by M. C. Cerny
After a full week, Michael Tully took to the streets to look for his pregnant lover. He had a grainy photo from his phone to show the “ladies of the night” who hung out near her corner. He cleaned out his savings and offered money for information. For a few fifties, he got a lead. He went to a tough neighborhood near the waterfront and was able to see her from a distance. Her skinny legs were encased in bright red stiletto boots. Even from far away, she looked tired. He pulled out his video camera and recorded her getting into a black Mercedes. She seemed to hesitate and looked up to where he was standing in the shadows, her blonde hair piled on top of her head like a Victorian doll. An arm pulled her roughly into the car and drove away. He wrote down the license plate, making a note to call an old friend who worked for the DMV.
He followed the car to a warehouse and pulled into an alleyway across the street. Was this where she lived when she wasn’t with him? He pondered how to get her out of this mess; this seemed more involved than just a prostitute from out of the country. The men outside the warehouse had guns, which were holstered under their jackets. They didn’t look like run-of-the-mill thugs, either. What were they protecting? He had heard of human trafficking, and being with Petra probably meant he was contributing to it. It was getting harder to blur those lines of right and wrong. If he got her out, maybe his kid would look at him differently. Even his ex-wife might not see him as just a drunken slob. He wanted redemption; he needed redemption. He knew someone who might be willing to take a risk on him and blow the story wide open, depending on how he presented it to her. Michael Tully turned around and headed back to his job at Channel 10 News, Petra’s smart phone in his pocket and the beginnings of a plan in his mind.
KATIE STOOD NEXT TO HER cubicle in the office, reading through memos from her boss and other assorted mail. She put down her coffee after a long sip. She mused about the weekend of relaxation that she had planned after tonight’s festivities. Consumed by her thoughts and tapping a delicate finger over her lips, she almost missed Trevor approaching her from behind. He laid a black garment bag over her chair.
“Hello beautiful. Miss me?” he whispered in her ear, hugging her from behind.
Katie laughed. “Of course. Who else would help me get dressed for tonight’s party?” Katie turned around and hugged her best friend and co-worker right back. They had been teasing each other since the day Katie had started interning at the news station. Trevor Jones was tall and on the slim side. His sandy blonde hair was closely cropped in a stylish men’s cut, something very metro-sexual, which Katie knew he paid way too much for. Her Midwestern mother could have probably given him the same cut with her vacuum scissors that she had ordered off the television, but she didn’t tell Trevor that. More than likely, he’d scoff at the suggestion of a vacuum anything touching his golden hair, and then tweak her on the nose and call her his “country mouse”.
“Is that all I am, Katie love?” Trevor was the only man she knew who could get away with pouting.
“Of course not. You are the eleven o’clock anchor, not just my personal stylist,” she emphasized, and Trevor made a harrumphing noise and rolled his eyes dramatically at her.
“Everything should be set in the garment bag. Try to not work too late, and make sure you set the curls in your hair 25 minutes before you go. The shoes are the most perfect platform heels so don’t run around the city getting a last minute story, darling. You need to be at the ball on time.”
“Am I ever late, Trevor?” Katie sighed. She was always cutting things close.
“Just making sure, ‘Cinderella’. I know how you get when your nose is in a story. Jeff’s a beast tonight with so many prestigious awards being handed out. This could mean the station’s overall ratings for next year, and future TV network syndication.”
“I know, I know. I have to check a few last minute emails, and then I promise to get ready and meet you over there. On time, I swear.” Smiling, Katie crossed both her fingers, and Trevor gave her a doubting look. “Really, Trevor. I won’t be long here.”
“Perfect, darling.” Trevor kissed Katie on the cheek and left the newsroom.
Katie yearned as she watched Trevor leave. If only, she thought. Caught up in what could have been, she almost missed their mail girl, Molly, dropping off a package on her desk. “Oh, hey, Molly. Thanks.” Katie took the envelope from her. Molly sorted through a few other letters in her cart, dropping them off on nearby desks. She came back to her with one extra letter.
“Oh, right, this one, too. It just came in before I left to come up here. I must have left it on the bottom of my pile, but I figured it was important.” Molly gestured to the garment bag. “Hey, nice bag. Guess you’re going to the fancy awards tonight. Good luck.” She brushed her dark hair from her face. A tattoo of a flower on the inside of her wrist was just visible under the cuff of her long sleeve shirt and fitted leather jacket that she always wore. Her nails were painted a garish black shiny color but, somehow, Molly didn’t seem the Goth-type of girl.
“Thanks, Molly. You’d be proud of me tonight when I go to the awards dinner. I think I’m going to clean up nicely.”
“Oh?” Molly usually said little, but seemed to be extremely observant. Katie liked her and thought her a sweet girl, if a bit odd in her fashion choices.
“Yes, I’m taking Trevor’s suggestion and wearing a LBD or, as he likes to say, a ‘little black dress’ tonight. Though I imagine it’s something you’d wear, he says it’s very chic.”
Molly snorted at Katie’s interpretation of her. “Yes, well, I don’t do dresses, Miss Wilson. Black leather, yes; dresses, not so much. I’m sure you’ll look great.”
Molly was about to leave, but Katie excitedly grabbed her wrist. She was so caught up in her own excitement that she didn’t register Molly flinching at the pressure on her wrist. “I bet the shoes even have an expensive red sole underneath. I don’t know how Trevor manages to get them from his stylish friends for next to nothing. Let’s look!”
Molly instinctively cradled her wrist, smiling hesitantly and shoving the limb under her arm, and both women opened her garment bag, digging into the shoe compartment. Sure enough, those expensive black pumps had mile high heels and red soles. The ladies laughed and Molly said goodbye. She left to deliver other letters to the skeleton crew still in the building.
Katie rehung the garment bag and sat down at her desk to open the letter. She tried sliding her finger under the flap, but the thin paper cut her. “Ouch, crap.” She sucked on the offending finger, hoping to ease the painful cut. She went back to her task of opening it. “Good thing my dress is black. I’d probably bleed all over myself,” she whispered.
The envelope was plain, white, and nondescript. Neat, block letters addressed the letter to “Ms. K. Wilson at Channel 10 News”, and gave the station’s New York City address. Katie received mail all the time and thought nothing of opening it and examining the contents before she left to get ready for the evening. She’d received fan mail in the past and few unpleasant advances from overly friendly viewers, but nothing she felt she couldn’t handle.
Inside the envelope was a sheet of paper with an email address and what looked to be a password for a Gmail account. Katie had been investigating several stories recently, and a few on the side that her boss Jeff was unaware about. The email address had a note following it: In regards to your inquiries on the lower Manhattan prostitution ring, please refer to the Friday folder for more details. Hmm, interesting, she thought.
Katie had heard some rumors about a sex slavery drug ring in operation but, considering some of the participants were rumored to be high profile, she doubted anyone would come forward to give her a lead. She hadn’t seriously been following the story since Jeff was keeping her extra busy these days. Sometimes she got lucky with her sources after she researched their origins and verified facts, one of the reasons she loved her job. Katie looked around the newsroom, which was unusually light in staff this evening due to the awards dinner tonight. Seei
ng that nobody was paying her any attention, she logged onto her computer and entered the email address and password.
She noticed it was one of those cell phone linked email accounts, very organized with folders and dates. It was obviously something a lot of secretaries and PA’s utilized. The emails contained in the account were in a language that she didn’t immediately recognize. She thought about calling her brother, Sam, since he had excelled in languages, but figured her insurance accountant brother was probably busy crunching numbers right now. Maybe it was in Greek? Polish? Russian? Katie rubbed her temple. Just trying to decipher what it said was giving her a headache. She pulled up a translator program through her browser to help her try and figure it out. She opened the most recent email and copied it into the program. Hitting the option to translate it into English, she waited about thirty seconds. It wasn’t Greek or Polish. Her third attempt, as she checked her watch, said that it was Russian. She scanned the email over in its new English text.
It looked like there was a shipment of asters coming into one of the shipping dockyards this evening, not far from where the dinner was being held. Why was this important? Was it a cover for something else? Where was the shipment going? She googled “asters” and got a Wikipedia hit. They were flowers, common in Europe and North America, specifically in the desert. North American asters seemed to be primarily in Arizona and New Mexico. Since Katie covered the flower show just a few days ago, she recalled her cute navy dress and matching hat, sitting on the top shelf of her closet at home. It didn’t make sense that a large shipment of flowers would be coming when the flower show was wrapping up for the spring season, but this past show was focused on the exotic blooming orchids, not some semi-arid desert aster.
She glanced back at the Wikipedia page and scrolled to the bottom. A few articles described the uses of asters as an ingredient in several designer drugs that had been deemed illegal for human consumption and discontinued several years prior. Now it made more sense given that she had been working on a story with prostitutes turning up dead recently from an unconfirmed designer drug overdose. Katie tried pulling up the links, but nothing legitimate surfaced. So much for Wikipedia being a journalist’s first line of fact-finding. She could imagine explaining to her boss, “Gee, since Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions, I need to drop those other assignments and start chasing this one”. Frustrated, Katie closed the website, tapping her fingers on the keyboard. Damn curiosity.
At 26, Katie was the youngest female anchor on the staff. Her moxie led her to rise quickly in the ranks at Channel 10. Her ambition to follow through on stories and her appeal to viewers was earning her a coveted place on the 6 o’clock news, a big break from the local beat. No longer would she be in bad weather, and chasing down landlords and crooked businessmen. This was huge for the Kansas City girl who used to serve up apple pie in a dive diner to make her college book money. Tonight, she was being awarded for her excellence in news journalism. Her winning story was on illegal puppy mills selling sick animals to the city pet shops. Because Katie had broken the story, several dozen puppies were now being adopted out to families instead of bred to death for sale to pharmaceutical companies who often neglected and abused the dogs.
Katie felt the wheels in her head turning. Could the large quantities of flowers be used as some sort of drug component? Was that what was responsible for the deaths of at least three, maybe more, prostitutes recently? Either way, there was a repeated address in the text of several corresponding emails, the most recent had today’s date and a time of 8:00pm. It was skirting dangerously close to the awards dinner; although, it was practically on the way…
Thinking, Katie checked her watch again, tapping her pen on the desk and looking at the time. It was only 5:30pm, and she already had her dress here. Her official promotion didn’t start until Monday so she was free until the awards, which began at 9:00pm. Katie decided to check with her friend Tully, who used to be her regular camera guy when she was in the field. She trusted him, especially if this lead was bogus. She was planning to meet Trevor at 8:00pm, but he would understand if she was just a teensy tiny bit late. Her award was not being given until much later in the evening anyway. It was unlikely her boss, Jeff, would notice a temporarily empty seat at the table, right? She could text Trevor to let him know. Logistically, the plan should work. If she got ready before they left, she would have just the right amount of time to spare. If she could get enough information to present it to Jeff, she could then get the “okay” to properly follow up on the story. Having decided to go for it, she pushed herself out of the chair and made her way towards Tully’s office. She didn’t get to be one of the best and newest broadcast journalists by sitting back on her laurels.
JACOB PACED HIS APARTMENT. HE adjusted the gun in his back holster and stretched his bad shoulder, which was probably aggravated from the pending rain storm that the weather guys were calling for tonight. The only profession that probably got away with lying more than lawyers, Jacob mused. Hauk lifted his head to watch him, soulful black eyes watching his master move about the apartment. He gave a soft woof of approval, and Jacob petted him on the head. Kneeling down, he checked to make sure that his bulletproof vest wasn’t rubbing his collar or his belly uncomfortably. He then checked the supply bags that he and the team had packed earlier in preparation for tonight’s raid on the warehouse. They had some pretty solid Intel that a shipment was coming in and would immediately be going out to another location. Satellite images showed trucks parked near the warehouse with out of state license plates belonging to some fraudulent trucking company. While Jacob had seen his fair share of violence while he was in covert operations overseas, he was getting increasingly tired of chasing demons. Eli had put this latest team together to find and shut down a branch of international human traffickers who were possibly involved in creating a designer drug to make their victims more compliant. Shutting it down was something the US government was trying to do but, with some of the international players involved, they were sometimes forced to outsource some of the unsavory work. Now there was a possible threat of brand spanking new designer drugs being introduced illegally into the US, and because some senator’s brat couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, Jacob and his team was being asked to bring it all down
Mostly, Reed Software & Securities Co. went about its business securing tech information and surveillance, but they were no strangers to covert operations or recovery missions. Sooner or later, he was going to have to step out of these assignments and start managing the office like a good public CEO, something Eli never understood. Jacob checked his IPhone for messages…nothing yet. The elevator dinged and Nick walked in, followed by Lulu and several other muscular team members in combat gear.
“Everything looks set, Jacob. I think we’ll be able to finally bring down this branch of suppliers tonight.” Nick put his small portable laptop on the kitchen island and checked for last minute instructions from Eli, and blueprints of the warehouse location. Lulu, who could have passed for a tiny Lara Croft, grabbed an apple that had been sitting on the counter. She winked at Jacob, then walked into the other room to kneel down and rub Hauk’s belly. Hauk whined affectionately and let Lulu rub him down, scratching his belly and behind his ears.
“Yeah, I’m just tired of strangling the fucking beast. I think Rick Chambers, who I think is a shady little fuck, knows we’ve had run-ins with Cosovo in the past.”
“It’s very likely he does know.” Nick looked up from the laptop momentarily. “It makes you wonder what his motives are and why give us these particular assignments. I mean, we’re not the only private contractors on the market. I feel like he’s baiting us, but for what? I have no idea.”
“I just want Cosovo stopped. We’ve been chasing the guppies of his operation for a while and now he’s fucking with my business interests,” Jacob stated as he leaned over his kitchen island, stretching out the tightness of his back.
“We need this tonight. Now that our Intel is telling us tha
t they are combining efforts to join Baron’s Mexican cartel and Al-Amhed’s Iranian technology, these Russians are going to be tougher to stop. Instead of the tentacles, I want the man himself. We still haven’t completely figured out how they’re trafficking the woman into the sex trade and, other than the money, why they need the drugs. He could sell nukes and be more profitable, so why this?” Nick shook his head in frustration. The question was unanswerable, and both men just shook their heads and grabbed their gear.
“All I know is that Eli has been rabid to figure out why Cosovo has been involved in these shit operations. This is becoming problematic for me because I’m going to have to see the fucker at some European technology trade meetings a few months from now. Damn awkward if I have to show up a little worse for wear while our competing companies are arguing trade and buyout agreements. Eli doesn’t understand the bind he’s putting me in as the CEO, then sending me out there into the field.” Jacob blew out a deep breath.
“I guess we’ll have to make sure the bad guys don’t get a good shot at your pretty boy face,” Lulu quipped from the floor with Hauk, belly exposed and tongue out, lying next to her. Jacob grunted, ignoring his only female teammate.
“Let’s get to the dockyard and get into place. This is going down at 8:00pm, and I want us set up and ready to go. I’ve got the ear buds for us to wear. I finally tweaked them with your program to drown out the residual feedback that we were getting in the jungle last time. Hopefully, no one will end up with sore eardrums tonight.” Jacob handed out the ear buds and everyone put them in.