“No. They’s young, too.” Creach was too thick to catch Slidell’s sarcasm. “I don’t like old pussy.”
“You’re a real discriminating guy, CC.”
Slidell sounded as revolted as I felt. After pausing a moment, he pulled a photo of Jane Doe from his assortment and whipped it across the table.
“You know her?”
Creach scratched an ear as he eyed the image. “Yeah.”
Slidell’s eyes rolled up to the camera.
I held my breath.
“What’s her name?”
“Candy.”
“Tell me about her.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Dead serious.”
“The Passion Fruit’s not a place for shooting the shit.”
Slidell crossed his arms.
Creach shrugged. “She didn’t speak no English, man. None of them did. They talked Spanish or some shit.”
Slidell slid Ray Majerick’s mug shot across the table.
Creach studied the face but said nothing.
“I’m gonna say something here maybe I shouldn’t.” Slidell inhaled deeply, exhaled through his nose. “I think you’re trying, CC. But so far, it ain’t enough. You give me something to work with, I’ll do what I can to make the drunk-and-disorderly beef disappear.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Creach tapped the photo. “This guy was always there.”
“At the Passion Fruit.”
“Yeah.”
“He work there?”
“I don’t know. Honest to fuck, I don’t. The girls called him Magic. Acted scared of the dude.”
“Why?”
“No fucking clue.”
I hadn’t noticed the pumping foot go quiet. Until it started again.
“This shit’s all confidential, right? It gets out I talked to you, it’s my balls to the wall.”
Slidell flipped a pen and tablet across the table. “Write it down.”
“I gave it up. Come on. We’re talking my ass!”
Slidell was already heading for the door. He turned.
“Do yourself a favor. Calm the fuck down.”
“Hey! Wait! What happens to me?”
I met Slidell in the hall.
“What do you think, doc?”
“His story seems to track.”
“So we got Candy for our Jane Doe’s street name. Maybe Majerick for her pimp.”
“You figure Majerick works alone, or as a handler for someone else?”
“Magic’s too mean and too crazy to run a string. If that’s what we’re looking at.”
I thought about Creach’s words. Young girls arriving every month.
Arriving from where? Small towns? Middle-class burbs? Big-city ghettos? By buses? Trains? Vehicles in which they’ve thumbed free rides?
A revolving carousel of women, moving in young and naïve, then sliding down the ladder to places like the Passion Fruit, addicted, broken, youthful optimism gone forever. It was a dispiriting vision.
Suddenly one of Creach’s comments clicked with something D’Ostillo had said.
“Show him Dom Rockett’s photo.”
“Why?”
“Will you just do it?”
“Why the hell not.”
On-screen, I watched the third photo slide across the table, not sure myself what reaction I hoped for.
“Yeah. He was there.”
“At the Passion Fruit Club.”
“Yeah. Totally freaked the chicks out.”
“They were afraid of him?”
“Scared shitless.”
“Who is he?”
“Hell if I know.”
Slidell placed Rockett’s picture beside Majerick’s. “Did these men know each other?”
“Same answer.”
Slidell flicked impatient fingers.
“Hell if I know,” Creach repeated himself.
“Did you ever see them talking to each other?”
Creach shook his head.
The monitor receded. The room around me. Facts were clicking together fast.
Dominick Rockett frequented the Passion Fruit Club. Our Jane Doe worked at the Passion Fruit using the street name Candy. Rosalie D’Ostillo saw Candy and other girls in the Taquería Mixcoatl. The taquería was near the intersection where Candy died. D’Ostillo and Creach thought Candy and the other girls spoke Spanish. Dom Rockett was an importer, probably a smuggler, who made frequent trips to South America.
I heard Slidell’s footsteps click the tile in Interrogation Room C. The door open, close.
Creach began whining about his rights. His deal with Slidell. His safety.
The video and sound cut off.
I stood in the musty little space, a cold hollowness filling my chest.
Dear God.
Could that be it?
“SUPPOSE THESE GIRLS ARE BEING trafficked.”
Slidell’s expression was beyond dubious.