Helen freed her bedraggled ponytail, scraped back her hair, and pulled it through the loop again. She straightened her shoulders. “All of this started with Kurt Inger.”
Kurt, she told us, had realized that hiring undocumented women offered benefits to the company. Lower pay, longer hours, an ability to cheat the women out of overtime and sometimes out of entire paychecks.
“Then he realized the biggest benefit of all,” she said. “Free sex.”
She picked up a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table and shook one out. Father Thomas rose and struck a match for her. She closed her eyes as she puffed. “Thank you, Father.”
She turned back to us. “Kurt hung out with a group of like-minded assholes. They called themselves the Superior Gentlemen. Ha. They wouldn’t know a gentleman if one walked up and introduced himself.” Her pale eyes snapped at me through a cloud of smoke. “That photo you showed us. That’s them.”
I set the picture of the Superior Gentlemen on the table. “Can you identify them for us?”
“Happy to.” She aimed a finger at the men like a gun. “Kurt, of course. Riley Lynch. And Noah Asher, who started the group with Markey Byron. That was before he met Ami. Before she helped set him straight.”
“They were in a relationship,” I said, curious what Helen would say.
“They were in love. But it was Romeo and Juliet from the start. The girls—Erica and Lupita—they didn’t trust Noah. And those assholes”—she gestured again toward the photo with her cigarette—“they were pure poison.”
“And the fifth man? Who is he?”
Helen’s eyes narrowed. Her free hand rose to her chest, and she rubbed the tips of her fingers against her skin, a self-soothing gesture. “That’s Craze.”
I leaned in. “Do you know his real name?”
She shook her head.
I held my disappointment. “What do you know about him?”
Helen pulled hard on her cigarette. She held it the way you would hold a joint, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Her knuckles were red and peeling. Cleaning chemicals and elbow grease.
“He was terrorizing the girls. Erica and Lupita. Ami. Five or six others. Ami was the only one who stood up to him.”
I feigned ignorance. “How’d she do that?”
“She went to the cops. And they didn’t do shit. Craze, though, when he heard what Ami’d done? He swore he’d kill her. So she and Erica and Lupita moved here. And for a time, things were fine.” Her face went tight with fury. “The three of them got jobs cleaning offices. Top-A didn’t care about their immigration status. And they liked the work okay. It was a hell of a lot better than processing chickens at ColdShip. Then—”
She sucked on her cigarette and exhaled, waving away the smoke.
“Then what, Helen?”
“Kurt Inger moved from customer service into the management position. He’d always been a creep, forever hitting on Erica and Lupita. Didn’t take him long to get the idea the girls should offer ‘bonuses’ to special clients.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning they should provide sexual favors for his friends. Unless they wanted to get reported to ICE. I swear, there’s a place in hell for him. And now—” Her eyes went bright with tears, and she blinked them away angrily. “Now he’s got Erica and Lupita. And Ami.”
“He kidnapped them?”
“Him and Craze and the others.” The hand holding the cigarette shook. “I’m sure of it. That was the promise Craze made—that someday those girls would belong to him. I don’t know how he got the others to go along with it. Even I didn’t realize Kurt was that much of an asshole. But he did.”
“You’re saying the Superior Gentlemen are kidnappers?”
“Kidnappers. Rapists.”
“What about murderers?” I said softly.
She blinked at me. “You think they killed Noah Asher?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh, dear God.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “I don’t know. But Noah was the only decent one among them. He never went along once things started getting crazy.” She dug into her pants pocket and pulled out a wadded tissue, blew her nose. “I know Erica and Lupita would have called if they were just sick. Something’s happened.”
“You hear anything about a falling-out between these guys?”
She shook her head.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s stick with Craze. Anything else you can tell us about him? Where he lives, any friends?”
“Friends.” She snorted. “I know three things for sure. He likes to hurt women. That’s one. Sometimes he rides the trains like a hobo. That’s two. And he puts in yellow contacts when he hurts people. You know about that?”
My eyes met Bandoni’s. The nursing-home rapes.
I said, “We’ve heard about the yellow eyes.”
“Ami called him a supervillain. Like in the comics.” She picked up an ashtray and mashed out her cigarette. “Now, what about my friends? What are you going to do?”
“When did they go missing?”
“Ami’s been gone almost a week. We didn’t know because she and Noah were going on vacation, a four-day weekend in Vegas. But she didn’t show up for work yesterday. Before you came by, we were hoping she and Noah were so happy together she just decided to take an extra day. Call me an optimist.”
“What about Erica and Lupita?”
“They disappeared sometime between when we clocked in this morning at seven and when they were supposed to clock out this evening at four.” The tears rose again; she furiously dashed them away. “I was afraid to call you because of their undocumented status. I went to Father Thomas, hoping something had scared the girls into asking for asylum.”
Bandoni and I looked at Father Thomas, who shook his head. “I haven’t seen Erica or Lupita since Sunday mass. I’m as worried as Helen.”
I turned back to Helen, who was tapping out another cigarette. “Any idea where the men might have taken them?”
“I figure it’s one of the properties we clean. We did a couple of move-out cleanings this month, but I don’t know if the places are occupied now.
