Chapter 3

They found Jack’s modest brown Buick fairly near the entrance to the garage, leaving the problem of finding somewhere for Joe to park. “Why don’t you ladies go on and check it out while I find a spot,” Joe told them.

By the time he walked down from his spot, they’d already found what they needed. Joe sat in the driver’s seat and looked through Jack’s small leather clad notebook.

“What do you want to do now?” Honey asked.

“Why don’t you two spend some time together? I’m going to go on a stakeout. If you want, Estella, you could grab our bags and the manila envelope at Honey’s. It’s got our aliases in it, and Jackie reserved a room for us at the Wynne. You can check in as my wife. I can meet you later at Honey’s club.”

“You think you need to watch the woman?” Estella asked.

“She seems to be the one who got him into this.”

“Makes sense. What if she got taken or something?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

“Okay. Be safe.”

“You too.”

They kissed quickly and he got out of the car, taking the notebook with him.

Parking the car a half a block from the apartment entrance, an older building that might have been a transient hotel in another life or a cheaper place for the locals to afford, stepping into the entryway he saw it must have been refurbished with only ten residences sharing the four floors. It also had become much more secured with a glass door that needed buzzing in and the kind of telephone intercom system similar to his condo in Minneapolis. He found her last name on the list of occupants and dialed the code.

“Yes?” a woman answered.

“Oh sorry. I must have dialed wrong.”

She hung up abruptly and Joe walked out. Luckily, across the street was a transient hotel that hadn’t been transformed. A bored little chubby Latino with a stained shirt greeted him at an old hotel desk.

“Got any rooms that look over the street?” Joe asked him, showing him two hundred dollar bills.

“How long?” the man muttered.

“Does it matter?” Joe asked, placing the hundreds on the desk.

The man shrugged and grabbed a key near the top of the hook board. 410.

Joe decided to skip the ancient looking elevator and took the stairs up to the fourth floor. The small room had a dank, lived in smell, a combination of sweat, cigarette smoke and a hint of urine. At least the double bed had been neatly tucked in and it had a small desk and a wooden chair, the latter of which Joe brought to the window, opening the shade, after turning on the air conditioner that had been built into the wall. As the machine noisily did its business of cooling the hot room, Joe gazed out the window and waited.

He took pictures using his cell phone of any woman exiting the apartment across the way, but the short woman with dark hair who came out after a couple hours, the apple fritter he’d bought at the diner to go and the liter of water he gotten from Honey’s home had been finished by then, by the way she looked both ways when exiting as if looking to be watched, he figured, was the one he was looking for, enough to end the surveillance from above and continue it on the street.

By the time he arrived there, she was gone, but he had a feeling he knew her direction and went that way, spotting her a couple blocks ahead. As expected, he watched her enter the Campfire Station through a side, employee’s entrance.

“How the hell could she afford that apartment at an employee’s salary, and probably under the table?” he murmured to himself before heading to the main entrance to the casino.

He stationed himself at a slot machine nearest to an employee’s only door and fed it a twenty. A few minutes later, a scowling, short, pudgy man, Armenian if Joe had to guess, since the woman had an Armenian last name, dressed to the nines and as Joe watched him, every employee deferred to him, kotowing if only in their expression, had exited the door and adjusted himself a bit, making sure he was zipped and such, with a tint of red in his cheeks. “Ah,” Joe muttered.

Waiting didn’t bring Sylvie, the woman Joe followed, to appear, so Joe left the slot machine and entered the hotel area, walking the halls. He found a maid trolley and debated whether to ask the maid about Sylvie. When she turned out to be a pretty Hispanic woman he decided to take the chance. After flirting with her in Spanish, enough to make her blush with his compliments, he asked her about Sylvie.

Her expression soured, but soon a smile appeared, hardly genuine, and she said, “Why didn’t you say?” and brought him into a hotel room, the bed unmade. Spotting the hundred in his hand, she said, “Didn’t she say? Two hundred.”

He handed them to her, which she pocketed and pulled off her maid’s outfit. Her smallish breasts needed no restraint, so she finished getting naked by removing her panties.

“Get naked!” she muttered.

Instead he lifted her onto the bed and knelt between her dark thighs and went down on her. She pulled at his t-shirt, so he paused to remove it before resuming his task. Her moans became more genuine until he tasted the effluence of her orgasm.

“My turn,” she said and went after his jeans, getting them lowered along with his jockeys to attack his half hard cock. His nudges had her straddling his mouth and the pillows allowed him better access. After another successful bout of cunnilingus, she grabbed a condom packet she had placed discretely on the bed and had his cock gloved up, though a tight fit with how big he was, and she carefully lowered her pussy onto it. Not as tight as Estella, she still needed time to adjust, and he felt her cervix with barely an inch left. He turned them over and closed her thighs, which gave just enough separation for him to fuck her without fear of hurting her. He managed to give her one more orgasm before giving into his own release.

Pulling out, he disposed of the condom in the toilet, adding paper to assist it being flushed. He grabbed a couple more hundreds from his wallet while she dressed.

“I just wanted to know who she was,” he explained, handing her the bills.

“You a cop or something?” she asked.

“More something,” he chuckled. “A friend of a friend. Obviously she runs some girls, but where exactly does she work here?”

“She’s mostly in charge of room service, making sure the deliveries are right.”

“Including the maids it seems.”

“Part of the service, yeah,” she giggled.

“Is this what you expected when you got hired?”

“Unh-hunh. I was desperate enough to start working the streets until my cousin told me about this.”

“Your cousin a man or woman?”

“A woman. You thinking it’s some organization?”

“Something got my friend nearly killed.” Joe saw the flinch. “I’m just a customer, okay. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “But maybe I should get back to work.”

Joe took out the notebook and borrowed the hotel’s pen. “Just one thing.”

“I guess.”

“You see her, tell me how she looks.” He wrote down his number and tore of the page.

“What do you mean?”

“I think you’ll know.”

“I think I already do. Okay.”

“Thanks.”

“No. Thank you. That was about the best fuck I’ve had.”

“Glad to be of service.”

Both of them laughed.

Joe headed back to Sylvie’s apartment building, finding the back entrance easily opened and Sylvie’s apartment as well. It was a fairly large open plan design, with two bedrooms. One, he realized, had been occupied by a young man, maybe closer to a boy by his slightly immature choice of decoration, or perhaps he didn’t change things when he got older. But, oddly, masculine clothing shared space with feminine such as panties and bras and slinky outfits. His vanity had quite an array of make-up. The only picture he saw was one with the boy/man and what Joe was figuring his mom, Sylvie.

Joe spent more time in Sylvie’s room but found little there. He did find Jack’s business card beside her phone, no surprise. His phone shivered in his pocket, and extracting it, he saw that the maid had texted him. “Worse than usual,” it said in Spanish. Joe sighed.

The essentially nothing in her room that might help surprised Joe somewhat, but he figured a combination of fear from her boss or owner or whatever and most likely a pure cash business might explain a lack of any records. No letters, but of course those had become more and more a thing of the past. No pictures except her son. He kept looking though, for some sort of stash. He had time after all.

By the time the apartment door finally opened, Joe had texted Estella that he’d probably be late. She texted back the hotel room number.

Just Sylvie entered and he immediately showed him his gun.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she murmured.

“Sit,” he ordered her, and she sat on the couch. He chose the armchair across from her. “Nice apartment.”

“My boss’s. He got it for me.”

“Boss or...”

“Master?”

“The boy his son?”

She nodded. “Not that he’d ever admit it.”

“Is he part of the services at the Station?”

She shook her head. “More ... uhm ... freelance?”

“How old is he?”

“Sixteen?” she sniffled. “I’m so sorry!”

“He never came home.”

“I thought ... Ben would never...”

“Ben?”

“My master?”

“Your son?”

“Nat.”

“Go ahead.”

“I knew Ben would never tell me what happened, so I hired ... you a friend of Jack’s?”

“I am.”

“I’m so sorry. Is he...?”

“He’s in a coma. Hopefully he’ll pull through.”

“At least he’s alive. I never meant...”

“Do you get Nat his jobs?”

“Never. That was always Ben.”

“Did Jack talk to Ben?”

“I warned him not to. Ben’s a cruel man. I think ... he might have snuck some info. Ben must have found out or something.”

“Or he got caught trying to get to who Ben rented Nat to.”

“Do you think Natty’s...”

“I don’t know. Do you want out of this?”

“Ben said if I said anything, Natty’d be dead.”

“I don’t think Ben’s in control of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your son’s like the golden goose, Sylvie. Blackmail I’m thinking. It looks like someone, some Saudi royal or someone in his entourage, must have figured out the scam. It could be Nat’s still alive if the guy’s fond of him. But that means Ben has less use of you. You keep some semblance of sanity for Nat, don’t you?”

“I know he should hate me, but I guess he’s smart enough to have figured out I’m as much under Ben’s thumb as him.”

“So do you want out?”

“Or maybe you want to keep your eyes on me?”

“I suppose that’s true. Jack got nearly killed working your case.”

“Not a trusting situation.”

“No. Do you have a secret stash by the way?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like anything from your past or maybe something incriminating.”

“Do I seem brave? Ben stripped me of everything, literally, when he brought me here.”

“From?”

“Baltimore. My family’s poor.”

“He bought you.”

She only nodded. “Can I get some things?”

“Sure.”

He watched her while she stuffed a pillowcase with clothing, putting the picture of her son on top.

They went out the same way he entered, through the back. A gap through buildings allowed them to get to his rental without much time on the street. She got into the passenger seat, keeping the bag in her lap while he climbed into the driver’s seat. He drove to be sure he wasn’t tailed and headed out to the safe house at the edge of town when he wasn’t.

After dropping her off, he headed back into the city, deciding to go to the Wynne first. He figured it was early enough so Estella could still very well be at Honey’s club, but he wanted to change.

Slipping on a wedding ring, he went to the registration counter and asked for a key to his room, which the woman gave to him after looking at his fake driver’s license. It wasn’t the Presidential suite but it was nearly as high up with a nice view of the strip which he gazed at after showering, too high up to be seen, and changed into black slacks and a rugby shirt that, though casual, looked a little less so than a t shirt.

Estella enjoyed her time with Honey. They enjoyed each other’s company, helped by both realizing how smart the other was.

When they arrived at Honey’s and Jack’s house, Estella debated whether to call the detective, deciding to let Honey do it, a very good decision as it turned out. It wasn’t just that Estella’s accent might have bothered the detective, let alone her being a woman. Honey’s no nonsense attitude would help too. But it turned out they knew each other!

“I always told Jack you were a good cop!” she said. “I got the second sense you know.”

After some laughs and chit chat, Honey got down to business. “Can you trust this Sylvie to Joe? Yeah, they’re close. Good. What did you find? Oh. So I guess Jack really was lucky to get out. I don’t know much about that stuff, though I’m learning. Go for it and let us know, if that’s okay? Thanks Gene. You too. Me too. See you. Oh wait, maybe you could stop by Betty’s Lounge? Well, if you can. Okay, see you.”

“You know the detective?” Estella asked.

“Not a bust like you’re thinking,” Honey pouted.

“I didn’t...”

“But you thought it, right? Just kidding kid. But no, I was like a witness when one of my colleagues got killed, and the way he treated me, with respect, you know, instead of trying intimidation like most others would told me he was one of the good ones, so I told Jack.”

“What did the detective say?”

“There was another guy whose blood was around the dumpsters and there were fingerprints and such and it was some bodyguard.”

“Hired by the Saudi assholes.”

“Probably.”

“Did they check out the suite?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Probably some diplomatic immunity bullshit.”

“They’d need a warrant, right?”

“For a hotel room? I don’t know.”

“Diplomatic immunity bullshit.”

“Probably.”

“How about I show you my town before we head to my club?”

“Sounds great. Let’s use Jack’s car just to be safe.”

“Sure kid. You want to drive too?”

“You know the town.”