“She has that effect,” I said.
The Vice and High Risk Victims Unit is located on the tenth floor of the SPD building. Dwayne announced us to the receptionist, who made a phone call. A couple of minutes later, a short, middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blond hair came out to greet us. The woman wore a beige tweed dress suit over a black blouse. Her police badge was clipped to the pocket of her jacket.
“Hi, Nancy,” Dwayne said, smiling broadly. He stepped toward the woman and gave her a warm hug.
“Hello, Dwayne,” she said, also smiling. “It’s so good to see you. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from you yesterday.”
“It’s been a while,” he said. “Here we are, just four floors apart, and it’s like we’re in two different cities.”
“So true,” she said.
“You know Gus, right?” Dwayne said.
“I do,” she said. “Gus-good to see you.” She smiled and shook his hand.
Dwayne turned to us.
“Lieutenant Nancy Stewart, I’d like you to meet Danny Logan and Toni Blair. They’re with Logan Private Investigations.”
“Danny Logan,” Nancy said, stepping toward me and offering her hand. “I’ve heard of your company. I know you by reputation.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, shaking her hand.
She laughed. “All good,” she said. “Nothing bad. You guys are held in high esteem in this building. All the old guys around here know Richard Taylor, of course. And now, you guys are making quite your own name for yourselves. You seem to be very professional-very effective.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We work hard at it.”
She turned to Toni. “Hello, Toni,” Nancy said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Nancy and I used to work in the same unit,” Dwayne said. “That would have been in. .” he looked at the ceiling, thinking.
“That was some time ago,” Nancy said, interrupting him. “Let’s just leave it at that, okay, Dwayne? No sense dating ourselves.”
Dwayne laughed. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “That works for me.”
“Are you guys going to be joining us this morning?” Nancy asked Dwayne.
Dwayne shook his head. “No, I wish we could, but we can’t,” he said. “We’ve got a meeting with the DA at eleven.”
“Good luck,” Nancy said.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I do want to get together and do lunch. We can talk about the good old days. I’ll bet we’ve got a lot of catching up to do-a lot of secrets to share.”
“Shhh!” Nancy said, smiling. “It’s a date.”
Dwayne and Gus left, and Nancy escorted us back to her office.
“That Dwayne is a fine man,” she said, as she took a seat at a small table in her office.
“He’s great,” I agreed. “He and Gus both.”
“Dwayne saved my life once,” Nancy said. “Knowing Dwayne, I’ll bet he didn’t tell you.”
I shook my head.
She thought for a couple of seconds. “Bad situation. Very bad-April 7, 1997. I’ll never forget.” She looked at us. “You should get him to tell you about it one day.”
“Dwayne’s a pretty modest guy,” I said. “He doesn’t blow his own horn much.”
“Well one day, you ask him about Raymond Allan Johnson. Mr. Johnson-may he rot in hell-nearly had my number. Dwayne fixed it for me. I’ll owe him forever.” She thought for a few more seconds, and then she focused on us and smiled. “But you’re not here to hear about my old war stories. Dwayne tells me you guys have a problem that falls into our purview.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid we do.”
I was just about to launch into the story when a handsome black man in his mid-thirties entered the office. He wore a badge clipped to his belt, alongside a holstered Glock. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get off the phone.”
“Danny and Toni, this good-looking young guy is my assistant, Detective Tyrone Allison.” We shook hands and Tyrone pulled a chair up to the table.
“Ty, your timing’s good. Danny was just about to start explaining what’s happened.” She turned to me. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. Yesterday, Toni’s little sister, Kelli Blair, approached Toni and me. Kelli said she was worried about her friend, Isabel Delgado.” I went on to explain Isabel’s story to Nancy and Tyrone, all the way up through the details of our visit to Isabel’s house. When I was done, I showed them copies of Isabel’s text messages to Kelli. After they’d read the messages, they looked at each other for a second, and then Nancy looked at me.
“What’s your initial impression?” Nancy asked. “What do you think happened?” If I was reading her correctly, she was probing, trying to figure out how to deliver bad news, wondering how to break it to us.
I nodded. “Let me start by saying you should know you can speak plainly to us-you don’t have to worry about saying anything that will shock or offend us.”
She nodded, and I continued. “That said, we’re starting to think that it’s possible-maybe even probable-that Isabel’s gotten herself caught up in some sort of underage prostitution racket, perhaps with a gang.” I looked at her. “We believe that Isabel probably felt like she needed to run away to escape her stepfather. She hooked up with some people and at first, her text messages seem to indicate that she was happy. Then, at some point, Isabel apparently came to some sort of realization that things weren’t as rosy as she’d been led to believe. No word since then.”
Nancy seemed to relax, knowing that she wasn’t going to have to deliver unexpected news. “I’d say there’s almost no doubt that that’s exactly what’s happened,” she said. “As a matter of fact, this seems like a classic case of a runaway being scooped up. Let’s start at the beginning. We usually figure that a runaway girl has less than forty-eight hours before a pimp approaches her. Of course, the pimp won’t actually say he’s a pimp-he’ll just offer shelter, clothes, food-stuff like that. A huge number of these girls don’t have any alternatives. The pimp’s initial offer is like a life ring to a drowning person. The next thing she knows, the girl’s completely caught up in the life.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Until yesterday,” I said. “I hardly knew anything at all about this. I had no idea the problem was so big.”
She nodded. “It’s very sad. We probably have somewhere around one thousand minor-aged girls actively being prostituted in Seattle right now. Basically, they’re sex slaves. And it’s growing faster than we can stop it.”
I shook my head. “It makes me wish there were more we could do. But at least with regards to Isabel Delgado, maybe we can help out.”
“We’ll take one-at-a-time victories,” Nancy said. “Sometimes, we’ll arrange stings where we can get five-maybe ten girls even. But one-at-a-time works well, too. Everyone we can pull out is one young life potentially saved.”
“Speaking of that,” Toni said, “what happens to these kids after you arrest them? We were wondering what would happen to Isabel when we find her.”
“We don’t actually arrest all that many kids anymore,” Nancy said. “Not unless it’s the only way to help them. A few years ago, the law enforcement community finally came to the realization that thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girls being coerced and manipulated by an older man into prostitution aren’t really the criminals in the equation. They’re actually the biggest victims of all-even if they are doing something illegal. That’s when we changed the name of our unit from just plain ‘Vice Squad’ to ‘Vice and High Risk Victims Unit.’ It turns out that the kids are the high-risk victims-have been all along. They’re subjected to physical violence from either the johns or their own pimps. They’re exposed to deadly diseases. If they live through it, they almost always have emotional scars that last the rest of their lives. It’s enough to make you cry. You wouldn’t have thought that it would have taken law enforcement so long to figure that out, but bureaucratic inertia sometimes takes a while to overc
ome.”
I nodded. “I was in the army,” I said. “I understand how large organizations work. Let me ask, then, where do the kids go now if they don’t go to juvenile hall? Some sort of shelter?”
“A shelter or back to their home if it’s possible, although a lot of the kids can’t go home. Like with Isabel, a lot of kids had their problems start at home in the first place.”
I pictured Tracey Webber. “I agree 100 percent with that,” I said. “There’s no way Isabel can go back home with her stepfather still in the picture.”
“Agreed,” Nancy said.
“Any hints on the best way to tackle finding Isabel?” Toni asked. “I think we’re basically planning to treat it like a missing person case.”
“We don’t spend much time hunting down specific individuals,” Nancy said. “But I think you’re probably on the right track. You said the mother was going to file a missing person report? When she does, that will get the case entered into the NCIC and WACIC databases. After that, like you say, it’s pretty basic stuff-a lot of interviewing and legwork.”
“But it’s made all the more difficult because your subject is a minor,” Tyrone added. “She’s not going to be leaving any electronic traces-no credit cards, no bank withdrawals, nothing like that.”
Nancy thought about this for a second. “On the other hand, there are a few things that might help you out. First, if there’s a gang involved-and odds are that there is-then you might be able to work another angle and get some help from our Gang Unit. They might have some information on the gang itself. Can I see those text messages again? What were the names of the people Isabel ran into?” She looked over the transcripts.
“Crystal, Donnie, and Mikey.” She turned to Tyrone. “Any of these sound familiar to you?”
He thought about it and then shook his head. “No.” He looked at me. “But don’t read anything into that. Unless we’re dialed in on someone as a subject of one of our investigations, we probably wouldn’t bump into them during our normal course of business, and we’d have no reason to know their names. The Gang Unit might, though. They bounce around in those circles all the time. I’ll hook you up with those guys before you leave.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Nancy continued. “The second thing is that, as I was saying, whoever Isabel’s gotten herself involved with is going to try and prostitute her-most likely on the Internet. That may be what led to this last message-the one that reads ‘too good to be true.’ She may have finally been exposed to the big picture-the timing seems about right. She might have even tried to resist. As distasteful as it is, I’d start monitoring the Backpage.com website. Leave us a picture, and we’ll keep an eye out, too. That’s something we can do-we monitor Backpage all the time anyway. That’s where most of the pimps run their ads. There’s a reasonable chance that you’ll see a picture of Isabel in some provocative pose posted there. Brace yourself.”
The thought disgusted me, but the tactic made sense.
“Another lead we can give would be to talk to Annie Hooper at Angel House. Angel House is actually a series of houses that the city has recently purchased and fitted out as safe long-term places where these girls can live while they’re trying to break free from their pimps. They keep the locations pretty secret, and they’re heavily securitized, although from the outside, they look just like a regular house. Each house takes six or eight girls. They’re able to stay in a safe, structured place without having to worry about their pimps coming after them. If you’d like, I can call Annie and see if she’d agree to a meeting.”
“That would be great,” Toni said.
“Annie likes to encourage her girls to speak out. She feels that it can be therapeutic for them if she can get a girl to the point where she’s actively trying to help other girls break free. It’s possible one of her girls might recognize these names. If it’s okay with you, I’ll pass on that information as well and get back to you with meeting arrangements.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “That’d be a big help.”
“I wish we could do more,” she said, “but we’re not set up to hunt down individuals. It sounds like what you were planning is the right approach-you need to do some missing-person-type work to try and find Isabel.”
“Agreed,” I said. “We specialize in missing persons. I’m betting that we’ll find her.”
“Good. When you do, I’d like you to call us before you try any sort of intervention. It could be that us going after her pimp might be the safest way to rescue Isabel. Besides, if Isabel’s pimp is a gang member-highly likely-then that makes it quite probable that he’s armed and dangerous. We can certainly match our resources to the specific problem. We should definitely work together.”
“Agreed,” I said again. “We’ll gladly take whatever help you’re willing to provide.”
Chapter 5
Nancy called Annie Hooper before we left and put in a good word for us. It must have worked because Annie agreed to meet us for lunch at noon at a popular Caribbean-style restaurant in Fremont called Paseo. “Do you know where it’s at?” Toni asked as we headed north. I was trying to get on Highway 99, but it was closed throughout a good part of the city for construction work.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s on Fremont Avenue just north of Forty-Second Street. Just off 99.”
“You ever been there?”
“No. But they have one in Ballard-I’ve been to that one. It’s spicy stuff. You’ll like it.”
“Good,” she said. We fell back into silence for a few minutes.
“Did you ever do it with a prostitute?” she asked.
I suppose I should have seen this coming.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Would it make a difference to you if I had?”
She thought about this. “Maybe,” she said. “Depends on the circumstances.” She turned to me. “Why? Did you?”
I stared straight ahead and didn’t answer for a minute. She continued to look at me.
“I came close once,” I said. “Long time ago.” I paused for a few moments.
“What do you mean-‘close’?”
I turned onto Aurora at Denny. I finally had a clear ramp to get on 99 northbound. “It was at Fort Benning in Georgia. We’d just graduated from Advance Infantry Training like two days before New Year’s. I was all of eighteen years old. We’d all just received our new assignments and were set to ship out the next week. Three of my buddies and I had passes for New Year’s Eve, so we were out to do some celebrating. Naturally, we got completely shit-faced at one of the local redneck bars down there and-well-there was this place you could go-this house. One of the guys heard about it, so we got a cab to take us there. Turned out to be a full-on whorehouse-set way back up off a country road. Had a red light out front and everything. The place was full of soldiers-soldiers everywhere. We actually had to wait our turn. But they had beer and loud music, and everyone was hootin’ and hollerin’ and having a good time, so we didn’t care. I was young and stupid.”
“What happened?”
“We finally got our turn and went inside,” I said. “They had this lineup of girls-women really-they were older than I’d expected. They all looked like they were in their thirties-maybe forties even.” Despite being halfway drunk at the time, I remembered the lineup. I guess something like that is one of those things that gets permanently burned into your mind’s memory chips.
“Were any of them cute?”
I shrugged. “A little, I suppose. They weren’t ugly. Remember, I was a little shit-faced by then. Anyway, I was last in our group to pick. When it got to be my turn, I looked at the four women who were standing there.” I shrugged, seeing the women in my mind. “They were okay-looking, I suppose. They were all wearing this slinky lingerie, supposed to make ’em look sexy. And as I looked at them, that’s when it hit me.” I shook my head. “They didn’t look sexy. Far from it, really. They actually looked kind of sad. I looked in their
eyes and bam! — the switch got thrown, and I was instantly turned off.” I paused for a moment, remembering. “They all had sad eyes. It changed things for me-kind of woke me up, I guess.” I paused for a moment, remembering. “So then I just turned and walked back outside. I had another couple of beers and waited for my friends.”
Toni thought about this for a few moments, then she said, “Do you imagine under different circumstances-?”
I shrugged. “What is this? A test? Who knows. I do know that that’s the closest I’ve ever been to being with a prostitute. And there’ve been plenty of opportunities since then.”
“Like you got close to the fire once, and you don’t want to go back.”
“Got that right-I definitely don’t want to go back. It was twelve years ago and today-just thinking about it-mostly all I see are those sad eyes.”
“We’re buried.” Annie Hooper was sitting across from us at an outside table at Paseo, explaining the shortcomings of Angel House. We’d just finished lunch. Annie was a cute, vivacious woman, I’d say in her early forties. She had wavy red hair that fell to her shoulders. Her bright, infectious smile was made all the more endearing by the band of freckles on her face. She wore a black dress with a black necklace. “We’re up to six houses now-that means beds for thirty-six girls-a couple more in a pinch. And that means that at any one time, I probably have four more girls on a waiting list-girls I don’t have room for.”
“There’s that many girls trying to get straight?” Toni said.
“That’s right. The girls are all minors-by our charter with the city, we can only accept minors. Nearly all of them have been working for pimps. We give them a safe, secure home. We try to keep the locations secret to keep the pimps from coming by. They tend to find out anyway, but we have cameras, alarms, and heavy locks-and nearly instant response from the police. If a pimp shows up, he gets hit with a restraining order and a pretty firm warning. After that, most of them figure it’s not worth the trouble, and they don’t show up again. Most of them seem to get the message. At least so far. We’re diligent.” She smiled. “And maybe, just a little lucky.”
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