Ghosts, Matt Rogers [reading the story of the .txt] 📗

down, sending him all the way to the sidewalk, which would make getting to his feet a whole lot harder.

He muttered, ‘Sorry,’ left the guy there and walked off.

Josefine didn’t even see it. She was crossing the street, eyes fixed forward, beelining for cover. Probably hoping to lose her pursuer in the maze of residential housing.

King broke into a sprint, and she heard him coming and did the same, but he was a whole lot faster and a whole lot bigger. He circled around her, screeched to a halt, and she had to stop in turn.

He looked her right in the eyes and said, ‘I’m not who you think I am. I’m not an enforcer. I have no connection to any part of this story.’

‘I don’t want your help,’ she said, still pale despite the sun beating down on her face.

She was spooked.

He didn’t answer immediately. He let her breathe. The exhalations were claustrophobic — they came out in ragged clumps, with no consistency between breaths.

Eventually he said, ‘If you walk away now, I won’t follow you. But I think you should let me hear you out.’

‘There’s nothing you can do.’

‘You don’t know.’

It was true.

She didn’t.

Not really.

And she started to recognise it.

He didn’t push for answers. He was comfortable right where he was. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at his feet. They were round the corner now, out of sight of the bystander he’d dropped. The guy would pick himself up eventually, feeling awfully sorry for himself, but otherwise unharmed. He might go to the cops. He might not. Either way, King would be long gone before there was any sort of response.

Josefine’s breathing settled.

King said, ‘You didn’t see Elsa. You didn’t see Melanie.’

She paused for a long time, then he saw her think, Screw it, and she said, ‘Which was weird, right?’

King nodded. ‘They’re hanging out there every day after school. Except they’re not.’

Josefine nodded too.

King said, ‘So Wan’s is a front.’

She stared at him, flabbergasted. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I told you.’

‘You didn’t mention the mind-reading part.’

Despite everything, he smiled. It seemed to cool her nerves, as much as they could be cooled. He knew they’d been battered left and right for much of the past few months. He could see it on her face, in her eyes.

She was at her wits’ end.

Which was maybe why she was even entertaining this conversation in the first place.

King said, ‘So you dug deeper.’

‘I didn’t know how to ask Elsa about it,’ Josefine said. ‘Because that would reveal I’m trying to spy on her, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So I followed her from school one day,’ she said. ‘She and Melanie went to the mall. They went inside. As far as I could tell they went into Wan’s. I walked past five minutes later, and they weren’t there. Proving it was a front, just like you said.’

‘So there’s something going on out back.’

‘That’s what I realised. And at the same time someone realised I was walking past the shopfront way too frequently for it to be a coincidence. I’m not good at that stuff, after all.’

‘Who saw you?’

‘The same guy who was in there half the time I walked past. Just hanging around, talking shit with the workers. He looked like trouble, but I could tell he had — what would you call it? — a certain bad-boy charm. He was tall. Taller than you, and skinny, but not weak-skinny, more…’

‘Wiry? Athletic?’

‘Yeah. He was Central American, I think. Like from El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala. He spotted me. Looked right at me and his eyes went black. I thought he’d kill me right there. I felt like he knew everything. I panicked and ran out.’

‘Then?’

‘I confronted Elsa that night. I was scared. She turned it into a screaming match. Told me to fuck off out of her business, and she left for Wan’s again. Stormed right out of the house. An hour later I drove to the strip mall, and then I saw…’

She trailed off.

Took in a deep, shaky breath.

Said, ‘I didn’t dare walk past the shopfront again. So I circled round back of the mall, and lay low, and within the space of thirty minutes I saw — I don’t know, eight, nine? — different cars go into the alley behind Wan’s. And these were Mercedes’, Range Rovers, Bentleys, Rolls Royces. Cars that had no business in Chinatown. Right then I knew what it was.’

‘An unlicensed club.’

5

She stared again.

Finally she said, ‘Okay, yeah, you are good at this.’

‘Trust me when I say I’ve seen it all.’

She didn’t respond.

He said, ‘And then?’

‘I can’t … easily explain. There’s no clean timeline. Weeks went by. I was crippled with stress. I didn’t know whether to keep spying, or go to the police, or just try my best to pull Elsa out of whatever was happening there. Elsa got worse. She came home with bruises and cuts. She started self-harming. I changed my tune, and started reassuring her instead of clashing with her about it. I knew I was on the verge of losing her forever. And then … she opened up.’

King sensed a pause, but didn’t interject.

Josefine said, ‘When she started talking, she couldn’t stop. She confirmed everything. There were girls there — her and Melanie’s age. She didn’t actually say that, but I got the sense most of them were still in school. You know, just old enough to look legal, but young enough for it to be a murky line.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Nothing in the club. They’d dance, and guys would come in — mostly old and rich — and buy drinks … for themselves and for the girls. Everyone would talk. The Central American guy … his name was Gates—’

‘First name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Gates.’

‘Gates ran the whole thing. It was his … I don’t know, operation? Business?’

‘What had Elsa done?’

‘Nothing yet. She was new. She liked hanging out there. They gave her drinks and weed. Some other stuff, maybe. But she saw her new friends leaving with some of the