Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

“It’s Spice, isn’t it?” I asked. I could spot a synthetic marijuana user like nobody’s business. She had the jitters, the paranoia, and the sallow skin color. “You’re using right now. I can see it.”

Waters leaned back from the table and glared at me. He swung his leg over the chair and motioned me into the corner of the room. His jaw was set. His eyes were wide with anger. He spoke through clenched teeth. “What are you doing?” he asked. “We’ve got a lead here and you’re intimidating her. You think she’s gonna talk if she thinks we’re gonna lock her up?”

I looked past Waters at the woman. She ran her fingers through her greasy hair and then picked at a small black gauge in her right earlobe. She swallowed hard and raked her teeth along her bottom lip. She couldn’t sit still.

“Good cop, bad cop,” I said. “Always works.”

Waters raised an eyebrow. “So I’m the good cop?”

“Without a doubt.”

“I don’t think that’s what we’re doing here,” he said.

He shook his head and resumed his one-sided conversation with the woman. He kept offering her useless niceties, promised her some cigarettes or coffee. Maybe a Shipley’s donut or a hot dog from James Coney Island down the street. Whatever she wanted.

“How about another hit, Annie?” I said. “That help?”

She glanced at me, checked with Waters, who was frowning, and then looked back at me. She nodded.

“No problem,” I said. “You just need to help out Bill here. He thinks you might know something about the woman we found in the bayou last night.”

Annie stared at me. Her lips were pursed. She was stuck in pause mode for a moment, fixated on me, and then she nodded again.

Waters pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He sucked in a deep breath of air and exhaled. “Okay,” he said begrudgingly, “you tell us what we need to know and we’ll see about getting you some of what you need. Deal?”

She nodded once more and Waters pulled his phone from his pocket. He unlocked the screen, tapped it a couple of times, and slid it across the table to Annie.

She glanced at the phone and closed her eyes. “Her name was Mary Ann,” she said. Her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was timid, almost sweetly apprehensive, the product of a life spent at the behest of others. She looked younger when she spoke. “She was new.”

“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.