by Sean Black
He walked to the apartment door, opened it and was gone. She was alone. All she could think about was that picture of her mom.
“Sorry,” she said, sinking down onto the couch and lying down, her knees pulled up into her chest.
38
“There better not be a scratch on my car,” said Carmen.
“Don’t worry. Ty’s a really careful driver,” said Lock.
“We both know that’s a lie,” Carmen shot back.
“Are we good?”
She glanced over at him. “I don’t know, Ryan.”
“I followed up on something that I thought would take me to Kristin Miller. If I’d known where it was going to end up with me getting arrested, then maybe I wouldn’t have.”
Carmen didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, okay. I really am.”
“And if you get another call in five minutes from Ty saying that he’s seen her and he needs you there, what are you going to do then?” asked Carmen.
They both knew the answer to that one.
“I’m just worried about you,” said Carmen.
“I’m fine,” said Lock.
“You look it,” said Carmen, this time with a hint of a smile playing at the edge of her lips.
Lock’s cell phone chimed with an incoming call. The call showed on the car’s display. It was Ty.
Carmen reached over and answered it.
“You’d better not have crashed my car,” she said.
Ty’s voice filled the cabin. “Oh, hey Carmen. No, your car’s fine. Is Ryan there?”
“Yeah. I haven’t dropped him by the side of the road. Not yet anyway. You’re on speaker.”
“What the good news?” said Lock, hoping that’s what it was.
“I’m tucked in behind her on the I-15. I don’t think she’s seen me. Or if she has, then she’s being cool about it.”
“The I-15?” repeated Lock.
“Yeah, I think she’s headed for Vegas.”
“Okay, stay close, and keep me updated,” said Lock.
“Roger that,” said Ty. “If I see the kid?”
“Do what you have to do,” said Lock.
Ty hung up. Lock chewed over what he’d just heard. Vegas made sense. It was within driving distance and it didn’t take a genius to know that it was a mecca to the sex industry. Sex was baked into the city’s DNA almost as much as gambling. What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas.
39
They were coming into Vegas, heading north on the 15 as they skirted the north-west of the Mojave desert. Ty was about three hundred yards behind the black BMW, tucked in behind what looked like a group of college kids headed for the bright lights of Vegas.
If Soothe had spotted him, she’d showed no sign of it. She’d kept a steady clip all the way from Bakersfield, stopping once for gas. Ty had hung back when she’d exited the interstate and driven past the gas station to wait for her. When the black BMW had driven past him ten minutes later, he’d been nice and patient, giving her plenty of time to rejoin the interstate before he did.
As every exit came up, he closed the gap a little so he could see if she got off. When she didn’t, he fell back a little further, occasionally losing sight of her before he closed the distance when they came up on the next exit.
It wasn’t until they were in Vegas itself, and the traffic thickened enough that he could risk getting closer that he saw her move over, ready to exit onto Flamingo Road.
He followed, barely making the light as she merged on to West Flamingo Road. The Bellagio with its famous fountains was on the right as he maintained the tail.
He thought she might turn on to the Strip, maybe pull into one of the big hotel and casinos. She didn’t. She kept moving, on down Flamingo Road and into Paradise City, past the edge of the airport and the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign and out into the less glitzy section of the city.
He hung back. The whole time he’d following her, her speed had rarely varied. She’d driven at the speed of the other traffic. Now as they moved down Tropicana and hit a fresh set of lights, the BMW suddenly lurched forward, running a light as it switched to red and narrowly missing being clipped by a truck making a turn.
The driver lay on his air horn, coming close enough to the rear of the BMW that he may even have shaved some paint. The BMW kept moving, picking up speed, and then it was gone as Ty sat, frustrated, six cars back and waited for the lights to change again.
Even if he’d wanted to run the intersection and risk Carmen’s car, there was no way he could navigate it. The surrounding traffic was too thick. He was hopelessly penned in. Worse, it hadn’t been the move of someone running late and concerned about missing the light. It had been deliberate, calculated to make sure that anyone behind her wouldn’t be able to follow.
Finally, after a frustrating minute, the light changed. Ty moved through the intersection. He sped up, cutting in and out of the traffic. After a time, he doubled back. He checked out the side streets, hoping for a glimpse of the car, slowing down as he came up on every black car he saw.
There was no sign of the BMW. It was gone.
40
With Gilman driving back to Bakersfield, Hanger jumped the shuttle to LA at McCarran airport. At LAX he grabbed a cab LAX. Soothe could keep his BMW in Vegas. He didn’t plan on staying long in Los Angeles. A day or two at most while he figured out who was so determined to pry his brand new swan from his grasp.
On the short plane hop he’d found himself sandwiched into a window seat by a sweaty, overweight road warrior who’d insisted on telling him all about his career selling CRM software to Fortune 500 companies. About halfway through the conversation, while Hanger was sucking down his second Jack and Coke, he’d asked Hanger what he did for a living.
“Guess I’m in sales too,” Hanger had told the man.
His travel companion had perked up, like somehow this made them brothers.
“Oh, really, what is it you sell?” he’d asked.
Hanger had stared him dead in the eye.
“I sell pussy.”
The guy had looked puzzled. “Sorry? What was that? You sell what?”
Hanger had done a lurid mime with his fingers, and the guy had excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he got back, he opened the overhead locker, took a laptop and pretended to work, which was fine by Hanger.
The cab ride from LAX didn’t take long. What had been unseasonably cold weather had given way to bright blue skies. It wasn’t exactly warm, not by California standards, but it wasn’t freezing cold either.
Forty-five minutes later, the cab pulled up outside his apartment building, a few blocks from the ocean in Santa Monica.
He’d lived here on and off for the past four years. He’d figured it as a sound investment, a good way of stashing his pimping money. When people asked what he did for a living, he told them he was in the music business. It fitted with the neighborhood.
He was on nodding terms with most of the people who lived here, but he kept it to that and no more. He didn’t like people having more information than he wanted them to. His brushes with the law and a couple of short stints in jail had taught him that much.
As he walked to the front door, a couple who lived on the floor below were coming out. They saw him and hurried past, the guy slipping a hand around his wife’s waist.
Hanger said hello. They both looked away and ignored him.
Weird, but he didn’t think too much of it until he opened the front door and walked into the lobby, where he got the same reaction from an elderly lady who lived on his floor. She looked like she was on the way out, but when she saw him, she about turned and made for the elevator.
Using his key, he opened his mailbox and pulled out the usual junk. It was mostly menus for local restaurants and a flyer for a new yoga studio.
As a rule, he took the stairs. It helped him stay in shape.
He planned on taking a long shower and then grabbing a couple of hours sleep. Then he’d ge
t out there and start trying to figure out what was going on. He wanted to speak with Andre, and he planned on making a trip downtown. Right now, that could all wait. He was dog tired.
Pushing out of the stairwell door, he walked along the corridor to his apartment. He froze as he looked at the flyer that had been tacked to the door and took in his name. Not his real name, his street name, a name that no one here would have known about.
Ripping the flyer down, he studied it. He could feel a rage bubbling up inside.
He knew this had to be connected to what had been going on. Well, he thought, whoever it was had just made a monumental mistake.
Unlocking his door, he slipped inside his apartment and closed the door. He closed his eyes for a second, allowing his anger to wash through him.
When he opened his eyes again, he took another look at the flyer. There was a phone number. People were to call the number if they saw him.
Suddenly, his neighbors’ reaction made sense. His shower and his nap would have to wait. He wasn’t scared of whoever was looking for him, some do-gooder on a moral crusade, but he needed somewhere quiet to get his bearings, and figure out his next move.
41
Lock picked up Ty’s call. He was in the living room, papers scattered all around. He was working up the courage to call Kristin Miller’s mother and tell her that they were still no closer to finding her daughter. He owed her the call, and it was the right thing to do. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier.
“Tell me something good, Tyrone.”
“Sorry, brother, all I got is bad. Well, maybe not bad exactly, but I’m not sure it’s good either. What you want first?”
Lock figured it was best to start by ripping off the Band-Aid. “What’s the bad?”
“I lost her in Vegas. It was all cool. Then she gave me the slip. It was pretty slick too. I had no idea she’d seen me and then she was gone.”
“But she’s in Vegas, which means that’s where he has Kristin,” said Lock.
He knew from his research and a quick call to Angie that if Kristin was in Las Vegas, the chances of her being picked up were better than in most places. When it came to trafficking, the Vegas PD were switched on and had a lot of good officers. According to Angie, they weren’t likely to accept a fake ID and throw an underage girl in jail or let her go back to her pimp.
“Yeah, that’s where it gets complicated,” said Ty. “Our boy Hanger is back in LA.”
Lock cursed silently. That muddied the waters. If Hanger was back in town, then that meant Kristin could be too. Suddenly they had two cities to cover and not one.
“How do you know he’s back here?” asked Lock.
“I had a call from some of his neighbors. They said he was back at his pad in Santa Monica. Didn’t stay long, but he was definitely there.”
“They have any idea where he was headed?”
“Nada. I expect he keeps his real work very separate from people like that. He’s mostly just on nodding terms. No people around, no loud parties. He keeps a low profile when he’s on the Westside.”
That concerned Lock on a couple of fronts. First, they now had no real idea where Hanger was. Second, it was a sign that he was smart. Dumb criminals made a show of what they did for a living, the clever ones played it down, and went out of their way not to draw attention to themselves.
As a general rule, the dumb criminals were easier to deal with for that very reason.
“Ryan? You still there?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m thinking. I can call Jenny and ask her to scan the internet listings for Vegas, see if we can get a lead that way.”
“You want me to hit the track downtown when I get back, see if I can spot him. That’s one of his regular haunts, right?” said Ty.
Lock was aware that this wasn’t Ty's problem to solve. “You have time for that?”
“I’ll make the time. This is kind of personal for me too now.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well, if you want the truth, this whole thing’s been a bit of a gut check for me.”
“How come?” asked Lock.
“Dude, I’m like everyone else. You hear the word pimp, and you think one thing. You hear the word sex trafficker, you think something else. But they’re basically the same damn thing.”
Lock knew exactly what he was saying. Pimping had become part of American culture, the word was engrained in the vernacular. Rappers rapped about it. Movies were made about it. It was something that was sold as entertainment, with the idea that pimps were somehow business managers when the truth was, they were the worst kind of predators.
“You’re not the only one, brother. I didn’t know about any of this until I met Angie.”
“Okay, listen,” said Ty. “I’m going to grab some coffee, take a leak and drive back. I’ll drop Carmen’s car back to your place. If anything changes, I’ll give you a call.”
“Same,” said Lock. “I have some calls out to law enforcement in a couple of different places. I’ll call the cops in Vegas too. Give them a heads up.”
Lock’s phone lit up with another call. “I have to take this,” he told Ty.
“I’ll see you soon,” said Ty, hanging up, as Lock switched to the other call, the number withheld.
“Ryan Lock.”
No reply. There was someone there. He could hear the sound of traffic in the background.
“Hello?” said Lock.
The line went dead.
42
“You have to understand one thing about the pimping game, Andre,” said Hanger.
They were sitting in Andre’s car in a McDonalds parking lot. The car faced out to the gas station across the street.
Andre looked at him, nervous. “What’s that?”
“You can never let the hoes run the game. Not ever. Once that happens, it’s over,” said Hanger, his fingers miming an explosion.
This was the first time they had seen each other since Andre had passed Kristin over and all hell had broken loose. Hanger knew that Andre had given up information. That meant one thing. Andre owed him.
“Yeah, I feel you,” said Andre.
“I know you do,” said Hanger, digging into his jacket and pulling out a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it in blue pen.
It had taken some time to get the address. There had been a lot of phone calls. At first, he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Then he’d found a girl who was looking to get back into the life. She was strung out, in need of a fix. In return for Hanger making sure the sickness stopped, she had given it up. Junkie were like that. They’d do anything, betray anyone, as long as they could feel okay again.
Andre looked at the scrap of paper.
“What you want me to do?” he asked Hanger.
“We’ll get to that,” said Hanger, a smile creeping over his face.
43
The smell of gasoline thick in the car, Andre pulled over and made a final check of the address. Yup, this was it.
He switched off the engine and cracked the front windows, partly to clear the smell and also because a running engine or fogged up windows got you noticed. Not that anyone was around. It was two in the morning and the street was empty.
Andre sat there for a moment. He looked at the address again. He looked at the gas canister sitting on the passenger seat.
Part of him wanted to drive home, go to bed and give Hanger some kind of excuse, like he was about to do it, but the cops drove by. The problem was that Hanger would never believe him. He’d know he was lying and that he’d punked out.
If Hanger put the word out, then Andre’s life wouldn’t be worth living. There was nothing worse on the streets than a snitch. Okay, he may not have spoken to the cops, but it was a distinction without a difference.
A car drove past, its headlights sweeping across his windshield. He sunk down into his seat until it passed and looked across the street.
This was bad. Different level. Once it was set in motion, it would be out of his
control. All Hanger had told him was that the place was full of hoes and that the lady that ran it was behind all the bad news that had been coming their way.
He’d tried to persuade Hanger to go with something less drastic, but his mentor’s mind had been set.
“Burn it to the fucking ground,” he said.
Easy to say, thought Andre, but harder to do.
His phone chimed. He answered it.
“Yeah.”
“What you waiting for?”
The question spooked him. Was Hanger watching him? Was he here?
He looked up and down the street. He couldn’t see Hanger’s BMW. Nor could he see anyone else sitting in their car. That didn’t mean too much. Hanger could be like a ghost, appearing and then evaporating seemingly at will.
“Someone just drove by,” said Andre.
“Yeah, that was me,” said Hanger. “Now go take care of business. If I come back and you’re still sitting there, it’s not going to end well for you.”
Andre popped his door. “I’m doing it, don’t worry.”
“You’d better be.”
Andre pulled his hood up over his face and speed walked across the street holding a jerrican full of gasoline. When he got to the building, he skirted around the front and walked down to the side. He climbed the padlocked gate, careful not to spill anything from the can.
Jumping down, he jacked up his ankle. He cursed as a security light snapped on, bathing him in light.
Angry that he’d hurt himself, he swore and kept moving, keeping his head down so that even if he was caught on camera, his face wouldn’t be clear. It wasn’t like this was an insurance job where someone wanted to hide the fact that they’d set a fire.
At the rear of the building, he found what he was looking for. A big stack of cardboard boxes next to the recycling. He set the can down and hauled the cardboard over to the back door.