A Perfect Cover

by Maureen Tan

  “I’ll give you a description of the vehicle—or vehicles—and let you know when the shipment is on its way.”

  I’d just tucked my phone back into my pocket when I heard a vehicle turn into the alley behind me. I glanced in that direction and saw a bright yellow rental truck of a size that would accommodate a small apartment’s worth of furniture. Or twenty women.

  My first thought was that they’d arrived faster than I’d anticipated. My second was that I should get out of sight. But I was too far from the florist’s van to duck behind it and there was nowhere else in the alley to hide.

  Then I realized that there was no reason Squirt shouldn’t be in the alley. So I simply began walking in the direction of the slow-moving van. By the time it drove past, I was near the Dumpster behind the Red Lotus, and I saw that the ugly butcher was driving. I lifted my hand in casual greeting, but he didn’t seem to notice me. He rolled past and parked parallel to the loading dock. As he was maneuvering the truck, I slipped back behind the florist’s van.

  He turned off the engine, stepped down from the driver’s seat and went to the pedestrian door. After tapping on it, he stepped back so he could easily be seen through the peephole.

  The door swung open.

  “You’re early,” Tommy said.

  The butcher nodded.

  “I figured I could help you distribute the documents.”

  “Cool,” Tommy said as he turned away to walk back inside.

  But instead of going with him, the large man stood solidly in front of the door. Blocking it open.

  For a moment, I wondered why. Then the back door of the truck slammed upward and six armed men jumped out. The entire membership of the Young Vietnamese Businessmen’s Association. Minus two.

  At the same time, Vincent jumped down from the truck’s passenger side door. He, too, had a gun. The men stormed past the butcher and swept into the building. The butcher stood for a moment, then followed them inside.

  As I pulled out the gun that Anthony had given me, I heard the muffled cries of several women. The tea shipment, I thought, and I was certain that those cries wouldn’t be heard inside the noisy store at the front of the building.

  Even armed, rushing into the warehouse would be foolish. With the gun in my right hand, I pulled my phone out with my left. And hesitated. For just a moment, I wondered if Vincent—the FBI agent—was actually trying to rescue the women.

  But then he returned to the back door. He held Tommy in front of him.

  Tommy was sagging, weak-kneed and barely conscious. He looked as if someone had pistol-whipped him. His nose was bleeding, probably broken, there was a nasty abrasion on one cheek and blood was pouring from a wound on his scalp, staining his bright hair with a third color.

  Vincent had a gun pressed to Tommy’s temple.

  “Lacie Reed,” he shouted. “I saw you as we drove past. Show yourself. Now. Or the kid dies.”

  My hesitation had lost me my chance to phone Beauprix. I quickly tucked my cell phone under my shirt where my bra crossed my breastbone. Perhaps later there would be an opportunity to use it. In the meantime, I could only hope that when Anthony didn’t hear from me, he’d call, get no answer and then come running.

  I stepped from behind the florist’s van, holding my gun up where Vincent could see it. And I wondered how he knew my real name.

  “Toss the gun away, Squirt,” he said, going back to the name he knew me by. “And the purse, too.”

  I did what he said. And I realized that he was the third person who knew both of my identities.

  “You’re the one who sent the carrion birds.”

  That stopped him for a moment. He looked confused.

  “The guys in the bird masks.”

  “Yeah. That was me. Before you arrived in New Orleans, the senator—your Uncle Duran—told me about your awkward relationship with Tinh Vu and sent me photos of you. He asked me to keep an eye on you, not to let you screw up a federal operation, and to watch your back. As necessary.”

  I was hoping to buy enough time for Beauprix to start worrying.

  “Then why?”

  “Just playing with you. Now quit stalling or I’ll shoot young Tommy. Come on up the steps. Slowly. And keep those hands raised.”

  I did just that, and tried to walk without bouncing. I stopped halfway up.

  “Why the photo?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why not? I needed proof they’d done their job. Better, I think you’ll agree, than asking them to bring back your severed finger. Hurry up. Inside.”

  The brick through the Red Lotus’s window, I thought, was another attempt to scare me.

  “And Saturday?” I asked as I walked past him.

  “You were getting too close. You’d become an impediment. But even then, they had orders not to kill you. Just to do a little cosmetic work. I just wanted to send Senator Duran a little something to remember me by. But this is even better.”

  And then something hard slammed into the back of my head.

  Chapter 24

  I was in a boat, escaping Vietnam. Beneath the deck, where it was dark, the sounds of the sea were drowned by the roar of the diesel engine.

  I felt queasy. And my head hurt.

  Seasick, I told myself.

  Maybe I would feel better if I went up on the deck.

  I lifted my head, intending to stand and do just that.

  The world shifted. Up, down, forward and back were suddenly indistinguishable directions.

  I shut my eyes again, watched as pinpricks of light exploded behind my eyelids, and blacked out again.

  When I came to the second time, the world made more sense.

  I was moving again, but this time I knew I was riding in a vehicle on a well-paved road.

  I smelled soil and rubber and diesel fuel. There was a ridged surface beneath my right cheek and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

  I opened my eyes and it took a moment for me to figure out that I was in the cab of a truck, not its trailer. I was on the floor, in front of the passenger-side seat. And we were moving fast.

  A pair of feet, tied with nylon rope at the ankles, rested beside me. My face was to the bench seat, my knees were bent, and the bound feet were tucked in somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach.

  My own feet, I realized, were touching the door. I tried to move them, succeeded, and realized that my ankles were not bound. But my hands were tied behind me. Tight.

  I twisted my neck far enough to see another pair of feet, right foot on the accelerator.

  “Hello, Vincent,” I said quietly.

  “Ah, good company at last,” a mocking voice replied.

  I heard him strike someone.

  “Where are your manners, boy? Lift your head and say hello to your little girlfriend.”

  “’Lo, Squirt,” Tommy said, and though his voice was weak, the bound feet that rested next to me moved slightly. Tapped me lightly in the stomach.

  I managed to roll halfway onto my back, tipped my head to look up in Vincent’s direction. Rediscovered my headache and saw nothing but a cloudy sky moving past.

  I had no idea where we were or how long I’d been unconscious.

  “Where are your buddies?” I asked, wondering how talkative he was feeling.

  “They’re going to meet us in Miami. I’d gotten a phone call from one of my bosses a few days ago. Seems like someone was nosing around, and suddenly he’s got questions about my ongoing undercover investigation. And the way you were sniffing around…

  “I decided it was time to move our operation. In Little Vietnam, I ran a nice little neighborhood protection racket and sold counterfeit documents. That was enough for me and my little organization to get our feet wet. Now we can move on to bigger and better things. Our equipment is all in the back of the truck. Computers. Copiers. Cameras. Paper. Everything. But a move’s expensive. So I upped the price of the documents. And stole the shipment the Benevolent Society hijacked.”

  �
��You delayed the documents on purpose.”

  “Hell, no. Damned computer got a virus. Then there was some software incompatibility….”

  Vincent’s sudden anger twisted his mouth, whitened the knuckles on his hands. He stepped down on the accelerator, hard.

  Where, I wondered, was a traffic cop when you needed one? And I prayed that suddenly I’d see lights flashing in Vincent’s side-view mirror.

  Vincent must have had the same thought. He took a breath, slowed back down. I was sure he was, once again, keeping carefully to the speed limit.

  And he was smiling again.

  “Usually, we can provide superior customer service,” he said matter-of-factly. “Birth certificates from all fifty states. And Puerto Rico. Social security cards. Drivers’ licenses. Occasionally, for special customers, a U.S. passport or two. We’re computer literate and extremely entrepreneurial. I don’t much care who we sell papers to. The folks in Little Vietnam wanted to hijack tea shipments and I said, more power to them. But anyone trafficking humans through the Port of New Orleans buys their documents from me.

  He was a compulsive talker, I thought. And I was certain he’d prefer to have his audience looking at him. To be able to look at his audience.

  “Would you mind if I sat up?”

  “Help the girlfriend, why don’t you, Tommy?”

  Tommy managed to tuck his feet beneath my shoulders and lifted as I sat up. My head hurt and now my back was to Vincent. But there was enough space on the floor of the truck that I was able to shift myself around. I pulled my knees up in front of me, leaned back against the door and discovered an extremely sore bump.

  “You hit me with your damned gun,” I said, cursing softly.

  Vincent laughed.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Made it a lot easier to find that phone you stashed. You have such soft little breasts.”

  I shuddered at the thought.

  Tommy threw himself against the seat belt that bound him, made a noise in his throat that sounded like outrage.

  Vincent dealt him a backhanded slap.

  “My God, boy. Don’t you learn? I think the kid’s in love with you, Squirt. Tried to protect you earlier from a little friendly petting.”

  Then Vincent grew silent, concentrating on the road as he slowed to take a sharp curve. As he did, I tugged at the ropes that bound my wrists, then turned my head to look at Tommy.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed.

  When I’d seen him last, he’d looked bad. But now… His lips were split, one eye was swollen completely closed and the eyelid had turned a dark, angry purple. Blood was smeared across his face, its source a broken nose and a tear in his right eyebrow where a piece of silver jewelry had once been. His ears were also bloody and there were small, ragged wounds where his many earrings had been torn away. Somehow, the ring that pierced his left nostril remained, and it glinted gold when the sunlight hit it. A grubby ballcap was pulled down over his bright hair. Its billed cap, I suspected, kept any passing drivers from getting a good look at his face.

  He now looked just like his brother, I thought, whose slashed and battered body I’d examined at the morgue. But this young man was no lifeless corpse. He angled his head slightly so that Vincent couldn’t see his face, then dropped his left eyelid in a slow, deliberate wink.

  Good boy, I thought. Don’t give up.

  I shrugged my shoulders to relieve their cramping, stiffened my elbows and gave the bindings on my wrists another tug. Then I shifted so that my head and back were leaning against Tommy’s legs.

  Vincent was staring at the road.

  I tried to start him talking again.

  “So you moved into Little Vietnam and took over.”

  There was an edge of madness to his sudden bray of laughter.

  “Imagine Tinh Vu having to buy forged documents from me. For a while I thought I’d put him and his Vietnamese soldier buddies out of the human trafficking business. They didn’t like buying their documents retail. But they ended up paying sixty-thousand dollars for documents that I’ll sell again.

  “Tinh Vu didn’t like coming up with all that extra cash, did he? But this time he didn’t have much choice. I killed all his forgers. Smashed the very hands that Tinh Vu used to defy me. It was easy enough for my people to track them down. Use the right pressure and people betray almost anyone and do anything they’re asked to do. Take the butcher, for instance. All I had to do was grab his little florist girlfriend, cut one of her fingers off, and show it to him. After that, he told me everything I needed to know. And he betrayed his friends. Fortunately, a missing finger won’t affect her resale value.”

  My stomach roiled, as much from the thought as the lingering feeling of concussion. Uncle Tinh’s business rival was, indeed, a sociopath. When I brought Uncle Tinh the drawings of the victims, told him about the pattern I’d seen, he already knew that the message was for him. I had simply shown him the reality—the brutality—of those deaths.

  At the mention of his brother, Tommy had struggled violently against the seat and lap belts that held him tightly in place, struggled to somehow free the hands that were tied behind his back.

  Stop it, I thought. Save your strength. Sooner or later, there will be an opportunity to use it. Wait for it. But when finally he sagged against his bonds, he wiggled his feet, and I realized that he’d shifted them beneath my bound hands.

  “You bastard,” Tommy muttered. “I’ll kill you.”

  I braced for Vincent to hit the boy again. But he didn’t.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a little family loyalty,” he said. “But that’s the last I want to hear from you, Tommy.”

  And then, without warning, he slammed him in the face again.

  Tommy made a small, strangled noise and went very still. I turned my head to look at him, saw that his undamaged eye was closed. I wondered if he was sleeping. Or unconscious. Or simply playing possum.

  After that, we rode for a while in silence.

  I lay back against the seat, staring at Vincent, working my fingers through the knots that bound Tommy’s ankles. And I tried to think of what good it would do if I actually managed to free him. Especially if he was unconscious.

  I kept working at the knots.

  “The tea shipment, it’s in the back of the truck?”

  “You are good,” he said sarcastically. “Yeah. The tea shipment, with the pretty little florist thrown in as a bonus. By now, her boyfriend’s gator food. But I wouldn’t do that to our young Tommy. There are people who’ll pay well for him, even in his slightly bruised condition.”

  Vincent spent a moment enjoying the thought.

  I tried not to be sick.

  “I hadn’t planned it,” he continued, “but we had all this extra space. And you can be sure that I won’t be wasting this opportunity like Tinh Vu and his buddies did. I’ll sell my merchandise.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. And I didn’t.

  Beneath my probing fingertip, I felt a knot ease, just a little. I worked my fingertips into the next knot.

  “Tinh Vu has contacts. He’d tell one of his old soldier buddies, who happens to be the chairman of the Benevolent Society, about arriving tea shipments. Then the Society and a few of their trusted friends would steal the shipments and hide them…”

  Another piece of the knotted rope moved easily through my fingers.

  “…arrange for documents, and send the women up north.”

  He wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already guessed.

  “So what. They’re sex traffickers.”

  “I’ve been told for most of my life how smart you are,” he said. “Don’t you understand? They steal the women, give them papers and money, and set them free. What a waste.”

  He set them free! I felt a surge of joy that even the current situation couldn’t dilute. Uncle Tinh was the man I’d grown up believing him to be. He was not a brutal exploiter like Vincent.

  And as for Uncle Duran’s sus
picions, his evidence… Then I remembered what Vincent had said just before knocking me unconscious.

  “Is Senator Duran Reed in on this?”

  Vincent giggled. It was a sound more terrifying than his laughter.

  “Hell, no. Senator Reed had the FBI send me to New Orleans to investigate Tinh Vu. There was a rumor—nothing more—that he was trafficking in humans. And supplying counterfeit documents. I was feeding the senator bad information, trying to get rid of Tinh Vu. And using the opportunity to bring in my people.”

  I slipped my fingers beneath the ropes that bound Tommy’s ankles. One more knot, I thought, and his feet are free.

  “He asked me to call him Uncle Duran, too, you know,” Vincent continued. “My family was wealthy, but they sent me away anyway. For my own good, they said. And they put me on a boat. I ended up in Thailand. You were in the camp at Songkhla, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I was at a larger camp—Sikhiu. For two years. I’d almost given up the dream of coming to America. No American family would want to sponsor a thirteen-year-old camp rat. Then along came Uncle Duran. Do you remember the tests they gave us?”

  He stared at the road ahead.

  I began working on the final knot as I thought about the Americans who’d visited the refugee camp. It was one of the best memories of my young life. They played games. Gave me toys, candy and hugs as rewards. Told me I was pretty. And there had been a special game. They showed me photos, took them away, then asked me to tell them what I’d seen. I remembered showing off a little—I described what I saw to the interpreters, but then I drew pictures for the Americans.

  “Everyone took those tests,” I said. “IQ. Aptitude. Psychological evaluations.”

  Vincent shook his head.

  “No. Only a few. Prescreening, you might say, before being selected for the senator’s version of the American dream. I’d been in America for three months when he told me that my job, if I didn’t want to be deported back to the refugee camp, was to infiltrate the Born To Kill gang.”

  I was genuinely horrified. I knew from the reports I’d read that around the time Vincent was talking about, the BTKs were just organizing. But its members were already notorious for their brutality.