by Sean Black
Usually, in his experience, they gave up. Once or twice, when a girl was already used up, he’d throw her back.
He had no plans to do that with Kristin. She was a gem. The kind of girl that came along once every three or four years. Young, white, and with the help of his bottom girl, a seven out of ten, maybe an eight. If he played it right, she was a million-dollar baby.
That was why there was no way he was letting her go. Now all he had to do was make his position clear.
“I heard you were looking for me,” he said, watching the guy in the Audi who had just rolled past him and into the parking lot.
“Let’s cut to the chase. You’re going to return Kristin Miller to her family. Today. In fact, you have two hours and the clock just started ticking.”
Hanger smiled. Tough guy talk. He’d heard a lot of it in his time. It didn’t faze him. He’d once had a dude pour gas over him and threaten to set him on fire. He’d told the dude to go ahead, laughed while he said it. He’d meant it too. Hanger wasn’t afraid to die, he was prepared.
He sucked on his teeth as he scoped the guy out. He was lean, muscular, looked former military, one of those types. If this had been about some older duck, an asset he had already sweated, maybe he would cut his losses. But not with this girl.
“I don’t know who that is. I’ve never heard of any Kristin Miller. But I don’t much like threats.”
“Oh, it’s not a threat.”
Hanger stopped speaking. He wanted to see if this dude would fill the silence. He waited for him to start looking at the phone, to see if Hanger had hung up.
He didn’t. The dude in the car stared straight ahead, scanning everything around him. If Hanger hadn’t been behind tinted glass that meant no one could possibly see into his vehicle, he may have started to worry.
A few more seconds ticked by. It was weird. It was like this dude knew Hanger was here. Like he knew he was being watched. It was, Hanger wasn’t going to lie, more than a little unnerving.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “But here’s the thing, I don’t like dealing with anyone when I don’t know their name. You feel me?”
The dude holding Andre’s phone smiled at that. It wasn’t a nice smile either. Wasn’t a regular Joe smile.
“You don’t need my name,” he said to Hanger.
“Okay,” said Hanger. “That’s cool. But I don’t know no Kristin Miller or anyone called Kristin, so I can’t really help you.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Guess it is.”
“You don’t want to know why it’s too bad?”
Hanger choked back a laugh. He was starting to enjoy this little back and forth. It tickled his funny bone.
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“It’s too bad because we both know that you are a lying sack of shit. And it’s too bad because if by some miracle you happen to be telling the truth, then I’m going to kill you, regardless. Choice is yours.”
He hung up. Hanger stopped laughing. Now he was pissed. Super pissed. No one hung up on him. Not ever. It was beyond disrespectful.
Part of him wanted to pop his door open right there and then. March over to this dude and introduce him to the rings on his hands. See if he could back up the threats he’d made.
But something held him back. There was something about this dude that was off. Like he was psych ward crazy. Something like that.
He pulled up Soothe’s number and hit call. She answered immediately.
“What’s up, Daddy?” she said in that little girl voice she used with him.
“You with the new girl?” he said.
“Yeah, she’s here.”
“Get her off the track. Take her back to your crib.”
“You sure? It’s really busy.”
“Am I sure?” he said, anger rising up in him.
“You got it,” Soothe hurriedly corrected. “We’re leaving now.”
13
Lock pushed through the door and into the diner. It was busy, the customers a mirror of the people outside, minus the men in their cars. Lock guessed that they scuttled off home after their seedy liaison with one of the girls outside.
A couple of people looked up as the door jangled shut behind him, then went back to their food or their conversation. He took a seat at the counter and used the mirror on the wall facing him to scan the space for any sign of Kristin Miller, or for anyone who’d seen him and decided to make a hasty exit.
Angie had told him that this track was a popular place for traffickers to put new girls to work. Not, as Lock assumed, because it was somehow safe, but for the opposite reason. They chose it because it was both seedy and dangerous. Angie explained that when traffickers were ‘breaking’ a new girl, they often put her in the worst possible situation first.
It served two purposes. The first was to shock and traumatize them, making them more malleable. Following on from that, it made them grateful when they were moved to work on a nicer track or inside, usually a motel room.
“What can I get you?”
Lock looked up at the waitress. She looked short on patience. He asked for coffee and a menu. She dumped coffee in a chipped white mug and pointed to the menu on the wall without saying anything.
Lock thanked her and went back to scanning the booths and tables behind him. There were a couple of teenage girls in short skirts and low-cut tops, their faces plastered in heavy makeup, who looked underage. None of them were Kristin.
Mostly the girls and women sat in small groups of two or three. In a couple of booths, Pimps sat alone or with girls. They hard-stared Lock when they made eye contact. He returned the favor. A couple of them looked away, obviously taking him for a cop.
The waitress came back.
“You ready to order?” she asked him.
He slid his paper napkin across the counter, a twenty-dollar bill tucked under it. With his little finger, he slid his cell phone with it. The screen was facing up, and he had it turned around so the waitress could look down and see the picture of Kristin he’d made his screensaver without having to pick the phone up.
“You seen her?”
The waitress flicked her eyes down, pulling the money out from under the napkin and sliding it over the edge of the counter and into the pocket of her apron.
“Nope.”
“Take another look,” said Lock.
“One second,” she said, walking down to the other end of the counter and filling up another patron’s coffee cup before reaching in and producing a black ring binder.
She dumped the binder in front of Lock. It was bulging. He opened it. There must have been a hundred clear plastic sleeves. Inside sleeve was a missing person poster with a picture and a phone number. Some had a reward for information.
Lock flicked through. A couple posters featured teenage boys and young men. Most were girls, some who looked, and were even younger than Kristin.
The waitress came back. “If you’re not eating, then you have to leave.”
It seemed a strange house rule, given that most of the customers were busy stirring a hole in the bottom of their cup. But Lock knew when to take a hint.
Closing the binder, he tapped his fingertips on the front cover.
“Maybe you should put these up somewhere so people can see them.”
The waitress gave him a tired smile that seemed laced with sarcasm.
“Yeah, we tried that. We got complaints.”
I bet you did, thought Lock. He jotted down his number on the napkin.
“If you see her, give me a call.”
The napkin went the same way as his twenty dollars. He put another five dollars on the counter to cover the coffee and an extra gratuity.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, heading back outside.
He walked to the end of the block, gathering more than a few solicitations.
“Hey, sugar.”
“You looking for a date?”
He tho
ught about showing some of them the picture but decided against it. His continued presence was already drawing more unwanted attention from the pimps.
That wasn’t his reason for avoiding asking any of the women on the track. For one, he was unlikely to get a straight answer when everyone could see them talking to him. For another, like it or not, and regardless of his own morals, they were working. Finally, canvassing here was a task better left to Angie, who knew many of the women and had already built trust with them.
Lock took a sharp left into an alleyway. Even by the standards of downtown alleyways, it smelled bad. The cold took a little of the edge off the odor. He could only imagine how bad it was at the height of summer.
He kept walking, senses on alert in case someone had followed him. Since he’d arrived here, his sixth sense told him he was being watched.
Movement behind a dumpster. His hand moved to his SIG Sauer P226. A woman’s head popped up from behind the dumpster. She had an electric blue wig on and nothing else. A guy stood up. They both looked at Lock, saw he wasn’t a cop, and went back to what they’d been doing.
Lock kept moving until he reached the service entrance at the back of the diner. A couple of the kitchen staff, heavy-set, squat Latino guys were having a smoke break while less than ten feet away a guy leaned against a wall while a woman knelt down and unbuttoned his pants. The guy sighed and stared straight ahead as she went to work, Lock glad he’d passed on breakfast.
Lock showed the two kitchen staff the picture of Kristin, explaining himself in the little broken Spanish he had until one of them said, “I speak English.”
“You seen her around here?”
The guy side glanced down both ends of the alleyway.
“She’s fourteen,” said Lock.
The guy rubbed at his chin. “Yeah,” he said. “Last night, well, it was more his morning. She came in with one of the regulars.”
“A guy?”
“No, a woman.”
Lock reached into his pocket and pulled out another twenty-dollar bill.
The guy waved him off. “I don’t want your money. I have a daughter not much older than that.”
Lock felt bad for making the assumption that it would take a bribe for this guy who worked for minimum wage to help him when common decency was all that was required. Lock guessed that he had been around rich people for too long. Not everything in life came with a price tag.
The guy finished his smoke. He ground the butt under his boot, walked back and pulled the door behind them closed.
“These people keep us going, know what I’m saying.”
Lock nodded that he did.
“You didn’t speak to us, but the woman’s name is Soothe, she’s the bottom girl for a dude by the name of Hanger.”
“What does she look like?” asked Lock.
The guy gave him a quick description. “Real tall. Like six one. Skinny. Black. Maybe early twenties. Real pretty.” He looked over to his co-worker, who added something in Spanish that Lock didn’t catch.
“She has like this big silver fur coat. Real fur. Real long hair. Oh, and she carries this big ass knife. I’ve seen her use it on a John out there. Sliced this dude from here to here,” he said, slashing his hand all the way from his groin to his throat.
“She was with Kristin?”
“If that’s who that is,” he said, looking at the picture on Lock’s phone, “Then, yeah.”
“And what about Hanger? What does he look like?” said Lock.
The kitchen worker shook his head. “I don’t play with that dude,” he said, opening the door behind him, and signaling that as far as he was concerned their conversation was over. “And if your smart, you won’t either.”
He started to hustle back inside.
Lock thought about pressing him, but didn’t. The man had done the decent thing. He didn’t owe Lock anything.
“I hope you find her, I really do,” he said. “The girls down here. It’s about as messed up as it gets down here,” he added with a sad shake of his head.
“If you see her again, would you text me?” said Lock, handing off his number.
The guy took it, but didn’t answer. The door closed.
A few feet away, the John was already pulling up his zipper. Lock would have to take another shower when he got home. Maybe use some bleach instead of soap.
He walked back down the alleyway. If Kristin had been here with Hanger’s bottom girl, then it was safe to say she wasn’t here now.
In truth, he’d probably gathered more intel than he could have reasonably expected in such a short period of time. He guessed this was why cops referred to the golden twenty-four or the golden forty-eight when it came to major investigations. It was easier to gain traction when things were still fresh.
He stood where he was, pulled out his phone and called Angie Garcia. As he brought her up to speed, he could hear merriment in the background. She was at the shelter. They had just opened presents, and they were busy preparing a meal for later. Everyone sounded happy.
As he looked around the alleyway, he could imagine the relief the women she helped felt trading a basic room at the shelter for what they had come from. An hour down on the track had been sixty minutes too long for Lock. He couldn’t imagine spending months or years in a place like this.
Angie told him she’d ask around about Soothe. The name rang a bell. He thanked her and called Joyce Miller.
“I haven’t found her,” he said as soon as she picked up. “But I have some strong leads on who she’s with.”
“You think you’ll find her?” she asked.
“I don’t want to make any promises or raise your hopes, but I’m hopeful, yes.”
“Oh, thank the Lord,” she said. “Where are you, anyway?”
As he told her, shadows fell across the end of the alleyway. Lock stopped as three of the pimps he’d seen out on the track turned into the alley, headed for him. They were laughing and joking, trading a joint, the pungent aroma of weed pushing out the smell of filth, seemingly paying no attention to him, but their intent was obvious.
“Mrs. Miller, I have to go,” he said, killing the call immediately as he drew his gun and stepped into the middle of the narrow passage.
14
“Hey, fellas. What’s this?” said Lock. “Meeting of the Sex Traffickers and Badly Dressed Assholes Local 541?”
His jibe drew an acknowledgment of his presence. The conversation they’d been having died away. They looked down the alley towards him.
Lock heard the service door into the diner slam shut. He made a quick appraisal of the three men. One was short and squat, neck fat pushing its way out at the top of his shirt collar. He was on Lock’s left.
The guy in the middle was tall and lean and the most garishly dressed of the three. He was wearing a green suit that gave him a demonic leprechaun vibe. The third guy was carrying a cane and wearing, of all things, an old-fashioned monocle that was attached to a chain.
Three guys walking toward you in an alleyway when there was only one of you was rarely a good thing. Unless of course you had not just one gun, but two. In which case, the odds swung back strongly in your favor.
“One of you wouldn’t happen to be called Hanger, would you?” said Lock, taking this is an opportunity for further intelligence gathering.
The Leprechaun shook his head. “Don’t know that name,” he said.
“There’s a surprise,” said Lock.
“You come down here, it better not be to disrupt business,” Neck Fat chimed in, his voice surprisingly high for such a heavily built man.
“Unless you want to catch yourself a beating,” said Monocle.
“Oh, come on, fellas, it’s Christmas,” said Lock. “And I was just about to leave.”
That drew a few chuckles.
“Oh, you were,” said Neck Fat.
“That’s right, so if you wouldn’t mind turning back round, I’ll be on my way,” said Lock, his hand moving to his gun.
Lock took the question to be rhetorical.
There was a sound from behind Lock. He threw a fast glance over his shoulder. The service door opened and the two kitchen staff he’d spoken to a few minutes ago stepped back out.
“You okay?” the more helpful of the two said to Lock.
“Yeah, I was just leaving,” Lock told him. “As soon as these gents get out of the way.”
Now that the numbers were even, maybe he wouldn’t need the gun after all.
The two kitchen staff walked up behind him. The three pimps seemed to hesitate. Monocle took a step back.
“Okay,” said Leprechaun. “We just wanted to warn you that Hanger don’t like people asking questions about any of his girls. You feel me?”
“Oh, you mean the trafficked fourteen-year-old?” said Lock.
“Ain’t no hoes out here on the track who don’t want to be,” said Neck Fat.
Lock took a step forward. “You know I’m really growing to dislike that word.”
“That so?” said Neck Fat.
The two kitchen staff guys reached Lock. They stepped in front of him, flanking him on either side. Looking down, he saw one of them holding a cleaver, the other one had a large kitchen knife with a razor sharp seven inch blade.
With the odds suddenly even, the three pimps seemed to lose their resolve. Monocle jabbed his cane in Lock’s direction.
“You’d better not come back down here,” he said.
They turned and walked slowly away. Lock watched them go.
“He’s right,” said one of his newfound friends. “Those guys don’t mess about.”
“None of them were Hanger, were they?” Lock asked.
The men shook their head.
He thought about pressing them for more details, but he already owed them. They had to work down here, and he was merely passing through.
“We’ll keep an eye out for her,” said one of the kitchen workers.
Lock thanked the two men for their help, walked back down the alleyway and onto the street, scanning the girls walking up and down, but knowing that if Kristin had been here, she’d be long gone by now.
