Джеймс Паттерсон: The Red Book

The reply comes quickly.

We can still fix this, Porter tells him. I have a plan.

You better, Disco writes back. He puts the car in gear and starts driving.

Chapter 104

THE BUILDING is on Rockwell, south of 26th Street. Large, two stories, wooden frame, red paint on the front.

The alley to the side of the building is wide enough for a car, with maybe ten feet to spare. I’ve seen this alley before.

I saw it in the photos Valerie took and clipped inside Antoine Stonewald’s file a few days before she died.

A black Lincoln Town Car pulls past the building and stops, backs into the alley, and aligns itself alongside a door on the side of the building. A tall guy, dressed in black, opens the back door of the vehicle.

On cue, the building’s alley door opens, and a young woman, in a long dress and heels, hair done up high, steps out of the door and into the Town Car.

Just like in Valerie’s photos.

“Crime in progress,” I say into my collar. “Let’s do it. Go! That’s a go!”

A screech of tires, and an unmarked vehicle bounds into the alley, cherry lit up on the dashboard, nose to nose with the town car, before the chauffeur’s even back in the driver’s seat. Patti pulls our car up from the rear, pinning in the town car.

Officers will be kicking in the front door of the building right now, others taking the rear entrance by force. I’m the first one to the alley door.

I rush in—“Chicago police!”—and see an older woman, matronly, bright red hair, trying to get away in her flip-flops. I grab her by her shirt and force her down.

“Any men in here?” I shout. “Any men?”

“No, no men.”

“You sure? Anybody gets shot, you take the blame, lady.”

“No men.”

“What about Disco? Disco here?”

“No. No!”

Officers, plainclothes detectives from the Tenth, rushing in. “Take her,” I tell one of the patrols. “Cuff her and put her in a chair.”

I race downstairs. There’s an upstairs, but I’m thinking downstairs.

“Chicago police!” I run down padded stairs into a basement. Turn with my weapon up.

A dim, filthy space reeking of body odor and urine and vomit. A mop and pail of dirty water in the corner. Sleeping cots lining the other half of the basement.

Dozens of pairs of eyes staring up at me. Twenty, maybe thirty young girls, some in their early teens at best. Dressed in rags. Sitting on a stained, broken concrete floor or lying on battered couches, the foam stuffing sticking through the cheap fabric. A few girls in a circle on the floor with a deck of cards. Some huddled around an old television watching a show about animals. Several clutching beaten old teddy bears or scuzzy blankets.

One girl, who couldn’t yet be a teenager, sitting in the corner, staring at me through stringy, unwashed hair and sucking her thumb.

They sleep down here. They live down here. When they’re not cleaned and prettied up to perform sex acts for strangers, they live down here in a dirty, disgusting cave like animals.

“Chicago police!” I say. “Everyone get down.” I pantomime the motion, assuming many of them can’t understand me. “Down. Down on floor.”

I don’t want any cops getting the wrong idea, amped up as they are, coming down the stairs.

The girls get down, lie flat. They don’t understand yet, but they understand doing what a man tells them to do. They’ve been doing that their whole lives.

I catch a few glimpses. Tattoos of black lilies on each girl’s ankle.

“Hold your fire; hold your fire,” I say to the officers pouring down the stairs. “They’re not a threat. They’re just…”

My throat chokes on that sentence.

They’re just children.

I open my phone, which is already linked to an online English-to-Romanian translator. I do my best to repeat the words. Some of them are trying to understand me, but I’m probably botching it.

The translator has an audio component, so I turn up the volume and play it, let the robot voice pronounce the Romanian words better than I ever could.

Nu ai probleme. Sunteți victime. Oamenii ăștia nu te vor mai răni. Suntem aici să te ajutăm să ajungi acasă.

You are not in trouble. You are victims. These men will not hurt you anymore. We are here to help you get home.

I play it once, twice, a third time.

Several of them understand and start talking to the others, rapid bursts of words I couldn’t possibly understand. Before long, the news seems to spread across the room in a few languages. The girls are hugging each other, crying, some of them even smiling.

“We…go home?” one of the girls says to me.

“Yes,” I say, squatting down. “We will help you.”

A detective starts collecting the girls, any semblance of a threat now gone. They line up, not for the first time in their lives, but probably for the first time willingly and happily.

“Take them to SOS and call Protective Services,” I say. “These girls are gonna need detox, too.”

I watch the girls file up the stairs, most of them underage by several years, dressed in ripped, ill-fitting clothes, dirty and sick and abused beyond comprehension.

Sometimes there are no words.

But I have a few more. Not for the cops or for the girls. They’re only for one person, one person who isn’t here.

This is what you were trying to stop.

We finally did. Thanks to you.

Chapter 105

THE MATRONLY woman with the fiery red hair and chubby face is apparently named Augustina, last name currently unknown.

She’s the only one in the house. The upstairs was clear. Vanities covered with makeup, closets full of fancy dresses and kinky costumes, even a tanning bed in one of the rooms.

“You’re under arrest,” I tell her, “for running a house of prostitution. Probably kidnapping, rape, and a lot of other things, too. We could be here all night just listing the charges.”

Her chin up, defiant. “I want lawyer.” The thick accent.

“I know a good one,” I say. “His name is Vasyl Discovetsky. Ring a bell?”

That stops her a moment, but she won’t say so.

“You know Disco, do you?”

“I do not know that person.”

“What about Trev? What about Nicolas? You know those boys?”

“No,” she whips out. Cuffed to a chair, caught dead to rights, but still fighting.

“Trev and Nicolas are dead,” I say.

Her expression breaks, but I’m not getting anywhere using those names. Disco runs the show, Viviana told me.

“Disco’s on the run,” I say. “Though last time I saw him, he was limping more than running.”

She looks at me. That bought me something with her; that detail gives me some cred. Still, she won’t budge.

“You don’t seem nervous, Augustina. But you know who is?” I lean up close. “General Boholyubov.”

I pull back. She doesn’t look quite as hard, quite as collected.

“Boho must be getting really nervous right now. Nervous enough to make sure nobody talks. That’s what you’re thinking right now, isn’t it? You keep your mouth shut, maybe you do some time, maybe you get deported back to wherever you’re from. But ask yourself, Augustina: Is he really gonna let you live? I’m thinking no way.”

“We can help with that,” says Clara Foster. She shows her badge. “FBI, Augustina. I’m working on a joint federal and county task force to combat sex trafficking. Tonight was a big break for us”—she nods to me in thanks—“but we want to stop this thing at its source. We want General Boholyubov.

“You tell us what you know, we put you in WITSEC. Witness protection. You get a new identity and a new life. If”—she wags a finger—“ if you can help us take down the general. You help us break up this sex-trafficking ring, you get your life back. You sit there like your mouth doesn’t work, we throw you into the system, and the general takes care of you sooner or later.”