by Matthew Iden
“No.” Softly.
“You want to tell me about all these texts, Trish?” Sarah asked.
She shook her head.
“Nothing? You won’t mind if I send a couple, then?”
A shrug.
“Should I call Daddy and see what he says?”
Trish opened her mouth, fear flashing across her face, then her shoulders slumped, resignation taking its place. Singer saw it, too, and caught Sarah’s eye. He made a gesture with his fingers. Let’s switch.
Sarah bristled. She couldn’t get through to a teenage black girl, but the middle-aged white guy would? Singer waited, watching her with those calm green eyes, letting her come to the conclusion he knew she would. Do you want to make some headway on this thing or do you want to play ego games?
She swallowed her pride and went to search the bathroom again, more to give him some room to operate than to look for clues. What she really wanted to do, despite the fact that it was hella-freezing, was step outside to get some air, to get away from the room and everything it represented. And not because it smelled like sex. It did, but that wasn’t what was causing a crawling sensation under her skin. The odor was repugnant but understandable. She struggled to put a name to what her senses were telling her, then she had it.
The room smelled like people.
The tiny space had all the combined odors of a subway car or a taxicab or a crowd pressed to the edge of a concert stage. It was sweat and heat and moisture and all the smells that the human body makes when it’s moving, working, rutting. To that cocktail, her fertile imagination added the despair of the girls and the vulgarity of the act done for commerce and greed. The impact of what Trish did and went through dozens of times a day hit Sarah like a physical thing. Pulling her shirt over her nose, she took a deep breath, sick and dizzy, trying to clear her head.
She backed out of the bathroom like it was a crime scene and turned around to see how Singer was doing. He’d dragged the room’s single chair close to Trish, directly in front of her, but careful to stay out an arm’s length away. At first Sarah thought this was excessive caution on his part—how dangerous did he think the girl was?—then she realized he’d done it for Trish, not him. She took a second, careful look at how he was sitting. His posture was relaxed, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his hands clasped together. Head canted forward, interested. Expression concerned but laid-back, with the intensity dialed down. Sarah leaned against the bathroom door frame, the revulsion of a second ago forgotten in her curiosity.
Singer’s deep voice murmured occasionally, but he’d gotten Trish to talk and was letting her go, encouraging her with a nod or a gesture when she slowed. They stayed that way for several long minutes. Singer’s presence seemed comforting enough to put her at a cautious ease. Eventually, the dialogue wound down and Singer glanced at Sarah. She walked over.
“Trish, Officer Haynesworth and I are going to step outside for a second,” Singer said to the girl.
“Can I have my phone back?” she asked.
“In one second,” he said, opening the door and tilting his head meaningfully toward Sarah. “Promise.”
Sarah walked through and Singer closed the door. Their breath steamed in the air.
“Looks like you made a connection,” Sarah said.
He shrugged. “Only because you were there. I fit the profile of every john who comes to see her. She felt at least marginally safe with you in the room.”
“Even though I’m a cop?” Sarah asked.
“Some things are more basic than that. If someone like me is in the room alone with her, she’s either hooking or being raped or being beaten. With three of us—one of who is a woman and a cop—the dynamic changes and she can at least hope she’s not going to get assaulted.”
Sarah shivered and not because of the cold. “So what did she say?”
“We’re on the right track. ‘Daddy’ is Tena, like you thought. He was the local pimp, the manager. Three or four girls stayed at his house. He dropped them here each afternoon if they weren’t needed for a special arrangement, like a john that contacted him through the web or by e-mail. He took anything they could use to run. Or they weren’t allowed to have it in the first place.”
“Which is why we didn’t find any coats or shoes.”
“Right. They’re stuck. He paid Paul to pick up their take once or twice a night so they wouldn’t have any cash to leave with. Apparently, he’d also collect the phones each night and check the history. If he found the girls had called anyone but him, he’d beat the shit out of them. When he wasn’t raping them, of course.”
“Why do they put up with it? I thought the superpimp we’re looking for sweet-talked them into hooking?” Sarah asked.
“To start with, maybe,” Singer said. “But then he hands them over to Tena. A few weeks into hooking, they don’t have any possessions or money and a guy who hits them if they talk back. Where are they going to go? Who are they going to complain to?”
“Lord,” she said. The image of Tena’s body sprawled on his kitchen floor didn’t seem quite so horrible now. “What about the texts?”
“The girls get lonely between tricks, so they text each other. Which is why there are so many messages, from so many sources.”
“And why they’re all from the same date,” Sarah said slowly, catching on. “They erase the text history each night.”
“Yep. She said Tena would call each of them once or twice a night to make sure they were working or to set up a special meet with a john.” Singer blew on his hands, then rubbed them together to warm them. “He let them text each other to keep them happy, but he didn’t want them talking on the phone in case a john showed.”
Sarah paused, thinking. “They’re . . . prisoners. Slaves. No money, no way to communicate, no way to leave.”
Singer nodded and motioned at the room. “There might as well be bars on the door.”
“What about the mastermind, the one we’re looking for? She mention him?”
He made a face. “She said she was the only one Tena had personally recruited, but the other girls talked about a guy named ‘Eddie’ nonstop.”
“Eddie,” she said, rolling the name around.
“I know,” he said, seeing her look. “It’s not exactly ‘Hitler’ or ‘Dracula,’ is it?”
“She have any idea where he is?”
“No. But she said Tena sounded weird on the phone when he called to check on her.”
“Maybe after he called Eddie and told him about me,” Sarah said.
“I think so,” Singer said. “After you spooked Tena, he calls Eddie and tells him about you. Eddie, thinking fast, tells him, ‘Stay put, I’ll be there soon and we’ll talk the situation over.’ The girls were already here at the Crowne, so he was clear to ace Tena at home.”
She thought about it, then sighed. “She’s a dead end?”
He grimaced. “Maybe, though confirmation is always good. We were working on nothing but theories until now. But she doesn’t know how to get ahold of Eddie or anyone besides Tena.”
“Which is just how the pimps wanted it,” she said. “But one of these girls, the ones Eddie recruited directly, has to know more about him. We need to keep knocking on doors until we find her.”
Singer nodded, then a door opened above them. They craned their necks upward to see Rhee leaning over the railing, looking for them.
“Singer?”
“Over here. Got something?”
“Definitely maybe.”
In the time it took the two of them to hotfoot it up the steps, Rhee had already tapped a cigarette out of its pack, lit it, and taken a drag. He blew a lungful into the night sky and used the top of the rail to knock off the first bit of ash. The bite of the match hung in the air.
“Why don’t you tell me what you know so I don’t repeat myself,” he sa
id as they topped the stairs. Sarah took turns with Singer filling in Rhee, who nodded from time to time. He smoked steadily and mechanically, finishing the cigarette as they offered him what they knew.
“Girl in here is named April,” he said, flicking his butt into the parking lot. The cherry-red tip made an electric arc through the air. “Everything you said jibes with her story with one big difference.”
“What’s that?” Singer asked.
“I’ll let her tell you, see if you think what I’m thinking,” Rhee said. He opened the unit door and they went in. The smell in here wasn’t any better than in Trish’s room, but at least it was warm.
Sitting in a chair, smoking her own cigarette, was a woman in her early twenties, with black roots showing through bottle-blonde hair. She wore spandex hot pants and a pink, short-sleeved shirt with a plunging V-neck. One leg was hooked over the arm of her chair so that her foot dangled, and she bobbed it up and down so that her flip-flop clapped gently against the sole of her foot. She gave the three of them a hard look as they trooped into the room.
“These your squad mates, honey?” she said. Her voice was scratchy.
“That’s right,” Rhee said. “Tell them what you told me.”
“Since you asked so nicely,” April said. “What do you want to know?”
“Rhee said you’re different than the other girls here,” Sarah said.
April shrugged. “Most all of these girls here are local, picked up by that asshole Eddie. Most are middle-class cuties, if you can believe it. Bowie. Columbia. Burtonsville. He promised to marry them or something.”
“West and south of Baltimore, north of DC.”
“Yeah,” she said, then took a drag and blew it toward the ceiling. “But Eddie picked me up in Breezewood.”
“Pennsylvania?” Sarah asked.
“You know another Breezewood, honey?”
“Town of Motels,” Singer said.
April laughed, hoarse and grating, taken off guard. She pointed at Singer with her cigarette. “That’s right. That sign on the turnpike. Town of Motels. Jesus.”
“What’s so special about Breezewood?” Sarah asked.
“Truckers,” Singer said. “Steady source of clients where the turnpike and I-70 meet. Easy to get out of there and move on quickly. Cheap motels.”
“Motels?” April said. “Who’s going to pay for a motel? Everything happens in the cab.”
“I stand corrected,” Singer said, dryly.
“So the point is,” Rhee said, impatient, “April was working a truck stop on her own. Eddie spotted her, asked if she wanted to make some real money, then brought her back here.”
“What’s the punch line?” Singer asked.
“Eddie already had a girl with him,” April said. “But she didn’t come back with us.”
Singer arched an eyebrow and shot a glance at Chuck, but didn’t say anything.
April continued. “Pretty little thing, cried the whole time when she wasn’t doped to high hell. It was weird. Eddie drove around for a while with her bawling and me wondering what we’re doing, then he dropped me off at a diner and told me to kill an hour. When he came back, the girl was gone, we drove to Maryland, and I started this illustrious career at the Huntington Crowne Motel.”
“I can’t say I’m happy I was right,” Singer said.
Rhee nodded. “Eddie’s working two games, like you thought. He runs strings of girls down here for the steady cash then grabs other girls for the occasional big score.”
“He meets his clients in Breezewood so they can both get in and out easily,” Sarah said. “Head west for three hours and you’re in Ohio. Same thing east and you’re crossing the New Jersey line. Philly in less than that.”
Singer turned to April. “Did he have any other places he liked to go? Baltimore? New York? Richmond?”
She shrugged, stubbing her cigarette out on the arm of the chair. “No idea, hon. He didn’t exactly confide in me and I haven’t seen him since he dropped me here with that piece of shit Gerry.”
Singer glanced at Rhee and made a face. Rhee nodded, running a hand through his hair. “I know. We got no proof he’s heading back there. And Interstate 95 is just as easy to get to as I-70. We don’t even know if he’s heading north, for Christ’s sake.”
The three went quiet, each of them searching for a flaw in the logic, something that might give them the answer they needed, or at least eliminate one of the possibilities. Minutes passed. Finally, Singer spoke.
“Chuck, it doesn’t matter where he might be. We’ve got nothing else to go on. Either he’s on his way to Breezewood . . .”
“Or he’s anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard,” Rhee finished. “You’re right. We gotta go.” He turned to Sarah. “You in?”
She nodded. “Hell, yes.”
He flashed a quick smile that disappeared so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. “Thanks.”
“What about the girls?” Singer asked. He canted his head toward April. “Does she know about . . . ?”
“Does she know about what?” April asked, suspicious.
“Uh,” Rhee said, turning toward her. “Your pal Eddie decided to downsize his staff earlier tonight.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He put two bullets in the back of Gerry’s head.”
“Oh,” April said, taken aback.
“And I’m going to do something similar to Eddie, if I catch him. So, you all can do whatever you want now.”
“You’re not going to run us in?” she asked.
“Shit,” he said. “This ain’t no bust. I’m after my sister and that’s it. If you and the other girls can get out of here, do it.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that? You think I got a trust fund up my—”
“Probably not,” Sarah interrupted, then pulled out her business card. She flipped it over and wrote a number on the back. “Here. This is the number for a friend of mine named Jimmy. He’s a cop, but he’s not going to be interested in running you in. He’ll at least give you and the other girls a ride to an Amtrak or Greyhound station.”
“Wait,” Singer said. “Don’t go there. Let me see that card.” He scribbled something below Jimmy’s number. “This is the name and number for my daughter, Amanda. She helps direct a women’s shelter in DC called FirstStep. I’ll call and tell her to expect you. Get Trooper Haynesworth’s friend to drive you there. Amanda will take care of you.”
April took the card with a look that spoke for itself.
“It’s not like you’d expect. They can help you find work, a place to sleep, and training if you need it. Oh, and take this.” Singer stepped forward and handed her a roll of bills.
“What’s this?”
“The night manager’s cut for the week,” Singer said. “I kind of figured this is where we’d finish and, uh, convinced him it might be worth his time to make a donation. I’m going to give the other girls their share and then you call that number.”
April stared at the wad of bills and the card like they were diamonds, shaking her head. Her eyes were shiny.
“You’re welcome,” Singer said, smiling.
“We done here?” Chuck asked, fidgeting by the door.
“I think so,” Singer said, then cracked his knuckles. “Let’s go get Lucy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The girl wouldn’t stop crying and it was driving him insane.
When Lucy had seen his face, she’d freaked out and tried to rush past him, kicking and screaming until he’d pinned her to the passenger’s seat. Even then, she’d landed a kick to the inside of his thigh that still ached and when he’d reached in to grab her, she’d pulled a goddamn knife out of thin air and nearly ended him. Doris had grabbed her arm at the last second and kept the thing from going into his eye.
He squeeze
d her wrist until she’d dropped the knife, but it still had taken both of them to get her under control, Eddie holding her down while Doris held her bunched-up coat over the girl’s mouth and nose until she started passing out. It was the only way to teach her a lesson without leaving a mark. When it finally sunk in that they’d let her breathe if she’d sit quietly, they’d bundled her into the Mustang and shut the door.
As a thank-you, he’d paid Doris a flat five hundred bucks from Gerry’s stash, told her to go home and see if Jack was still alive, and promised to send the full payment despite Jack being his typical numbskull self and letting the girl escape. It had been just his luck that Doris had been out partying when he’d brought Lucy around for safekeeping. The girl had probably clocked Jack with one of his own stupid replica weapons and trussed him like a turkey ten minutes after getting dropped off. If Doris had been there instead, he could’ve rested easy, knowing that things would be taken care of.
Doris had been his helper for the past two years and was worth more than Gerry, Jack, and every other knucklehead he’d worked with combined. She had a sharp mind and an empathy she could turn on and off when she needed to. He’d sent her to Gerry and the other managers from time to time to calm the girls down or explain the finer points of pimping. The girls trusted her and lapped up the bullshit she spun about making enough money to leave the life or kick their habit or find a better way, while guys like Gerry got put in their place in record time if they thought they’d push Doris around. She’d slipped a knife into Gerry’s pants once to remind him—in case he’d forgotten—which ones were the whores and which one wasn’t. Sometimes Eddie thought the guys were more scared of her than him.
He could’ve used Doris now with Lucy’s nonstop moaning and crying. He considered force-feeding her some of the roofies he kept on hand and doping her into silence. If not, it was going to be a long drive.
The entire situation had already shredded his nerves and he was sweating and jittery, unable to concentrate on the road. Which sucked, because driving was one of the few things that he did to calm down. At this point, however, he was ready to pop. He’d taken the gun out of its hiding place in the armrest and instead kept it in the crease between his seat and the center console. He didn’t know why he’d put it there and was too scared to analyze it any further. All he knew was that he’d never be able to bluff his way through another encounter with a cop like he’d done earlier in the night. He was so on edge that a cop could ask him his name and he’d probably get it wrong.