Of Uses and Abuses
The ring of 13 detectives continues their assembly.
Dickerson: Why did you send me to Woo, Mack?
Mack: Interesting you should hearken back 12 years, Dickerson, but maybe starting from the beginning is better than going around and around in this Lermontov-like loop. So, go on…
Dickerson: Because, Mack, it goes back even further than what you call the beginning. When you suggested I set up an appointment and visit Woo’s office, you –
Mack: Well, you’d cried out in your misery a couple of times around here, so I thought you’d appreciate the offered help – I mean, a kind of help we couldn’t really give you, with the stress you said you were going through, and other concomitant problems, so we –
Dickerson: What do you mean, “we”, Mack?
Step: Well, it certainly doesn’t mean me. I was out of it until I got to Dirk’s apartment that evening – and found the Chinaman there, dead. Smith, though –
[Editor’s Note: John Smith is not part of this meeting, and hasn’t been with the agency, at least according to Mack, for a while. Accounts as to his current whereabouts, state of affairs, physical condition, and activities vary.]
Dickerson: Smith… Smith! That’s right! Smith was part of all this from the get-go – with you, Mack; you had him in on it, from the very start. Why? To make light of my afflictions? Make a fool of me?
Mack: No, Dickerson, it was nothing like that; nothing like that at all. You better slow down before you take this too far.
Dickerson: Because, Mack, you’d already had contact with this fucking Woo, possibly well before you sent me to him. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have presented me with his visiting card when you told me about him, made the suggestion.
Mack: You didn’t have to go, Dickerson. You’ve got free will. It was only a suggestion.
Dickerson: Djha – right! You knew I’d go – trusting you. Giving the whole thing the benefit of the doubt. Believing that maybe I truly could get some help at a time when I felt I needed it most. So I figured – ‘sure, why not try a shrink, even if it is a Chink.’ And you, there, observing it all through a lens from across the street – with Smith!
Silence.
Dickerson: Because who was he, Mack? Who was this Woo to you? You think I didn’t find shit out about him? I mean, not everything, but, in any case, a lot!
Mack: I expected nothing less. Sure, I already knew a few things, or at least had my suspicions. But you get most of the credit. It’s all in our files. The information was officially written up and passed on. So, calm down, please, and go on.
Dickerson: Yeah, chief – and you kind of sound a little like him now too. Twelve years later, but some of that fuckin’ CCP operative must’ve rubbed off on you. They say they’re influence runs deep, once they get their claws into you…
Tom Popper, Detective First Class: Ah, come on, Dirk, lay off…
Mack: No, that’s good, Dickerson. That’s fine. Go on…
Dickerson: So, this Woo tumbles out of Chink Land into Ukraine and suddenly he’s got an office in the capital Kyiv, of all places, so naturally, I want to know why. Find out the diplomas I see on his office wall are legit – Harvard, Cambridge, degrees in Anthropology, Behavioral Psychology, a medical degree, yeah, it all checks out. Also, turns out – and I dug this up without intending to – quite an aficionado of Black Magic and the Occult.
Sims: The Forbidden Arts: alchemy, astrology, sorcery, demonology, witchcraft, necromancy, reptilian envy, casting spells, astral plane…
Jean-Dan Asphalt, Homicide: Thank you – oh, thank you so much, Sims, for filling in that vacuum of knowledge among us while demonstrating your indispensable –
Mack: J.D.! All-a-ya! Damn it! Come on, hey, we’re good into this, now, so let’s keep moving.
Dickerson: Master hypnotist, subtle movements, eye tricks and misdirection, manipulation and sleights of hand, like he did flashing that newspaper at me. Choice of words – not so important as how he’d say them, varied intonations, voice modulation.
And I figure, with all those scholarly scrolls on his wall from the premier Western institutions of highest learning, the whole painfully typecast chopstick pidgin English just had to be a ruse – turns out, I was right. Last time I heard him speak – you know, right before I whacked him – it was perfect; must’ve forgotten himself just then. Of course, it was not without that oriental timbre to it, and also had something of a seeping-hissing quality to it, which for some reason reminded me of egg drop soup, which I find disgusting; actually wanna puke just smelling it; so maybe that’s why I offed him – because he made me sick. In my boxer shorts.
Mack: Dickerson – why did you ram that chair through his window when you visited his office that one time.
Dickerson: Funny you should ask, Mack – and not that funny, I guess. Funny, ‘cause I don’t get why everyone and their kitchen sink wants to know anything about it. Like, what does that have to do with anything? The price of tea in fucking Chink Land, for example?
Augustus Quarry, Crime Analyst: And not that funny, Dirk, the same as why you can never answer the question – in any way. Did what Woo say or do with the newspaper, do you think, have anything to do with it, or –
Dickerson: I don’t know, Gus! I certainly didn’t have to do it; and I didn’t feel like he was compelling me to do it, or that I’d lost control of my will to him or of my senses. It’s more like I felt he wanted me to do something… so I went ahead and did it. I showed what I could do, and Woo showed Mack what he could do…
Casper Syntax, Forensics: So, what are you saying, Dirk?
Dickerson: Up to that moment, the moment when I “lost it”, the thought hadn’t even entered my mind that you were there, Mack, across the street, with Smith, taking it all in and taking it all down. I did it because I suddenly got a notion, a gnawing feeling deep inside my gut, that it was theater; that there was something like a show going on, with me as the main clown.
And, again, I was right. Got a glimpse of Woo’s grinning goblin Chinko chops and his steamed-up glasses just before I, ah, sort of threw myself out that window. Good thing it was only the first floor…
Quarry: Well, that certainly answers all my questions…
Mack: Anything else on that, Dickerson?
Dickerson: Yeah, and you know this, although I don’t know how much of this you knew when you first sent me –
Mack: I didn’t send you; you went of your own accord and volition. You –
Dickerson: Gimme a fuckin’ break, Mack – will ya? I went under a pretext. You knew I’d go, no matter what. But instead of shooting straight with me, you requested I go as a mental patient.
Mack: I admit, things –
Dickerson: Yeah, I’ll say! Things got a little out of hand, went a little south of Savannah…
Mack: Dickerson, what else were you going to say?
Dickerson: What? I’ll tell you what… That this Woo had Ukrainian chicks coming in there from all over the country – for “interviews”. They’d take some stupid, nonsensical 20-question test, in bad English, and then he’d call them up a week later and tell them how great they did. That he’d supposedly sent their test results together with their photos to the big pumpkin Chink heads of new hospitality projects getting started in southwestern Russia and Kazakhstan, and they wanted them for their hotel, restaurant, casino, what have you, right away. He’d have them come in again and show them pictures of these places, and they’d be all new and colossal and shiny and fantastic. Just impressive as all get out, and these girls had never seen anything like it in their lives, not even in Kyiv, and they just wanted to get out of the village – like just about all of them do.
Next thing you know, and heedless of the pleas and protestations of their boyfriends, and the worries and warnings of their mothers and babushkas, who’d never see them again, these girls would be boarding trains to the Russian border, where, naturally, their passports would be collected, also never to be seen again. Why trains, and not planes? Counterintuitive, the way the great [hint of sarcasm and possibly contempt] Jack Step, here, likes to figure things. Because they weren’t going to anywhere in Russia, or Kazakhstan, but to China itself, and that long, long train ride simply made it easier, and a lot more fun, for these young women to be serially raped and brutalized, as part of their training, before they got there…
Mack: And you don’t think it’s a good thing, Dickerson, that we latched onto him?
Filed by Ed Tomorrow, August 6, 2025