On a couch against the wall was a very young girl, no more than sixteen maybe seventeen. She wore jeans, unzipped and half pulled down, no top and was either very drunk or drugged. She was aware we were in the room, but as she attempted to stand she fell to the floor, got up on all fours and then vomited.
The bald guy in the jockey shorts was kneeling, hands cuffed behind his back, beer belly resting on his thighs, his nose was bleeding. He half shouted something, then spit at Nikki.
She was wearing the same stylish boots she’d worn the day we spotted her, sharp pointed toe, narrow six-inch heel. She calmly, quickly took a very graceful three-paced hop, kicked him in the crotch, full force, like she was attempting a fifty yard field goal.
He collapsed with a groan, fell forward on his side, moaning.
“Oh no, don’t, please stop. You’ll hurt him, stop, stop.” I said softly, dead pan, not meaning a word of it.
Nikki turned, gave me a smile, then brushed something imaginary off her jeans. She muttered something in Russian just loud enough for the two women to hear. They both nodded respectfully, then stared down at their feet.
“Please put their tops back on,” Aaron pleaded. “Probably call the paramedics for the kid. I’m guessing she’ll need forty-eight hours to clean out her system.”
Nikki bent down next to the girl, asked her something. It sounded like she asked the same question three or four times.
“She said she just wants to go home, she wants her mother,” she said, standing and making her way back to fatty in the jockey shorts.
He began talking loudly, scrambling backwards on his knees, maybe pleading.
I would have loved to let her go at him again, but I grabbed her arm and held her back. She fought, but not that hard.
Fatty had half crawled behind Norm, peeked out from behind him, smiled through his bloody nose and began to shout something at Nikki. Norm kneed him in the side of the head, bounced his head off a door frame, “Oh sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said, then grabbed the guy by his ear and yanked him upright.
Nikki took a step in his direction and the guy visibly flinched. I don’t know what she said to him but I’d had women direct that sort of tone at me enough times to know it was rather unpleasant.
Chapter 72
That night we had a celebratory feast of takeout pizza, garlic bread, and Cokes. Aaron and his team joined us and we planned the next day’s activities. If we’d taken out a good portion of the call centers today, tomorrow would be spent rounding up the worker bees. Armed with warrants we started at six o’clock the following morning hitting apartments.
In the first apartment we placed six girls under arrest. I pegged them at an average age of about twenty. All asleep, some still groggy from whatever chemistry they’d been on the night before. We found a couple of box cutters they must have carried for protection, otherwise their purses held cheap makeup and no identification. There was a small pot of something with mold growing on it in the refrigerator, a note in Russian taped to the lid.
For a place housing six young women it was remarkably empty. In the closet there were a couple of T-shirts on hooks, one blouse halfway hung up. Three skirts that were so small I thought they might be belts. Seven high-heel shoes of varying sizes were scattered across the floor along with a variety of undergarments. No food to speak of, two plastic vodka bottles, empty, rested beneath a torn and threadbare couch, along with someone’s thong. There was a metal mount on the kitchen wall for a phone but no phone. Three of the girls had pay-as-you-go phones, none of them with more than an eight-dollar credit.
As they were being led out one of the women turned to me.
“I do you cheap, you enjoy then let me go, no?”
“No,” I said.
“All I rated was a discount, not even a freebee,” I complained to Aaron.
“She probably knew you,” he said.
We raided a number of places throughout the day all pretty much the same, depressing. The women were taken to a facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing and I guessed eventual return to wherever they came from.
Back at the bunk-bed dungeon Nikki was busy translating reams of transcripts from Braco’s email and phones when she wasn’t turning up her nose at the Canadian bacon and pineapple pizzas we’d ordered for dinner.
“You will all be fat as pigs. The eating here is not healthy,” she said shaking her head. “I cook tomorrow, something good for you, and me.”
There was no further discussion.
The following morning Hale and Aaron had us sit tight after we received a call from one of Peters’ lieutenants. I’m guessing it was one of the shiny-shoed, pressed-suit clones that hovered around Peters in the conference room during the meeting where I met the lovely agent Dziedzic, not that it made any difference.
Armed with federal warrants the FBI was going to shut down the State Bank of Valdem, Minnesota, and deny Braco access to funds in a number of accounts. The guy went on for a couple of minutes about the extensive federal investigation that had resulted in the information to obtain the warrants and ultimately shut down the bank. Then he added, none too subtly that it would be nice if we put our little sideshow on hold for a bit, lest we screw up the Bureau operation. Hale reminded him our little sideshow had given them the information their extensive investigation seemed to have missed. The phone conversation ended shortly after that.
The day was spent monitoring Braco’s communications. In between times Nikki made a stew, and a salad, and roast potatoes. Washed down with a couple of cold root beers we all admitted it was a pleasant change of pace from pizza and garlic sticks.
The five o’clock local news led with the FBI moving on the bank in Valdem. Amazingly, the cameras just happened to be present as Peters stormed into the bank armed with his federal warrants and a platoon of pressed suits with highly shined shoes.
“Great, but I’m willing to bet these guys are going to grind our end of things to a screeching halt,” Hale said to Aaron between bites of stew.
“They’ll be going after the bank. National media has no doubt already been alerted. It’s probably the smart play for the Bureau. They sort of care about Braco the Whacko, but nailing a bank, and the impact that has on everyone else involved in this kind of money laundering, that’s the bigger score for them. I don’t like it, and there’s not a hell of a lot anyone can do about it,” I said.
“Be nice to know what they have in mind,” Hale said, slurping the last of his stew, then getting up to refill his bowl.
“You could ask Peters,” Aaron scoffed.
“I might know someone who could help. We’d have to let her in on the fact we have Nikki. But she might help, if we could help her,” I said.
“And just who would that be?” they asked in unison.
So I told them. As I finished I mentioned I hadn’t see the lovely agent Dziedzic on the news with the other Bureau types and wondered if it wouldn’t make sense to give her a call.
Chapter 73
“Yes.”
“Valentina Dziedzic, please.”
There was a bit of a pause before she answered.
“Finally make bail, Mr. Haskell?”
“Not to worry, I’m sure I can beat those charges and please call me Dev, will you. Otherwise it sounds like you’re going to arrest me. How’ve you been?”
There was just the hint of a chuckle, I knew my charm was working its magic.
“Fine, just fine. From what I hear you’ve been busy,” she replied.
“Oh you know, never busy enough. Hey, I saw your guy Peters on the news with a bunch of guys who looked like they didn’t want to get their suits dirty. Were you in on that? I didn’t see you charging into the bank with all the other earnest agents.”