“Because of what you think happened to your sister?”
“Partly, yes, of course. But more importantly, if there is some op underway in Robbins County, even if I wasn’t privy to it, it won’t happen any time soon. Most of headquarters knows when something like that’s about to bear fruit.”
“What if we lit a fire over at social services in Robbins County? Using the abused kids angle?”
“Against the Creighs? What was it that woman told you?”
I sighed. She was right. Now the question became whether or not I wanted to join this fight. Then I realized that, having taken Rue Creigh’s head off, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. It was just that years of police experience had taught me how badly Lone Rangers could screw up a perfectly good police operation. King had said exactly the right thing to give me pause. Carrie saw my hesitation.
“You want to bail, I can live with that,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I did that to you once already. No, I’m just trying to think of a way to go at this. Let’s get some chow and then I’ll call Baby.”
After a day of rest for Carrie and resupply for me, we met Baby Greenberg up at the main lodge dining room at six thirty. He listened to our tales of mutual adventure and said repeatedly that we were both insane. Carrie had put a headscarf over the wound on the top of her head, and of course Baby had to have a look.
“Damn, girl,” he said as she was repositioning the scarf. “Another inch lower and you could be in DEA management.”
We had dinner and he told us what he’d found out with a few calls to the FBI field office down in Charlotte.
“I had to tell a few lies about why I was asking,” he said.
“I’m shocked,” I said. “Shocked.”
“DEA and the FBI lie to each other all the time,” he replied. “It’s our way of showing bureaucratic affection.”
“They wouldn’t talk to Sam King over the phone,” I said. “They told him he had to go down there.”
“That’s just feds jerking state guys around, what can I tell you,” he said. “I called in on a federal secure pipe and we got right to it.”
“Which is?” Carrie asked. She’d had a glass of wine and seemed to be coming back to life.
“Apparently there’s a medium-sized federal task force in Washington working on the exploitation of children. It’s running under the so-called PROTECT Act.”
“Whassat?” I asked. The feds used to drive me crazy with all their acronyms.
“Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act of April 2003,” he recited. “Or PROTECT.”
“This PROTECT bunch have an intel branch?” I asked.
“They do,” he said. The waiter brought our dinners, and we waited until he’d left. I attacked a bloody rare steak. Carrie looked over at my plate and asked if I didn’t want that thing killed before I ate it. Once the waiter finished with his is-everything-okay recital, Baby continued. “And subject intel branch has identified western Appalachia as one source for children being sold into international sex-slave markets.”
“Suspicions confirmed,” Carrie said, with a hint of triumph in her voice. “But western Appalachia is a big place. Any specifics?”
“No, and there’s a wrinkle,” he said. There was enough background noise in the dining room to cover our conversation. “They can’t tie any reported instance where children have been rescued from one of these human sewers to a source in this area. I asked. But: They did have one CI who told them that there is a ‘florist’ up here somewhere, and that what she, and he did say ‘she,’ produces is extremely valuable in subject markets.”
“Any details?” I asked.
“That’s when they went NFI on me.”
NFI was intel-speak for no further information. It was the code word intelligence wienies used when they didn’t understand what some snippet of information meant. But that reference to a “she” also supported Carrie’s theory.
“He used that term?” Carrie asked. “A florist?”
“Yeah, and I asked about that, too. A florist produces ‘flowers,’ which is the street word for the product, as in little flowers, plucked for the disgusting pleasure of some seriously bent motherfuckers.”
“And why Appalachia?”
“Because the children have little value to a certain stratum of the population. As in, she was a’lookin’ pretty damn good for thirteen, but then she done got her a damn kid hung on her. And if it was her daddy who did the hangingon, then the child become disposable.”
“Did you ask them that question I had about a doctor’s involvement?”
“I did. They said that if the flowers are sterile, they’re more valuable, for obvious if repugnant reasons.”
“And this is a Washington, D.C., game?” I asked. “That seems like a dangerous place for this kind of enterprise, especially these days.”
“The key is a transport channel with diplomatic immunity,” Greenberg replied. “Most of the diplomatic courier channels in the country terminate in Washington and New York. They are not subject to search. Think about it: A Saudi woman shows up at Dulles, all burka-ed up in her best twelfth-century haute couture. She arrives with a sleepy child in tow, similarly covered, made up to look Saudi and probably doped to the gills ‘because she gets airsick.’ They’re boarding a Royal Saudi Air Force plane, and her husband’s a prince, of course. That’s a government airline, and nobody messes with them. They pass the metal detector test and the bomb dogs, and off they go.”
“So if someone’s going to bust this up, it would have to be on the way into Washington from Robbins County?” Carrie asked.
“If you just wanted to rescue one flower, then yeah,” he said. “But if you’re a bunch of feds trying to put together a case that can be prosecuted, then you need to roll up both ends of the pipe. That’s hard, and it takes time. Lots of time. Especially on the diplomatic end-especially if you assume it’s the princes who are buying the flowers.”
“Based on what I overheard, we may not have lots of time,” I said. “Somehow our probes have spooked Grinny. She’s talking maybe unloading the whole hothouse.”
“Jeez, I wonder why,” Baby said. “Nathan grabs you up and then gets beat to shit, Rue Creigh gets her head blown off, a third of their lovely little dog pack is vulture bait up on Book Mountain, somebody inside Mingo’s force gets you out of jail, and they’re spooked?”
“The way to stop this is a laser-guided bomb into Mother Creigh’s little house of horrors,” Carrie said. Santa Claws was in the building.
“LGBs are good,” I pointed out. “Unless, of course, that’s where the children are collected prior to a shipment.”
“My Bureau contact said there’s another problem, which is that, so far, they have never been able to put a TV monitor or even an eyeball at either Dulles or Reagan airport on a mother-and-child departure profile that seems to fit the bill. And there are zero ties to Robbins County or any other part of this area.”
We ate our dinner for a few minutes, trying to digest this information. Carrie finally broke the silence. “If Robbins County is the source in question, the ‘she’ would have to be the Creigh clan. Who else has a criminal enterprise of substance going up there?”
“One wonders,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m struck by the fact that the people like Sheriff Hayes don’t seem to be very excited about the Creigh clan and all their works in general.”
“That’s partially because we’re here,” Baby said. “Chasing druggies isn’t a big priority for local law if the appropriate feds are in the area. But we’ve been looking at the meth problem, not anything to do with trafficking in children. And, actually, by the Code of the West, that would belong to the Bureau, not us scruffy narcs.”