She had to take that chance. So, she went to the prison, with the intention of talking to him. Once she told him what his daughter was doing, she hoped that he would be angry enough that he would marshall forces on the outside to do something. She knew something about the Aslanian clan, and, as far as she knew, it was more powerful than the Ivanovs, but they apparently worked with the Ivanovs, among other Eastern European mob families.
When she got to the prison to speak with Harrison, however, she was surprised to see a familiar face. It was the guy who had been hanging around the pool at some of the parties, the guy who was always just observing everybody and not partaking in the festivities. Jackson Eisel.
He was coming out of the prison as she was coming in, and the two of them exchanged glances.
He smiled. “Regina, right?” he asked, pointing to her.
“Yeah,” she said, thinking it was really weird that this guy was here. What was he doing here? “Right.”
“Hey, I’ve been seeing you around, and I’ve never gotten the chance to formally introduce myself. My name is Jackson Eisel.”
“Yeah, I’ve been seeing you around, all right.” Regina felt her hackles rising up. “I’ve been seeing you around those parties.”
“Uh, huh. I had a feeling about you. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody that you’re some kind of a mole. I mean, I won’t tell anybody about that if you don’t tell anybody that I’m also a mole. I mean, I’m right, aren’t I? You got that job there because you wanted to infiltrate the place? I’ve been watching you, and I just have been getting the distinct vibe that you aren’t there to work. You’re there to spy.”
Regina didn’t trust this guy. She didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him. Carl might have tailed her and sent this guy to this prison because he wanted her to confess about what she was doing. No way was she going to tell this guy a thing. She knew that if Carl ever found out that she was, in fact, a mole, she wouldn’t live to see her next birthday, which was in two weeks.
“Yeah, you got me all wrong, there. I’m there for one reason, and one reason only. I’m there for Carl. I’m there to fluff old guys and I’m there for moral support for the girls. Now, if you will excuse me…”
“And why are you here, then?” Jackson asked her. “What brings you to this place? Do you have somebody in here that you’re seeing? Maybe somebody who you need to ask certain questions of?” He raised an eyebrow.
“I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“Now, I’m not going to answer that question,” he said. “You won’t come clean with me, so I’m not going to say anything more to you about why I’m here. But if you ever want to come clean on what you’re really all about, here’s my card.”
He handed her a business card. It simply had his name on it, and his phone number. No other information.
“What’s this? This has no information on it.”
“It has all the information you need. Trust me, I’m one of the good guys. I mean, you don’t have to take my word for it, but I hope that maybe you will.” At that, he smiled broadly at Regina and then proceeded to walk out of the lobby of the prison registration building. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. But if you ever need an ally, you just give me a call. I was thinking that maybe you and I could team up.”
At that, he walked out the door. Regina stared at the business card in her hand, as the woman behind the bullet-proof glass waited for her to give the name of the person she was going to see.
“Um, I’m here to see Harrison Baker,” Regina said.
“You on his visiting list?” the woman asked her.
“No. This is a professional visit.” She showed the woman her private investigator credentials, and the woman nodded and then picked up the phone. “He can see you.” Then she got out a map of the prison and all the pods, and then showed her which pod he was in. “Just go in there, tell the guard who you are there to see, and he’ll direct you to the visiting area. Since you’re a professional, you don’t have to always be here during visiting hours, although it is helpful.”
“Thanks,” Regina said, looking at the map.
She found the pod that housed Harrison and found a guard, who led her to the visiting room. There, she waited for Harrison to be brought out.
This prison was not a maximum security, but, rather, was a medium security penitentiary. This was generally the place where guys like Harrison, who were convicted for non-violent crimes, yet don’t quite qualify for Club Fed, go. There was an electrified fence around the perimeter. There weren’t rock concerts and pool halls, but, at the same time, the inmates did get certain privileges that the Max prisoners did not.
Harrison came out to see her about an hour after she arrived. He cocked her head and smiled at her. “Well, well, well, to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked her. “Who sent you?”
“Calm down,” Regina said. “I’m not here with a nail file in a cake. And I’m not here to give you some kind of conjugal visit. I’m here to ask you some questions. I’m also here to tell you about what your daughter is up to.”
“My daughter? Emma?” Harrison squinted his eyes. “What is she doing? What is my baby girl doing?” All of a sudden, the happy-go-lucky guy that Regina met when she first came into the prison turned into somebody who was completely different. She could see rage behind his eyes.
This might work after all. “Your daughter, Emma, was forced into prostitiution by your loving wife, Jennifer. Jennifer apparently feels that it’s necessary to maintain your home in La Jolla, and, well, she doesn’t actually want to go out and get a job to pay the mortgage on that fancy home, so she’s making your daughter work for that $5,000 a month mortgage payment.”
Regina folded her arms while she watched Harrison’s face change from anger to down and dirty rage. She smiled, knowing that she had calculated it all correctly.
This guy was going to help her.
Chapter 13
Avery
I did it. Well, actually, Christian did it. He managed to capture just the kind of incriminating evidence that would give us a ton of leverage over Paul the perv.
Now it was just a matter of Christian and I using this information against him. It helped that Paul was a longtime prosecutor. He first got into this office over 20 years ago, right after he moved out here from Kansas City. He had moved up the ranks and was currently running for the job of District Attorney. In other words, the guy had ambition. Of course, I knew that there was little chance he would ever become district attorney, and, even if he did, it would only be a matter of time before somebody blackmailed him with his predilections. That kind of thing cannot stay quiet forever. But for now, I was content with simply threatening him with what I knew.
So, I made an appointment to see him. The appointment was for the next day at 2 PM. That gave me time to get my ducks in a row before our visit. I was prepared with a thumb drive of what I had recorded at his house, and I knew exactly how I was going to threaten him with this. In fact, I felt gleeful that I was finally going to get to watch this guy squirm like a worm on a hook. Just like he watched me squirm all those years ago, knowing I was innocent, hiding evidence from the court, watching me be taken away in handcuffs… there were no words for the fury that I felt for this guy.
Chapter 14
I made my appointment with him. It was just he and I in his office. He summoned me in, and I sat down. I just looked at his smug face, knowing that he probably took some kind of sadistic pleasure about what he did to me all those years ago, and I wanted to slap him. But, instead I just took a breath, and looked him right in the eye.
“Avery Collins, to what do I owe this pleasure? I know we don’t have any cases together.”
That was the other thing. I had to work with this guy. He was a prosecutor on many of my criminal cases over the years. It always made me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I saw that he was my prosecutor, but I always had to smile a
nd bare it.
“Actually, I wanted to speak with you about a case that I want you to file. I want you to file a murder case against Carl Williams. I have a strong suspicion that he was behind the murder of Becky Whitfield. You know, the case that you railroaded me into? That case?”
At that, the bastard started to laugh. “Oh, really? And what, pray tell, evidence do you have against him?”
“He’s the leader of a pedophilia ring up in Del Mar. It’s an elite pedophilia ring. The clientele pay $50,000 a month just to take part in this ring. I have reason to believe that Becky was a part of this ring. And I have reason to believe that Carl killed her because she was going to expose him.”
I actually did not have reason to believe that Becky was going to expose him. That was just a hunch. All that I really wanted to do to him was to file charges against him, and then he could come up with the evidence against Carl.
He shook his head. “No can do. Sorry. You’re going to have to come up with a more substantial answer than that. Number one, how do you know that he has a pedophilia ring? Number two, I did investigate him all those years ago. And he had an airtight alibi. He was at an international conference in Geneva at the time. I checked, he really was there. And I spoke with several witnesses who were at this conference, high-level diplomats and such, and they confirmed to me that he really was there. So, I’m sorry, you’re just gonna have to try again.”
My heart sunk when he said that. “Listen, you were covering for somebody. I know that. Now, perhaps Carl was not the person who was behind it, but I have definitive proof that he is the head of an elite pedophilia ring, and I want to bring it down. I want you to bring charges against him for that.”
He took a deep breath, and steepled his hands. “Do you understand what you’re asking me to do? Carl Williams is an extremely wealthy man. And, he has ties in the community that I don’t want to mess with. So, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to decline your demand. Now, is there anything else that you want to ask me, because I’m a very busy man?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.
I thought about what he was saying to me, about how Carl was not behind the murder of Becky. I was going to have to get Regina to look into this alibi situation, but my heart sunk when I realized I might be back to square one on that situation.
Yet, there was still something that I could do about Carl’s disgusting ring. And I was going to do it.
“You will file charges against Carl Williams, and you will be responsible for breaking up his pedophilia ring. If you don’t, I will expose you.”
“Expose me for what?”
“Expose you for what you do at your brother Max’s house.”
I watched his face, and saw all the color draining out of it. All at once, his hands were fidgeting, and he got up out of his chair, and started pacing around the room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said meekly, almost pathetically.
“Oh, but you do know what I’m talking about. You know what I’m talking about, and I know what I’m talking about. And I have proof. I’ve paid a couple of visits to your brother Max, and Max has been more than helpful. He’s given me access to his house, and he’s allowed me to set up a surveillance system. I’ve also taken the computers I found in his house over to a forensic analysis computer guy, and this guy confirmed to me that one of the computers in the bedroom, Max’s bedroom, is full of child porn. Do you need me to go on?”
He swallowed hard. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “What are you going to do?”
“You know what I’m going to do. I’m going to take this thumb drive, which has all these images of you, videos of you, enjoying yourself wile you watched very young boys and girls on screen, and I’m going to send it to your immediate supervisor. I would think that he would be very interested in it, and I would think that he would be eager to file charges against you. And if he doesn’t, I’m going to go to the media about why it is that the district attorney is not only keeping a pedophile on his payroll, but he’s refusing to file charges against him. I’m going to make it a scandal like this city has never seen. That’s what I plan to do with what’s on this thumb drive.”
He took a deep breath. And then his voice was pleading with me. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand. If I file charges against Carl, it’ll be my life. Carl has friends who are not nice. To say the very least. If I file charges against him, I’ll be dead by sundown.”
“Don’t be silly. You file charges against him, and then it’s out there. It’s out there in the media, and he would not dare do anything to you. He has to know that if he sends one of his mob goons to bump you off, there’s going to be hell to pay. That would be a clear RICO violation, and the feds would get involved. He’s going to have to deal with the FBI if he has you killed, and I would think that he would not want that headache. You just have to tell him that the jig is up, and it’s either you prosecuting him or the feds. He’s going to have to pick his poison, and if he has you killed, he’s going to have one more thing to answer for. And, trust me, the FBI will not go easy on him.”
“You’re signing my death warrant.”
“Cry me a river. You had no problem signing my death warrant. Or do you remember that? And while we’re at it, I need to know exactly why it was you signed my death warrant all those years ago. Why you were so eager to allow me to go to prison for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do. You were covering for somebody, I assumed it was for Carl, but it apparently wasn’t. At least, if you’re not lying about the fact that Carl had an airtight alibi for the time of Becky’s death, and that somebody else was involved. I need to know who it was.”
Paul did not answer me. In fact, he just stared at me. “So this is what it comes down to. This is what my miserable life has come to. I tried so hard all these years to calm my demons. You don’t know what it’s like to deal with what I’m dealing with. Who I’m dealing with. If you did, you would not be putting this on me. But that’s okay. I know what I need to do. And I’m at peace with that. Now, I would appreciate it if you would leave this office now.”
I didn’t budge. “I need your commitment. I need to hear from your mouth that you’re going to file charges against Carl. He might not have been behind Becky’s murder, I don’t know, I’m going to have to look into that alibi situation myself, but, even if he wasn’t, he is behind the destruction of hundreds of girls. You need to do something about that. Nobody else is willing to do anything about it, but I don’t think you really have a choice in the matter.”
He just shook his head.
And then, he picked up his chair, and flung it hard against the window. Before I could react, he had broken the window with his heavy black chair.
And then, with one leap, he threw himself out that window, onto the cement below.
Chapter 15
Regina
“Yeah, Harrison, your daughter is prostituting herself as part of the Carl Williams ring.” Regina said to Harrison. “On the good side, your wife is entertaining random gentleman at your $1.5 million dollar La Jolla manse. Her lifestyle has not been affected at all by your incarceration. Your daughter is bringing in $10,000 a month, because she’s working a lot of hours, and your wife is busy as well. She’s busy getting mani-pedis, massages, facials in more ways than one, and she’s planning on sailing around the world with one of her new boyfriends. I don’t know if you feel good about what’s going on, but I certainly don’t.”
“That bitch. Listen, you get my daughter out of there, you hear that? You get her out of there.”
“Here’s the thing. Your daughter is just one of many young girls living over there. I mean, she’s a day player, which means that she actually lives with your wife, that is when your wife happens to be home, which is not often. But there’s lots of girls over there. I could certainly get your daughter out of there, not that she would go, because she’s making too much money, because, you know, she doesn’t understand she’s b
eing exploited. But I want this ring to come down, and I want these girls to be compensated for what they went through. They’re all going to be messed up for the rest of their lives, they’re all going to need lots and lots of therapy, and I want them to be compensated. That’s where you come in. I need a little bit of insurance that if those girls actually leave the compound, nobody is going to end up dead. And that would include me.”
Regina could see that Harrison was getting the picture. “There are some people who owe me some favors. I took the fall for a guy by the name of Alexander Petrov. He’s a brigadier in the Ivanov clan. The Ivanovs are close allies of the Aslanians. I agreed to take the fall for him because, basically, he’s too important to the organization. The Ivanovs made sure that I was not put into maximum-security prison, and they made sure that my prison time was short. I only got five years for what I was convicted of, which was the murder of a high-level government guy who was trying to expose our organization. Actually, I was not convicted of that, even though that was what I was charged with. I was only convicted of the hacking offense for when I got into the Department of Defense to find out information about what that guy was doing. I didn’t really kill that guy. Alexander did. Anyhow, nobody’s going to pay the price for murdering that guy, because I agreed to take the sentence for Alexander.”
“You do know that the Ivanovs are the ones who are behind the whole Carl Williams thing?” Regina asked. “They’re the ones who are the enforcers. They’re the ones who make sure that nothing ever happens to Carl. If we could neutralize them, then I think that I could get the girls out of there safely, and then I can turn the tables on Carl to make sure that the girls were compensated for all the crap that they’re going through right now. They can never be made whole, but they can get out, and they can have money once they get out. Probably a lot of money, if my boss Avery does things right.”
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