The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (16 page)

Munroe set the glass on the table. Alina had left her own untouched, which, because the hostesses were paid for every drink the men bought, meant she was losing money. “Let me buy you another,” Munroe said.

Alina’s eyes drifted from Munroe’s face to the table, where her glass dripped condensation, allowing the obvious to stand in for her reply.

“This place closes soon,” Munroe said. “We can waste the rest of the night playing games of avoidance or you can tell me what you want, and I can tell you straight up if it’s reasonable.”

Alina eyed Munroe again, then turned away and stared across the room at nothing in particular. “I watch people,” she said. “I know people.”

She’d have to in this line of work. Probably knew each customer better than he knew himself within a minute of his walking through the door.

“I know criminals and soldiers. I know weak men from strong.”

She glanced at Munroe for the briefest of seconds. “You are not a weak man,” Alina said, and her focus turned to the rear of the room, where the portly mark’s red face continued on far too cozy with the tiny blonde.

“You came in with him, but you didn’t come with him. You came to ask questions, but you came without asking questions. You are a strong man, and clever, and you have no ties to the owners of this club or you would have come here under other means.”

“What is it you think I can give you?”

“Protection.”

“From what?”

“From the man who owns this place,” Alina said. “The man who keeps my passport. The man who claims he owns me. If I tell you what you want, then you keep me safe in exchange.”

Munroe began to speak, but Alina’s expression shifted, instant metamorphosis, and her body language switched from indifference to flirtation. She leaned into Munroe as if she were whispering in her ear and stroked her hand. A heartbeat later, a tiny man in a deep gray designer suit passed by their sectional, and when he was gone, the change vanished and Alina shifted back again. “The master,” she said. “It’s better that he sees me working.”

“He’s the one you need protection from?”

Alina smiled, a real smile. “He’s just an employee.”

Munroe set her glass on the table and leaned back, her arm draped over the sofa mirroring the woman’s faux indifference.

“Can you protect me?” Alina said.

“I could,” Munroe said, “but I can’t imagine anything you tell me would be worth the effort.”

“I saw things,” Alina said, and in her earnestness she leaned in. “I saw your friend kill a man.”

Munroe stared hard. Everything in the woman’s body, her micro expressions, her posture, held that she told the truth. Brow furrowed, Munroe said, “That’s a serious accusation. You’d think for something like this, the police would have been called and he would have been arrested.”

“Yes,” Alina answered, and as if in her earnestness she’d betrayed too much, her tone went back to indifference. “It’s what I saw. The friends of the man carried him away. I only found out much later that he died.”

“There was more than one person?”

“Yes, but only two men fighting with your friend.”

“Do you know why they were fighting?”

“I do,” Alina said, “but that’s all I will tell you for free.”

Munroe picked up the glass again, set it down, ran a finger along the rim while priorities ordered and reordered. There were very few reasons a woman like Alina would beg for protection from a stranger in a country as safe as Japan, and every one of them was attached to organized crime.

Strategy set itself out in an array of possibilities.

Hating that she’d been boxed into a corner without room for negotiation, Munroe said, “I can keep you safe in exchange.”

“Where can I find you after work?”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight or not at all.”

Munroe took a napkin and motioned for a pen. Alina sought one out and gave it to her, and Munroe drew a map from the hostess club to the
konbini
not far from where she’d parked the bike—a five-minute walk, maybe ten in Alina’s stupid shoes. “You know where it is?”

“I’ll be there by three,” Alina said.

“If I have to protect myself before I get a chance to protect you, then I’m not waiting for you to get there.”

Alina smiled and flicked Munroe’s nose. “It will be fine,” she said.

Motorcycles were common, foreigners on motorcycles not so much, especially not at this time of night. Munroe waited under the streetlight, ignoring glances and double takes from the few who came and went.

Alina arrived at three just as she’d promised wearing flat shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt, with most of her makeup removed, and her long tresses pulled up into a messy ponytail, speed-walking and looking over her shoulder as if she feared she was being followed. She carried an oversize purse stuffed full, and her steps faltered slightly when she caught sight of Munroe and the bike.

“This?” she said when she’d reached it.

“Unless you’d rather walk.”

Alina glanced down the street as if genuinely considering the possibility. Then, expression grim, she said, “Please. Let’s go quickly.”

Munroe handed Alina her only helmet. She hadn’t had the foresight to bring the spare when leaving the apartment, never imagined that in her decision to fix Bradford’s problem she’d wind up with this type of baggage.

Alina fumbled with the straps and Munroe helped her get the helmet on and then waited patiently for her to settle. “You need to go home and get some things?” Munroe said.

The helmet shook: No.

“You sure?”

“Not safe” came the muffled response.

Munroe rotated back, flicked the visor up and found fear in Alina’s eyes.

“Do you have a phone?”

Alina glanced down at her purse.

Munroe held out her hand.

Alina dug and pulled out a cell phone. Munroe turned it off, opened the back, and removed the battery. “Carrying this is like carrying a tracking device,” she said. “Don’t put it back together unless it’s an emergency. Got it?”

Alina nodded. Munroe pushed the visor down again. “Don’t fight me,” she said. “I’m not going to do anything to get us killed, but if you tense up and throw your weight, you’re going to cause problems.”

“Don’t tense,” the muffle said.

Munroe nudged the bike toward the curb and Alina tensed.

Munroe sighed. “Hold on,” she said, and when Alina grabbed tight with the cushion of the purse pressed uncomfortably between them, Munroe took the bike out into the street. Riding without a helmet was a risk. If she got stopped, she’d lose her license and see the bike impounded, but this wasn’t a throwaway jaunt. Instinct told her that Alina was right:
Tonight or not at all.

Munroe drove in circles, street to street, farther and farther from the drinking district until, certain they hadn’t been followed, she wound back to the hotel with its web of diagrams taped up along her room’s wall.

She could have gone elsewhere for the night, holed up at one of the many fanciful love hotels where privacy was sacred and rooms that played to want and whimsy could be had by the hour—hotels that, like the manga cafés, offered temporary escape from overcrowded living. Could have but didn’t because love hotels were often run by organized crime and, without knowing what territory belonged to whom, they became a greater risk.

Instead she stopped in a small parking lot where owners without better options paid by the quarter hour to keep their vehicles from being towed and stood by while, in the shadows, Alina emptied her purse, item by item.

Munroe took the purse and ripped out the lining in search of tracking devices. She’d not expected to find anything—fear and pain were far more reliable methods for controlling a victim—but she couldn’t risk not knowing. Munroe returned the purse without explanation and Alina said nothing as she shoved her things back inside.

At nearly five in the morning, Munroe slid the key card into the room lock and swung the door wide. She stepped inside. Alina remained on the threshold, face white, purse in her hands, staring into the darkened space, as if it only now dawned on her what she’d done, and worse, what she was about to do.

Munroe flipped on the light and motioned around the room. “Nothing here but me,” she said.

Alina stayed put.

Munroe opened the desk’s bottom drawer and pulled out one of the hotel-provided
jinbei
—pants and jacket—the Japanese version of pajamas or a robe, yet not so intimate that they couldn’t be worn out on the streets during the evening hours.

Munroe sat on the bed, held the
jinbei
toward the door, another invitation for Alina to come inside. But still she stood frozen, the fear on her face more pronounced than it had been from behind the visor, and Munroe understood.

Making the plea for help had been easy in the spur of the moment— a daydream practiced often. Even getting on the bike and going where Munroe chose to take her had been doable. But to be locked in a small room with a strange man who might in the end be worse than the man she’d just fled?

Munroe set the loungewear back on the bed, stood, and unbuttoned her shirt. She tossed the outer layer aside and then stripped out of the T-shirt beneath. Concealing her gender had never been particularly difficult. Nature, in making her taller than many men, hadn’t been generous with other gifts.

“I want to know what you know,” Munroe said, “and now you see that I have no reason to hurt you.”

Alina’s mouth dropped open slightly, though it was difficult to tell if that was due to discovering that Munroe was a woman or a response to the scarred slivers that crisscrossed Munroe’s torso as mementos of the knife attacks that had occurred near-nightly over the space of two years.

Alina stepped inside and shut the door. Eyes never leaving Munroe’s torso, she slipped out of her shoes and left them in the entry, then dumped her purse on the desk. Fingers outstretched, she reached to touch the longest, thickest scar that ran from the right side of Munroe’s rib cage down to her belly button.

“Who did this?” Alina said.

Munroe snapped a hand around Alina’s wrist before skin connected with skin. “It was a long time ago,” Munroe said. She let go slowly. “Don’t touch me.” Then, releasing Alina completely, she added, “Please.”

Alina took a step back, just out of Munroe’s personal space. Never dropping eye contact, she pulled her own shirt over her head, then unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and pushed them off. She stood and, arms wide, turned a slow circle, her gaze finally disconnecting when physics forced her head to follow her body.

Angry gashes marred the pale skin along her back, her chest, her buttocks and upper thighs, all body parts that had been hidden by the alluring red dress. Creeping up beyond Alina’s panty line was the pink of a still-fresh wound.

Munroe clenched her fists and inhaled a long, long, deep breath.

She didn’t need to ask who’d done it: Alina had told her as much inside the club. Munroe let the air out slowly and with the air the burden.

This woman was not her fight.

“He did this to break me,” Alina said. “He needs to be sure that I know I am worthless, that no man will ever find me beautiful once my clothes are off. He says that when he doesn’t need my face to make money anymore, then he will take that, too.”

“You tried to run away?”

Alina nodded, lips taut, expression grim.

Munroe offered her the
jinbei
again and this time Alina took it, slipping the cotton jacket over her shoulders, wrapping the belt around her waist, and knotting it with experienced hands.

Munroe pulled her T-shirt back on, sat on the bed, and patted the space beside her.

Alina offered a slight smile, then, like a kid, she knelt on the bed and crawled across to the side that backed up to the wall. She pulled the band out of her hair and lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Slowly, tears trickled down toward her ears, eventually making water spots on the pillowcase.

Munroe shifted and leaned against the headboard.

Questions about Bradford chased each other in a race against time, but Munroe held them back, allowing the silence to settle, giving Alina a chance to absorb the possibility that her torment might soon be over.

Without opening her eyes, Alina whispered, “You promised to keep me safe. How will you do that?”

“Keep you hidden while we work on getting you a new passport,” Munroe said. “When you have that, I’ll put you on a plane and send you home.”

“I have no money.”

“I know,” Munroe said. “I consider it a cost of doing business—payment in exchange for the information you have.”

Alina looked down at her chest and patted her crotch. “I thought maybe, you know, I should have to buy my way, but not so?”

Munroe smiled, and Alina laughed a snot-wet laugh and dried her eyes.

“I came to Japan legally,” she said, “through an agency in my country. They hire girls for the hostess industry, put them on contract for a few years, and then when the contract is finished the girls go home. I had many friends who have done it. The work, it sucks, but the money from two years in Japan goes very far in making a better life in Russia. You know of these things?”

Munroe nodded. Alina continued in fluid fact-based sentences that neither played for pity nor masked frustration and pain. She told of how when she’d arrived, her passport had been taken with the understanding that the travel documents would be returned when the contract expired—how this was an accepted practice to guarantee that the agency recouped its money for transportation and housing, ensuring the girls didn’t take off to work on their own once they’d arrived in Japan. But unlike most girls’, Alina’s passport and the passports of a handful of others who worked in the club were never given back. Without passports, they overstayed their visas, were there illegally, were afraid of the police and afraid of their bosses.

The owner of the agency, also the owner of the club, claimed her for his own, providing her with an apartment and clothes and food while taking from her the money she could have used to provide for herself, always threatening to throw her out into the streets, to strip from her the higher-classed privilege of hostessing and turn her to prostitution, and then to kill her and bury her where no one would ever find her. “I knew from the beginning that the agency is run by the mafia,” Alina whispered. “Most hostess agencies are, yes? But I thought that this is Japan, and in Japan they follow the law—not like the mafia in Russia, which owns the law—I thought this was different.”

“Not so different.”

“It’s exactly the same. Business and crime and government all tied in one ugly bow. The other girls think I am lucky. They hate me a little, I think, even though I am here against my will just the same. He promises to return my passport, but he has promised many times and beats me when I ask. They think I have it better—they don’t know.” She paused and looked at Munroe, her face ten years older than it should have been. “They don’t know about the many trips to the hospital and the many trips I don’t make because I am too scared to go. You think it’s strange I trust a stranger after a few minutes of conversation, that I trust a stranger to protect me and then I leave everything and go into the night?”

Munroe didn’t answer.

Alina said, “My youth is fading, and Jiro tires of me. He will kill me soon—or worse, give me to one of his men. There is nowhere for me to go that is safe, nobody I can ask for help. But you’re a foreigner, less likely to have connections, and I thought you were a soldier like your friend, I thought maybe you could help me. If not, what did I lose? Either way, I die.”

“I am like my friend,” Munroe said.

Alina sighed. “We’ll see.” She rolled over and, lying on her side, she said, “Your friend killed that man in self-defense—he was provoked.”