“I have no connection to John Carson, Jude Letour, Calvin Gardner, nor any other members of the alleged trafficking ring in the Northeast that has caught the attention of the public in recent months,” she said in a statement outside the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, only two blocks from the district attorney’s building at 350 Jay Street. “Human trafficking is a massive problem in this country, and I will not rest until I am certain this office has done everything it can to cooperate with the local authorities who have valiantly pursued this case, beginning with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office tomorrow morning. This is a human rights issue, and certainly a federal one. We will not stand idly by.”
Jude Letour and Calvin Gardner were both arrested in May, while a larger trafficking ring across New England and the tristate area, headed by Ben Vamos, was broken up last month. While no official connections have been made between the two, Mr. Gardner’s childhood relationship to Vamos emerged last month and has provoked questions about whether or not Gardner and Vamos had been working together from the start.
Mr. Gardner and Mr. Letour both await trials due to start within the next few months.
The New York Times
November 15, 2018
Socialite sentenced in trafficking case
New York heiress Nina Astor de Vries was sentenced today on charges of accessory to human trafficking and fraud. Despite remaining married to financier and real estate investor Calvin Gardner, de Vries has reassumed her maiden name after filing for divorce.
The judge agreed with the DA’s request for relative clemency, awarding only forty-five days of jail time and three hundred hours of community service to Ms. de Vries. She checked into Rikers Correctional Facility earlier this morning and is expected to serve only a short time of her sentence.
“Relief,” she said sharply when asked how she felt. “And gratitude.”
Although Executive Assistant District Attorney Greg Cardozo declined to comment on the sentencing, many suspect that Ms. de Vries made a plea bargain with the DA in exchange for testimony against her husband’s involvement in a larger human trafficking operation.
Calvin Gardner’s trial was delayed again after his wife confessed to her crimes. A new date has not yet been announced.
I
Primi
Chapter One
November 2018
Nina
The doors closed on a whisper, not a bang.
Even so, I stumbled slightly as I exited the Rose M. Singer Detention Center—one of the eleven jails housed at Rikers Island—with the wobbly grace of a newborn foal on the heels I hadn’t worn in more than two weeks. Under my arm, I carried the purse I’d brought in with me, just before I’d been stripped down, searched, and forced to trade the demure Chanel shift dress and wool coat for a brown jumpsuit.
Despite having been kept in a storage locker for the mere fifteen days I’d endured of my forty-five-day sentence, all my clothes still smelled like the jail, like sweat and concrete and mildew and bleach. Like misery and anger. Hopelessness and despair. I’d burn them all as soon as I could find replacements. But for now, I just wanted off this godforsaken island.
I held up a hand to block the sun that was unnaturally bright for so late in November. Or was it just that I hadn’t seen it in over a week? Regardless, the light was blinding, and I squinted as I looked for the stop for the shuttle to the central hub of Rikers, from where I could call a car to take me…somewhere.
“Cos.”
My head snapped up at the sound of a familiar voice. I turned to find a tall blond man dressed in an impeccably cut navy suit, standing in front of a familiar BMW sedan.
“Eric?” I asked incredulously.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I found I wasn’t just hearing things. It was my cousin—Eric de Vries, Chairman and CEO of De Vries Shipping Industries and one of the busiest men in New York—waiting patiently for my release.
“What—how do you—what are you doing here?”
“I came to pick you up,” he said as if it weren’t obvious.
I glanced around at the few vehicles in the lot. “I mean, how did they let you drive in here, though?” Already I had steeled myself for a ride through the complex on one of the crowded shuttles, then expected to call a cab or something similar to pick me up from the entrance to the facility.
“They’ll do a lot with a few well-placed donations to the complex. Here’s to your freedom, Nina. Welcome back.”
He leaned in with a smile to deliver a customary kiss to my cheek, but I immediately held up a hand.
“No, don’t,” I said. “I reek of that horrid soap.”
Eric made a face and backed up. “Oh, yeah. That stuff makes your skin feel like chalk. I remember.”
I pressed my lips together. My cousin had his own holiday in another jail on the island while being detained for insider trading. A farce, all of it. But it left a scar just the same.
“I suppose now being jailbirds runs in the family,” I said wryly.
Eric snorted. “Talk about a rite of passage. Come on. Let’s get out of this dump.”
I followed him into the back of the car, which was manned by his driver.
“How did you know?” I asked as we took off.
My cousin shrugged good-naturedly. “Barney told me after your parole hearing.”
I frowned. That he had spoken to my attorney wasn’t so strange—after all, Eric was bankrolling my criminal defense. “But you came?”
Eric’s face remained calm, but beneath that cool facade lurked a ripple of something darker. “I remember what it’s like. No one should come out of here alone.” His eyes widened as something else occurred to him. “You weren’t expecting someone else, were you?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I wasn’t. Thank you.”
I didn’t tell him that as I had walked outside,
