Dance With the Dragon by Hagberg David

Author:Hagberg, David [Hagberg, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller
Amazon: B00HFU5AXU
Goodreads: 20710555
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2007-09-18T07:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-NINE

THE APARTMENT

This time Monique got to stay at Liu’s apartment near the UN, though he was seldom there. The young doctor who came every day to see to her needs admitted at one point that the major had been temporarily called out of the country but phoned several times each week to see how she was doing.

“And how am I doing?” she’d asked.

“You’re making remarkable progress considering the condition you were in when you first got here,” the doctor told her.

“Do you remember his name?” McGarvey asked, but Monique shook her head.

“He had kind eyes, and even though his hands sometimes shook a little, he was always gentle.”

“Was he an addict, too?”

Yes. That’s one of the ways Liu controlled his mob. Anyway, the doctor was there to show me how intelligent people managed their addiction. The trick was to gradually switch from heroin by using methadone to control the pain of withdrawal. It wasn’t very pleasant. The two or three weeks at the beginning were nasty, but the doctor was always there for me, day or night.”

“But in all that time you never asked him what his name was?”

Monique shook her head. “Sometimes it’s best not to pry too deeply, if you know what I mean. This guy was working for Liu, which meant he had his own problems, and yet he was there to help me. His name wasn’t important.”

“Eventually you broke the heroin addiction. Then what?”

“A little morphine sometimes when it got bad in the middle of the night, but mostly some high-quality coke. And let me tell you, it doesn’t take very long to tell the good shit from the bad.”

“I don’t understand,” McGarvey said. “You’d managed to break the one addiction. Why get hooked on something else? It was a second chance. Why didn’t you just walk away when you could?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Monique said. “I wasn’t a street person, a bag lady, someone sleeping in a cardboard box. I was living in luxury. The best clothes, the best food, the finest champagne anytime I wanted it. Jewelry, the sable. I didn’t have to hustle for my fixes.”

“But you were hustling for your fixes,” McGarvey reminded her as gently as possible while keeping her on track. “You were Liu’s whore.”

“Everybody is someone’s whore,” she shot back. “And I began to like the feeling I got.”

“When you were high.”

“That too.” She was becoming agitated. “But all men think through their dicks, and I was the one in charge.”

McGarvey waited for a few moments to let her calm down. “Do you really think that?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

“Did your husband fit that mold?”

She didn’t answer, but it was clear that she’d been stung. She was on edge, and McGarvey wanted to keep her there, even though it was cruel of him.

“How long did that last?”

“I don’t know. A couple of months, I guess. Maybe a little longer, because it was fall again when Liu showed up.”

“Did he tell you where he’d been?”

Monique shook her head. “He’d come back for me, and that’s all that mattered.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.