River of Glass

by Jaden Terrell

  Jay set another bowl in front of me. “What happened this time?”

  I held up the cast. “Bone meets pipe. Pipe wins.”

  Khanh said, “What we do now?”

  “Now you stay home and rest while I go have a talk with our good friend Helix.” At her baffled frown, I said, “That part about being good friends, that was sarcasm.”

  “Why I not go?”

  “Somebody already tried to kill us. No point tempting fate.”

  She stared down at her bowl, pushing the oatmeal around with her spoon until the sugar made brown swirls in the cereal. After a few moments, she lifted her gaze and waved her stump toward the scars on her face. “You know what happen me?”

  “Not my business,” I said.

  Jay took the pot off the stove and set it in the sink to soak, then slipped out of the room.

  Khanh said, “I ten year old. My sister, Trinh, only eight.”

  As she spoke, she toyed with the spoon. She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her, but as she wove the story, it unspooled behind my eyes like a movie.

  THEY’D GROWN up in a small village not far from the Red River. Before the Communist takeover, her mother’s family had owned a small plot of land where they grew rice and other vegetables, and where her grandmother made a meager living as a soothsayer. Then they found themselves on the wrong side of the government.

  A lot of women in their mother’s position had abandoned their Amerasian children, but Khanh and Trinh were lucky. They were embraced by their mother and her parents. While they spent much of their early childhoods in education camps, scrabbling for handfuls of rice and scouring the riverbank for mussels and snails, their family treated them with kindness. One neighbor, Min, made toys from the river clay, and they earned a few coins gathering clay for him in chipped pots. They learned English from their mother, who insisted they would need to know it when their father returned for them. He was trying to get them out, she said, but it was too hard. There were too many obstacles.

  When Khanh was ten, her grandfather died, and the family moved to a nearby village to live with a cousin and her husband. Their first day there, their cousin pointed to an overgrown field on the south end of the village and then to an old man sitting on a reed mat, the legs of his trousers knotted beneath the stumps of his thighs. That is a dangerous place, their cousin said. A field of ghosts.

  Two days later, while their mother went to the river for mussels, Khanh and her sister went out to gather bamboo to make baskets. Take care of your sister, Phen said to Khanh. Keep her safe.

  The girls wandered toward a stand of bamboo at the south end of the village, Trinh’s damp hand clasped in Khanh’s. Stay close, Khanh said, and at Trinh’s nod, turned to the bamboo stalks.

  The sun streamed through the canopy of the trees. The air was damp and steaming, smelling of muddy water. The older girl, engrossed in her task, looked up, realized the child was no longer at her side. She scanned the landscape, saw her sister, hand stretched toward a brilliant yellow flower in the middle of the minefield.

  The bamboo clattered to the ground, forgotten. Khanh ran toward the field, hand flung up in warning. “Don’t move!”

  The smaller child froze. Turned her head and opened her mouth to protest, then saw something in her sister’s face and took a tentative step in her direction.

  “No!” Khanh said. “Stay there. I’ll come for you.”

  While Trinh stood frozen, ten-year-old Khanh picked her way through the field. The earth was soft from the recent rains, and she could see Trinh’s small footprints in the grass. She stepped carefully into the impressions left by Trinh’s feet. She reached the smaller child, took Trinh’s hands, and placed them on her own waist. “You walk where I walk,” she said, and turned to retrace her careful steps.

  If a mine exploded, she thought, she would be torn to pieces, but her body would shield her sister’s. Maybe, just maybe, Trinh would be all right. Khanh felt a sudden chill, though sweat stung her eyes and trickled down her neck. I should have been watching her. She was mine to watch.

  One step. Two. The vegetation crunched beneath her feet. Trinh, realizing where she was, began to cry. Her small hands dug into Khanh’s sides.

  Halfway there.

  Khanh tried not to think of the old man with no legs or of the others she’d seen, women, children, some missing limbs, some missing eyes, some crippled, some ripped apart, their startled spirits doomed to haunt the countryside as hungry ghosts. So many ghosts.

  Almost there.

  She felt it a heartbeat too late, a lessening of pressure as Trinh’s hands slipped from her waist. Sensing safety, the little girl bolted around her sister and rushed forward.

  No!

  Khanh lunged, planted a hand on each of her sister’s hips and lifted and shoved with all her might. Trinh flew up and forward as Khanh fell, hands flung wide.

  There must have been a noise, a flash of white, a rush of red across her face, but those moments were lost now, perhaps blessedly lost. There was no memory of pain. But there was pain later, when she awakened, and for many months after. Pain when the bandages were changed and her wounds abraded and cleaned, pain in her stump, pain in the arm that was no longer there. The ghost of an arm. The ghost of pain.

  And pain in her heart when she learned that she had not saved her sister after all, had not even been able to help their mother wash and wrap the remains or prepare the incense and offerings to keep the girl’s spirit from rising as ma doi—a hungry ghost.

  You were lucky, everyone told her. Lucky to be alive.

  She wondered about that, especially when fire spilled from her pores and the weeks and months ahead seemed like nothing but endless, relentless pain, or when visitors glanced at her face and averted their eyes. Was it luck that had taken her sister and left her with a scarred face and half an arm?

  She expected ridicule from the village children, who for years had taunted Khanh and her sister for their lighter skin and the trace of Western Europe in their features. She expected them to throw stones, to call her names and tease her about her scars. Instead, they kept their distance, eyeing her with a mixture of awe and apprehension.

  What she had done was so huge they couldn’t find a way to turn it against her. Her scars, which might have made her an object of ridicule, had become a symbol of self-sacrifice.

  KHANH FELL silent, head lowered. The air in the kitchen seemed thick, a few motes of dust swirling slowly in the light that streamed through the window. After a moment, I said, “And you were never sorry you’d done it?”

  She lifted her head and gave me a level look, then turned her face to the window. “Sometimes . . . I see people look my scars . . .” She shrugged. “I imperfect human.”

  20

  I wanted to protect Khanh, to keep her in the shadows while I followed threads and searched for her daughter, but I understood now that, even if she’d had reason to trust me, she needed to play a part in bringing Tuyet home. She’d walked into a minefield to save Trinh, but she had failed. That failure made her doubt herself. It made her doubt me. It made her doubt the possibility that Tuyet—that anyone—could be saved.

  I went back to Helix’s website, Pimp It Up, and showed Khanh the forum, books, and webinars dedicated to advising other upstanding young businessmen on the finer points of targeting, grooming, and turning out vulnerable girls. A prominent donate button on each page reminded visitors that their dollars subsidized the valuable free content.

  Khanh, perched beside me on the couch, shook her head. “You think he kill Bridget?”

  I clicked the Log Off button. “I think the manticore killed Bridget. Whether Helix is involved or not . . . Let’s go see.”

  It was another gray day. The rain held off, but the air was thick and wet. It felt like breathing slush.

  After a quick stop at the bank I stashed my ID, credit cards, the receipt, and all but three hundred in cash in a lock box behind the front seat. I tossed a space blanket acro
ss it. Then we crossed the Cumberland River and passed from downtown to East Nashville, a crime-infested patchwork of low-income housing, crack houses, and meth labs pocketed with funky artist hangouts, Victorian cottages, and the occasional jazz club.

  We rolled past the bombed-out skeleton of a meth house we’d seen on the news, then passed a group of kids with skateboards. One boy jumped off a homemade ramp, one hand free for balance, the other holding up a pair of oversized pants. I pulled up and rolled down the window. “You know a guy named Helix?”

  They exchanged amused looks. The kid on the ramp, lean and wiry, with skin the color of burnt cocoa, cocked his head and smirked. “You buyin’ what he sellin’?”

  “Depends on the price. And the goods.”

  He flipped his board up with his toe and caught it with one hand, then strolled over and leaned close to my window, baring his teeth in a dangerous smile. “You a cop? ’Cause you kinda look like a cop.”

  “I look too much like a cop to be a cop. Anyway, I tried it for a while. It didn’t suit me.”

  “Don’t know why. You the type, for sure.” He jerked his head up the street, the way we were headed. “You’ll know it when you see it, you got any brains at all.”

  Apparently, I had some brains, because, two blocks down the street, I saw it. One-story cracker box with a small front porch and gabled roof. Chipping purple paint. Sagging chainlink fence. Windows curtained with heavy black cloth. From the porch eaves hung a rainbow-colored windsock, intersecting spirals like a DNA chain.

  A woman leaned against the fence, elbows propped on the top bar, emphasizing small breasts and a bony chest. Short skirt, hazel eyes, skin the color of a boiled pork chop. She smiled when I pulled up, almost like she meant it, and patted her hair, which had been dyed orange and teased into frizz. It looked like she was wearing a Pomeranian.

  I got out of the car, and she pushed herself away from the fence, tugging at her skirt. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” she started, then stopped as Khanh climbed out of the passenger side. Her gaze flicked over the scars, the stump, the oversized Titans poncho, then swung back toward me. She looked at the bright blue cast jutting from the sleeve of my coat, and her mouth twitched. “You’re not cops.”

  “No,” I said, and made an offer to prove it. “Fifty bucks for a blow job.”

  “It’s extra for two.”

  I glanced at her neck, where, just above her collarbone was a scar shaped like a DNA helix. “Truth is, I don’t really need a blow job.”

  “Nobody does. It’s what you might call a luxury. You wanna get luxurious with me, baby?”

  It was probably the biggest word she knew, and she’d probably learned it from a hand-lotion commercial. “What I need is to talk to your pimp. Helix, right?”

  “He don’t like to be called a pimp.”

  “What does he like to be called?”

  “A entrepreneur.” She pronounced it with a y in the last syllable and not enough r’s, but I knew what she meant. “Whattaya need with Helix?”

  “I just need to talk to him.” I pulled a twenty from my wallet, held it up between two fingers. “Tell him it’s about the dead girl with the double spiral on her collarbone. Tell him I’m the one who found her.”

  She stared at the bill for a moment. Then she pushed herself away from the fence and plucked the twenty from my hand. “Just a minute.”

  She took her time sauntering to the house and up the porch steps. Lots of hip action going on beneath the short skirt.

  Khanh nudged me with a finger. “She think you look, you buy.”

  “Not my type,” I said. “Besides, a place like this, you don’t buy, you rent.”

  An elderly black man came out of the house next door, smacked the screen door open, and mopped his broad face with a grimy handkerchief. He leaned on the porch railing and sipped at a Corona, watching us with hostile eyes.

  A few minutes later, the woman with the orange hair came back. Jerked a thumb toward the purple DNA house. “You wanna talk, it’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred.”

  Khanh’s mouth dropped open.

  I said, “Steep.”

  “Talk ain’t cheap. The blow job was a better bargain.”

  “Depends on what you need, I guess.”

  We followed her into a living room crowded with oversized leather recliners and a matching sofa that looked like it had been built for a family of Yeti. High-dollar brands. A big-screen TV filled one wall, and a high-priced speaker hung in each corner. The air was heavy with the stench of cigarettes, marijuana, fried fish, and stale beer.

  Somewhere in another room, a baby cried, long, inconsolable wails.

  The baby changed things. I glanced into the kitchen, wondering if, given the neighborhood and Helix’s line of work, the covered windows meant sex wasn’t all Helix was selling. Blackened or covered windows were signs of a meth lab. Images flashed through my mind. A two-year-old with burns over most of his body, an eight-month-old who’d died in convulsions after swallowing the rat poison his parents were using to cut their meth. In scope, prescription drugs were a bigger problem, but meth was a scourge. Sooner or later, it killed everything it touched.

  I took a deep breath, nostrils flaring at the sour smells, but there were no smells of ammonia, ether, or rotting eggs, as there would have been if someone had been cooking meth. Through the open doorway, I saw dirty dishes, empty pizza boxes, crushed beer cans, and empty liquor bottles. No tell-tale plastic tubing, stained coffee filters, plastic gloves, or lithium batteries.

  It didn’t make Helix the father of the year, but at least it lowered the kid’s risk. A gruff voice turned me back toward the living room. “You lookin’ to buy the place, or what?”

  The man from the website sat on the couch, legs spread, arms draped across the sofa back, making a point of filling the space. He was a big man, broad in the shoulders but soft in the middle. Mulatto skin, short-cropped hair, gray linen suit with a pale blue shirt and a striped tie. Lots of gold. Rings, chains, a gold hoop through one eyebrow. The tie was loose and the shirt untucked. He looked like a banker, except for the woman who perched beside him, one hand stuffed into the waistband of his pants, tugging without passion. Alpha male posturing. He might as well have pounded his chest and banged two garbage can lids together.

  “You looking to sell it?”

  He hunched a shoulder. “Right price, maybe. You got the right price, everything be for sale.”

  “Helix, I presume.”

  “You look surprised. You thought maybe I be wearin’ a snakeskin suit and a hat with ostrich feathers? Hell, I got a business degree.”

  “I read that on your website. Color me impressed.”

  “You should be. Bet I make more money in a day than you make in a month.”

  “Yeah, but look what you have to do to get it.”

  His eyes slitted. Then he grinned, flashing gold incisors. He made a hand it over motion. “Time’s money, Cowboy. You want to talk, pay up first.”

  I pulled out my wallet again and, keeping it tilted toward myself so he couldn’t see the contents, peeled out ten twenties. He folded the bills into his palm, then plucked the wallet from my hand.

  The baby wailed, and Helix gave the woman with orange hair a stern look. “Yo, Simone, shut that kid up.”

  With a sour glance at the girl on the couch, Simone stalked out of the room.

  I introduced myself as a private investigator, and interest sparked his eyes. I didn’t introduce Khanh. He hadn’t introduced his women, would probably see it as a sign of weakness. Instead, I said, “A woman was killed last night. She had your symbol burned into her.”

  “Simone say you the one who found her. Thing like that, I guess it mighta damaged your fragile little psyche.”

  “My psyche’s pretty tough. How’s yours?”

  “Titanium.” He cupped a massive hand behind the girl’s head, lifted his hips in rhythm with her hand. “What I care abo
ut some dead ho? She ain’t one of mine.”

  “Then how do you know she was a ho?”

  “They all hos. What’s your jones for this one?”

  “I’m looking for a girl. A Vietnamese girl. Whoever marked the dead girl has the one I’m looking for. Or can get me one step closer to whoever does.”

  He flashed a predatory grin. “Hell, you want some Asian pussy, I get you some.”

  “Not just any girl. A particular girl.”

  “What I’m tellin’ you is, they all the same. You had one, you had ’em all. What’s so special about this one?”

  “She’s family. So she’s not interchangeable.” I pulled a business card out of my wallet and a pen from my pocket and scratched out the Chinese character Khanh had called the eye of the dragon. “You ever see a mark like this?”

  I handed it to Helix, who looked at it briefly and shook his head. “Never seen it.”

  “Somebody’s marking women with it. Same place you mark yours.”

  His lips tightened. “What’s that they say? Imitation is the best kind of . . .”

  “Sincerest form of flattery.”

  “Screw that.” He closed his eyes. Gave a little grunt of pleasure. The girl slipped her hand out of his pants and wiped her palm on her jeans. He tugged his shirt down over his crotch. Somewhere in the back, the baby fussed, and Simone’s voice, soft and cooing, shushed it.

  I said to Helix. “If you’re not involved in this, somebody’s going to a lot of trouble to make it look like you are.”

  He gave a brittle laugh. “I gone kill some bitch, I’m not gone put my mark on her. How long I be breathin’ free air, a bunch of dead hos start showin’ up wearin’ my signature?”

  Simone came out of the back room jostling a mocha-skinned baby in a dingy pink romper. A pink bow stood out against a head of black curls. So much promise. No future. I saw her fifteen years from now, maybe less, a spiral-shaped scar above her collarbone. Just one more kid who couldn’t be saved.

  Helix fumbled with his zipper, fastened his belt. “Somebody tryin’ to set me up for sure, but don’t tell me you come here to do me no favors.”