Human Traffic

by Patrick Logan

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here. Listen, I may have changed my mind about this. I think I’m going to lend a hand, look into how these girls made it from Colombia all the way to New York.”

  Screech chewed to the inside of his cheek. Even though he had gone to the man for help, he wasn’t sure he was keen on Beckett getting involved.

  When Beckett got involved, people ended up dead.

  As these thoughts ran through Screech’s head, he nervously glanced up at the rearview mirror only to see his own scared face staring back.

  “Screech?”

  “Yeah, look, Beckett, I don’t know if it’s the best—”

  “I can do things that Drake can’t,” Beckett said sharply. “I can go to places he’s not willing to go.”

  Screech cleared his throat. He felt guilty for not doing anything about the dope on the yacht, and he wanted nothing more than to extract revenge for what happened to Mandy and the other girls.

  But this… did anyone deserve what Beckett was proposing?

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said glumly.

  Chapter 28

  “I’m only here to ask you a few questions, that’s it. Now please, put the Taser down.”

  Veronica sneered.

  “Last time you came here, you dragged my ass out in handcuffs wearing a Frozen nightie. Paraded me around like I was a… well, you know.”

  Veronica crackled the Taser as she spoke, and Drake continued to step backward toward the stairs. His eyes darted from her angry face to the angrier Taser leads.

  “Look, I’m not even a cop anymore. I haven’t been a cop for a long time now. In fact, I’m actually wanted by the cops.”

  Veronica’s brow furrowed.

  “Maybe I should give them a call then, tell them to come pick your ass up. Add harassment to whatever charges they want you for.”

  Drake started to reach behind him for the envelope that Screech had handed him in the car.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Veronica snapped, leading with the Taser.

  Drake had been tased twice prior in his life: once by accident by a rookie police officer and the other by a drug dealer who’d gotten the jump on him. These incidents had been some of the most excruciating of his entire life. It felt as if his entire body was on fire, but instead of stopping, dropping, and rolling, the only he could do was clench his jaw together. In fact, his entire body had seized, and his brain felt as if someone had dumped kerosene in one ear and tossed a lit flare into the other.

  Drake never wanted to feel that sort of pain again. It made his current torment feel like a hangnail by comparison.

  “I’ve got a package for you, Veronica. Cash.”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  Drake started to turn.

  “You may not need it, but I bet you want it. I remember Raul coming to you with one just like this. And unlike what he asked of you, all I have are a few questions.”

  Drake untucked his shirt, showing Veronica that the only thing he was carrying was the envelope.

  “Turn around slowly, Drake,” she instructed.

  She remembers my name; that’s something, at least.

  When he had his back to her, Drake heard the crackle of the Taser and prepared himself as best he could for what was to come. But the tasing never came. Instead, he felt the envelope being yanked from the back of his pants.

  “Can I turn around now?” he asked, hands still in the air.

  “Slowly.”

  Veronica still held the Taser one hand, but used the other to open the envelope. Drake knew that the moment she saw the cash and started to do some mental math, he’d have a shot to wrench the Taser from her. Veronica was petite, but she was feisty, and he knew that if he didn’t take this opportunity now, he probably wouldn’t get another.

  But he did nothing; he wasn’t here to start a fight. Drake was here for information, something that required her cooperation.

  “It’s a little Light,” Veronica said as she closed the envelope.

  Drake shrugged.

  “It’s also four the morning and it’s all I could get. It may be light, but it’s plenty just to answer a few questions.”

  Veronica pressed her full lips together as she contemplated this. Eventually, she tilted her head toward the door.

  “A few questions, that’s it. And that’s only because you caught the bastard who killed Tom Smith.”

  Drake’s memory flashed back to when he’d apprehended Dr. Mark Kruk, followed by his most recent meeting with the man in the psychiatric facility. Something told him that these interactions with the doctor with the split personality weren’t going to be his last.

  Hands still raised, he walked slowly into the apartment. Veronica followed him inside and locked the door behind them.

  The room hadn’t changed much since he’d been here about a year ago. There was a large bed and one side of the room with four massive posts that extended the ceiling, and there was a makeup stand to the right. The only new addition, so far as he could tell, was on one wall: hanging from a pegboard was an array of sexual devices, everything from a paddle, to a two-headed black dildo approximately the size of a Louisville slugger, and numerous other things that Drake couldn’t even imagine uses for.

  “Sit on the corner of the bed,” she instructed. Drake did as he was instructed. Despite the fact that the room smelled faintly of lavender and was meticulously clean, he was still apprehensive about sitting on the bed given Veronica’s profession. But his discomfort played second fiddle to his fear of being tased. “Now, what do you want to know?”

  Drake started to reach into the pocket of his jeans when Veronica leaned forward with the Taser.

  “I’m just getting a piece of paper. Jesus, relax.”

  “People in my profession who relax contract chlamydia or end up dead.”

  Good point, Drake thought.

  He took out a piece of paper that Screech had printed from the Internet. It was a blown-up version of the icon on the business card: two female legs that ended in lacy shoes.

  “Have you ever seen this before,” he said, tossing the paper at the woman. Veronica kept her eyes locked on Drake as she unfolded it.

  “I hope this worth ten grand to you, because—” she stopped speaking the second her eyes darted at the paper. “Where did you get this? Where the hell did you get this?”

  Chapter 29

  It’s amazing what you can find online these days, Beckett thought with a smirk. He would have thought that a man like Bob Bumacher, given his profession — which was looking more and more like it consisted of mainly smuggling women and drugs — would have exercised some discretion when it came to posting online.

  As it turned out, a simple Internet search revealed not only Bob’s address, but his phone number as well.

  Beckett checked his watch. Normal people were sleeping at this hour.

  But he wasn’t normal.

  He hadn’t been normal since that day he’d come across Craig down the side of the burning house.

  After printing out Bob’s Manhattan address, Beckett pulled a leather case out of his desk. Inside, he laid a scalpel, a syringe loaded with Midazolam, and then, after a moment’s contemplation, he threw in the bag of heroin that Screech had given him.

  Satisfied, he stood and stretched his back. It had been a long day — shit, it had been a long week, and it wasn’t about to end. Not just yet, anyway.

  With a sigh, he made his way toward the door and peered back into his room one last time. Beckett knew that the risk of what he planned to do was even greater than when he’d dealt with Craig Sloan and Donnie DiMarco. Craig had been a known murderer and it had been easy to claim self-defense. Donnie had died on foreign land run by corrupt cops that had been paid off on his behalf.

  But Bob Bumacher — according to his ‘official’ profile at least — was a well-liked fitness trainer that would most definitely be missed. And a man of his immen
se size would pose a physical challenge as well.

  And yet, if Beckett found concrete proof that Bob knew about the girls, that he was responsible for bringing them over from Colombia, then he had to pay.

  Drake had his methods, his connections in the police force, his analytical process.

  Beckett, on the other hand, had a more rudimentary approach. An ancient one, but crude none-the-less.

  With a self-assured nod, he tucked the small leather case into his pocket and left his apartment.

  If Bob is responsible in any way for what happened to those girls, he will pay.

  Chapter 30

  “That… that’s a long story,” Drake said apprehensively. Veronica’s visceral reaction to the image on the page had been startling, to say the least. “I just want to know if you’ve heard of these guys, if you know where I can find them.”

  Veronica shook her head.

  “You don’t want anything to do with these guys, Drake. Trust me on that one.”

  Drake frowned.

  “Is it a strip club? Escort service?”

  Veronica shook her head.

  “No.”

  Drake threw his arms up in frustration.

  “I gave you the money, and you said you’d answer my questions. But you aren’t giving me shit? Who are these guys? What the fuck is this thing?”

  Veronica’s eyes narrowed and for the first time since Drake appeared at her door, she lowered the Taser to her lap.

  “It’s not an escort service, Drake. It’s an auction.”

  Drake’s jaw went slack.

  “An auction? They’re selling these girls?”

  Veronica nodded and set the Taser down on the chair beside her. She took a deep breath, then finally started opening up.

  “Before I started here, myself and a couple other street workers were approached by a man with this symbol on a business card. You see, Drake, on the street, every girl is your competition, but every girl is also your safety net. If something goes wrong, if a John goes too far or tries to get something he didn’t pay for, the best protection you have isn’t you guys — the police — but your fellow street worker. There’s power in numbers, Drake. But you need to earn the respect of your fellow workers before they’ll put their neck on the line for you.

  “There was this one girl, a young girl who had just come up from somewhere in the South, one of the Carolinas I believe, and she was as green as they come. Nancy, I think her name was. Anyways, on her first trick, she forgot to get the money upfront then didn’t get paid at all. Her second trick was even worse: the John choked her so bad that she had to wear a scarf in the middle of August to cover up the bruises. I tried to help her out, give her tips, but it was clear she wasn’t cut out for this job. So, when the man with the card approached us and asked about whether or not we wanted something safer, something more secure, Nancy jumped at the opportunity. Usually, this is the same shit that pimps tell you, but this man… he was different. He was no pimp, at least not in the traditional sense.

  “When you’ve been in the game for as long as I have, you just get feelings about people. And I felt that this was a very bad man. I tried to convince Nancy not to go with her, but she was naive and scared. That was the last time I saw her alive,” Veronica paused for a moment to catch her breath. “About a month later, one of the other workers found her body in a dumpster on 42nd Ave. Her throat had been slit ear to ear, but this was probably a mercy killing. Her body… Drake, it had been ravaged. I can’t even — just thinking about it now makes me want to cry or puke or something.”

  Veronica handed the print out back to Drake. Her hand was shaking so badly that it fluttered.

  “You don’t want to fuck with these guys, Drake. I hear that they’re mobbed up, but we’re not talking about Mafia. We’re talking about Colombians, cartels, that kind of shit.”

  Drake thought back to the gray-haired man outside the hanger.

  “Russians?”

  Veronica shrugged.

  “Who knows. These guys, these scumbags, they often work together.”

  “But these people… the ones that would buy these girls. What kind of person would do that?”

  Veronica chewed her lip and took a moment before answering. It was clear that she was remembering something from her own past.

  “What happens to a person when their entire self-worth is wrapped up in the things they can buy? What happens when they’ve already bought everything? New experiences don’t exist for these rich assholes. You know how it is, Drake. For these people, it’s not about money, it never was; money is simply a tool to gain power. After all, they don’t call it buy anything money,” she shook her head. “No, they call it fuck you money. When you have this much money, you can tell anyone you want to fuck off. They say it all the time to people like you and me, the police, the FBI, anybody, really.”

  Drake struggled to take all of this in. He wasn’t naïve, and he doubted the girls in the container were either. They were coming to New York to ply the sex trade, that much was obvious. But Mandy didn’t mention anything about being sold. Clearly, that was part of the fine print that they hadn’t been privy to.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Well, you see, Veronica, here’s the thing. I don’t give a fuck about the FBI or NYPD, either. What I give a fuck about is the fact that two dozen girls were found dead in a shipping container. They died because whoever was bringing them in from Colombia decided it would be a good idea to pack them so full of heroin that the baggies burst in their stomachs. Two birds and one stone, that sort of shit. That’s what I care about. I don’t give a fuck about mobsters or rich assholes. All I care about is making sure that what I saw in that container doesn’t happen again. That none of your friends are ever found in dumpsters with their throats slit. That’s what I care about. But I can’t do it on my own. I’ve got very few friends left, but even with their skills, they can’t find out where these assholes are hiding. That’s what I need you for.”

  Drake leaned forward and interlaced his fingers.

  “You think you can help me out, Veronica? Can you help me find these assholes and finally be the one to tell them to fuck off?”

  Chapter 31

  Beckett stared up at Bob Bumacher’s house through the windshield. It was a three-story brownstone that must’ve cost at least seven figures. Expensive digs for a personal trainer.

  He slipped the leather case of his pocket and rechecked the contents.

  I should just go home and get some sleep, he thought unexpectedly. When I wake up, I’ll call the police, let them know what Bob’s been up to. Let them deal with it.

  But something inside of Beckett had awoken. Something that gripped him, something that had a stranglehold on his soul.

  No, Bob Bumacher has to pay.

  And Beckett was the one who had come to collect his debt.

  With a deep breath, Beckett’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. He caught his reflection and was monetarily startled. It wasn’t his face that was shocking, even though he looked older and more tired than he remembered.

  It was his eyes — there was an emptiness to his eyes that was alarming.

  Following another deep breath, Beckett stepped out into the night. He went to the trunk first and put on two pairs of purple lab gloves before slipping a balaclava over his head and face. In addition to these items, he’d also picked up several rudimentary lock picking tools: a baseball bat and a crowbar. He opted for the latter.

  He walked briskly down the side of the house, looking for a way in. After about ten paces, he found it in the form of a window roughly six feet up. Hoisting himself up wouldn’t be a problem, but it would prove difficult to pry the window open from below without making a racket. Glancing around, he found a recycling bin against the wall and wheeled it over. He placed it beneath the window and, after confirming that it would hold his weight, climbed on top of it.

  A quick glance inside the house revealed that the window led into the k
itchen. Beckett jammed the crowbar between the window and frame and it popped open with ease.

  It probably hadn’t even been locked.

  After waiting to make sure that there was no stirring within the dark house, he put the crowbar on the counter inside and then hoisted himself through the opening.

  Once inside, he paused again and listened closely.

  Nothing, no sound. Not even an AC unit.