and just park up here. I can eyeball them when they come out before they even get in the car.”
“That works. Doc-you’re good where you are. I’d just as soon he didn’t see this green van again. I’m going to go down a half mile or so here and park. Toni? Where are you?”
“On Twentieth between Ravenna and Fifty-Eighth.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Just wait.”
Less than five minutes later, Kenny said. “Here they come. Just the two of them,” followed shortly afterward by, “They’re headed south again.”
“I got ’em,” Doc said a minute later. “They just passed me. They turned east on Fiftieth. They’re leaving our area.”
I thought about this. We were out of vehicles that hadn’t already been in the prime position. We had what we needed. I didn’t think we’d been spotted. A good afternoon.
“Everybody-let’s call it a day,” I said. “Break off, and we’ll debrief back at the office.”
Chapter 15
A few minutes before ten the next morning, Toni and I waited in the lobby of Nancy Stewart’s office for our meeting with the SPD gang unit. I was reading a
“Morning, guys,” Nancy said. She’d poked her head out the “Restricted Access” door, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Hey there,” I said, standing. “You ready for us?”
“C’mon back.”
She held the door for us and then led us back to a conference room. We walked into the room and noticed two men already seated. Both men were dressed casually-even more so than I was (I wore jeans and a short- sleeved Hawaiian shirt). One of the men looked up when we entered. He was Hispanic, probably late twenties. His dark hair was cut very short except for a slightly longer Mohawk strip down the middle. In a thousand years, I’d never have guessed him to be a cop-except for the badge pinned to his shirt and the Glock on his belt. The other guy was on his cell phone, his back turned to us. He had medium-length blond hair and even from the side, I could see he wore a short, scruffy beard. When we entered, he finished up his call and spun around in his chair.
Our eyes met, and we instantly recognized each other. “D-Lo!” he said, hopping out of his chair. “Son of a bitch! I had no idea you were the one we were meeting with today.”
“Mickey Cole,” I said as I walked around the table to greet him. Michael Cole, known far and wide as Mickey, had been a senior at Ballard High School when I was a sophomore. Normally, that two-year difference would have made us invisible to each other. In our case, though, we were both on the varsity track team-he threw the javelin, and I was a miler. We spent a lot of time together. “Long time no see.”
“Damn right,” he said as we shook hands warmly. “Last I heard, you’d gotten yourself shot over in Iraq.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I zigged when I should have zagged.”
“Jesus, dude. You’re okay?”
“I’m fine. All in one piece. I was only out of action for a week or so.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said. He turned to Toni. “Hi,” he said, smiling broadly. “I’m Mickey Cole.”
Toni smiled. “Hi,” she said. “Toni Blair. I work for Danny.”
Mickey shook her hand. “Danny and I were on the track team together in high school. He was pretty good at it-damn good, actually. I sucked. I was just there for the letter.”
“He’s still pretty fast,” Toni said.
“I’ll bet he is,” Mickey said. He turned to the other man at the table. “This skinny guy over here is my partner Javier Martinez. Javi and I head up the Gang Unit’s north-side efforts. Nancy told us about your little sting operation. Sounds like it didn’t turn out quite the way you’d hoped.”
I shook my head. “No, it didn’t,” I said.
“Let’s have a seat, and you can tell us about it.”
We took our seats. “Have you ever heard of a group called the North Side Street Boyz-that’s boyz with a ‘z’?” I asked.
Mickey glanced at Javier and then turned back to me. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’ve heard of them. Donnie “Young Love” Martin and his crew. What are those knuckleheads up to?”
I walked them through the events of the last week and a half, starting with the text messages Kelli’d received from Isabel, all the way through our vehicle surveillance. “So,” I concluded, “our interest in this is finding and rescuing Isabel Delgado.”
Mickey nodded. “Based on what you just described, this sounds like vintage shit from these punks. They recruit young runaway girls, force them into prostitution, and then they live off the earnings. We think they’ve been doing it for three years or so. They use the money to buy drugs and fancy cars. They’re nothing but modern-day pimps.”
“That’s actually an insult to pimps, if you can believe that,” Javier said. “At least most of the old-fashioned pimps split the money with the prostitutes in some fashion. These guys don’t even do that. They keep everything. They’re actually modern-day slave masters.”
I opened the file I’d brought and slid out pictures of the three individuals we’d seen at the big house.
“That’s Donnie Martin,” Javier said. He held up the picture and turned to Nancy. “Have you pulled this guy’s sheet?”
Nancy nodded. “He’s been in trouble since he was ten years old.”
“No doubt,” Mickey said. “He’s a bad dude. What’s worse, he’s not very bright. The combination makes him dangerous. I’d say he’s on a one-way street. If he’s lucky, he’ll end up in prison for a long, long time.”
“And if he’s not,” Javier said, “somebody’s gonna take him out.”
“You guys don’t have any active investigations going on this guy then?” Nancy asked.
“Nothing formal,” Mickey said. “You guys neither?”
Nancy shook her head. “We’d never even heard of them until Danny and Toni brought them to us. It’s the exact kind of thing we’re all over-particularly with the threat of trafficking.”
“What threat is that?” Mickey asked.
Nancy recounted Paola’s conversation about Isabel possibly being sold.
“That makes it federal, doesn’t it?” Mickey asked.
Nancy nodded. “It does. The FBI runs a local task force dealing with sex trafficking of minors. They should be joining us any minute.”
Ten seconds later, a man in a suit and a woman in a dress suit were led into the conference room by a member of Nancy’s staff.
“Here they are,” Nancy said, standing. We all stood for introductions. “Special Agents Nicole Bryan and Jonathan Geist.” Nancy introduced each of us.
“Thank you for inviting us to your meeting, Nancy,” Agent Bryan said as they took their seats. She was a tall woman, perhaps mid-thirties. Her blond hair was pulled back tightly. She turned to us. “I don’t know how familiar you are with what we do, but Agent Geist and I are attached to the national Innocence Lost Initiative. As such, we head up the King County Innocence Lost Task Force, which consists of the FBI, the King County Sheriff’s Department, and most of the local police departments. We’re here to try and stop domestic sex trafficking of children in the Seattle area. Nancy called us and told us that we might have a new subject.”
“That’s right,” Nancy said. “Danny and Toni are trying to find Isabel Delgado, a sixteen-year-old girl who we
