The brothel was small but a nuisance on the block. The neighbors didn’t appreciate the stream of men going in and out in regular fifteen-minute intervals. Complaints had been made; a quick investigation launched; a confidential informant reported four girls working ten hours a day in the basement apartment. Last week, Hector had conducted an afternoon of surveillance. Based on the number of men he saw, each girl might be handling a hundred customers a week.
Hector could have brought his anticipatory search warrant to any sex-crimes prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but he preferred to knock on Anna’s door. Not just because she was pretty. Anna was kind and respectful, even when she was correcting some flaw in his warrant. If this bust went well, he’d have a chance to work with her more.
For now, he focused on the row house. There were two things he always worried about at this stage. First, had the informant lied to him, and was he about to raid some innocent family’s home? Second, would someone inside try to kill him?
The “Eyes” of the operation would watch with binoculars, and Ralph would listen through the transmitter tucked in Hector’s pocket. A fifth officer was waiting in the back alley, securing the rear door. But the arrest team was a block away, and they couldn’t see what went down in the brothel. Once Hector was inside, he was on his own.
He would be quick. Go in, hand thirty dollars to the doorman, establish that he would be getting sex in return for the money. Take his poker chip. A real john would give his chip to the next available girl, who would give him fifteen minutes in return. But Hector would “have to go to the bathroom” first. Then the team would raid the place, arrest everyone inside, and search the house for more evidence. It wasn’t easy work, but Hector and his team had the routine down. They did it several times a month.
Of course, another brothel would soon pop up a few blocks from here, part of the game of Whac-A-Mole the police played with pimps and prostitutes. But the good citizens of Monroe Street would be appeased. At least for a few months.
Hector trotted down the concrete steps to the front door of the basement apartment. A couple of dark-haired kids were putting up Halloween decorations on the stoop next door, talking in mixed English and Spanish. Hector made eye contact with a boy who was holding a little plastic skeleton on a string.
“Hola.”
Hector smiled at the boy as he knocked on the door.
“Shhh.” The boy brought a finger to his lips. “The Devil is inside.”
The hair on the back of Hector’s neck stood up.
4
A
woman at the next table was looking at Anna with pity. That was not the reaction Anna had been hoping to elicit tonight. She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks, burning with the pain of rejection and the embarrassment of having it happen so publicly. The latter was her own fault, for popping the question in a crowded restaurant. She tucked the little red box back into her purse, as if hiding the watch could also hide the debacle of presenting it.
“Anna,” Jack said gently. “Wait.”
She didn’t want him to see the hurt on her face. She looked down at her purse, like she was trying to find something in there. Maybe her dignity.
“I understand,” she said.
“You
don’t
understand.” Jack’s voice was quiet but firm. “Look at me.”
She met his eyes. Despite everything, she still found them a warm and happy place to land.
“When a couple gets engaged,” he said, “they have to tell that story over and over again, for years.”
She tilted her head.
“I’m a traditional kind of guy. In our story . . .” Jack’s eyes were twinkling. “
I
want to be the one who does the asking.”
He pulled out his own little red box, stood up, and walked over to Anna’s chair. Then he knelt down on one knee. He opened up the box and turned it toward Anna. Nestled in the white silk was a sparkling diamond on a platinum band. She found it hard to take a breath.
She remembered this ring. It was the one Jack had pointed out when they were at the Tiny Jewel Box a month ago, following up on some evidence in a case involving an escort who was killed at the U.S. Capitol. When Anna realized he was checking out engagement rings for personal reasons, she’d freaked out. That had contributed to their breakup. Now she was overcome with happiness to see the ring again.
“Anna Curtis,” he said, grinning. “I think I know the answer to this question. But I’ll go ahead and ask. Will you marry me?”
Anna looked at the man kneeling in front of her. She wanted to take in every detail of this moment, knowing she would replay it for the rest of her life: Jack, holding the ring out like a glittering promise of their future, his green eyes glowing with happiness, his mouth curved into a broad white smile.
“Yes!” The word came out in a hiccup. She realized she was crying. Her hands were shaking, but he held the left one steady as he slipped the ring onto her finger.
They were both standing, arms around each other, her body pressed hard against his. She kissed him as tears streamed down her cheeks.
The sound of clapping brought her back to the present. They pulled apart and saw that the rest of the restaurant was cheering for them. Jack grinned at her. He looked young and radiant and ridiculously happy.
“We should’ve asked for a bulk discount at the Tiny Jewel Box,” he said.
She laughed through her tears, feeling giddy. “When did you buy the ring?”
“Before we even went there for the Capitol case.” He took a napkin from the table and dabbed her cheeks.
“And you’ve been carrying it around ever since?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to return it. It’s been sitting in my night stand. That’s why I was late. Your friend Grace tipped me off. I ran home and got it.”
“Grace! I swore her to secrecy.”
“It was all in pursuit of a worthy cause.”
He twined his fingers with hers and held up her hand so they could look at the ring on her finger. It sparkled even in candlelight.
“How are we going to tell the office?” Anna asked. They’d kept their relationship a secret until now.
“Forget the office,” Jack laughed. “How are we going to tell Olivia?”
His sassy six-year-old daughter was either going to be Anna’s biggest fan or her severest critic. But Anna put aside her worries about office politics and family drama. She stepped back into Jack’s embrace. She just wanted to bask in the bliss of getting engaged to the man she loved. They’d figure out everything else tomorrow.
5
A
moment after Hector knocked, a woman began yelling from inside the brothel.
“Ayúdeme! Ayúdeme!”
Her voice was muffled, but her words were unmistakable.
“A woman is calling for help inside.” Hector spoke loudly toward his pocket, so the arrest team would hear him through the transmitter. “I need backup. I’m going in.”
Cursing under his breath, he pulled the Glock from the back of his jeans, braced himself, and kicked the door to the basement apartment. It buckled open. Hector swung into the brothel, gun first. So much for the plan. There would be no evidence collection, no orderly execution of a search warrant. Not when there was a woman screaming for help.
The dim hallway smelled of cigarettes, latex, and sex. Hector’s eyes skimmed the interior and landed on a hulking shape at the end of the hall. One man was crouched over another, rifling through his pockets. The crouching man sprang to his feet, holding a machete. He was young, with the glassy, unfocused eyes of the very high.
“stop!” Hector yelled. “Police!”
The man raised his machete and charged at him, screaming obscenities in Spanish. Hector had years of training and experience; he’d practiced hundreds of drills—but a guy charging with a machete was still a heart-stopping moment.
Hector fired twice into the man’s center mass. The machete clattered to the floor. The guy dropped a couple of yards from Hector’s feet. Burnt gunpowder overpowered the brothel’s other smells.
The sound of gunshots inside the apartment was stunning. Hector had been on the Metropolitan Police Department for ten years; he had fired his Glock countless times on the range and in MPD training. But he’d never shot a person. His ears rang from the noise; his heart pounded from the shock of what he’d just done.
Ralph and the others rushed inside behind him. Ralph knelt down and started cuffing the guy Hector had shot. No telling what damage the shots had done—the man still had to be incapacitated.
Hector stepped around Ralph and approached the prone man whose pockets the machete guy had been going through. His hands and feet were bound with duct tape—but his entire head was gone. Where there should have been a face there was just a pool of blood on dirty carpet. His neck looked like something from a messy butcher’s shop. Hector swallowed back a wave of bile and kept going.
The hallway deposited him into a dark and musty living room. The main source of light was a boxy old TV with porn playing on it. “Ah, ah, ah!” the woman on TV moaned, her breasts bouncing frantically as she rode the man beneath her. A cheap plastic stopwatch was tacked to the wall, to track the time each john was allowed. A bookshelf was overturned, its stash of condoms, lube, and VHS porn tapes scattered on the floor. A few dingy couches slouched around the TV. Several of the cushions had been sliced open, and bits of the inner fluff floated through the air.
Another man lay on a couch; he was also bound in duct tape, with a piece of tape over his mouth. This man was alive and terrified. He met Hector’s gaze and signaled with his head toward the back rooms. Hector strode to a bedroom and threw open the door. There were two mattresses separated by a curtain, but otherwise the room was empty. He moved to the next bedroom.
It took him a moment to process the scene. A naked woman curled on a mattress, sobbing. Next to the bed, a grinning man scrambled to pull up his pants, which were tangled around his ankles. A severed human head—presumably from the body in the hallway—was impaled on top of a cheap bedside lamp. It dripped blood onto the lightbulb, which flickered in protest.
Two men in trenchcoats were fumbling with the lock on the bedroom’s back door, which led outside to the back alley. They held a third man, who wore only a bloody white T-shirt and black socks. Hector recognized him from his mug shot—Ricardo Amaya, the brothel owner, the man Hector had come here to arrest.
One of the two thugs was an average-looking Hispanic male, but the other seemed to be wearing some sort of mask. Hector’s eyes went to their hands, assessing the threat they presented. Both thugs carried machetes, but unlike the fool in the front hallway, they didn’t raise them at Hector. Instead, they opened the back door and stepped outside into the dark alley, dragging the half-naked brothel owner with them.
Hector could see another officer outside in the alley, guarding the rear door. The weird-looking thug hurled Ricardo at the officer. The officer was bowled over; he and the brothel owner fell in a tangled heap to the ground. The two thugs took off running.
Meanwhile, the man with his pants around his ankles was reaching toward a machete on the floor. Hector kicked the machete away and slammed the guy, chest-first, into the wall. Hector cuffed him, then shoved him into Ralph’s arms.
“Call for backup,” Hector said. “Two Hispanic males with machetes, wearing jeans and trenchcoats, running west toward Fourteenth Street.”
Hector ran through the bedroom’s back door and out into the dark alley. He could see the two thugs rounding the corner, more than a block away. He sprinted after them.
6
A
n hour later, Detective Tavon McGee knelt down in the brothel’s front yard. The flashing police lights illuminated a little plastic skeleton laying in the dirt. With gloved hands, he pinched the string attached to the plastic skull and held up the figurine. The little skeleton seemed to dance on its cord as the detective examined it with a flashlight.
McGee filled his lungs with the warm night air, momentarily relieved to study the kitschy representation of death as opposed to the real thing. The scene inside the brothel was a bloody mess. Two corpses: one downed by the double-tap of a police Glock, one duct-taped and decapitated. Three injured: the brothel owner with his chest carved up, drifting in and out of consciousness; a second man, duct-taped and confused; and a naked prostitute, bruised and bloody, sobbing nonsensically about
el diablo
. The three survivors were on their way to Howard University Hospital; the two dead were headed to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The crime scene techs had their work cut out for them: Dozens of used condoms in the garbage can in the bedroom. Blood spattered on the bedroom walls. Broken furniture strewn around the living room.
It was a messy scene, and it was going to be a messy case. Two of the invaders had gotten away. The police involved in the shooting would not be able to work the case. A Use of Force investigation would be launched, to determine whether Hector Ramos’s shooting was justified. All of the officers would be placed on administrative leave pending the decision. Their union attorneys might not let them talk for weeks, if not months. McGee would have to figure much of this out on his own.
He was a homicide detective, had been for over twenty years. He was used to sorting out the relationships between the living and the dead.
A movement in the row house next door caught his eye. A dark-haired kid was cracking open the front door and peering out. The boy was maybe five years old, with knobby knees and wide brown eyes.
“This yours, little man?” McGee called. He held up the plastic skeleton. The kid nodded. McGee walked up the steps to the boy’s porch. The metal railing around the porch was decorated with dozens of identical little skeletons, as well as black rubber bats and pipe-cleaner spiders. Ghosts made of wispy white sheets hung from the ceiling, twirling slowly in the breeze. McGee handed the little skeleton to the boy. “What’s your name?”