The Death Box(37)
“Where the hell you think you going?” Cho said.
“To the Seven-Eleven. I wanna Big Gulp and the Herald. There’s only one customer back there.”
“Hurry your sorry ass up. I don’t pay you to … shit, I’ve got no idea what I pay you for.”
“I’ll take off the next Saturday night you got a car-dealer convention in town and you’ll find out quick.”
Hotchkins left and the door swung slowly back to the frame. “Close goddamn door!” Cho screeched. “I’m not paying to air condition the outside.”
Cho muttered and went back to her calculating. A minute later the rear doors swung open and Cho saw a balding, fortyish man, tucking his blue shirt into gray slacks.
“I want my money back, lady. The girl. She won’t … massage. She just stands there with tears dripping down her cheeks. Jesus.”
“I’m very sorry, sir. She’s new. I get you another girl right now.”
“I don’t feel like a massage any more. I want my money back.”
“Another girl treat you right. You get massage just like you want. Refresh you all over.”
The man’s hand was out, fingers scratching the air. “Money, dammit. Now.”
Cho paid and the man stomped out the door just as a trio of smiling customers were entering. The look on the departing man’s face made the newcomers turn away. Cho picked up a bamboo backscratcher and went to a room in the back, opening the door to see a head-down Leala Rosales beside a massage table.
“What you doing to my business?” Cho demanded.
“Please, I want to go home,” Leala said. “This is a terrible place.”
“Little bitch!” Cho brought the backscratcher across the girl’s arm like a riding crop. “I give you good room, oil, solid table, towels. I pay for everything. All I ask is for you to give the handjob!”
Cho whipped at Leala with the backscratcher. Leala screeched and batted at the whipping backscratcher as welts rose red and angry on her raised arms and hands. Cho began flailing at Leala’s face and driving her into a corner.
“I’ll beat your eyes out. Try to make the money blind!”
Leala cowered, the bamboo stinging across the skin of her face. Cho drove in harder, screaming curses as the stick blurred in the air. Then, from seemingly nowhere, Leala screamed and lunged at Cho, knocking her fully across the room. Cho’s scrambling legs tangled and she tumbled to the floor.
Absolute silence. The pair stared at one another for a split-second, Leala as if absorbing new information, Cho in unbridled fury. Cho stumbled to the door, calling down the long hall. Within seconds four other young women were in the room, their eyes expressionless. They were heavily made up and wore plastic Chinese shoes and thin Oriental robes that stopped at mid-thigh.
“Beat her,” Cho demanded, pointing at Leala. The four women’s eyes were dull and perplexed. They looked at one another.
“Wha’ for?” one asked.
“I’m ordering you to beat her,” Cho repeated. “I see blood and everyone gets a half-day off next week.”
One of the masseuses, a heavier, Asian-inflected girl with dead eyes beneath baby-doll bangs punched Leala in the face.
“Harder!” Cho yelled.
The large girl punched Leala again, knocking her to the floor. Tentatively, the other girls stepped up and started kicking.
“More,” Cho yelled. “Kill the bitch!”
Leala tucked into a fetal position as kicks rained in and Cho whipped at the girl’s flailing arms with the backscratcher. Then, as if levitating, Cho was lifted straight into the air.
“That’s it,” Hotchkins yelled to the girls, a struggling Cho locked in his arms. “It’s over. Back to your rooms NOW!”
As if a switch had been flicked, the girls stopped kicking Leala. They padded away like robots as Cho wriggled furiously in Hotchkins’s grip. “Let go me, ape-man. I kill little whore!”
“That’s just it, madam,” Hotchkins said. “You pay me to protect them.”
“Not from me, stupid man.”
“If you tear her up, how you gonna get your money back?”
Cho stopped fighting. “Put me down, big fool.”
Hotchkins set Cho on terra firma. She glared at Leala but seemed afraid to approach her. “YOU! Get your ass out to lobby. You going back to store for refund.”
I followed Roy outside, leaving Rayles and Pinker to confer with Morningstar. “So that’s it for the investigation?” I asked when the doors closed behind us and we crossed the parking area. The air was hot and purple-bottomed thunderheads boiled in from the west, their rumpled crowns lit white as cotton by the sun. The squall would cross us momentarily.