“It’s not over for you,” I said, the resolution warbling my voice, “so it’s not over for me. George came out of retirement to help you. He told me he owed you a favor and he wanted to repay it. It’s my job to repay it now. And in our line of work, we finish the jobs we’re hired for.”
“George owed me nothing,” Elena said. “I told him this a thousand times. He did more for me than I ever did for him. He got me into this country. I wouldn’t be here—wouldn’t be alive—if not for him. This is better life than I could ever hope for if I stayed in Ukraine.”
“That’s where you’re from? Ukraine?”
It was a stupid thing say. It put her back on guard just when she’d finally begun opening up. But a voice in my head kept whispering, Ukraine, Ukraine… something about Owl in the Ukraine… Then I had it.
“Hang on,” I said, “does this have something to do with that case with the kidnapped American girl?” I looked her over. She was in her early twenties now, she’d have been about the same age as that girl when it happened— which was also, I realized, roughly the age she’d been in the photograph with Owl. “I remember hearing a story,” I said, “about a case Owl had that took him to the Ukraine. Maybe ten years ago? I heard it from two different guys, actually. About how he helped rescue an American girl from a child pornography ring there.”
She was nodding, the knife she’d been gripping all this time finally lowered. I saw that the t-shirt bunched around her arm was soaked a dark red, but at least the stain had stopped spreading.
“The way I heard it,” I said, “he was hired by the grandparents of a missing girl who’d been abducted by her father. They’d sought custody after their daughter died the year before in a car accident. There were signs of sexual abuse by the father, as I recall, but the grandparents didn’t press for criminal prosecution as long as he didn’t contest their custody. They won the case—but lost their granddaughter. A month later the father kidnapped her and they both vanished without a trace.
“So the grandparents hired George Rowell. He tracked the girl down after photos of her surfaced on a child pornography website based in the Ukraine. He went over, learned that the girl’s father had involved her with, what was it, a child modeling agency?” Elena nodded. “But not the sort of modeling agency you’d want your child working for. It was all porn, right? Photographing and videotaping naked girls between the ages of seven and sixteen.”
“Six,” Elena said softly. “There was one girl who was six.”
“And you,” I said, “how old were you?”
“Eleven,” she said. “When I started.”
I thought back to being that age, what had I been up to? Moving my lips to an
I cleared my throat and asked her, “These people kept you prisoner? Locked up?”
“No. Not how you mean. We were…prisoners, but not locked up. Where I lived in my country, everyone was poor. These people, they offer us too much money for taking these pictures. Too much to refuse. And the girls, most didn’t mind. It was only being naked. Not sex. Not for most of us. For some girls, it felt exciting, even glamorous. I never liked it. But I had no choice. It was too much money. Cristy—that was the American—she’s like me, she don’t like it either. But she does it, every day, because, well, her father says do it, the other girls, they do it, I do it, what she gonna say, no, I refuse? So they roll tape, they say, ‘Pull, your panties down, darling, bend over, darling, blow a kiss, darling, sweetheart, princess,’ and she do it. I do it. We all do it, with a big smile, show all our teeth.”
I concentrated on keeping my expression neutral. I had to appear the seasoned professional—seen it all—but it was a strain to keep my jaw from dropping open and repeating over and over, “Omigod.”
“Cristy,” Elena said, “she was living with her father. He would bring her to the studio for sessions. He give her drugs before they shoot, pills, you know, make her more relaxed. Then, end of day, he take her away again. Never told nobody where they lived. But Cristy and I, between shoots, we talk, we became friends. And she told me where they lived. Then later, when George come and say he’s there to take her home…”
“You told him.”
She nodded.
“It was like a movie, a spy movie. He need my help,” she said. “He choose me. No other girl, he pick me. I was in store shopping when he approach me the first time. He pretend he need my help buying soup, read the cans. He say, Oh, I’m so happy you speak English so good, can you tell me what this says? And this? And he take me down aisle where nobody is, and then he talk to me serious, say he’s gonna trust me, he’s looking for American girl and do I know her, will I help him?”
“And you said yes.”
“Of course I say yes. He was so clever and funny and brave. I liked him at once.” Her eyes were bright with memory, almost as if for a moment, for her, Owl was alive again.
“All week, he say, he’d been watching the modeling agency, the girls coming and going. He look for Cristy and her father, but that week they don’t come. He don’t know where they are. So I tell him I know where she lives.”
She smiled broadly, remembering with pride.
“George, he say, Help me get Cristy away from her father, I tell you what to do. You frightened? Of course I’m frightened, but I say no, I want to help. So he teach me a story I’m suppose to say to her father so he’ll let Cristy go out alone. George tell me the story, make me repeat, repeat, till I get it right.
“Then he walk with me to their apartment. He hide while I ring bell. I was so scared! But when I hear her father’s voice out the intercom, asking what I want, I know what to say, I say what George tell me: the agency want me to take Cristy out shopping, buy clothing for special pictures. I tell him they give me money for the clothes, and for him, too. He buzz me in.
“Upstairs, father takes the money George give me for him, tell Cristy get you coat, go out with this girl, come straight back, don’t stop nowhere, understand? And Cristy nods, okay, okay, and go downstairs with me. We go four blocks, to a craft shop George showed me. As soon as we walk in, there’s George, and Cristy’s grandfather and grandmother are waiting, and they ask her, Want to come home? And she can’t speak, she cries so much, she just keep nodding, yes, yes, I wanna go home. They put her in a car, go straight to airport.
“Then George say to me, you gotta go, too. You stay, they hurt you, ’cause you help me. I am last person Cristy’s father saw with her so I am first person he’d come looking for, to ask what happened. I’d never be safe in my country. And George, he know this, he tell Cristy’s grandma and grandpa, you get this girl out, too. They’re very rich, they get me passport, visa. Week later, I am in United States, new name, new life. Not scared. Till now. Now I am scared again. First time since I come here.”
“Why?”
“Someone find me,” she said. “Someone from my past. From my country, from my old life. This woman.”
“Who?”
She hesitated.
“One of the older girls. I don’t remember her name.”
I didn’t believe her, but I let it pass for now.
“And how did she find you?”
“I don’t know!” Elena said. “Maybe it is accident, just walking down the street. She’s here in city now and she see me and find out where I live… and she’s angry, I think she want to hurt me, because I got out while she and the others were left behind. So I call George, tell him this woman’s bothering me, ask him can you help me? And he come. I feel bad when he show up. He look so old. He don’t need my troubles, too. So I say go home, I take care of on my own, but George say, no, if you need help, I help. No way to turn him off.”
I understood. I never could reach my off switch either.
“So I say, Can you get this woman leave me alone? And George say, yes, we just need something on her, get some lever…”
“Leverage,” I said.
“Yes. And we get some. We get, and we are suppose to meet her at cafe, tell her what we got, George suppose to say leave Elena alone or we spill your beans. But now he’s dead…”
Meet her at cafe? Well, that told me who the woman was. “That’s what the meeting at Yaffa was supposed to be about?” I said. “Telling this woman to stay away from you?”
She nodded. “We were going to go together. But when I didn’t hear from George, I didn’t go.”
“Instead you sent your boyfriend, Jeff?”
“You know?”
