Gangsta's Paradise

This was how I made mine.

Recovering missing merchandise.

Easier if I thought of them as merchandise.

I was good at it, too. Two years on the unit, I had a pretty good idea who the local players were who dealt in the kind of merchandise that it paid me to recover, and they knew me by then too. Those players and I, we both knew a few other things too. The cops had way more to concern themselves with than druggies and poor abused little bitches that had run away from home more often than not, and just didn't want to go back. The ones that hadn't done a runner, the ones that had been sold or got themselves lifted, they were a different story, and those were the ones that we did try to find.

Miss Tokyo hadn't run. She hadn't been sold.

Greg knew that, but he had a backlog of a hundred other cases like her. More every week. I knew that, too. Add in cutbacks to the police, and financial reductions, making Greg's team smaller, and there hadn't been enough of them before. Whoever had snatched her knew that. Of course they did. The parents had no fucking clue and they were desperate, they were in a foreign country, they knew fuck all and hey, Greg always knew which parents could foot the bill.

Greg had done the groundwork to bring me in, and here I was.

Of course, he'd get his referral fee. He knew that, too.

They hadn't had a payrise in four years.

Had to pay the bills somehow.

Kinda knew he spread it round the unit as well, 'n they all knew me from when I was one of them, 'n they knew what I did now. Every single one of them looked the other way 'n took the payoffs, coz every single one of them knew how many girls I got back my way. About five times as many as all of them combined, 'n they turned a blind eye to the odd missing pimp too. Maybe they guessed, but it never came back. Maybe they felt guilty for leaving me hanging that once, but whatever. Nah, I did it my fucking way, and it was win-win for the old team, and for me.

For the girls too, the ones that I got back, anyways.

"You go do your thing in there. I'm gonna make a few calls, and you don't wanna hear them. I'll come in when I'm done."

"Good luck," Greg said flatly, dropping the butt of his Gitane on the flagstones, grinding it under his shoe as it hissed out, before turning and heading inside. He knew he didn't want to hear a word I said.

He never did, and we both knew why.

We'd had that conversation when I first started. Once.

A long one, starting with Johan's proposal. Greg, he'd eyed me and we'd gone through it, 'n he'd looked at me kind of strangely. "You sure about this, Mal? I know what you think about those guys. Just don't go into this half-assed. They're assholes, you know what they do to those girls, and you know how they work. You're gonna have to look a lot of those girls in the eye and just turn around and walk away and leave them. You sure you can do that?"

"I've thought about that, Greg," I'd said. "Thought about it long and hard, and that bastard Johan, the way he laid it out, you know the background of a lot of those girls. Those guys are picky, they have to be with their clients. He's right, the asshole. I can get a lot of those girls back like this, Greg. Way more than we've ever managed to get back, and Johan'll introduce me. He knows most of the players. They deal with each other all the time."

"I know how it's gonna work, Mal," Greg said. "I know what Johan wants, 'n I'm only gonna say this once. You get those girls back, you tell me who's cooperating with you and turning them over, and we'll ignore them unless it's something blatant. Ten percent off the top for me and the team, and you can tell Johan he's gotta deal, and I never want to hear about how it works again. Capiche?"

"As a bell, boss," I'd said.

"And I'm not your boss, Mal. Not anymore. You're on your own on this. No backup. You get into a jam, there's no cavalry riding to the rescue."

"I got it, Greg," I'd said. "I'm not gonna take any risks. This'll be business, and I know, I know, there's gonna be girls I can't do a thing about, and I know I'm gonna have to just walk away and leave them, but the good thing is, I'm not gonna be tied down by the rules and regulations either. I can work this the way we never could as cops, and I'm gonna get a lot of those girls back."

"Sure hopes this works out the way you think it's gonna work, Mal, and we'll leave it at that."

We had, and it'd worked out way better that either Greg or I thought it would.

Greg headed inside and I got down to work.

Calls. Most my work was calls.

Always had a dozen burner phones in a box in the back of my beat up old Volvo, one of the old ones from the mid '90's, built like a tank from the days before Ford fucked Volvo over and then sold it to some shit Chinese company. Mine was Swedish made, older than me, replacement engine and a few other mods, and it really was a tank. Useful when you wanna run some asshole off the road, and don't fucking ask, okay? I was still fucked off about the cost of those repairs.

Added it to the bill though. Told the asshole that really, that dude was heading outta state with his little darling and I coulda just stayed legal and let her go, and then he'd never have seen her again, coz she'd have been in Vegas in some discrete little apartment tucked away out of sight and pulling tricks day and night until she was all used up, and then they'd have shipped her out to South America and she'd have been gone for good.

Asshole paid, but it fucked me off that he'd tried to nickel and dime me.

I grabbed the first burner outta the box. Started making calls. Looking at those images that Greg had sent me on my own mobile, the one I used for Greg and for client calls. Yeah, well, Miss Tokyo was a looker. I'd sure have looked more than twice if I'd seen her in one of the clubs I hung out in when I was looking for something cute and innocent. She was exactly what I liked. Kind of like me when I was eighteen, and I knew now how easily I could've ended up where she likely was now.

No street smarts, clubbing, little innocent that I'd been?

Yeah, back then I thought I'd been street smart.

Now I knew I'd been lucky, that was all.

More I thought about it, the more I was sure the poor little bitch had been taken to meet an order for a fresh one. Big demand for young Asian girls, and not just by Epstein's buddies. One look at this one and whoever had her now would know the potential. She wouldn't be out on the streets or in some bar, club or brothel. Nope, she'd be exclusive, hidden away in some upmarket suite or apartment for the johns with real money and a taste for fresh young Asian honey. Not even a hooker. Hookers got paid. She'd be a sex slave, literally. Yeah, she was merchandise. A body to be sold. That was all she was now.

There'd be no clues.

None at all.

Even if there were, whoever had her, if he thought the cops were onto him, he'd have that poor little bitch shipped off to some Mexican brothel south of the border faster than a gay Democrat politician slipping his cock up an intern's ass. Over the border, not even I could get her back, and I wasn't ever going to try. You couldn't pay me enough to even think about it. That was cartel territory, and if I crossed the border on that kind of business, odds were I'd never be coming back either. You just did not fuck with the cartels. Not unless you were the FBI and you had Special Forces backup, and me, I worked on my own.

My only backups were the guns I carried and cold sharp steel, and for the cartels, that was nowhere near fuckin' enough. A fucking Special Forces company wouldn't have been enough. Nope. Never going there. Not for all the fucking gold in Fort Knox. If it was still called Fort Knox. Probably been renamed to Fort Saint Dylan Mulvaney by now, but whatever. I was talking about south of the border.

Be lucky if all that happened to me was I ended up as a ten buck whore myself.

Worse things happened to cops and ex-cops south of the border.

I was in this to make a living, not die in agony.

Fumiko Suematsu's parents had the money, they wanted her back, and that was where I came in. I had my own approach. Successful approach too, but it was one that Greg didn't want to hear the details on, even though he knew. He'd helped me get started, after all. I got a lot of girls back, and I didn't do it by kicking in doors and arresting pimps that'd be out the next day on bail. Wasn't a cop anymore. I couldn't do that, not legally anyhow, even though I'd done it once or twice. Hadn't arrested them, mind you. I'd put them down, and that means exactly what it sounds like.

Even if those pimps were arrested, they'd be out without any bail, coz that's the way a lot of those DA's were handling pimps these days. Prostitution, it was just sex work after all, and pimps, hey, they took the bookings and made appointments didn't they. Just glorified receptionists, that's all they are and we can't prosecute them for that. Oh no no no, and the assholes turned a blind eye to the young girls being whored out, and the trafficking and the violence and the outright rape and coercion, and all the other shit that went down. So no, they wouldn't just be out, they'd be out and highly fucked off with me as well, and I wasn't a cop.

It'd be open season on Mallory Kwon.

Nope, me and those guys, I knew them and they knew me. Mostly, we did honest business, and I was gonna be making calls. Call after call after call.

A dozen calls, half an hour later, and a quarter of the way down my contact list, I hit pay dirt. Faster than usual.They all knew me now. They answered when I called, they didn't waste my time, and I didn't waste theirs. This was business, and we all knew what that business was.

"Yo?"

"It's me."

"Hey, how ya doing Chiquita? You calling about that missing Jap import?"

"You got her?" Yeah, as soon as he said that, I knew he had the merchandise I was looking for. I knew before he'd finished talking.

I could hear what was going on in the background, and I did speak Japanese. Not real good, but not bad. Always had a talent for that sort of language thing. Already knew I didn't have to do any more looking for Fumiko Suematsu. She wasn't screaming; although I guess she probably would've been if I'd called a few hours ago. Sounded like she'd already been broken in from what I could hear, coz she wasn't weeping and wailing.

Sounded like she was doing what she'd already been trained to do, and begging and asking them to fuck her, in between those little sobs and moans and cries in broken English and in Japanese that said that yeah, she was being fucked.

Miss Tokyo had been lifted twelve hours ago, and she'd probably spent the last eleven of those twelve hours being broken in and fucked non-stop by Johan's team. I doubt they'd been going easy on breaking her in and fucking her, either. They never did with new merchandise, not from what I'd heard, and I'd heard it first hand mostly. Open for business, that's where they wanted her, and Miss Tokyo sounded like she was there.

Yeah, I'd been right.

MIss Tokyo had a new career.

She was in the sex trade and being trained.

She was gonna be open for business in the morning.

Her looks? Johan's clients? Steak in front of a junkyard pitbull.

Johan chuckled. "Yeah, I got her. Planned to call you in the morning to let you know. Figured you'd be interested in this one."

"Would I be calling if I wasn't? How much?"

I kinda tuned out the background. Didn't really enjoy listening to Miss Tokyo being broken in, and whoever was using her now was pounding the bed with her. She was being used, and used hard. She likely wasn't enjoying it, either, but who could tell from the noises she was making? Coulda been enjoying it, the way she was squealing her head off. Unlikely though, but whatever, she was gonna be fucked like that for the next six weeks straight. She'd get used to it, but right now, she wasn't.

Yeah, I knew that sucked. Nothing much I could do about that. You start letting it get to you, you start thinking like a woman, like any normal person, you're gonna lose it, but for me and for Johan, this was business as usual.

Getting a good return on the merchandise was Johan's business.

Getting the merchandise back to her family was my business.

Doing what she was doing now was her new business.

Whether she liked it or not didn't matter at all.

Nope, that was none of my business.

She'd get used to it. Eventually.

Johan told me how much, and yeah, well, I knew the market rate for this type of merchandise. I kept an eye on the market myself. Had to if I didn't wanna be shafted. Johan was honest, some of the others weren't. Expensive, but he wasn't jacking the price up on me. Hot young Asian merchandise like Miss Tokyo, it was always expensive, and if she'd been younger, it'd have been way more.Younger they got, the more expensive they were. A lot more expensive down at the bottom of the bell curve that Johan marketed.

Eighteen? She was at the top end of that bell curve for Johan's clientele, and he didn't have too many girls at that end because he was in that kind of specialist niche market where the low end of the bell curve was, well, let's just say it was low and that other end was real popular with his clients and leave it at that, but the high end was about where Miss Tokyo was, and even if he kept her, she wouldn't have a long career in his niche of the trade. A few months, a year at most, and he'd have to move her on. Too old.

Plenty of other buyers'd be willing to take her off his hands though. She was in a niche sector right now, but Miss Tokyo was prime market material for the mainstream of the industry, 'n by the time he was ready to pass her on, she'd be real well trained. Johan knew how to make sure his girls met the clients expectations, and they paid well to have those expectations met. All those guys in his niche of the industry knew how to make sure their girls met the client's expectations, no matter where they were on that bell curve.

It was their business, after all.

I knew he was being straight with me. We'd dealt before. Quite a few times, right from when I got started. We'd deal again. He wasn't going to screw me. We had a good thing going, him and me. Not that he was the only one I had a good thing going with now, not by a long shot, but whatever, Johan had been my first, he'd more or less got me started, and he was straight up with me. Always had been.

This was business as usual for both of us, and Greg wouldn't have bothered calling me in if those parents couldn't handle the bills. Hot merchandise in that market niche was never cheap. Merchandise that looked like Fumiko Suematsu was always in demand, but for Johan, selling her back to me was a deal that reduced his risk to almost zero, because I had my own deal running with Greg on the side. One of those unspoken deals, but it worked for everyone.

As long as nobody ever talked about it.

"Done. I'll drop the deposit off tomorrow morning. Look after the merchandise for me and don't damage her, okay? Nothing permanent. I'm gonna be collecting and I'd like her in good condition. Four work for you?"

Four weeks. Not four tomorrow afternoon.

"Mal, Mal, Mal, you know me. She'll be in good shape for you. And make it six. Expecting a good return on this one and I'd prefer not to cut it too short. Stretch it longer if we can. She's going to be real popular."

Yeah, I'd already figured that one out. I had those images of her on my mobile, the ones that Greg had shared with me. She was hot, and she was exactly what Johan's clientele paid the big bucks for, even if she was on that outside end of the bell curve for his niche. I knew that as well as Johan did. Hot looking young Asian pussy and ass, and yeah, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and maybe Thai or Lao or Burmese or Cambodian if you wanted something a little more exotic. That's what his clientele were into. Sucked for Miss Tokyo, but it wasn't like I was gonna argue. Four weeks? Six weeks? Eight weeks? Whatever. After she'd been trained up and working that first couple of weeks, it wouldn't make much difference to her.

She'd be used to it.

Whether she liked it or not.

Didn't like it at all myself, but fuck, at least I'd get her back, and yeah, that was my niche in the market. Getting girls like Fumiko Suematsu back. Used hard before they were returned, that went without saying, coz the deal I ran was, the guys that ran them got to make their money first, but eventually she'd be back with her family. She wouldn't be trafficked. She wouldn't be exported to Europe or Mexico or South America. She wouldn't be sold off to some rich pervert, never to be seen again, and yeah, that stuff happens more than you think.

There's some sick bastards out there, and I'd been a cop once. Worst I'd ever come across was that guy with the agricultural waste reduction incinerator. Think crematorium for animals. Works just as well for bodies, believe me. Burns them to ashes. Flush the ashes, clean out the incinerator, and there's no trace. We'd only got that dude because the ashes were still there. There, and warm. Didn't like to think about how many girls had been through that incinerator. Quite a few, was Greg's assessment. That dude, he'd had that incinerator for a few years, but he never cracked, and we only ever pinned that one girl on him and for that, he'd gotten twenty five. Parole? Soros DA. He was gonna be out after ten, and I could pretty much guarantee he'd be at it again after he was out.

It was the eyes. Those dead fuckin' eyes.

As soon as you saw those eyes, you fuckin' knew.

I sorta tracked that dude in case he got early release. Back of my mind was always that thought that once he was out, I'd deal with the fucker. Quietly. My way. Hadn't made up my mind, but I'd put a few dudes through Raoul's little grinder now, and I was kinda thinking why the fuck not? It'd be justice for those girls at least.

Met one or two like that shit since, and now? I wasn't a cop and I had my own ways of getting rid of the evidence. Done it maybe half a dozen times now, and I wasn't a cop. I didn't give a fuck for those laws, the ones they made for us, but not for them. Didn't have any real proof, but fuck, I wasn't prosecuting, and I knew they'd bought those girls. Knew there wasn't any trace of those girls, and they hadn't been moved on.

Those two, they were johns, 'n I knew they'd bought those girls. I looked in their eyes, 'n I knew they'd done it, and they knew I knew and they'd laughed. I'd had the last laugh though, coz I'd smiled back, and I'd put them down. Assholes never knew what happened to them, which kinda pissed me but I had to get rid of 'em fast, and that was before my deal with Raoul. Put them down, and there hadn't even been a twinge of guilt, coz those bastards were animals, feral animals, and you put ferals down.

I'd put 'em down 'n society was the fuckin' better for it.

And yeah, if I ever came across any more of those sick perverts, I wouldn't bother even thinking about bringing Greg in, and I know what you're thinking. I know what I used to think too. Dudes that pay guys like Johan to use those girls they way they do, they're perverts.They're sick bastards. But there's a scale, and there's way worse things that happen out there than what Johan's girls had to live through.

Way and the fuck worse.

Never had come across anything more after those two other than rumors. None of the dudes I did business with ever had anything I could've used, and I did keep an ear open. No names, nothing. Nothing I could ever pin down, but if I ever did...let's just say I'd be doing another freebie, Greg's team wouldn't be needed, and I knew enough that there wouldn't be anything linking it back to me.