“So, talk.” She took off her five-inch heels and rubbed her feet, apparently disinterested in what he had to say.
“Actually, I need you to talk. I am still paying you, and since the sign said satisfaction guaranteed, that’s not too much to ask, I wouldn’t think.” Rory referred to a sign above the doorway to the first hall they had entered.
“What do you want to know?”
“For starters, how old are you really?”
“Twenty-four.”
“That’s a lie.” Rory wasn’t sure, but he figured he’d try to fish out the truth.
“Okay, eighteen.” Rory suddenly realized this girl who was offering her body for him to take advantage of, use, and possibly abuse was no older than his daughter Riley, who was hopefully safe and sound in her room back home a few thousand miles away. He felt nauseous again but swallowed it down, fighting the recollection of the night he spent in Caesars Palace with the blonde call girl ten years ago. She had seemed to be about his age, but who knew? Put it out of your mind, you have a job to do, he silently reprimanded himself, focusing all of his attention on Tiffany, concentrating on extracting information from her as coolly as he could.
“And why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Strip and, um, all the rest.”
“Uh, because I have to.” Her sarcastic tone reflected her disdain, as if to say, “What, are you an idiot?”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know me. I need the money. It’s ….”
A sharp, crashing sound interrupted her. It came from the side of the room closest to the end of the hallway.
“You’re a no good—!” They heard a girl’s high-pitched scream following the harshly uttered epithet and then a loud crack, the sound of a hand loudly smacking someone’s skin.
“How dare you not charge for your services?” Even though the voice was muted and distant, Rory could distinguish it was a man who spoke English with an Arabic accent.
They heard another smack and then a thud, like the sound of someone kicking a body. Then they heard the sound of a whimper, and begging. “Please, don’t ….” a young female voice pleaded. But the smacks and thuds and banging continued, one after another, interspersed with more cries and screams that slowly faded.
Tiffany jumped up from the bed, her face ashen. “Oh, my God.” She stood frozen, panicked. “That’s my friend Danielle. She’s only sixteen. He’s going to kill her!”
“Who is?” Rory stood.
“His name is Jameel. He works for the Master. We’ve got to save her.”
Tiffany headed toward the door, but Rory grabbed her by the arm, stopping her.
“Wait a minute. He’ll kill you too. Hush.” Rory put his hand up to Tiffany’s mouth to silence her. “Listen.” The room was quiet. The sounds had stopped. “He must have quit beating her. Let’s give him a minute to leave, and then I’ll help you go find her.”
Tiffany was weeping quietly, mascara running down her cheeks.
Rory opened his arms and enveloped her in them, thinking of Riley.
After holding her shaking body for a few minutes, calming her, Rory took Tiffany by the hand and slowly opened the door, peered both ways, and then stepped out into the hallway, pulling her behind him.
Rory led Tiffany around the corner to the left into the third hallway. It was dark, more ominous and seemed eerily quiet except for the now distant staccato of hip-hop music.
They stood long enough to hear a far-off sound of crying coming from the other end of the hallway. Feeling their way through the dark, they turned the corner to the right, and halfway down the next corridor, their eyes adjusting to the blackness, they saw Danielle lying on the floor of a cage like a ragdoll, unconscious.
Tiffany let go of Rory’s hand, ran to the cage, and shook the barred door. “Danielle,” she cried in a loud whisper, but her friend didn’t move.
The cries had come from another girl in the next cage, an Asian girl, also a teenager, who sat huddled on the floor, her back to the wall of the cage, hugging her knees.
“I think he killed her,” the young Asian girl said.
“Kimi, how long have you been locked up back here?” Tiffany walked over to the other girl’s cage and rattled the door, hoping to wrench it open.
“I don’t know, a few days. He brings me bread and water and makes me eat and drink it like an animal.” Rory noticed the girl didn’t have any clothes on, and wore only underwear and a dog collar around her neck. She was so thin she looked almost like a skeleton, her backbone protruding through her pallid skin. There was a stained plastic pad, about an inch thick and five feet long, covering the floor of the cage where he guessed she must sleep. When she finally turned to face them, they saw that she was covered in bruises and had dark gray circles under her eyes.
Suddenly all three of them heard moaning coming from Danielle’s cage, and the young brunette teenager stirred, rolling to one side.
“Thank God!” Tiffany said, going to her friend’s cage door.
Rory tried to think fast. How can we get these girls out of here before this lunatic comes back and finds us all?
As if his thoughts became reality, they heard heavy footsteps approaching.
“There’s a door at the end of this hallway,” Kimi whispered urgently. “Quick, you two better get out of here.” She turned and sat back down on the floor, slumping forward, feigning sleep. “Go!”
“But we can’t leave you!” Tiffany desperately looked from Kimi to Danielle to Rory, searching his eyes for help.
“We need to go,” Rory said. “If we stay, she’s right, he’ll kill us all.” Rory’s mind seemed to work on autopilot. There was no time to think. The footsteps were louder and closer. “I promise, we’ll come back for both of you,” he told Kimi, then grabbed Tiffany’s hand and yanked her with him, fumbling through the dark, running for the door, running for their lives.
CHAPTER TEN
Rory and Tiffany escaped out the back door of the strip club and were standing in an asphalt lot full of trash bins.
After throwing his jacket over her shoulders to cover her, Rory led Tiffany around the building to the front, sneaking along the concrete façade to stay out of the glaring lights of the parking lot. Rory peeked around the corner of the front of the club and saw Carlos standing alone next to his car, smoking a cigarette.
Motioning for Tiffany to stay put, Rory walked up to Carlos, trying to keep his nerves at bay.
Carlos turned when he felt his partner’s hand tap him on the shoulder. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes!”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down. There’s no time to talk. I’ll explain later. Just start the car and give me your jacket, hat, and sunglasses. I’ll meet you back here in two minutes. We need to get out of here fast.”
Not giving him a chance to ask questions, Rory snuck back to where Tiffany stood, shaking with fear, handed her the jacket to wrap around her waist and the hat and sunglasses to wear, and with his arm around her like she was his girlfriend, he walked with her out into the open, saying a quick foxhole prayer.
They both strolled as casually as they could to the waiting car. Carlos gave them a wide-eyed look of shock from behind the wheel but was smart enough not to ask any questions until they were on their way back to the station.
Lieutenant McAfree had worked with female victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault for almost twenty years after joining the force following graduation from college and the police academy. She was skilled at showing victims compassion yet knowledgeable enough to be firm when she needed to be, and was rarely sucked in by manipulation, drama, or emotion.
Tiffany had been hesitant at first to talk to anyone including Susan, afraid to divulge any information that might be used against her.
But Chief Steele had convinced her that she would be given full immunity and witness protection by the FBI and Sheriff’s department and would be put in a
safe house with round-the-clock guards. More importantly, he promised her the police and FBI would do what it took to rescue the other girls and bring them to safety if she cooperated.
Rory, Carlos, Chief Steele, and Agent Glover watched and listened to the interrogation through the two-way mirror.
“So tell me what went on back there,” Lieutenant McAfree said in a quiet voice.
Tiffany sat up stiffly in the hard metal chair, looking uncomfortable in the khaki pants and long-sleeved blouse Susan had given her to replace her skimpy outfit.
She seemed even younger and more vulnerable under the bright fluorescent light, which made her skin appear translucent against the collar of the white shirt.
Receiving no answer, the lieutenant leaned in and reached for Tiffany’s hand, but the young girl wrenched it back, turning her face defiantly, refusing to make eye contact.
“Tiffany, I know it’s hard to talk about all of this, but I know you want to help those girls—your friends who are still stuck back there.”
Tiffany turned to look at Susan, and Rory noticed through the glass that she was tapping her foot anxiously as Susan lay out on the table several photos of Jameel and the Master.
A tear strayed down Tiffany’s cheek, which grew a hot red—with anger and shame, Rory imagined.
“Danielle and Kimi aren’t the only ones who were beaten and starved,” she finally said, her voice cracking. She wiped away tears, and seemingly out of nowhere, Susan produced a box of tissues and handed her one, waiting for the teenage girl to collect herself.
“It’s okay, Tiffany,” Susan said, her voice soothing. “Whatever you tell me will be confidential. And telling it will help you get through this and hopefully help us catch these dirt bags.”
“Sometimes the guys who worked there would … use us for their own pleasure too.”
“You mean, they would rape you?” Lieutenant McAfree asked gently.
“Yes. You’d be lucky if that’s all they did.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’d rough up some of the girls while they’d have their way with them. Or they’d sub them out to their Muslim gang friends. Since we aren’t Muslims, they treat us as less than human. Sometimes, I’d wake up to three or four of them in the room ….” Tiffany cried into her tissue, dabbing away the vestiges of mascara that streaked down her cheeks. The air apparently grew warm in the small interrogation room, and Rory noticed Tiffany roll up her sleeves without thinking, revealing thin track lines along the undersides of her arms.
“Did they drug you?” McAfree also saw the tracks on Tiffany’s forearms.
“Yes. I had never done drugs before I came into Wildcats. But one night after I started working there, Jameel came into my room and said I had a long night ahead of me, and since I was new, he would help me out by giving me a little pick-me-up. I tried to tell him no, I didn’t need it, figuring he meant some type of drugs. But before I could resist, he and another guy held me down and stuck a needle in my arm. It was heroin. I think I blacked out. When I came to, this guy was on top of me, hitting me and hurting me.”
Tiffany started to weep—big heaving sobs that she had held back for a long time. She had seen what they did to girls who cried and she had stopped showing any emotion a long time ago.
After a few minutes, she wiped her tears again, took a deep breath, and continued. “After that I was hooked. I’d take anything to numb me. I gave most of the money I made from stripping and prostitution over to Jameel or his men for more drugs. They had me right where they wanted me. It was one big vicious cycle. And the one time I hinted that I might want to get out of the business, one of them told me that if I ever tried to leave, I’d be as good as dead—that I may as well plan to spend the rest of my days there until I was too old and unattractive to be of use to them anymore. I swore to myself I’d somehow find a way to get out.”
Susan took Tiffany’s hand in her own and glanced up for a moment in their direction as if to say, “It’s okay.”
Looking on, Rory felt a combination of admiration and respect for Susan McAfree wash over him.
The lieutenant didn’t even have to ask how it all got started. Tiffany seemed to want to unload her guilt and shame, not needing to be asked.
“All I wanted to do was make some quick money dancing in a strip club so I could put myself through college. My parents had divorced when I turned fifteen, and my dad left. I lived with my alcoholic mom, who couldn’t take care of me. She and her boyfriend kicked me out and I had nowhere to go. When I was promised room and board at Wildcats in addition to a lot of money, I thought I would just stay for the summer. They said all I had to do was dance topless and that would be it.” She sighed heavily. “They are all liars.”
Tiffany finished her story and eventually gave Susan the names of all the people and places she knew in the business, finally trusting the redheaded cop and wanting to help out of gratitude for being brought out alive.
“Jameel Tahan. Age forty-two. Birthplace is Cairo. Gained entry to the US three years ago to work here in Vegas for Amad Safar, aka the Master. We know Safar has been in Vegas for about five years now, and we’re trying to find out more info on him as we speak. We’re not sure if he’s in charge of the whole ISM outfit or, like Tahan, just another player.” Mark Glover outlined what had been gleaned from the investigative profiling his FBI team had assembled once Rory and Carlos had reported what they had discovered and Tiffany had been questioned.
When the rundown of both ISM members was finished, Chief Steele turned to Rory, Carlos, John, and Susan. “Okay, here’s the plan.”
Steele outlined to them that the FBI, in conjunction with some of Sheriff Thomas’s forces, would conduct a simultaneous surprise raid on Wildcats and five other notorious strip clubs suspected of being run by the Mafia.
The Operation’s goal wasn’t only to root out the Mafia members in hopes of eventually finding their leader and the nuclear bomb; it was to close down the strip joints that were operating as sex-slave warehouses.
Chief Steele had ordered the police to offer the girls who worked in these places a special arrangement. In exchange for their testimony of what they had seen, heard, and experienced while employed there, the young women would be given immunity. If they were arrested and convicted of any related charges in their line of work, such as drug use or prostitution, the US Attorney’s office would automatically grant them probation with mandatory community service and counseling as well as drug rehabilitation.
If they weren’t arrested or charged, they would be offered free job counseling, a stipend to get them started in new lines of work, and witness protection as needed.
The raid was set for the following week.
SWAT team members would be stationed at each of the five major Mafia-run nightclubs: Wildcats, Cobra, Brandy’s, the Black Panther, and Hot Pink.
When given the signal, the armed agents would “descend” or break down the doors and storm in, taking as many prisoners as possible.
Ambulances would be parked on standby for girls who needed them or any victims of gunfire if it broke out.
The signal would be initiated by Lieutenant Susan McAfree, who was going undercover as a decoy stripper looking for a job at Brandy’s, where the Master purportedly held court.
Prior to the sting going down, Susan would plant bugging devices throughout the building, and once the team retrieved enough information about the Mafia suspects and she gave them the green light, the SWAT team would converge on the five nightclubs after she escaped to safety.
Her goal was to get in, get to know the girls who worked there, then find out what they knew about Jameel, the Master, and whoever else was of Arab or Middle Eastern descent and thus most likely part of the ISM.
She also was instructed to find out if any of the strippers were being abused like Danielle and Kimi were at Wildcats.
She wouldn’t be alone; shortly after she was to apply and get the job, a different wired FBI agent posing a
s a john, like Rory and Carlos had done at Wildcats, would go in every few hours to keep tabs on her.
Rory nearly fell out of his chair when Susan sashayed into the Condo wearing black stilettos. Her shoulder-length wavy red hair, which she usually wore in a tight bun, had been teased out around her face in soft curls. She normally wore little to no makeup, but for the sting operation, her face had been transformed into that of a supermodel with crimson lipstick and plum-colored eye shadow and eyeliner accentuating her big brown eyes.
He tried not to stare when she briefly, playfully opened the front of her oversized raincoat to reveal a red halter-top that hugged her curves and showed her midriff and a very short black skirt that showcased her long legs enmeshed in fishnet stockings. He was used to seeing her every day in her police uniform, and his voice caught in his throat and he coughed, nearly choking until he took a gulp of water.
The rest of the guys whistled appreciatively.
“Knock it off before I punch one of ya,” she reprimanded them, closing her raincoat.
If she doesn’t I will, Rory thought, a sudden feeling of protectiveness toward her grabbing him by surprise.
“Show’s over guys, go back to work,” Agent Glover barked at them from his desk.
Rory, Carlos, John Dade, and most of the rest of the Operation No Dice team were stationed at the Condo as the sting went down.
Reports were called in by the minute from the field agents. Chief Steele had taken two men with him and was in the field with the SWAT commanders outside of Brandy’s.
Rory sat with John and Carlos in the Condo’s small kitchen area drinking coffee and eating sandwiches that had been ordered in. They were halfway through dinner when Mark Glover poked his head in the kitchen doorway. He stood, his bulky body filling the frame, looking at each of them silently. He was clearly at a loss for words.
“What is it, Mark?” Carlos prodded him.
“I have bad news. Steele just told me Susan’s missing. When the SWAT team went in to Brandy’s, we thought she’d already been safely removed by the FBI agent inside. We just got word she’s still in there. It sounds like halfway through the back passageway she and her “john” partner were discovered as they tried to escape, and they somehow became separated from each other ….” Mark’s two-way radio beeped and he picked it up. Static muffled the voice on the other end. “What? All right, keep looking! You’ve got to get her out of there!”
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