On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery (21 page)

“Allah-King, Allah-King!” I screamed until I was hoarse. I was looking down driveways, in alleys, and behind abandoned buildings. Between the running and my anxiety I could feel myself running out of gas.

In the distance, a couple of blocks over, I thought I heard something. I didn’t waste time running around the block—I ran right through four backyards, jumping fences, and two streets over, I saw him and it dawned on me. This was where I should have started the search.

Al was on Walanda’s porch scratching at the front door, whimpering and then barking out of frustration.

“C’mere boy, it’s all right, it’s all right,” I said. It took him a little while to come to me, and when he did, he looked up and whimpered.

“It’s okay, buddy. Let’s go home,” I said.

We started to walk and he stopped and looked back at the house a couple of times.

I thought about the jail, I thought about Tyrone, and I thought about my visit from the men in the Crown Vic. I thought about Walanda and I thought about Shony. I thought about Al.

And I thought I’d be damned if I was going to leave anything alone.

28

It was Wednesday and
I had until Monday to nurse my irritable bowel syndrome, which didn’t give me a whole lot of time. I had learned that there were some connections, but I still wasn’t sure what they connected to. There was definitely some skuzzy business going on involving three scumbag chicks from Forrest Point, there was a bald biker guy who was connected to them who also beat me and Al, and there was Tyrone, a former significant other to Walanda whose highlighted résumé sections included pimp and pervert. He was connected at least to Stephanie and Melissa, but maybe most disturbing was that he had voiced a desire to get Shondeneisha into prostitution or something equally as vile. Then there was the Crown Vic.

I needed to find out more about the connections, and I figured my best bet was to hang around the Eagle Heights clinic because eventually Stephanie had to show up there. Usually, post-jail assessments occurred within forty-eight hours of release, and because it was part of probation, the clients usually kept those appointments, even if they dropped out of treatment shortly after that. Probation officers had a habit of checking on the first-visit attendance but after that losing track of the clients on their
caseloads.

If I was going to keep my eye on the Eagle Heights clinic, I had two choices. I could sit outside the clinic for the next forty-eight hours, which was going to be very tedious and there was always the danger of being spotted by Stephanie, Tyrone, and Baldy, or by the clinic staff. If the first group spotted me, that could cause them to be suspicious and might bring on another surprise visit from Baldy. This time it might mean more than a warning.

If the clinic staff spotted me and it got back to Claudia, then that would probably blow my sick-time claim and I’d get fired faster than Claudia could buy a new pair of elastic-waist pants. The best chance I had was to get ahold of Katy and see if she could get me some information and be quiet about it. If it got back to Claudia, I was in trouble, and if it got to Rhonda, I was probably in trouble. The fact of the matter was that I was likely to get in trouble no matter what I did. I guess I was already in my fair share of trouble and was probably going to lose my job for a bunch of reasons, so—what the hell?

I poured myself a cup of coffee and figured I’d call Eagle Heights around 9:20. If I called right at nine, I would look too anxious. There was also a good chance that, Eagle Heights being a not-for-profit, no one would be there until ten after nine. Human service workers usually have so many issues that getting to work on time is almost impossible.

Al’s health was showing some improvement. He was walking okay and whimpering less. I still had to lift him on and off the sofa and bed because the few times that he jumped it caused him to make this awful yelping sound. Right now he was lying on the kitchenette floor, sleeping.

Before I could call Katy, my phone rang. It was Jerry Number Two.

“Duff—I think I got something you better see.”

“What is it?”

“The website has announced their special monthly event.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“I went to the members-only pay site—the one with the kids and the sicker shit,” Jerry said.

“Yeah?”

“They were promoting their next webcast featuring the newest girls.”

“Jesus …”

“Yeah, and they’re making a big deal about Shondeneisha losing her virginity live with somebody named Tyrone.”

I froze. I felt a sickness in my stomach that quickly spread all through me. This was beyond sick and had to be stopped. It didn’t matter if I lost my job or got in trouble or took a beating. Concern for that now seemed ridiculous.

“Duff—you there?”

“Yeah, Jer. When is this all going down?”

“It says on the webpage that it’s supposed to happen on Saturday, but the time won’t be announced until sometime that day. It looks like they take care in not letting out too much information. They’re pretty sophisticated in the security measures they take.”

“Jerry, can you look into Dr. Gabbibb?” I asked.

“I can find out something on just about anybody,” Jerry said. “What kind of stuff are you looking for?”

“I know that he has at least checked out the site. Can you find out about the alfinuu.org site and the offshore banking stuff?” I said.

“I can try, Duff, but without being real sure what I’m looking for, I’m not sure what I’ll come up with.”

“Whatever you can come up with will be great.”

I signed off with Jerry and told him I’d be over to see him after I took care of something else. I called Eagle Heights and asked for Katy.

“Hi Duff, what can I do for you?” she said.

“Hey Katy, how’s it going? I was calling to see if Stephanie’s eval was scheduled,” I said.

“Uh … Duff, aren’t you supposed to be out on disability or something?”

Shit. She had found out. I had no idea what this was going to do. I decided to go with it and see where it took me.

“Yeah, I’m just following up with what I can from home.”

“Rhonda told us that Claudia called her and they want us to let her know if they hear from you. Duff—I think you’re in some trouble.”

“Probably.”

“I don’t know if I feel comfortable talking to you.”

“Can you just tell me what time her eval is? I promised Jane at the jail.”

“I really shouldn’t. You’re putting me in an awkward position.”

“I won’t tell anyone I talked to you. Please, it’s important to me.”

“I don’t feel right about it …”

“Look, Katy, do you really want to spend your life being afraid of assholes like Claudia and Rhonda? Do you think they care about helping people or do you think they care about protecting their own little pathetic bureaucratic power? Don’t become one of them—it means death to your soul.”

I lost my cool. My little tirade probably would mean she’d run right to Bowerman. She was young and impressionable and was still scared.

“Hang on,” Katy said and I heard the call go on hold.

I didn’t have any idea what to expect and I waited for a few minutes that felt like a month.

“She’s coming in at eleven today.”

Katy hung up before I could thank her. I was impressed. The kid was all right.

I went to Jerry’s and we reviewed the site and it was as sick as I imagined. There were images of a very frightened Shony with Tyrone next to her with all sorts of promises of all the things he was going to do to her in the upcoming simulcast. There were images of other young girls—some looked barely ten—who were also to be featured that night. Apparently, the simulcast was the big event for the losers who belonged to this club of scumbags.

I asked Jerry if there was any way of telling where something like this could take place. He said there wasn’t, that was what made Internet porn so difficult to track. Nothing pointed to the physical presence of things, and any evidence of whereabouts was limited to servers and domains and that bullshit.

I asked Jerry what he had found out about Gabbibb.

“I didn’t come up with a lot, Duff,” he said. “He’s been a doctor for twenty-seven years, went to medical school in Pakistan, is part owner with his cousin in an electronics store, and he paid cash for his $350,000 home.”

“Must be nice,” I said.

“I found a way to translate alfinuu.org, and it’s an extremist site—anti-Jew, anti-American. It’s either terrorist or terrorist related.”

“Is there any sign that Gabbibb is involved in any way?”

“No, but I would doubt if anyone who was going to get involved in terrorism in this day and age would leave their name and address,” Jerry said.

“What’s their aim?”

“The usual shit. Death to America, death to the Jews, et cetera, et cetera …”

I thought it over for a minute. There’s lots of reasons a guy could go to a site like this. Maybe he read about it in
Newsweek
, maybe Tom Brokaw was talking about it, or maybe he wants to keep a handle on what his enemies are doing. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

“What about the Bank of the Canary or whatever it is?” I asked.

“Like I said before, maybe he has money that he doesn’t want the government to know about,” Jerry said.

“Like if you invested in a very profitable porn site?”

“Yep, that would be a reason,” Jerry said.

29

I got done at
Jerry’s at about five minutes to ten, which gave me just enough time to make the drive to Eagle Heights. I asked Jerry to loan me his video camera and he gladly gave me some space-age thing that fit neatly in one hand. It was ergonomically shaped so that it was easy to carry and maneuver.

In the middle of my ride over to Jerry’s, I had a startling moment of sanity. Kelley was right about me sticking my nose into things. I had come a long way, but this whole deal was getting way beyond my scope. I figured if I could catch Stephanie and Tyrone or Baldy or all three of them on tape and show the FBI and the cops the website, it would make arresting them relatively easy. The whole evil thing could be stopped, and they could do it better than a goofy social worker pug who read too many comic books. Maybe my friends in the Crown Vic would be the guys who would ultimately be the saviors in this deal after all, and, though I wasn’t following their directions, the ends would justify the means.

Al took the ride with me because I didn’t feel it was okay yet to leave him alone. With the forty-five-minute ride, the company wasn’t bad as long as he kept the flatulence to a minimum. Al’s new habit of playing with the power windows and power locks was getting on my nerves. On long drives, he’d throw a big, fat paw up on the switches and then watch with fascination as the window went down or the locks clicked up and down. He tried sticking his head out the window like he had before, but lately his ears kept slapping him in the face, which would make him howl as if some evil force in the universe was doing it.

I pulled into Eagle Heights at 10:40, giving me plenty of time to watch Stephanie’s arrival. The clinic was on Ninth Street, which was a busy street, and I parallel parked a block and a half away. The Eldorado was no doubt conspicuous, but the narrowness of the street made it difficult to spot. I waited for Elvis to finish up the last verses of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” a song most people would be surprised he did, and I turned off the eight-track.

I distracted Al and got him to turn around and have his head face me so he would stop with the window deal. He settled in, happy to drool on the velour elbow rest. At exactly eleven, the white pickup truck pulled up on ninth from the opposite direction. I fumbled around to adjust my seat to get the video camera in position.

My shuffling around got Al to sit up and look in the direction I was looking. He started to whimper and shift his weight from side to side in what appeared to be some sort of nervous fit. He scratched at the passenger door and tried to get at the window switches. I grabbed his head and tried to calm him down. He had remembered the white pickup.

I got the camera pointed at the truck and, though we were down the street and it was being shot from a distance, it was very clear that Stephanie and Tyrone were getting out of the truck, which was driven by Baldy. Tyrone and Stephanie headed into the clinic and I was relieved when Baldy took the right turn on the side street before passing Al and me.

That was what I needed. I had the connection between Tyrone and Stephanie together with the bald guy. When I turned this over to the authorities it would be a piece of cake for them to wrap this up.

I didn’t waste any time getting out of Eagle Heights. I drove about eighty home and stopped just once along the way to let Al do some business and to call Kelley from a pay phone. I got lucky—Kelley was there and available. I set up a meeting over lunch at AJ’s.

Al was sleeping so I left him in the car and went in to meet Kelley. Kelley was already there sitting at the bar. He didn’t look pleased.

“Look, I only got a half an hour. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to involve your new private-eye bullshit?”

“Kel, you’re right, but let’s put that aside for now, this is too important.”

I set down the video camera so we both could view the playback screen. I hit play and watched as it showed the white pickup pulling up in front of the Eagle Heights clinic.

“That bald guy is the asshole who paid Al and me a visit and probably the same guy doing the park beatings. The black guy is Tyrone, an old perverted boyfriend of Walanda who always wanted to get weird with Shondeneisha. The woman is Stephanie and she’s one of the women I told you about from the jail.”

“Geez … Duff, slow down. What the hell are you talking about?”

I pulled out the webpage printouts I had made at Jerry Number Two’s.

“Here’s the porn webpage they’re running with underage kids, and this is what they’re planning for this Saturday night.”

I explained all the security stuff that I went through with Jerry Number Two. I explained the relationship of the three characters on the video and how they came to go to the Eagle Heights clinic. I knew I was going at a frenetic pace, but I couldn’t control myself.

“Whoa … All right, all right. I see what you got. I won’t lecture you now about getting in over your head, as you clearly have, I’ll save that for later.”

“Kel …”

“Don’t interrupt, Duff. We have the bald guy on an assault. We have Stephanie on a porn site, but she’s not doing anything illegal. We have what we think is ‘Tyrone’ going to a clinic and promising to be involved with child porn on the web page.”

“Right.”

“Where does Tyrone live?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the bald guy’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is this webcast going down?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what we have connecting this trio is the video tape shot from what looks like a hundred and fifty feet with a guy that could be the guy on the website, a guy who is most probably your assaulter, and a woman who we can definitively say is the woman from jail and the website.”

“Yes.”

“If we could find the bald guy we could arrest him. Busting Tyrone immediately will be harder because any task force will want to be sure that what they got him on sticks. He hasn’t done anything worth arresting him for yet. Stephanie is a creep, but I don’t see what we can bust her on now.”

“Kelley—C’mon!”

“Duff—I’m telling you how it works. The images on the tape are shot so far away any lawyer will have it thrown out. You can’t read the license plate number on the truck and even if we could, it’s probably stolen or untraceable in some other way. The child porn stuff is awful, I agree, but those task forces move slower so that collars stick.”

“You’re telling me nothing can be done?”

“I’m telling you what will happen. I’ll bring the information to my supervisors, but they’re going to tell me the same shit, only less politely.”

“Shit. This sucks.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“The other thing—and I have even less proof of this one—but I think Dr. Gabbibb is financing the whole thing.”

“Duff, you are out of your league. What the hell am I supposed to do with that kind of information?”

“Kelley—I don’t know, but this just can’t be allowed to go on.”

“Look, I’ll do what I can, but this isn’t how this stuff works, you know,” he said.

Kelley left to get back to his job and I sat there for a minute or two thinking. I had no idea what to do, but I was going to do something. I didn’t blame Kelley; he was just being real and giving it to me straight. It meant that if this webcast was going to be stopped, I was going to have to do it. I thought for a while about just going to the police and telling them exactly what I had found out and being a good responsible and safe citizen.

I also thought about Walanda. Her whole life was one big shit sandwich and the cruelest and coldest things in this world had eaten her up. She asked—no, pleaded with me—to help her not have that happen to Shony. Shony had already been subjected to the scummiest of the earth and was about to go through a trauma that she would carry with her forever.

Fuck being a responsible citizen.