Brice ran his fingers over the cold steel of the shiny silver .45-caliber Desert Eagle special. Pop had come through big time. The fact that he knew how to shoot it properly made him feel not just powerful, but invincible. Brice was well aware that in the streets, shooters always cocked their guns to the side like they were playing cowboys and Indians, which almost always assured a missed shot. Being trained up, Brice knew how to use his sights to hit the center mass; after all, he was a five-ring expert marksman.
“You get me inside and then you get the fuck outta dodge, you hear me?” Brice whispered to Casey. She shook her head up and down. She really wanted to see Jordan suffer, but she knew this was risky at best.
“It’s me, Dave . . . Casey,” she said into the intercom system. Brice stood off to the side. His police training told him that he was being stupid. He walked into possible danger like a fool with no kind of backup . . . a one-man army. It was too late to back down; too much was at stake.
When Dave pulled back the doors, Casey smiled and stepped aside. Brice rounded the corner and pounced on the man so fast, Dave let out several farts in rapid succession.
“Where the fuck is he?” Brice growled, his hot breath blowing on Dave’s face.
“Who ya lookin’ for?” Dave croaked out.
“Jordan, muthafucka, you know who!” Brice said in a low harsh whisper. He didn’t want to give anyone else in the suite a chance to come out with weapons blazing.
“Ask Mikey . . . I don’t know,” Dave said. Brice released him with a shove and stepped over his body. He stormed down a long hallway toward the sounds at the back of the suite. Brice used his raid boots to kick the door open. He was startled by a high-pitched scream from a woman. He spotted a fat white man hovering over a bed with a camera. The man’s eyes were stretched so wide he looked almost like a cartoon.
“Where the fuck is that coward Jordan Bleu?” Brice yelled out, rushing toward the director.
“He left, man. I swear . . . he ain’t here. Said something about leaving town. He called the cop guy who gets the girls for him. I don’t know, man. . . .” Mikey stuttered. He had already dropped the camera and put his hands up in front of him as if they could shield him from the big-ass gun Brice aimed at his fat tits.
“What? A cop?” Brice asked.
“Yeah, man. Jordan got girls on the street and he gets girls for underground movies from this white guy . . . a cop,” Mikey blabbed, his words rolling off his tongue so fast he couldn’t even get them out right.
“Where does he go?” Brice asked.
“Man, I don’t know, I swear,” Mikey pleaded. Brice walked over to him and hit him on the back of the neck with the butt of the gun. Mikey screamed out. “Now, where does he go to get the girls?” Brice asked calmly.
“All I got is the cell phone number . . . I swear, man . . . that’s all I got,” Mikey moaned, his fat girth spilled over the floor like a beached whale. He directed Brice to his desk. There was a piece of paper there with a number and no name. “Jordan had written that down and forgot it there–that’s the new number the man gave him,” Mikey explained.
Brice folded the paper into his pocket. He looked at the three girls sitting naked, cowering in a corner. “How old are these fuckin’ girls?” Brice asked, coming back to stand over Mikey with the gun aimed at Mikey’s head.
“They told me they were eighteen,” Mikey whined, sounding like a straight bitch.
“Everybody get dressed and get out of here!” Brice yelled to the girls. Their faces were filled with horror. They scrambled around like hens running from the slaughter house.
“If you contact Jordan and tell him I was here, I will kill you myself,” Brice threatened Mikey before he took off.
Brice’s hands trembled as he dialed Detective Page’s number. He exhaled when Page picked up. “I need you to do a reverse look-up on a number,” Brice said, his voice shaky. Detective Page agreed and told Brice he would call him back. When the phone rang, Brice fumbled with it, his nerves on edge. The number returned no information on the public Internet. Brice was going to have to call in a favor to the Feds. “Fuck!” he screamed after hanging up with the Detective.
Brice called an F.B.I. agent he had met while standing patrol on a dignitary homicide. Special Agent Lisa Striker was a hot-ass black female agent who had taken a liking to Brice. Brice thought she was so damn beautiful–she reminded him of Nia Long, who he’d been in love with since Boyz n the Hood.
After a few dates, Brice and Lisa learned that two type-A law enforcement personalities weren’t so good together, as they were always competing. Agent Striker had called recently when she’d heard about his sister. She had told Brice she would’ve loved to get in on the search for Ciara, but the Bureau had prevented Striker from getting involved since the NYPD had classified the case as a runaway.
When Agent Striker picked up the line, Brice gave her the number. She told him she would go into the Bureau’s databases and get right back to him. She called back within minutes.
“I hope you’re sitting down,” she told Brice. “The name is listed as unknown . . . but the billing address came up. When I ran the billing address, it came back to Anthony and Carmelita D’Guilio. When I ran Anthony D’Guilio to match the address, he came up as a NYPD detective!” Agent Striker announced.
Brice thought his heart would thunder out of his chest. “Muthafucka! Muthafucka!” Brice screamed so loud his throat itched.
“Brice . . . what is it?” she asked, shocked by his outburst.
“I want you to meet me. I may have stumbled onto a human trafficking ring that has my sister,” Brice announced. Renegade suspended cop or not, he knew this was going to be an all-out operation.
D’Guilio rushed out of the precinct when he received the call. His blood was boiling inside. “How stupid could he be?” D’Guilio mumbled. He was so caught up in thought that he didn’t notice the new tail on his back.
“Why the fuck did you bring her here?” D’Guilio barked, spit spewing from his face.
“I need to get rid of her and get the fuck out of here,” Jordan said, moving around like he was being bitten by little bugs.
“Not here! Not with all these girls right in the next room!” D’Guilio screamed. “The Russians will have my fuckin’ head on a platter,” he said, pounding his right fist into his left hand.
“This is the only place I could go. I need to leave her here where she can be guarded until I can figure something out,” Jordan said weakly, pacing now.
“What you need to do is let her go home and you get the fuck outta dodge. Never to mention my name, never to mention this place, never to fuckin’ bring your black ass back again,” D’Guilio said, pointing in Jordan’s face. “You ain’t man enough to put a fuckin’ end to this because she is a cop’s fuckin’ sister? You would risk losing everything?” D’Guilio asked, lifting his personal weapon from his shoulder rig. Jordan’s world started closing in on him. He was taken back to the apartment with C-Lo and the girl. He started seeing visions of the little dead girl from the East New York apartment.
“You need to do what you gotta do. They think she is a runaway anyway,” D’Guilio said. “I’d rather sacrifice one girl than have the fuckin’ Russian mafia come after me and my entire family because I fucked with a dickhead like you,” he spat. He stormed over to where Ciara sat huddled and crying in a corner.
“Please, I just want to go home,” she begged.
“Your brother is a fuckin’ troublemaker. He is such a hero, but he couldn’t save you,” D’Guilio raised his weapon over her.
“No! Pa-leese!” she screamed, throwing her hands up in defense. Three shots rang into the air, followed by silence.
Brice’s feet had been moving at the speed of light when the shots were fired. His hands shook uncontrollably and sweat dripped from every pore in his body. Detective D’Guilio’s body lurched forward, falling just inches from Ciara.
Ciara cried out, covering her face with her hands.
>
“Be careful, the other one has a gun too!” Special Agent Striker screamed, her gun still smoking at the tip.
“Stay there, Ciara! Drop your fuckin’ weapon!” Brice screamed as Jordan leveled his weapon at him. They both pointed at each other, looking like two cowboys at a showdown.
“I’m not going out like this, son. Not over no bitch,” Jordan said, holding his position. Brice could hear his own breath in his ears.
“We just both gonna have to die,” Jordan kept talking shit, but was visibly shaking like a frostbite victim.
“Well, prepare to die, cowboy,” Brice stated calmly.
“Fuck you!” Jordan screamed out, cocking his gun to the side. Brice seized his moment and shot Jordan in the shoulder of his shooting hand. Jordan fell backward, gun flying from his hand.
Brice didn’t want him dead. Not yet anyway. Before Brice could reach him, he heard the thunder of feet. When Brice turned around there were a swarm of law enforcement, some NYPD and some F.B.I. Agent Striker had Ciara and was trying to console her.
“Simp . . . you all right?” Detective Page asked, racing over to Brice while the backup stormed Jordan like he had a bomb strapped to him.
“I’m fine,” Brice said, dropping his illegal gun on the floor. He knew it would disappear. He ran over to his sister and they hugged so tightly he thought she would stop breathing.
“I’m sorry I failed you,” Brice cried into her hair.
“We got an ambulance waiting for her,” Detective Page said.
“I guess you back in the spotlight, Simp,” Detective Page said, patting Brice on the back.
“Nah. You can keep the lousy fifteen minutes of fame . . . the fuckin’ price is too high,” Brice replied, holding on to his sister and promising to never let her go.
“The porn industry is a one hundred billion dollar–a year business. A salacious and secretive world that attracts millions of men and women each day. In a world where sex sells, we often wonder about the stars of these oftentimes debasing movies. Tonight on 50 Minuteswe turn the tables on a industry that oftentimes portrays itself as a glamorous world where women love to be the object of men, as we sit down with two former self-proclaimed porn queens from two very different walks of life, but who ended up on the same dark path. Join us tonight as we get firsthand stories of women who bargained their bodies for fame and fortune on this segment, “Memoirs of a Porn Queen.”
The introduction itself made Dominique’s skin crawl. She wanted to back out of the interview, but she had already made it this far. Casey wrung her hands together in her lap as the show’s producers strung small microphones to the back of her pants and on her jacket lapel. Casey took her seat next to Dominique on a soft black leather sofa. Diane Saltzer would be sitting in an armless, paisley chair across from them.
They were both prepped with makeup as they watched Ms. Saltzer stroll onto the set and take her seat. Casey thought she looked much younger in person. The director’s cue clicked and Casey watched the red digital lights on the wooden structure count down. They were on.
“Two girls, two different races, same industry, nearly the same outcome,” Diane Saltzer said to them. Dominique shook her head up and down. Casey had one of her infamous silly grins on her face.
“Dominique, lets start with you,” Ms. Saltzer began. “You grew up in Brooklyn, New York, barely educated, and admitted to being on the streets selling your body since you were a teenager,” she continued.
“Ahem, yes,” Dominique said, her response barely audible.
“How do you make the transition from the streets into the world of pornography?” Ms. Saltzer inquired.
“It’s not that hard when you don’t know anything else. When you’ve been selling sex before you ever shopped for your own underwear. When you believe you are not worthy of being loved and when you have never been given any alternatives,” Dominique told her.
“Is it easier to be famous for selling sex?” Diane Saltzer asked.
“It’s never easy to sell sex. And it’s a steep price to pay for fame,” Dominique replied.
Diane Saltzer seemed shocked at Dominique’s revelations about her childhood, tsking here and there as she relayed some of her more painful memories. Then she turned her attention to Casey.
“How do you go from being the daughter of a Mormon elder to the self-proclaimed Queen of Porn?”
Casey looked at her seriously. The lights that 50 Minutes had set up around her house were hurting her eyes. “I don’t think about my past. At the time, that was the life for me. I grew up thinking men were the most important people on the planet and that women should do as they were told. That is what growing up as the daughter of an FLDS elder taught me,” Casey answered, shifting in her chair as she wrung her fingers together.
“Well, how does your religion translate into being a world-renowned queen of the sex industry?” Diane Saltzer asked. She wasn’t letting Casey off that easily.
“Religion is a hoax. You know what religion did for me? It allowed men to abuse me and use me. Whether you get paid for sex or you’re forced into it . . . in my book sex is just sex,” Casey said angrily.
“You never think about how much your life has changed? You never think about your family?” Ms. Saltzer pressed as the cameras panned to a picture of Casey’s mother, father and four of her siblings.
Casey averted her eyes from the pictures. A golf ball–sized lump was growing in her throat and she willed herself not to cry. “I am human and I think of them often. I could never go back there because of the consequences. I guess that’s the price of fame,” Casey continued.
“Sex with hundreds of men and even women for money . . . How did that make both of you feel?” Ms. Saltzer asked pointedly, a look of sympathy contorting her face.
“It’s what we had to do. Have you ever been homeless with no education and taught to believe sex was your only way of survival?” Dominique posed the rhetorical question.
“But there are programs for girls in situations like yours. How many times did either of you really try to get out of the business?” Ms. Saltzer asked. That question took Dominique’s breath away, like someone had just punched her in the diaphragm. It hit Casey equally as hard. She remembered running so hard and fast her feet felt like they were bleeding. She could hear him calling after her. You ain’t shit! You can’t leave me, I made you! Where you gonna go? Back to the compound? An eerie silence pierced the room.
“You both ended up on drugs before leaving the business, correct?” Ms. Saltzer asked.
“That’s what the sex business can do to you if you’re in it for the wrong reasons,” Dominique said, looking for validation from Casey.
“Casey, you were quite famous for a while, but Dominique didn’t have the same good fortune, if it could be referred to as such. Why not?” Ms. Saltzer asked, looking from one to the other.
“Just put it this way: the world only sees race differences when they look at us. Racism exists even in the porn business. But no one can take away the fact that although different . . . we grew up exactly the same. The same pain, the same struggles and ultimately we both paid the same price,” Dominique answered.
Diane Saltzer seemed to be momentarily speechless. Just like everyone else watching, she probably never considered the human side of the women who sell sex–their emotional pain and struggle.
“Are both of you out of the business?” she asked, trying to break the awkwardness.
Dominique and Casey looked at each other and turned back to her with a solid, “Yes.”
“Well, tell us about your experience with leaving the business. How do you just walk away from the money, the attention of millions of men . . . just the fame in general?” Ms. Saltzer asked.
Leaving the business had probably been the hardest part for them both.
Chapter Fourteen
Breaking Free
Los Angeles, California
“Ain’t nobody ever gonna love you. You was tainted from conception
because your mother was a whore! You think a man could love you when your daddy ain’t give a fuck about you? Who else you got but me? Who else gonna want a throw-away like you? Awilda spewed hatred in Dominique’s face, brainwashing her into submission once again.
“Mommy,” Dominique whispered, delirious and barely able to catch her breath. She could see her mother’s face so clearly, it was like she was standing right in front of her.
“Bitch! I ain’t ya mama!” Jordan screamed, slamming his huge fist into her face again. She felt the bones in her cheek shatter under her skin and blood spurted from her nose like a turned-over fire hydrant. Dominique felt like someone had hit her in the head with a solid wood baseball bat. Stabs of pain emanated from her nose into her cranium. A scream was stuck somewhere between her diaphragm and her throat. The next hit immediately brought her back to reality, and her mother’s face and her aunt’s vicious voice faded from her ears.
“I’ll teach you,” Jordan said in an eerily calm voice as he dragged her across the hot gravel. As soon as Dominique hit the ground, the clouds parted and the sun beamed straight down on her body like a solar spotlight. She was the star of this ass-whooping show. God was trying to tell her something.
Mr. Wonderful had set her up. He had lured her to his studio with a promise to put her in his newest release, but it had all been a ploy concocted by the very man she had heisted three months ago.
“Casey, help me!” Dominique screamed, as Jordan wound his hands deeper into her hair. Casey just stood there with a simple-looking smile on her face. She was too high to help and too afraid of this side of Jordan to risk getting in the middle.
“She can’t help you. You wanted to be a porn star, right?” Jordan growled, pulling Dominique’s gaunt skeletal frame upright.
“Jordan, please! I will pay you back!” Dominique pleaded. She was well aware of why she was taking this ass whooping.
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