Chung King Mansions. I’ve been outside the thirty-floor apartment complex for no more than five minutes, and already I’ve been offered weed, coke, meth, and sex.
I grimace, and pull my backpack tighter up on my shoulder.
The building in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, Hong Kong, is well known for being a hub of vice. Reading about it on the plane ride over, murders don’t just go unsolved, but sometimes uninvestigated.
And here I am, a pregnant woman on her first visit, and I’m about to go inside the dark, maw-like opening, and begin the climb up the escalators until they stop, before waiting for an elevator.
I have no choice, but I’m not that worried. This is also a tourist hot spot. They say you can get the best curry in Hong Kong here, according to my guide-book, anyway.
As long as I keep to myself, I’ll be alright. I tell it to myself over and over.
I weave my way through mobile phone stores selling knock-off or stolen products, past clothing stores selling the same. As I make my way higher into the building, it becomes less crowded, and I realize, to my astonishment, that I’m already at a residential area. People live amongst the markets, sleeping in the back of their shop stalls on hammocks tied between steel posts.
Cage houses adorn the walls; literally men living in cages that would be considered inhumane for a big dog.
I see the weary eyes of the downtrodden. Kids younger than teenagers smoke cigarettes in the stairwells when they should be at school.
I reach into my bag, and pull out my mask with an air filter. They’re sold all over, the only true way to ward off the smog that blankets the southern coast of China.
Once the escalators stop at the tenth floor, I wait for an elevator. The doors slide open, and I squeeze in. Surely we’re above the weight capacity, but the elevator moves on upward anyway. I get off at the twenty-seventh floor.
It’s just apartment units up here. I hear the cry of babies, the play of children, the scolding of mothers. I hear four or five distinct languages, maybe more. I walk down the hallway, hazy with smoke, looking for unit 2712, and eventually find it.
The doorbell plays a tune. It’s the British national anthem.
The door is buzzed open, and I step inside an air-conditioned and carpeted room. It’s a small office, and far, far cleaner than the corridor outside.
“You can take off your mask,” a young Hong Kong man says to me. He’s tall and wire-thin. He speaks with an English accent, but from where in England I can’t hope to tell.
“We have an air filtration system.”
He offers me a seat after I take off my mask, and so I sit.
“I read your email. I tried to reply, but the email bounced.”
“I deleted the account,” I tell him.
“Very wise,” he says off-handedly. “So you are looking for an Australian passport?”
“Yes.”
“You are American?”
I nod at him.
“Very good, very good.” He flicks through some sheets of paper on his desk, then pecks away at his keyboard for a moment. “Do you have a criminal record in America?”
I furrow my brow. “Why do you ask?”
“Our service is a trade-in one,” he tells me patiently. “I cannot issue you a new identity without taking your old one.”
“You want my American passport?”
“Yes,” he says. His manner is perfunctory. “I need to know your background so I can measure how desirable your passport may be, and price it accordingly.”
“Will you give it to someone else?”
He pauses, and slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine. “What do you think?”
I purse my lips. “No, I don’t have a criminal record.”
“But you want to change who you are?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“I didn’t stay in this business for as long as I have without accruing information to trade. It is doubtful anybody will track you to me, but if they do, I intend to save my own life.” He smiles. “I don’t care about yours.”
I sigh. “I’m running away from my father.”
“Okay,” he says, completely unfazed by that response. “And your father is a powerful man? Government official? Senator?”
“No. Mafia.”
“Gangster, huh,” the man says. He thinks for a moment, chews on the end of his pencil. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I can work with this.” He puts out his hand, but I shake my head at him, not knowing what he wants. “Your passport, please, and all other identity documents you have.”
“No,” I tell him. “Not until I see the passport I’m going to get.”
He sighs, and gets up. “You foreigners… no trust. Wait a moment.” He disappears into the back for barely a minute, then comes out with four passports in his hand. He drops them on the table, and gestures at me. “Choose a name.”
I open them all up. Lydia Johnson, Yasmin Butani, Caroline Sax…
“This one,” I say. I like the sound of the name Caroline Sax. It reminds me of my roommate.
“Now, your passport, driver’s license, social security, everything, please. Fee is ten-thousand US dollars, cash only.”
I swallow, and begin to rummage through my backpack. I take out everything he asks for, including the cash. I unroll the thick wad, count out ten thousand one by one in front of him.
Calmly, he takes the money and puts it through an electronic counter.
“Good,” he tells me. “I need to take your photograph.”
He guides me to the wall, and the flash blinds me for a moment.
“Wait here.”
“For how long?” I ask.
“As long as it takes me,” he throws over his shoulder before retreating into the back room.
I notice then that there are security cameras pointed at me, one in each corner. God, I hope this isn’t going to be a bad idea.
Not thirty minutes later he comes out, and hands me my new identity. “Ms. Sax,” he says.
I flick through it to the back page, see my photo inlaid perfectly. I run my finger over it… it’s seamless.
“That was fast,” I say, impressed. That’s when I feel the microchip. “Wait a minute,” I say, looking up at him. “This has a digital chip. It will bring up the photo of the real Caroline Sax at immigration.”
“Relax,” he tells me. “It’s a custom chip, and will inject a virus into the computer. It will show your picture, but I don’t know for how long. One year, maybe. The security protocols are updated constantly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he tells me.
“And what if it doesn’t work? Do I get my money back?”
He laughs. “If you’re not jailed, I’ll happily return your money.”
Somehow, I doubt that. “Who will you give my passport to?” I ask him.
“To whoever buys it.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
He leans back, touches the tips of his fingers together. “I’ll consider it.”
“Give it to the first person looking for an American passport who walks in here.”
“Hoping to put your father on the wrong track?”
“Something like that,” I tell him. “Something like that.”
I leave the way I came in, down the elevator, down the escalators. I politely decline, for the second time, some of the same people who tried to sell me drugs on my way up.
Dad will be looking for me, and he will be able to get my passport records. He’ll know I came to Hong Kong, but hopefully somebody using my name to enter America will turn him back around.
Hopefully.
But I don’t dare hope too much.
I pass the cage houses, see a man curled up, knees pressed against his chest, sleeping. He must be in his sixties, and he’s thin as a rake.
The cages remind me of Duncan.
Have I left him trapped?