by Naomi Foyle
“Did I hear you right?” he murmured. “Did I hear you say you want to extort money from me?”
“Oh, excuse my English, I don’t know.” Rattail tittered. “All I know is I watching very interesting video, on the Internet already.”
“Well, if it’s so fucking interesting, why did you wait so long to tell me about it? It’s been a while since the hospital. Maybe it took you that long to cook up this story, Ratface, or hire a couple of actors to make some bad porno flick?” Johnny kept his voice low, with one eye on the entrance to the antechamber. No one was within earshot.
“Oh no, no, I was phone you before, you no answer. I don’t want leave message. I want talk to you. Video is real. Camera was inside air-con unit. Color beautiful—red James Dean innerwear, I like very much. You please tell me where you buy them. And sound excellent quality. I think Dr. Kim going to be very upset when she hear you calling to a dead prostitute her name.”
Shit. Those were his underpants all right—and there had been one of those tall air-con units in the corner. Still, this deep-fried runt and his plug-ugly cronies could just have been peeking.
“So are you going to send me this link then?” he asked, dry as a Bond martini. “Or am I going to have to come over and drag it out of you?”
“Oh no. No worry. We meet Hollywood’s. I show you on my MoPho.”
Meet this whiny schmuck? This human mosquito? Johnny took a draw on his cigar and blew a perfect smoke ring across the room. It sailed between the upholstered chairs before warping and dissolving in front of a framed photograph of Winston Churchill. Old Winnie the Poohbah hadn’t said anything about fighting ’em in the humidors, on our afternoons off.
“What makes you think I care if Kim sees it, Ratface?” he countered, not quite able to hide his irritation. “She’s not my girlfriend—or my boss.”
“No, you right; I think maybe you like Kim to see it, make her mad. But I think you don’t want her tell your people in LA you losing your temper, doing bad things—illegal things. Things embarrass company. I heard your boss pay big money for you learn how treat people nice. I heard he say you go on course or you fired. I think you job not so safe, is it Mr. Joh-nee?”
Kim. It could only be fucking Kim who’d told him all that. Johnny stubbed the cigar out. “Listen to me very carefully, Ratface. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, or how long you’ve been plotting this little scheme, but let’s get one thing straight: I’m not giving anyone my money. Assuming this video in fact exists, I want you to erase it, and any files of it anywhere, or else my people are going to find you and when they’re done with you there isn’t going to be much left. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but I have friends too—friends who send Kim the website and call police if anything happen me. I don’t think you want go jail in foreign country. You only want website erased, memory card destroyed—and price is thirty million won.”
“So you can turn up with another website address and double your price? Yeah, okay, let’s meet. So you can show me the website and we can talk about your options. See: my course worked. I treat you nice, Ratty; you treat me nice too.” Johnny made his voice sickly-sweet, though irony was usually wasted on Koreans. As for Ratty’s so-called friends, Bullfrog and Co. were easily dealt with, and the Korean police made the Keystone cops look like a crack unit of the Presidential Guard.
“Good, good. We meet tonight? You bring cash?” You could almost hear Ratty licking his lips. Fucking amateur.
“Tonight? Tonight, Rattail, is my night off. I’ll see you tomorrow, ten p.m., at Hollywood’s. Bring the camera too.”
“Ye, ye. No problem. We talk then.”
“Don’t be late.” Johnny ended the call and downed the rest of his Courvoisier. Who would know Rattail, and also know enough to keep his mouth shut if the creep went missing? TJ, that was it. TJ owed him from way back.
Monday night he pulled up at Rattail’s apartment building at nine, parking in the back, away from the building supervisor’s office. He was dressed in black, and had taken the precaution of wearing glasses, a false mustache and a hat—but still, the fewer people who saw him the better. Before getting out of the car he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and double-checked that the scalpel was in his coat pocket. He was proud of this touch: the blade was the one he’d picked up at the morgue.
Ten minutes later he was in the stairwell on the ninth floor. His plan was simple: just hang out by the elevator. Koreans never walked up or down—they were too afraid of robbers, which they pronounced “lovers,” funnily enough. All this was assuming that Rattail was home, and would leave his apartment alone. If not, he’d just have to meet him at Hollywood’s and take it from there.
The stairwell was just out of sight of the open walkway that connected the apartments. It was dusk now, which made it easier to lurk in the shadows. If another tenant appeared, he could just duck up a step or two. Finally, he heard footsteps approaching, and peering out from his corner, he saw Rattail, standing in front of the elevator, pressing the button. Bingo. Swiftly, scalpel in hand, Johnny stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the taller man in an arm-lock from behind and whipped the blade up to Rattail’s throat.
The swift attack had the desired effect: the Korean crumpled like a puppet with cut strings. Quaking, he sputtered a few words in Korean as Johnny dragged him into the stairwell.
“Who do you think I am, asshole?” Johnny whispered. Patting down Ratty’s grubby beige trench coat, he discovered the camera, and the Korean’s MoPho. “Now be quiet and share your toys with Uncle Johnny.”
The digicam was a tiny Japanese model. He shoved it into the pocket of his own coat, along with the MoPho. The sweat was rolling off him: it was way too warm for this shit—and way too exposed. Anyone could walk by at any minute.
“Right, take me to your apartment,” he ordered.
His breathing rasping and shallow, one arm twisted behind his back—a hold Johnny had always found very effective—Rattail led the way. At the door to number 932 he fumbled with his keys and finally let Johnny into a sparsely furnished studio apartment. Despite having hardly anything in it, the place was a dump: dishes were piled up like tower blocks in the sink, and the faded linoleum floor was caked with ripples of grime. A fuggish aroma of dirty socks and stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, while a pile of dirty laundry in the corner, skid marks clearly visible on a pair of gray underpants, added a rich, almost tangy top note to the stink.
“How can you live like this, Ratty?” Johnny muttered. “I’m going to have to call you Pigshit from now on.”
The computer monitor on the table in the corner was off, but the green light on the keyboard indicated the hard drive was still running. Johnny forced Rattail into the chair in front of the screen and turned it on.
“Okay. Now you show me the file, you erase it, then you show me the website you made and you delete the video. Understand?”
His thin shoulders trembling, tears now greasing his face, Rattail nodded.
Johnny stood behind him, looking over his head as he opened up the file. It was entitled, in English, Mr. Johnny’s Blind Date. Johnny watched it for ten seconds, then pressed the scalpel a little more firmly against Ratty’s throat. The Korean clicked his way through the process of deletion and then opened up the website. It was nothing special, Johnny was relieved to see, just a cyber-holding bay—no pay-per-view or download buttons.
“What about your buddy down at the morgue?” Johnny kneed Ratty in the back. “What about the Scalper? Do they know the password? Have they downloaded the file? How many times have you three jerked off to it, huh?”
“No, no, they don’t have.” Rattail twitched. Johnny had no doubt that he was lying. Well, first things first.
“What’s the code for the car elevator at the hospital? Quick!”
“73281,” Rattail sobbed.
“Good boy. Relax. I’m nearly done with you now.” Rubbing his own neck, Johnny had one last think about his op
tions. He’d deliberately left this part of the evening’s schedule open to the whim of circumstance, but now was the time for that whim to be guided by a little practical application.
On the one hand, he really was trying to put his hitman days behind him. Indiscriminate butchery was fun, of course, but it didn’t fit easy into the new Johnny Sandman HKO, future Head of SEA Ops, big picture.
On the other hand, could he really trust this scummy weasel not to try and take revenge?
Ratty’s hands were clutching the edge of the table. His fingernails were filthy. Because he spent his life wallowing in dirt. Look at the way he lived: bleach had never touched that kitchen sink; soap had never graced the back of his neck. Would he take Johnny’s kind intervention today as a message to clean up his act? No: he’d just find some new pile of disgusting muck to throw at his superiors as soon as he could.
Sadly, the Sandman’s latex gloves would be getting wet tonight.
But this decision brought up some serious logistical issues. It was against his principles to kill Ratty anywhere near his flat. That could get some over-zealous police officer interested in “a personal motive,” might get the computer hard drive checked over. Hustling the Korean down the stairwell and across the car park this early in the evening was also far too dangerous an option. Bumping off Ratty and taking the hard drive down with him would also be conspicuous, and the computer was way too big to conceal about his person—plus its absence in the flat would scream “investigate me.” Too bad Rattail didn’t use a laptop; that would have been a no-brainer: simple to hide under his coat, easy to dispose, and an obvious target for an opportunistic burglar.
The Korean was breathing more normally. His fingers twitched in the direction of a packet of cigarettes beside the computer keyboard. Obviously he felt the wrath of Johnny Sandman had passed.
“You have other porn videos on there?” Johnny asked, casually.
Rattail’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Ye, ye. You want see?”
Johnny waited as he clicked open an MPEG and a badly lit image of a tubby Korean being pissed on by a pre-op tranny filled the RealPlayer window.
“You like?” Rattail asked hopefully. “I have plenty I show you.”
“I think it’s fag shit.” Johnny took a swipe at Rattail’s head with the flat of his palm, releasing a small cascade of dandruff. “I want you to erase it, and every other sick, fucking video you have on there. One by fucking one.”
Ratty sniffled as his life’s work began to disappear, but Johnny watched the general obliteration with a growing sense of security. One trashed file reconstructed by computer forensics was evidence. A dozen, though; that was just a guy getting bored. All gone, though: that might look a little strange.
“Better leave a few,” he growled. “I need to go soon. Show me your favorite one that’s left, get it up and running.”
“Okay, thank you, Mr. San-duh-man, thank you.” Rattail sighed and opened up another video. Johnny grimaced as a ginger-haired US soldier appeared on screen, fucking a goat in a cellar while his buddies stood round in a big circle jerk, their dog tags glinting against their bare chests.
“You’re really sick, you know that, Pigshit?” With one deep incision he cut Rattail’s gulping throat. A jet of blood from the jugular spurted over the keyboard, the monitor and the wall. The body jerked briefly, like a fish on the end of a line, then, with a satisfying gurgle, slumped to the floor.
Johnny stepped back from the pool of blood spreading over the lino. Checking his hands, he was pleased to see only a few crimson smears on the latex fingertips. He could always pick up a few shifts at a Halal butcher’s if he ever quit working for ConGlam.
There was a plastic bag in his pocket. He took it out, peeled off the gloves and stuffed them and the scalpel inside it. He’d throw the knife into the Han later, and burn the latex along with his cheap new clothes. For now, he pulled on another pair of hospital gloves. There wasn’t a mirror in the room, so he ducked into the bathroom to make sure no flecks of blood had splashed his face. All clear—but fuck, that shower was a high school experiment in how to grow mold. He resisted the temptation to pocket Ratty’s Hugo Boss aftershave. Taking trophies from a murder scene was strictly for psychos and retards.
Back in the main room, he erased the video from the digicam and set it beside the computer. Instinct told him not to rough up the apartment or make it look like a robbery. There’d be plenty of people with a grudge against that sleazy bastard; best just let the police scratch their heads over which one had had the guts to even the score. With any luck no one would discover the body for days. It hardly appeared Rattail had been in the habit of socializing at home.
Now for the smart part. He sat down at the desk, took Ratty’s MoPho out of his pocket and went through the text messages. Reading HanGul was not his strong point, but he forced himself to concentrate. Yup, the inbox was full of chats with Scalper and Bullfrog: Ratty crowing about the success of his plan, telling them he’d be at Hollywood’s at ten; to call him at midnight. Well, that carelessness had saved their sad lives. Johnny switched the MoPho into camera mode, took several arty photos of Ratty’s drenched corpse and sent them to his little gang of would-be cyber-criminals. They’d be fucking insane to pass any copies of the video onto Kim after they’d seen the guaranteed results of such insubordinate behavior.
He switched the MoPho off; he’d ditch it in the Han with the knife. Now he had to get back to his business report. Listening at the door, he heard only the muted sound of traffic below, so he slipped back out onto the walkway and strode quickly across to the stairwell. The air was dusty, but compared to the apartment, fresh as a Wisconsin breeze. He sucked a deep breath of it into his lungs. The sun had set now and the night city was sprawled out below him, bright lights gleaming like a vast orchard of money trees.
Humming a blockbuster show tune of his own devising, a little ditty about a guy called Ratty, getting Internet chatty, now as flat as chapatti, never gonna see Cincinnati, Johnny jogged down the nine flights. All in all, an excellent night, he thought as he turned his key in the ignition. Like the convertible revving into life, the beast in Johnny Sandman had re-awakened, its appetite keener than ever. Maybe Andrew Beacon wouldn’t have approved of his empathy levels tonight, but it would sure save ConGlam some coin if their Head of South East Asian Operations could bump off the opposition with his own bare hands.
29 / Dr. Tae Sun
Mee Hee pulled out the Western-style armchairs. She and Su Jin had never used them, but they seemed appropriate for the gravity of the situation.
Dr. Tae Sun perched on the fat-cushioned seat. He looked as awkward as she felt. Over his shoulder, the shrine to Dr. Kim was lost in shadow. How could she have neglected it tonight?
“Please, excuse me. I must light a candle, for Su Jin and for Dr. Kim.”
He waited patiently as she fumbled in the drawer for the matches. The candle lit, she sat opposite him, hands folded in her lap.
“Mee Hee.” He leaned forward, his eyes bright. “I have important news. After supper, I spoke to the driver of the bus to Pusan. He told me that Su Jin was one of his passengers this morning.”
Relief swept through Mee Hee, followed by a swift rake of tension. Su Jin’s whereabouts wasn’t a secret anymore. But did that mean she would be chased and punished? “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very good, of course, to know she isn’t lost in the woods. I wanted to tell you, to put your mind at rest. But before we tell the others, I need to ask you, do you know why she would want to leave us?”
Mee Hee’s arm was stinging. She rubbed it underneath her sleeve. A few feet away, a large flying beetle was batting against the window. Normally, she and Su Jin would have chased it outside, but with Tae Sun looking at her so intently, she didn’t dare stand up.
“She likes those women’s magazines,” she said at last. “Maybe she just wanted to see the city for the day?”
“I don’t want to frighte
n you, Mee Hee, but Pusan isn’t like those women’s magazines,” Dr. Tae Sun said gently. “It’s a rough town, full of sailors and prostitutes. Su Jin doesn’t have any money, and we’re worried about where she’ll be sleeping tonight. Mee Hee, if you know anything at all, please say. You won’t get yourself or Su Jin into trouble. We only want to help her, to make sure she’s safe.”
Dr. Tae Sun reached over and placed his hand upon hers, loosening her fingers. His palms were dry and sure. She searched his eyes for a sign of anger, a hint of disappointment. But his square, pale face, as always, looked on her only with kindness.
She took a deep breath. “She has money,” she heard herself whisper.
“How did she get it, Mee Hee?”
She paused. She mustn’t tell on Dr. Dong Sun; she had to lie—not for Su Jin, but for herself. “She found it, in a purse, in Inch’on. She told me last night, when I woke up; she made me promise not to tell.”
Dr. Tae Sun was smiling at her, his hand stroking her own, his warmth spreading up her arm. “You only wanted to help her, I know that. But helping us find her is the best way to do that, isn’t it?”
Yes, she thought, Su Jin might be in danger. She might have disregarded Dr. Dong Sun’s instructions; she might have been followed by a sailor. Anything could have happened.
And if something bad had happened, it would all be Mee Hee’s fault. In a small but steady voice, she continued, “She said she was going to get a job sewing. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen. I felt so terrible all day. I lied to Dr. Dong Sun. I’m so sorry, Dr. Tae Sun.”
“No no, I understand. But don’t worry about telling us. If we can find her, we can help her get the kind of life she wants. No one is going to force her to come back. That wouldn’t be good for the babies, or for anyone.”
“I never want to leave,” Mee Hee blurted out.
“We love having you here too. Now, let me look at your arm. You must have a mosquito bite, it’s bleeding.”
