Russian Roulette dh-1 Page 19

  We shook our heads.

  “Seems we got a serial killer out there shooting innocent citizens as they walk along the river. Jesus, Sergie Alekseeva, and this moron yesterday, Villas somebody. Innocent citizens, God help me. So, how’d you find her?”

  “Oh just sort of ran into her,” I said hoping to move on.

  “Looks like you may have run into her pretty hard.”

  “She’s given us a lot of names and places. I think you guys might be able to shut down a good portion of Braco’s revenue stream,” I said.

  “Revenue stream? Who have you been talking to?” he glanced at Hale.

  “We got addresses, names, what the security situation is like. If you moved on this, I bet in twenty-four hours you could do Braco some real harm,” I added.

  “It would sure take some heat off.”

  “She’s giving us information you guys can act on. You can judge whether it’s good or not.”

  With that Hale handed Aaron two sheets of paper with names and addresses Nikki had provided. Aaron read through them, picked up the phone, and spoke to someone named Norm who entered the office a moment later. Aaron introduced us all around. Norm nodded, took the list, and left.

  “Any chance I can meet the ever-popular Nikki?” he asked.

  “That’s not a problem, I don’t think. Let me tell you what I have in mind,” Hale said. He went on to explain how Nikki was key to bringing down Braco and important, though in a lesser role, in doing the same thing to Kumarin down in Chicago. He finished up with, “So you can see how her arrest would not be in our best interest.”

  “Okay,” Aaron nodded, and that was all he said.

  Chapter 71

  Two days later we began to shut down Braco’s empire in earnest. The call centers were the first priority. Hundreds of Internet ads were out there listing cell-phone numbers with bogus photos. The ads funneled back into maybe a half dozen different call centers, which then contacted and sent transport to pick up and deliver the girls, not to mention extract payment.

  I envisioned some sort of secure facility. High-tech cameras, armed guards, bars on the windows, and something akin to a vault door that was impossible to breach. I could not have been more wrong.

  They were operating out of a series of nondescript offices. Two or three woman manning computers to constantly update ads on dating networks and a variety of search engines. They answered the calls, set up the appointments. They were just like Da’nita Bell, only not in a wheelchair and still alive.

  At the first place we knocked on an office door that was locked. Nikki called someone’s name and answered whatever was asked in Russian. We heard light footsteps and then the door opened almost immediately.

  Aaron, Norm, and two other guys barged in wearing bulletproof vests with their weapons drawn. It got the girl’s attention. Hale and I followed. Once it was secure I brought Nikki in. One of the women, a mean-looking blond, spat some invective in Russian at her, kicked out, and caught me in the shin. It really hurt.

  Nikki half screamed something back at her. The three women, in the process of getting handcuffed behind their backs looked at one another like deer in the headlights.

  We placed them in different corners of the office. Two of Aaron’s guys led the mean blond out to a squad car. Once she was out of the room Nikki walked over to Hale and me, then whispered, “The dark-haired one might have something to say. She has been knocked.”

  “You mean knocked up?” I asked, still rubbing my shin.

  “Has baby in her.”

  Aaron gave the nod to the other two guys and they led a thin brown-haired girl out, holding her by the elbows. She looked like she needed a bath and a meal and appeared to be somewhat drugged and not completely aware of what was going on.

  Nikki approached the dark-haired girl. I gathered around with Hale and Aaron. She resembled a frightened puppy, large dark eyes, visibly shaking, blinking back tears. In a soft voice Nikki translated their questions and the young girl’s answers. At one point she gave the girl a hug, wiped the tears from her face, then finally kissed her on the forehead just before they led her away, crying.

  We hit four of the places, made sixteen arrests, and confiscated twenty-one computers, which were delivered to the bunk-bed dungeon for Gary and the Mikes to begin sorting through.

  At our final stop we could hear what sounded like women arguing. Nikki knocked and a male voice answered, gruff sounding. Nikki looked at Aaron, shook her head to indicate she didn’t know who it was, then knocked again and said something. The male voice shouted something back, loud, angry. Nikki replied it sounded like she was pleading. The door flew open and a fat, bald man stood in the doorway. He was shouting, and wearing white jockey shorts and a mean look.

  Aaron’s fist brought whatever he was shouting to a close. The entry team trampled over him in the process of surging into the office. Two paunchy, middle-aged women stood together in jeans and bras. Their upper bodies looked like bread dough covered with knuckle imprints and hung heavily over their waistbands. It made you wish they’d quickly find their tops. Cigarettes smoldered in their left hands. They were sipping what looked like vodka. One of them held the bottle and apparently had just finished refilling their shot glasses. They stood completely still, eyes wide with shock.

  On a couch against the wall was a very young girl, no more than sixteen maybe seventeen. She wore jeans, unzipped and half pulled down, no top and was either very drunk or drugged. She was aware we were in the room, but as she attempted to stand she fell to the floor, got up on all fours and then vomited.

  The bald guy in the jockey shorts was kneeling, hands cuffed behind his back, beer belly resting on his thighs, his nose was bleeding. He half shouted something, then spit at Nikki.

  She was wearing the same stylish boots she’d worn the day we spotted her, sharp pointed toe, narrow six-inch heel. She calmly, quickly took a very graceful three-paced hop, kicked him in the crotch, full force, like she was attempting a fifty yard field goal.

  He collapsed with a groan, fell forward on his side, moaning.

  “Oh no, don’t, please stop. You’ll hurt him, stop, stop.” I said softly, dead pan, not meaning a word of it.

  Nikki turned, gave me a smile, then brushed something imaginary off her jeans. She muttered something in Russian just loud enough for the two women to hear. They both nodded respectfully, then stared down at their feet.

  “Please put their tops back on,” Aaron pleaded. “Probably call the paramedics for the kid. I’m guessing she’ll need forty-eight hours to clean out her system.”

  Nikki bent down next to the girl, asked her something. It sounded like she asked the same question three or four times.

  “She said she just wants to go home, she wants her mother,” she said, standing and making her way back to fatty in the jockey shorts.

  He began talking loudly, scrambling backwards on his knees, maybe pleading.

  I would have loved to let her go at him again, but I grabbed her arm and held her back. She fought, but not that hard.

  Fatty had half crawled behind Norm, peeked out from behind him, smiled through his bloody nose and began to shout something at Nikki. Norm kneed him in the side of the head, bounced his head off a door frame, “Oh sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said, then grabbed the guy by his ear and yanked him upright.

  Nikki took a step in his direction and the guy visibly flinched. I don’t know what she said to him but I’d had women direct that sort of tone at me enough times to know it was rather unpleasant.

  Chapter 72

  That night we had a celebratory feast of takeout pizza, garlic bread, and Cokes. Aaron and his team joined us and we planned the next day’s activities. If we’d taken out a good portion of the call centers today, tomorrow would be spent rounding up the worker bees. Armed with warrants we started at six o’clock the following morning hitting apartments.

  In the first apartment we placed six girls under arrest. I pegged them at an averag
e age of about twenty. All asleep, some still groggy from whatever chemistry they’d been on the night before. We found a couple of box cutters they must have carried for protection, otherwise their purses held cheap makeup and no identification. There was a small pot of something with mold growing on it in the refrigerator, a note in Russian taped to the lid.

  For a place housing six young women it was remarkably empty. In the closet there were a couple of T-shirts on hooks, one blouse halfway hung up. Three skirts that were so small I thought they might be belts. Seven high-heel shoes of varying sizes were scattered across the floor along with a variety of undergarments. No food to speak of, two plastic vodka bottles, empty, rested beneath a torn and threadbare couch, along with someone’s thong. There was a metal mount on the kitchen wall for a phone but no phone. Three of the girls had pay-as-you-go phones, none of them with more than an eight-dollar credit.

  As they were being led out one of the women turned to me.

  “I do you cheap, you enjoy then let me go, no?”

  “No,” I said.

  “All I rated was a discount, not even a freebee,” I complained to Aaron.

  “She probably knew you,” he said.

  We raided a number of places throughout the day all pretty much the same, depressing. The women were taken to a facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing and I guessed eventual return to wherever they came from.

  Back at the bunk-bed dungeon Nikki was busy translating reams of transcripts from Braco’s email and phones when she wasn’t turning up her nose at the Canadian bacon and pineapple pizzas we’d ordered for dinner.

  “You will all be fat as pigs. The eating here is not healthy,” she said shaking her head. “I cook tomorrow, something good for you, and me.”

  There was no further discussion.

  The following morning Hale and Aaron had us sit tight after we received a call from one of Peters’ lieutenants. I’m guessing it was one of the shiny-shoed, pressed-suit clones that hovered around Peters in the conference room during the meeting where I met the lovely agent Dziedzic, not that it made any difference.

  Armed with federal warrants the FBI was going to shut down the State Bank of Valdem, Minnesota, and deny Braco access to funds in a number of accounts. The guy went on for a couple of minutes about the extensive federal investigation that had resulted in the information to obtain the warrants and ultimately shut down the bank. Then he added, none too subtly that it would be nice if we put our little sideshow on hold for a bit, lest we screw up the Bureau operation. Hale reminded him our little sideshow had given them the information their extensive investigation seemed to have missed. The phone conversation ended shortly after that.

  The day was spent monitoring Braco’s communications. In between times Nikki made a stew, and a salad, and roast potatoes. Washed down with a couple of cold root beers we all admitted it was a pleasant change of pace from pizza and garlic sticks.

  The five o’clock local news led with the FBI moving on the bank in Valdem. Amazingly, the cameras just happened to be present as Peters stormed into the bank armed with his federal warrants and a platoon of pressed suits with highly shined shoes.

  “Great, but I’m willing to bet these guys are going to grind our end of things to a screeching halt,” Hale said to Aaron between bites of stew.

  “They’ll be going after the bank. National media has no doubt already been alerted. It’s probably the smart play for the Bureau. They sort of care about Braco the Whacko, but nailing a bank, and the impact that has on everyone else involved in this kind of money laundering, that’s the bigger score for them. I don’t like it, and there’s not a hell of a lot anyone can do about it,” I said.

  “Be nice to know what they have in mind,” Hale said, slurping the last of his stew, then getting up to refill his bowl.

  “You could ask Peters,” Aaron scoffed.

  “I might know someone who could help. We’d have to let her in on the fact we have Nikki. But she might help, if we could help her,” I said.

  “And just who would that be?” they asked in unison.

  So I told them. As I finished I mentioned I hadn’t see the lovely agent Dziedzic on the news with the other Bureau types and wondered if it wouldn’t make sense to give her a call.

  Chapter 73

  “Yes.”

  “Valentina Dziedzic, please.”

  There was a bit of a pause before she answered.

  “Finally make bail, Mr. Haskell?”

  “Not to worry, I’m sure I can beat those charges and please call me Dev, will you. Otherwise it sounds like you’re going to arrest me. How’ve you been?”

  There was just the hint of a chuckle, I knew my charm was working its magic.

  “Fine, just fine. From what I hear you’ve been busy,” she replied.

  “Oh you know, never busy enough. Hey, I saw your guy Peters on the news with a bunch of guys who looked like they didn’t want to get their suits dirty. Were you in on that? I didn’t see you charging into the bank with all the other earnest agents.”

  “No, I guess there wasn’t a need for a translator out there on that operation.”

  I thought I could just pick up the slightest hint of something in her tone.

  “How fortunate the camera crews from the local stations and amazingly FOX, just happened to be passing through Valdem, Minnesota, at the time.”

  “Timing’s everything,” she said frostily.

  “So do you go by Val or Tina?” I asked hoping to get some more positive vibes going in our conversation.

  “You can call me Agent Dziedzic,” she said.

  Something must have been wrong with the connection, my charm didn’t seem to be getting through.

  “Okay, Agent Dziedzic, I…”

  “Just kidding, I go by Val. But if we’re talking business it should probably just remain Agent Dziedzic.”

  “Okay, Val, listen, the reason I’m calling is I’m wondering if we might get together. There might be some business involved, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy ourselves in the process.”

  “Does that actually work?”

  “Enjoying our…”

  “No, your lame line, enjoy ourselves in the process? You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Well, actually, I was thinking that we could get together, there is someone I’d like you to meet. I think you might find her interesting. Almost as interesting as me, but not quite.”

  “This have anything to do with the Alekseeva investigations?”

  “It might.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You know they basically have me doing go-for work on that, running for coffee if they need some, taking messages. So if you’re hoping to work some sort of deal or trade or inside scoop I’m not in the communication chain. You’d have to run anything like that through Agent-In-Charge Peters.” Her disdain was almost palpable when she said his name.

  “I’m guessing you might have a little more to offer than running for coffee and if nothing else you might be able to pick up a good bit of background information. Would it be a good career move? I don’t know, you know what they say, nothing ventured nothing gained.”

  “Peters know about this?”

  “If he knew, do you think I’d be making the call?”

  “Where can I meet you?”

  Chapter 74

  We met in a Holiday station. I had to gas up my new loaner, a nondescript Toyota Camry. Just about anything would have been a step up from the pimped-out Hummer.

  “You sure know how to romance a girl,” she said, after pulling alongside and climbing out of her car.

  It was a warm day but not insufferably hot, and the humidity had blown out of the region at least for the moment.

  Dziedzic wore sandal things with little heels, a form-fitting pair of jeans, and a white blouse, two buttons casually undone. The curls in her hair bounced as she walked around her car. The highlights in her hair shone in the sun. She did not look like
my perception of an FBI agent.

  “Oh charming, health food?” she said leaning into my open window.

  I was sitting behind the wheel, wolfing down a very large Butterfinger candy bar. The humidity may have dropped but it was still warm enough to melt the chocolate. In an effort to avoid any mess, I had created just that, crumbs melting on my shirt and a smear of chocolate on the edge of my mouth, which I now proceeded to wipe off and then licked the chocolate off my fingertips.

  “Oh, so sexy,” she said in a tone that suggested the exact opposite.

  “I’m practicing working undercover and blending in. Thanks for coming, Val.”

  “I think you’ll need a lot more practice. And what happened to your nose?” she asked looking at my stitches.

  “Oh just ran into someone I’d been looking for.”

  The claw marks down the side of my face had more or less healed. The swelling on my lip had gone down although it was still split. There was still a major gash across the bridge of my nose, bits of thread exposed from each of the stitches. My black eyes had mostly faded, but in their fading left yellow and green bruises.

  “Hey, hop in, I’ll take you over,” I said.

  We exchanged pleasantries on the five-minute drive. As we approached the park where we were going to meet Hale and Nikki I pulled over to the curb, turned the car off.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. We’re going to arrest Braco Alekseeva. We have an informant who has given us information. Some of which was passed on to you guys.”

  “Is that what got Peters all hot and bothered about that little bank?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew he wouldn’t move that fast unless there was someone pushing him.”

  “We didn’t actually push, but I think he figured he had an opportunity to move way past one local bad guy up here in flyover land. Make it look like he was taking a real hard line on money laundering operations all over the country.”

  “And he told you guys to what, back off?”