Currents of Sin

by Arleen Alleman

  Unfortunately, before he was allowed to leave this world, he endured twenty minutes of hideous torture involving a small acetylene torch normally used to make crème brûlée and a long ice pick. He told the Asians all about his other boss and the girls who used to stay at the Green Door but now lived on the twelfth floor of a Strip hotel. In addition, he named another person—a woman—who worked indirectly for the Strip operation.

  52

  My phone buzzed just as I was climbing into bed. I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear Lorraine Parkins’s voice. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I met Mick’s questioning look with one of my own.

  “Hello, Lorraine, is everything all right with Tina and Banu?”

  “Oh yes, Ms. Farthing. They seem to be settling in just fine. That’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Please call me Darcy.”

  I listened intently to her amazing story, becoming increasingly alarmed as she explained Lucy’s and Marta’s situation.

  Then she got to the point. “I don’t want to go to the police with Lucy’s story. I’m hoping instead to set something up where the police can directly apprehend these men. I know this is asking a lot, but I wondered if you and your friend Mr. Smythe could think of a way. You told me when we first met that you were communicating with the authorities about the street kids and their problems.

  “I have her cell phone contacts, including the number she uses to let them know when to drive onto Fourth Street to pick up girls leaving the deli. I’m hoping we can use that to set something up. Apparently, the kids like to avoid Fremont Street and the tourists, so they typically access the deli from the other direction—Ogden Street.”

  “Tom is leaving in the morning. But my husband, Mick Clayton—you met him today—is here. I’m stunned to hear that Lucy and her daughter are involved with the abductions at the deli. Do you realize the danger they are in, not to mention the charges they’ll probably face?”

  Lorraine sighed into the phone. “I’ve thought of nothing else since Lucy revealed all this to me. Honestly, I didn’t even know Marta was having any difficulties. Lucy has been lying about their relationship the whole time she’s worked for me.”

  “Rather ironic, I’d say, since she is the assistant director at the shelter intended to save the kids from prostitution and trafficking.”

  “Believe me, I’m way beyond incredulous. But I want to do whatever I can to soften the legal blow that’s coming. If I turn her in, she’ll be arrested and will surely go to jail. The men doing this will go to ground.

  “Based on her description, I’m confused about who the guys are working for. She swears there’s a Strip hotel involved with drugs and prostitution. She doesn’t seem to know any details, but it makes some sense because why would the gang members abduct girls off the street when they have access to them at the motel? I know it sounds bizarre, but I believe Lucy is telling the truth now, and she’s scared to death for her daughter.”

  I recalled the conversation Tom and I had with the undercover cop Curtis. Hadn’t he mentioned that a rival gang might be working out on the Strip? Several puzzle pieces began to shift—not into place, but closer together.

  “Okay, Lorraine, let’s go over her story again. Then I’ll talk to Mick and see if we can come up with a plan.”

  After the call, we sat nestled together up against the headboard. I spent a full ten minutes explaining all the details, including the meeting at the Peppermill with Curtis. Mick held my hand and listened intently.

  “Sweetie, I can understand if you don’t want to get involved,” I said finally. “But I keep thinking about the Strip hotel story and the weird vibe I got from Nate Mirabelle at Athens. Could that be a coincidence?”

  “I don’t know, but I get it. This is getting just as far-out as everything else you get involved in.”

  I thought he was angry with me, but he put his arm around my shoulder and drew me in against his body. He nuzzled my hair and kissed the side of my head.

  “I’m with you in whatever you want to do as long as we involve your police contact, Detective Hollister is it?”

  “I agree to that. Thanks so much. Curtis said they were going to begin surveillance at the deli anyway, so Lucy would probably have been found out without her confession. Hopefully, Hollister will cut some slack if she helps us catch them. Let’s come up with a plan using these phone numbers Lorraine took from Lucy’s cell.”

  I waved the notepad in the air. “Then we’ll present it to him and see what he says. I feel bad for Lorraine and for Lucy as well, but there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “What about Tom?”

  “Oh, he’s going home in the morning, so I don’t think we should bother him with this. He’ll only feel worse about leaving. I know he needs to get back to work.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Mick. I know you should get back to DC. Hopefully, we can both go home soon.” I wanted it to be true.

  53

  On a quiet street in North Las Vegas, Lucy Sanchez parked her faded blue 1998 Chevy Impala in the lot of the apartment building where she once lived with her daughter. Due to the debilitating loneliness she endured living there alone, she spent as little time in the apartment as possible.

  For the past few hours, she’d been sitting at the bar in a low-end neighborhood club just for some company. Shy and introverted around strangers by nature, she hadn’t actually talked to anyone. Just being around people who were living normal lives and enjoying themselves raised her spirits—until she had to go home to sleep, that is.

  Having told Lorraine her story, she was even more depressed than usual. No matter what her employer might try to do to help, she and Marta would eventually be arrested. She’d been miserable for a long time, but now her life was a complete ruin.

  She hadn’t done anything to help Marta. In fact, she’d made things much worse. She should have gone to the police when the man first contacted her, but she’d been completely intimidated by the threats and frankly by Marta. She no longer knew the girl. She wasn’t even sure she could trust her own daughter.

  Tears blurred her vision as she cut across the swimming pool patio on the way to her ground-level unit. Low-intensity lights illuminated the water and the surrounding concrete, but beyond the fence that surrounded the pool deck, there was only murky darkness.

  Most of her neighbors did not want to waste electricity, and consequently, only a few porch lights here and there cut through the blackness. With her eyes on the ground in front of her so as not to stumble, she felt inside her bag for the key. She made her way down the sidewalk hemmed in by tall shrubs on one side and the building on the other.

  Just as she reached her door and began to insert the key in the lock, a rough hand snaked over her shoulder and covered her mouth. She nearly fainted from the shock and then from terror as the man half dragged her back toward the street. A black SUV-type vehicle waited at the curb, and she watched in horror as a very big man approached from around the back of the car and reached for her.

  When she saw him up close, she thought her heart would stop. He was Asian, and his face was covered in strange black geometric tattoos. Long black hair flowed around his shoulders, and she knew he had to be a gang member. He grinned at her, obviously relishing her fright.

  They loaded her into the backseat like nothing more than a sack of feathers. Looking up, she gasped as Marta turned from the front passenger seat to look at her mother. Lucy couldn’t tell whether the girl was frightened or not, but a cold shroud of terror clouded her thoughts. She pushed herself upright on the seat. The monstrous man climbed in beside her while the other one slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Marta,” she cried.

  “Shut up.” It was the tattooed man next to her.

  She instantly complied, but it didn’t matter. A moment later, as the driver pulled
away from the curb, he slapped her face with the back of his hand, sending her sprawling across the seat. She screamed, then lay against the door, whimpering.

  Marta looked straight ahead, trying to block out the nightmare unfolding behind her. The most important thing for her right then was to make sure the drugs kept coming as she needed them, and only her arrangement with the men she worked for could guarantee the supply.

  Although scared of the gang members beyond anything she’d experienced before, and that was saying a lot, Marta had not told them anything important. In fact, when they picked her up on the street near the Green Door and began questioning her about activities out on the Strip, she told them she had no idea what they were talking about.

  The big man laughed at her and grabbed her chin with a viselike grip. “So if you are not fully a part of our business here”—he gestured toward the motel—“then where do you normally stay?”

  “I live with my mom,” she managed. Tears of pain stung her eyes and nose.

  He let go of her. “Oh yes, your mother, Lucy Sanchez.”

  Marta nearly peed herself. How could they know her mother? As if reading her thoughts, he added, “We had a nice chat with one of your mother’s friends—a spy from a prostitution business on the Strip. You know, Horus?”

  The new downtown pimp was somehow associated with her handlers on the Strip? What did her mother have to do with him? This was confusing. All she knew of Horus was that kids who met him said they could tell he was going to be violent in the way he controlled the girls—a gorilla pimp. Marta stayed clear of him.

  “He told us all about what they’re doing on the Strip and how your mother helps them. That was just before he died.”

  She cringed, and he laughed at her. “From that, it didn’t take much effort to identify you, Marta Sanchez, and find you hanging around the motel.”

  With mounting panic, she swore to them that if Lucy was doing something wrong, she didn’t know anything about it. “I hate her and spend as little time with her as possible.”

  That was when they decided to take Marta along for a visit to the apartment. She didn’t have the courage to withhold the address after they threatened to beat the information out of her.

  As they traveled the dark streets, Marta sat perfectly still, waiting to see what the men would do. She gave no indication that she cared about her mother one way or the other. All she had to do was ride this out until she could call for help.

  Lucy stared at the back of Marta’s head. What happened to the little girl who was once a sweet, loving child? She knew the answer, of course. Marta’s father brutalized both of them. Lucy was too weak to stop him or to leave until it was too late. Marta had no respect for her—or for herself.

  A few minutes later, a little farther north in a sparsely populated area just off Pecos Road, they pulled into the driveway of an industrial strip mall. There was no traffic on the street and no cars in the lot. They proceeded slowly into an alley behind the building. The driver parked next to a huge black dumpster and turned off the engine, leaving them in complete darkness and silence.

  The windows were up, and it quickly became stifling hot. Sweat poured down Lucy’s face and chest, and she gagged down a mouthful of bile. Her fear had been mounting during the drive, and she was having trouble forming a coherent thought. The only thing that was clear to her was that she was going to die, and she wondered if her daughter was to blame.

  The tattooed man turned to Lucy. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out the details of his frightening features, but that did not diminish her terror.

  “Now, Lucy, you are going to pay a price for interfering with our business. You will never do that again. You’ll never do anything again. Right now, you will tell us exactly how our girls were taken from us and what part you played in it.”

  Lucy wondered if Marta was being spared only because they did not know about her involvement. Her stomach rolled, and she felt her bowels loosening. Her blood seemed to have drained out through her feet, leaving her body a cold empty shell. Fear did not come close to describing the sensation. She looked at Marta again, but the girl continued to stare straight ahead.

  “We know about the assholes out on the Strip who are interfering with our business,” the man was explaining patiently. “So there’s no point in withholding anything you know about them.”

  He mentioned the name of a place she’d heard of. She glanced up to see Marta quickly jerk her head to the left, revealing her profile. Was she afraid? If my life is over, she thought, at least I can protect my daughter now. She drew herself up and turned to look at the man. His face was inches from hers. Her breath caught at the cruelty that dominated his expression.

  “All right, I’ll tell you, but I don’t know much. I’ve never been to the hotel and honestly don’t know which one it is. All I get are directions from a man who calls on my cell.”

  The realization dawned that she’d dropped her purse on the ground when the man grabbed her outside the apartment. “I don’t have my phone with me now, but I remember his number.”

  Thinking that surely this offer would appease them and demonstrate her honesty, she recited her contact’s number, then cleared her throat and tried to calm herself.

  She couldn’t quite keep her eyes on the big man’s face as she explained truthfully how the men pick up the girls outside the deli. Then she added the lie.

  “The man calls me and tells me to watch for a certain girl.” She glanced at Marta a couple of times but saw no reaction.

  “Is that really all you know?”

  He leaned back and pulled a gun out of his sweatpants. In a flash, it was nestled against the side of Lucy’s head.

  Marta’s stoic act deteriorated. She sobbed hysterically. “Please don’t shoot her,” she cried over and over.

  The driver slapped her face. “Shut up. What do you care? Do you know something about this after all?”

  She shook her head and quieted. Her latest dose of heroin was wearing off fast, and she needed more. She had to get out and find a phone. While the men were putting her in the car, she’d intentionally dropped her phone in the gutter, realizing it would be very bad if they looked through her calls. I’ll never make it to a phone anyway, she thought, because I’m going to die right here.

  “No, I told you I don’t know anything,” she whined. “Please let us go. If she knew any more, she’d tell you.”

  The gun pressed harder against Lucy’s skull, causing her to flinch and instinctively lean away from him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her upright.

  “I have a few more questions, Lucy. How much did they pay you, and why would an old broad like you get involved with prostitution? Now her …” He jabbed his finger into Marta’s neck, causing her to yelp with pain. “That would make more sense. She’s obviously a junkie and a whore. She’s not one of ours, though.”

  This is it, Lucy thought. She was going to die here, and in typical Vegas fashion, no one would ever find her body in the desert. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. What did she have to live for anyway?

  The answer popped into her head—Marta. I have to protect my daughter. Incredibly, she felt much of the stress flow right out of her chest. More lies tumbled out with it.

  “The men from the Strip send me two hundred dollars each time I help them, and that is all there is to it. I used to be in the life a long time ago, and they knew I needed money.”

  Even as she spoke, she knew it was not convincing enough. Digging deep, she pulled up every ounce of courage she possessed. She stared into the man’s eyes with what she hoped was a look of confidence.

  “One more chance, lady. How is your daughter involved?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Marta has nothing to do with it. I swear. She just has friends who live downtown and likes to hang out with them.”

  Marta could not believe her mother was blatantl
y lying to protect her, but she still could not bring herself to look into the backseat or to speak. Instead, she held her breath and waited for the gunshot.

  54

  Day 11

  Early in the morning, I called Marta’s cell. She answered in a voice barely above a whisper, as if she didn’t want anyone to know she was on the phone. I didn’t bother with small talk. Briefly, I introduced myself and explained that I knew about her through STAY and her mother and from a couple of street kids.

  Before she could respond, I added, “Marta, all you need to know is that we’re aware of your involvement with human trafficking and abducting girls off the street. We want to meet with you, or we’ll tell the police all about it.”

  There was silence. I knew she had to be shocked at what I was saying, so I waited. When she answered, I couldn’t make out her response. Either she had a mouth full of cotton, or else it was the world’s worst cell connection.

  “I can’t understand you, Marta. Just tell me where to meet you. You really have no choice. We know all about your mother’s role in the abductions at the deli as well.”

  That seemed to convince her. The urgency in her voice was evident, but I could only make out every other word.

  “I can’t understand what you’re saying. You will have to meet with us. Tell me where you are now, and we’ll pick you up. We’ll try to help you if you agree to work with us and the police. Otherwise, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble and danger. If you don’t meet with us, the police will not work with you on the trafficking charges. It’s up to you.”

  She repeated her location three times before I finally got it. I was beginning to think I’d interrupted her in the middle of something sketchy. She acted as if she was distracted or trying to carry on the conversation secretively.

  Mick and I left the hotel and drove away from downtown. Ten minutes later, a few blocks from the Green Door, I saw a slim girl with short dark hair standing slightly bent over on Thirteenth Street just beyond the I-515 overpass.