Currents of Sin

by Arleen Alleman

  Tom shrugged and adjusted his sunglasses. “This whole situation is getting to me. I’m angry and frustrated that it’s so damned hard to help these kids. I was probably too harsh …”

  Before he could continue, a car pulled up to the curb next to us. A young Asian man who looked no older than eighteen rolled down the window and beckoned us over.

  Tom leaned down tentatively. “Yes, can I help you?”

  “I’m going to help you. I’ll make this brief. For your own good, meet me in a half hour at the Peppermill on Las Vegas Boulevard just north of Desert Inn. It’s away from town and not frequented by any of the locals.” He waved toward the street.

  I understood that by “locals,” he meant the gangs and kids from this neighborhood. Tom straightened up and looked at me questioningly.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  The young man put his car in gear and started to pull away. “By the way, my name is Curtis,” he said as he rolled up the window.

  We watched him drive up Fremont, and Tom took a notepad out of his shirt pocket. After jotting down the plate number, he turned to me. “Well, that’s interesting. Why does the pimp in training or whatever he is want to talk with us privately?”

  “Could it be a trap?”

  “I know the place where he wants to meet. It’s a popular Strip restaurant, and it’s always crowded. That wouldn’t be the place for any sort of ambush. Quite the opposite, I’d say.”

  31

  We arrived at the Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge about ten minutes early. The décor seemed better suited for a cocktail lounge than a coffee shop, but this was Vegas after all. Hot pink and blue neon lighting imparted a warm glow from both the floor and ceiling. Cozy round fire pits with colorful lighted fountains dominated the lounge, but we opted for a booth in the restaurant and ordered coffee.

  Five minutes later, Curtis strode through the door and took a look around, quickly spotting us. He nodded as he slid into the seat across from us.

  “Thanks for meeting me. Look, on the way over here, I changed my mind about how to approach this.”

  “Okay,” Tom said tentatively.

  “Detective Hollister—Craig—and I agreed it was probably best to keep my cover intact. But I’ve decided to be honest with you. I’m undercover Metro, and I work for him.”

  The waitress approached, but he waved her away.

  “Oh, we weren’t expecting that,” I said. “In fact, someone suggested that you were a pimp in training. You do look very young.”

  “That is the cover. I’m twenty-four, and looking young is an advantage. I suppose the Strohmayrs told you about me.”

  I nodded but decided not to elaborate.

  Tom said, “I assumed you wanted to talk about something related to the pimp’s murder. I talked to the detective at the scene last night.”

  “We know that. There are several reasons why Shimmer might have been killed, but they’re indirectly related to what I’m here to talk about.”

  He proceeded to explain some details of the Asian gang trafficking activities and how the pimps help them. Most of it we had already heard from Hollister and the STAY staff.

  “I’m trying to identify the top echelon of the gang, but so far, they haven’t appeared downtown as far as I know. The guys I work for are go-betweens at best. Look, we understand you two are looking for a specific kid, and you’re not doing anything illegal. However, you’re at risk of raising the suspicions of people we’re watching. We’re not ready to move on them. I mean you’ve come into this at an inopportune time for the good of our investigation.”

  Tom waited a beat. He gently set his cup down and held his hands out, palms up. “You know I’m in law enforcement myself, right? Let me just connect a couple of dots here based on my intuition. I assume you’re also looking at Ping. I know there’s something off with that guy. Much as I hate to say this, maybe the Strohmayrs as well?”

  This surprised and disappointed me since Tom hadn’t told me he was suspicious of Deborah and Walter. He avoided my sidewise stare, keeping his eyes on Curtis.

  “Well, since you’ve discerned that much, the fact is, Ping is an odd duck. We’ve been watching his operation at the mission for a while. He is actually good to the kids, and they like him. But he also has an unhealthy hold on some of them. He keeps his distance from gang members, and we’ve seen only one interaction that might indicate he’s involved with them. That’s not enough to go on.”

  “What about the deli?” I asked.

  “An adult prostitute arrested working the streets in that area said kids have been abducted from there. She was trying to help herself by trading information, but she insisted it was true.”

  “If it is, it’s funny that so many kids apparently feel safe there.” I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance.

  He shrugged. “I assume the kids don’t know about it—if it’s true—or don’t want to know. I’ve accompanied kids there myself and then left with them. But so far, I haven’t seen anything suspicious, except the glares I get from Walter. Anyway, we’re about to begin a round-the-clock clandestine stakeout of the place. That takes considerable resources, and we’ll only pull the surveillance for a week.”

  Tom asked, “By the way, do you know why the kids are reluctant to go to STAY? Tina told us a kid who she wouldn’t identify told them there is something wrong with the staff and that kids are better off at the motel.”

  “No, I don’t know anything about that.” He didn’t seem to care either. “However, we haven’t discussed one of the main reasons I’m here talking to you.” It was shocking to think there could be even more to this.

  “Something odd is going on with the kids staying at the Green Door Motel. I have to keep a low profile at night during the time I spend with gang members, supposedly earning my pimp chops. The pimp who watched over them—the now-deceased Shimmer—was the only one who stayed there at night. From time to time, when I go to the motel in the morning, I notice that one or two kids are missing. None of the remaining kids will talk about it, and the gang never mentions them.”

  I glanced at Tom, but he indicated we should keep listening.

  “Then you learned about an eyewitness account of an abduction. We think that could be a major break. We’ll need to talk to the two girls you’ve befriended, but there’s a need to be careful. They could become targets.”

  I looked at Tom again and assumed that like me, he was beginning to understand that we’d inadvertently stumbled into a major police undercover operation. Worse, we really had put the girls in danger.

  Tom said, “Sorry if we’ve interfered. The last thing we want to do is endanger them any more than we already have, but at least we got them to admit that kids are being taken against their will.”

  “Yes, but there’s more.” He settled back, leaning with one hand next to him on the seat. “There are different circuits that the pimps run, like the Pacific Northwest, for example. They come south in the winter, and if they get settled into a stable of girls, they stay. Everyone in the business knows who they are. I should be ensconced as a pimp by now, but my gang bosses say I’m not ready. I think they trust me, but parts of their operation are still off-limits to me. Anyway, they’ve already been told from higher up the circuit that they’re getting another guy right away to replace Shimmer. I can’t find anyone who knows anything about him.

  “Just so you know, it isn’t clear where Shimmer came from either, and his murder might not have anything to do with your activities down there. The gang seemed genuinely shocked about his death. They’re nervous, and I’m almost positive they had nothing to do with it. Shimmer never fit the mold. It’s true that almost all the gang pimps are black, but he had a chip on his shoulder. He tended to go his own way, and like I said, it isn’t clear where he came from.

  “There is one possibility, though. We think a second arm of
the gang—or a separate trafficking enterprise—is operating on the Strip. I don’t know which hotels are involved, but it might explain where Shimmer came from and maybe the new guy as well. That would mean someone is in a position to manipulate and possibly intimidate the gang. The bosses downtown take orders from above and don’t question anything. Bottom line? They’re afraid of those higher up in the network.”

  He sighed and fingered a menu lying in the middle of the table. “We have intel telling us that high-end call girls are servicing customers somewhere on the Strip. A whole cast of characters supposedly recruits the johns and sets up the rooms and the girls. There are rumors that the girls might not be willing participants.”

  I wondered why this revelation bothered me more than anything else he’d told us. “What are you doing about that?”

  “We’d like to get an undercover guy like me in there, but so far, no one will name a hotel or provide specifics on who’s running the show except that they are not the Asian assholes. Everyone is scared. I think there’s another enterprise that is more international in its makeup and might actually be calling all the shots for the trafficking in Vegas.”

  As he talked about the trafficking and the gangs, it was apparent that Curtis held animosity toward the Asian community of which he was a member. He told us that many people have weaknesses or huge cultural blind spots, as he called them.

  “They refuse to assimilate and become real Americans, and that is what perpetuates the gang problems. My parents were born in the US, and thankfully, they completely embrace our country’s values. I’m an American, and that is how I’ve always seen my identity. So many of our Asian youths have been indoctrinated by their parents with ridiculous fears and preconceived ideas about society and the police.

  “Everyone knows the human trafficking problem is getting out of hand. The Justice Department gave Metro a four-hundred-thousand-dollar grant specifically for that purpose. Most of the money will cover overtime pay for us vice officers and the program director. We got a task force up and running with it, and a Salvation Army program also received a big grant to provide services to victims of sex trafficking.

  “In addition to the money, the federal grants require local law enforcement to work with their state’s attorney general to press for stronger laws and to help build community support. Nevada is just one of many states reexamining crimes related to prostitution and ordering harsh new penalties for the pimps.”

  This was similar to what Hollister told us. New laws in about a dozen states dramatically increase prison sentences for pimps and narrow their ability to avoid conviction. An accused trafficker, for example, would not be able to argue that the prostitute was a willing partner in crime or plead ignorance if the prostitute is found to be a minor.

  Curtis added, “Problem is everybody has rights, and if the kids don’t want help, we can’t force it on them.”

  How well we knew that fact. He left us with the admonition that we should stay away from the motel and the mission, saying that the edict came from his boss, Hollister.

  We were frustrated that we weren’t able to convince Tina, or by extension Banu, to go to STAY. How would we change their minds if we couldn’t go back there? On top of that, the possibility of the Strohmayr’s involvement was unnerving. I didn’t believe it.

  Curtis didn’t tell us to stay away from the deli, so we decided to use the rest of the day to hang out near there and watch kids come and go. We didn’t really expect to find out anything important. We would just be killing time. Tom called Grant Murray earlier, and we were waiting to hear back from him.

  On the way, Tom said, “It does seem odd that Deborah and Walter allow their restaurant to be a magnet for homeless teens. You would think that would be bad for business. Maybe there’s a good reason Walter seems gruff and reluctant to interact with us.”

  “Right, but why would Deborah be so forthcoming with information and seem so genuinely caring if they were doing something harmful or illegal?”

  “Yeah, I agree it doesn’t make much sense.”

  32

  After two uneventful hours sitting in the car on Fourth Street midway between Fremont and the deli, we’d just decided to leave when three girls who looked like street kids came around the corner and went inside. We decided to wait until they emerged, then go back to the El Cortez.

  A half hour later, they sauntered out onto the sidewalk and turned north toward Ogden Street, heading away from Fremont and us. They were laughing and talking and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to their surroundings. We decided to watch them until they turned the corner and were out of sight.

  Behind us, a blue Ford cargo van turned onto Fourth from Fremont and quickly passed our car, perhaps not noticing we were sitting inside. As soon as the van went around us, it slowed down and swerved in toward the sidewalk as if it was going to park. Instead, it proceeded slowly next to the curb until it came up behind the girls. Tom’s quick thinking probably saved them.

  “Oh shit.” He was already out of the car. He started running up the sidewalk. Just as the van drew parallel with the girls, the side door slid open. A man reached out his hand and said something, and the girls stopped to listen. My breath caught as I realized what was happening. I climbed out of the car and started jogging toward them. Tom was almost next to the rear bumper, and a pulse of fear shot through me when I saw that he’d drawn his weapon.

  A girl with brown hair hanging to her waist wearing tight jeans and a tank top took a step closer to the man who was now leaning out of the van. She was smiling and saying something to him. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed her arm. She yelped and tried to pull away, but she was no match for him.

  The other two girls backed away from the curb, plastering their bodies against the building. The van continued crawling up the street with the man dragging the poor girl along. She was struggling against him as he tried to pull her inside.

  Tom lurched forward and wrapped his arms around her waist. When the startled abductor momentarily loosened his grip, Tom pulled her free. He let her go and turned back to confront the man. It was too late. The door slammed shut, and the van screeched away.

  For a moment, I thought Tom was going to shoot at it. Instead, he quickly holstered the gun and turned to the girls, who were nearly hysterical.

  I joined them and tried to give comfort. The one who’d almost been taken—the most attractive of the three—was sobbing piteously. Too heavily applied mascara and thick pancake makeup ran down her cheeks in colorful rivulets. The other two stared at her in shocked silence.

  Tom pulled out his cell and dialed Hollister. “Get the plate?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What is it?”

  After I recited what I remembered, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I got too.”

  After Tom explained the situation and gave a description of the vehicle to someone in Hollister’s office, we decided to confront Deborah about this seeming link between her business and an abduction attempt.

  We insisted the three girls accompany us. Thankfully, there were no customers in the deli. The Strohmayrs were standing behind the counter, taking a break. She was sipping coffee while he stared at receipts spread out on the countertop. I couldn’t muster a friendly greeting as we strode up to them.

  Deborah looked up, obviously alarmed. “What happened? Is everything all right?”

  Tom took the lead. “No, Deborah, it isn’t. We want you to know that we just witnessed an attempted abduction of this girl just after the three of them left here a few minutes ago. We’d really like to know how the kidnappers knew exactly the moment to drive their van around the corner to snatch a girl off the street.”

  While Tom talked, I watched their expressions. Puzzlement gave way to horror, then anger. Walter grabbed Deborah’s hand.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, l
ooking back and forth between Tom and the girl who was just beginning to calm down.

  “You’re saying somebody tried to grab her right outside?”

  “That’s exactly what we’re saying. Do you get how suspicious this looks?”

  Deborah sniffed and pulled away from Walter’s grasp. I could see that whatever emotions she’d felt before, they’d given way to rage.

  “Are you kidding me?” she yelled. “You think we had something to do with it? That’s insane.” She looked at the girls, and her attitude softened. “You know we would never do anything to hurt you.”

  All three girls recoiled from her. She dropped her head, and I could see that she was crying. Walter reached down and grabbed her hand again. In an odd role reversal, he became the assertive one.

  “If you saw a crime committed on the street, you should call the police.” With his free hand, he reached out and grabbed the phone, swiveling it in Tom’s direction.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve accusing us, but worse, we’re doing what we can to help these kids. If they don’t feel safe coming here, it will be their loss.”

  Tom took a step back and nodded. “We already called Metro, and they’re sending someone over for statements. You two need to think hard about how the word could have gotten out that girls were here and how someone knew the exact time they were leaving. The van came from the direction of Fremont, and the timing was obvious. There’s no question the situation makes you look bad.”

  Two Metro detectives entered the deli and greeted Deborah and Walter, obviously already familiar with them. They introduced themselves to us and suggested we all take a seat around a large table.

  After Tom and I explained the incident with as much detail as possible, one of the detectives turned to Walter.

  “We’ve known you two for many years, and frankly, I’m baffled at how you could be involved. However, we’re going to investigate this, and you should be aware that we know it’s not the first time something like it has happened.”