by Anna Ferrara
She wasn’t smiling in the photograph yet somehow she managed to look a great deal prettier than the rest of the female visitors I had seen. But why give a fake name to the hospital? I pulled up her details.
‘Status: Within Hong Kong, Tourist VISA. Date of entry: 6 Jun ‘99.’ The very day C39 entered Hong Kong! ‘Purpose of visit: Holiday. Residence in Hong Kong: The Regent Hong Kong.’ Another similarity! ‘D.O.B: 11 November 1978. Passport Origin: New York, U.S.A.’
Seems to me they came to Hong Kong together for a holiday. To be sure, I got myself out of the Immigration Department’s database and logged into the Hong Kong Government’s Phone Directory.
I keyed in the digits from the nurse’s clipboard and typed the command to activate a search for the address linked to that phone number.
What I saw next made me sit up and lean forward.
The phone number C39’s girlfriend had written for the nurse didn’t belong to The Regent Hong Kong. No, it belonged to a residential address in an expensive part of the city. The name of the apartment’s owner? M. Milone.
So, C39’s girlfriend was... loaded? Was she the reason C39 could afford The Regent? It was certainly a possibility, but how then had she, a mere twenty-three year old, come into such money? Who was she, really?
I went back into the U.S. Federal Government’s database and searched for information on C39’s girlfriend. I found only a birth certificate and educational records which told me C39’s girlfriend had never been employed in her life. According to her educational records, she had gotten a degree in Business Administration from New York University just a few years earlier. According to her birth certificate, her father was a man named Stefano Milone and her mother was dead.
Further investigation into the records of her parents revealed that her mother’s cause of death was a ‘Traffic Accident’ that had taken place when C39’s girlfriend was five. Her father had been in jail since the early ‘90s for ‘Racketeering’ offences and was likely to remain in jail for the rest of his life; he also had been to jail twice before 1970 for ‘Extortion’ and ‘Loansharking’. From her father’s records, I learned she had a younger brother named Angelo Milone and five older half-brothers from her father’s previous marriages. The oldest two co-owned a pizza parlour; the next three held minimum-wage jobs such as ‘Plumbing Supply Salesman’, ‘Contract Builder’ and ‘Assistant Truck Driver’. Her younger brother was the only one unemployed like she was. He too had gone to college.
The New York Police Department’s database gave me better answers. Stefano Milone was known on the street as ‘Smiles’, former Godfather of the Milone mafia family. The family used to dabble in prostitution and loansharking but didn’t appear to be in operation any longer.
I sat back, crossed my arms and let the information I gathered form new connections within my brain. If C39’s girlfriend was the daughter of a mob boss, could the mob or, perhaps, their enemies have been responsible for C39’s disappearance? If she was lying to the hospital about her real identity, could she be lying about not knowing about his whereabouts too? And what was the deal with the 81M men around her? Why would members of a Hong Kong triad be offering a New York mob boss’ daughter escort and translation services?
I knew there was no way of finding out where I was. My apartment was in Kowloon, not even on Hong Kong Island where C39’s girlfriend was likely at—possibly with C39. To get where the action was, I would have to move into her swanky neighbourhood, the same way I had moved to be closer to C31 all those years before. I took a long look around my soundless apartment and realised I didn’t actually want to leave.
Despite the battered aesthetic my apartment had (it hadn’t been renovated since the ‘50s and retained all the features of apartments of that time: repetitively-tiled floor, windows with multiple panes, uneven white-washed walls…), I liked my apartment; I felt more at home in that apartment than I had ever felt in my mother’s second husband’s home. It was the home I had made for myself, by myself. I had chosen to keep it monotone—blacks, whites and metallic furnishings only (my books being the only sources of colour)—and minimalistic—one of every object only—because I wanted something that was easy on the eyes and also easy to maintain. In my six years of living in it, I had formed many memories in the various nooks and crannies of the apartment; I had built a wall of books—both English and Chinese ones—in the living room and had sat in my one sofa for long enough that it curled around my body like a mould and hugged me in ways no human being would; I had slept in my bed for so long, the mattress had my smell in it.
I didn’t want to move yet I knew I had to. My job required me to; my boss would want me to. And hell, I really did want that promotion.
After a long, heartfelt sigh, I picked up the East Asian Morning Post and flipped to the very back where the property section of its classified pages always sat.
There was one one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit available for rent on the street C39’s girlfriend lived on; just opposite her apartment, from what I knew. It was insanely expensive.
That was a relief. With luck, my boss would find it too much to be paying for and I’d get to stay in the apartment I loved while still being in the running for a promotion. Back at my computer, I pulled up my email program and drafted a request for approval to claim a full year’s rent at that expensive apartment, the cost of which would be more than what Carla earned in six months. I made it sound as if I were simply providing information about the rent in great detail although what I was really doing was emphasising how expensive it was, in hope my boss would see it as unreasonable expenditure.
Six minutes before 5pm, my boss replied with a single word.
‘Approved.’
Chapter 6
26 Jun 1999, Saturday
I moved into the overpriced (in my opinion) apartment opposite C39’s girlfriend’s the day we first touched. Even though I resented it on sight (for reasons that had more to do with my feelings for my Kowloon apartment than anything else), I had to admit it was perfect for the job.
It was on the tenth floor, just like hers was, and from its bedroom, I had full view of her living room and bedroom and also the pavement around the foot of her building.
I could see when she left the house and where she was headed; I could see what she was doing for most of the day. That was how I had known where she had gone for dinner the day we first touched; I saw her leave her apartment and I followed her.
C39’s girlfriend’s apartment was extremely new and modern; it had a shared garden, pool and gym on the roof like only the real expensive ones ever had. My apartment was older, with none of those facilities, but it didn’t bother me one bit because I knew I was there to work, not to enjoy life. I didn’t even bother decorating or getting curtains.
Once I got the requisite one-way mirror films installed on each and every one of the windows (just as I had done with the windows in my Kowloon apartment years before) and moved my essentials—my desktop computer; my box of notebooks and erasable pens; box of camera related accessories; a luggage of clothes; a single mattress, pillow and quilt; the treadmill from my old apartment; a stash of instant coffee and Cup Noodles—into the new apartment, I was in business. I set up my video camera and tripod in the bedroom next to my work-related boxes and desktop computer, which I simply left on the floor. I left the bedding, treadmill and suitcase of clothes in the bedroom-sized living room. Like my Kowloon apartment, this one had no kitchen; only an induction stove on a tiny, built-in, L-shaped counter at the corner of the living room, next to a stainless steel sink. There was no fridge. The cupboards underneath the L-shaped counter were empty so I stashed my instant food there.
An hour and a half before I was to meet with C39’s girlfriend for our dinner date at Luk Kee Tea House, I was watching her from my new bedroom with the pair of binoculars I had bought the day I started working on the C31 assignment. I hoped I’d see C39 somewhere in her house, on a bed or sprawled on the sofa, but
I didn’t. C39’s girlfriend was alone.
Putting on make up in her bedroom. Then, peeling off her casual dress, spraying herself down with perfume and climbing into a little black dress and high heels. I watched as she picked up the Chanel handbag she had sitting by one of her bedside tables and as she left her apartment with it in hand. I watched her leave her building, walk to the side of the pavement, flag down a cab and climb into it.
Then, I stopped watching. I put away my binoculars, grabbed a cap and mask from my suitcase of clothes and dashed out of my apartment with the black Jansport backpack I had packed for my next mission.
If you saw me then, in my jeans and plain white t-shirt, you would’ve thought I was just another harmless student.
I got to the back of C39’s girlfriend’s apartment’s building at 6:04pm. I knew the back door was my only way in because there were guards at the lobby of her building twenty-four seven and I didn’t want to risk being recognised if I ever had to send C39’s girlfriend back to her apartment.
The back door of her building was decades newer than my Kowloon apartment’s front door. It was unguarded but locked, just as I expected. The lock wasn’t an issue for me; I had prepared a portable lock pick set for the job and knew its selection of pick rakes could handle all sorts of locks.
One look at the keyhole and I knew exactly which rake would do the job best—the one with three ridges.
After I checked and double-checked that no one was around, I stuffed the lock pick set’s tension wrench into the lock, added the three-ridge rake into the mix, jiggled for a bit and opened the door in just over thirty seconds—one and a half minutes faster than the maximum amount of time Benny said an agent was allowed to spend picking a lock. “The seasons yield to no one,” he had said; any longer and you will run the risk of looking suspicious.
Once in, I locked the door behind me and took the stairs all the way up to the tenth floor where C39’s girlfriend lived; jumping up two steps at a go to save time. I could do so without suffering greatly because I ran two hours every day, without fail, on the treadmill my boss made me buy the week after I first got the job. The employment contract I signed actually stated that daily physical training was compulsory; every security agent at Everquest, junior or otherwise, had to be in top physical shape. I had to go through a timed test similar to an Ironman challenge before they gave me the job too. I passed that test—a long distance triathlon that included a swimming segment, a bicycle ride and a marathon—by the hair, in sixteen hours and fifty-seven minutes out of the maximum seventeen, and ached for a whole week after doing so. In comparison, ten floors were a piece of cake.
I made it up at 6:09pm and by 6:10pm, was inside the apartment I had been staring at from the outside for almost two entire days.
C39’s girlfriend’s apartment smelled like expensive candles. It was more spacious and colourful inside than it looked from the outside. She had a proper kitchen, a yard, a proper dining area next to the living room and—to my surprise—a second bedroom I couldn’t see from my apartment’s window. It was completely empty. Was that where she kept him locked up when she first kidnapped him? Perhaps before she killed him? Was there something in the room I wasn’t seeing? Had I more time, I would have investigated her living quarters more thoroughly and, perhaps, even deduced a bit of her personality from the way she decorated, but I didn’t have time; I had a job to do and a train to catch.
Over the next ten minutes, I planted ten wads of plasticine in high corners all around her apartment; two in her bedroom, two in the living area, two in the dining area, two in the kitchen, one in the yard and one in the other, empty, bedroom. I stuck them inside ceiling lamps, above shelves and cupboards, and even behind speakers. I left her two bathrooms out because it was, to my own personal relief as well, company protocol; I wasn’t too keen on having to watch strangers using the bathroom myself. Each wad of plasticine concealed a fully-charged, motion-sensitive, eraser-sized, wide-angle camera that in turn contained an empty MultiMediaCard. With them in place, I had eyes all about her house for the next seven days.
By 6:30pm, I was out of her apartment and back in mine. I did a quick change into the ripped jeans, white baggy shirt and Doctor Martens boots I had already set out before hand then put on the silver-framed glasses my boss wanted me to wear.
Once I was certain I looked like a reporter on a weekend, I left my new apartment and ran all the way to the nearest train station.
I found C39’s girlfriend waiting for me at the lobby of Big City Hotel, on a circular velvet chair that was studded with what looked like diamonds, under a giant chandelier that emitted yellowish orbs of light. There were no gangster-like men around her, as far as I could see, but I didn’t dare presume they weren’t anywhere close. She had, after all, lied to me about her name. Milla Smith? Why was she hiding? What was she hiding?
“You’re right on time,” she said the moment I went up to her.
“And you look really nice,” I said. I meant it. Up close, you could see how flawless her bronzy tanned skin was and how toned her arms and legs were. When I realised I knew exactly what underwear she was wearing under her dress, however, my cheeks began to burn. I had seen C31 and her family in various states of undress before of course—so much so that I was now mostly unperturbed by the sight of human nudity—but having to look into the eyes of a person you had only just seen in that state—which I never had to do with C31—turned out to be more nerve-wracking and awkward than I expected it would be. I found myself staring hard at the speckled black marble floor under my feet with my lower lip in between my teeth, willing the memory of what I had seen out of mind.
“Thanks,” I heard her say. “You look great... too.”
My boss had been telling the truth, I realised. The assignment really did require a great deal more of my wits and skills than my previous assignment ever did. I was feeling all self-conscious and embarrassed, and... slimy. I felt like I had become just as lecherous as my boss; I felt I had violated her privacy with my eyes and it made me terribly ashamed. I did everything I could to keep my emotions away from my face—visualised my body as calm the way Benny taught me to do—and forced myself to look up at her, smile, and get on with the job. “Shall we?”
Just as I said the words, my nerves evaporated, just as Benny said they would. I thought Benny was a genius.
“Yes, we shall.” She beamed and suddenly looked, to me, a lot like one of those supermodels in those advertisements for expensive jeans.
I brought her on the train, which she, apparently, had never been on before, and took her to the very last station on the red line—the Tseun Wan station. Once there, I led her to a mini bus stop, got us on one of the buses and got us off at the village Luk Kee Tea House was at.
Watching how C39’s girlfriend grinned throughout the ride, you would have thought New York was an empty, unexciting town with nothing of interest whatsoever. Every little thing was fascinating to her—the squeeze on the train; the way passengers on the mini bus hollered when they wanted to get off; the caged birds the villages’ elderly residents carried around. By the time we sat ourselves down at Luk Kee Tea House—on plastic stools at a foldable wooden table for two on the patio in front of a view of sunset and trees—C39’s girlfriend was flushed and bouncing on the seat of her stool as if she had only just completed a very thrilling roller coaster ride.
The two-storey tea house was self-serve; its food—all types of dim sum and other local delicacies—was presented on tiny plastic plates along a long counter at the corner of the first storey. I explained how she could grab whatever she wanted from that long counter, that the final bill would be determined by the number of plates on our table, then sent her off to get food for us both so I could get a breather from the strain of having to be somebody else all the time.
C39’s girlfriend grabbed every one of the dishes the tea house had to offer, including the French Toast I talked about, and covered every inch of our smalli
sh, rectangular table with plastic plates. I had been worried about how I was going to be able to keep a conversation going all evening long (and had even prepared a mental list of fifty topics I could bring up if dead air ever arose between us) but it turned out way easier than I expected, largely because C39’s girlfriend was a great conversationalist; she kept us talking as we worked our way through the plates, asked about every aspect of Hong Kong life—touristy sites, lifestyle, habits, culture, food, things only locals knew like why we rinsed our utensils in tea at dining establishments (if you saw how restaurants washed their utensils en masse, the reason for doing so would be obvious)—and appeared more interested in Hong Kong than any other person I had ever known.
Minutes flew by faster than I expected they would; the sun set in the blink of an eye. We never once ran out of things to talk about, not even when the plates on our table had been thoroughly wiped of food. Sooner than I expected, a waiter came by and asked if we wanted anything else to eat or drink, the implicit message being that we were going to have to leave if we weren’t going to be spending another cent there. The tables around us had filled up and a queue was now outside the entrance, waiting to take our seats.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I said to her when I realised I hadn’t even gotten to asking about her relationship with C39 yet.
“You want to buy me a drink?” she replied, with eyes so wide, you would think nobody ever bought nobody a drink where she came from.
The waiting waiter shifted his weight from one leg to another and huffed with impatience so I said, “Yes. If you want one that is. It’s fine if you don’t—”
“No, no, I do. I definitely do. Want a drink. Any drink will be fine.” She seemed a little breathless in that moment and it seemed as if the layer of blush on her cheeks had suddenly thickened.
