by Rhys Ford
“I take it he had some issues with that day I ran into Kane and his friend Miro,” Connor drawled, the Irish in his voice bright with laughter. “Next time, maybe that boy should leave the heavy lifting to the SFPD.”
“Alex is here to help us, Con. Try not to piss him off.” Kane smiled a thank you to their cousin who’d brought over a round of coffee and appetizers on a bar tray. As Alex sat, his eyes flitted over her, a cold professional assessment in his gaze rather than a flirtation. “We appreciate your help. Anything to give us some background is good. Especially since we’re pretty much operating on fumes. What did you bring us?”
“Let the man get settled first,” Connor interjected, passing a coffee cup over to the agent. “Or at least let’s get some brew and food into him.”
“Thanks. Actually, what I have is pretty sparse, but you are welcome to it. I’d like to see what you brought and maybe we can stitch something together.” The DEA agent took a sip of coffee, whistling appreciatively at its taste. Saluting Kane with his mug, he reached for the folder Kel offered. “I assume all of you have already read this part. Why don’t you skim through what’s in the portfolios and we can brainstorm.”
Much of what Alex brought with him Kane already knew, but there were lists of names, some of them female, that gave him pause. He found Rodney Chin listed as one of Wong’s lieutenants, as well as Sandy Chaiprasit under a column marked known associates. An asterisk next to her name referenced a footnote, denoting her occupation as a hostess/prostitute for one of Wong’s businesses. There were other women listed as well, and Kane’s blood stilled when he realized one of them could have been Miki’s mother.
“So Wong primarily ran drugs, gambling, and prostitution?” Kel’s question jarred Kane from his thoughts. “You guys pulled him down for distribution and tax evasion, right?”
“Yes,” Alex agreed. “No matter how hard they pushed, the department couldn’t get anyone in the area to testify against Wong before the DEA took him down. So they slid a couple of undercover agents into his organization. They were able to get enough on him for the drug charges, but back then sex trafficking wasn’t as much of a priority as it is now.”
“It’s a sad day when a kilo of heroin is more important than a woman’s life,” Connor murmured. “It says here that the DEA suspected a couple of the SFPD were on Wong’s payroll. Do they know who it was? If those officers are still working at the department, IA would probably like that information.”
“Only rumors, from what I read, but that doesn’t mean conversations didn’t happen behind closed doors.” Alex picked up a bacon-wrapped Brussels sprout and examined it. After popping it into his mouth, he chewed carefully, then murmured his approval, swallowing. “I’ve asked to see if I can get the agents’ names released to you, because they might know who Wong was closest to. Their names are still classified because there are still players on the field that are active. But the agency might be willing to share that information, so you can at least talk to them. Most of his lieutenants were in their thirties and forties back then, so a lot of these guys who ran with Wong are dead or, let’s face it, too old to do much.”
“I’ve got a lover with a gunshot wound.” Kane looked up from a stack of prostitution arrests. “You don’t have to be young to do a drive-by. Hell, you don’t even have to have good aim. Just a gun and a car that can move faster than someone can run.”
“Fair enough,” Alex commented. “Everything that I’ve read here corroborates with what the agency currently has on Wong and his nephew. Adam Lee, Wong’s sister’s kid, runs the area now, and from what little I got sniffing around, he doesn’t care for his uncle very much. There are some rumblings about a bit of a gang war, but Wong doesn’t have the support that he used to have.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t throw a monkey wrench into Lee’s operation,” Kel offered. “Did Kane tell you we are trying to back-door information on St. John’s mother? She looks like she could have been one of Wong’s.”
“We’re not back-dooring anything. There’s enough here for me to hammer at the DA to release Chaiprasit’s belongings so I can enter them into evidence for the case. Some asshole down there has been blocking our requests since this whole thing started. If her name is in that envelope somewhere and also on this list, that will at least verify that she was Wong’s.” Kane pushed at Kel’s shoulder. “Miki’s got that damn tattoo on his arm. Someone put it there when he was a baby. Tell me that wasn’t a deliberate show of power. Chaiprasit confirmed that Miki’s mother is dead—which we kind of already assumed—so it’s odd that Wong is going after him. Other than the tattoo, there’s nothing connecting Miki to Wong.”
“Wong did put that tattoo on people close to him, so maybe there is a tighter connection than we know. He did it so they couldn’t hide who they worked for, which usually ended up badly for them if they crossed one of Wong’s competitors. It was his way of ensuring everyone around him knew who he owned.” Alex shot Kane a look over the rim of his mug, wariness flaring in his brown eyes. Setting his coffee down, he shook his head. “I will be the first one to tell you, that’s kind of a sticky web to get into. There were a lot of things going on thirty years ago that definitely wouldn’t happen on an operation today.”
“I’m not sure I follow.” Kane cocked his head, leaning back in his chair. “The focus of the investigation is to find our victim’s murderer. She was carrying mementos she’d stored for years. It’s more than likely his mother’s name is in there. We just have to get the DA’s office to release it, so really, the information is out there already.”
“Here’s the part where it gets sticky,” Alex said, picking up another Brussels sprout. “The agents who went undercover in the investigation against Wong were in deep. One way Wong showed his appreciation for a job well done was to give a subordinate a woman.”
“What do you mean?” Connor leaned on the table. “Like a night with a prostitute?”
“No,” Alex said, shaking his head. “Someone to own. She would be his. Anything he wanted to do to her, Wong was good with. The boss said he knew of at least two agents who’d been rewarded that way. They’d been instructed to… well, let’s just say they had to stay in character so Wong wouldn’t suspect them of anything. I don’t know what happened to those women, but it wasn’t a good life, and Wong viewed a pregnant prostitute as a renewable resource. I’m going to take a very short leap and guess your Miki was one of those kids.”
A numbness spread over Kane’s body. What Alex was implying sank in slowly. Catching his breath, he tapped at the pile of reports under his fingertips. “Nearly all of Wong’s associates and subordinates were—are—Asian, but….”
“Your Miki is mixed,” Connor rumbled. “And if Wong gave those agents women, that means—”
“It’s possible that Miki’s father is one of those DEA agents, but that’s just speculation. There were other guys in Wong’s organization who were just as likely to have gotten his mother pregnant, so I wouldn’t mention it to him until we know for sure,” Alex finished. “But in my opinion, there is no one Wong would want to hurt more than the man who took him down and destroyed his empire.”
Chapter Ten
KANE, TRYING to get soap bubbles out of Miki’s hair: So let me get this straight, the dog reeked so you decided to give him a bath. In my parents’ downstairs bathroom. Before they got home from church.
Miki, disgruntled: Yeah. Asshole found a pile of crap in the bushes. Someone took their diseased rhino out for a walk and it took a shit right where Dude could find it. Now it’s all over the tub, the dog’s somewhere in the house, still half-covered in rhino poop, and I swear to God, he looks like cotton candy. The damned shampoo turned him pink.
Kane: It’s a house of redheaded women. They’ve got stuff to keep their hair red, especially in the summer when the sun bleaches it out. You don’t use it on the dog.
Miki: Well, I did. Now my dog looks like a goddamned carnation and I smell like rhino. And I s
wear to God if you laugh at me, you better sleep with one eye open, K.
Kane: Well, a ghra, it’s kind of hard not to laugh, because unless we can somehow strip this out of your hair, your dog’s not the only one who’s pink.
“WHY DON’T you tell me how you felt about Kane finding those photos?” asked the older woman sitting across from him on the other end of the couch. “The ones in the box under the bed at Shing’s restaurant.”
Miki choked, wincing as if she’d knifed him with her words, their edges sharpened with his old pain and dipped into a poison Shing and Vega brewed up out of his own blood and tears. He should have expected the verbal shiv. She’d tagged him more than a few times before but, as always, he was fooled by her comfortably aged, sweet face and sugary smile. They were a lie he fell for every time, lulled into a false sense of security she welcomed him into her office, a space set up more like an aging hippie’s retreat rather than the lair of a shrewd, cunning brain scraper with the ability to lay waste to his equilibrium at the drop of a hat.
Nothing made Miki more uncomfortable than a sunny room filled with bookshelves, a comfortable sectional with plump, rainbow-striped pillows, and a cup of steaming, hot, fragrant coffee sitting on a side table, ready for him to drink. There’d been other fears in his life. The sound of ripping steel dominated most of his nightmares for the past few years, and before that, intrusive fingers and red-hot pain slicing through his young body waited for him every time he tried to fall asleep. Those terrors still haunted him. They weren’t going away any time soon, but now he had a new hell to walk through.
And the demon who stood waiting for him at its gate was named Penny, a therapist with a blunt-force-trauma personality and a tongue sharp enough to cut a lemon into wedges, much like the one sitting on the saucer next to her teacup.
She’d promised him nothing other than an ear for his troubles and a mirror to peer at his broken soul but delivered so much more. Dressed in a pair of loose jeans and a wine-colored tunic embroidered with dancing dragons, with her graying brown hair cropped short, Penny looked the farthest thing from a doctor Miki ever thought possible. He knew better. The certificates on the lobby’s walls all bore her name, and countless awards—mostly abstract glass things affixed to wooden bases—were packed into a bank of shelves like toy soldiers lined up to march into any war Penny chose to take on.
Today he was her battle, and her first thrust was a good one, plunging her spear into his belly button, then ripping him up to his throat, bleeding him out before his coffee even had a chance to cool off.
“Jesus—you just go for the fucking throat,” Miki finally stammered out.
“I find it helps jumpstart you into talking.” She gave him a smug smile over the rim of her mug. “Also, get comfortable. You don’t start to relax until you take your shoes off and pull your legs up, which you’ve already done, but you always need a little bit of a push to get started. Oh, and since I now know you hate tea, that’s Vietnamese coffee in your cup. It’s instant but Fala swears by it.”
“Fuck, you sure you don’t have a twin?” Miki held his hand up to his chest. “She’s about so fucking tall with curly red hair and walks on snake-fang heels. ’Cause you remind me of her right now.”
“Kane’s mother?” Penny cocked her head. “Brigid, right? You’ve mentioned her. Do you want to talk about her instead? Because—”
“No.” He crossed his legs, working his shoulders back into the couch’s thick stuffing. “Not Brigid. Not yet.”
There wasn’t enough room in his thoughts to mull over Brigid, not with the white noise buzzing between his ears. The punch of Penny’s words resonated in him still, a sharp thrum, not unlike his ears after a concert. He struggled to find where to start, hating the wall he’d built up to protect himself but at the same time thankful for its thickness. It kept out everything—everyone—coming at him, defending the broken-off bits of his heart and soul he’d gathered up along the way.
Penny leaned forward, cradling her cup in her hands. “Do you want to talk about those photos? We don’t have to, but I think it’s a beginning for you. That was the first time someone you loved witnessed what was done to you. It seems like a good place to talk about sharing how you feel and, maybe, a bit of healing you’ve already done.”
That damned wall was in front of him. His head hurt from ramming into it, and his heart ached from being dragged against its rough surface. Staring out of the window helped.
Some.
Every word he pulled out of his darkness, each curl of reflection, was a battle, and Miki didn’t think he had it in him to chip away at the concrete he’d encased himself in.
It was easier to get wrapped up in the ribbons of clouds strung over the faint cerulean sky than tear apart his emotions. The third-floor office was close enough to Chinatown’s main streets that he could see a line of red lanterns dancing in the light breeze, the black cord holding them up swaying between the tightly packed buildings. There wasn’t a whisper of street noise coming through the closed windows, and when a sea bird of some sort flew by, it screamed silently as its wide wings carried it past the room’s three windows, a real-world triptych playing out one of the endless scenes caught in its frames.
The photos. The flashes of light. The stabbing pains. How he’d screamed himself hoarse, begging and tearful, but he was as mute to his ears as the bird outside. There wasn’t enough hot water to wash off the filth of their hands, of their mouths, and he remembered thinking it couldn’t go on forever. It—they—had to stop sometime. What they were doing—their forceful intrusions—had to stop.
There had to be an end. Then one day, it would never start up again and he would be free to fly.
Except it hadn’t ended. Everything they’d done to him. Every disgusting and perverted act Vega, Shing, and whomever else they’d dragged in to play with him was captured on bits of film. The violation of his body and soul lay open and raw for other sick men to see, images of his tearstained face and bruised body traded like playing cards.
And Kane had seen them. Handled them. There was no looking away from his memories, and his cop carried Miki’s filth with him—every day—and still loved him.
He just couldn’t love himself.
“Breathe.” Miki sucked in a mouthful of air, steadying his nerves much like he did before he stepped out onto a stage. He swallowed hard, reaching for his coffee to wash down the sour, curdled taste rising up from his throat. “I can do this.”
To Penny’s credit, she didn’t say anything. He liked that about her. Her patience and willingness to wait for him to find a purchase on the slippery ground he constantly trod went a long way. Especially since his mind couldn’t settle and it felt like his heart was going to pound its way out of his rib cage.
“I was…” Miki tasted the soup of emotions simmering in his center, dipping his way through the bitter and acrid flavors stewing on the hot flame of his repressed anger. “Scared. I think I was scared first. Because—shit, this is hard—it hurt. It’s as stupid as fuck, but looking into Kane’s face—into his eyes—and knowing he saw me like that, it fucking hurt.
“I mean, I know it was his job. He was riding the badge when he pulled that box out, and he’s really fucking good at shutting shit down when he’s got to be a cop, but he knew. He saw.” He exhaled, a fetid, rank breath fouled by the memories he’d locked away a long time ago. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it. Not like I don’t think I ever would have. I don’t know. I didn’t have…”
Miki lost himself in the cloudy veil, his attention caught on the lure of blood red shadows moving along the wind-tossed lanterns’ curve, playing hide-and-go-seek with the sun on the cherry-painted paper spheres. A tiny brown sparrow picked at something it brought up to the opposite building’s roofline, its talons holding down the white scrap so it wouldn’t blow away as it ate.
“I didn’t have a chance to tell him.” Another breath, a pull of cold air scented with coffee and a hint of the citrusy pe
rfume Penny wore. His rage rose up, threatening to drown him, and Miki forced himself to push past the surging tide, standing firm against its momentum. “It was taken from me. Like what Vega and Shing did to me. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad at Kane. I just… wish I’d been the one who told him what happened to me. I guess. I don’t know. We don’t really talk about it. I mean, some, but it’s not like I can—fuck, I don’t want to talk to him about what they did. I just want it to go away. I fucking wish—”
He hit the wall hard. The impact left him breathless and aching. His chest tightened and Miki closed his eyes, plunging into the darkness he’d lived in for so long. He couldn’t talk with all the sunlight and colors. He couldn’t scrape back the rot and mold on his soul, surrounded by cheery pillows and a sympathetic woman sitting next to him, her hands resting on his knees.
They’d agreed beforehand to her putting her hands on him, a radical departure from the boundaries set by her practice but something they’d talked about to break through his repulsion of being touched. It was something they’d worked out down to the places he felt comfortable and the situations he would allow it, giving Miki all of the control should Penny feel he needed to be grounded.
She’d done it only a few times before, always guided by something instinctual between them, and each time Miki was glad for the weight on his knees, happy for the slight warmth to drive away the cold he seemed to always carry in his chest.
Her touch anchored him in ways Miki couldn’t explain. It wasn’t desirous, not in the way he loved the feel of Kane’s fingers on the back of his neck or the comfortable weight of Damie’s arm slung over his shoulders. It was nothing like the enveloping hugs Donal caught him up in or the press of Dude’s warm body on his aching leg in the middle of the night. Penny’s hands violated his space, forcing into the protective membrane he clung to, parting its thick skin, but as unwelcome and hateful as her contact was, Miki understood he needed it. The warmth of her palms through his jeans anchored him, stopped him from drowning, and most of all, she reminded him to keep moving forward, past the noxious debris he was kicking up from the past and into the now he lived in.
