No Escape (10 page)

Tessa bit her lip; suddenly feeling ill as she recalled Sledge’s saying he’d bought Kelly.

Did they want to keep customers happy to the extent that they would offer a teenager like Kelly to Sledge Aiken on a silver platter?

She looked at Luke, saw the sympathy in his eyes, and understood for the first time that he had been right. She wasn’t going to like the answers to the questions she was asking on this case.

Los Angeles, California

Thursday afternoon, March 4

“P
lease don’t say ‘I told you so.’ ” Tessa fastened her seat belt and sat back for the drive to see Jasmine at Three Sisters Shelter.

“You don’t know me very well, Swiss.” Luke started the engine and refused to let himself get mad. Tessa was under an enormous amount of stress, and worry for Kelly had to be eating away at her right now.

“No. I can only go by what I’ve experienced in the past.”

“That sounds pretty ominous, and one day soon we’ll talk about it in depth. But until then, don’t judge me based on how people in your past have acted. I haven’t ever let you down, and I don’t plan on doing it, either.”

“Who does plan on letting others down? In my experience it just happens,” she observed.

“Maybe. But I’m not going to say I was right about Kelly. In fact, I’m still hoping like hell that I was wrong.”

Tessa sighed. “Me, too. I’m sorry to be such a bitch. I just can’t stand the thought of a kid like Kelly working as a stripper. Or being offered as a party favor to Sledge Aiken.”

Luke didn’t know what to say to that, so he reached over and gave Tessa’s hand a comforting squeeze. Nothing more was said as they drove to the shelter to speak with Jasmine.

When they pulled into the driveway at Three Sisters, the security guard waved them over to a spot in front of the manager’s office. He told them Eunice had left a message for them to see her when they arrived.

Tessa got out of the car and gripped her bag as she went to the office. She was grateful for Luke’s steadying hand at her back, because her legs had begun to quiver with nerves as soon as she heard that Eunice wanted to speak to them. Maybe she was starting to develop the instincts Ed was always talking about.

“What’s going on?” Tessa asked, as soon as Eunice opened the office door.

“Jasmine isn’t here anymore,” the woman said.

“Where did she go?” Luke asked. “And why didn’t you call us? You knew we wanted to speak with her.”

“She won’t do you much good in the state she’s in. She fell off the wagon.”

“Shot up?” Luke asked.

Eunice nodded unhappily. “Went on a thirty-six-hour heroin binge, starting yesterday morning, apparently. She never went to rehearsals, and didn’t make it to work, either. She got back last night just before curfew. One of her neighbors complained today that Jasmine’s baby had been crying all last night and into this morning.”

“Is the baby all right?” Tessa asked.

“He is now,” Eunice said. “Child Protective Services has him. He hadn’t been changed or fed since sometime yesterday—that’s how we know Jasmine went on a major toot.”

“Where is she now?” Luke got out his notebook to write down the address.

Eunice shrugged. “Evicted. We packed her bags and dropped her off at a friend’s apartment in Gardena. Nasty
neighborhood. I don’t imagine Jasmine will be sober for the rest of the week.”

Luke took down the address anyway, then led Tessa back to his car.

“Where are we going?” Tessa asked.

“To see Jasmine.”

“But you heard Eunice—she’s going to be high.”

“The way I see it, Jasmine has a vice to exploit right now. That will make it easier for us to get information from her. It won’t be pretty. But it is necessary, so I need you to back me up and not say anything. No matter how ugly it gets.”

Gardena, California

Thursday afternoon, March 4

“A
re you sure you want to leave your car parked here?” Tessa asked. “It will probably be stripped down to nuts and bolts by the time we get back.”

The neighborhood where Jasmine was staying was the type of place where even the police would hesitate to enter. Luke glanced around, then headed for a group of teenagers hanging out on the corner. Tessa saw him wave money in front of the kids; some kind of deal was struck, and Luke returned to the car. As he walked toward her and a gust of wind caught his coat, she saw a holstered pistol underneath his right arm. Apparently, he was a lefty.

“The Mercedes will be fine. Stay close to me as we go up to Jasmine’s place. Make eye contact with people you see, but don’t maintain it. Don’t be afraid, but try not to display attitude, either. Okay?”

“Sure.” Tessa swallowed hard as they approached the group of men hanging out in the entryway of the building. They ranged in age from fourteen to twenty, and clearly spent whatever money they had on gold chains, designer
denim, and the hot rods parked out front. Conversation stopped as she and Luke approached.

She met the eyes of the group’s leader enough to show that she saw him, then looked away. Her skin crawled as a chorus of hoots and catcalls followed her up the shallow steps. At one point, she and Luke had to pass within inches of a man who was leaning on the door frame. He pelted Luke with a question in rapid-fire gutter Spanish. Luke responded in the same bastardized dialect, and they were allowed to pass.

Tessa could smell sweat and beer on the man as she squeezed by him in the peeling wooden doorframe. She felt his eyes on her like a violation, peeling away the layers of business clothes and leering over what lay underneath. Her skin continued to twitch as she followed Luke through the dark, damp courtyard toward the cracked cement stairs at the far side of the building.

The smell of mold, urine, sweat, and despair assaulted her nostrils. The cement walls of the building were covered with dank stains and had moss growing in the cracks. At one time the courtyard had sported planters, and a few anemic ferns struggled for life among the trash, cigarette butts, and condom wrappers that were ground into the mud.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Luke advised, doing the same to cut back on the stench. He saw tattered curtains flutter in a series of barred windows and felt the eyes of a dozen people tracking their progress.

“Why, so I can taste it, too? God, how do people live like this?” Tessa muttered.

Luke just shook his head and led the way upstairs. As the cement walls of the stairway shielded her from the penetrating stairs of the first-floor tenants, Tessa breathed a sigh of relief.

“Don’t relax your guard yet, Swiss. It only gets better from here.”

Tessa followed his gaze as they stepped into the hallway
on the second floor. Here the groups of loitering individuals included hard-eyed women and children of various ages. Some of the women were dressed like streetwalkers, others wore faded housedresses or sweats.

If Tessa had hoped for a kinder reaction from the women, she was mistaken. As they walked down the hallway, numerous rude questions were thrown at them, most of them ending with the word “bitch.” She ignored the others and focused on Luke’s back.

At one point they had to pass through a clutch of women standing with cigarettes in hand and fussing babies on their hips. The same smell of beer and sweat that pervaded the downstairs was here, too, and Tessa couldn’t help but ache at the thought of the children being raised in such an environment.

“This is it,” Luke said, stopping in front of a scarred orange door. There was no peephole, knocker, or bell, so he rapped several times with his knuckles. A young woman with tired eyes, cornrows, and pale skin opened the door. Her eyes opened wide when Luke waved a fifty-dollar bill in her face and asked to see Jasmine.

The woman took the money fast enough to give him a paper cut, then stepped back and pointed toward a door at the far end of the apartment. Luke looked at her, then at the other three women sprawled in front of the TV. “Another fifty if everyone splits for ten minutes and forgets we were here.”

Without a word, the women shuffled out, the last one taking the money and tucking it into her bra. “If Jasmine isn’t in the mood,
hombre,
you just give me a call.” She made a vulgar kissing noise and left, giving Tessa a dismissive once-over as she passed.

“With friends like that, no wonder Jasmine is in trouble,” Tessa muttered. She looked around at the apartment with its rump-sprung and tattered couch, thrift store chairs, and a card table that served as dining surface and trash receptacle.
The sink was full of beer bottles and wine coolers, and someone had dumped used paper plates and napkins in there as well. She saw rodent droppings on the counter and turned away with a sound of disgust.

Luke had been busy checking the other rooms to make sure they were alone. He motioned Tessa behind him and slowly opened the door to the bedroom where they were told to find Jasmine. Inside there was a single lamp with a naked bulb that gave feeble light. Vintage suitcases were strewn on the floor, with clothes and personal items spilling out of them. In the center of the room was a single mattress resting directly on the floor. Fetid sheets were twisted at the bottom of the bed, and a variety of stains dotted the makeshift bed.

A woman who matched Jasmine’s mug shot was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, though she didn’t even look up as they entered. Her long, kinky hair had been pulled back, but hanks of it escaped the messy knot to fall around her downturned face. She held a piece of rubber tubing in one hand and adroitly flipped it around her upper arm before using her teeth to tighten it. In the other hand she gingerly balanced a raggedly cut soda can and a syringe.

Tessa stood with her mouth open, watching as Jasmine carefully drew water into the syringe then squirted it into the cut-out bottom of the soda can. A small brown lump the size of a breath mint rested there.

“We have some questions for you, Jasmine. You answer, we leave,” Luke said, kneeling cautiously on the mattress to get on her level. She didn’t even look up as she swirled the can to mix water with the heroin rock.

Luke watched as Jasmine grabbed a lighter and held it under the can. He could see her licking her lips in anticipation of the drug, and waited until the right moment to interrupt her.

She had just drawn the dirty brown liquid into the syringe when Luke leaned forward and stopped her from plunging
the needle into her skin. She cursed and struggled, but he held her arms securely and ignored her insults.

“You can shoot up in a minute, Jasmine. First we have a few questions for you.”

Jasmine wet her lips and pulled her dazed eyes away from the syringe. “What the fuck you want, man? I’m busy. You wait a sec, then we can talk prices.”

“I’m not here for sex. Where is Kelly Martin? What happened to her the night she disappeared from the shelter?” Luke asked.

“Fuck her. I don’t know anything about her. She never trusted me, snotty bitch.” Jasmine pulled against Luke’s hold but wasn’t strong enough to break away.

Luke wrenched the full syringe out of her hand and held it in the air above her head. “Give us information, and we’ll walk out the door.”

“He’ll mess me up if I tell you.” Tears of frustration filled Jasmine’s eyes as she looked at the drugs. Sweat beaded her upper lip as some internal debate went on inside her. But the addiction was stronger than any sense of self-preservation. With a sigh, she fell back against the cushions.

Luke lowered his hand as he sensed victory. “Someone put out the word for Kelly in the clubs around town. What do you know about that?”

“I don’t know who it was, but Kelly pissed someone off. Had to be high-level to get the word out like that. And they were paying good money for information. I needed the dough for smack.”

“How much did it take for you to sell Kelly out?” Tessa asked from the doorway. She had been standing there as if in a bad dream, but shook herself free of the surreal fog when she realized that Jasmine had been the one to betray Kelly.

Jasmine didn’t look away from her syringe. “Five hundred. I told Street about Kelly and split the money with him.”

“What happened the night Kelly disappeared?” Luke held the syringe higher as Jasmine feebly reached for it.

“Nothing. She walked out.”

Luke shook his head, aimed the syringe at the filthy sheets, and squirted a small stream of liquid onto them.

Jasmine shrieked in frustration. “All right, don’t waste my stuff. I was smoking on the porch at about two in the morning, and these guys show up. Said they were going to take Kelly back home. They gave me an extra hundred to look the other way, so I went into the bathroom. When I came out, Kelly was gone.”

“Who were these guys? Who did they work for?”

“I don’t know, man. One of them looked like he could be a bouncer, you know? I saw plenty like him at the club I used to work at.”

“You mean Mafia muscle?” Luke clarified.

“Probably. Street told me Kelly was working out of Club Red, so I just assumed she was mixed up with their business.”

“What did Kelly do there?” Tessa asked.

“I heard she was being groomed. She had this sweet young thing going for her that’s popular with a lot of guys.”

“So Kelly was stripping?” Luke got to his feet still holding the drugs.

“Nah. I heard she was going to be an escort for the big spenders once she got a little more polished. Stupid little Goody Two-shoes didn’t have enough experience with men to be any use, so they were, like, training her,” Jasmine sneered. Then she gulped at the fire in Luke’s eyes. “At least that’s what I heard.”

Tessa pressed a hand to her stomach to quell the sudden urge to throw up. She leaned back against the wall for a moment, but saw something move in her peripheral vision. Turning slightly, she saw a cockroach marching up the wall about six inches away from her head. It was huge.

She remembered Luke’s warning not to interfere in his questioning, and barely stifled her shriek at the last second.
She pulled away from the wall and focused on Luke. He was the only sane thing in the waking nightmare she was experiencing.

Luke heard Tessa’s muffled noise behind him, but didn’t take his attention off Jasmine. So far, the stripper had confirmed every one of his worst fears. He shifted the syringe from one hand to the other as he thought about what to do next. Jasmine’s eyes followed his motions involuntarily, pulling his focus.

Looking at her, Luke figured that anyone who would look away while a young girl was taken off in the middle of the night didn’t deserve to have something she wanted so badly. He stepped off the mattress, carefully broke the syringe in two, and dropped it to the dirty floor. As Jasmine howled, he ground it viciously beneath his heel. He left her cursing and huddled over the broken pieces, trying to salvage her drugs.

He turned to Tessa, but she was already backing out the bedroom door, looking behind her to make sure there was no one blocking her way. He followed her out of the apartment and down the exterior hallway. They had to run the same gauntlet of residents as when they came in, but this time did it at double speed.

As they made their way past the group of young men out front, Luke did a quick visual inspection of his car. He felt Tessa stiffen beside him as the men began another chorus of whistles and rude suggestions. He knew she was at the point of exploding and tried to hustle her down the shallow steps in front of the building.

“They’re just kids trying to act cool,” he said. “Keep walking.”

Instead, she shrugged off his hold. She turned and walked up to the ringleader, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “Shut your fucking mouth,
vato
. Your mother must be really proud of you.”

There was a moment of tense silence before all the men cracked up, slapping their leader on the back as they howled
with laughter. Luke stood behind Tessa, made a pointed comment in gutter Spanish to the men, then pulled her toward the car. He ignored the laughing offers to take the “hot chili pepper” off his hands, and flipped a wadded-up fifty to the kids who had watched the Mercedes.

Tessa was silent as she fastened her seat belt and locked the door. Luke kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge how she was doing.

“Look, I know I was a little hard on Jasmine,” he began.

“The woman sold Kelly out to some mobster for $250 worth of heroin. She deserves whatever you gave her and then some.”

Luke had never heard her voice so strong and steady. He realized that while she was reeling from her exposure to the ugliness of LA’s dark reality, she was going to hold herself together and focus on getting the job done.

He turned her head toward him and kissed her gently on lips that parted in surprise.

“What was that for?” Tessa asked, when the soft kiss was over.

“For doing a great job. And not getting squeamish.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, rubbing her unsettled stomach.

“You only shrieked once. What made you do that, by the way?”

“There was a cockroach the size of a Buick on the wall next to me.”

Luke looked at her. When he realized she was serious, he laughed out loud. “Tessa, you were in a heroin flophouse, surrounded by gang members, prostitutes, drug dealers—and you freaked over a bug?”

“It was a really big bug,” she protested. Then she started to snicker as well. It had been pretty stupid.

And besides, it felt so good to laugh and release some of the tension and adrenaline inside. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“You did just fine, Swiss.” Luke looked at her with approval before landing another smacking kiss on her surprised lips.

He was so casual about it she didn’t even know if she should say anything. Instead, she rubbed her tingling lips and looked out the window, wondering how to handle this new wrinkle in their complicated partnership.