As her knotted muscles relaxed, the accumulated stress and tension of the last five days began to drain away and Gianna began to relax. The pleasure of the moment gradually began to replace the pain brought on by the senseless slaughter of women walking to church. She was safe and secure, surrounded by the familiar: Mimi straddling her, Gianna sandwiched between her knees as she knelt over her, massaging the lightly sweet almond oil into her skin. She gratefully allowed all the ugliness of hatred to drain away and readied herself for the pleasure she knew was coming: Mimi’s strong hands would slide off her shoulders and beneath her to caress her breasts before returning to the long muscles of her back with the strength and pressure needed to untangle the knots there. That would be painful, yes, but it was a necessary prelude to the downward movement of those wonderfully strong hands to massage her glutes, the only muscles that were not knotted and painful. Gianna waited for the hands to slide off her butt, down her thighs, to more gently but still intensely massage and caress her clit . . .
“Wake up, Gianna! Wake up, now! You’re having a nightmare!” The light was on and Mimi was shaking her awake, rubbing her face and her arms.
“What is it?” Gianna groggily asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You were crying out in your sleep.”
“Really? What was I saying?”
“You were talking to Cassie,” Mimi said. “You kept saying no, Cassie, no Cassie.” Mimi held her close, massaging, gently now, her neck and shoulders and back. “Lie back down and go back to sleep. I’ll hold you.”
Because she’d not fully awakened, drifting back to sleep wasn’t difficult, but the thought, the memory she took with her was Cassie’s declaration of love as she died. That’s what Gianna had been saying “no” to. Because she didn’t want Cassie to have had those feelings, and because she couldn’t believe that she, Gianna, the Boss, hadn’t been aware that Cassie had them. And she should have been.
Mimi’s meeting with Dee in her office at the Snatch was quick. What Dee wanted her to see was at the warehouse she’d recently bought, so they left almost immediately, treating Mimi to a first: a ride in a Bentley. She tried to be cool about it, to act as if it were no big deal. She couldn’t pull it off. “This is some car, Miss Phillips.”
Dee gave a slight smile of thanks, then said, “That Audi convertible is no rattletrap.”
It certainly was not! After Mimi’s classic Karmann Ghia convertible was stolen and wrecked and she accepted that she’d have to buy a new car, Gianna had pushed her in the direction of the Audi; she’d never have considered it on her own. She had realized why as she stood in the showroom, mouth agape in full-blown sticker shock. “Are you nuts?!” she practically yelled at Gianna, who laughed and told Mimi they’d be sharing the cost of the car since they’d be sharing the car. Driving a police department-issued Ford wasn’t Gianna’s idea of a driving good time.
Mimi was enjoying the elegance of the Bentley’s interior, but she was also keeping one eye on where they were going and was not exactly surprised when Dee turned off a major thoroughfare into an industrial area of low-rise warehouses. But there was nothing run-down or derelict about the area, and there certainly was nothing run-down or derelict about the building they stopped before when Dee made a smooth, tight U-turn.
“We’re entering the front of the building,” Dee said. “There’s also a back entrance with loading docks,” she said as she pushed a button on a remote and the metal door of the building rode up smoothly and quietly. Inside, it was a warehouse—cinderblock and concrete, cool and quiet, but clean enough to eat off the floors. A row of stainless steel industrial refrigerators lined one wall, pallets of every kind of soft drink lined another. Mimi followed Dee to the middle of the room and an elevator, which opened immediately when she punched a button. Like the front gate, the elevator door opened and closed smoothly, quietly and quickly, and the box rose one floor the same way.
The back half of the second floor was filled with furniture—office furniture, home furnishings, patio and outdoor furniture—all of it new. The lights that came on automatically when they stepped off the elevator illuminated the entire floor. The front of the space was empty, and floor-to-ceiling windows made it almost too bright. Dee walked over to the wall of windows.
Mimi followed and looked out at another building that shared a parking lot with this building but was not connected to it. “Is that one yours, too?”
Dee shook her head. “That belongs to what I believe is a sex-trafficking operation.” Before Mimi could formulate a response, a dark blue panel van pulled into the parking lot. Both driver and passenger got out, and the passenger slid open the side door, reached inside, and pulled out three young women—girls, really. They stumbled, seemingly unable to stand upright. The two men push-pulled them to the door where one of the men pushed a button. The door opened almost immediately. The girls were dragged inside and the door closed.
Mimi still struggled to find words. “That’s . . . I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”
“Men come at night,” Dee said. “Lots of men. I stood here in the dark one night. I turned out the lights, and I stood at this window and watched cars of men come and go. Three times one of the men left with a girl, a really young girl. Children, really. I’ve done some reading and research. I believe they’re selling some of the girls and just prostituting the others.”
Mimi couldn’t talk. She could barely breathe. She was still looking out of the window, but in her mind she was feeling the impact of Dee’s words: A version of the international sex-trafficking problem was playing out not a hundred feet away, and it was international because the girls she saw forced into the building across the parking lot were all Asian. “I’m speechless.”
“I wanted to tell the lieutenant, but with all that’s been going on with her . . . will you tell her about this?” Dee asked. “Please. Somebody has to do something.” And there was only one somebody who could do something.
“Chief.” Gianna said the word, and he stopped the pacing and the coin jiggling. He’d known her long enough and well enough to register that her tone of voice in that one word meant that she had changed the subject to something much more serious. More serious than hate crimes? To her? He came toward her, but instead of going to sit behind his massive, highly-polished desk he sat beside her in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
“What is it, Maglione?” He listened intently and without interruption as she told him what Mimi had told her. When she stopped talking, he asked, “Is this the Dee Phillips that owns that nightclub in Midtown and every other building in D.C. not owned by the federal government?”
She almost smiled at that. She and her team had met the Phillips sisters, Delores and Darlene, several months earlier when a young woman was murdered while walking to the train station after leaving the Snatch, the women’s nightclub they owned. The murder was a hate crime committed by the victim’s former brother-in-law who hated her and the fact that she was a lesbian. During the course of the investigation the HCU team had learned that the Phillips sisters and everyone related to them had a business degree and owned property and businesses all over D.C. “She just recently bought this warehouse and witnessed what she believes to be the sex trafficking of young girls from her window overlooking the parking lot of the adjacent warehouse.”
“And Patterson is sure about what she saw from that window?” The Chief had known Mimi longer and better than he knew Gianna, and he knew that she did not make mistakes, and Gianna knew that he knew how scrupulous and meticulous Mimi was about her facts. No alternative facts and fake, pseudo news for her. Still, he had to ask.
She had done the same thing, had asked Mimi if she was certain about what she saw, and Mimi had been still too shocked, too traumatized to get pissed off. “She called all of her contacts and sources in the federal government—at the State Department, at Justice, at the FBI, at the U.S. Attorney’s, at the Attorney General’s, at U.S. AID—everywhere somebody should be concerned about c
hild sex trafficking in the nation’s capital.” Gianna stopped talking for a moment as she recalled the horrified sound of Mimi’s voice: Nobody that I knew still worked in any of those offices. I couldn’t find anybody who was interested in or cared about the issue. And worse than that, Gianna. In half the offices I called, nobody answered the phone. She told the Chief all of this and watched the expressions wander across his face and in his eyes: shock, disbelief, horror, disgust, and finally, anger.
He got up and began to pace again, but there was no jiggling of the change in his pockets. “They actually think they can do this kinda thing and get away with it. Like those fools who rode in here and shot up those women! They think they’ve gotten a free pass!” With every sentence his voice went up a few decibels until he was shouting. His aide opened the door, hand on his weapon, to see if his boss was in danger. He quickly closed it when he saw that his boss was pacing and that Lieutenant Maglione was sitting still as a statue. “They think a great America means they can come here and do what they damn well please. Well, not in my town, and it’s been my town for a lot longer than it’s been his, and it’ll be mine when his large ass and nappy head depart.”
Gianna almost smiled again. Large ass and nappy head indeed. She couldn’t wait to share that with Mimi. “So . . . we’re going to do something, Chief?”
He nodded and began the coin jiggling. “Oh, yes! We’re definitely going to do something. I just don’t know what or how since we can’t count on any help or support from the feds these days. And that may be a good thing in the long run.” He said the last sentence almost under his breath and with a definite edge to his tone. Gianna knew all she could do was wait—and hope he included her in his plan.
Meanwhile, a dozen blocks uptown from police headquarters, another boss was having a similar reaction to the news of the sex trafficking of young girls in the heart of the nation’s capital.
Tyler looked at Mimi like she was handling snakes and speaking in tongues. He couldn’t find words, either. They were looking at each other, speechless, until Tyler finally found his voice. “Child sex trafficking in the middle of the nation’s capital, Patterson?! That can’t be true! I hope to hell that’s not true!” But he knew that if she said it, then it was true, and they looked stunned, shocked, and a little bit scared—not normal expressions for either of them.
“Are you guys all right?” Joe Zemekis asked, looking from one to the other of them. They hadn’t seen him approach and hadn’t smoothed their facial expressions back to something resembling normal. “We’re still assigned to you, right, Tyler? Me and Patterson?” Then he cast a worried frown at Mimi. “You’re all right with that, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine with it, Joe. In fact, I’m looking forward to it.”
“OK,” he said warily. “We still doing lunch? I hope so ’cause I’m starving.”
Tyler stood up, nodded. “Yeah, but we’re seeing Todd first. He wants to make sure we’re all on the same page—his words, not mine.” And he led the way the few steps to the Exec’s office. He saw them approach and waved them in, telling Tyler to leave the door open.
Todd led them to the round conference table and waved them into chairs. Copies of Mimi’s Eastern Shore story were laid out like place settings, and their boss got right to the point. He liked how Mimi and Joe complemented each other, how their stories fed and strengthened and informed each other, and he wanted more of it. “Read these stories, Zemekis, and find me an angle that Patterson didn’t cover and tell me how you’d do it. By the close of business.”
Tyler got up first and headed for the door. Mimi and Joe followed. “Guess we’ll do lunch tomorrow,” he said, returning to his own desk, leaving the two reporters to cross the newsroom to their desks, stomachs growling with every step. “I don’t write well hungry,” Joe said, “and I’m starving!”
Mimi grabbed the menu of the Chinese restaurant from the top drawer of her desk and passed it to Joe, who waved it away. Like her, he had his favorites and she called to place their orders. Everybody in the restaurant knew her voice and her order so she ordered Joe’s Mongolian Beef, extra spicy, then hung up the phone. It rang immediately. She answered and initially heard nothing, then a muffled sob. She waited for the person, who she was certain was a woman, to collect herself.
“Miss Patterson,” the caller finally managed before a heaving sob stopped her words. Then the woman was hyperventilating.
“Miss?” Mimi said. “Ma’am!” she said authoritatively. “Take a deep breath right now and hold it! Right now! Take a deep breath and hold it!” She waited, then said, “Now release the breath and inhale deeply again. Right now! Deep breath in, hold it for a five count, release it. Do it again!” Mimi guided the woman through five deep-breathing exercises with Joe Zemekis standing beside her desk, watching intently.
“I’m OK now. Thank you, and I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize . . . what is your name, please?”
“Virginia Barrett. Virgie,” she said, and Mimi wrote it so Joe could see.
“Why did you call me, Ms. Barrett? Virgie?”
Virgie Barrett inhaled deeply, held the breath for five seconds, released it. “You probably don’t remember her, but you interviewed my sister when you were writing those stories about the Doms and Ags. She said you write about everything, not just gay people. Is that right? Because I’m not gay. Does that matter?”
“No, Ms. Barrett, it does not matter. Your sister is correct. I write about everything and everybody. What do you want to tell me?” And for the second time in two days what Mimi heard left her speechless.
Joe had pulled up a chair, taken out his notebook, and was taking notes, writing down things that Mimi repeated out loud, even though she, too, was taking notes. Even though she’d attached a recording device to the phone so she wouldn’t forget or omit anything. She was silent for a long moment after Virgie Barrett stopped talking.
“Miss Patterson? Are you still there?”
“I’m still here. We need to meet in person. I can come to your home—”
“No!” Virgie Barrett cut her off quickly and sharply. “You can’t go there!”
“All right. Where?”
“The hospital. I saw you there every day when those Muslim women were murdered. I knew it was you because my sister told me what you look like. I work there.”
“Today. This afternoon. Tell me where and what time.” Mimi had no intention of giving Virginia Barrett time to change her mind about talking to a reporter. She wrote down the time and place, hung up the phone, and locked eyes with Joe Zemekis.
“Holy shit!” he whispered.
“And you didn’t even hear the whole thing,” Mimi whispered back, disconnecting her recording device from the telephone handset and standing up. “Let’s go find Tyler.”
“And commandeer an office,” Joe said darkly. “We can’t let anybody hear any of this until we get it nailed down all nice and neat. Make sure there aren’t any alternative facts lurking in there.”
Tyler watched them approach his desk and thought for at least the one-millionth time how lucky he was to have them assigned to him rather than that twerp, Ian Williams. Then he read their faces—Mimi’s he knew well, Joe’s he was just learning—but what he saw caused him to hang up the phone and save and close the document he was reading on the computer screen. Tyler always did at least two things at once. When he focused on a single thing—in this case, Joe and Mimi and whatever they were coming to tell him—everyone who knew him and his work habits knew he was serious indeed.
“We need to talk,” Mimi began.
“Behind a door that closes and maybe even locks,” Joe added.
Tyler gave him a look and stood up. “The Exec’s in meetings at the top. We’ll use his office,” he said, and led them into the executive editor’s office, the one they’d just left, and closed the door. None of them really wanted to know what he was meeting about “at the top,” in the publisher’s office on the top f
loor of the building. “What’s up?” Tyler asked. “And do I really need to lock the door?”
Mimi took a deep breath and held it briefly, much as she’d instructed Virginia Barrett to do. “I just got a call from a woman—”
“A source?” Tyler asked.
“No, not a source, a stranger,” Mimi snapped, “and quit interrupting me, Tyler! I’m trying to keep this thing organized in my brain.”
Tyler raised his palms in apology, removed his glasses and polished them on his tie, exposing bright green eyes, the best feature in an otherwise unmemorable face. Other than his brain, which couldn’t be seen on visual inspection. “I’m listening. Not a source.”
“Right. Virginia Barrett is her name. She’s a dietician/nutritionist at University Medical. Her sister told her to call me because I could be trusted. I interviewed the sister during the course of the Doms and Ags stories. Didn’t know her before then, have had no contact since. OK?”
Both Tyler and Joe nodded, and Joe made a note to himself to reread the Doms/Ags stories.
“Virgie, as she’s called, lives with her children in an apartment complex called Sunset View. There are twelve units in three buildings, all of them two- and three-bedroom units: rare for D.C. as you know, so no surprise that the residents have lived there for a while. The residents are all women and children because, one by one, all the men either have died, been incarcerated, or just left. Virgie’s husband and three of the other men were killed in a car crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike last winter coming back from a Steelers game. More about that later. But here’s where it gets—I don’t know what to call it—Virgie calls it sick. A group of D.C. cops in the last two months have invaded—Virgie’s word again—the complex. Four of them. They come most nights. She says they act like a gang, like they’re in charge, like the apartment complex is their clubhouse. Two nights ago, one of them raped one of the women—”
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