by Leslie Wolfe
Holt knew it firsthand. When it came to mercy, Samuel “Snowman” Klug had none.
Exhausted, he leaned against the chain-link fencing that surrounded the employee parking lot of the Scala Hotel and Casino and gave Industrial Road another look.
It was relatively quiet, but it was early for the Las Vegas Strip, only 1:15 in the afternoon. Most of last night’s drunks were still nursing their hangovers or getting ready for another binge session, preceded by artery-popping burgers and fries, whose smells filled the Strip joints north and south of Flamingo Road and gnawed at his empty, growling stomach. As for the local street corner pushers, they were starting to come out again, stocked up and ready for Saturday night, the best of the week by substance sales volume.
Soon the place would be crawling with kids buying and selling junk.
Holt saw a dope peddler, one he hadn’t seen before, coming out of the woodwork behind the Scala with a younger kid in tow. The hotel’s parking lot was undergoing renovations, and part of it was fenced off with tarp-covered, chain-link barriers. Holt crept alongside the barriers and approached the pusher without being seen.
The dealer couldn’t’ve been more than seventeen, maybe eighteen years old, a scrawny kid who belonged in school, not selling coke behind the Strip’s fanciest hotels. But his lack of experience could work in Holt’s favor, and the detective was grateful for any miracle, no matter how small.
Holt left the cover of the construction fencing and approached the kid, feigning hesitation, looking left and right for any police cruiser traffic. Any legit buyer would check the street for cops; only rookie undercover law enforcement trying to set up a buy would advance on their mark straight and quick as an arrow.
The two youngsters were chatting casually, both listening to music on their earbuds and talking at the same time, almost dancing in place with hints of rhythm in their lazy, uncoordinated steps. When Holt appeared, the youngest one vanished, while the other’s smile disappeared.
“Need some candy,” Holt said in a low voice, after looking around again. He pulled a crisp fifty-dollar bill out of his wallet and held it out with two fingers.
“Yeah, like I need a dick up my ass,” the kid replied. “What, you think I’m stupid, man? You reek of bacon. Get the hell out of here.”
“Snowman sent me,” Holt said, hoping he’d get the kid to cooperate. “Come on, hit me, okay?” he insisted, showing the kid his bruised knuckles, raw and bloody after an entire night’s worth of pounding on anyone who could’ve given him any information. “I need something for the pain.”
The kid looked at him with a slight head tilt, then spat on the ground. “Aren’t you that cop whose kid has gone missing?”
“What do you know about that?” Holt asked, his tone different, less pleading, more threatening. He took his right hand to the side of his jacket, ready to lift the flap and pull out his service weapon.
“Nothin’,” the kid replied quickly, his pitch higher, traces of discernible panic seeping into his inflections. He raised his arms in the air. “Nothin’, I swear. Just some street talk, that’s all.”
“What street talk?”
The kid shook his head and shoved his dirty hands into the deep pockets of his baggy jeans, pulling them up an inch higher and taking a step back. By the looks of it, he was getting ready to bolt. Holt stepped toward him, forcing him to retreat against the fence where he could grab the boy the moment he made his move.
The kid looked toward the hotel, then down the street. No one was coming. He sighed and mumbled a few words, then decided it was probably better if he cooperated.
“Word’s out there that some crazed-up cop whose daughter got snatched is beating on the pavement guys, trying to get them to snitch.”
“Is that it?” Holt asked, a menacing look piercing the boy from underneath a furrowed brow. He removed a set of zip cuffs from his belt and grabbed the pusher’s arm. “Turn around, smartass, you’re going down.”
“What for?” the kid reacted, trying to wriggle free from Holt’s grip. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
“We’ll figure that out,” Holt said, tightening the cuffs around the kid’s wrists. “I could’ve sworn you tried to sell me some cocaine, remember that?”
“Hey, that’s a lie,” he cried. “It’s entrapment.”
“Unless you have some information for me. Then I’d be willing to forget the whole incident.”
“I ain’t no snitch,” the kid said, holding his head up high although his chin was quivering.
“Fine by me,” Holt said, shooting another worried look at his watch.
Time was flying by with the speed of light when he wished he could make it stand still. He’d lost count of the pieces of scum he’d interrogated since last night, then let them go without charging them formally with any crime. Not because they were innocent; no. He couldn’t afford the time it would’ve taken to call in a cruiser and turn them over to the patrols. And he couldn’t make most of the charges stick in court, without being able to show any probable cause for the arrests. Most of all, he had no time to waste.
His little girl didn’t have any time left.
He grabbed the boy by the collar and slammed him against the fence.
“Where’s Snowman? Where can I find him?”
The kid’s eyes were open wide, staring straight at Holt, filled with fear. “I—I don’t know, man, I swear! It’s not like we’re socializin’, if you know what I mean. He’s up there with the fat cats, I’m down here, on the back streets.”
Holt sunk his hand into one of the kid’s pockets and fished out a few small plastic bags. A couple of the bags held specks of white powder; others held pills. There were enough tablets of oxy, Vicodin, ecstasy, and a few others he couldn’t identify, to start a small drug store. Last in the handful were a couple of dime bags, each packing ten dollars’ worth of weed.
“This bunch will earn you three hots and a cot for a few years,” Holt hissed in the kid’s face. “Care to try our accommodations as a guest of Nevada’s prison system? Or do you want to tell me what I need to know so you can go back to poisoning people one pill at a time?”
“You’re going to let me go?” the kid asked, wrinkling his forehead in surprise. “You think I’m an idiot?”
“Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll keep in mind I had no probable cause for the body search,” Holt replied, filled with bitterness against the legal system that tied his hands behind his back every day of the week. “Even a pro bono lawyer can get you out with no time served.”
The kid stared at Holt for a long moment, biting his lip. “All I got is a rumor. He shacks out in Henderson somewhere, on a large property, so the neighbors don’t hear the gunshots when he feels like shooting people. That’s all I know, I swear.”
“How about these two men?” he asked, showing the kid a photo of the two fake cops who’d taken Meredith.
“Uh-uh, haven’t laid eyes on them,” he replied.
He seemed truthful. Holt cut off the zip cuffs with a bitter sigh. “Get out of here, before I change my mind.”
The kid bolted without waiting for a second invitation, and Holt hurried toward Industrial Road, where he’d parked his car. Henderson… at least he knew that much. A few years ago, after an eight-month undercover stint, Holt brought Snowman’s organization tumbling down. Snowman had fallen off the radar after barely evading capture. Some voices put him in South America, others in the Dominican Republic.
Now he was here, back to the city he was addicted to, hiding under some desert rock like the venomous snake that he was.
Feeling a dull pain in his side with every step, Holt paid little attention to his surroundings, letting his mind wander. His target was in Henderson, but where? Three hundred thousand people lived in Henderson.
He needed help.
Fletcher could tell him where to look for Snowman’s property, pull up satellite imagery, or whatever the hell he did to find things. And Baxter, she was resourceful and sm
art. He needed Baxter. For a moment, he couldn’t recall why he’d left her behind and roamed the streets alone with his phone turned off.
Then he remembered. From where he was going, there was no coming back.
He was almost at the car when a middle-aged jogger, dressed in gray track pants and a sweatshirt, turned the corner and bumped into Holt. Instead of apologizing and moving on, the man stopped in front of Holt, raising his fists and getting ready to pounce.
“Yo, piece of walking pig shit, you blind or something?” he asked loudly, staring intently at Holt. Street slang intonation and pronunciation were strong in his voice, eerily familiar.
The detective thought he recognized the man but couldn’t place him. He reminded him of an informant he used to work with, back in his early days as a beat cop.
He didn’t have time for any of that, whatever that was.
“Get lost,” Holt replied, but the man blocked his way, then feigned a punch to the cop’s throat.
Holt pulled out his weapon and took two steps back. “All right, that does it. Hands where I can see them.”
“Finally,” the man muttered. “Now cuff me and haul my ass out of here.”
Holt stared at the man for a moment, then nodded slightly while holstering his gun. He cuffed the man and grabbed his arm, leading him to the SUV, beginning to understand what was going on. He was dead tired, or else he would’ve caught on sooner to the man’s intentions.
Informers couldn’t be seen talking to cops; their lives depended on that, and everyone on the force knew that. A snitch’s life wasn’t worth more than the time it took to make one phone call and have him dealt with, quickly and violently, so that each lesson would serve as an example to anyone else who felt that cutting a deal with the police was a good idea.
Holt held the man’s head down and loaded him in the back seat of his Interceptor, then drove off. For a few seconds, his passenger stayed silent, looking at Holt through the reflection in the rearview mirror.
“You don’t remember me,” he eventually said. “You cut me loose one time, almost ten years ago, when I was, um, allegedly pushing dope to feed my family. I owe you a big one. I would’ve lost my kid if I’d been locked up back then.” He scratched his stubbly face and grinned, showing two rows of crooked teeth laid out in a severe underbite. “I cleaned up my act and been on the straight and narrow ever since,” he added with a tinge of pride in his voice. “I cut hair for a living.”
Good for him. Holt listened impatiently, driving toward the Interstate and wondering if the man had anything useful to say or was just another waste of his precious time.
“Now I’m going to help you get your kid back,” the man continued.
Holt’s heart swelled. “What can you tell me?”
“Not much, but I heard they’re keeping her with the rest of Snowman’s new girls.”
“What girls?”
“You didn’t know? He’s into exotic escort services these days. Underage girls, rape fantasies, virgins, bondage, anything your heart desires, if you can pay for it,” he added. “Once a year, he holds auctions online for the really weird shit, and he always delivers the goods. You won’t believe what some people pay to get their hands on one of these poor girls.”
Holt hit the brakes and brought the SUV to a sudden, screeching stop, then turned to face the man. “Are you messing with me right now? Did Snowman have you deliver a threat to me, is that it? Because if you are, they’ll need dental records to put a name tag on your corpse.”
“No, honest to God, no. I only want to help you get your kid back. Find where he’s keeping those girls and you’ll find your kid. “Rumor has it he gets the new girls addicted to dope and teaches them the oldest profession in history, to cater to the rich, depraved customers.”
Holt breathed heavily, letting the significance of what the man had said sink in. If his old source was telling the truth, he had even less time than he’d anticipated. The ultimate revenge for that son of a bitch, Klug, was forcing his baby girl into prostitution.
“Where does he work those girls?” Holt asked between gritted teeth, starting to drive again.
“Only the high-end hotels. He’s got the bartenders and bellhops on his payroll.”
19
Captive
Thirty hours missing
She crouched, leaning against the cold, looped wires, and hugged her knees, burying her face against her folded arms and letting fresh tears fall. Her sobs were quiet, subdued by fear and exhaustion. Every few minutes, she raised her head from the cradle of her arms and looked at the door, afraid of the moment it would open again.
She was cold. She’d been trembling hard with her teeth chattering the entire night, and now that the sun was high, she could feel a bit of warmth coming through the pitched roof, but not nearly enough to ease her shivers.
Most of all, she was sorry, and she missed her mom. Sorry for all the angry, cheeky words she’d spat back at her mother whenever she’d given her advice. “Don’t be so slutty, Krista,” she’d said, and Krista had lashed out bitterly at her mother, not because she was wrong, but because she was right. “Don’t be so desperate to get a boyfriend; no one will respect you if you don’t play a little hard to get. Lengthen those skirts an inch or two, and you’ll have a line forming outside your door,” her mother had added, then ran her warm fingers across Krista’s cheeks in a caress she’d give anything to feel again. “There’s time,” her mother had whispered smiling, “You’re so young. Trust me, there’s time.”
No, there wasn’t. Her mother had been wrong about that, and right about everything else.
Three days ago, her biggest fear was that she was going to show up at the prom still a virgin, the last one in her group of friends to give it up. She was terrified of that as if she’d be forced to wear a sign, a scarlet letter V embroidered on the corsage of her satin gown, informing everyone of her mortal sin: no man had touched her body.
Now all she wished for were the things she had so heartily despised only a few days ago. Her mother’s warm hands touching her face, her level voice giving advice. Warm clothing. A shower. A bed with clean sheets where she could sleep and feel safe.
Instead, she was half-naked, locked inside a ten-by-four chain link kennel lined up against the wall of a large garage and tucked between two other cages just like it, occupied by other girls her age. She was living a nightmare from which there was no waking up.
Krista raised her head and looked at the door, then breathed a trembling sigh of relief. She was afraid of the moment that door would open again. They would come for one of them, or they’d bring Mindy back, and she wasn’t ready to face either scenario.
She looked at the neighboring cages. To her left, an empty enclosure where Mindy was usually locked up. She thought of Mindy and her heart broke. Mindy had stopped crying for a while, and barely seemed present anymore, as if she were in a different realm where nothing could touch her. Whenever the men came and pulled her out of there, she complied; she’d stopped fighting a couple of days ago.
The other girl, a feisty brunette, got on Krista’s nerves. Every chance she had, the girl shouted at their captors, delivering profanities and threats without making much sense. She hadn’t shared her name but kept on yelling some weird shit about her dad and how he was going to find her and kill every single one of those men. The girl paced her cage like a lanky, snarling, rabid lioness, waiting for another opportunity to irritate the crap out of their captors.
How stupid could she be? What purpose could that foul mouth of hers possibly serve?
Right then, the brunette locked eyes with Krista and held her disapproving gaze without flinching. Then Krista looked away, turning her attention toward Mindy’s empty cage.
They were keeping Mindy out there for a long time. If Krista could tell the time at all, Mindy must’ve been gone for a few hours. If Krista held her breath and listened hard, she thought she could hear her screams in the distance, muffled by thick walls and, at
times, covered by raspy bouts of laughter.
When the door opened, Krista flinched. She withdrew into the farthest corner of her cage, trembling badly, watching the opening with large, fearful eyes. Then a man came in, the huge one with the mustache. He was covered in tattoos, bizarre ones, not like what she and her friends would get. His arms, thick as tree trunks, were covered in snakes and knives and tribal tats like she’d never seen before. But the most intriguing one and the scariest, although she didn’t know why, was the one on his forehead, a series of numbers below some words she couldn’t make out. It must’ve had a meaning, if it had been deemed worthy of being inked on the man’s forehead, as if it were a label identifying the man’s true essence.
Behind him, Mindy barely stood, shaky, pale, hugging herself with trembling hands.
“Come on already,” he snapped, turning toward her. “Move.”
Krista heard a whimper as the man grabbed Mindy and shoved her into the garage, then dragged her across the dirty cement floor to her cage. He opened the door to the kennel and shoved Mindy inside, then pushed the shackle on the padlock, laughing.
“See? It wasn’t that bad,” he commented, talking to Mindy but giving Krista a head-to-toe, leery look that sent waves of shivers down her spine. “Soon you’ll start to like it. You’ll beg me for it.”
“You motherfucker,” the brunette shouted. “You’ll be dead by the end of the day, you hear me? Dead! And I’ll piss on your grave, yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”
The man snarled and spat in her direction, then he slammed both his hands against her cage. The brunette fell silent and faltered backward until she reached the wall.