Dragon: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 37)

by Robert J. Crane

  I looked around; no one could see us unless they walked by or glanced out one of the windows of my office across the way. Which was unlikely, because the offices directly across from where we stood were in the disused part of the building. The sidewalks had been pretty empty, too, but I suppose you can never be too careful. “What?” I asked. “Do we need to talk elsewhere?”

  “No, this is fine.” Michelle shook her head. “Besides, I don't know any of the local restaurants and I doubt any are as good as the Bon Ton Cafe. Just...trying to get my thoughts together before I launch into this.” She lapsed into another silence. “You know I hire and bring in people from China to work in my businesses, right?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “I remember well chasing after that Chinese grandma when you sent her down Bourbon Street and told her to wait for me.” Also, that the rest of her work force was cut from similar cloth, in terms of ethnicity.

  Michelle nodded slowly. “Right. Well.” She stalled there again.

  “Was one of them kidnapped?” I asked, tired of waiting. I kinda needed to pee, and all this cloak and dagger wasn't getting me closer to a bathroom.

  “Well...they definitely disappeared,” Michelle said. “And it wasn't one of them.” She bit her lip. “It was three of them.”

  I frowned. “What?” Three?

  She nodded. “Two sisters, and a guy that was a distant cousin of theirs. They lived separately – well, the cousin did. The sisters lived in the same apartment with some other people.”

  “Did someone come crashing into the apartment and drag them out?” I asked.

  She shook her head again. “No. They just...disappeared. Didn't answer phone calls – phones are shut off, actually. Didn't show up for work. And when I checked in, the sisters hadn't come home the night before. Same with the cousin.” She shrugged. “They're all just...gone.”

  Time for the tough questions. “Are you sure they didn't just...run off?” I asked.

  “That does happen sometimes,” Michelle said slowly. “And the fact that they're a family unit makes it more likely. But...” She hesitated, checking the street. Presumably there was no one out there, because she turned and meandered back to me, but lowered her voice. “These people worked in the legitimate part of the business.”

  I gave her a wary eye. “I thought it was all legitimate now.”

  “I'm working on it,” she said, and a little fire lit in her eyes, giving her more pep than she'd had in our whole conversation thus far. Color me shocked that Michelle hadn't completely extricated herself from criminal activity. “But the point is – I'm not the only person who imports Chinese labor for massage parlors and other enterprises in this country.”

  “Ah, yes, the famed Sino Illegal Activities Guild and Yoga Club. You must be a charter member with those pants.”

  “Hah,” she said mirthlessly. “I talked to a few of my peers. I'm not the only who's had disappearances. And they're not all labor, and not all first generation.”

  I blinked, thinking that one through. “How many are we talking here?”

  “I don't know,” she said, going quiet and sullen. “Near as I can tell, at least fifty. In my little neck of the woods.”

  I sagged forward, my eyes widening dramatically. “Fifty?” I took a step closer to her. “You're telling me fifty people of Chinese origin have gone missing from this pool of immigrants and no one's noticed but you?”

  “Of course people have noticed,” she snapped. “But think about who you're dealing with here. Most of these people came to the US looking for a better life. Lots come from rural China. A few from the cities. They're brought over for labor – cheap, labor, okay? Usually for jobs people don't want to do, like massaging the grubby feet of elderly tourists from Florida or giving handjobs to octogenarians or–”

  “Selling furniture to residents of DC,” I said, filling in the blanks from my own recent experience.

  “Yeah, politicians and their staffers are generally awful people,” Michelle said. “I might prefer putting a hand on an octogenarian to that. Anyway – they're not plugged into the American system, let's say. They're cloistered off by their employers. Kept in apartments with lots of fellow workers. They're either here on an employer-sponsored visa that can be revoked at any time the employer chooses–”

  “Ah, helotage. The more things change...”

  “–Or they're here illegally,” she said. “Either way, they're less likely to call the cops if people start going missing, you know what I'm saying?”

  “So they go unnoticed,” I said as a pigeon flapped on a ledge above me. “Your buddies in the underworld – they're not going to report them missing, I take it?”

  She shook her head. “Can't. It would lead to uncomfortable questions about how they got here, what they're doing, working conditions...also, they probably don't have the standing in some cases to file a missing persons report, even if they wanted to. Local cops would just say–”

  “They ran away,” I said. “But you're sure this is happening. It's a thing, Chinese nationals–”

  “And some American citizens of Chinese descent. Like your case.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “And...seriously, fifty?”

  She nodded slowly. “That I know of.”

  “My God,” I whispered. That damned pigeon flapped again above me, and I cast it a dirty look. Pigeons were the bane of my existence. Other than superpowered people with lawbreaking tendencies, I mean. Damned sky rats.

  “What are you going to do?” Michelle asked, rubbing her arms and hugging herself lightly.

  I started to walk away, because I sensed our conversation had reached its natural end. “I don't know. Go poking around, probably. How do I reach you if I need to?”

  She gave me a sly look. “Why would you need to reach me?”

  “Because I don't have a reliable source of information on China,” I said, pausing at the street.

  She stepped out to the edge of the alcove and looked left, then right. “That's kind of racist, assuming I know anything about China just because I'm Asian.”

  “I didn't assume it because you were Asian. I assumed it because you're the Triad boss of New Orleans, which, last I checked, was a Chinese organized crime syndicate–”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She waved me off, then stepped up to me, proffering a white business card.

  I took it. All that was on it was a phone number and nothing else. “Oh, I get it. You're a criminal, so you give this to cops and they have to investigate their way to you. Clever. Very meta, joke-wise.”

  “A necessary precaution in my line of work,” she said. “You don't want your name and address and whatnot out there, especially if you're talking to a cop.”

  “And you do so often enough to need a blank business card printed up,” I said, waving it, smiling at her. “For yoga mom playdates, I assume? I'll be in touch, Blankwoman.”

  “Don't call me if you can avoid it,” she called out as I crossed the street. “I don't need to be subpoenaed to testify in some court about this.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, looking back at her as I went. “You're just doing it out of the goodness of your heart. Or something.” I caught her frown before I left her behind, but somehow I knew, in spite of her denial, that Michelle hadn't put all this together and traveled to Washington for solely professional concerns.

  She really did care, somehow. Who she cared about...well, that was still an open question.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “I thought I gave you the week off?” I asked as I walked into the FBI office. Holloway was there, hanging out at his computer, checking sports scores. Baseball, it looked like.

  He closed the window just as I got close enough to read them. “You're not my boss,” he said, spinning around in his chair. “And also...since Hilton's on paid leave pending the investigation...”

  “Peace and quiet for you, time off for her,” I said, slipping off my jacket and draping it over my chair. “Sounds like a win/win.�
��

  “I feel like I'm the real winner here,” Holloway said. “I know I'm a fossilized misogynist pig and all, but the shit she tells me about from her personal life–”

  “I know, right? Who wants to hear about her latest Tinder date's foot fetish in action?”

  Holloway blinked. “Actually, I could stand to hear about that. She only overshares feelings with me.” He did a full body shake. “Like I want to talk about my feelings with anyone, let alone my co-worker who got out of the neonatal care unit around the time I lost my virginity.”

  “I bet that was a special time for both of you,” I said. “It's something you have in common: both on the breast at the same time and all that.”

  Holloway chuckled. He really was a pig, but I'd dealt with worse. Since that time he'd gotten out of line with me in New Orleans, he hadn't put one toe over it since. “You didn't ask about news.”

  “The news is always bad, unless it's the Huey Lewis variety, in which case it's always amazing.”

  He just shook his head in response to my lame joke. “It's really not hip to be square.” Then he lifted a Post-it note. “Also, there's this.”

  I squinted at the note. Tough to read at this distance, mostly because the handwriting was doctor-on-a-prescription-pad level bad. “'Spock's...ballin'?'”

  He flashed a look at the writing, then rolled his eyes. “The Glocks carried by the guys at the kidnapping yesterday morning and the furniture store after that? Stolen. Forensics matched the serial numbers to an entry in the database.”

  “A stolen gun being used to commit a crime?” I asked, filling my voice with the requisite sarcasm. “Why, I am so, so very shocked. You could knock me over with a feather right now.”

  “That's not the interesting part,” Holloway said. “The interesting part is that they were stolen, all together, down in Northern Virginia. Fairfax, actually.” He dangled the Post-it in front of me. “Also stolen? A .22 rifle, among a few other firearms.”

  I snatched the Post-it out of his fingers before he even realized it was gone, leaving him looking at his fingers with blank eyes for a second after I'd grabbed it. There was more on the back, almost as illegible. “Is this a number for a local cop?”

  “Yeah, and I called him,” Holloway said. “Let me save you the trouble of reaching him by giving you the bullet point answer – he said the whole thing was fishy as hell. Thought the burglary or theft or whatever was staged.”

  “Where were they stolen?” I asked, trying to make sense of Holloway's writing. Hopefully no one ever asked him to pen a will by hand, because if so, the entire estate was going to probate forever as they tried to decipher his chicken scratch.

  “HKKCME, Inc. company security force,” he said. “Guy in charge said they disappeared out of a storage locker, but our officer taking the report says the guy was nervous, twitchy, and generally full of shit.”

  “Is there an address for this place on here?” I asked, scouring the note. “Because I really want to talk to this suspicious character who lost the guns that ended up being pointed at me yesterday. Also, that name is suspiciously like another company I’ve run across in this. Bunch of garbled or random letters.”

  “No address,” Holloway said, getting up. He pulled his coat off the back of his chair. “But I know where it is.”

  “What, you want to drive me?” I asked, picking up my own coat.

  “I'd really just like to not be a desk jockey for a while,” Holloway said. He seemed a little stuck in place, like he was waiting for me to veto his ability to come. I didn't have that power, but it was my investigation, and he was standing there like a hopeful puppy.

  “Come on, little dog,” I said, inclining my head toward the door. “I'll even let you ride with your head out the window.”

  “Oh, gee, thanks,” he said, but he did come along. Tail wagging, almost.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  HKKCME, Inc. was located in an industrial/office park in Fairfax, Virginia, a scenic suburb half an hour outside DC. We hit Interstate 66 and were there pretty quickly. Fairfax was a burgeoning suburb that looked like so many I'd seen across America: big box stores, lots of greenery between the commerce zones, and a section of office parks a little off the beaten path from the aforementioned stores.

  As Holloway cruised us into the parking lot of HKKCME, Inc.'s office, he nodded at the security checkpoint. “This looks vaguely serious.”

  “Really?” I asked, scoping the booth, which had a tollbooth barrier keeping us from entering. A white-shirted security guard with a tie and a baseball cap with HKKCME written across it started over to us. “Because it looks to me like a cheesedick operation that funneled guns to a Chinese kidnap team.” I slapped my hand over my mouth. “Oops. Allegedly, I mean.”

  Holloway gave me a weird look, but the security guy was at the window so I didn't have time to explain the heat that Bilson had put on me about implicating the Chinese. The guy at the window was a basic white dude with glasses who looked about two missed meals from being a ninety-eight-pound weakling. So he was probably a hundred-pound weakling. He held a clipboard in his hand and peered in at us. “Can I help you?”

  “FBI,” I said, flashing my ID because Holloway's hands were on the wheel. “I need to talk to your head of security.”

  He looked in at me, and I caught a flash of recognition. He played it cool, though, and just nodded. “Uh huh.” Coming up with a walkie-talkie a minute later, he radioed ahead. “Hey, this Brett...we got a couple FBI agents here to talk to Leif.”

  “What do they want?” the answer crackled back.

  “To talk to Leif,” I said, using my RBF game to my full advantage.

  “Uhm,” Brett said, stealing worried looks at me through his glasses. Poor guy was sweating. “I'm gonna send them through. Let Leif know they're coming up.”

  “Thanks, Brett,” I said sweetly, and he hustled back to the booth to lift the barrier arm.

  It swung up, Holloway drove through, then shot me an amused look. “Do you ever get tired of playing the bitch?”

  “Do you?” I shot back, smiling.

  He grinned as he pulled up in front of the HKKCME building, parking in the fire lane. I popped out as a guy in a suit came bustling out the front door. He was clearly on his way to intercept us, which I thought was hilarious. He was still fastening the bottom button of his suit when he got to us, talking to himself as he walked. I caught a snatch of it:

  “...Can't believe he'd just let them in here like...didn't even call for an appointment...right in the middle of lunch, didn't even get to take my afternoon shit yet...”

  “Hey,” Holloway said as he got close. This time he flashed his ID. “Holloway and Nealon. FBI.”

  Leif wandered up, forcing a smile and looking at Holloway. “Yes, well. Leif Wallis.”

  He turned to me to shake my hand, and I let him, smiling from beneath my black glasses. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch before you could get your afternoon dump in, Leif,” he paled, “but this is kinda important. See, it turns out those guns you Barney Fife wannabes lost? They got used in a kidnapping case yesterday. Also, to shoot at a federal agent.”

  “Oh, uh, well, ah...” He made a choking noise deep in his throat, “...see, uh, ahm, they were...stolen.”

  “Were they?” I asked, and watched Leif fade whiter. “Because I gotta tell you something...” I came up next to him, draped an arm over his shoulder like we were old chums, and started walking him toward the front door, “...the federal agent that was on the barrel end of your lost weapons? That was me. And I don't like being shot at, Leif. It's right up on my list between having to listen to Taylor Swift putting to music her terrible choices in men and getting my toenails pulled out during a light torture sesh. Capisce?”

  “Yeah, I, arrrr...” Leif's voice failed him and he sailed straight into pirate vocalization territory. I'd never heard anyone do that before.

  “So I need you to tell me something,” I said, pushing into the office complex.
“I need to know wh – what the hell?”

  Leif's gulp was epic. He had a good reason to gulp, too – he had probably thought he could bullshit us out on the curb and keep us from walking him in the front door. Too bad for him I was the type to do whatever I wanted and ask for permission never.

  The office building for HKKCME was absolutely empty. By which I mean the only damned thing in there was the metal pillars that framed in the basic outline of where offices should be.

  There were no desks.

  There were no people.

  Hell, there were no walls.

  There was a chair, however, and a card table, and a guilty-looking guy in a security uniform just like Brett from out at the gate, staring at us with half a turkey hoagie in his hand.

  “I...I...” Leif was now stuck in broken record mode.

  “Well, this is interesting,” Holloway said, looking around. “Where did these guns get stolen from, exactly?”

  “We, uh, up on the second floor we have a...lockbox,” Mr. Hoagie managed to get out.

  “What are you protecting against?” I asked, looking around. “There aren't even any copper wires to steal.” I directed my gaze at Leif. “Where the hell were you going to take a shit? In the woods out back?”

  Leif pointed, wordlessly, at the ceiling, which, to be fair, was present. There was a staircase in the far corner of the building that looked fully constructed.

  “Show us what's up there,” I said, giving Leif a light shove in that direction. Light for me, I mean. He still nearly went sprawling with its force.

  Leif steadied himself and started in that direction, stiff-legged, like he needed to take that dump very badly. He turned and started to say something, but my face must have dissuaded him. He made his way, shaking and pale, toward the staircase.

  “You come with us, peckerwood,” Holloway said to the other guard. “I don't need you on my flank.”

  “What?” the guy sputtered.

  “I don't trust you at my back,” Holloway said, spelling it out for him, slow and derisively.