River of Glass Read online

  We parked in front of the main house. Billy tossed me the home improvement bag, and we went inside. Impressive. Flagstone floors, high ceilings, chandeliers, a bronze and copper wall fountain.

  Decker said, “There are rooms upstairs for members, and a community area. A wine room, a cigar room. Indoor and outdoor pools. The . . . actresses . . . live out back. Before they’re allowed to service members, they’re all trained in massage.”

  Billy’s jaw clenched. “You’re not selling us a membership, Decker. Best you remember that.”

  THE SECURITY monitors were in a back room on the ground floor. Decker pushed the door open and flashed a grin at the guy behind the monitors. It wasn’t a convincing grin, for my money, but by the time the guard had time to process it, Billy had stuffed a washcloth in his mouth, and I’d bound his hands and feet with zip ties.

  One down.

  I ripped open his shirt and, blocking his view with my body, attached a smoke alarm to his hairless chest with two strips of duct tape. Billy said to him, “You know what this is?”

  He shook his head, mumbled something around the gag.

  “This here’s an explosive device. There’s a motion sensor attached. You try to get loose, or one of your buddies tries to get you loose . . . boom.”

  The guard’s eyes went wide. He shook his head.

  “You might not believe me,” Billy said. His eyes looked feral, like a tiger’s. “Maybe this is some elaborate joke. But you have to ask yourself, like Dirty Harry used to say, ‘Do you feel lucky today?’ ”

  The guard shook his head.

  “Where are the others?” I asked Decker.

  “I don’t know.” At Billy’s scowl, he hurried to add, “Honest to God! The concierge is probably in his office. The chef’s in the kitchen. The other guards could be anywhere.”

  “Where are the women?”

  “There are two big sheds out back. Sturdy. Metal. Like Quonset huts.” He stepped over to the monitors and pointed. “The more experienced ones, the ones we can trust, stay in the larger one. They have a lot more perks there. Good food, nice clothes, a real bathroom. The new ones stay in the smaller hut.”

  “How new is new?”

  “Sometimes a month, sometimes a few months. Depends how fast they learn.”

  Billy reached behind the monitors, ripping out wires. With the butt of his gun, he smashed the glass of each monitor. Blinding them.

  Decker’s presence was as good as a movie pass. Within eight minutes, the chef and the concierge were gagged and zip-tied in the security control room, each with a simulated explosive device attached to his chest. We locked them in and, three minutes later, we were heading out the back door, back into the rain, home-improvement bags in hand.

  The two sheds were set back from the house, well hidden by the landscaping. Apparently, men who bought and paid for sex slaves didn’t care to be reminded that their paramours were frightened women brutalized into submission.

  Beside the smaller shed was an open pit, and just beyond that, a mound of freshly turned earth that could only be a grave. I walked to the pit and looked in. It was deep, maybe twelve feet. In one corner, a small pile of human bones jutted from the muddy water. I looked at Decker, and something in my face made him recoil.

  The clock in my head ticked on. No time to think about the pit or what might have happened there. I found my voice and said to Billy, “Around back. I want the shed between us and the main house.”

  While Billy kept a watch on Decker, I laid one tarp across the glass and tossed one end of the other over the fence. Careful to place my hands only on the tarp, I climbed over and used the rope to secure one end of the ladder to a nearby tree. Then I climbed back with the other end.

  I said, “There’s nothing on this side to secure it to, so I’ll hold this end and help the women climb over. You’ll be on the other side of the wall to help them down and lead them out of here.”

  “What about Decker?” Billy asked.

  “On top of the wall. He helps them over, and we can both keep an eye on him.”

  “We should have brought a bus,” Billy said, reaching for his cell phone. “I’m gonna call Tommy and have him bring us one.”

  “Tell him to park out of sight of the cameras. We passed a Jiffy Mart not far from here. Tell him to park it there.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Decker said. “Then they’ll find the breach, and you guys are so dead.”

  “You better hope not,” Billy said, “’cause I guarantee you’re dying three seconds before I do.”

  Fifteen minutes left.

  I took a deep breath and kicked in the door of the shed. A dozen pairs of eyes swung toward me. This one fearful, that one defiant, this one deadened. One woman shrank back, curling her body inward to protect the baby in her arms. I recognized the mocha skin, the nap of black curls. Helix’s daughter.

  I opened my mouth, closed it again, suddenly unsure of what to say. Remembering Decker’s words: By the time he’s through with them, they’re convinced that everyone is in on it. They wouldn’t go with the Pope himself.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said. “But we don’t have much time. Let’s move.”

  They exchanged glances. Hopeful. Hesitant. Confused. Someone muttered something in another language. Another minute passed.

  I scanned the room for Khanh. She wasn’t there.

  Best-laid plans.

  I scanned the room again. Ten women, all young, all gaunt, all in filthy nylon slips or teddies. One face looked familiar. “Tuyet,” I said.

  Tuyet

  The man was tall, maybe six feet, and lean, his blond hair sodden, water streaming from his open raincoat, the suit beneath soaked through. She pushed herself up from the stained mattress, gave a sharp hiss of breath as her movement tugged at the thin slash along her side.

  The pain brought a flash of memory—Beetle’s triumphant smile as she rose from the water with the knife in her hand, the thin, sharp pain as the blade bit into Tuyet’s skin, the startled “o” of Beetle’s mouth when Tuyet turned the blade and slipped it between the older girl’s ribs. She hadn’t wanted to kill Beetle, but she hadn’t wanted to die, either. Sometimes you had to choose.

  “Tuyet,” the man said.

  Near the open door, Weasel wrapped her arms around her shins and pressed her face against her knees. She refused to look at Tuyet. None of them would meet her gaze, not since she alone had returned from the pit.

  “Tuyet,” he said again.

  She had not seen the tattooed man in days. Since then, the Boss Man seemed angry, Mat Troi worried. Things were coming apart, but she didn’t know why or how, or whether it was a good thing for her or a bad one.

  She looked at the stranger, while rain pounded on the ceiling of the hut and washed through the gap Dung had crawled through. A new man. What did it mean?

  He fumbled in his jacket pocket, held out a jade monkey on a silver chain.

  Her heart faltered.

  “Your mother left me this,” he said. “You gave one to your grandmother and one to your mom before she left to find the wind tree.”

  Fear and hope warred within her. If he had the monkey, then he knew her mother. The Boss Man might have her, or the tattooed man. They might have made her mother tell them these things. It might be a trick or a trap, or . . .

  She stared at the necklace, frozen by possibility.

  He took a step forward. As his shadow passed, Weasel moaned. Gaze fixed on Tuyet’s eyes, he approached her slowly, closed her fingers around the necklace. “Please, Tuyet. You know who I am. Look at my face.”

  She stretched out her empty hand and touched his face. Ran her fingers along his jaw and across his cheekbones. How many times had she seen that face, or one much like it, in her mother’s photographs? In her own dreams?

  “You are you,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “You are really you.”

  42

  She took her hand away from my cheek.

  “
We have to hurry,” I said. “Can you make them understand?”

  She gave a small nod, then turned and tugged at the arm of a willowy girl with a broad mouth. “Hurry, we must hurry.” Then she was moving, helping women to their feet, shoving them toward the door, urging them on in a mixture of broken English and her native language.

  Another minute. Two.

  I looked at my watch. Seven minutes left for the guard we’d captured to miss the check-in, figure two or three more while the others tested their radios, rationalized his failure to respond. They’d close the front gate. Hurry to the main house. Find the control room door locked. Another few minutes to pop the door and realize what had happened. Another few to make a plan and narrow down our location.

  I stood at the open door as the women shuffled out, pointed them around to the back of the shed, then followed behind. Decker stood on the wall, helping the first of the women over, while Billy stood on the tarp, securing the ladder with one hand and covering Decker with a pistol in the other.

  I turned to Tuyet. “Where’s Khanh?”

  “Not know. Maybe big house.” Her chin quivered.

  “Where in the big house?”

  She closed her eyes. “Downstairs. Basement. Very bad.”

  I looked at Billy. “You get them out of here. I’m going for Khanh.”

  “What about the women in the other hut?”

  I looked at Tuyet. “If I open the door, can you convince them to come?”

  “Not know. They here long time. Maybe not trust.”

  “I’ll get them on the way out.” I nudged her toward Billy. “You go ahead.”

  She shot a longing glance toward the wall, where Decker, eyes riveted on Billy’s gun, helped the next woman clamber over. Then she drew in a long breath and lifted her shoulders. “I stay. They not listen you.”

  Her jaw was firm, her eyes clear. Like mother, like daughter. “Okay,” I said. “Billy, if I’m not back before the bad guys get here, throw her over your shoulder and carry her over.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” With a mock salute, Billy turned his attention to the next woman on the ladder.

  Tuyet took one side of the ladder and reached for the woman’s hand.

  Four minutes.

  I drew the Glock and headed for the main house at a run just as two men in tan security uniforms and yellow rain slickers came around the corner. They were laughing about something, and for a moment the laughter froze on their faces. They were both young, maybe midtwenties, muscled up like football players.

  “Hands up,” I said, pointing with the Glock.

  The one on the left grabbed for his gun, and I shot him twice, center of mass, the suppressed rounds sounding like two quick sharp breaths. He gave a soft, high-pitched moan and crumpled, and the one on the right dropped to his knees and threw his hands up over his head. His eyes were squeezed shut, tears—or maybe rain—leaking from the corners.

  “Don’t make a sound,” I said.

  He nodded, his breath coming in ragged bursts. He let me stuff the rag in his mouth and bind him with the zip ties, and I rolled him into the shadow of the building to buy a little more time.

  “Smart guy,” I said. “Stay smart.”

  He nodded again, and I left him.

  Two minutes.

  I found the basement door and slipped through just as excited voices and the slam of the front door said time had run out.

  The stairs were lit by bare incandescent bulbs. I crept down cautiously, leading with the pistol low and ready. At the bottom of the stairs was a door, and propped in front of the door was Harold Sun with a bullet hole in his forehead.

  From the other side of the door came a thwack and a cry.

  No time to worry about Sun. I kicked the door open and stepped inside.

  My brain cataloged the details. Bare walls, an empty chair and another with a woman lashed to it. Khanh in her bra and panties, one eye swollen shut, a bloody bandage on her left hand. Her head was bent, her hair covering her face.

  Andrew Talbot stood behind her in his expensive suit, one hand cupping her chin, the other clamped onto her shoulder. Suddenly, everything made sense. Sun’s no-show at the park, the explosion at Helix’s place. The timing of Sun’s offer to make a trade. Talbot had sent out an e-mail just before that call.

  Talbot had known where the investigation was going, which put him in the ideal position to deflect it. He’d been there when I’d called the police about the meeting with Sun, and as a police consultant, he even could have gotten access to the murdered girl’s case files. For all I knew, Malone had shown him the file when she first asked him about Tuyet.

  When he saw me, he let go of Khanh and ducked behind her, shielding himself with her body. He reached around her head, drew out a silver-plated revolver.

  Khanh looked up and, in a broken voice, said, “You came.”

  “Brave man,” I said to Talbot, stepping back past Sun’s body into the partial cover of the doorframe. “Does it make you feel tough, hiding behind a wounded woman?”

  Talbot laughed. “Is this the part where we share confidences until the cavalry comes? I could give you a long sad story about how my father drove my mother to suicide with a string of Asian whores, and that damaged my fragile psyche.”

  “That was a rhetorical question. I don’t really give a shit about your life story.”

  “Too bad. It’s an interesting story.”

  “I got it already. All that stuff you said about Sun was true, but it was true for both of you. Using Hands of Mercy as a shield, that was brilliant.”

  “Glad you appreciate it.”

  “To tell you the truth, it pisses me off.”

  “That’s because you’re such a white knight. You are a white knight, right? Otherwise, why would you be here? And that’s why you’re going to put down your gun so I don’t shoot this pathetic husk of a woman in the head.” He tapped the pistol barrel against Khanh’s temple.

  A sound came from the top of the stairs. I glanced up just as the door swung open and a startled security guard lifted his gun. I swung the Glock toward him, popped off a round. He looked down at the red stain blooming on his shirt, and with a puzzled look on his face, tumbled forward down the stairs. He lay in a heap near the bottom, wheezing a red mist.

  I kicked his gun away and swung the barrel of my Glock back toward Talbot.

  Talbot said, “I wish you hadn’t done that. First poor Karlo—”

  “I didn’t kill Karlo.”

  “Of course not. Sun killed Karlo. But you made it necessary. And then there’s Sun. I owe you for Sun. I loved him like a brother.”

  “He was your brother.”

  “Half. But he was weak. It was the Asian side of him. He’d have crumbled under scrutiny, and then how long before he gave me up?”

  “So you killed him.”

  “Sometimes hard things have to be done. I learned that from my father.”

  “Does Claire know?”

  A pained expression crossed his face. “Not yet. Perhaps she won’t have to.”

  “You’ve destroyed the rescue group. Everything she worked for.”

  “Only if you survive to tell the tale. But even if you do, Claire will bounce back. Her type always does.”

  “Her type?”

  “Idealists. Now, enough talk.” He caressed Khanh’s cheek with the barrel of the revolver. She gave a little shriek, and the Glock jumped in my hand. Talbot’s mouth dropped open, and a stream of red spurted from one eye. He sank to one knee, then toppled to the concrete floor, a red pool spreading from the ruined eye.

  I holstered the Glock and knelt in front of Khanh, unsheathing my survival knife. It cut through the ropes easily, and she shoved them off her lap.

  I looked at the bandage on her hand, tried to think of a way to tell her I was sorry. There were no words big enough, and no time to say them, even if I could think of them. Instead, I said, “I need you to stay here. I need to go up and clear the house before the others go
back out and find Billy.”

  “No, please.” Khanh’s voice broke, and she wet her lips and tried again. “Please not leave me here.”

  I forced a smile. “You know I work alone.”

  “I know.” She touched two fingers to my chest, just above my heart. “You work alone. I come with you.”

  THE GUARD at the bottom of the stairs was still breathing, but his eyes were glazed and frightened. He wouldn’t last long without a doctor. He might not last long, even with one. He scrabbled at my arm with bloody fingers, mouthed something I couldn’t hear.

  While Khanh put on my shirt, I found the guard’s cell phone and dialed 911, then left it, line open, beside him. Then I folded one of the home-improvement cloths against his wound and pressed his hand against it while I used my new tie to secure it. He thrashed his head and moaned but I didn’t let go. “Press hard. As hard as you can stand. Maybe you’ll live long enough to go to prison.”

  A blast of static burst from the radio attached to his belt. I let go of his hand and tugged the radio free. Pressed the Speak button. “Listen up,” I said. “Sun’s dead. Talbot’s dead. Savitch is dead. The police are on their way. It’s all falling apart. You stay, you lose.”

  THERE WAS no one at the top of the basement stairs. The door to the security office hung on its hinges, but our prisoners still lay trussed on the floor. The makeshift gags had been removed, and while the concierge looked at us with frightened eyes, the chef spewed a stream of invective.

  Billy’s spiel about the explosives must have been convincing.

  I hurried out the back door, Glock in hand, Khanh at my heels. From the direction of the Quonset huts came the sound of a silenced shot. Then three more. I broke into a run.

  It had taken longer in the basement than we’d planned, and the door to the larger shed hung open. A quick glance inside showed a row of beds with comforters, each with a woman in a Japanese robe sitting or lying on it, each with a wooden wardrobe beside it. One woman stood near the door, peering out. She was beautiful. Clean, graceful. Slender but well fed. Her nails were manicured. Her eyes were dead. As I passed, she jerked her head in and looked away.