Currents of Sin

by Arleen Alleman

They continued to eat, chewing slowly. It appeared to be a noodle bowl affair with pieces of chicken and a shredded green vegetable. It smelled delicious, and I detected a minty aroma. If nothing else, maybe Ping was a decent cook. After several minutes, Tina finally looked up at me with unmistakable sadness, which did nothing to enhance her plain features. Her gold-flecked eyes sparkled as she leaned her elbows on the table and bent as far forward as possible.

  After glancing toward the kitchen, then the door, she gave Banu a cautionary look. She whispered, “Pammie was with us at the Green Door until two weeks ago, maybe a little longer. I really don’t know what happened after she disappeared. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Go on,” Tom urged.

  “I really don’t know.” She stared straight ahead for a moment. Then she added, “A while back, I saw two men come in and wake up two kids in the middle of the night. The kids went with them but didn’t come back. Maybe that’s what happened to her.” Oddly, her tone was hopeful. “I pretended to be asleep, but I saw it happen.”

  Her head swiveled to check her surroundings again. Then she leaned back in her chair. Banu stared across the table at us with a look of both fear and defiance. She shook her head in a gesture that was clear. She had nothing to say about the subject.

  Tom prodded gently and quietly. “Are you sure you don’t know who the men were?”

  It was Tina’s turn to shake her head. The girls were obviously frightened and didn’t even want their spiritual leader to overhear our conversation. I rose and went around to their side of the table. Sitting down next to Tina, I whispered to her while locking eyes with Tom.

  “Please, Tina, just tell us why you’re so afraid. Is it because of these men you just described, or is it a pimp or someone else who might hurt you? We would like to try to help.”

  “Oh no, I’m not afraid of those men. I’m sure the kids are better off.”

  That was a strange thing to say, and I noted Banu’s reaction. I’d say she was incredulous.

  “Tadashi will fix everything. He knows what will happen and …”

  “And what, Tina?”

  Another head shake. I noted that Banu was sitting hunched over, looking at her lap. Evidently, she’d lost her appetite. Tina turned only her head in my direction. My heart nearly broke to see the pitiful attempt she’d made to improve her looks with heavy eye makeup and too much blush and lipstick.

  She whispered, “We’ve heard stories about kids being shipped to Asia or someplace to be sold as sex slaves. It might not be true.”

  This was getting worse by the minute. Tom leaned across the table. “You don’t need to say anything else here.” His arm swept the room. “We can arrange a safe place for you to talk to us and the authorities. You don’t need to live in fear. Please let us help.”

  Water pooled against Tina’s bottom eyelids, and I watched a single tear spill onto her cheek. I had the feeling it took a lot to make this girl cry.

  “I know I don’t need to worry about being sold to traffickers,” she said, “because I’m not pretty enough for them to want me.” She looked at Banu, then back at Tom. “But Banu is, and so was Pammie. I’ll be fine here with Tadashi. If you can help her, it would be good, just in case.” She nodded toward her friend.

  While she listened to her friend, Banu’s eyes appeared to dilate like an angry cat’s. She didn’t speak, but there was no question her emotions were in turmoil. I wanted to talk to her alone because it was obvious that a strange dynamic between them made Banu reluctant to give her opinion.

  After providing our cell phone numbers, we left them to finish their meals. Tom told them to call anytime, and he would also be in touch soon. He repeated that we were serious about helping.

  I had a strange feeling about Tina and the odd comments she’d made about Ping, to say nothing of her description of kids leaving the motel in the night and not returning. Clearly, she understood about trafficking for prostitution and appeared to know she was already involved in it herself. Yet she didn’t seem to be concerned for her own safety. I had the feeling Banu was more in touch with the reality and danger of their situation.

  Tina seemed to believe Ping could do something to change her circumstances. I wondered why she wouldn’t elaborate on his plan. She didn’t seem to fear him. It was more like she was in awe. That disturbed me, and I decided to probe for more information about the good preacher.

  18

  We stepped out of the mission into the baking night air and turned toward where we’d left Tom’s car. Without warning, he grabbed my arm and jerked his head toward the motel. A guy who appeared to be African American was standing in the motel parking lot, smoking what looked like a marijuana cigarette. I swore I could smell it from our position across the street.

  He wore baggy black pants slung low on his hips and multiple gold chains hung loosely around his neck and waist. His black short-sleeved T-shirt revealed colorful tattoos covering both arms. I was sure I could see more tats creeping up through the neck of his shirt. His hatless head was nearly shaved, and he seemed to be forcing a menacing—almost comical—expression on his round not-unpleasant face. He was young and certainly looked like a pimp, but this was not the Asian kid Curtis that the Strohmayrs described.

  He had to be the colorful guy Don told us he saw the other night. Before I could react or say anything, Tom was already jaywalking across Maryland Parkway. I jogged to catch up and stepped onto the curb right behind him. Tom quickly crossed the sidewalk and intercepted the blingy guy a few yards inside the lot.

  As I watched Tom moving in fast, I wondered if the boy might have a gun. I didn’t see one, but he could have a knife in any case. Then I wondered if Tom was armed. I knew he sometimes carried the service revolver he’d kept from his time with the LAPD. I’m not a gun fan myself, but I could see that it wouldn’t be a bad idea right now.

  I lagged about fifteen feet behind when Tom stopped short three feet from the guy. I watched him square his shoulders, pulling himself up to his full five feet eleven. The kid was a couple of inches shorter. Tom’s physique under a thin tight tee was impressive, but he still looked his age. I figured he probably looked ancient to this kid.

  “Hey, man, how you doing?” Tom used his buddy voice.

  Obviously caught off guard, the boy relaxed his posture and took one step back. The menacing expression immediately returned.

  “Yeah, who’re you, pop?” He folded his arms across his chest and glared, then shifted his eyes to me as I positioned myself behind Tom. His scowl became a crooked leering grin.

  “Momma, what you be doin’ down here? Wanna job?” He cackled at his own joke.

  Ignoring the insult, Tom said, “I just wanted to ask if you are Shimmer.”

  I thought it was a good assumption. The boy jutted his chin and scrunched his mouth to the side. Turning his head slightly, he squinted sideways at Tom. Then he flicked his smoke away and brought his hands down to his sides. Tom opened one side of his jacket. I couldn’t see what was inside from my position but assumed it was his Ruger.

  “You a cop?”

  “Not anymore, but I haven’t forgotten anything about being one, Shimmer.”

  “Yeah, so? You know my name. One a those little sluts tell ya?”

  “Didn’t have to. You have a reputation, and anyway, you couldn’t be more obvious. You’re a fucking pimp.”

  He laughed, apparently finding Tom’s vernacular amusing. “Why you fuck with me anyways, man?”

  “We don’t want to hassle you. All we want is information about a girl that means a lot to us. Her name is Pammie Fleetfoot. We know she lived here until a couple of weeks ago. I think you know where she went, and I want you to tell us. That’s it.”

  Shimmer seemed to seriously consider Tom’s rather polite request. “What’s the whore to you? You got you a stable or maybe juss look for a date for youself, ha?”<
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  Tom sighed. “No, I’m not into the life. Look, this is on the level. Her family is worried. What happened to her?”

  He took a step away from me and closer to Shimmer. I let out a little gasp, suddenly feeling exposed.

  Shimmer took another step backward. “Old man, I don’t know where she went. She old too anyways.” He laughed. “She wanna be left alone.”

  I understood that Tom didn’t want to say anything about kids being taken from the motel. It would be counterproductive for Shimmer to know that the girls told us that story. But this is what might have happened to Pammie.

  Tom held his ground, continuing to stare at the boy, and waited for him to provide additional information.

  Shimmer looked at his high-tops, then turned his head to glance up and down the street just like the girls had done. He was afraid as well.

  “She left. Jus lost revenue for me, man. I pay that girl’s lodging and expenses before she leave town. No biggie. Then she come back, and we start up again. Then she gone again. That whore more trouble than she worth.”

  “Come on, Shimmer, you know where she went.”

  “Nah. Look, man, we got this ho line, a network, yeah?” He gestured toward the motel. “There be a, watcha call, food chain. I be not far up, get it?”

  “Yes, I get it. Who do you work for?”

  Shimmer scoffed. “This meet’n adjourned, y’all. Your girl is good-lookin’. She an asset, but not mine no more, and I got no say ’bout it. Got no exit fee neither. Thas it.”

  Before Tom could react, Shimmer turned and strode back to the building with hardware twinkling and jingling and entered one of the green doors.

  “Well, that was interesting,” I said after the door closed behind him.

  “Yes, I guess so. What I took away from the meet’n was that our pimp friend is almost as scared as the girls. There’s a whole underground network, and he’s near the bottom. I’m surprised he revealed that. I guess we didn’t appear too threatening.”

  “I caught the fear too. What did he mean about an exit fee?”

  “As I recall the lingo, that would be money a prostitute has to pay her pimp in order to leave the life or go to another pimp. So I think at one time, Pammie was his, and somebody took her from him. That squares with what Tina said about her having just disappeared.

  “But the idea that there might be abductions by traffickers is very worrisome. I wish I could have asked him about that, but I didn’t want to endanger the girls.”

  “I know, he would assume they gave us the information. There seem to be several things going on down here that could involve Pammie.

  “I can’t believe how much that guy looks like a caricature—talk about a stereotype. Do you think he knows that?”

  He shrugged. “Or the stereotype exists because it accurately portrays the real thing, and he’s proud of the look.”

  19

  About twenty miles from downtown near the south end of the Strip, the captive was once again preparing to receive a client. She methodically applied makeup while trying to overcome the dulling effect of the drugs her handler doled out with regularity.

  She donned a provocative blue satin knee-length chemise, whose only function was that it could easily be removed. Standing back from the mirror, she tried to clear her thoughts. Knowing she should be terrified on the one hand, it was difficult to conjure up the appropriate emotion. She knew she looked sexy. Every man she came in contact with told her she was beautiful, but why should she care what they said?

  Stepping out of the bathroom, she looked around the room warily. She appeared to be alone. This was rare, and she crossed to the small table that held the champagne bucket and strawberries. Her mouth watered at the sight of the huge chocolate-covered treats. She almost picked one up but quickly pulled her hand back. Until directed to share with her client, she must not touch them.

  Looking around the room, she tried to determine if anything had changed. Maybe he left something behind that would help her figure out where she was or allow her to contact the outside world.

  On one occasion, she asked a customer which hotel this was and quickly learned that the johns were told that certain areas of conversation were off-limits, like the name of this place. Every one of them knew the prostitution was illegal and coerced, but they did nothing to stop it.

  Tears formed, but she quickly pressed her fingers against her bottom lids to stop the flow. She’d be punished severely if her face was not painted perfectly.

  At the window, she stared out onto the strip below. She could see nothing to either side, but judging by the windows in the hotel across the street, she figured she was on at least the tenth floor. For the hundredth time, she chastised herself for not knowing anything about this part of the city or the names and locations of the various hotels relative to one another.

  Enjoying a few precious minutes alone, her thoughts wandered to how she ended up in this predicament. Despite growing up only thirty minutes southeast of Vegas, she’d spent very little time in the glitzy depraved city until the day she left home for good. It was hard to remember why she’d become so angry at her mom and her life during those early teen years. She understood, now that it was too late, that her mom made a brave decision when she moved to Boulder City to escape her abusive husband.

  She thought about the quiet town established in 1931 as a temporary home for the men who built the amazing Boulder Dam, the third largest in the world, which supplied power to more than twenty million people in Nevada, Arizona, and California. She knew all about the dam and its history and never tired of visiting the museums at the dam and in town.

  During the Great Depression, the government intended for the community to represent a brighter future for the nation. To this end, gambling was prohibited in the town and still is.

  Only now did she understand that despite having little money for anything beyond necessities, her childhood was wholesome and peaceful living in the shadow of Lake Mead National Recreation Area and without the negative influence of gambling and drugs in her environment.

  She’d taken for granted the fun she and her friends had fishing and swimming off the rocks that surrounded the largest man-made reservoir in the country. In middle school, her friend Sarah’s parents owned a boat, and they invited her for trips and picnics at various landings on the lake. Twice, she spent the night with them at Willow Beach Campground a few miles south on the Colorado River. It was so much fun, she now recalled, and she ached for the fresh breezes and beautiful stark desert vistas.

  Where is Sarah now? she wondered. Probably in college, where I should be. That seemed an impossible and undesirable path just a few years ago, but now she realized there were ways to obtain funding for an education.

  More importantly, she thirsted for knowledge about the world—now that it was too late. Staring down at the crowds of tourists crossing Las Vegas Boulevard, she wished she could go back to the day of her sixteenth birthday and take back her misguided action.

  The door opened behind her, and she whirled around to greet her handler—actually her pimp—and another man who timidly followed him into the room. The man’s fingers twitched against his thighs, and his small dark eyes bored into her in a way that left no question about his thoughts. At just under six feet and not bad looking, he had a full head of black curly hair. At least he wasn’t fat and pimply.

  “This is Bill. He’s getting half-and-half barebacking. Got it?” her pimp informed her.

  She drew in a sharp breath she hoped was not obvious. She understood that what was about to happen was in a way more dangerous than the beatings she received for disobedience. Half-and-half meant the john was paying for both oral and vaginal sex and without a condom—barebacking. He would be getting a discount off the price of both sex acts sold separately.

  It was virtually unheard of for HIV-positive men to disclose their conditio
n, but they often offered more money. She had no way to know if this was the case. What she did know was that nearly everyone in the game eventually becomes infected with hepatitis C, if not HIV.

  Part Two

  Murder and Misery

  20

  Day 6

  The next morning, I rose early and decided to go for a run around the quiet neighborhood. My normal exercise routine had taken a hike, and I needed to work muscles and clear my head. Last night’s phone conversation with Mick was still looping through my mind after keeping me awake half the night.

  He described his call to Rachael, during which he asked if she would bring little Anna to the States for a visit. She didn’t say no, but Mick admitted he thought she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She told him she had some commitments there in Sydney. She was rowing again—her Olympic sculling dream having been temporarily hijacked by motherhood—and there were other things. Mick interpreted that to mean some sort of relationship, but I wondered if he was reading a lot more into her words than she intended.

  I tried to picture my girl on the other side of the world. My heart ached every time I thought about her Olympic aspirations, and I marveled at the fact that she apparently hadn’t entirely given up on them.

  When Mick asked Rachael about Anna’s father, Gerald, she said only that she’d e-mailed him a few times and sent pictures. I knew I had to let go of my hopes for a reconciliation between them. I wanted that mainly for Anna’s sake. The fact was if Rachael was going to travel anywhere, it probably should be to Kenya so Anna could spend time with her father and his large family.

  Mick didn’t seem quite as depressed as he had before I left DC, and he swore he was feeling okay. I filled him in on everything, or what little, we’d learned about Pammie. His reaction was predictable. He was worried that I was delving into a situation that could be physically dangerous. He was correct in saying that it would be a mistake to interfere with the type of people involved in prostitution.