No Escape

by Heather Lowell

  The smell of mold, urine, sweat, and despair assaulted her nostrils. The cement walls of the building were covered with dank stains and had moss growing in the cracks. At one time the courtyard had sported planters, and a few anemic ferns struggled for life among the trash, cigarette butts, and condom wrappers that were ground into the mud.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” Luke advised, doing the same to cut back on the stench. He saw tattered curtains flutter in a series of barred windows and felt the eyes of a dozen people tracking their progress.

  “Why, so I can taste it, too? God, how do people live like this?” Tessa muttered.

  Luke just shook his head and led the way upstairs. As the cement walls of the stairway shielded her from the penetrating stairs of the first-floor tenants, Tessa breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Don’t relax your guard yet, Swiss. It only gets better from here.”

  Tessa followed his gaze as they stepped into the hallway on the second floor. Here the groups of loitering individuals included hard-eyed women and children of various ages. Some of the women were dressed like streetwalkers, others wore faded housedresses or sweats.

  If Tessa had hoped for a kinder reaction from the women, she was mistaken. As they walked down the hallway, numerous rude questions were thrown at them, most of them ending with the word “bitch.” She ignored the others and focused on Luke’s back.

  At one point they had to pass through a clutch of women standing with cigarettes in hand and fussing babies on their hips. The same smell of beer and sweat that pervaded the downstairs was here, too, and Tessa couldn’t help but ache at the thought of the children being raised in such an environment.

  “This is it,” Luke said, stopping in front of a scarred orange door. There was no peephole, knocker, or bell, so he rapped several times with his knuckles. A young woman with tired eyes, cornrows, and pale skin opened the door. Her eyes opened wide when Luke waved a fifty-dollar bill in her face and asked to see Jasmine.

  The woman took the money fast enough to give him a paper cut, then stepped back and pointed toward a door at the far end of the apartment. Luke looked at her, then at the other three women sprawled in front of the TV. “Another fifty if everyone splits for ten minutes and forgets we were here.”

  Without a word, the women shuffled out, the last one taking the money and tucking it into her bra. “If Jasmine isn’t in the mood, hombre, you just give me a call.” She made a vulgar kissing noise and left, giving Tessa a dismissive once-over as she passed.

  “With friends like that, no wonder Jasmine is in trouble,” Tessa muttered. She looked around at the apartment with its rump-sprung and tattered couch, thrift store chairs, and a card table that served as dining surface and trash receptacle. The sink was full of beer bottles and wine coolers, and someone had dumped used paper plates and napkins in there as well. She saw rodent droppings on the counter and turned away with a sound of disgust.

  Luke had been busy checking the other rooms to make sure they were alone. He motioned Tessa behind him and slowly opened the door to the bedroom where they were told to find Jasmine. Inside there was a single lamp with a naked bulb that gave feeble light. Vintage suitcases were strewn on the floor, with clothes and personal items spilling out of them. In the center of the room was a single mattress resting directly on the floor. Fetid sheets were twisted at the bottom of the bed, and a variety of stains dotted the makeshift bed.

  A woman who matched Jasmine’s mug shot was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, though she didn’t even look up as they entered. Her long, kinky hair had been pulled back, but hanks of it escaped the messy knot to fall around her downturned face. She held a piece of rubber tubing in one hand and adroitly flipped it around her upper arm before using her teeth to tighten it. In the other hand she gingerly balanced a raggedly cut soda can and a syringe.

  Tessa stood with her mouth open, watching as Jasmine carefully drew water into the syringe then squirted it into the cut-out bottom of the soda can. A small brown lump the size of a breath mint rested there.

  “We have some questions for you, Jasmine. You answer, we leave,” Luke said, kneeling cautiously on the mattress to get on her level. She didn’t even look up as she swirled the can to mix water with the heroin rock.

  Luke watched as Jasmine grabbed a lighter and held it under the can. He could see her licking her lips in anticipation of the drug, and waited until the right moment to interrupt her.

  She had just drawn the dirty brown liquid into the syringe when Luke leaned forward and stopped her from plunging the needle into her skin. She cursed and struggled, but he held her arms securely and ignored her insults.

  “You can shoot up in a minute, Jasmine. First we have a few questions for you.”

  Jasmine wet her lips and pulled her dazed eyes away from the syringe. “What the fuck you want, man? I’m busy. You wait a sec, then we can talk prices.”

  “I’m not here for sex. Where is Kelly Martin? What happened to her the night she disappeared from the shelter?” Luke asked.

  “Fuck her. I don’t know anything about her. She never trusted me, snotty bitch.” Jasmine pulled against Luke’s hold but wasn’t strong enough to break away.

  Luke wrenched the full syringe out of her hand and held it in the air above her head. “Give us information, and we’ll walk out the door.”

  “He’ll mess me up if I tell you.” Tears of frustration filled Jasmine’s eyes as she looked at the drugs. Sweat beaded her upper lip as some internal debate went on inside her. But the addiction was stronger than any sense of self-preservation. With a sigh, she fell back against the cushions.

  Luke lowered his hand as he sensed victory. “Someone put out the word for Kelly in the clubs around town. What do you know about that?”

  “I don’t know who it was, but Kelly pissed someone off. Had to be high-level to get the word out like that. And they were paying good money for information. I needed the dough for smack.”

  “How much did it take for you to sell Kelly out?” Tessa asked from the doorway. She had been standing there as if in a bad dream, but shook herself free of the surreal fog when she realized that Jasmine had been the one to betray Kelly.

  Jasmine didn’t look away from her syringe. “Five hundred. I told Street about Kelly and split the money with him.”

  “What happened the night Kelly disappeared?” Luke held the syringe higher as Jasmine feebly reached for it.

  “Nothing. She walked out.”

  Luke shook his head, aimed the syringe at the filthy sheets, and squirted a small stream of liquid onto them.

  Jasmine shrieked in frustration. “All right, don’t waste my stuff. I was smoking on the porch at about two in the morning, and these guys show up. Said they were going to take Kelly back home. They gave me an extra hundred to look the other way, so I went into the bathroom. When I came out, Kelly was gone.”

  “Who were these guys? Who did they work for?”

  “I don’t know, man. One of them looked like he could be a bouncer, you know? I saw plenty like him at the club I used to work at.”

  “You mean Mafia muscle?” Luke clarified.

  “Probably. Street told me Kelly was working out of Club Red, so I just assumed she was mixed up with their business.”

  “What did Kelly do there?” Tessa asked.

  “I heard she was being groomed. She had this sweet young thing going for her that’s popular with a lot of guys.”

  “So Kelly was stripping?” Luke got to his feet still holding the drugs.

  “Nah. I heard she was going to be an escort for the big spenders once she got a little more polished. Stupid little Goody Two-shoes didn’t have enough experience with men to be any use, so they were, like, training her,” Jasmine sneered. Then she gulped at the fire in Luke’s eyes. “At least that’s what I heard.”

  Tessa pressed a hand to her stomach to quell the sudden urge to throw up. She leaned back against the wall for a moment, but saw something move in h
er peripheral vision. Turning slightly, she saw a cockroach marching up the wall about six inches away from her head. It was huge.

  She remembered Luke’s warning not to interfere in his questioning, and barely stifled her shriek at the last second. She pulled away from the wall and focused on Luke. He was the only sane thing in the waking nightmare she was experiencing.

  Luke heard Tessa’s muffled noise behind him, but didn’t take his attention off Jasmine. So far, the stripper had confirmed every one of his worst fears. He shifted the syringe from one hand to the other as he thought about what to do next. Jasmine’s eyes followed his motions involuntarily, pulling his focus.

  Looking at her, Luke figured that anyone who would look away while a young girl was taken off in the middle of the night didn’t deserve to have something she wanted so badly. He stepped off the mattress, carefully broke the syringe in two, and dropped it to the dirty floor. As Jasmine howled, he ground it viciously beneath his heel. He left her cursing and huddled over the broken pieces, trying to salvage her drugs.

  He turned to Tessa, but she was already backing out the bedroom door, looking behind her to make sure there was no one blocking her way. He followed her out of the apartment and down the exterior hallway. They had to run the same gauntlet of residents as when they came in, but this time did it at double speed.

  As they made their way past the group of young men out front, Luke did a quick visual inspection of his car. He felt Tessa stiffen beside him as the men began another chorus of whistles and rude suggestions. He knew she was at the point of exploding and tried to hustle her down the shallow steps in front of the building.

  “They’re just kids trying to act cool,” he said. “Keep walking.”

  Instead, she shrugged off his hold. She turned and walked up to the ringleader, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “Shut your fucking mouth, vato. Your mother must be really proud of you.”

  There was a moment of tense silence before all the men cracked up, slapping their leader on the back as they howled with laughter. Luke stood behind Tessa, made a pointed comment in gutter Spanish to the men, then pulled her toward the car. He ignored the laughing offers to take the “hot chili pepper” off his hands, and flipped a wadded-up fifty to the kids who had watched the Mercedes.

  Tessa was silent as she fastened her seat belt and locked the door. Luke kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge how she was doing.

  “Look, I know I was a little hard on Jasmine,” he began.

  “The woman sold Kelly out to some mobster for $250 worth of heroin. She deserves whatever you gave her and then some.”

  Luke had never heard her voice so strong and steady. He realized that while she was reeling from her exposure to the ugliness of LA’s dark reality, she was going to hold herself together and focus on getting the job done.

  He turned her head toward him and kissed her gently on lips that parted in surprise.

  “What was that for?” Tessa asked, when the soft kiss was over.

  “For doing a great job. And not getting squeamish.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said, rubbing her unsettled stomach.

  “You only shrieked once. What made you do that, by the way?”

  “There was a cockroach the size of a Buick on the wall next to me.”

  Luke looked at her. When he realized she was serious, he laughed out loud. “Tessa, you were in a heroin flophouse, surrounded by gang members, prostitutes, drug dealers—and you freaked over a bug?”

  “It was a really big bug,” she protested. Then she started to snicker as well. It had been pretty stupid.

  And besides, it felt so good to laugh and release some of the tension and adrenaline inside. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you.”

  “You did just fine, Swiss.” Luke looked at her with approval before landing another smacking kiss on her surprised lips.

  He was so casual about it she didn’t even know if she should say anything. Instead, she rubbed her tingling lips and looked out the window, wondering how to handle this new wrinkle in their complicated partnership.

  Chapter 20

  Los Angeles, California

  Thursday afternoon, March 4

  Ed Flynn leaned back in his chair at the police substation, saying nothing as he listened to the story Tessa was telling. Then he cut a hard glance at Luke Novak. He figured, since they knew each other fairly well from previous police operations, that he could speak his mind.

  “You took Tessa to a flophouse in Gardena to see a junkie whore?”

  “She did a great job. And I couldn’t exactly leave her in the car,” Luke pointed out.

  “Drop it, Ed.” Tessa snapped her leather notebook closed. “I’m learning more with Luke than I have since I did the two week ride-along with you.”

  “Just wanted to make sure he was watching my girl’s ass,” Ed said.

  Luke fought hard against an inappropriate grin. If Ed had any idea of how he had been watching Tessa’s ass—literally as well as figuratively—he figured the veteran cop would take him out in the desert somewhere and shoot him. “I watched her back. And she did a good job of guarding mine, too. Except for a minor cockroach incident, she was unshakable. You should be very proud.”

  “Okay, can we get back to the case?” Tessa asked, sure her pale cheeks were flushed at both the compliments and the underlying testosterone communication thing going on between Ed and Luke.

  “What do you want to do next?” Luke asked. “We have a good idea that Kelly was kidnapped or at least threatened into leaving the shelter, and all roads lead to the entrance of Club Red.”

  “Why don’t we go there and get her back?” Tessa asked. “A preemptive strike would take them by surprise.”

  Ed shook his head. “If we go in without backup, without a warrant, we won’t be able to look for Kelly.”

  “She’ll come with me,” Tessa insisted.

  “What if she doesn’t? What if she’s been locked away, or if she’s being kept somewhere else?” Luke asked. “You could tip off the club ownership, and they could make Kelly disappear permanently. She would become a liability to them.”

  “So we conduct a raid,” Tessa said.

  “Not with the information you have so far, and you know it. We can’t even say for sure if Kelly is there,” Luke pointed out.

  “And even if you did find Kelly and talk to her, it’s possible that she’s being coerced or manipulated,” Ed pointed out. “If she is, and if she refuses to go with us, that would be the end of the matter. We’d have little recourse to get a warrant and go back for her at a later date unless we got some compelling evidence.”

  Tessa made a frustrated noise. “So how do we go after her?”

  “We’ve got to focus on the other crimes involved—ones where we can gather incontrovertible proof and use that as leverage on the Club Red folks,” Ed said. “Stuff like credit card fraud, Mafia connections, sports betting. That way, we can make a bust and pull Kelly out of there whether she wants to go or not.”

  Tessa looked briefly to Luke for confirmation, giving Ed a start. He wasn’t used to her looking to someone else, but was pleased to see that Luke had gained her trust to that extent.

  She thought about it. “We know there are at least several criminal activities going on at Club Red. We can try to focus on those as a way of getting to Kelly. For a day or two, anyway. I’m not comfortable leaving her there for much longer than that.”

  “From everything you’ve discovered, it seems like the club has made a big investment in Kelly. It would be foolish to hurt her and risk that,” Ed said.

  “He’s right,” Luke said. “Listen, if it looks like Kelly is in imminent danger, we’ll go to Plan B,” Luke said.

  “Which is?” Tessa asked.

  “Fighting fire with fire. We take Kelly back ourselves. No cops, no warrants, and no evidence we were responsible.”

  Tessa closed her eyes as she thought of how that would
play with the D.A. “We wouldn’t be able to build a case against the people holding Kelly if we did that,” she pointed out.

  Luke looked at her steadily, saying nothing.

  She turned to Ed, who held up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t look at me, kid. I can’t help you there. It’s your case, and you have to decide how far out on a limb you’re willing to go to get Kelly back. At this point, I can’t even tell whether she’s there against her will or not, so my hands are tied.”

  “Then let’s work strengthening our case and untying your hands,” she said. “So we don’t ever need to implement Plan B. Kelly struck me as a survivor. I hope she can hold out for a little while where she is.”

  Unless something has already happened to her.

  Tessa physically shook off that thought and began to plan the next step in her evolving strategy. “Ed, we need to talk to some of your contacts in Major Crimes and Vice to see if there are any ongoing investigations into Club Red. I find it difficult to believe that they could be up to what Luke is thinking without catching the attention of someone in local law enforcement.”

  “Good idea,” said Luke. “I’ll do the same and check with some of my sources at the ATF, FBI, and State Attorney’s Office. We can compare notes.”

  “I also want to look further at this Jerry Kravitz,” Ed mused. “How does a washed-out Arena ballplayer put together something like Kelly’s disappearance? There has to be someone else involved. Someone bigger.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Tessa admitted. “I have a feeling Jerry isn’t calling the shots. But I don’t know who could be—I don’t have experience with anything like this.” She gave a short laugh. “Who am I kidding? I know just enough to know I’m out of my league. And I’m clueless about the rules of play where I am right now.”

  “You’re doing just fine winging it,” Ed said. “And Luke and I do know what we’re doing.”

  Luke stood up. “Besides, rules are overrated.”