Justice for All (14 page)

“Pretend you don’t know me?” Sandy shook her head angrily. “What the fuck, Dell.”

Pissed again, but finally feeling like she might not throw up, she settled onto the sofa bed to wait.

*

Mitch pulled his motorcycle along a wooden fence behind a block of row houses in North Philadelphia. It wasn’t the kind of area where anyone, even the inhabitants, walked around unarmed after dark. Many of the houses were boarded up or had been claimed by crack addicts, drug pushers, and squatters. The Russians had kept Irina and her charges in a house in the middle of the block. No lights shone from the building now, and as Mitch and Irina crossed the cracked cement patio toward the back door, he could see that most of the windows on the first floor were broken out. Those along with the door had been hastily boarded up.

“Let me go first.” Mitch leaned down and pulled a Beretta .25 from his ankle holster. “A place like this is a blinking red sign for vandals and looters. We might find company inside.”

“Wait,” Irina whispered.

Mitch watched wordlessly as she ran deftly across the debris-strewn yard. Then he couldn’t see her, but he heard stones scraping. A minute later she was back at his side, a Glock in her hand.

“Christ,” he muttered. Whoever had searched the place after the raid hadn’t done a very good job. “Any more surprises inside?”

“If I told you,” Irina said, “they wouldn’t be surprises.”

Mitch grabbed her arm. “You can’t shoot anyone. If you do, you’ll end up back behind bars again.”

“I’m not going back,” Irina said with finality. “Come on.”

By unspoken agreement they avoided the door. If anyone was inside, they’d probably be smart enough to rig the door with some kind of alarm, even if it was just a row of cans strategically placed on the floor. Keeping to the shadows, Mitch skirted around to the left side of the house, keeping Irina in sight, just ahead of him. Her bedroom window was still intact.

“Let’s forget this,” Mitch said. “We can get you some more clothes tomorrow.”

“Give me a boost up. The latch is loose on purpose.”

Mitch cupped his hands and sure enough, after a minute, he heard the window slide up and Irina shimmied inside. He jumped to grasp the lower windowsill, dug his toes into the soft wood wall, and clawed his way after her. Inside, the air smelled like cordite and blood. He remembered how his own blood had smelled pooling beneath his body not that long ago. With his body too weak to move and the knife jutting from his thigh, he’d wondered if he was about to die. And then Frye had leaned over him. She’d been the one to take the knife out, to stop the bleeding, to tell him he would be all right. He’d believed her.

“Bastards,” Irina cursed. The closet door was standing open—hangers in a jumble on the floor, and the single dresser was upended. The drawers had been tossed into a corner and their contents strewn around the room. The mattress lay half off the bed, its stuffing erupting from a long rent down the center. Police, probably.

“Let’s make it fast.” Mitch moved to stand by the left side of the door.

If anyone tried to come in, he would be able to swing into the open doorway and take them out by cracking them on the head with his gun. He didn’t want to have to shoot anyone. If anyone
was
inside, it wouldn’t be cops. Not enough manpower to continue a stakeout. Still, he didn’t want to shoot a drugged-out teenager or a drunken prostitute.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Irina pawing through the mess on the floor. She quickly jammed items into a small bag she’d dug out from underneath the corner of the mattress. Then she hurried to the closet and stepped inside. A thud sounded on the ceiling upstairs, and Mitch tensed. They weren’t alone. When he heard footsteps shuffle over his head, he abandoned the door and jumped across the small room to the closet.

“We have to go,” he whispered urgently, wondering what she was so eager to find. He reached inside, grabbed her arm, and yanked her out. “Now.”

She jerked her arm free. “One minute.” She fumbled around the floor and came up with what looked like a knee-high leather boot.

“You’ve got be kidding me,” Mitch cursed. “What is it with girls and their shoes. Jesus.”

“Here.” Irina thrust the bottom of the boot toward him. “Hold the heel.”

Deciding that agreeing with her was likely to get them out of the room faster than anything else, Mitch grabbed the four-inch stiletto and held on tight as Irina clutched the shoe and yanked hard. The heel broke off in his hand. Irina tugged at the sole and it stripped away from the bottom of the shoe. She pulled several items from inside, shoved them into her bag, and ran to the window. She looked back, her face framed in moonlight. “Are you coming, new boy?”

Then she disappeared.

Mitch dropped through the window and onto the ground, half expecting her to be gone. But she was crouched by the gate, waiting, and in another minute they were racing down the alley to his motorcycle. Mitch straddled the big bike and Irina jumped on behind him. They jammed helmets on and he wheeled the bike out into the street before starting the motor. If anyone in the house heard them, it would be too late to catch up with them now.

He drove fast through the empty streets until the lights of Center City appeared, and then he pulled over. He yanked off his helmet and angled around in his seat so he could see Irina. “What was that all about? And don’t tell me just clothes.”

Irina smiled, her eyes gleaming in the lights from a nearby gas station. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because…” Mitch hesitated. He was about to say because he was a cop. One of the good guys. But he realized that would be a tough sell to Irina. He didn’t think she was innocent in the prostitution and porn operation. Maybe Clark was right and she hadn’t had a lot of choices, but she’d still kept those girls practically prisoners, and had sold them to the men who used their bodies like so much merchandise. “Because if you don’t work with me, you’re not going to find your sister.”

“What do you know about my sister?”

“Not enough, unless you tell me. But I’ve got a lot better chance of finding her than you do on your own.”

“They promised us a new life,” Irina said bitterly. “We would be models and hotel managers and hostesses in fancy restaurants. We would have clothes and a house with heat in the winter and running water all year round.” She shook her head. “Instead they made us slaves. Worse than slaves.”

“Who, Irina? Who?”

“I don’t know. Men from our village drove us all night to the seaport. They kept us in rooms, brought us food, told us we must stay inside or we would not be able to leave when the boat came. Then there were other men who took us from the docks here and brought us to these houses. These prisons. I don’t know who they are.”

“Okay,” Mitch said softly. “We’ll find out. And we’ll find your sister.”

“You think your American police care about women like me?” Irina scoffed.

Mitch thought of her lieutenant and the others on her team, and the blood they’d already shed. “Yes. I do.”

“You are a fool, new boy.”

“Come on, it’s time to get some sleep. Then we’ll talk about your sister.”

When Mitch pulled back into the street, Irina put her arms around his waist and nestled her face between his shoulder blades. Sandy did that when she rode behind him. He missed her. He missed her a lot.

“Seeing as how you’re still on the sick list,” Watts said, his words sounding as if he were pushing them through a meat grinder, “I’ll be the one to kick his ass.”

Two blocks ahead, Mitch turned onto Bainbridge.

Rebecca pulled the car over abruptly. “He’s taking her to his apartment. At least
that’s
according to plan.”

There hadn’t been any way to stop him from taking Irina back to the stash house in North Philadelphia, and once he pulled his motorcycle into the alley, they couldn’t get closer than a full block away or their vehicle would have been immediately visible to anyone watching. If anything had gone wrong they couldn’t have provided backup, and the frustration of being unable to protect one of her team ate at her.

“You think the Russians got someone watching that house?” Watts asked.

“If they’re not sure whether any girls got out during the raid,” Rebecca said, “then it makes sense to watch the house. Where would girls like that go except back to the only place where they had shelter? They don’t speak the language, they don’t know the city, they’d have no way of making money. They wouldn’t even be able to sell their bodies.”

“So the Russians have probably seen Mitch with her.”

Rebecca nodded, rolling forward again until they cruised through the intersection at the end of Mitch’s block. “That could turn out to be a good thing. It definitely helps establish their connection.”

“Unless they’ve decided Irina is a liability, or they think she got out of the building because she was the one who fingered them. Then they just might dispose of her, and anyone who might miss her.”

Rebecca parked and turned off the engine. Mitch’s motorcycle was pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of the building where he and Sandy lived. Settling into surveillance mode, Watts pulled a crumpled pack of Camels out of the inside pocket of his equally crumpled suit jacket and shook one out.

“There’s too much we don’t know,” he said. “The whole setup blows.”

“For once we agree.” Rebecca glanced over at him. “Not in the car.”

“Jesus, Loo, I’ve been in this sardine can half the night.”

“And just think how much cleaner your lungs are already.”

He snorted and stuck the pack back in his pocket. “You really think we’ll get close to the guys at the top using a bottom-level whore like Irina?”

“Irina isn’t a prostitute—and even if she was, that doesn’t make her unimportant.” Rebecca struggled not to jump down his throat, because she knew his crude disregard for just about everyone was often a substitute for concern. Of course, sometimes he really just didn’t give a damn. “How many women do you think there are like Irina? With enough English to deal with clientele and enough strength and smarts to handle a house full of girls and keep them from panicking or running away? My guess is they’re going to want her to set up housekeeping with a new bunch of girls as soon as possible.”

“It’ll be sweet if it works that way.”

“Yes,” Rebecca said, thinking of the million ways it could all go wrong. “Sweet all right.”

*

Irina turned in a half circle, surveying the room. “You live here?”

“I flop here sometimes.” That was stretching the truth by a lot. Mitch kept the room as part of his cover but he’d never actually spent a night in it. He slept with Sandy, three doors down the hall. “There’s milk and bread in the refrigerator. And peanut butter in the cabinet. That’s all I had time to get, but—”

Irina laughed. “I know how to shop, unless you’re going to lock me in here.”

Mitch flushed. “I’m not your jailer. I know you probably don’t want to be doing this, and if you want to walk away, that’s between you and Clark.”

“And you won’t try to stop me?” Irina’s tone was incredulous.

“No.” Mitch indicated the mattress pushed into one corner of the small studio apartment. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any sheets, but there’s a blanket and the mattress is new.”

Irina sank down on the mattress and dragged the blue blanket around her shoulders.

Guiltily, Mitch said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were freezing?”

“Because I wasn’t. This…” Irina waved her hand toward the window. “This is not cold for me.”

Mitch shook his head. He wasn’t thinking the way he should be. “I should have given you my jacket while we were on the bike.”

“No matter. The cold will pass. But I
am
tired. I couldn’t sleep where your friends put me.”

“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Mitch had no idea how far the feds would go to convince someone to flip on their associates. Probably pretty damn far since 9/11, especially when foreign nationals were involved.

“They tried to frighten me.” Irina shrugged. “I have known men who were better at it.”

Mitch didn’t doubt her. Why else would she have fled her country on just the word of strangers? “I’m going out. I won’t be back tonight, but I’ll bring coffee and something to eat in the morning. Then we can get this place into some kind of shape for you to stay here.”

Irina regarded him steadily. “You have someone.”

Mitch knew he probably shouldn’t talk about his personal life. He definitely didn’t want Irina to know anything about Sandy. But he needed her to trust him, and trust meant taking a few risks. He nodded. “Yes.”

“And this…girl? You like girls, yes?”

He nodded again.

“This girl, she doesn’t complain when you fuck other women?” Irina draped the blanket around her like a shawl and leaned back on her arms. Her breasts thrust forward, straining the buttons on her blouse.

Mitch sensed he was being tested, and he wasn’t certain what answers he should be giving. He remembered Frye saying once that the truth, or at least part of the truth, was often the best answer in a tough undercover situation. “She minds.”