“In exchange for what?” asked Andrew. “So far we don’t know squat.”
“I know enough,” said Lucky, approaching Andrew. “The money.”
“No,” posed Andrew, indignant as hell.
That’s when Lucky reached with both arms and snatched the FedEx envelope from Andrew. He placed it in the shopping cart and rolled it back toward Herm.
“Nice doin’ business,” said Lucky. “Now go.”
“Screw that!” spat Andrew. “We’re not done with you—”
“Lemme ask daddy man somethin’,” asked Herm. “Why’d your little girl run away from home?”
“Why do teenage girls do anything?” Andrew fired back.
“See? That’s the problem,” said Herm. “You mommies and daddies say you never know. Least that’s what you always say.”
“You don’t know crap!” angered Andrew.
“Oh, but I know these girls,” smiled Herm. “That’s cuz when I get ’em all warm and cuddly and trusting, they tell me all of it. And you know what?”
“Let’s go,” ordered Lucky.
“Shut up!” Herm spat at Andrew.
“Always a good reason,” finished Herm. “Always.”
Lucky had Andrew by the shirt and was walking him backward. Andrew bucked, pointing his broken finger.
“Walk away!” hissed Lucky, manhandling Andrew into a one-eighty turn. He was trying to get the seething parent out of the sporting goods aisle. Cherry quickly followed without saying goodbye or making eye contact with Herm.
“What’d you just do with my money?” demanded Andrew. “That bastard’s the bad guy! I know it!”
“He’s a bad guy,” answered Lucky. “Just the wrong bad guy.”
“I just paid him fifty thousand dollars! For what?”
The trio exited Costco without a purchase. Lucky would go on to explain that it was all about the blood on the shoes. Fresh, he said. Still bright, oxygenated, with some drops having soaked into the fabric.
“How the hell do you know it wasn’t my Karrie’s blood?” pressed Andrew.
“It was all about the other guy,” remarked Lucky. “It was his blood. He’s probably dead or hurt real bad after Herm back there tortured him.”
In the back of his mind, Lucky was already onto the Armenian connection and that one name on the phone. Jake. As he maneuvered the Crown Vic out of the Costco lot, he was on the phone to his old pal, Bledsoe. The division Captain’s phone went directly to voicemail.
“It’s Lucky,” he began. “You know that guy I asked you to run the dogs on? Herman Bland of WeHo? Add him as a suspect in a one-eight-seven. Just met. Shoes covered with blood so you’re gonna need some kind of PC before you bag ’im. Call me back. I got a lead and a phone number I need help with.”
“What’s next?” asked Cherry.
“Taking you back home.”
“And if I don’t wanna go back home?”
“What you do with the rest of your day is your business,” said Lucky. “You and Mr. Kaarlsen can work out something between what you deserve and what he thinks he owes you. Isn’t that right Andrew?”
“He’d pay you out of his end,” lamented Andrew. “But I already fired him once.”
“I’d like to help,” shied Cherry. “More than I have, you know?”
Lucky didn’t have an answer for her. At least not yet.
50
Woodland Hills. 3:54 P.M.
“Hagop Aram Tobarian,” repeated Jake, knowing that in a matter of seconds he’d have to spell his birth name. At thirty-one, he had long since been accustomed to the routine of repeating his name twice, maybe three times, then having to spell it for whomever was on the other end of the phone call. In this case, it was someone in the Fraud Department at American Express.
“H as in Henry. A as in apple,” recited Jake by rote. Sometimes while going through this all-too-familiar exercise, he’d curse his Armenian name, wishing he’d bucked his parents wishes and married his Taft High School sweetheart, Jamaica Blume. He’d even fantasized about taking her last name in lieu of his own while legally switching his first name to the easier to spell Jewish form, Jacob.
Once Jake had identified himself as the primary cardholder, the Pakistani-sounding customer service rep read off the series of suspicious charges on his account. He leaned back in his tilting office chair, feet up on a Korean conflict era gray metal tanker desk, nodding instead of scribbling down each financial indiscretion. He was more certain with every line item that there was no charge card theft involved. These online items were most likely the result of one of his wife’s buying binges. Having to listen to each and every impulse buy was like another tiny shoe kicking at his testicles.
Ahhhh. His buxom Ana Sofia with her raven hair, sleepy brown ayes and old-world curves. Jake truly loved her as any Armenian-blooded man would love the mother of his children. Four in all, ages two to eleven. Three girls and a baby boy. All but the toddler already enrolled in a West Valley private school. Add to that a mortgage, the two leased cars, utilities, insurance, and all the groceries that were required to fill his progeny’s pie holes—the bills were entirely unmanageable on his salary as an overpaid tire salesman. Since high school he had toiled at his father’s Woodland Hills business, working his way up to manager and sales chief. Yet as generous as his father was, Jake had still managed to accrue more debt than tangible assets. What he would do without direction from his cousin Zagreb—better known as Ziggy to his peers—was a mystery he didn’t care to unwrap.
Ziggy’s game was girls.
In fact Jake knew, Ziggy’s business was lots of things. Most of them illegal. Back in high school, Jake had tagged along as lookout on a few burglary jobs, eagerly accepting the easy cash he would later spend on weed and cocaine. Whispers in the Armenian community of Jake’s extra-curricular activities eventually reached Jake’s father’s ears. After that, most contact with cousin Ziggy was severely curtailed. For at least a decade, Jake kept his associations with Ziggy to tilting shots of oghi at family gatherings.
On one such holiday, Ziggy, who was also married with children, listened to Jake’s complaints about his wife and her sometimes unhinged shopping addiction.
“You need money, cousin?” Ziggy had inquired. “I might have some easy work for you.”
Cash, like the old days. Only in rolled one-hundreds instead of the crumpled twenties Ziggy used to feed Jake after a job.
“I’m brokering girls,” Ziggy had told him. “Prostitutes destined for work overseas.”
White girls. Young and fresh and the type who sell for big dollars to buyers with a particular taste.
Jake caught on quickly. Ziggy had been talking about human trafficking. A repugnant crime, especially when he thought of his own young daughters. Ziggy thought he could use Jake’s tire trucks as camouflaged transportation, moving his human cargo from one San Fernando Valley depot to the next.
Of course, Jake kindly declined his cousin’s offer out of hand. Soon though, after a marathon night crunching the numbers on his household’s expenses—and seeing how Ana Sofia didn’t seem to mind at all that her husband had slept for two lonely nights on the den couch of their Canoga Park home—Jake rung up his cousin and simply said:
What do I gotta do?
This is how Jake began straddling two different worlds: the legitimate retail tire trade of his father; and the illicit sex trafficking game that was making his cousin a very tidy sum.
It wasn’t long before Jake had graduated from carting drugged young women from warehouse to warehouse in his father’s tire trucks—to playing point man to the various stringers Ziggy employed. Once the girl was vetted by Ziggy, he’d turn the action over to Jake, who would supply the stringer with enough flunitrazepam—aka Rohypnol or Narcozep—to incapacitate the target, instructions for preparation, use, and transfer—plus cash for the final exchange. Jake would then drive the tire truck to one of Ziggy’s warehouses where the girls were kept in cargo containers until they
were ready for their overseas journey.
Imprisoned, Jakey. You’re a modern-day slaver.
The guilt that sometimes shamed Jake was usually flushed by a concentrated dose of his immediate family. A reminder of the voraciousness of their daily needs. And those fat envelopes stuffed with hundred-dollar bills he received every week.
Jake was just finishing up with one of his repeat customers—an Encino housewife whose run-flat tire rims kept getting bent out of shape every time she parallel parked. Her sob story was redundant as hell.
“It can’t be my driving” the housewife insisted. “The wheels are just defective.”
Jake’s phone buzzed, the vibrate function practically sending it skittering across the desk’s surface. Where the telephone number should have been displayed, it read NUMBER BLOCKED.
“Will you excuse me just a moment?” asked Jake. He picked up his mobile phone and slipped out the door and into the five-stall garage where the constant hydraulics would be sure to cover most of his conversation. Jake answered, “This is Jake.”
“Need a delivery tonight,” said voice that Jake knew as his cousin Ziggy’s.
“No can do,” answered Jake. “Wife’s got me locked down for a neighborhood thing.”
“You’re so pussy whipped,” argued the older cousin.
“Is what it is, dude.”
“What’s the thing?”
“Neighborhood watch meeting. You know. Where some cops come by and tell everybody what they can do to keep the hood safer.”
“So it’s bullshit then.”
“We’re hosting. I’m dead if I don’t show.”
“How late does it go?” asked Ziggy. “Cuz I don’t need my delivery until ten.”
“Might be tight,” said Jake. “Where’s the stuff get to?”
“San Pedro.”
“You’re trying to get me divorced.”
“You will never be divorced,” laughed Ziggy. “Not from Ana Sofia. She’ll kill you first.”
“So you’re trying to get me killed,” corrected Jake.
“Delivery’s gotta happen. We’re committed and I’m a truck short.”
“Then get a U-Haul.”
“It’s you, cuz,” pressed Ziggy.
Jake did a slow turn, eyeballing the activity in the shop to see if anybody was eyeballing him. Four of the five stalls were filled, three cars up on lifts. Business was good. Jake imagined that if he were the boss, he’d have been able to pinch off the pressure from Ziggy with an efficient lavet kunem, the Armenian catch-all for fuck off.
But he wasn’t boss. At least not yet.
“What’s on the truck?” resigned Jake.
“Thirteen full sets new,” said Ziggy. “Everything from off-road to all-terrain to mud.”
To defend against anybody who might be listening in—electronically or otherwise—Ziggy and Jake had devised a simple code. A set of tires was a kidnapped girl. The genus of road rubber defined that category or quality. All-terrain tires was code for an average, pretty girl. Mud tires defined a girl of African-American extraction. Off-road tires equaled any Hispanic or brown-skinned girl. Snow tires were, of course, white girls. A petite girl was a low-profile tire. Tall girls were truck tires and the larger, more zaftig girls simply categorized as heavy-duty. Young girls versus the still attractive but over twenty-two-year-old women were described simply as new treads and re-treads respectively.
And lastly, but most profitably, were the special girls with unusually beautiful features. These girls were almost always younger model Caucasian teens with a classic, scrubbed American look of naturally blonde hair, blue or green eyes, fertile but slim bodies, and a fresh bloom of freckles dappling pairs of rosy cheeks. The code for these pricey young lasses was the rare, but still manufactured whitewall.
“Oh,” added Ziggy. “Got one set of whitewalls. So handle with extreme care.”
But for the short notice and delivery hour, everything else appeared normal. San Pedro or Long Beach harbors were the typical destinations where the human cargo would be loaded onto foreign freighters. Daytime was favored over night because deliveries during normal business hours were so much less suspicious. Concerns for random discovery were also minimized due to fears of terrorism being so high that few federal inspections ever took place on vessels leaving American ports.
“Kinda weird delivery time,” remarked Jake. “Sure you got your A.M. from your P.M. sorted?”
“Is what it is, cuz,” said Ziggy. “Text the deets. You just make sure the truck is on time.”
51
“Contrary to popular belief, there’s not much substantial data on it,” said Naomi Sanchez, the lieutenant in charge of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department of Human Trafficking Unit. “On average it’s something like seventy-two or so hours. But that’s the FBI national average. It changes depending on who’s moving the cargo.”
“I told you,” chirped Lucky, damning both the distracted driving law that banned using a handheld cell phone while operating a motor vehicle on the road, as well as the all too frequent red traffic lights. He was eventually freeway bound on the 101, topping the Crown Vic out just south of eighty-five miles per hour, weaving when he could between the slower traffic. “This is the Armenian mob.”
“Time from abduction to leaving U.S. jurisdiction?” she asked herself. “Twenty-four hours, a hundred hours. Without understanding how they have set up the pipeline, it’s anybody’s guess.”
“You’ve got zero CI’s inside the organization?” queried Lucky, fishing for the unit’s confidential informant.
“As a former sheriff, you must know all assets are protected,” said Naomi. “I’m only talking to you as a courtesy to one of your former colleagues.”
Cherry had been alternating her view from the serpentine track Lucky was picking down the freeway to the man himself with the cell phone glued to the side of his granite face. She lent an ear to his half of the conversation as he seamlessly switched from leaving terse voicemails for men named Bledsoe and Lopes, to some woman called Emery.
Then her eyes shifted to the rising slopes of the southeast end of North Hollywood and the familiar architecture of Universal City. The movie studio seemed more amusement park than old Hollywood dream factory. In addition to all the rides and attractions, a destination called City Walk had been added, offering a nightly neon mix of shopping, dining, and movie-going as a way of keeping its greedy fingers into the pockets of visiting tourists. Finally, towering over the park were two high-rise hotels, the Hilton and the Universal Sheraton.
Suddenly Cherry’s heart felt an uncomfortable squeeze. Like some cold hand had reached inside her chest and laid claim to it. It had been on the top floor of the Universal Sheraton where, only days earlier, she had met the adorable girl who introduced herself as Valeriana. Even worse, Cherry admitted to herself she had known at first glance that the new party dancer was underage—sixteen at the most. Yet Cherry had extended an invitation to show the girl around that Valley sleaze den, The Rabbit Pole, where women like Cherry lost their clothes and a good chunk of their self-esteem in exchange for tips.
“That’s where we met,” said Cherry, gesturing past Lucky to the Universal property. “Top floor of the Sheraton.”
Andrew answered with a resounding snore. After Costco, he’d complained of pain in his hand so he’d popped some of his prescribed Vicodin before stretching across the backseat of the car. He’d fallen asleep moments after Lucky had ramped the borrowed car onto the freeway.
In the meantime, Lucky was dialing police sources for assistance and information, leaving gruff voicemails and his callback number. Cherry reached into the cup holder and removed the smartphone they’d purchased from that bogus casting man, Herm. Everything about that recent encounter had crept under Cherry’s skin. The man seemed so smug and without a scintilla of morality. Cherry wondered why the hell her instincts hadn’t served her well when she first auditioned for the scumbag. Or even at her second encounter. Was her
own, personal ambition so great that she had completely shut off her creep detector?
The phone in her hands appeared new, well-cared for, with a hard-rubber protective case. Cherry knew more about Herm than the mysterious Gabe. Perhaps the smartphone would provide an answer. Then she recalled Val—er Karrie—excitedly expressing that Gabe was a photographer. If such was true, then the smartphone might contain photos he had taken. Or even pictures of…
The phone was unlocked so Cherry expertly opened the menu and found the icon for photo albums. She clicked the most recent stream. The first saved picture she saw was a simple snap of a tray of gourmet muffins. It had been attached to a text sent to “Queenie” and captioned “choose your poison.” Cherry swiped to the right, bringing up the very next photo. The image injected her with an all-over chill.
The photo was of Karrie Kaarlsen—eyes shut and most likely sleeping. It was a tight image, above the shoulders and a bit washed out due to the blast of artificial light from the smartphone’s flash.
Swiping again, Cherry gasped at the next picture of Karrie, still asleep, but stark naked except for her panties. The young girl was displayed on a rumpled bed, posed just as she was for her close-up, only pornographically exposed. There was also an attached text message to the aforementioned “Jake.” The message read: What do u think? 15 yrs n ready for u.
Cherry hurriedly switched into the text function, seeking the rest of the conversation. She quickly discovered Jake’s reply: Same as las time. $$$ after deliver.
Gabe had written back: 2night 2 soon?
To which Jake had replied: 4 am. Same spot.
Quickly shifting back to the photo album, Cherry swiped through five more photos of the young teen, each of her sleeping —drugged, guessed Cherry—in progressive states of undress.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
She turned her head slowly, sneaking a look into the backseat. The snoring had subsided as the father had rolled to his side and pressed his face into the crease between the bottom and back cushions. Then swinging her look back to the front, she caught Lucky staring down at her with a furrowed brow as if to ask, “What the hell did you just find out?”
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 54
