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They talked about baseball, mostly. For a while Ross was hopeful Manny would not bring up the girl.
But then Manny asked suddenly, “Have you changed your mind?”
“Ah,” said Ross.
“I had to ask.”
“Okay. Look, Manny, I’m really sorry. But I got a lot to deal with at home. Clan politics. You get that, right?”
Mangjeol said, “You have a right to your own destiny. My family affairs are my own to solve.”
Ross rubbed his chin. “So…what will happen to the girl?”
“As I told you. I will have to find a way to dispose of her.”
“Can’t you set her up somewhere? She’s American, right? You can find a place to stash her…”
“I thought I had,” Manny said, raising his eyebrows.
“Look, Manny, I really can’t.”
“She is a free radical,” Mangjeol said. “I cannot put more resources into keeping her prisoner. I don’t have the time to keep track of her. Wherever she goes, I must be certain that she won’t make trouble.”
Though Ross was determined not to get involved, he didn’t like the sound of that. “She’ll be a prisoner, then. Wherever she goes.”
Manny fished a dumpling from a boiling vat of broth with his chopsticks.
“Just promise you won’t give her to the bastards that killed her dad and brothers,” Ross said.
Manny popped a dumpling in his mouth and made a very Japanese sound.
“She’s innocent, Mangjeol.”
“Innocent? Not even by birth,” Manny sneered.
“She’s American. She’s got nothing to do with the stuff going on over here. She doesn’t deserve to get turned out by some Yakuza pimps.”
As a Private Investigator, sometimes he was asked to track down girls who ran away. Most of them ended up walking the strip. Ross recalled being handed photographs of the runaways from worried relatives. These pictures usually showed a girl like Angel. Bright-eyed and full of life.
Ross ground his teeth. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll take her,” he said.
“I see,” said Manny.
“Don’t you have a heart?” Ross snapped.
“Don’t you?”
“She isn’t my responsibility.”
“In a year, you would be thanking me. Some men pay a lot to marry virgins.”
“Doesn’t she want to go back home? Back to L.A? Can’t you arrange it?”
“She was nothing but a gangster’s toy. She has no home. She’s a nothing.”
“Why keep her alive, then?”
“Sook-Jae’s ghost won’t let me.”
