldn't get to the fucking doors. Walls. Security gates. Barbed wire. Condos with card access only and not a human in sight. Whatever. You couldn't just smash your way in. Not easily, anyhow. Not without repercussions.

I knew that. I'd been a cop, once.

I'd been on Greg's team. I'd dealt with the real missing girls cases, the older girls in my case. The girls that were a staple commodity of the sex trade. Worked the whole sex crime angle when I'd been in. I remembered those girls whose cases I'd worked on. The one's that'd been dragged off and raped, the ones that'd been the victims of sex crimes, the ones that'd just vanished completely, and I'd volunteered for the unit. They'd picked me because they could use me as bait, and they had. I'd been good at it too.

Up until they'd tossed me out on my ass.

"Laid it on the line to them?" I wanted to know what Greg had told them. The parents.

"Told them she was more than likely taken right off the street but we just don't know. Told them if she'd been taken by someone, odds are it was for the sex trade and there was fuck all chance we'd find their girl. We'll look, but with all the downsizing and defunding, we've just got too many active cases with a higher priority and the social workers are too busy drinking coffee and tweeting about institutional sexism and racism and protecting trans kids from their oppressive parents to get off their asses."

"Really? You said that?" Okay, yeah, that did surprise me.

"Fuck, Mal. Do you think I'm an idiot? Of course I didn't say that. Christ, what's it take to get a laugh out of you?" He was laughing at me.

"Sorry," I said, shaking my head. "I just don't find it very funny." Fuck, I'd believed him there. Asshole.

"Yeah, me neither, Mal, but you laugh or you cry, right? And I've done all the crying I'm going to do long ago."

He looked up into the blackness. "I feel like it though, Mal. Lost two guys so far this month. One took early retirement, one resigned 'n he's moving to Florida, got a job lined up there. Can't blame him. Thinking about it myself. Got half a dozen rape cases right now where we got a handle on the perps. Open and shut, but they take time and I got no-one to work on them. Everyone's already maxed out on overtime and they fucked us over on the budget.

Anyhow, it's out of character for the girl, but there's actually no indication she was taken, no CCTV, no witnesses, and it's not like we can go door to door downtown around there for every missing teenager, especially when she could be anywhere by now. Told them I could bring in an expert if they could afford one. Told them you had a way better chance of finding her and getting her back if you started on it right away."

Yeah, well, Greg was right. That's exactly what I did. That's all I did.

Been a cop once upon a time. I'd worked for Greg for two years, before they kicked my ass out of the Force. Yeah, my ass. Me. Mallory Kwon. Five foot six, hundred fifteen pounds of American-Chinese. Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Fukien and Japanese. Conversational Korean and Vietnamese. Could order off a Thai menu and tell you to fuck yourself or your mother in Bahasa, Tagalog, Burmese and Lao. Blended right into the Asian community, coz I was fucking Chinese, and yeah, I knew all about those kinky Japanese school uniforms. I'd been the bait more times than I cared to remember, until that once when the backup failed.

That was a while ago now, a couple of years ago. They'd kicked my ass out after that, no package, and I'd been lucky the DA hadn't taken me to the cleaners. He'd wanted to, and I knew why. Asshole. Him and me, we went back a while, to before I was a cop and before he was a DA, but Greg had done his best to cover my ass, and I knew he blamed himself. As for that DA? He was an asshole, a Soros-funded DA, which kinda went with asshole, and I'd realized that in the end, back when I'd dumped him. Ex-boyfriends are bad. Ex-boyfriends who are assholes and DAs when you're a cop are the worst, and he was.

A Soros-funded asshole. Excessive violence? He could bite my ass. Those two dudes? I'd known what they were gonna do to me. They'd told me. In detail, and they were gonna get started down in that back alley they'd dragged me into. I'd put them both down myself when my backup failed, and then I'd reloaded and finished them off? Reloaded four times and I hadn't started shaking until I was halfway through that last mag.

So fucking what? Pimps? Who cares, and nobody saw a thing.

Turned out that my fucking coms link had failed.

Backup team never got the message.

Didn't matter to the asshole.

"You put four mags into them, Kwon. One would be okay, but four! What the fuck were you thinking? The only reason we're not having riots over this is they're all already busy chimping out over that shit that went down over you know where and that fucking cop there."

"Fuck you, those assholes were gonna have my ass."

Literally they were, to start with, and both of them were twice my size. That was my story and I was sticking to it, coz it was true. One of them had already had his dick out, and it hadn't been all floppy either. I mean, I was a big girl, even if I looked about ten years younger that I was when I dressed the part, which was why I was the fucking bait, out there wearing one of those fucking kinky school uniforms, coz it was this pervert serial rapist we were after, except those two dudes had muscled in where they weren't wanted.

"Wasn't like I didn't warn them to fuck off, was it?"

"Dunno what you were worried about. Not like your ass hasn't been had before."

"Fuck you, that's harassment, you prick." Yeah, we didn't like each other much.

Fucking asshole. Him, and those two dudes. Problem was, six foot three pimps just don't take a five foot six girl in a Jap school uniform seriously, even when they flash their cop card, and they had their own plans for me, which they'd been more than willing to share. Me, I was a big girl, and I knew what dicks were for, and I knew a hard one when I saw it. Both of them had been looking forward to sticking it where it wasn't welcome, and the second one hadn't been shy about sharing what he was gonna do to me before they put me out to work.

That first dude with his dick already out sure hadn't looked forward to what I gave him instead, and I'd put a couple of rounds up his ass and blown his dick off once he was down, just to make a point. He might've already been dead by then, but I sure hoped he hadn't been. I'd wanted him to get the full experience.

Never found out if he had though. He was dead when I bothered to check. Holed like a colander. Couple of mags of .45 at two or three feet made a bit of a mess. Wasn't really a colander by then. More like pulp, and wasn't much chance of using facial recognition to ID him either. The other one, he'd been in much the same shape. I'd kinda made sure of that.

"Four. Mags. Kwon. That was just a little excessive, don't you think?"

"Fuck no," I'd said. "If I'd had more, I'd have used them too."

"I bet you would have," he said, real sarcastically.

End result? Yeah, well, you guessed right.

I'd been kicked out of the Force, and I'd only been in two years. Resign or get fucked over. Some choice. Hard to make a living when you're only two years out of university and cop school, and you only have two years on the job, you've been kicked out, you've got no other work experience, and you look about eighteen, even though you're twenty five. That was another reason I'd been the bait. Asian, hot, and looked about eighteen, except when I wore that fucking school uniform. Then, I looked younger. A lot younger. Yeah, anyhow, they'd kicked my ass out, and a girl has to make a living somehow.