Quicksand

by Carolyn Baugh

  Wansbrough continued, “So, for this reason, we’re on our way to dawn prayer, ridiculously early, to see if we can find out something about her murder. And the imam?”

  “Hafsa apparently disliked him—‘hated him,’ according to her brother, although it’s unclear why. She had wanted to talk to him about something on the day she disappeared. Burton gave him a pretty negative report. Says he’s salafi.”

  “Salafi?”

  “Yeah, like people who are keen on getting back to what they think is the pure religion. Catch term for ultra-conservative.”

  John took a long sip of his coffee, studying her. Then he said, “So what are we going in with here? What’s our goal?”

  “We need to know what happened the last day Hafsa came here. We need to know who Hafsa’s friend Basheera is and where we can find her. We’re going to ask the imam how his lesson went that day, and we’re going to ask him for his help.”

  * * *

  Imam Anwar of the Unity Masjid was frowning at them.

  They had caught him in the hallway outside his shabby office, where he had headed after completion of the dawn prayer. He was shocked to see two visitors to the mosque that early, and his first reaction was to ask Nora to cover her hair. When they showed him their badges, and mentioned that they needed to ask him questions with regard to a crime, he was visibly disconcerted.

  “I’m afraid your partner needs to cover her hair,” the imam insisted, “It is very disrespectful…”

  “We’re not in the actual prayer area of the mosque, Shaykh Anwar,” an irritated Nora reminded him. “And I don’t think you’re grasping what’s going on here. We are investigating the murder of a young woman.”

  The imam swallowed audibly.

  John said, “Hafsa al-Tanukhi was a young woman who taught literacy here—right here in this very mosque. On a regular basis.”

  Shaykh Anwar’s face remained impassive as he entered his office and took his place behind his desk, gesturing at them to sit.

  John continued, “She was recently murdered, Shaykh Anwar. Are you saying you don’t know her?”

  The imam frowned deeply, thinking. “This is a terrible thing, but I do not think I have heard this name before. I cannot say for sure.”

  Nora felt anger bubbling in her stomach. She reached for the file and plunked the pictures of Hafsa’s corpse down on the desk in front of him. The picture she had taken from Hafsa’s home was clipped to the inside of the file folder.

  The imam’s gaze fell on the pictures, and his face wrinkled in disgust. “This is haram, you should not allow a Muslim woman to be exposed in this way.”

  “We didn’t expose her,” Nora retorted. “Her killer did.”

  The imam sighed. “This is a terrible crime, very sad. What did you say her name was again?”

  John Wansbrough leaned forward, tapping the desk with his index finger for emphasis. “We know for a fact that this young woman visited this mosque regularly. We also know that this mosque was the last place she was seen alive. I find it hard to believe that there are that many women teachers willing to volunteer their time here.”

  The imam shook his head. “None of this is anything more than nonsense to me. How can I know the intimate details of all the Muslims who come to this mosque? I do my best to counsel with and get to know the young men, but women too? It simply isn’t possible.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s something you’ll need to work on,” responded Nora. “You were scheduled to teach the afternoon that Hafsa disappeared. She came with the intention of talking to you that day. And you still say you don’t know her?”

  “I’m not sure you understand the way a mosque functions,” the imam said, struggling to make his English keep up with his displeasure. “Anyone can walk in and pray here, any time. We don’t keep records of the people who worship here or attend classes. And I certainly don’t ask the women in my class who they are or what they’re doing there. I come, I teach, I leave.”

  “So you do not know Hafsa al-Tanukhi?” John pressed, botching the name’s pronunciation.

  “No, I do not.”

  “There is a woman named Basheera, a friend of Hafsa’s. How can we get in touch with her?” Nora asked.

  “I do not know the women in my mosque,” he answered defensively. “I have no way of knowing this.”

  Nora spoke. “And, with the understanding that making false statements to federal investigators can get you convicted and sentenced to prison, you assert that you do not know that an Iraqi-American woman was teaching literacy in your own mosque?”

  The imam glared for a charged moment at Nora before looking away. “You might be speaking of the sister who came here volunteering to teach reading and writing to some of the more ignorant women.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Nora confirmed, even though the imam was continuing to address Wansbrough.

  “I did not know her.”

  “You didn’t want to see if she was qualified to teach?”

  The imam answered quickly, “I sent my wife to sit in on one of her sessions.”

  Nora smiled pleasantly. “Then we’ll start with her.”

  “No!” the imam practically shouted. “That’s impossible.”

  John Wansbrough leaned forward, his patience exhausted. “Why?”

  “She—she doesn’t speak to strange men,” Shaykh Anwar said thinly.

  “My partner can interview her privately, if she prefers.”

  “But—but she doesn’t speak any English!” replied the imam, his voice taking on a desperate edge.

  John turned to Nora, who said in dulcet-toned Arabic, “Is there any other reason?”

  The imam’s eyes darted between their faces, and his shoulders slumped.

  The two agents stood. Wansbrough said, “We’ll come to your home this afternoon to interview you both. At that time, you can decide if you’d like to be more forthcoming with information, or if you’d prefer to come downtown.”

  The imam was silent. He did not escort them to the door.

  * * *

  “That guy is really scared about something,” John said, as soon as they’d entered the car.

  “I agree,” Nora said.

  “Involvement in the murder?”

  Nora shrugged.

  They were interrupted by an incoming call. Wansbrough hit speaker.

  “Hey guys, it’s Ben. The semen thing was right, Nora. Monty stayed late last night and I just found his e-mail.”

  “How right?”

  “At least three other males besides Dewayne had intercourse with Kylie in the days before her death.”

  John Wansbrough almost swerved into a car. “Jesus, I’m absent one day—”

  Nora frowned at him. “We think Dewayne was pimping her.”

  John shook his head. “God, that poor kid. It’s a miracle she wasn’t dead from some sexual disease already.”

  “Well, she did have gonorrhea. Monty found out with a cervical swab, but it’s hard to die from that. How do you want to proceed?” Ben was asking.

  John thought. “You guys have a JBM girl in custody, right?”

  “Rita Ross,” Ben answered. “Eric and I keep hoping to talk to her about supply lines.”

  “Let’s talk to her about pimping first.” John glanced at Nora. “Maybe you could talk to her.”

  Nora took a deep breath, remembering how Rita had cursed her. “I can try. She gave me the impression she wasn’t talking without a lawyer.”

  Ben volunteered, “She’s dismissed two lawyers already.”

  “Dismissed?” John asked.

  “Won’t work with them. Apparently she’s a handful.”

  John grinned. “Then Nora is just the right person to speak to her.”

  * * *

  Nora walked into the room, trying to exude confidence. Rita Ross’s file was under her elbow, and two mugs were in her hand.

  The woman looked up at her with disgust. “You?”

  Nora smiled; she knew John and Be
n were standing in the dimness beyond the mirror. “No one’s ever happy to see me anymore.”

  “What do you want?” the woman growled at her.

  Nora placed the mugs on the table; the smell of the mint filled the small room, and Rita Ross frowned, staring. “I want to drink a cup of tea with you,” Nora explained.

  The other woman pushed back her chair. “Fuck you.”

  Nora had asked that she be uncuffed, and they’d debated this lengthily, but finally came to an agreement—provided that Ben and John could be close enough to intervene.

  “Look, you can drink it or not. It’s tea with mint and sugar in it…”

  “I can throw it in your face,” Rita said.

  “You could. But then I would almost certainly shoot you for wasting the perfect cup of tea.”

  Rita stood and walked over to the mirror. “What the fuck is this? Can you get me a real cop up in here?”

  Nora picked up her mug and held her ground, choosing to lean casually against the wall, even though it took real effort not to walk right out of the room. “So I told you what I want. What do you want, Ms. Ross? Looks like you’ve been firing a lot of lawyers lately.”

  “I want some respect. They seem to think I’m some kinda gang ho.”

  Nora nodded, finding her first opening. “I know, Ms. Ross. You are a full member of the crew. Without you, Dewayne Fulton’s operation would fail.”

  “What do you know about it?” the woman asked scornfully, leaving the mirror to walk back to the table and reoccupy the chair, folding her arms.

  Way too much, Nora wanted to respond. “You helped Dewayne build something. You were just getting to the place you wanted to be. You guys had made all the right connections, you were ready to take it all to the next level. Then Dewayne starts taking the organization in a different direction altogether…”

  Rita Ross regarded her with narrowed eyes.

  Nora continued. “He starts pimping. Sets it up on the Internet, sends out some runners to watch over the merchandise. Keeps the girls high so they keep coming back…”

  The woman looked away, drumming false, blue fingernails against the tabletop.

  “Starts working with a white hooker named Lisa Halston. Wants to take it up a notch…”

  Nora watched as Rita’s face darkened.

  “But that’s not your style, is it, Ms. Ross?”

  She rounded on Nora. “Oh, I see where this is going. I say again, Bitch. You do not know me. I ain’t your friend.”

  Nora sat down across from her and looked her square in the eye. “Well, that’s too bad. Because it’s been a long time since anyone made me work to run them down. And I respect that.”

  Rita glanced up, then looked away again. “Why, you think you pretty good?”

  Nora said, “I do alright.”

  “If I’d had my piece I wouldn’t have had to run,” she said.

  “Where was your gun that night?” Nora asked.

  Rita was silent. Nora gently pushed the warm mug toward her. She took it, sighed, and sniffed at it before taking a small sip. “I had to trade my piece,” she said finally. “For shelter.”

  “You’d left in a hurry,” Nora surmised. “So it was all you had with you.”

  “This crew up in Strawberry Mansion, said they had a safe house where we could ride it out under the radar, but they wanted somethin’ in return. Didn’t know they’d put us in a fuckin’ crack house.”

  Nora regarded her for a while, recalling the stench of the house and the chaos within. “Why … why didn’t you just get out of town?”

  Rita gave her a scathing look. “You ever traded your blanket for food?”

  At Nora’s silence, Rita continued. “You ever steal some cough syrup for your baby sister so she can sleep through one night?”

  Nora faltered, “I…”

  “Situation like that, the gang steps up. The crew is your family. Got your back, you got their back. You don’t run from that. You don’t just get outta town. You in it. For life.”

  Nora tilted her head. “And Dewayne? You think Dewayne still has your back?”

  Rita was silent.

  “He’s been busy these days, right? With the girls. With Kylie Baker…”

  Rita Ross tsk’d softly, then lifted the mug of tea to her lips again.

  “Kylie was in love with him,” Nora ventured.

  Rita harrumphed. “She mighta thought she was.”

  Nora looked a question at her.

  “You think I don’t understand Kylie? Kylie saw Dewayne, with his Beemer and his bank. And it couldn’t’ve mattered less what he did or how he did it or what he asked her to do. She just wanted to hold on to the idea that there was a way out.”

  “But Kevin had that. He was taking care of his family, wasn’t he?”

  Rita’s face darkened. “Kevin Baker is a piece of shit. He don’t take care of nobody but Kevin Baker. Soon as he got himself some Gs, he was buyin’ the flashy ride and then movin’ out of his house, wearin’ the gold. His mama was sick, she still need an operation so she can walk better, fix her knees, he don’t even give her the time of day … Kevin Baker is worried about one thing: Los Zetas. He’s gotta sell and sell some more. If he can’t hold on to the turf here and keep the supplies flowing, they will find someone who can. And that will be that.”

  Nora couldn’t keep from glancing up at the mirror as she digested this.

  Rita Ross stared into her mug. “Girl like Kylie wants to be taken care of. Sometimes you wanna get so spoiled you forget what it was like to be hungry. And you want someone to lie to you and say you can have it all. Dewayne was like that with me in the beginning.”

  “And then…?”

  “And then he got tired of me.” She took a swallow of the tea. “He coulda gotten rid of me. But he kept me. Trained me to make the connections he needed.”

  “You mean, made you use your body to build his network.”

  Rita didn’t answer.

  “And then made you watch him start pimping girls. Some of them little girls.”

  She inhaled, staring down at the spot where one of her electric blue fingernails had popped off, exposing a stunted, broken nail, bare of paint.

  Nora pulled out Jane Doe’s picture and slid it across the table. “We found her. We have no information on her. She won’t talk. She’s scared and alone.”

  Rita looked at the picture, then looked away.

  “Do you know her? Rita?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, I don’t know her. But if she’s one of the girls, she’d be on the disk.”

  Nora straightened in her chair. “What disk?”

  “Flash drive. Lisa Halston and Dewayne had been putting together information on all the girls. For marketing purposes,” she said icily. “Dewayne called it his moneypot, but Lisa was behind it. Ms. In-Control. Had the girls’ real names and their street names and how much they brought in. And their … special talents.”

  “Where was this disk?” Nora asked, leaning in.

  Rita shook her head. “The bitch always kept it with her. So she could stay in the game, she said. So Dewayne wouldn’t cut her out. She was the expert at bringing them in, see? Showed the girls her fancy loft, her shoes, her shit. Once in, Dewayne knew how to keep them. Anyone change her mind, he pull her by the hair into the street, slam her head against the pavement. Tell the whole neighborhood, ‘This bitch is mine!’ Used his belt on them, used his ring. Used his cigarettes. One girl, he tied her up three days in his bathroom. Every time he needed to go, he went and pissed on her, then kicked her a few times, then left. Three days, until she swore never to turn down a customer again for the rest of her life.”

  Nora watched Rita’s face. “We can help you,” she said softly.

  Rita met her gaze and held it, then whispered, “There’s no help for me. That’s the thing about hell, see? You don’t get to leave.”

  The two looked at each other for a long moment, and Nora nodded slowly. Reluctantly, she rose to le
ave, and was almost at the door when she heard Rita murmur, “West Philly High.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I ran the 100, 200, and four-by-100 meter relay. West Philly High.”

  Nora nodded again. “Thanks,” she said, gently closing the door in place behind her.

  * * *

  He was moving her.

  Slowly she realized he was covering her hair with a black scarf, and then pinning a long black niqab over her face.

  You have to walk now, you understand me? You have to walk. No sound. No sound at all.

  She understood.

  She had been moved often.

  No one ever told her where.

  No one had to tell her why.

  She did not know the name of the city where she now was, only that she and the six other girls had been brought here at night in the back of a van with blackened windows.

  She knew the others had already been taken away, the first night that the police came and took the body in the alley.

  They had been left there long enough to see the message, long enough to learn their fear anew.

  And the people of this new town had gotten the message, and had surely begun to fear as well.

  Whatever hope had invaded her at the sound of the sirens was driven off now by the sound of the door closing behind them. He seized her by the elbow and steered her down the crumbling cement stairs, as the cold midnight swallowed them whole.

  CHAPTER 7

  The home of Anwar al-Islahi was slightly less ramshackle than the neighboring row homes. An optimistic hand had once painted the intricate trim teal; now, it struck a tinny dissonance alongside the other weary facades.

  John and Nora stood on the porch.

  Nora paused before rapping on the outer door. “He’s not going to be happy to see us.”

  “Get used to it, Rookie.”

  “I completely hate it when you call me that,” she said, knocking.