“New to what?” asked Waters.
The girl shrugged. “Everything.”
Waters leaned in, his voice softer, matching hers. “Drugs? Sex?”
“She was from Connecticut,” said the girl. “New London. They brought her last week.”
“Who?”
The girl hesitated. She peered over at me, as if I could give her approval. As if I was the one holding sway over her. She bit on her cuticle, nibbling on the loose skin before working it free of her nailbed.
I nodded.
She looked back at Waters and ran her hand through her hair. “EastEnders,” she mumbled.
“The gang?”
She lowered her head and tugged at the gauge. “Yeah,” she said. “They have places where they keep us.”
“Like White Chapel?” asked Waters.
She nodded.
“How would she get out?” he asked. “I mean, if they put you in these places, they must keep an eye on you. How did you get out?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “They keep some tied up. But most of us, they keep us high. You know, they give us stuff. For free. So we stay close.”
“What if you try to run?”
“Nobody does,” she said. “They’d kill us. I’ve seen them kill girls. You know, give ’em too much stuff. OD ’em on purpose.”
“Did Mary Ann try to run?” asked Waters. “How’d you know she was missing?”
Annie glanced at me and then shook her head. She looked back at Waters and her eyes widened. Her head tilted to one side and she shook a finger at me. “I think I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you.”
Waters swung his attention to me, a quizzical look on his face. He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “You know him?”
She wagged her finger again and narrowed her beady little eyes. “It’s the hair,” she said. “And the eyes. I know I’ve seen you. On White Chapel. You’ve been in there. Drinking at the bar.”
She was right. She’d probably seen me. She might have handed me a Jack and Coke. She might have given me more than that. Sex trafficking. Takes its toll.
“Yeah,” I said, unfazed by the accusation. “I’ve been in there. I worked trafficking for five years.”
“Drug trafficking?” Annie asked.
“Human.”
Waters, apparently satisfied with my explanation, shifted in the chair and planted his elbows on the table. “How did you know Mary Ann was missing?” he asked.
“I heard people talking. Nobody had seen her in a couple of days. They’d dropped her off. She got picked up by some dude in a beater. Never came back.”
Waters scratched his chin. “Did she run away?”
Annie shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t really know. We worked different spots. I’m Old Spanish Trail. She’s Third Ward.”
“You think you could show us where in Third Ward she worked?” I asked. “What corners?”
Waters nodded his approval. “That’d be great, Annie.”
“You think I could get a bump?” she asked, scratching the Betty Boop above her shoulder blade. “I’m coming down.”
“If I get you the bump,” I said, “you’ll take me there? The spots where the EastEnders drop off the girls?”
Annie checked with Waters. “Sure,” she said. “As long as nobody sees me in a cop car. I don’t want nobody seeing me with cops.”
“Not a problem.”
Waters hopped up from his seat. “Can I talk to you?”
He motioned for me to leave the room and led me into the hallway. Annie just sat there picking at her cuticles.
Waters stood uncomfortably close to me. “Couple of things,” he said under his breath. “I can’t sanction you giving her synthetic pot. I don’t know what kind of crap you got away with in vice, but that’s not what we do here. She’s already a shaky witness. You give her drugs and she’s toast. The DA will never let her testify.”
I stepped back from Waters, gaining some space. “What’s the other thing?”
“Why do you need her to show you where the EastEnders drop the girls? You know these guys, right? Don’t you already know the spots they control?”
He was right. I did know.
I knew where to find the girls, and the boys, run by Barrio Azteca, Sureños, Tango Blast, Mara Salvatrucha, Bloods, and Crips. I knew their turf. I knew their methods. I knew the legit businesses that fronted their operations. I knew their trafficking routes. I knew the EastEnders were rapidly growing, given their backing by a dominant Mexican cartel.
I also knew that no matter how much we learned about all of them, how much actionable intelligence we gained, how many resources or informants we had, we were only scratching the surface. We’d flip on the light, stomp on a cockroach, and fifty more would scramble into the dark corners where we couldn’t get them.
It had only gotten worse since Harvey. Unlike Katrina, which had drained the delta of its undesirables and sent them to Houston, Harvey clogged the city with more homeless than it could handle. Shady contractors descended on the neighborhoods piled high with Sheetrock, subflooring, and kitchen sinks. Instead of rebuilding homes, they’d spend their cash on women and drugs. The gangs, which we’d gotten better at tracking, had scattered. We’d lost our grip on informants. All of them together floated untethered and just out of our grasp. Some days, just when I thought maybe I was making a dent, I realized it was getting harder to leave a scratch.
“It changes,” I told Waters. “And it doesn’t hurt to check it out, given we have somebody who knows the area.”
Waters inhaled. He planted his tongue in his cheek, rolling it around while he seemed to contemplate the idea. “All right,” he said. “You head over there with her. I’m gonna drive by White Chapel. Kill two birds with one stone. We meet back here and hopefully the ME gives us a positive ID. Then we get a warrant and hit the place.”
“Got it,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here by sunup.”
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’ve got no clue who they is, but they’re right. I’m guessing they’ve lived a life like mine, always fighting the glare of the light, seeking the shadowy quiet between midnight and the alarm clock.
I’ve never been one for daylight. It offers too much promise. I learned a long time ago that hope is nothing but a sexy woman behind the glass. You stuff your credit card into the slot, the curtains peel back, and she smiles at you. But you’re not looking at her face. And there’s nothing but the promise of a big bill at the end of the month, with an interest rate you can’t afford. It’s a nasty cycle, the sun coming up every morning. I’d just as soon it stayed sunken low.
It was five fifteen on Friday morning. That’s what the clock on my Chrysler said. I couldn’t be sure it was accurate. Didn’t matter.
The clouds had the streets darker than normal. Third Ward didn’t get the attention nicer parts of town got. Powers that be would never let the streetlights go out in Memorial or River Oaks. Hell, if a blade of grass was too long on Inwood Drive, the mayor himself would show up with a pair of scissors. But in the Tre, as local rappers called it, a dead body wouldn’t catch much glare, let alone a string of busted streetlights. Gentrification or not, Third Ward was still Third Ward.
I had my window cranked down, enjoying the musty air and fine mist that had settled over the city. Annie tugged on her seat belt, trying to get it to click. “Your car is old,” she said, “and I think my belt is broken.”
I turned onto Elgin and headed southeast. “I’ll drive slowly,” I said. “Just focus on where we need to be.”