The Lullaby Girl (Angie Pallorino Book 2)

by Loreth Anne White

  She turns to survey the establishment. Pale complexion. Kohl eyes. Blood-red lips. He goes stone-cold still. Slowly he sets down his coffee cup. His heart slows. He’s a hunter who has just sighted his prey, because it’s her. She has the scar.

  She has indeed come looking. For her biological parents. And she’s good.

  Because she’s come to the correct place for information—right into this lair.

  He watches as she goes to the hostess’s stand and asks the hostess a question. The hostess points to Nadia working behind the bar.

  CHAPTER 53

  It was close to midnight when Angie entered Club Orange B. The place was classy, white linen tablecloths and napkins, low lighting. A lounge singer in a figure-hugging blue dress at a grand piano crooned into an old-fashioned-looking mike. Topless dancers undulated lazily, evocatively against poles. She went to the bar, where the hostess had told her Nadia was working. She ordered a martini from the woman, who looked to be in her fifties. Short blonde hair. Nice-enough looking but well beyond pole dancing at this place. And she walked with a slight limp—consistent, possibly, with the baseball bat beating she’d received after being raped in the alley outside all those years ago.

  “I’m looking for Nadia,” Angie said when the woman delivered her drink.

  She glanced up, locked her gaze onto Angie’s. “Who’s asking?”

  “I need to ask you about Milo Belkin.”

  The woman paled, set the bottle down. She glanced up at a CCTV camera. Caution whispered into Angie.

  “I’m Nadia,” she said quietly. “Who are you?”

  “I’d like to know why you dropped charges against him.”

  “Look, I don’t know who you are, and—”

  “I’m someone who wants to make Milo pay for something he did to my family a long, long time ago, Nadia. He hurt me, too. I’m not a threat to you. I just need to know the names of the guys Milo Belkin and his friend Semyon Zagorsky used to hang with back then.”

  Two in particular. The ones who evaded the drug bust.

  Another nervous glance at the camera. Someone up in headquarters was watching her at the bar.

  “I made a mistake,” she whispered, wiping the counter around Angie’s drink in an exaggerated fashion, for the camera no doubt. “It wasn’t him—it wasn’t Milo who hurt me.”

  “Are you certain?”

  The woman’s gaze ticked up.

  “Look, I can help you—”

  “I don’t need help. It’s in the past. Over.”

  A swarthy male in a polo shirt sidled up behind Nadia. “Everything okay, Nadia?” he said, eyeing Angie.

  “Yeah, yeah, cool.”

  The man studied Angie for a moment, then said to Nadia, “Let me know if you need help.”

  When he left, Nadia went to work the far end of the bar. Angie finished her drink and motioned to Nadia for another. Nadia looked upset. She came over, wiping her hands on her apron. “What now?”

  “Can I get a sparkling water?” Angie said.

  Nadia returned with the water. As Angie took the glass from her, she said, “How about Semyon Zagorsky, then? Did you know him?”

  A frown furrowed into Nadia’s brow. She flicked a look behind her back. When she returned her gaze to Angie, she looked scared. “Semy used to come into the club with Milo,” she whispered. “Then he got married, had a kid. He didn’t come after that.”

  “Who were Semy’s friends? Anyone close who used to come here with him?”

  “I don’t want trouble.”

  “Please,” Angie said.

  “Both Milo and Semy were tight with Ivanski and Sasha.”

  “They have last names?” Angie said quickly, keeping an eye out for Nadia’s polo-shirted boss.

  “Ivanski Polzim and Sasha Makeev.”

  Adrenaline pumped into Angie’s blood, her mouth going dry with excitement at the lead.

  “Where would I find Sasha and Ivanski?”

  “Maybe they come into the club sometimes.”

  “So they do still hang out here?”

  The male manager returned. “All good, Nadia?” he said.

  “Yeah, all fine.”

  The man studied Angie for another long moment before leaving. As he disappeared from view, Angie quickly asked Nadia for her check. She was worried Mr. Polo Shirt was going to send in the bouncers, and she wanted to give Nadia a way to contact her before that happened.

  Nadia handed her the check. Angie wrote the number for her disposable phone on it and pushed it back across the counter secreted between bills of cash. “Please,” she said, “phone me if you want to talk. Or if you remember anything else.”

  Nadia took the cash, surreptitiously pocketing the note in her apron pocket as she went to attend to customers down the bar. Angie turned on her stool and surveyed the establishment as she finished her water. Couples and groups at the tables were enjoying late meals or desserts, or just drinks and snacks. A man seated in a dark booth at the back caught her eye. He was studying her with an unnerving intensity. He appeared to be dining alone, a newspaper in his hands.

  He caught her gaze, then returned his eyes to his newspaper.

  Angie finished her drink. She wasn’t going to get anything more out of Nadia here. But she had a fresh lead—two names. Ivanski Polzim and Sasha Makeev.

  There was a chance they were the accomplices who’d escaped capture during the drug bust that had netted Belkin and Zagorsky. If so, one of them had left DNA at the drug bust scene that matched the semen DNA found on the purple sweater left in the cradle.

  One could also be the VPD cop killer.

  From the surveillance building across the street, Maddocks watched the monitors over the shoulders of two cops and a technician. The screens all showed live footage of Club Orange B from various angles. They’d been at it for hours—it was hitting midnight now. Something was definitely on the verge of going down, but what and when still remained the question. One monitor showed the outside parking lot next to the club. Another displayed a feed from the back alley. A few more streamed from inside the club.

  As he watched, a van pulled into the parking lot and sat idle, exhaust fumes puffing into the wet night. The lot was full with newer model SUVs and cargo vans. He turned to study the monitors showing the interior of the club again. Patrons dining. Dancers at their poles. Lounge singer. Folks sitting at the bar.

  His work phone rang. It was Takumi. They were using cells, not radios, which might be listened in to. Takumi said they were on—cargo containers had been unloaded from a vessel out of China. Two of the containers carried human cargo. From them a total of thirty-two females had been moved into two trucks owned by Atlantis Imports. The trucks had left the docks in convoy, following a black SUV with plates registered to Atlantis Imports. Another SUV brought up the rear, plates registered to the same company. Cops were tailing the convoy now. A helo hovered way up high, monitoring progress. Intel from Rollins’s UC at the port was that the human cargo was headed toward Club Orange B. ETA around twenty minutes, if a direct route was followed. Emergency response teams were stationed outside and around the club, waiting for Maddocks to give the command on his end. The goal was to storm the joint only once all the women had been taken inside.

  “It’s going down,” Maddocks said to the surveillance team as he killed Takumi’s call. “Twenty minutes.”

  In tense silence they watched the screens. The footage showed several more men entering the club. The males went through the restaurant, past the bar, disappearing through a door at the back. The surveillance team knew from their UC that the door led upstairs, but their surveillance did not extend into that area. Maddocks turned his focus to the footage showing the inside entrance of the restaurant. A woman had just come in. Alone. His body tightened, every nerve in his body suddenly on raw alert as he watched the female. Long hair fell in a sheen as she bent forward to talk to the hostess. The hostess pointed to the bar. The female turned. Shock slammed through Maddocks—Angie?


  What in the hell?

  Tension crackled through his veins. She seated herself on a barstool, ordered a drink, and began conversing with the female bartender. Slap-bang in the middle of their takedown operation. He had to get her out, stat. Shit. He rubbed his mouth hard. This was his fault. He’d given her too much information. She’d gone to see Milo Belkin, and Belkin was now dead. Had she gone to see Semyon Zagorsky as well?

  Had Belkin and Zagorsky told her something that had brought her here?

  Her presence inside that club could send the entire Aegis op sideways.

  He should have turned her in to Takumi for everyone’s safety, including her own. This was why cops in relationships could never be partnered on the job—decisions were made out of emotion, not cold, dispassionate logic.

  Maddocks’s heart raced as he considered his options. He reached into his pocket for his burner phone and dialed the number he had for her. No response. Number inactive. She had to have switched out phones when she checked out of her Coal Harbour hotel. He couldn’t go into the club, either, and haul her out—he’d blow the entire op himself. The girls could be killed. The UC’s life could be put on the line. Other officers, including Angie, would be placed in lethal danger.

  He watched Angie write something on a piece of paper, secrete it between dollar bills, and push it toward the bartender. The bar woman pocketed the note and went to the far end of her counter. Angie then angled on her stool to watch the dancers as she finished her drink.

  What in the hell is she up to?

  He watched as Angie shifted her attention to a male seated at the rear of the establishment. The male was in his late fifties and had a newspaper. He held Angie’s gaze across the restaurant. An odd chill of familiarity washed through Maddocks. He leaned closer to the screen.

  “Can you zoom in on that guy, there, at the back?” he said quickly to the techs as he pointed to the screen.

  As they narrowed in, Angie got up from the bar and made for the exit. The man came instantly to his feet. He folded his newspaper and headed toward the bar, carrying the folded paper in his hand. Angie exited the club doors. The chill in Maddocks turned to ice. The man walked with a very slight limp, like one leg was shorter than the other, and it canted him slightly to the left. Maddocks tried to swallow. The man was the right height, the right build. Except he wore no wig this time. It was him. Sophia Tarasov’s killer. The man who’d posed as a doctor. His image from the hospital CCTV footage had been burned into Maddocks’s brain. Every instinct in his body screamed that this was the guy. The hit man. The same killer suspected of having tortured and killed the Russian interpreter.

  Angie had walked right into a lion’s den.

  Maddocks’s gaze shot to the monitor showing exterior footage. Angie was walking down the road, past the parking lot, hair blowing in the wet wind, streetlights glinting in the rain.

  His attention whipped back to the interior footage. The male was asking something of the woman behind the bar. She looked scared. From her pocket she extracted the piece of paper Angie had given her. She showed it to the man.

  The man pointed to it and said something. The woman’s body language screamed fear. Subservience. She reached for a cell phone on the shelf behind her. She returned to the counter. The man jabbed at the note with his index finger. She focused on the piece of paper as she punched a number into the phone.

  “Closer,” Maddocks said, voice thick. “Zoom in more. Onto that note.”

  The bar woman’s hands were shaking. The man stepped in front of the camera’s line of view. His shift in position afforded Maddocks a clear view of the headline on the top part of the folded newspaper in the man’s hand.

  Angel’s Cradle Child from ’86 Identified as Victoria Cop

  A smaller subhead read:

  Officer’s DNA a match to floating child’s foot

  Maddocks swung his attention back to the monitor of the exterior. He watched as Angie stopped, answered her phone. She nodded as she spoke, checked her watch, then killed the call. Maddocks switched his gaze to the footage feeding from the inside of the club. The bartender ended her call, too. The outside feed showed Angie turning around and starting back toward the club. But when she reached the parking lot, she crossed through it, threading her way among the stationary vehicles as she headed toward the alley that led to the rear of the club building.

  Maddocks could barely breathe. He watched as the male with the newspaper left the bar counter and made for the restaurant exit.

  The man headed out the door. The exterior camera picked him up outside. Maddocks scrutinized his gait, the way he held his head, moved his arms, the roll of his shoulders. He was even more certain—this was their hit man. The suspect entered the parking lot and approached a black Audi gleaming with rain. He opened the driver’s side door, got in. The running lights flared on as he started the engine. He reversed out of his parking spot and drove the Audi around to the alley at the rear of the club.

  “Can you read the plate?” Maddocks snapped at the surveillance tech in front of the monitors. “Zoom in on that Audi plate.”

  “Can’t see it,” the surveillance guy said. “The dumpster on the sidewalk is obscuring line of sight.” Maddocks’s phone rang. It was Takumi.

  “ETA five minutes,” Takumi said. “Waiting for visual confirmation of the convoy on your end.”

  Maddocks’s gaze flicked to the screen showing exterior footage of the dimly lit back alley. Angie came suddenly into view around the back corner of the building. She stopped in dark shadows and looked around as if waiting to meet someone. It happened so fast Maddocks barely saw. The Audi drove into the alley behind Angie just as the bartender stepped out of the club’s back alley door.

  The bar woman waved and called to Angie, distracting Angie as the Audi door opened behind her. Angie went toward the bar woman. The woman started talking to Angie as the man came out of the car and slipped into the blackness of shadow along the wall. Maddocks could no longer make out his shape. Tension lashed through him. Where in the hell is he?

  A dark movement loomed out of the shadows and came up behind Angie as she conversed with the barkeeper—the man. He flung his arm around Angie’s neck, squeezed, and jabbed something in her back. Angie stilled, and then her whole body jerked in wild spasms as if she’d been shocked.

  “Fuck!” said one of the surveillance cops. “Did you just see that? Did you see what he did?”

  “Stun gun,” said the second officer. “He used a fucking stun gun on that woman.”

  Maddocks stared in mute horror as Tarasov’s killer dragged Angie’s limp body back toward the Audi, its engine still running and puffing white exhaust fumes into the air. The bar woman went back inside.

  “There it is!” the tech said, pointing to another monitor. “The convoy. Lead SUV and one bringing up the rear. Two trucks. Atlantis Imports on the sides. We have a visual. We have a visual.”

  The lead SUV turned into the parking lot and drove around toward the back of the club. The rest of the convoy followed. Maddocks couldn’t wait. The killer was pulling out of the opposite end of the alley in his Audi. He was going to exit on the far side of the club. Angie was inside that car.

  “Get that damn Audi plate—there—there, you can see it now!” The Audi came around the far side of the building, and light fell on it as it turned into the street.

  “Sir—the convoy—”

  “Yes, you watch the convoy,” Maddocks said to the officer who’d just spoken. He addressed the tech next. “You, zoom into that goddamn plate before we lose that vehicle.”

  The tech obeyed the order. The Audi plate zoomed into view under the streetlight. Maddocks committed the registration to memory as he reached for his work phone and made another call, this time to Sergeant Eden, who was stationed back in the incident room.

  “I need a plate run.” He gave Eden the registration.

  As he waited on the line, he said to the team, “Tell me when all the females fr
om the trucks have been taken inside—all thirty-two, count ’em.”

  Eden came back on the line. “Vehicle is also registered to Atlantis Imports—a company car.”

  “Put out a BOLO on a black Audi with that registration. The driver has just abducted a woman from Club Orange B. He’s a suspect in the killing of Sophia Tarasov and a Russian translator on the island. Armed and dangerous. Kidnap victim is Angie Pallorino—ex MVPD officer. Did we untangle those holding companies yet? Did we get any key names of the current owners or individuals behind Atlantis Imports?”

  “All have ties back to one numbered company that also has investments in Club Orange B—”

  “Who, dammit, who is behind that company?”

  “I was getting there, Sergeant,” she said coolly. “It’s been in the process of being unraveled since you recently brought to the table the MVPD information regarding the possible trafficking route. Until then Atlantis wasn’t even on our radar.” A brief pause as Eden opened a file. “The company appears to be linked to five BC and Alberta businessmen. All billionaires in their own right. Two are in the oil industry based out of Calgary. Another in mineral exploration and mining in the north. One in commodities trading, and another invested primarily in import-exports. All have at one time or another come to the attention of white-collar crime divisions, but nothing has ever stuck.”

  “Send me their files, names, photos. Stat.”

  “Sergeant,” the tech cut in, “they’re offloading girls.”

  Maddocks’s gaze shot to the monitor. He watched the first woman being taken from the back of a truck. His brain raced, tension ratcheting. His phone pinged—Eden’s emails were coming through.