宋扬的自拍，40路的人管她叫“西西”。“心情压抑了很久，”她写道，“出来晒晒太阳吧。” TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A woman begins to fall. With her long dark hair in a ponytail and her black-and-red scarf loose around her neck, she is plummeting from a fourth-floor balcony, through the neon-charged November night.
一个女人开始下坠。她长长的黑发扎成马尾，脖子上披着黑红相间的围巾，她正在从四楼的阳台坠下，穿过11月霓虹灯闪烁的夜晚。
Below awaits 40th Road, a gritty street of commerce in the Flushing section of Queens. Chinese restaurants and narrow storefronts, and dim stairwells leading to private transactions. Strivers and dawdlers and passers-by, all oblivious to what is transpiring above.
下面等着她的是40路，这是皇后区法拉盛一条环境粗陋的商业街。四周是中餐厅、狭促的店面，以及通往私下交易地点的昏暗楼梯间。为生活打拼的人、无所事事的人和路人，都没注意头顶正在发生的事情。
But before the pavement ends the woman’s descent, a few feet from a restaurant’s glittering Christmas tree, imagine her fall suddenly suspended — her body freeze-framed in midair. If only for a moment.
距离一家餐厅闪烁的圣诞树几英尺开外，人行道即将为这名女子的下坠画上句点，但在此之前，想像一下她的坠落突然暂停——她的身体停留在半空。哪怕只有片刻。
She toils in the netherworld of Flushing massage parlors, where she goes by the street name of SiSi. A youthful 38, she is in a platonic marriage to a man more than twice her age; harbors fading hopes of American citizenship; and is fond of Heineken, Red Bull and the rotisserie chicken at a Colombian place on Kissena Boulevard. Among her competitors, she is considered territorial and tireless.
她在法拉盛的地下按摩院打工，她在那里的名字叫西西。38岁的她显得很年轻，跟一个年龄大她两倍的男人维持着有名无实的婚姻；想成为美国公民，希望却越来越渺茫；喜欢喝喜力、红牛，还喜欢吃凯辛娜大道一家哥伦比亚餐厅的烤鸡。在竞争者看来，她的地盘意识很强，而且工作很拼。
It is the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and SiSi is in a shabby building’s top-floor apartment, for which she pays her “boss” a hefty fee. She has returned from a market with provisions. She has tried calling her younger brother in China, but he is asleep. She has been on the phone with friends and clients, unaware that she is in the sights of a 10-member police team working vice.
这是感恩节后的周六，西西住在一栋破旧建筑的顶楼公寓，为此她向“老板”付了一大笔钱。她从市场买了不少吃的回来。她尝试给在中国的弟弟打电话，但他睡觉了。她一直在跟朋友和客户打电话，完全不知道自己已经被一支由10名警察组成的扫黄行动队盯上了。
She heads downstairs to stand at her building’s entrance, a necessity of her job. Soon she is leading a man back upstairs — an officer working undercover — as her closely held cellphone casts a glow about her face. Their awkward conversation in her apartment convinces him that SiSi has broken the law, just as it convinces SiSi that he is a cop. She pushes him out and closes the door, though not to the inevitable. She knows from experience what comes next:
她下楼站在门口，这是工作需要。没过一会儿，她就带着一名男子回到楼上——那是一名便衣警察；她手中紧紧抓住的手机给脸打上了一层光。在公寓里发生的尴尬对话，使得那名便衣相信西西违反了法律，而西西也明白了对方是警察。她把他推出去，关上了门，虽然已无必要。根据经验，她知道接下来会发生什么：
More police. Tromping through the dusky vestibule of her building, across the worn scarlet rug and up the 50 tiled steps. Past the Chinese sign that says if you’re looking for the driving school, you’re in the wrong place. Then right to her door.
会来更多的警察。穿过那栋布满灰尘的门厅，走过破旧的猩红色地毯，爬上50级瓷砖台阶。经过一个中文标牌，上面写着这里没有驾校，你找错了地方。然后，就到了她家门口。
The handcuffs. The hurried escort to a police vehicle. The humiliation. Again.
手铐。被匆忙带上警车。羞辱。再一次的羞辱。
SiSi watches the officers ascend on the video monitor she keeps near the door. Under the fixed gaze of one of those lucky cat figurines perched on a table, its paw raised in a wish of good fortune, she begins to pace.
从门旁边的监视器上，西西看到警察上楼。她开始踱步，桌子上一只举起爪子祈求好运的招财猫注视着她。
Now they are pounding on the door and shouting Police! Open up! SiSi rushes to the apartment’s north balcony, with its panoramic view of the street hustle below. Day and night, sun or sleet, this is where she and her sister competitors sing their plaintive song to passing men: Massage? Massage?
现在，他们正在砸门，大声喊着“警察！开门！”。西西冲到公寓朝北的阳台上，那里能看到楼下熙熙攘攘的街道全景。日日夜夜，晴天或雨雪天，这条街是她和抢生意的姐妹们冲着路过的男人唱响哀歌的地方：按摩吗？按摩吗？
On the narrow balcony, barely two feet deep, she keeps a broom, a bucket and a small blue stool. Up she steps — and now she is falling, plunging toward the hard tenth of a New York mile that is 40th Road.
在栏高只有2英尺（约合60厘米）的狭小阳台上，放着一把扫帚、一个桶和一个蓝色小凳子。她踩了上去——然后开始坠落，跌向楼下四分之一纽约英里(New York mile)、坚硬的纽约40路。
A tenth of a mile. Where Mandarin trumps English and a glance trumps the spoken word. Where sex is sold beside cloudy tanks of fish and crabs. Where seedy quarters controlled by local powers are rented to illicit massage operations, and the police make sporadic sweeps, and immigrant women are arrested again and again, and few in this city take notice.
四分之一英里。在那里，普通话比英语好用，匆匆一瞥胜过语言。在那里，性就在浑浊水箱里的鱼蟹旁边进行交易。在那里，乌烟瘴气的住所由地方势力控制，租给地下按摩院，警察不时进行扫荡，移民女子一次次被捕，这座城里没多少人注意到这些。
Gravity prevails.
重力占据上风。
The undercover officer, his job done, exits the building and turns right — at the very moment that the woman who has just offered him intimacy for money hits the pavement at his feet. A woman known along 40th Road as SiSi, but whose given name was Song Yang.
卧底警察的工作完成了，他走出大楼右转——就在那一刻，那名刚刚向他提出用亲密换取金钱的女子击中路面，落在他的脚边。一个以“西西”为名混迹在40路的女子，她的真名其实叫宋扬。
在这条小街上，无论白天黑夜，总能听见女人们喊着：“按摩吗？按摩吗？” TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
In the Google Maps of the mind, pull back from this tiny street to take in the borough’s 178-square-mile sprawl: a pulsating hive of parkways and boulevards, apartment buildings and single-family homes, two airports, a major league ballpark, remnants of a world’s fair — all bracketed north and south by ocean, river and bay.
在脑海中的谷歌地图上，从这条小街拉回，进入一个面积为178平方英里（约合461平方公里）庞大、忙碌区域：林荫大道和马路、公寓大楼和独栋房屋、两座机场、一个大联盟棒球场、世界博览会的残迹——它南北两边被大海、河流和海湾包围。
A striving borough of comity and contradiction, Queens is both the birthplace of the American president — elected in part on an anti-immigration platform — and home to 2.3 million people, nearly half of them foreign-born. With hundreds of languages spoken here, it may be the most linguistically diverse place on earth.
作为一个友善与对立兼而有之的矛盾之地，皇后区既是那位美国总统的出生地——他当选的原因部分是因为一个反移民平台——也是230万人的家，其中近半数人口都是在外国出生的。这里的人们使用数以百计的各种语言，皇后区恐怕是全球最具语言多样性的地方了。
Every day, airplanes alight at Kennedy International Airport in southeast Queens, their passengers including many immigrants who join the borough’s anonymous, aspirational ranks. They chop the vegetables, wash the dishes, clean the toilets, mow the lawns, drive the hired cars.
每一天，从位于皇后区东南部的肯尼迪国际机场降落的班机上下来的乘客中，有许多是加入这一区隐姓埋名、充满志向的移民。他们切菜、洗碗、清洁厕所、修剪草坪、开出租车。
And some wind up in the commercial sex trade. Making money for a pimp in an airport motel in South Jamaica. Waiting for the next client in a dingy building along Roosevelt Avenue in Corona. Or, like Song Yang, standing on a Flushing street on a cold November night, hiding behind her cute nickname, calling out to men. Playing her role in a shadow economy that benefited others through the exorbitant rent she paid.
一些人最后操起了皮肉生意。在南牙买加的一家机场汽车旅馆为皮条客赚钱。在可乐娜罗斯福大街昏暗肮脏的大楼里等待下一个客人。或者，像宋扬一样，在11月一个寒冷的夜晚站在法拉盛的街头，用可爱的昵称隐藏身份，招呼着男人，在影子经济中扮演着自己的角色，通过她支付的高昂房租使其他人获利。
“I hear she was No. 1: young, pretty, and her service was great,” said Michael Chu, a travel agent and community advocate who worked across the street from her on 40th Road. “People just lined up for her.”
“我听说她是头牌：年轻、漂亮，而且服务很棒，”旅行社职员、社区倡导者朱立创(Michael Chu)说，他就在40路她家对面上班。“人们排着队等她。”
For years now, Flushing has been an ever-replenishing repository of immigrants entangled in the underground sex economy. The commonplace raids of illicit massage operations across the country routinely lead to the arrests of women with Flushing addresses.
多年来，法拉盛一直源源不绝地提供着卷入地下性经济的移民。全国各地对非法按摩生意的突击行动屡见不鲜，往往被捕的女性都有一个法拉盛的地址。
These parlors disappear and reappear with regularity, undermining the police crackdowns often prompted by neighborhood complaints. The industry’s opaqueness adds to the confusion. Some parlors have legitimate state licenses; some legitimate operations have masseuses making sex-for-money side deals; and some are illegally unlicensed, with no interest at all in addressing someone’s sore neck.
这些按摩院定期消失又再出现，破坏了警方打击行动，这些行动往往是在接到附近居民的投诉后进行的。这个行业的不透明也增加了人们的困惑。一些按摩院拥有合法的州执照；一些合法按摩院中存在女按摩师私下用肉体换取金钱；还有一些是非法运营、没有执照的，这些地方根本对缓解脖子酸痛没有兴趣。
Emotionally manipulated by their bosses, ashamed of what they do, afraid to trust, the women rarely confide in the police or even their lawyers about their circumstances. They might be supporting a family in China, or paying back a smuggling debt, or choosing this more profitable endeavor over, say, restaurant work. No matter the backstory, the police say their collective silence further complicates law-enforcement efforts to build racketeering and trafficking cases against the operators.
这些女性在情感上受到老板操控，对自己的所做作为感到羞愧，不敢信任他人，鲜少对警方，甚至是自己的律师坦白自身情况。她们可能是为了养活在中国的家人，或是为了还偷渡欠的债，又或是为了不想做餐馆一类的辛苦工作，而选择了这种赚钱更多的方式。无论情况如何，警察表示，她们一致保持沉默，这种做法进一步导致执法部门调查这些运营者敲诈勒索、贩运人口案件的努力变得复杂起来。
But society has become increasingly aware of the complexities and inequities of the commercial sex economy, including a criminal justice system that has tended to target the exploited — often immigrant women and members of the transgender community — while rarely holding accountable their customers and traffickers.
但社会越来越了解商业性交易经济中存在的复杂情况和不平等，包括往往将被剥削者作为打击目标的刑事司法体系——这些人通常是移民妇女和跨性别群体成员，而很少让客人和人贩子负责。
In early 2017, New York’s police commissioner, James O’Neill, announced at a news conference that he would redirect his vice division to address prostitution and sex trafficking. This would include training intended to alter what he called the “law-enforcement mind-set.”
2017年初，纽约警察局长詹姆斯·奥尼尔(James O'Neill)在一个新闻发布会上宣布，他将把自己手下刑事案部门的调查方向转至解决卖淫和性交易问题。其中将包括旨在改变他所说的“执法思维模式”的培训。
“We’ve already switched much of our emphasis away from prostitutes, and begun focusing much more on the pimps who sell them and the johns who pay for their services,” he said. “Like all crime, we can’t just arrest our way out of this problem.”
“我们已经将大部分的重点从卖淫女性身上转移，并且开始更多着重于贩卖她们的皮条客，和购买性服务的嫖客，”他说。“和所有犯罪一样，我们不能只是用逮捕来解决这个问题。”
Since the establishment of this new “mind-set,” the police have continued to struggle at building criminal cases against the operators. But prostitution arrests in New York City have dropped more than 20 percent in the last year, while the arrests of customers have spiked.
自建立这种新“思维模式”以来，警方仍在继续努力增加对经营者展开刑事调查。不过，纽约市卖淫被捕人数去年下降超过20%，同时被抓的嫖客人数出现激增。
Still, this change in attitude at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan had not necessarily crossed the East River to benefit an immigrant now lying on her side, unable to speak, gazing up at a plainclothes officer trying to calm her until an ambulance arrived. Beside a spent cigarette, her blood pooled on the pavement she had so often worked.
然而，曼哈顿下城警察总部态度的转变却未必能越过东河，造福一名移民。现在她侧躺着，不能说话、抬头盯着试图在救护车到来前安抚她的便衣警察。她的鲜血在自己经常工作的人行道上流成一滩，旁边只有一个烟蒂。
By morning, Song Yang would be dead, shattering a tight Chinese family that would never accept the police version of events. Her death would also come to reflect the seemingly intractable nature of policing the sex industry, and cast an unwelcome light on the furtive but ubiquitous business of illicit massage parlors.
宋扬将于次日早上死去，令一个关系紧密的家庭支离破碎，他们永远也不会接受警方对事发过程的说法。她的死亡也反映着整顿性产业似乎异常棘手的本质，为鬼祟却普遍存在的非法按摩生意带来他们不想要的关注。
In the epic of Queens, this stretch of 40th Road is little more than an asphalt hyphen. But along its short expanse exist worlds within worlds within worlds.
在皇后区的史诗中，40路的这一段只是一个沥青连字符。但在它短短的空间中，存在着层层世界。
宋扬住的四层公寓楼。她冲向了阳台，楼下是40路的灯光与阴影。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Baba, I want to go, I want to go.
爸爸，我要去，我要去。
I want to go to work, the little girl would say to her parents. I want to pick ginseng. She was a born worker, their Song Yang.
我想去干活，小女孩这么对父母说。我想去采人参。她生来就是个能干的人，他们的宋扬。
She and her younger brother lived with their parents in a remote village in China’s northeastern province of Liaoning, where they grew crops on land allotted to them by their local village committee. Little Song Yang was especially efficient at harvesting the family’s ginseng crop, her mother, Shi Yumei, recalled. “The more her father praised her, the harder she worked.”
她和弟弟与父母一起住在中国东北辽宁省一个偏远的村子里，一家人在村委会分配的地里种植作物。母亲石玉梅回忆道，收割家里种下的人参时，小宋扬尤其能干。“她爸爸越是夸她，她就干得更起劲。”
Her father, Song Xigui, eventually found moderate success selling construction-grade sand he bulldozed from a nearby river, and by the 1990s the family had replaced its thatched-roof home with a modern brick house that included two “kang” bed-stoves, heated slate platforms that provided warmth during the severe winters. Still, they continued to work the crops, with Song Yang often responsible for running home to light the stove, cut the vegetables and mind her brother.
她的父亲宋喜贵用推土机从附近河里推出建筑用沙子出售，最终生意还算成功，到了1990年代，这家人已经用一个现代砖砌宅子取代了原来的茅草屋，新宅子有两个炕，即床下有炉子，可以在严冬中加热石床板进行供暖的床铺。宋扬经常要负责跑回家为炉子点火、切菜和照料弟弟。
As she grew older, she began to collect specimens of the enchanting butterflies zigzagging down by the river, and became meticulous in preserving their fragile iridescence. When friends came for boisterous sleepovers, they would marvel at her book of butterflies, and take turns asking to keep one.
随着年龄渐长，她开始沿着蜿蜒曲折的河边收集迷人的蝴蝶标本，小心翼翼地保存下它们脆弱易损、五彩斑斓的样子。当朋友们来家里过夜打打闹闹时，都会对她一本子的蝴蝶标本感到惊叹，挨个问她能不能给自己一个。
Butterflies became Song Yang’s gift.
蝴蝶成了宋扬的礼物。
At 19, she moved 2,200 miles south to Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth, where she became one of the thousands of young Chinese women who labored in sweatshops to produce apparel bearing the guilt-absolving label “Made in America.” Sharing a room with five other women in a dormitory, she covered her bottom-bunk bed with a silken cloth curtain, and adorned her small rectangle of privacy with family photographs.
19岁那年，她搬到了家乡以南2200英里外的塞班岛，那是美国自由邦北马里亚纳群岛中的最大岛。在那里，她成为了在血汗工厂当苦力的数以千计中国年轻女性中的一员。她们生产的衣服带有让人免除负罪感的“美国制造”标签。宋扬与其他五名女性住在一间宿舍里，她睡在下铺，用一块丝质布窗帘作床单，用家庭照片装饰着自己小小的一方天地。
Saipan’s garment industry was shrinking by the early 2000s, and Song Yang left to become a waitress on the island. She married a worldly divorced father named Chau Chuong, an American citizen who had worked for years in New York’s restaurant grind. He was so much older — 67 to her 27 — that her family was slow to accept him.
塞班服装行业的规模在2000年代早期开始缩减，宋扬于是离开了这个行业，成为了岛上的一名服务生。她嫁给了一个名叫周章的美国公民，这个离过婚、有孩子的男人深谙世事，在纽约的餐馆业摸爬滚打多年。他年纪要大得多——67岁，她27岁——因此她的家人过了长时间才接纳他。
In 2006, the couple opened a small Vietnamese restaurant on Saipan that became so successful they opened a second place, with 150 tables. He worked the kitchen and she worked the front. “She attracted a lot of friendly customers,” her husband recalled.
2006年，这对夫妇在塞班开了一家小小的越南餐厅，生意很好，于是他们又开了第二家有150张桌的店。他负责厨房，她则负责大堂。“她吸引了不少友好的顾客，”她丈夫回忆道。
Her brother, Song Hai, joined her after his high school graduation, eventually opening a henna tattoo parlor with a friend. When their mother came for a visit, she posed for photographs beside her daughter’s well-stocked restaurant bar, her smile radiating pride.
她的弟弟宋海高中毕业后也和她一样去了塞班，最终和朋友一起开了一家指甲花纹身店。当他们的母亲前去探望时，她站在女儿备货充足的餐厅吧台旁拍了照，笑容中透着骄傲。
“We had a real sense of accomplishment,” Mr. Song said in Mandarin.
“我们特别有成就感，”宋海用普通话说。
But a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011, disrupting a main source of tourism to Saipan, as well as the fortunes of Song Yang and Song Hai. The restaurants were sold, the tattoo parlor shuttered.
但一场灾难性地震和海啸2011年袭击日本，导致前往塞班岛一股主要游客来源中断，也断了宋扬和宋海的财路。几家餐厅被卖掉了，纹身店也关了。
Photographs from her brother’s wedding in March 2013 capture the last happy times that Song Yang spent with her family. Here she is back home, posing with the bride and groom. Here she is, sharing a restaurant meal with the growing family. Here she is.
2013年3月，她弟弟的婚礼照片捕捉下了宋扬与家人最后度过的一段快乐时光。此时的她回到了家，与一对新人合照。此时的她与越来越大的家族一起在餐厅吃饭。此时的她在这里。
去纽约前一个月，宋扬（左）参加了弟弟的婚礼，和家人们聚在一起。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A month later, Song Yang joined the hundreds who arrive daily at Kennedy Airport, direct from China. Straight to Flushing she went, like so many before, where she hoped that she and her husband would succeed again as restaurateurs.
一个月后，宋扬成为每天从中国直飞肯尼迪机场的成百上千人中的一个。像以前的许多人一样，她径直去了法拉盛，希望在那里能和丈夫一道作为餐饮界从业者再次获得成功。
But there is the dream of Flushing, and the reality.
但法拉盛梦是一回事，现实又是另一回事。
With her husband now too old for kitchen work, Song Yang became their sole source of income. A waitressing job failed, as did a short-lived Chinese fast-food venture on Main Street. So she became a home health aide, and took a massage-therapy course in the hope of earning additional money. Then a friend told her of a more lucrative opportunity, to be found along 40th Road.
由于丈夫上了年纪，无法从事后厨工作，宋扬成为了家里唯一的收入来源。一份服务生的工作没能做下来，在缅街上一个没存活多久的中国菜快餐生意也失败了。于是她成了一名家庭护工，开始上按摩疗程方面的课程，希望能赚些外快。然后一位朋友告诉了她一个赚钱更多的机会，就在40路上。
The understanding of her parents and brother was that Song Yang worked in reflexology. They knew that gifts arrived from New York. That she called regularly for video chats while sitting in a black office chair, sometimes eating a bowl of porridge. That when her nephew was born, she proudly announced on social media that she had become an aunt — a “gugu.”
她父母和弟弟以为宋扬干的是反射理疗。他们知道有礼物从纽约寄来。他们知道她坐在黑色办公椅上，定期和他们视频聊天，有时候还喝着一碗粥。他们知道当她的外甥出生时，她骄傲地在社交媒体上宣布自己做了“姑姑”。
That she seemed happy, mostly. But there was that time when she refused to video-chat for several days, after which she explained that a man had beaten her about the face. And that other time, when she revealed that a man — a law-enforcement officer, she said — had held a gun to her head while forcing her to perform oral sex. Family members reassured her: She had no choice.
他们知道她大多数时候看上去很开心。但也有时候，她好几天都拒绝视频通话，之后她会解释说有男人打了她的脸。还有一次，当她透露一名男子——她说是警察——用枪指着她的头，让她给他口交。家人们不断安慰她：她别无选择。
Song Yang told her family last fall that she had booked a flight to China for December, and was looking forward to meeting her nephew for the first time. So far she had connected with him only online, through the popular WeChat app, where her avatar sometimes featured a butterfly.
去年秋天，宋扬告诉她的家人自己买好了12月回中国的机票，自己很期待第一次见她的外甥。迄今为止，她只在网上用流行的微信和他互动过，她的微信头像有时候是一只蝴蝶。
 What kind of present do you want Gugu to bring home? she would ask the child, her image beamed halfway around the world from some exotic place called Flushing.
你想让姑姑带什么礼物回来？她会这么问小外甥，她的样子从大半个世界以外一个叫法拉盛的地方传送了过来。
这条单行道上到处是运货卡车和建筑设备。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The thoroughfare known as 40th Road was Grove Street, once.
这条名为40路的街道曾经一度叫做“树林街”。
In the 19th century it had a volunteer firehouse, a nursery and residents with Irish surnames. Just in living memory, there was Harry Barlow’s auto garage, the mimeograph services of Case the Printer, an appliance store proud of its color Zenith television sets and, of course, the Old Roma restaurant — famous for its veal cutlets on linguine, and that yellow sponge cake with pineapple filling.
19世纪期间，这条街上有一座志愿消防站、一家托儿所，还有爱尔兰姓氏的居民。在世的人记得的事情包括：哈里·巴罗(Harry Barlow)的汽修厂、“印刷工凯斯”(Case the Printer)的油印服务，一家以出售“增你智”(Zenith)电视为傲的电器商店，当然了，还有老罗马餐厅——以其意大利小牛肉饼扁面和菠萝馅黄色海绵蛋糕而闻名。
It is all long gone, replaced by ginger duck rice casserole and a shaved ice treat called red bean baobing. The 40th Road of today is almost entirely Chinese, its restaurant signs often featuring no English at all — one more reminder that the only New York constant is change.
这些早已不复存在，被砂锅姜母鸭和一种叫红豆刨冰的甜品所取代。今天的40路几乎都是华人，沿街的餐馆标识往往一点英文都没有——提醒着你纽约唯一的不变就是变化。
The street’s 20 buildings, including Song Yang’s, are mostly three- and four-story structures from the 1980s and ’90s that evoke a utilitarian, Soviet-bloc drabness. Narrow and claustrophobic, they loom like set pieces for a film noir.
这条街的20幢楼，包括宋扬居住的那一幢，几乎全是1980或90年代的三、四层建筑，让人想起苏维埃国家那些实用建筑的单调乏味。逼仄且令人窒息，看上去像是一部黑色电影的布景。
The one-way street itself always feels like a wrong turn, an obstacle course of idling delivery trucks and construction equipment. One end elbows past a small playground; the other runs into the ever-clogged Main Street intersection, where plainclothes police officers can often be seen sitting in an unmarked vehicle in an attempt to deter quality-of-life crimes. Pickpocketing is so prevalent that a nearby grocery displays signs of a stick figure reaching into another stick figure’s handbag.
这条单行道本身总是让人觉得像是转错了弯，一路上障碍重重，到处都是运货卡车和建筑设备。路的一头环着一个小型游乐场；另一头通向时时刻刻都在堵车的缅街十字路口，人们往往能看到便衣警察坐在不带标识的车里，试图制止影响人们生活质量的犯罪行为。扒窃如此常见，以至于附近的一家杂货店展示着一个标牌，上面一个小人手伸入了另一个小人的包里。
Above, looming airliners grumble as they approach LaGuardia Airport, across Flushing Bay. Just behind 40th Road, Long Island Rail Road trains grind and whine along the raised tracks. Up and down the block, the earthy aromas of produce stands and restaurant waste commingle with the classical Chinese instrumental music emanating from a soup-dumpling restaurant.
头顶上，隐约可见的民航飞机轰鸣着飞向法拉盛湾对面的拉瓜迪亚机场。就在40路后面，长岛铁路的列车在高架铁轨上鸣着笛哐当前行。沿街上下，蔬果摊的泥土芬芳和餐馆垃圾，与一家饺子馆传出的中国古典器乐混杂在一起。
And here, beside the upturned fruit crates and the overloaded garbage bags, stand the women of the massage parlors. In their 40s and 50s, mostly, they check their cellphones, drag on untaxed Korean cigarettes bought in bulk, and chat, but with eyes scanning for unattached men lacking a law-enforcement vibe.
在这里，除了翻倒的水果木箱和塞得过满的垃圾袋以外，还站着按摩院的女人们。她们大多数年纪在四、五十岁。她们会查看手机、抽着批发来的韩国走私香烟聊天，但眼睛会扫着街上独自一人且没有执法人员气质的男人。
Massage?
按摩吗？
蔬果摊的泥土芬芳、餐馆垃圾的味道和中国古典器乐的旋律混杂在一起。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The offer is understood, if not explicit. If the man consents, he is led up the stairs of one of the dull buildings, where massage operations are often crammed amid barbershops, driving schools and employment agencies.
这个提议即便不算露骨，也是双方心知肚明的。如果男人同意，就会将他引上其中一座昏暗的楼房，在那里，按摩生意往往挤在理发店、驾校和职业介绍所中间。
Massage parlors offering sex are hardly a recent phenomenon, and business models vary. But the trade along 40th Road is especially audacious. The women stand on both sides of the street — five, 10, a dozen at a time — as ubiquitous as the delivery trucks. In the merciless heat and cold, they sweat and shiver on staked ground, prompting resentful neighborhood complaints about lost business and children exposed to the seamy daily spectacle.
提供性服务的按摩院算不上是新现象，商业模式也各有不同。但40路上的性交易尤其大胆。街道两边都站着这些女人——同时有5人、10人或十几个人——她们像送货卡车一样无处不在。在无情的酷暑寒冬中，她们站在打着立柱的地上流汗发抖，招致带着憎恶的居民投诉，抱怨她们让人们流失生意，让儿童暴露在每天上演的丑行中。
A common arrangement on 40th Road is one in which a “boss” rents an apartment or office from one of the building’s tenants, then provides space to women for a $20 cut of whatever they charge each client. The general expectation is that each woman will generate at least $100 a day for the boss.
40路上的一个共识是，一名“老板”从大楼租户那里租下一间公寓或办公室，然后为这些女子提供空间，无论她们从每位客人那里收多少钱，其中的20美元都会分给他们。人们普遍估计，每位女子每天至少能为老板带来100美元。
But the bosses provide no meaningful protection. The women are at the mercy of the street, where they have been robbed, beaten, raped, thrown down stairs. The surveillance cameras nearly always present are intended less for security, perhaps, than to provide the boss with a way to count the clients who walk through the door.
但老板们不会提供真正意义上的保护。这些女子的命运全靠这条街，在这里，她们被抢过、被打过、被强奸过，被从楼梯上扔下来过。几乎每次都有摄像头，但它们的用途可能并非是为了安保，而是为老板提供一个数清上门客人数量的方式。
Over several months, the women along 40th Road shared in Mandarin the stories of how they came to be standing here, offering sex to strangers. They use names like masks. Some have chosen Americanized names — Jenny, for example — while others have been rechristened by bosses with nicknames that sound like Lala, or Kiki, or Yoyo.
几个月里，40路上的女子用普通话相互讲述着她们来到这里站街、为陌生人提供性服务的缘由。她们用名字当遮掩身份的口罩。一些人选择了美国式的名字——例如“詹妮”——还有一些人由老板改名，叫“拉拉”、“琪琪”或“悠悠”之类。
They came from all over China, and from myriad backgrounds. One woman said she used to clean houses. Another said she was a former reporter who covered Chinese real estate. Several described the circumstances that left them in economic straits: a failed bus company, a bankrupt jade dealership, a gambling-addicted husband.
她们来自中国各处，背景各异。一名女子说，她之前做过保洁。另一名女子说她以前是一名记者，报道房地产方面的新闻。好几个人都描述了让她们陷入经济拮据的情况：巴士公司失败；玉石行破产；丈夫赌博上瘾。
One woman often positions herself near a standpipe at the corner of Main Street, so as to be the first to approach any man venturing west. She is in her 60s, small-framed and usually dressed in layers, with long hair dyed black. She said in a raspy voice that she was from the southeastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, and that she was trying to pay off a debt incurred by her adult son in a business deal gone wrong.
为了能第一个接近任何往西走的男人，常常有一个女人站在缅街街角处的立管附近。她60多岁，身材娇小，常常穿得里三层外三层，长发染成黑色。她用沙哑的声音说自己来自中国东南部江西省，并且说是为了还清自己已经成年的儿子生意失败带来的债务。
She had visited two job agencies on 40th Road, looking for work as a nanny, but nothing panned out. And now she was here, on the corner, where her half-joking refrain — “I’m too old” — did not seem to deter clients.
她去了40路上的两家职业中介所，想找一份保姆的工作，但都没能成功。于是现在她到了这里，站在街角。在这里，她常挂在嘴边、半开玩笑的“我太老了”似乎并不会吓跑客人。
Another woman, who gave her name as Xiao Li — or Little Li — said she was from the city of Dexing, in Jiangxi Province, home to a well-known copper mine, where she once was a welder. Thin and often wearing a simple black dress, she said she had briefly left the street to study legitimate massage — “So my heart could have a little bit of peace” — but had concluded that the classes were a waste of money. Back she came to 40th Road.
另一名自称为“小李”的女子说，她来自江西省德兴市，那里是一座著名铜矿的所在地。她曾是那里的一名焊接工。身材瘦削、常常穿着一条简洁黑裙的她表示，自己曾一度离开街头，去学习真正的按摩——“这样我能安心一些”——但她后来认为上按摩课是浪费钱。于是她又回到了40路。
“My body can’t take it,” Ms. Li, 50, said. “My body can’t take so many men.”
“我的身子受不了，”50岁的李女士说。“我的身子受不了这么多男人。”
Others were even more expansive, including a stocky, 40-ish woman with cropped black hair and a lazy eye who called herself Rachel. Eating a sweet baked potato at a dumpling stall on Main Street, she recalled that while working at a job she loathed — waitressing at a Chinese restaurant in Seattle — she began hunting through WeChat forums for leads on other work, and came across an offer that she recalled saying:
还有一些人要更加健谈，这其中包括一名结实的40多岁女子，她一头黑色短发，视力不佳，自称名叫“瑞秋”。她一边在缅街上一个饺子摊上吃着烤白薯，一边回忆着做一份令自己厌恶工作的经历：在西雅图一家中国餐馆做服务生——她开始在微信平台上搜寻其他工作的消息，于是看到了一份工作邀约，她记得是这么写的：
Massage Woman to Stand on Street. $20,000 a month. Flushing, N.Y.
站街女按摩师。20,000美元一个月。纽约法拉盛。
Rachel called the number to ask what the job entailed. The boss replied: Everything.
瑞秋打给了上面的号码，询问这份工作内容。老板回答道：什么都要做。
After her first day, Rachel said, “I got home and took a shower, and cried.”
上班第一天后，瑞秋说，“我回家冲了个澡，哭了。”
She paused at the memory, and added, “But then I just thought to myself, ‘I have to keep thinking positively.’”
回忆起这些，她的话头停下了，然后又开始说，“但我心想，‘我得一直往好处想’”。
Michael Chu, the longtime neighborhood advocate, has befriended some of the women who stand outside his building on 40th Road, and occasionally offers them assistance with police matters. His office, where an old dog named Scout is usually napping on some cardboard, is furnished with desks left behind by an accountant who moved rather than work beside a massage parlor.
长期以来的社区倡导者朱立创和站在40路上他所在的楼外的一些女子成为了朋友，偶尔还会在警方事务方面给予协助。他的办公室里，一只名叫“斯考特”的狗总是在纸板上打盹，办公室里的桌子都是一位会计留下的，那人宁愿搬走也不愿在按摩院旁工作。
A bespectacled man of 65, Mr. Chu has listened to the travails of these women, whom he calls “sisters.” The beatings, the robberies, the harassment from teenagers in the playground, the pressure to attract enough clients to cover their “rent” to the boss. The hopes they harbor for permanent residence, for having enough money, for finally not doing this.
戴眼镜的朱立创现年65岁，他认真聆听了这些女子的苦难经历，他叫她们“姐妹”。那些殴打、抢劫、游乐场青少年的骚扰、赚够给老板的“租金”、吸引足够多客人的压力。还有她们怀着的希望——获得永久居留权，有足够的钱，终于不用再做这种工作。
“They also have an American dream,” Mr. Chu said. “The sisters have an American dream.”
“她们也有着一个美国梦，”朱先生说。“这些姐妹有一个美国梦”。
The man spotted her on the street one night after stopping at a 40th Road restaurant known for its cheap and plentiful food. She was pretty, younger than the other women and conversant in English, so he paid for a session. She said her name was SiSi.
一名男子一天晚上在街上注意到了她，他刚光顾过40路上一家有名的饭菜便宜量又足的饭馆。她漂亮，比街头别的女人年轻而且英语说得熟练，所以他掏钱买了一次服务。她说她的名字叫西西。
His was Paul Hayes. Single, in his early 40s and living in Queens, he carried himself with a seen-it-all air — but she beguiled him. They gradually became lovers, then good friends with vague plans to rekindle their romance someday. But she lived with her husband in an apartment a block away. It was complicated.
他叫保罗·海耶斯(Paul Hayes)。单身，四十出头，住在皇后区，他摆出一副见多识广的架势，但她还是让他着了魔。他们慢慢成了情侣，后来又回做朋友，并隐约打算着哪天重温鸳鸯梦。可是她和丈夫就住在一个街区之外。事情有点难办。
She had a good sense of humor, and often solicited his advice — although she ignored him when he recommended bolstering the building’s security system. She also confided about the dangers and vagaries of her work life.
她很有幽默感，有事常常征求他的意见——虽然他建议加强那幢楼的安全措施时她没理会。她也向他吐露过自己工作当中的危险和变化无常。
“She really hated doing it,” Mr. Hayes said.
“她真的厌恶干这个，”海耶斯说。
Even so, Song Yang established herself as a fierce competitor in the circumscribed world of 40th Road. Fueled by coffee and Red Bull, she toiled nearly nonstop, as if facing some self-imposed deadline. Word was that she was trying to save up to open her own Vietnamese restaurant, or to buy a house in New York for her aging parents, or to just move on.
即便如此，宋扬还是成了40路这个圈子不大的世界里一个凶猛的竞争者。靠咖啡和红牛支撑，她几乎一刻不停地苦干，就像是面临某种自设的时间期限。有人说她是想攒钱开自己的越南餐馆，或是给年迈的父母在纽约买个房子，或者想赚够了就不干了。
Her sharp elbows and inexhaustible style irked some of the other women, leading to arguments, shoves and occasional hair pulling. One competitor recalled that if a man chose another masseuse, Song Yang would tease the client about preferring older women.
她的争强好胜和无穷干劲惹恼了一些其他的女人，发生过争吵、推搡和偶尔的撕扯头发。一名同行回忆说，要是有男人挑了别的按摩女，宋扬会嘲笑他喜欢老女人。
But another woman remembered a gentler, more generous Song Yang. She said that when she arrived at 40th Road, Song Yang insisted that she accept several pairs of pants to ward against winter.
但另一个女人记忆里的宋扬更温柔、也更慷慨。她说，她刚到40路的时候，宋扬非要送她几条御寒的裤子。
Song Yang’s domain was a fourth-floor apartment at 135-32 40th Road, directly above another massage operation. The apartment door faced a boiler room and a makeshift gate that was intended to keep vagrants from sleeping on the roof, but also to protect the hot pepper plants nurtured there by the aged custodian.
宋扬的地盘是40路135-32号楼四层的一套公寓，就在另一家按摩店楼上。房间正对着锅炉房和一扇临时门，那门是为了防止流浪者在楼顶上过夜的，也是为了保护年老的清洁工在楼顶种的辣椒的。
As were most things on 40th Road, her rental arrangement was convoluted.
与40路上的大多事物一样，她的租房安排错综复杂。
The building was constructed in 1992 by Jentai Tsai, 85, a prominent, even revered, banker in Flushing, and is owned by a real estate company overseen by his son, Eugene Morimoto Tsai. In a brief conversation last month, the younger Tsai, 42, said that he did not know that a woman had fallen from his building last year, or that his building had long been a hub of illicit massage activity.
这幢公寓楼是蔡仁泰在1992年建的，85岁的蔡仁泰是法拉盛著名的、甚至备受尊敬的银行家，物业持有人是他儿子尤金·森本·蔡(Eugene Morimoto Tsai)管理的一家房地产公司。在上个月的一次简短交谈中，42岁的小蔡说，他不知道去年有个女子从他的公寓楼上掉下来过，也不知道他的公寓楼成为非法按摩业的窝点已有很长时间了。
They both said, and city records confirm, that the building’s managing agent — responsible for collecting rent — was another man of local distinction: Peter Tu, 62, the longtime director of the Flushing Chinese Business Association, a member of Community Board 7 and a district leader for the Democratic Party.
他们都说，市政记录也显示，那幢楼负责收房租的管理人是另一位当地显要：62岁的杜彼得(Peter Tu)，他多年担任法拉盛华人工商促进会总干事，是皇后区第七社区委员会委员，也是选区的一名民主党领袖。
Outside his office around the corner, Mr. Tu at first denied that he was involved with the 40th Road building, but then said that he had merely tried to assist the Tsai family by collecting the $18,500 monthly rent from the main, first-floor tenant, the Shi Li Xiang seafood restaurant. He said he no longer served in this role, had never taken any payment “from the street,” and had no idea what arrangements the restaurant had with the tenants and subtenants upstairs.
在不远处的办公室门外，杜彼得先是否认他跟40路上的那幢楼有关系，但随后又说他只是曾经帮蔡家向主要的底层租户“新十里香海鲜城”收取18500美元的月租。他说他已不负责此事，也从没有“从街上”收过钱，他也不清楚那家餐厅跟楼上的租客和转租客之间有什么安排。
“I’m always in the middle,” Mr. Tu said.
“我一直都是中间人，”杜彼得说。
A man identifying himself as the boss of the first-floor restaurant began to shout when asked about the tenants upstairs. “How am I supposed to know the names of the people to whom I rent?” he asked in Mandarin. “You want me to go up and ask everyone who they are?”
自称是底层餐厅老板的男人在被问起楼上租客时嚷了起来。“我怎么会知道租客的名字？”他用普通话问道。“你要我上去问每一个人他们是谁？”
Above the restaurant, in this building owned and managed by Flushing men of stature, Song Yang paid a flat fee for her apartment — as much as $400 a night, competitors say — to a square-headed, elusive “boss” who goes by Lao Li, or Old Li, a kind of avuncular nickname conveying familiarity with the women who work for him. But the particulars of his subleasing arrangements are as difficult to pin down as he is.
餐厅楼上，在这幢由法拉盛头面人物拥有和管理的公寓楼里，宋扬为她的房间支付一笔固定的房费——同行说高达400美元一晚。钱交给了一个四方头型、神出鬼没的“老板”，她们叫他“老李”，这种称呼表明他与给他干活的这些女人很熟。但是，他转租这些房间的具体安排，就像他的行踪一样难以确定。
One spring midnight, Lao Li made a rare appearance on 40th Road to mediate a dispute over clients that had erupted among the women. When a reporter approached and called him by name, Lao Li looked up — and bolted. He dashed east down the center of 40th Road, dodging cars, before vanishing into the dark Flushing night.
今年春天的一个午夜，老李罕见地出现在40路，他是来调停女人们因为抢客爆发的一场纠纷的。当一名记者走过去叫了他的名字后，老李抬头看了看，拔腿就跑。他在40路的路中间朝东飞奔，躲避着过往的车辆，然后消失在法拉盛的夜幕中。
Although Song Yang and other women often quarreled, they occasionally gathered with Lao Li at the restaurant downstairs, or at a nearby karaoke bar. They’d watch him blow out a candle on his birthday cake, or sing along to a song popular in his native northeast China. At the Chinese New Year, he would hand out red envelopes containing small cash gifts.
虽然宋扬和其他女人常常吵架，她们偶尔也在楼下餐厅或附近的一家卡拉OK与老李聚会。她们看他吹灭生日蛋糕上的蜡烛，或和他一起唱他东北老家流行的一首歌。在中国阴历新年，他会给她们发装了小额钞票的红包。
In cellphone videos and photographs of these get-togethers, the participants could easily be mistaken for co-workers at an accounting firm, making a night of it. They seemed untroubled by their profession’s many perils, including robbery, bodily harm — and, especially, arrest.
在手机拍摄的这些聚会的视频和照片里，她们很容易被人误以为是某家会计师事务所的同事，痛快地玩上一夜。她们看上去一点也不为她们从事的职业中的诸多危险，包括被抢、肉体伤害，尤其是被抓所烦恼。
Arrest attracted unwelcome attention. It jeopardized applications for permanent residency. It magnified the humiliation. And it usually meant an appearance at the Human Trafficking Intervention Court, held on Fridays in the basement of the Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens, where Mandarin sometimes seems as common as English.
被抓引来不必要的注意，会危及当事人的永久居留申请。被抓也加重了羞辱感，通常意味着要在皇后区人口走私法院(Human Trafficking Intervention Court)出庭，这个法庭每周五在位于秋园的皇后区刑事法院的地下室开庭。在法拉盛的秋园，普通话似乎同英语一样普遍。
Established nearly 15 years ago, the court set out to treat women in the commercial sex trade less as accused criminals than as victims of trafficking and exploitation. They are told that charges will be dismissed and records sealed if they complete several individualized counseling sessions — focused, say, on job training, or education — with Garden of Hope, Restore NYC, Womankind or another outreach organization. A group called Sanctuary for Families is also on hand to provide immigration services.
人口贩卖干预法庭是差不多15年前成立的，法庭想达到的目的是，把性交易当中的女子当作贩卖与剥削的受害者来对待，而不是被指控的罪犯。这些女子被告知，只要完成若干个性化的咨询辅导班——比如以就业培训或职业教育为主的——就可以撤销对她们指控，并封存记录。这些辅导班由纽约励馨妇幼关怀中心(Garden of Hope)、纽约市恢复中心(Restore NYC)、纽约亚裔妇女中心(Womankind)等服务机构提供。一家名为“家庭庇护所”(Sanctuary for Families)的组织也可提供移民服务。
宋扬的遗物。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Song Yang went through this process more than once. In addition to expunging the arrests from her record, these court appearances provided pause, forcing her to confront the consequences of her work life.
宋扬不止一次走过这个过程。上法庭不仅让她记录中的这些逮捕被抹去，还给了她喘息的时间，迫使她面对她职业生活的后果。
In the summer of 2016, Song Yang began frequent WeChat dialogues with a Flushing lawyer, Chen Mingli, that at first focused on acquiring permanent residency — a process that he repeatedly told her could take months and months. Still, she fretted that her arrest history would thwart her application for a green card.
2016年夏天，宋扬与法拉盛律师陈明利开始进行频繁的微信对话，最初主要是关于获得永久居留权的——他反复告诉她，这个过程可能要好几个月的时间。不过，她还是担心被捕的历史会妨碍她的绿卡申请。
 I am having a lot of anxiety, she wrote in Chinese.
“我心里压力很大很急，”她用中文写道。
Gradually, though, their conversations came to reflect the darker realities of her 40th Road realm, with sobbing emoticons peppering her messages.
渐渐地，他们的对话开始反映出她身处40路境地的更为阴暗的现实，她的微信里加了许多哭泣表情符。（以下引言均为微信原文——编注）
 Good morning, Lawyer Chen, she wrote in mid-October 2016. A police officer put a gun to my head today and forced me to perform oral sex.
“陈律师早上好，”她在2016年10月中旬写道。“我今天被警察用枪指着我的头强迫我为他口交。”
At the insistence of a friend, she had filed a complaint with the 109th Precinct. Investigators spent the day in her “shop,” looking for evidence and checking the building’s surveillance video, which had captured a heavyset bald man in a suit ascending the stairs.
在一个朋友的坚持下，她向纽约市警局109分局投诉。调查员在她“店”里花了一整天的时间寻找证据，并查看了公寓楼的监控录像，录像拍到一名身穿西装的敦实、秃顶男子走上楼梯。
Mr. Chen assured her that the matter would not affect the status of her immigration case, and implored her to cooperate with the police. But her intense desire to avoid attention, coupled with fear of retaliation from her attacker, overshadowed everything.
陈律师向她保证，被捕的事不会影响她移民案件的状况，并恳请她与警方合作。但她不想吸引注意力的强烈渴望，加上害怕受到加害人的报复，给所有的事情蒙上了阴影。
 The police said that this won’t affect me in any way, but I’m afraid that it will … Lawyer Chen, what am I going to do now? … (Sob) (Sob) (Sob)
“警察说过不会对我有任何影响，但我还是害怕会受到影响……陈律师我该怎么办现在？（流泪）（流泪）（流泪）”
The police circulated a wanted poster based on a hazy photograph of the man lifted from the surveillance video. A retired United States Marshal, who surrendered after someone mentioned him as a possible suspect, participated in a lineup.
警方用监控录像中截取的一张模糊的男子照片发了一份通缉海报。一名美国退休法警在有人提到他可能有嫌疑后自首，他被安排参加了一次指认。
But Song Yang identified another man, wrongly, as her attacker. In addition, a DNA sample from the retired marshal did not match samples taken from Song Yang’s clothing. The case was eventually closed.
可是宋扬错误地指认为了另一名男子。此外，退休法警的DNA样本也与宋扬衣物上提取的样本不符。这个案件最终不了了之。
Several months later, in late September 2017, she was arrested a third time on a prostitution charge. Handcuffed, led away from 40th Road, held overnight.
几个月后，也就是2017年9月末，她因卖淫指控第三次被逮捕，戴着手铐被从40路带走关了一宿。
A few days later, Mr. Chen asked, You’ve been arrested again?
过了几天，陈律师问，“你又被捕了？”
Song Yang answered:
宋扬回答：
 Yeah. (Sob) (Sob) (Sob)
“恩。（流泪）（流泪）（流泪）”
She explained that she had been forced to make hard decisions and that it had been difficult to suppress her feelings while married to a much older man who seemed increasingly removed from her day-to-day life. She felt “morally depraved,” and sometimes thought about giving it all up and going home — or worse.
她解释说，她已被迫要做出艰难的选择，还说嫁给一个比自己大得多的男人，而他离她的日常生活越来越远，让她很难控制自己的情绪。她觉得自己“自甘堕落”，有时候想过放弃这种生活回家算了，也有过更坏的念头。
 I’ve been having thoughts of jumping from a building, but what should I do? she wrote early one morning.
“想跳楼的心情都有了，可是我该怎么办呢？”一天大清早她写道。
Mr. Chen was never formally hired by Song Yang, but now his central role seemed to be to buoy her spirits.
陈律师从未受到宋扬的正式聘请，可这时候他的核心任务似乎是提升她的情绪。
 Don’t be scared, he wrote hours later. Don’t think that way.
“不要怕，”几小时后他写道。“不要这么想。”
Song Yang only sank deeper.
宋扬却更低落了。
 I’ve fallen so low I can’t be saved.
“我觉得我堕落的无法救要了。”
She continued:
她又接着说：
 Without purpose, without direction, what meaning is there to keep on living?
“没有了目标没有了方向人活的还有什么意义？”
 I used to be a woman who was very strong in her life. I strove for perfection in everything I did. I never thought that my life would turn out this way. I’ve truly failed.
“我曾经是一个对生活很上进很要强的女人，做什么事情都追求完美，我没有想到我的人生让我变成这个样子，我好失败。”
At the end of October, Song Yang made one last visit to Mr. Chen’s office. She confided that another client had badly beaten her a couple of weeks earlier — an assault she had not reported to the police — and showed him photographs of her bruised and swollen face.
2017年10月底，宋扬最后一次来到陈律师的办公室。她倾吐说，几周前又有个客人打她打得很重——这次侵害她没报警，她让律师看了自己脸上青肿的照片。
40路上几乎全是中国人，街上的饭店招牌通常一句英文也没有。 TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Why am I so unlucky?” he remembers her asking.
“我怎么这么不走运呀？”他记得她问道。
 The case began with an anonymous complaint: Several women were said to be “selling intimacy” at the building at 135-32 40th Road.
这次的案子始于一个匿名投诉：据投诉，有数名女子在40路135-32号楼内“卖性交”。
The tip hardly came as a revelation, since shady activities at this address had generated scores of 911 calls over the years. To some, the building even had the aura of being cursed, following a horrific crime in 2010, in which a deranged stalker stabbed a woman in the second-floor hallway and removed her heart and lungs.
这个投诉根本算不上什么曝光，多年来这个地址发生的不三不四的勾当已产生过大量的911电话报警。在有些人眼里，这幢楼甚至有一种被诅咒的气氛，因为2010年那里发生过一件骇人的罪案。一个精神错乱的尾随者在二楼走廊里捅死了一名女子，还把她的心和肺挖了出来。
Forty-three arrests had taken place in the building over the last decade, more than a few sex-related, the most recent that of Song Yang. Ensnared in an undercover sting in late September, she had tried but failed to hide in the cramped boiler room across from her apartment, and was charged with offering sex for $70.
在过去十年间，这幢楼里发生过43起逮捕，其中不少是涉性案件，最近的一次就是宋扬。去年9月底她落进了一次卧底行动的陷阱，她想躲进房间对面狭小的锅炉房但未能逃身，对她的指控是以70美元的价格提供性服务。
Her case, which had prompted those despairing messages to the lawyer Mr. Chen, was one of 91 massage-parlor-related arrests in the 109th Precinct in 2017, and one of six along 40th Road. According to court records, none of those arrests were for pimping, solicitation or operating an unlicensed massage parlor.
2017年，109分局共有91起与按摩店有关的逮捕，其中40路上的有6起，她的案子是其中之一。那次逮捕导致了那些发给陈律师的绝望短信。
A few nights after the anonymous complaint, a sergeant and a detective ended a brief surveillance by venturing into the notorious building. The only thing they found suspicious was a handwritten sign in Chinese on the second floor, which they believed to say, in effect, There are no girls on this floor; please go to the third floor.
收到匿名投诉的几个晚上之后，一名警长和一名探员在对这幢臭名昭著的公寓楼进行了简短监视后，进到楼里。他们找到的唯一可疑物品是二楼的一个手写的中文标记，他们原以为上面写的东西大意是“本层没有小姐，请上三楼。”
The police later determined that the sign actually said, “Attention, the driving school is on the third floor next door.”
警方后来确认了标记上写的是“注意……驾校在隔壁三楼。”
An undercover officer then telephoned a woman associated with the building who was known as SiSi. They arranged an appointment for the next evening, Saturday, Nov. 25. Her price: $120.
一名卧底警员随后给一个与这栋公寓楼有关系的、名叫西西的女人打了电话。两人把约会定在次日，11月25日，周六。她的价格：120美元。
On the appointed day, members of the Queens North Vice Enforcement Squad met at their base in College Point to discuss the seven locations they planned to hit that night. The closest target became the first: the bleak building at 135-32 40th Road.
在约会的这天，皇后区北区扫黄行动组的警员在他们位于大学点(College Point)的据点集合，讨论当晚将要打击的七个地点。最近的目标成了头一个：40路135-32号的那幢破旧公寓楼。
The vice officers went over their safety plan. They chose their identifying color of the day. They agreed upon the mission’s assorted distress signals and code words, including what the primary undercover officer would say to indicate that sex had been offered for money. Now they were ready.
扫黄行动组警员们温习了安全方案。他们选定了当天的识别色，商定了这次任务的各种呼救信号和暗语，包括主卧底警员会用什么词来暗示已发生了出价提供性服务的情况。现在他们一切就绪。
The 10-member team headed out into the evening, unseasonably mild for late November. They parked along Prince Street, across from the White Bear dumpling place and just short of where the one-way street bends east to become 40th Road. The team leader and two arresting officers sat in the first car, with two more arresting officers in the second car. The third vehicle was for prisoner transport.
10个人的行动组在夜色中出发，这天的气温暖和得不像11月底。他们把车停在王子街，白熊水饺店对面，再往前不远这条单行道向东一拐就是40路。组长和两名执行逮捕的警员坐第一辆车，另两名执行逮捕的警员坐在第二辆车里。第三辆车是押送囚犯的。
The team tested its recording device, which used Bluetooth to transmit one-way audio. No problem. The green light was given: Go.
行动组测试了录音设备，这个设备通过蓝牙单向传输声音。没有问题。绿灯信号发出：行动。
Minutes later, the undercover officer approached his target, Song Yang, just inside her building’s entrance. He wore an olive-green jacket, jeans and a cap. She wore a short winter coat, a red-and-black scarf, leggings and one of her signature headbands — with a small bow that resembled a butterfly.
几分钟后，卧底警员接近了目标宋扬，她就在公寓楼门的里边。他穿着橄榄绿上衣和牛仔裤，戴着帽子。她穿着一件短冬衣，红黑两色围巾，紧身裤，还戴着一个标志性的发带——上面有个小小的蝴蝶结。
The officer could not have known that this woman had just attempted a video chat with her younger brother, who was still asleep in China. That she had plans to fly home in December. That she had kept her court-mandated appointments with Restore NYC, a nonprofit organization that helps foreign-born victims of sex trafficking. That her fifth and last session with Restore was four days away.
警员不会知道这个女人刚刚试着跟她弟弟视频聊天，可他还在中国睡觉。他也不会知道她打算12月飞回国。他不会知道她一直按照法庭的强制要求，定期去纽约市恢复中心，一家援助外国出生的性交易受害者的非营利组织。他不会知道她在恢复中心要上的第五次、也是最后一次咨询辅导班的日子是四天之后。
About all he knew was her police nickname for the night: “JD Ponytail.”
他只知道那天晚上行动中她的警方代号：“JD Ponytail”。
Jane Doe Ponytail.
马尾辫无名女。
She led him up the worn stairs. She gave him a peck of a kiss in the hall, and opened her apartment door. Another woman, brand-new to Flushing and known as Momo, was already occupied with a man in the second bedroom.
她领他走上破旧的楼梯。在走廊里她亲了他一口，打开了自己房间的门。另一个新来法拉盛的、名叫沫沫的女人，已经在公寓的另一间卧室里接待客人了。
Song Yang walked her client to her bedroom, where, according to the police, she offered sexual intercourse for the reduced price of $80. He consented to the arrangement and, heading to the bathroom, managed to utter the code word into his transmitter that a positive — that is, illegal — agreement had been reached. He also hoped to signal to colleagues that it was time to move in, but a wary Song Yang prevented him from having privacy, telling him to keep the bathroom door open.
宋扬带着自己的客人走进她的卧室，据警方披露，她在卧室提出以80美元的打折价提供性交。他同意了这个价钱，然后走进浴室，设法向他的发送器报出暗语，表明“阳性”——也就是非法的——协定已经达成。他还想发信号告诉同伴是行动的时候了，但警觉的宋扬不让他有私密，叫他别关浴室门。
“This is bad service,” the officer said.
“你这服务很差啊，”警员说。
Once in the bedroom, Song Yang became even more suspicious. Why aren’t you taking off your clothes? she asked. Are you a cop?
警员进到卧室里后，宋扬的疑心更重了。“你怎么不脱衣服呀？”她问。“你是警察吧？”
 No, he answered. But he complained again about the service and grabbed his hat, prepared to leave. She pushed him out and closed the door.
不是，他回答说。但他再次抱怨她的服务，抓起帽子要走人。她把他推了出去，关上了门。
Responding to the undercover officer’s signal, the three idling police vehicles turned onto 40th Road, smack into its everlasting gridlock. Four officers got out and hustled to the building. Climbing the dreary stairs, they passed their undercover colleague, who pointed to Song Yang’s door as he descended — and as she watched on the monitor in her apartment.
收到卧底警员的信号，空转着发动机待命的三辆警车拐上40路，扎进这条街上永远的拥堵。四名警员下车冲向公寓楼。爬上阴暗的楼梯时，他们与卧底警员擦身而过，他一边下楼一边指了指宋扬的房门——这时她正在房间里看着监视器。
With the police demanding that she open the door, and preparing to break it down, a panicked Song Yang hurried to the apartment’s north balcony. The other woman, Momo, emerged naked from her bedroom to investigate the noise, but hustled back to hide when she realized it was the police.
就在警察要她开门，并准备破门而入的时候，惊慌失措的宋扬快步来到公寓的北阳台。那个叫沫沫的女子光着身子从她那件间卧室出来，看外面在吵什么，明白了是警察后赶忙躲进屋里。
The balcony was not equipped with surveillance cameras, leaving what happened next to the imagination. It is possible that Song Yang was hoping to escape, perhaps by reaching for a wire that ran vertically past her balcony. It is possible that she was trying to land on the protruding metal sign of the restaurant below. It is also possible that she intended to kill herself.
阳台没有装监控摄像头，接下来发生的事情只能靠想象。宋扬可能想逃走，也许伸手去够了一根从阳台边竖着经过的电缆线。她也可能想跳到楼下餐厅伸到街上的金属招牌上。也可能她就是想自杀。
It is fact that she hit the pavement directly in front of the undercover officer she had pecked on the cheek just five minutes earlier. His supervisors say that the officer remains shaken to this day.
事实是，她掉在了街上，就在那名卧底警员的眼前，仅仅五分钟前她还亲过他一口。他的上司说，这名警员至今惊魂未定。
Later that night, while Song Yang was lying in a hospital bed with multiple fractures to her face, head and body, the police placed her under arrest. She died in the morning — and the arrest was, in the parlance of the police, “voided.”
那夜稍晚的时候，当面部、头部及身体多处骨折的宋扬躺在医院病床上时，警方宣布将她逮捕。她在清晨死去——对她的逮捕，用警方的话说，也就“失效了”。
作者：DAN BARRY, JEFFREY E. SINGER, TODD HEISLER
翻译：纽约时报中文网
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