Upgraded (28 page)

“Hello gentleman!” she say.

“Hello.”

“What service can I perform for you today?”

Geo shrugs.

Girl stares. Doesn’t blink.

“What service can I perform for you today?”

“Want bath.” Geo walk towards bathroom.

“I’m sorry, I can’t go in there,” girl says after Geo.

“That fine,” Geo say. Closes door.

Two weeks later, boys sleep in living room again. Girl spend nights alone. Sukilee would be scared of alone. But girl not Sukilee.

Jon look to Geo over second bowl of noodles. Getting belly. Like Sukilee. Better food nice.

“Good, eh?”

“Eh.” Put bowl down. “Miss junk table. Miss stick. Miss dancers.”

Jon’s boy point out girl can dance. Jon narrows eyes. “Not same.”

“We could sell junk.”

“Where? What?”

“Girl. Junk.” Jon say. Boys protest. Jon’s eyes narrow.

Geo knows it true.

Geo still has ball. Goes into girl room, alone.

“Hello gentleman! What service can I perform for you today?”

“Where is this?” Hold up ball.

Girl blank stare. “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Take off clothes.”

Girl comply. Stand naked. Face flat.

“Turn around.”

Find spot on back. Leverage with knife. Pop out panel. But not ball inside. Wires, thick and thin. Metal poles. Plastic.

Try to put panel back in. Won’t fit. Struggle.

Need tape.

Junk man know how to take junk apart. But only tinker man can put it back together again.

Jon trades extra noodles at market. Boys go with him. Make panks selling water. Geo alone in tower. Take bath.

Junk girl talks. Geo don’t listen. Stand at window. Naked. Drying.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” girl say. Geo looks over shoulder at girl. Looks at city below. Looks at junk beyond.

Day Three think men want hive. Want girl. But junk-girl not girl. Junk men know junk when see it.

Men leave towers. Day, month, year. Nothing here. Then Geo gracious.

Then Geo welcome Day Three down in the junk.

The Regular

Ken Liu

“This is Jasmine,” she says.

“It’s Robert.”

The voice on the phone is the same as the one she had spoken to earlier in the afternoon.

“Glad you made it, sweetie.” She looks out the window. He’s standing at the corner, in front of the convenience store as she asked. He looks clean and is dressed well, like he’s going on a date. A good sign. He’s also wearing a Red Sox cap pulled low over his brow, a rather amateurish attempt at anonymity. “I’m down the street from you, at 27 Moreland. It’s the gray stone condo building converted from a church.”

He turns to look. “You have a sense of humor.”

They all make that joke, but she laughs anyway. “I’m in unit 24, on the second floor.”

“Is it just you? I’m not going to see some linebacker type demanding that I pay him first?”

“I told you. I’m independent. Just have your donation ready and you’ll have a good time.”

She hangs up and takes a quick look in the mirror to be sure she’s ready. The black stockings and garter belt are new, and the lace bustier accentuates her thin waist and makes her breasts seem larger. She’s done her makeup lightly, but the eye shadow is heavy to emphasize her eyes. Most of her customers like that. Exotic.

The sheets on the king-sized bed are fresh, and there’s a small wicker basket of condoms on the nightstand, next to a clock that says “5:58.” The date is for two hours, and afterwards she’ll have enough time to clean up and shower and then sit in front of the TV to catch her favorite show. She thinks about calling her mom later that night to ask about how to cook porgy.

She opens the door before he can knock, and the look on his face tells her that she’s done well. He slips in; she closes the door, leans against it, and smiles at him.

“You’re even prettier than the picture in your ad,” he says. He gazes into her eyes intently. “Especially the eyes.”

“Thank you.”

As she gets a good look at him in the hallway, she concentrates on her right eye and blinks rapidly twice. She doesn’t think she’ll ever need it, but a girl has to protect herself. If she ever stops doing this, she thinks she’ll just have it taken out and thrown into the bottom of Boston Harbor, like the way she used to, as a little girl, write secrets down on bits of paper, wad them up, and flush them down the toilet.

He’s good looking in a non-memorable way: over six feet, tanned skin, still has all his hair, and the body under that crisp shirt looks fit. The eyes are friendly and kind, and she’s pretty sure he won’t be too rough. She guesses that he’s in his forties, and maybe works downtown in one of the law firms or financial services companies, where his long-sleeved shirt and dark pants make sense with the air conditioning always turned high. He has that entitled arrogance that many mistake for masculine attractiveness. She notices that there’s a paler patch of skin around his ring finger. Even better. A married man is usually safer. A married man who doesn’t want her to know he’s married is the safest of all: he values what he has and doesn’t want to lose it.

She hopes he’ll be a regular.

“I’m glad we’re doing this.” He holds out a plain white envelope.

She takes it and counts the bills inside. Then she puts it on top of the stack of mail on a small table by the entrance without saying anything. She takes him by the hand and leads him towards the bedroom. He pauses to look in the bathroom and then the other bedroom at the end of the hall.

“Looking for your linebacker?” she teases.

“Just making sure. I’m a nice guy.”

He takes out a scanner and holds it up, concentrating on the screen.

“Geez, you
are
paranoid,” she says. “The only camera in here is the one on my phone. And it’s definitely off.”

He puts the scanner away and smiles. “I know. But I just wanted to have a machine confirm it.”

They enter the bedroom. She watches him take in the bed, the bottles of lubricants and lotions on the dresser, and the long mirrors covering the closet doors next to the bed.

“Nervous?” she asks.

“A little,” he concedes. “I don’t do this often. Or, at all.”

She comes up to him and embraces him, letting him breathe in her perfume, which is floral and light so that it won’t linger on his skin. After a moment, he puts his arms around her, resting his hands against the naked skin on the small of her back.

“I’ve always believed that one should pay for experiences rather than things.”

“A good philosophy,” he whispers into her ear.

“What I give you is the girlfriend experience, old fashioned and sweet. And you’ll remember this and relive it in your head as often as you want.”

“You’ll do whatever I want?”

“Within reason,” she says. Then she lifts her head to look up at him. “You have to wear a condom. Other than that, I won’t say no to most things. But like I told you on the phone, for some you’ll have to pay extra.”

“I’m pretty old-fashioned myself. Do you mind if I take charge?”

He’s made her relaxed enough that she doesn’t jump to the worst conclusion. “If you’re thinking of tying me down, that will cost you. And I won’t do that until I know you better.”

“Nothing like that. Maybe hold you down a little.”

“That’s fine.”

He comes up to her and they kiss. His tongue lingers in her mouth and she moans. He backs up, puts his hands on her waist, turning her away from him. “Would you lie down with your face in the pillows?”

“Of course.” She climbs onto the bed. “Legs up under me or spread out to the corners?”

“Spread out, please.” His voice is commanding. And he hasn’t stripped yet, not even taken off his Red Sox cap. She’s a little disappointed. Some clients enjoy the obedience more than the sex. There’s not much for her to do. She just hopes he won’t be too rough and leave marks.

He climbs onto the bed behind her and knee-walks up between her legs. He leans down and grabs a pillow from next to her head. “Very lovely,” he says. “I’m going to hold you down now.”

She sighs into the bed, the way she knows he’ll like.

He lays the pillow over the back of her head and pushes down firmly to hold her in place. He takes the gun out of the small of his back, and in one swift motion, sticks the barrel, thick and long with the silencer, into the back of the bustier, and squeezes off two quick shots into her heart. She dies instantly.

He removes the pillow, stores the gun away. Then he takes a small steel surgical kit out of his jacket pocket, along with a pair of latex gloves. He works efficiently and quickly, cutting with precision and grace. He relaxes when he’s found what he’s looking for—sometimes he picks the wrong girl—not often, but it has happened. He’s careful to wipe off any sweat on his face with his sleeves as he works, and the hat helps to prevent any hair from falling on her. Soon, the task is done.

He climbs off the bed, takes off the bloody gloves, and leaves them and the surgical kit on the body. He puts on a fresh pair of gloves and moves through the apartment, methodically searching for places where she hid cash: inside the toilet tank, the back of the freezer, the nook above the door of the closet.

He goes into the kitchen and returns with a large plastic trash bag. He picks up the bloody gloves and the surgical kit and throws them into the bag. Picking up her phone, he presses the button for her voicemail. He deletes all the messages, including the one he had left when he first called her number. There’s not much he can do about the call logs at the phone company, but he can take advantage of that by leaving his prepaid phone somewhere for the police to find.

He looks at her again. He’s not sad, not exactly, but he does feel a sense of waste. The girl was pretty and he would have liked to enjoy her first, but that would leave behind too many traces, even with a condom. And he can always pay for another, later. He likes paying for things. Power flows to
him
when he pays.

Reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket, he retrieves a sheet of paper, which he carefully unfolds and leaves by the girl’s head.

He stuffs the trash bag and the money into a small gym bag he found in one of the closets. He leaves quietly, picking up the envelope of cash next to the entrance on the way out.

Because she’s meticulous, Ruth Law runs through the numbers on the spreadsheet one last time, a summary culled from credit card and bank statements, and compares them against the numbers on the tax return. There’s no doubt. The client’s husband has been hiding money from the IRS, and more importantly, from the client.

Summers in Boston can be brutally hot. But Ruth keeps the air conditioner off in her tiny office above a butcher shop in Chinatown. She’s made a lot of people unhappy over the years, and there’s no reason to make it any easier for them to sneak up on her with the extra noise.

She takes out her cell phone and starts to dial from memory. She never stores any numbers in the phone. She tells people it’s for safety, but sometimes she wonders if it’s a gesture, however small, of asserting her independence from machines.

She stops at the sound of someone coming up the stairs. The footfalls are crisp and dainty, probably a woman, probably one with sensible heels. The scanner in the stairway hasn’t been set off by the presence of a weapon, but that doesn’t mean anything—she can kill without a gun or knife, and so can many others.

Ruth deposits her phone noiselessly on the desk and reaches into her drawer to wrap the fingers of her right hand around the reassuring grip of the Glock 19. Only then does she turn slightly to the side to glance at the monitor showing the feed from the security camera mounted over the door.

She feels very calm. The Regulator is doing its job. There’s no need to release any adrenaline yet.

The visitor, in her fifties, is in a blue short-sleeve cardigan and white pants. She’s looking around the door for the doorbell. Her hair is so black that it must be dyed. She looks Chinese, holding her thin, petite body in a tight, nervous posture.

Ruth relaxes and lets go of the gun to push the button to open the door. She stands up and holds out her hand. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you Ruth Law, the private investigator?” In the woman’s accent Ruth hears traces of Mandarin rather than Cantonese or Fukienese. Probably not well connected in Chinatown then.

“I am.”

The woman looks surprised, as if Ruth isn’t quite who she expected. “Sarah Ding. I thought you were Chinese.”

As they shake hands Ruth looks Sarah level in the eyes: they’re about the same height, five foot four. Sarah looks well maintained, but her fingers feel cold and thin, like a bird’s claw.

“I’m half Chinese,” Ruth says. “My father was Cantonese, second generation; my mother was white. My Cantonese is barely passable, and I never learned Mandarin.”

Sarah sits down in the armchair across from Ruth’s desk. “But you have an office here.”

She shrugs. “I’ve made my enemies. A lot of non-Chinese are uncomfortable moving around in Chinatown. They stick out. So it’s safer for me to have my office here. Besides, you can’t beat the rent.”

Sarah nods wearily. “I need your help with my daughter.” She slides a collapsible file across the desk towards her.

Ruth sits down but doesn’t reach for the file. “Tell me about her.”

“Mona was working as an escort. A month ago she was shot and killed in her apartment. The police think it’s a robbery, maybe gang related, and they have no leads.”

“It’s a dangerous profession,” Ruth says. “Did you know she was doing it?”

“No. Mona had some difficulties after college, and we were never as close as . . . I would have liked. We thought she was doing better the last two years, and she told us she had a job in publishing. It’s difficult to know your child when you can’t be the kind of mother she wants or needs. This country has different rules.”

Ruth nods. A familiar lament from immigrants. “I’m sorry for your loss. But it’s unlikely I’ll be able to do anything. Most of my cases now are about hidden assets, cheating spouses, insurance fraud, background checks, that sort of thing. Back when I was a member of the force, I did work in Homicide. I know the detectives are quite thorough in murder cases.”