Hollow Dolls, The (23 page)

“Melanie,
you are mine now! My blood sister. I will never leave you.” She turned and
whispered to Phoenia.

“Clean
her up. Take her back to The Sandman with her car.”

~*~

Vic cruised the downtown streets in a cab looking for the man with
the wagon.

“We’re almost at seventy bucks,” said the driver.

“That’s fine, just let it run.”

Just as he was about to give up for the day he spotted Walter
coming out of an alley off Pender near Main.

“Let me out here. Anywhere.”

Vic tossed the guy a hundred and jumped out of the cab. He hung
back a block then quickly caught up and followed Walter into the alley behind
his rooming house. Walter opened the service door at The Lucky Lodge behind the
building where he rented a room. He pulled his wagons in. He was opening the
large wooden framed locker he’d been assigned. He rolled his wagon train inside
to rest for the night.

Vic slipped through the service entrance door and watched silently
in the shadow. Walter was busy organizing his things.  It smelled basement damp
and the old wood smell from the lockers made Vic excited. Old was easy.
Separating the darkness was a weak yellow light cast from the alcove stairwell
entrance and a small overhead bulb dangling from a wire above Walter a hundred
feet away from Vic. Rummaging around Walter clanged metals, rustling paper bags
and plastic alike. Vic waited. He was enjoying this moment like foreplay. He’d
rush over and slit the old man’s throat. Vic played with the zipper. His secret
compartment. The one he’d flipped in and out of a hundred times practicing his
technique like a gunslinger.

Walter’s life hung in the balance as Vic’s blood rose and for some
reason he fumbled with the zipper. He’d never had a problem before. Suddenly
the overhead lights came on throwing Vic’s dilated pupils into a frenzy. Footsteps
thumped on their way down the stairs.
Coitus interruptus.

Vic quickly slipped back outside to the alley and held the back
door slightly ajar watching. He saw another man come down to the stair landing.
He should rush in and waste them both. His blood pumped more furiously.

“Hey Walter!” yelled the super. “Catch a big one today?”

The super walked away from Walter after he spoke. He glancing back
to see if Walter had heard him. He was going to check the back door out of
habit, the way he always did at the end of the day. Walter poked his head out
from his storage locker and grinned.

“You know Herb, today was my lucky day!”  He closed the door on
his storage unit.

“Shit! Look at that damn door stuck open. That’s no good,” said
Herb. He grabbed the handle, pulled the back door hard and heard the lock
click.

“That’s better,” he said. He pulled the door a few more times good
and hard, jiggling the handle to make sure then turned back toward Walter.

“Lucky day you say,” said Herb. “We never know what’s in store, do
we? Hey, I picked up a nice bottle of single malt today. Care to join me for a
nip?”

Walter met him at the stairs and put his hand on Herb’s shoulder
partly as a friend, partly as a resting spot.

“You know Herb, you’re a good man.”

“Ok. Three fingers for you,” said Herb.

They both laughed big belly laughs the way old guys do as they
trudged up the stairs after a hard day’s work.

 “Hey Mr. Accountant Man. How are your numbers crunching?”

“Oh, you know. I got that raise!” said Huáng. “Twenty percent and
an extra week holiday.”

“Uncle is generous,” said Kim Li.

Kim Li’s cousin Huáng sat at his desk in the tiny office at Li
Imports.

“You’re good with computers right?”

“Yes, well that was my second PhD. My first was—”

“A wise choice cuz,” said Kim Li, cutting him off. “Now can you
help me find out who hacked my email? Someone is in there sending messages in
my name, and it’s messing me up big time.”

While Kim Li went on about her problem, Huáng brought up the dark
screen with the grey letters in was dos mode. He began to find his way onto her
computer via the internet. He knew her IP and email address by heart and was on
her computer tracing down the problem.

Kim Li sat on Huáng’s desk. Her China white legs and short skirt
beckoned while Huáng typed away.  He was too shy to look directly. The tension
got to him and he had to look only for a second! He glanced at her face with a
curt smile gazing dreamily into her eyes for one brief second then looked back
to the screen in stoic computer guy mode. That way, his cousin would know that
he hadn’t been looking—down lower. That was Huáng’s Overture. He knew when to
look and how long, in his practiced staccato style. Kim Li enjoyed the
symphony.

“Done,” said Huáng.

It had taken only five minutes. Kim Li was stroking his thigh with
her foot the entire time which probably slowed him down.

“It was ‘HunkyJunk201’

“That turd!” said Kim Li.

“I traced him through the Tumblr back door then blocked his internet
protocol from your email and other accounts. He won’t be able to connect to you
anymore.”

“Thanks, you’re awesome.” She didn’t understanding a word, only kissed
his lips. Not in a big sexual way. Just a kiss. She wanted to see him react as
she spun the web of his attachment.

Kim Li climbed down into the other office chair and rolled it
across the tiny floor close to him. She put her hand on Huáng’s thigh and
squeezed it lightly while whispering in his ear.

“I want you to do something for me. It’s secret! You can’t tell
uncle.”

“Sure. Name it,” said Huáng. His body tensed, then he relaxed
purposefully. He was learning to be not so ‘uptight’.

“I need you to hack into Li International’s email. I’m trying to
find something about his connections back in Guangdong.”

“Why?” said Huáng in his regular voice.

“Shhh! I told you top secret.”

“Ok Ok.”

“I need to know some things about special trade items. He will
never know. I’m just trying to get ahead. You’ll help me won’t you Huáng?”

“I can do it sure. If I get caught you what uncle will do.”

“He won’t find out, I promise. Have I ever steered you wrong?” She
pouted her lips.

Huáng was close to caving.

“You know being cousins doesn’t mean we can’t be friends with
benefits too.”

She was pulling out all the stops. She stroked his thigh gently
and brushed against his hardness. Huáng practically exploded! He opened the dos
screen again holding on. It was just to get his mind off of the incredibly evil
feelings he was having.

If she touched him there one more time
...
he thought.

That was six months ago. The day when Kim Li got into her Uncle
Ben’s
real
business. Huáng was able to hack the system without suspicion
being pointed toward the Vancouver end. So when the heroin shipments were
short, Ben Li would never suspect anyone in the Vancouver. The precious China
white powder was packed into different stock items each time. Ben Li was the
only one in Vancouver who knew the details of each shipment, or so he thought. 

In one shipment the powder might be found in the ‘Big Elephant
Playing Chinese Ingot’. The next perhaps in ‘Lucky Buddha Raising On Money
Frog’. To an outsider such as the authorities, it would be necessary to open
every box and check the heavily stocked warehouse in order to locate the
precious powder. The cousins intercepted the inventory name and number each
month from an email and could find the heroin easily.

Huáng had spent a few hours finding the link. It was an email
between Ben Li and head office that described the coded message for each
shipment. The emails were encrypted although Huáng was far beyond the
capabilities of his uncle’s old school programmers.

It was an auspicious plan. Kim Li would find the specific
container and figurines for each shipment and skim a kilo. It was enough to
anger her uncle. An amount that was tolerable. This month she’d decided to take
double the amount! Kim Li’s impatience with Vic grew. She’d taken him on as a
partner yet he was only good for one thing and it wasn’t worth half a kilo of
heroin every month. She’d been doing him a big favor only now she needed to
amass as much cash as she could. She was already set to get rid of Vic. This
was her ‘Golden nest egg plan.’

Kim Li arrived back to her room at The Regent with the second haul
from the warehouse of her uncle. She felt a bit exhausted from the close call.
Mostly because Huáng almost blew it. What if her aunt had caught them? She’d
used the Ruger first when a junkie confronted her with a knife in the alley. It
was on her way home from work.

She’d shot him without a second thought. It was a simple decision
of self-defence. There was a question of necessity. Did she simply want to try
the gun on a human? To kill with it. No need to answer to herself. She wasn’t
God. Plenty of people died by bullet. Millions. The idea of it. All the dead
bodies intrigued Kim Li for that moment. She wondered about war. Combat. She
could be in the military. No, she’d never taken orders well unless it was by
physical force.

That kill in the alley. The suppressor of the Ruger reduced the
sound to a click accompanied by a minimal sound of air pressure release. It was
softer than the sound of Huáng’s pellet rifle they’d played with when they were
kids. The Ruger’s shell had ejected and made a brassy metallic clink as it
bounced on the alley’s asphalt. Then she’d double-checked the alley for
witnesses as she slipped the barrel into her jeans at the back. It felt sexy.
She picked up the one shell. It was still hot and she had to flip it from one
hand to the other as it cooled and she walked back to her room.

Cool and unforgiving she was. She looked in the mirror on the
table with the white powder on it. She’d already forgotten about the junkie.
That he even existed. An ice-kitten. That had been her fourth kill. But the
first with her new gun.

Kim Li sniffed a bit of coke from the mirror and looked at her
reflection.

“Are you a cold bitch?” she asked the girl in the mirror.

She saw recognition in the girl’s eyes as they looked back at her.

 
I’m the coldest bitch
.

Kim Li smiled and the girl in the mirror smiled back.

As she unpacked the heroin, she went over the amounts in her head.
It was not the usual split. Normally she’d take ten packets out for her and Vic
to split and stash the other ten for her nest egg. This time she put the whole
twenty packets into her suitcase under the bed, making thirty-five all together
this month. Thirty-five times fifty grams. Almost two kilos of heroin. Her boys
in Richmond paid eighty a kilo. This month’s take would be a hundred and fifty
grand without counting the dribbles from the deal with Vic.

Kim Li had someone inside that urged her.
You should kill him.
He’s a threat. A loose end.

The digital clock on her side table read ‘7:00 pm’ exactly. Her
show was at eight.

Time for a shower.

Kim Li had been sweating a little nervous sweat. She touched her
underarm and smelled it. Her bodies’ experience was in there. She felt an
intimate communion in an auto-erotic experience she often had. That was the
only person she could love. The other. The alter on the inside.

Maybe she was only after the danger with all her carrying on. She
smelled again. There were plenty of risks involved with stealing from her uncle
and then dealing the drugs. Maybe she wanted him to catch her and get kicked
out of the family she so despised.

It wasn’t as though she needed money. Her day-to-day was covered amply
by trust allowance coming in. Ten thousand dollars each month. She couldn’t get
the full amount of the trust from her Uncle Ben until she turned thirty. And she
couldn’t even think of leaving the family or she’d lose the trust. This little side
business was good insurance. She was still only twenty-one.

When Kim Li and Huáng referred to Ben Li as their Uncle, it was
only a familiar term they used together. Like calling each other ‘cuz’. Ben Li
was  actually a 
叔公
 , their Great-Uncle, and
old man at that. The real wildcard in Kim Li’s future was when would the old
fart die?

Vic came back. After they made out, Kim Li laid exhausted on the
bed. Her menses mixed with both of their juices and trickled onto the white
sheets. Vic moved down to sandwich himself on her back and rubbed his bloated
junk around on her sticky buttocks. Kim Li arched her hips rising and falling
in the concerted cadence of her self-propelled fuck-addictedness.

Kim Li’s main room contained only the light from her peach
lampshade.

“It was a gift from uncle.” Kim Li had told Vic when they first
met. “That thing is worth eighteen grand! It’s antique.”

One day Kim Li’s jiujiu, an uncle on her mother’s side, watched
her stroke the bronze dragon that reared up from a porcelain based lamp in the
antiques section of his store. “Please accept it... as a gift,” he said
instantly.

Kim Li’s family patriarch Ben controlled most of the heroin trade
in Chinatown and he now had to contend with the upstart Blood Dragons, a puppet
group with US connections. As they made their move to carve out a piece of the
Li heroin trade, blood would surely spill. Kim Li was becoming increasingly
anxious about her secret affair with Vic. If her family ever caught wind...

Twisting around underneath to face him she reached down between
her legs and swiped herself then streaked an X on his cheek.

“Vlad The Impaler,” she groaned in a faux sexy voice, then darted
her hand back down to check and see if he was still hard enough.

“Later,” she said. Feeling he was soft, she pushed Vic and he fell
to the floor.

“What the fuck!”

She stepped on his belly and headed for the bathroom.

“That’ll shut you up.”

Vic groaned and pulled himself up. He walked over to the table
feeling the stickiness on his cheek and touching it to his tongue. There was the
perpetual supply of powders, pills and pot out on the table that were samples
of the products Vic middled to dealers in Surrey and Richmond.

Kim Li sunk down in the tub and closed her eyes. The water level
undulated against her golden mean jawline, her body still as jade. She had
practiced the art of bringing her heart rate down to a death breath.

Her lips were still by the edge of the water. A bulb hung from an
old cloth-covered electrical wire overhead. The tungsten light bounced from the
old painted plaster and cast an android green against the old tub’s inner
surface. It lent a rusty hue to the bloodied water forcing the diffuse glow of
her pale skin to struggle and murmur its pale white voice to the surface.

Blood wisps. Diffused crimson jellyfish tentacles reached out from
between Kim Li’s legs like tiny explosions as Vic slipped into the other end.

The water rose to the rim of the tub. Small tongues of excess
licked over the side onto the mat. All was silent.

 “Ok, that’s it. I have to wash up,” said Kim Li.

Vic didn’t budge. His eyes were closed at the other end of the
tub. She dug her toe into his bum.

“Get out you! I have to get ready for work.”

He groaned, pulled himself up to a standing position and stood
there waiting with his swollen after sex junk dangling in front of her. She
looked up at him. He had that bad boy snarl on his face that made her want to
scratch his eyes out and fuck him. She took him in her mouth sliding his head
around then swallowed him deeper. Vic’s hands gripped the back of her head and
pulled.

“Harder you slut.”

Kim Li released him and stood up.

“I don’t have time for this. I’m late already,” she said. “Now get
out.”

She smacked his ass hard and kissed his cheek.

Vic stepped out of the tub.

“Ok! Go be Tifa already.”

He grabbed a towel and closed the bathroom door behind him.

Kim Li pulled the clear shower curtain around the tub and turned
the faucets on. After she finished washing, she drained the tub to shower
down.  She moved around under the spray, rinsing off, and a shadow was cast
across the clear plastic curtain amongst the yellow and orange clownfish
swimming through strands of sea plants.