Smoke and Shadow

by Gamal Hennessy

  The sound had a cadence and a persistence Chu associated with a machine, but as he got closer he knew the ruthless violence of the blows could only come from a human attacker. The door was closed, but a harsh red light spilled out into the hallway under the frame. Chu moved to his position and held his body low to insert the camera. The speed of the blows remained the same, but Chu recognized the distinct sound of leather on flesh. He slid the camera underneath the door and slid back into his own nightmare.

  The man had his back turned to the door. His shirt and pants were off and the pudgy folds of his flesh glistened with sweat in the light of the lava lamps. His thin boxer shorts clung to his sagging waist and fleshy legs. The skin on his flaccid muscles quivered with each swing of his arm.

  He held a leather belt high over his head, swinging down with an anger born of impotence and fueled by cocaine. Chu saw the bags on the nightstand and the sprinkle of white powder spilling off the table and dancing in the red light like snow. He heard the addict cursing at his victims, blaming them for his sexual frustrations.

  He had three women squatting beneath him. Naked and exposed, each one bore welts and bruises along their backs asses and thighs. One woman still had the strength to cry. Another had sores dripping blood onto the putrid stained rug. The last one didn’t move or cry at all. Chu wondered if she might be dead.

  Chu thought about how long these women suffered under the cruelty of this man and how many nights they’d been beaten to provide pleasure to a stranger. His thoughts went back to his own mother and her decade of torture. Images of Baker’s ancestors invaded his mind and each blow of the belt forced more violence into his blood. He saw himself bursting into the room, wrapping the belt around the fat man’s neck and strangling him until his eyes popped out of his head and his tongue swelled out of his mouth. Chu wanted to ram the cocaine down his throat and let the women rise up and tear the skin from his body with their nails. He wanted to pummel this man with the same heartless rhythm he used to see how he took it…

  And Chu felt a persistent squeeze on his shoulder. Trent’s signal snapped him out of his vengeful fantasy and back to the operational reality. He kept them in one spot too long. They had to move or risk exposure. In spite of everything he felt and anything this man might deserve, he wasn’t a target. He was a john, and for tonight at least, he wasn’t on the hit list.

  Chu pulled the camera back from under the door and moved to the stairwell. The persistent beat of the belt on flesh pounded into Chu’s ear and it didn’t go away when they moved to the next floor.

  Chapter Twelve: Cold Steel

  The third floor of the Red Crane held no horror or opportunity. The rooms held furniture and apparatus for various perversions, but no one suffered in them when Chu slid his camera under the door. He tried to focus on the op, instead of imagining wailing women or masochistic men.

  No sentries roamed the halls and no cameras watched them drift through the hallway like a pair of silent sharks. Chu led the way down to the second floor with the beating of the belt still fresh in his mind, along with a hunger to punish someone for man’s inhumanity to women.

  He found his targets in the first apartment on the second floor. The tiny lens of his snake cam showed a break room or security station for the slave house. Two Fuk Ching gangsters sat on the right, drinking beer and staring at their phones. Another one lay curled into a fetal position on a small bed on the opposite side of the room. Chu didn’t see their weapons, but he could see the laptop screens near the two drinking men. Images from cameras in each of the holding rooms and playrooms could be seen in various windows. Chu could even make out the flailing belt finally ending its assault on bruised innocent skin.

  The image fueled his movements as he sent signals back to Trent. The squeeze of understanding on his shoulder couldn’t come fast enough. Chu was tempted to burst into the room alone. But he took several deep breaths and reached back to squeeze Trent’s ankle before he let his fury flow into the room.

  The door opened with a rush of air and a slight thud. The sound and motion got the gangster’s attention. Trent moved to the right. Chu heard three sharp snaps as the suppressed weapon unloaded into the sleeping man. Chu could see his victims watching Trent’s work, unable to turn away from the sudden display of violence and death.

  Their hands didn’t even start moving for their waists before Chu raised his weapon and fired point blank in their direction. The head of the slaver closest to him burst into a spray of bone and blood as the first two rounds caught him beneath the eyes. The second man had a chance to open his mouth when his companion’s brains hit his face, but he didn’t do anything else. Chu put one bullet in his mouth and three in his chest before the warm corpse crumbled out of the chair and onto the floor.

  Chu thought about pulling down his bandana and spitting on the worthless slaver, but Trent’s movements helped him maintain his professional demeanor. His partner had already grabbed the cellphone from his victim and moved to take the others as Chu composed himself. Taking off the bandana would reveal his face to any cameras in the room they didn’t see. Leaving saliva at the scene of a crime, even a bloody massacre like this one, gave a forensic specialist the chance to tie him to the crime. Instead of acting like a stupid amateur, Chu moved to cover the door, reaching for a spare clip for a tactical reload as he crouched in the doorway.

  He reached his position just in time to see someone coming towards the security station. Chu saw an ugly slug of a man. His shirt and pants were off and the pudgy folds of his flesh glistened with sweat in the light of the hallway. His thin boxer shorts clung to his sagging waist and the skin on his flaccid muscles quivered with each step he took. His thin hair was greasy and matted on his head and a white residue painted his nose and upper lip.

  He wasn’t holding a belt this time, but he had something in each hand. Chu couldn’t identify the shining gold object in his left hand. The barrel of the gun was unmistakable in his right.

  “Stop, Po…”

  Chu put three rounds into the cocaine fueled john at less than fifteen feet. The first round caught him in the stomach and he began to double over until the next two slammed into his forehead and cheek. He spiraled to the ground and the badge tumbled out of his convulsing fingers.

  Chu felt time slow down as the badge flipped end over end on the floor. He saw the insignia of the NYPD reflected in the overhead light. As he got closer, he made out the word Detective in bold capital letters. He tried to make out the numbers at the bottom of the badge, but the shadow looming over him blocked his light and got his attention.

  Chu looked up in time to see an ice pick bearing down on him. He couldn’t see his attacker, but whoever it was burst out of one of the other rooms, leaped over the dead cop and tried to drive the steel tip into Chu’s eye.

  Instinct brought Chu’s hands up to protect his face and throat. He felt the pick stab into the barrel of the SIG. He could have held onto the weapon if he maintained his two handed grip, but one hand still held the spare magazine. The sudden ferocity of the attack weakened his focus. The gun tumbled to the ground and the Fuk Ching slammed into Chu forcing him back into the wall.

  Chu’s body understood the unfolding sequence of events. He lived through too many real and simulated knife attacks to be surprised by the technique. The gangster would keep his head buried in Chu’s chest with their bodies close together and Chu’s back trapped against the wall. He would thrust low with the ice pick, driving the point up into Chu’s stomach and kidneys from a place Chu couldn’t see or defend. Once his kidney ruptured, his legs would give out and his ability to fight would be reduced to zero. Chu understood and appreciated the technique before his back hit the wall and he moved before the first thrust landed.

  He dropped his elbow and his weight down and to the right. He felt the steel spike bite into the loose fabric of his jacket sleeve as he twisted his body. The gangster focused his energy in pulling the pick out to stab again, ignoring his footwork as Chu s
pun him into the wall.

  He was able to wrench the weapon out of Chu’s clothing, but he raised his head too high. Chu torqued his body behind his elbow, whipping the pointed bone across the man’s jaw and forcing the back of his head into the wall with the crack of damaged bone.

  The gangster tried to stab again, but his body acted without the direction of his mind. His attack was clumsy, glancing off Chu’s raised arm. Chu caught the back of the man’s head with both hands and rammed a knee just above his belt. The first blow lifted the man off the ground with a desperate gasp of air. The second knee sent spurts of blood from his nose as the gangster collapsed to the ground.

  Chu whirled around to face a new threat and found Trent aiming his weapon in the general direction of his death match. Diving to the ground was his first instinct, but he held himself together long enough to realize Trent only planned to fire if he had a clear shot during the fight. Without a word, Trent motioned for Chu to recover his gun.

  Chu picked up and reloaded his SIG, wondering if they could get out of the Red Crane before something else could go wrong.

  Then he heard a woman scream on the first floor.

  Chapter Thirteen: Body over Mind

  Chu burst through the door after Trent, covering the right side of the room while his partner covered the left. The restaurant was empty, except for the three women who cowered in the small space behind the cash register. Most of the chairs had been flipped over onto the tables, but whatever commotion brought about the scream toppled two of the chairs onto the floor. The spokes on the back of the chair cast shadows over the women like the bars on a cell.

  Chu kept his body low and his gun pointed away from the frightened women. He needed to cover the front door while Trent checked their extraction route, but he didn’t want to make them feel any more threatened than they already did.

  The gesture felt hollow somehow. The two girls weren’t down here to clean up the restaurant. The cooking and cleaning staff already went home. They were here to service the late night customers looking for little institutionalized rape in the middle of the night. One of them could have been the girl he saw stumble back into the restaurant during his original stakeout. They could be here waiting to be abused by cops like the one he shot upstairs. With all they suffered through, the idea of making them feel better by not aiming a gun in their direction didn’t mean much.

  The third woman was smaller, older and fearless. She positioned herself between Chu and the young girls, willing to sacrifice her own body to protect them. The image reminded Chu of his mother. How many times had she used her body to shield him from his father’s abuse? How many times did she look death in the eye and face the monster to save her son? Chu blinked back a tear thinking about all the monsters this woman must have faced to keep these girls safe.

  But the image he projected on her didn’t make any sense either. If the old woman worked at the Red Crane, she was just as much a part of the Fuk Ching as the bald thugs in BMWs. She saw the way the girls were treated. She knew what happened to them every night. She might be just as responsible for the slavery in this house as the cop with the belt or the gangster with the ice pick.

  Was she the madam? Did she replace Ah Kay as the head of this slave house? How could she do that? How could any woman see the suffering other women bear at the hands of men and decide to participate in the process? What would drive a woman to throw other women to the wolves? Sunny Chu would do anything to protect him. What would his life be like if he were born to a woman like this? Would he even have a life at all? Chu shook his head in denial. He couldn’t believe his mother could be anything like the witch who began pointing a twelve gauge in his direction.

  The shotgun couldn’t have been real. It was like the thought of women selling women or Baker’s family running a slave house or armies of men dying to impress a single woman. It all felt like a horrible mistake. Chu wanted to understand. He wanted to figure it all out, but he couldn’t think straight. The barrel of the gun kept moving toward him and the world made less sense as he looked into the old woman’s dark eyes.

  The bark of a suppressed pistol brought Chu back to reality. A third dark eye grew out of the old woman’s forehead and began oozing blood. She fell back between the younger girls who could only cringe and wait for the bullets meant to kill them.

  But no more bullets came. Chu only saw his own pistol raised up in its ready position after several rapid blinks. He didn’t remember firing, but the familiar kick of recoil resonated in his limbs. Before he could consider what he’d done, he heard two soft taps on the wall behind him; Trent’s signal that the extraction route was clear. Chu turned on the balls of his feet and ran into the kitchen without looking back at the two girls cradling the dead madam between them.

  The cool night air hit his skin in sharp contrast to the anxious heat of close combat. The smell of fresh garbage invaded his nose like a physical blow. The sensations pushed him to run out of the alley, but Chu took his time. The steps of the extraction couldn’t be rushed. One false step here and the whole op would blow up in their faces.

  Before Chu reached his silly electric bike, he removed the suppressor from his SIG and stuffed each piece into place in the holster under his jacket. The bandana came down and the hat came off before he started up the bike. The helmet and safety vest went back on, covering both the sweat on his head and the belt holding the snake cam. He pulled out of the alley at the same speed he went into it, thankful the little cycle didn’t give him the option to go too fast and attract attention.

  Chu didn’t see Trent on the sidewalk or the street. He expected nothing less. Trent broke right when Chu took a left out the back door and he would initiate his own extraction, leaving the operational area under separate and plausible means. By the time the sun came up, Trent would be out of the city, to a place Chu couldn’t identify if he were caught. Chu already decided he would ditch the bike in West Chelsea and catch the first bus to Philly from the Port Authority. Neither man would see or contact each other, or come back to New York City, until Baker gave them the all clear.

  Chapter Fourteen: All Clear

  “So did you guys hear about the thing down in Chinatown? The papers are calling it the Red Crane Massacre.”

  Baker insisted on having their unofficial debriefing at a club called the Press Room. Perched on top of a boutique hotel west of Times Square, the place had sweeping views of midtown Manhattan, the Hudson River, and Jersey City on the other side. On this particular Friday night, the club also had a throng of out of town twenty somethings, European pleasure seekers and hustlers of the six figure variety. They couldn’t make any direct reference to the Red Crane op, so Baker played the game of innocent innuendo while they sipped their Angel’s Envy.

  “How many bodies did they find in there?” Trent grinned when he asked the question, but his eyes scanned the people around them for possible eavesdroppers.

  “Six, not counting the old lady and the cop.”

  “You’ve got to be pretty cold blooded to cut down a little old lady.” Trent’s smile grew to an annoying size when he looked back at Chu.

  The old lady killer shrugged and took a long sip. “You’ve got to be even more fucked up to live the life she did. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

  “True story.” Trent took a sip and the three men were quiet for a while. Perhaps each of them thought about their own violent lives and the possibility of dying just as cold and quick as their victims. Chu didn’t speak again until the waitress brought another round and walked away from the table.

  “So who else did they find in the building? What happened to them?”

  “They were relocated to the Save Haven Children’s Center in Queens. The cops say they rescued twenty seven girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty. The Commissioner is calling it a great day for the fight against human trafficking.”

  “The cops…” Chu sucked his teeth remembering the flabby slug and his detective badge “What do they kn
ow about fighting sex slavery?”

  Baker shrugged. “From what I read, Detective Miller was given a hero’s funeral for his role in busting the Fuk Ching.”

  “Was there any message in the papers of how Detective Miller got into the Red Crane and found the Fuk Ching?”

  “The official report says he was following up a lead on an escalating turf war between rival Chinese gangs and died trying to rescue the girls.”

  “That’s a shame.” Trent said with more irony than sincerity.

  Chu couldn’t muster a response. There was too much bile in his throat. They needed the NYPD to take credit for the rescue and direct blame at a fictional gang to keep their involvement secret, but the idea of honoring a brutal john for saving sex slaves made him want to dig up the corpse and shoot it again.