Russo looked them both over carefully, as if seeing them in a new light. Then he jammed his phone in his pocket. “What are you looking for?”
“Girls,” Webb said. He took a long drink of his beer, never taking his eyes off Russo. He backhanded his mouth and put down his stein. “Preferably fresh-faced, if you catch my drift.”
Russo nodded thoughtfully. “Young and untouched, got it. What are you looking for? High school? Or younger than that?”
Webb sat back and carefully stretched out an arm across the back of the bench. “I like them young and inexperienced. You can teach them what you like.”
“You boys going to share?”
Webb’s casual stance froze, his eyes going to slits. “I don’t share.”
Russo held up a hand. “That’s fine, man. I gotta ask or I can’t get you what you’re looking for.”
“I like mine not so wet behind the ears,” McCord said. “So, yeah, it’s an order for two for as soon as you can arrange it.”
“I can arrange something. But it won’t come cheap.”
McCord pulled out his wallet, extracted a hundred-dollar bill, folded it in half, and slid it across the table under his palm. “Will that do for a down payment?”
“Sure will.”
“How do we contact you?”
“You don’t. I’ll call you. Gimme your number.”
McCord pulled his notebook out of his back pocket, flipped it open to a blank page at the back, wrote down his cell phone number and ripped out the page. He handed it across the table.
Russo glanced at the number, folded the sheet carefully, and slid it into his pocket. “I’ll call you. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .” He looked at them pointedly.
“You must have other business to do.” McCord held out his hand across the table. Several painful seconds ticked by as his hand hung there, untouched, before he pulled it back. “We look forward to your call.”
They returned to the bar with their beers, finished them while making inconsequential small talk, and then left. They stepped out into fresh air and McCord breathed in deeply. “God, I hate cigarette smoke.” They turned south toward McCord’s car. “How do you think that went?”
“Fifty-fifty, I’d say.” Webb glanced down the deserted street, and stepped off the curb to cut across the asphalt on a diagonal. “You had to give him the guy’s name or he never would have bit, but I’m not sure he bought it either way. He may have just gone through the motions to get rid of us. We’re not a known commodity, and didn’t come through whatever the usual channels are, so he may not want to take a chance on us. He may think we just want to burn him.”
“He’d be right if he does. I guess we’ll find out if he calls. If he doesn’t, my editor is going to throw a hissy fit over the amount of bribery money I’ve been using for this story.”
Webb glanced at him sideways. “That was the Post’s money?”
“Sure was. You think my pockets are lined like that?”
They walked on for another minute in silence.
“I feel slimy,” McCord said.
“I need a drink not tainted by that hole in the wall. And a shower. In that order,” Webb countered. “These people make me sick. They also make me want to hit something. Hard.”
“We’re doing what we can. But I wouldn’t say no to that drink.”
“You’re on.”
Wednesday, July 26, 11:51 PM
Outside A Short Trip To Hell
Norfolk, Virginia
Meg looked up when the door to the bar opened with a blast of guitar and the pounding of drums and then thumped closed, quenching the sound. She squinted at the single figure standing on the doorstep, digging into the pocket of his jeans. Dark hair, white, about the right build, but in the weak, flickering light outside the bar, it was nearly impossible to see.
Maybe?
She quickly dug into the pocket of the light shell she wore and pulled out a compact pair of binoculars. She quickly focused on the man, but there just wasn’t enough light and he was hunched over, knocking something into his hand. What that something was became clear when he raised it to his lips and flicked a lighter to life. For a moment, his face was lit in tones of crimson until the flame went out, leaving just the burning tip of his cigarette glowing red as he inhaled.
Those few seconds were enough.
Russo.
She placed her hand on Hawk’s head to find him already alert, his eyes fixed on the man. They were across the street from A Short Trip To Hell, camouflaged in dark clothes, standing in the inky shadow of an alley kitty-corner to Russo’s favorite establishment. They’d been there since shortly after Webb and McCord had entered the facility, based on Webb’s text.
She’d come separately with Hawk, hell-bent on finding their own way to help. McCord was right: They had no cause to be inside the bar, but every cause to be outside it. Meg had done a little extra snooping. Russo didn’t own a car—at least not one actually registered to him—so she wanted to know how he got around. Either he had a car and she’d be able to get down the license plate number, or he lived close enough to his favorite haunt that Hawk could track him on foot. Either way, it would be additional information.
Webb and McCord had left nearly a half hour earlier. Meg was beginning to think she’d missed Russo’s exit—several men had gone out, but she didn’t think any of them matched his description—or he’d gone out a back exit where she had no line of sight.
Now here he was.
He stepped off the stoop and onto the cracked sidewalk, looked both ways, blew out a puff of smoke, and turned to his right to head away from Meg. She kept the binoculars trained on him as he strode down the sidewalk. He jammed one hand in his jeans pocket and then tossed something carelessly into the parking lot beside the bar. The object rolled under a parked car. Meg took five precious seconds to try to find the discarded item, but it was too dark and too distant.
He just made our job a whole lot easier. Now he can’t get away from us.
Russo reached the first intersection and turned right again, disappearing behind a building seconds later. He was moving at a quick pace, likely not wanting to be out in the open for longer than necessary.
Meg jammed the binoculars back into her pocket. “Hawk, come.” She pulled a latex glove out of her pocket and tugged it on as they jogged across the street and down past A Short Trip To Hell. Hawk, out of his FBI vest and on a plain collar and leash to avoid attracting attention, followed her as she stepped off the sidewalk and into the parking lot. Reaching the car, she dropped to her knees, bending over to shine her cell phone flashlight into the gloom beneath the car.
A small, crumpled piece of paper lay beneath. Reaching in with her gloved hand, she pulled it out and then used the edge of her cell phone to press a corner of the lined piece of notepad paper to the car window, pulling the paper flat with her gloved fingers. The only thing on the paper was a phone number, but she recognized it instantly as Clay McCord’s. They’d tried to make a deal with Russo, expressed their interest and left contact information, but he either wasn’t taking on new clients or he smelled a rat. Clearly, he had no intention of calling McCord back.
But now they had his scent. She pulled a small plastic bag out of her pocket and bagged the paper before pulling off her latex glove. She offered the bag to Hawk. “Find him, Hawk. Find Russo.”
Hawk scented the air for only a fraction of a second and then trotted down the street. Meg slowed him down to an easy walk. With a scent this fresh and undispersed, there was no way Hawk would lose it, and Meg didn’t want to stand out, even though neither of them could be visually tagged as FBI. If they were spotted, they’d just look like a woman and her dog, out for an evening walk before bed. The goal would be to stay far enough behind that they were never in visual range.
Russo was likely beyond careful as a matter of necessity and safety. He would be a man with enemies, who would want to avoid being picked off. It might be why he didn’t drive a car—a
vehicle was just another way to be tagged or a potential death trap if an explosive was planted. She was sure he was carrying, so he likely preferred his chances on foot. He could take a different route each night, cut through green spaces not open to vehicles, and backtrack if needed until he was safe at home.
What he wouldn’t expect was a scent dog trailing his every step just minutes behind. He’d never see Hawk, but Hawk could see him as clearly as if Russo was standing directly in front of them.
The route they followed was as convoluted as Meg foresaw. He cut through empty back lots and behind shuttered storefronts. He circled the opera house and bypassed an Exxon station. Then he wove through a huge cemetery, around mausoleums and between headstones. Meg could respect the man’s paranoia in thinking that he needed to take these precautions in case he was followed . . . except she was following him, so his paranoia was clearly warranted.
His trail left the cemetery and entered a quiet street, bordered on one side by a long pond on the west side of the cemetery. Meg studied the houses—big, beautiful, two-story clapboards with quaint porches and neatly trimmed boxwood hedges. This couldn’t be their end destination. The man she’d seen leave that bar would stick out like a sore thumb in this newly minted middle America.
Hawk apparently didn’t think he belonged either because he stayed on the trail that took them down the street, around the corner, over a treed boulevard and up a narrower lane. Streetlights were few and far between in this neighborhood, bathing the asphalt below in a dull, watery yellow haze. Instead of the wide sidewalks in front of the new subdivision, this street was narrow and without walkways. Cheap chain-link fences separated the tiny front yards from the road. Open lots of patchy weeds were scattered down the street, evidence of houses razed from the neighborhood.
This is more like it.
The street was deserted, but Meg expected as much, given Russo’s head start on them. Most of the houses were dark, but a few had lights on in their front rooms or upstairs bedrooms.
Hawk suddenly cut left, heading unerringly up a front walk of paving stones with moss and weeds growing between them. Meg gently pulled back on the leash and Hawk instantly stopped. “Hawk, come.” As he angled back toward her, she kept walking past the house, but she couldn’t see a house number on the dirty gray siding under the sagging porch. Luckily, the next house had a light on beside the front door, illuminating the large black 864 underneath. Meg didn’t look back, but continued down the street, turning the corner to purposely disappear from view in case Russo was watching for anyone tailing him still. Overkill on her part, but if he could be careful, so could she.
She waited a full ten minutes before going back down the street, this time on the far side. She purposefully dawdled, as if her dog had to stop and sniff every fence post, streetlight, and fire hydrant, and it gave her time to study the house. It was two stories, with every front window dark, and was completely enclosed by chain-link fence. Empty lots flanked both sides of the house. The unadorned front walkway led to a sturdy front door with no inset windows. The overall air was one of borderline neglect and dysfunction.
A movement behind the illuminated front window of a house two doors down on her side of the street caught Meg’s eye. She pulled out her phone to glance at the time—12:29 AM. Did she dare?
Hell, nothing to lose.
A soft tug on the leash told Hawk to come along, and he trotted at her side down the sidewalk. Reaching the house, she went up the short walk, up the three steps of the wooden porch, and softly tapped on the door. The noise of a television inside the house instantly muted, so she knocked again. As the squeak of floorboards sounded within the house, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her flip case. She held it out toward the peephole in the front door, hoping the large FBI designation would be clear to the occupant inside.
The door opened a crack to reveal an older man peering through the gap afforded by the chain still locking the door. “Yeah?”
“Hello, sir. My name is Meg Jennings and I’m with the FBI.” She looked down at her dog. “This is my partner, Hawk. I apologize for the late hour, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. You don’t need to open the door if you aren’t comfortable. I realize it’s late and this is an unexpected visit.”
The man’s gaze moved from her to the dog and back again. Then the door closed, and the slide of a chain sounded through the door before it opened all the way. “Come on in.”
Meg stepped into a neat and tidy front foyer that opened into a comfortable living room with a silent, flickering TV in front of the wide picture window. “Again, my apologies for the late visit. Your light was on so I wondered if I could speak with you.”
“What about?”
“The gray clapboard house across the road. The one with the chain-link fence with the empty lots on either side of it. Do you know who lives there?”
“See him now and then if we happen to be out at the same time. Seen the others who live with him too.”
“The others?”
“Men. Boys. Not for long though. They seem to rotate through. I always thought he was running some sort of halfway house for Mexicans. They don’t stay long. A few days, a week. Then a new crop comes through.”
The hair on the back of Meg’s neck rose, but she put extra effort into keeping her tone light and casual. “You’ve seen these men and boys leaving the house? You think they’re all Latino?”
“They look like it. But I’ve never heard them speak. They come out of the house early in the morning, seven days a week, heads down, always silent. They get in a van and drive away. They come back late. The door shuts and you don’t see them again.”
“You think it’s a halfway house?”
“Might be. Maybe he’s trying to help them find work. I always assumed he did, because then they go away and new ones come.”
“How many are there at a time?”
“Not sure. Numbers vary. He in trouble?”
“We’re not sure, but your information is extremely helpful.” Meg pulled a business card out of her pocket, along with a pen. “Would you mind jotting down your name, sir, and your contact information? In case we have any more questions?”
“Sure.” The man wrote down his name, address, and phone number and handed the card back to Meg. She handed him a second business card. “All my information is here, including my cell phone number. If you think of anything else you’d like to pass on, please don’t hesitate to call me. Again, my apologies for the late visit, but I appreciate the information. You’ve been very helpful.”
Meg said her goodbyes and saw herself out.
She stood for a few minutes in the dark, looking down the street at the dark house. They now had enough corroborating evidence to support Russo’s role in possible multiple trafficking rings stretching from the sex trade to illegal farming operations. As soon as she was safely off this street, she was going to get Van Cleave out of bed and was going to lean on him to get a warrant and be here by no later than six o’clock to raid the place.
She’d found a trafficking house. And they were going to save the men and boys inside before they could disappear forever.
CHAPTER 23
Mitigation: Efforts designed to reduce or eliminate search risks, and lessen possible property loss if possible.
Thursday, July 27, 6:14 AM
Washington Street
Norfolk, Virginia
Meg and Hawk stood across the street from the house they’d visited the night before, to watch the operation.
Agents in navy windbreakers with “FBI” in yellow block letters on the back led handcuffed men and boys out the front door. They were a disheveled lot, many of them overly thin and walking unsteadily as if sick or badly malnourished, most with hunched shoulders and lowered heads. Her irritation grew as the stream of people coming out of the house were loaded into an FBI van. These were victims. Why were they being treated so badly?
The stream dried to a trickle and then stop
ped. Was that all of them?
Van Cleave appeared in the doorway, pushing the man they’d trailed last night in front of him. Russo was cuffed, struggling and cursing, calling Van Cleave every name in the book, but Van Cleave’s neutral expression never changed. His face remained set in stone as he pushed Russo down the short walk and guided him into a waiting FBI SUV, taking care to ensure Russo didn’t bump his head as he settled into the vehicle. But the appearance of calm slipped when Van Cleave slammed the door behind Russo with significantly more force than required.
He’s pissed.
Never one to sit back and let others take the lead, Van Cleave had been the first through the door, his agents following behind. It had still been dark, and the house had been caught unawares. Shouts of surprise rang out in response to bellows of “FBI! Hands behind your head!” in both English and Spanish. Meg didn’t know how Van Cleave had managed to get a warrant and coordinate the entire op in a little over four hours, but it spoke to his judicial connections and the power of his command that he’d pulled it off. Not a single gunshot had been fired and no one had been hurt.
Meg’s gaze was drawn back to the front door as a boy appeared, backlit by the foyer lights. Seen only in silhouette, his frailty was accentuated by the oversized clothes draped over his slender frame. When he stepped onto the front walk, Meg could see he wore no shoes. The female FBI agent leading him down the front walk was gentle with him, her head inclined toward him as she guided him by the arm.
The line started again, threading its way out of the house.
How many of them are there?
Van Cleave paused at the curb as the FBI SUV rolled away from the house, turning on its lights as it picked up speed farther down the street. His eyes followed it until it disappeared from view, and then he stepped off the curb and crossed the street toward them. Beside her, Hawk started waving his tail in happy greeting, his body dancing in anticipation. Van Cleave surprised her by sitting down on the curb beside Hawk, a small smile softening the harsh lines of his face.
Storm Rising Page 21
