Insider X (3 page)

6

Den 3577

NA FINISHED TYPING and looked at what she had so far on her screen.

Best damn game hands down.  I pulled it from the box and two days later I came up for air.  This game F-ing rocks!!!!

Na tapped ‘enter’.  The thumbnail picture of
Tom “Bubba” Johnson
appeared next to the text.  It showed a red-faced man of indeterminate age wearing a camouflage hunting cap.  He had an enormous bulge in his cheek from what Na figured had to be some sort of chewing tobacco product.  She’d gotten the picture from the Internet.

The name, Tom “Bubba” Johnson, was her own design; she thought it dovetailed well with the picture, and accomplished her chief aim, which was to sound like a normal name of a person that lived in the United States.  There was plenty of backstory to go with the name, which Na had typed in her notes.  Bubba was from
Dentsville, South Carolina
.  Had been laid off three years ago when the local plant closed.  He started his own landscaping business, which was currently in danger of bankruptcy because of government regulations and unfair tax laws that hurt small businesses like his.  He believed a person was responsible for himself and didn’t need government handouts, just fix the damn laws and leave his business alone, and don’t even think about touching his guns, or (to use his words),
you’re gonna get shot dead
.

She could keep going.  She had Bubba’s backstory all figured out and sprinkled it into Bubba’s posts at times.  For her that was the fun part.  Making up these imaginary people.  In a way, it was like she was writing her own movie script, dialogue and all, figuring out the way they’d act, the way they’d talk, and what they liked to do for kicks.

She obtained pictures from all over the Web.  It was amazing how many places you could find them.  Blogs, dating sites, and high school reunion websites all had good pickings.  The best pictures, of course, were those that just showed the face.  A straight-on shot was what she usually looked for, but side pictures showing the person’s profile could work well too, or even a picture that had more than one person, as long as one face was most prominent.

She believed that pictures combined with regular-sounding names made them look authentic.  It was so much better than just doing an anonymous post where there wasn’t a picture, or the name was so silly it screamed out as being fake.  Names like
Manny-4578
or
TJohnson-5421.
  Really?  Did anyone actually think those were real?

Even nicknames, like
T-Dog, Loverboy
,
The
Librarian,
Tech Kid
didn’t pass the sniff test in her opinion.  And if she thought it looked fake, then a person reading the post would likely think it was fake too and would pay zero attention to whatever was being said.  And that kind of defeated the point of what she was trying to accomplish.

This wasn’t rocket science.
 
She loved that term—
rocket science
.  No, this was about as easy as it got.

A made for dummies business model.  And to think that five months ago she hadn’t even known this cottage industry existed.

FIVE MONTHS AGO.  That was when she’d seen the phone number on a wall.  Next to it, in English, was what a person could earn per week.  The pay hadn’t interested her.  But the English part had. 
Do you write good English?  If so, the skies the limit for you.

That part had intrigued her: the fact the advertisement was in English, and not in shorthand Mandarin or a regional language; a job where
writing
English had value.  The message didn’t say
speak
.  If it had, Na could think of several jobs where speaking English was a necessity.  Tour guides, interpreters, greeters… There were plenty of jobs like those, if you could get them.

No, this said
write,
as in writing.  As for the pay, she wondered if it was a commission thing, and the low number was just what she’d start at?  The next sentence made her think that might be the case
…the skies the limit for you.
  Curious to know, she called the number.

A nasally voice answered the phone.  When she asked about the job, she was given an address and told to show up at eight in the morning. 
Click
.

That told her nothing.  She tried calling back, but the line just kept ringing.  Red flags!  There were plenty of scams and traps out there.  She knew from personal experience how some of them operated.  Where people lured others into horrible situations where they never saw the light of day again.  Or, if they did, it was like that song bird story.  The song bird taken from its home in the wild, and put in a beautiful gilded cage where it saw but a sliver of daylight each morning through a window before the blind was closed.  It was never able to fly again or stretch its wings because the cage was too small.  So the song bird just stayed on its perch and didn’t sing.  It died on the fifth day, not for lack of food, but from sadness.

She was lucky, she realized.  She’d escaped her circumstances.  Tricked ‘Mr. Lot in Life’ early by using her wits.  She’d managed to get this far.  But she was a long way from where she needed to be.

Maybe that was why she didn’t just walk away then.  She kept calling, but the phone just rang… and rang.  The next day she tried using a different phone.  This time—
surprise, surprise
—someone answered.  Using a different voice, she asked about the job, but all she got was the same terse response.  She was given an address and told to show up at eight in the morning. 
Click.

Run away, Na.  Run far, far away.  But she didn’t.  She checked out the place that same day.  The address the nasally voice had given on the phone.  She didn’t go too near it.  She wasn’t that stupid.

What she did, instead, was disguise herself.  Nothing fancy.  Just enough to alter her appearance.  She scouted out a spot that was a good distance from the actual building, but still close enough where she would be able to observe.  It was down the street, near a pile of rubble and trash, in the mouth of an alley.  The location was perfect for her needs.

The next day she came back in a more elaborate disguise.  This time she wore baggy, ripped clothes, and changed her appearance using soot and dirt to obscure her features.  A hood hid her hair.  She got there well before dawn.  The streetlights were still on, and the oppressive gloom of darkness was everywhere.

Darkness didn’t scare her.  Neither did the night.  She’d learned years ago it was more a friend than an enemy.  Darkness worked both ways.  It could hide dangers, or it could hide her from dangers.

The alley was empty, but she had too much nervous energy to squat or sit down.  And she didn’t want to let her guard down.  She propped herself against a wall, near the entrance of the alley.  As the sky took on a gray cast, and dawn came, she examined the buildings on the street for a second time.

They were unchanged from yesterday.  Bleak looking, no lights or activity.  Many had their windows blackened out.  Those that weren’t covered with white paint were dark.  No lights were on, and none came on.  As for the building with the address she was given, there was no signage on it; nothing to indicate it was an actual place of business.  The street in front of the building was full of potholes and hadn’t been paved for a long time.

While the sky was still waking, a car drove down the street.  Later, a man on a bicycle piled high with goods pedaled past her.  Neither the car or the bicycle stopped; both seemed to be using the street as a cut through.  After the man on the bicycle, Na saw little to nothing.  No traffic.  No people walking into any of the buildings for work, or even walking on the sidewalk.  The rundown buildings all appeared empty.

This definitely had all the earmarks of a trap.  8 AM came and went.  Nobody went in the building.

At about quarter to nine, an old woman walked down the street.  Another person did the same an hour later.  Some time after them a van drove down the street.

It was strange.  Na knew the entire city.  Well, not the entire city, but enough to know that what she was seeing with this place was very unusual.

Almost every area of the city saw pedestrian or vehicular traffic.  Usually she’d see a steady flow of people or cars during the window of time she’d chosen to observe.  That was just the way of life here.  Like the flow of the Fu and Nan that meandered through the city.

Chengdu was a city with over fifteen million.  It was always alive, pulsing, stretching at its busting seams.  Full of people that were moving, masses of humanity going somewhere.

And she was seeing nothing.  No people, no vehicles, no scooters or bicycles, no carts, no nothing.  Aside from the two walkers she’d seen, the one car, one bicycle and one van, this was about as deserted a place as existed in Chengdu.  And that was saying something.

Curiosity killed the cat, but Na wasn’t listening to the voices in her head.  She didn’t leave.  Not even when noon came and went.  She’d brought a little water and something to eat.  She had it under her clothes.  She was more than curious now.  As traps went, this wasn’t a very successful one.  No people were walking into it.  If other people had seen the number she had and called, they weren’t taking the bait.  They weren’t walking up to the door and knocking to inquire about the job.

Nope.  Nobody came.

She watched.  Time ticked by slowly.  She’d sat down a while ago, and now she was getting up and stretching about every half hour.

When 3 PM came she got up again to stretch.  And that was when she saw the door open.  Not just one door, but almost all the doors on the street.  All the rundown buildings with painted over windows that she thought were empty.

She blinked.  Looked again.

Everything she’d already put together in her head made no sense.  Not with what she was seeing.  She almost thought she was imagining it.

People, lots of people, were coming out of the buildings.  She’d watched.  Confused.  Not understanding.  Not getting it.

It was 3 PM.  3:02 to be exact.  And there—she counted them as they left, and then began to lose count—dozens of people, more than dozens, coming out of the doors of all the buildings.  Young and old.  Men and women.  Some looked to be teenagers, boys and girls.  They walked out of the buildings and went either left or right, walking on the narrow sidewalks.

There were hundreds of people on the street now.  Maybe as much as a thousand.  All had come from the buildings she thought were empty.  Almost all were dressed in simple clothes.  They didn’t look harassed, abused, or excited to escape.  They just looked tired.  Tired, like they’d had a long day.  A long day working, doing whatever job they were doing.

But she’d gotten here before dawn?  5:35 AM, she recalled, thinking of the exact time.  When had they gotten here?  It made no sense to her.  The only explanation, she realized, was they must have arrived even earlier.

Now her mind was really curious.  What type of jobs were these?  She waited till the crowd dispersed.  About a hundred people walked by her, but no one seemed to notice her.  Ten minutes or so was all it took, and then the street was empty again.  She stayed around, waiting to see if others came and went in the buildings.

None did.  Not while she watched.  She stayed for a while, and that was enough.  She got up and left.

The next day she came back, but did so much earlier.  It was practically the middle of the night.  She didn’t use the same disguise, but dressed as a common laborer this time.  She used homemade putty she made from ingredients she had in her cupboard and a little water.  That went on her face; it completely changed her features.

She came before four.  She picked a different spot from which to watch.  She watched for over three hours.  Not till 7 AM did she see anything.  And when she did, it was the same man on the bicycle who pedaled down the street.

Okay, she wasn’t reliving yesterday again.  She left and came back the next day, but came even earlier.  Technically, it wasn’t even the next day.  She found another spot from which to observe.  Not in the neighboring street this time, but near one of the access streets that fed the area.  There were some businesses that were open all night.  And the streets were better lit.

Not less than twenty minutes into her stakeout
(she was like an American private eyelash
now)—at about 2:45 AM—a steady stream of people came walking down the street.  Ah ha!  She’d come early enough this time.  She was good at this; being a private eyelash.  She watched as the people proceeded to walk down the street and turned at a cross street that led to the area.  She joined them, batting her eyelashes, casually merging with the stragglers.

The group ahead of her went to the same street with the rundown buildings.  Other groups were funneling there, as well, coming from other directions.  A whole mob of people now.  They all proceeded to go into the buildings.  It was 2:50 AM by her watch and the street was full of people.  It just took minutes.  By 2:56 the last straggler had gone into a building.  The street was now empty.