toilet. Just before it, on the right, was a steep stairway that descended into the dank gloom of a subbasement.
The kid held out his hand and Jack gave him back his octagonal pendant, which he hung around his neck.
“You have the pin?” he said when Jack reached the head of the stairs.
Jack opened his hand. The pin he’d taken from Mathis, Twilight’s dead manager, gleamed dully in the center of his palm.
Thate nodded. “You’ll have to show it.” As he began to descend, Jack reached forward and spun him around. “Don’t fuck with me, you understand?”
Thate stared unblinkingly at him for a long, tense moment. Then he nodded curtly and continued his descent. His voice floated up from the semidarkness. “Keep the girl close to you at all times.”
“What the hell does he mean by that?” Alli said in a stage whisper.
They went down the stairs. Thate was already at the bottom. He knocked on the door and, when it creaked open a crack, a gruff male voice said, “Hey, Flyboy.”
The kid had to show his pendant before the door opened wide enough to let him inside. The door had begun to close when Jack put his foot in the gap.
“Yeah? Whatta you want?” the voice said. It belonged to someone with a suspicious eye that looked him up and down.
Jack held up the pin with one hand, while with the other he held tight to Alli.
“I don’t know you.”
“Mathis sent me. He’s down with the flu,” Jack said.
“Fuckin’ flu.” He stared hard at Jack, then looked him up and down. “Mathis was going to bring Mbreti’s money. You got it?”
“Then get your ass in here.” As with Thate, the door opened just enough for Jack to slip in, Alli right on his heels.
The guard was a massive, dark-skinned man, Albanian or Macedonian, Jack suspected. His eyes opened wide the moment he saw Alli, and a huge smile played across his face.
“I approve of the form Mbreti’s money is in.” He waved them through with a hairy paw. His arms seemed as long as an ape’s. His low brow looked like an anvil.
Behind him, there was nothing and no one. Jack had been expecting a large ballroom teeming with people, but the space they traversed was as small and ill-lit as a dungeon. One bare bulb dangling from the end of a length of wire descended from the ceiling like a dripping stalactite. They passed beneath it, then came upon a shabby- looking door to what might be a broom closet. Instead, it opened onto a cavernous space that looked hewn out of the bedrock beneath the city. Gritty concrete steps led down to this space, which was loud with the shouting of male voices, blue-tinted with cigarette and cigar smoke, thick with the musk of human bodies. But gone were the crowds of people, the monster sound system blaring techno and trance. There were no outrageously dressed bodies slithering together. For that matter, where was the dance floor, the bar, the drugs?
Thate had already gone down the short flight of steps, but Jack and Alli stood transfixed. In the center of the room, surrounded by perhaps a dozen men in shiny silk suits, a boxing ring had been erected. In the center of this, a mike descended from the ceiling. It was held by a young man, slim, well dressed, with slicked-back hair and the air of an entrepreneur. There were no boxers in the ring, no corner men handling their styptic pencils, buckets of ice water, and low stools.
Instead the atmosphere in the ring was woozy with sex, or, more accurately, bare female flesh. Lined up in front of the emcee were six girls—slim-hipped, small-breasted, blonde and brunette. All were naked. At least half of them, Jack estimated, were underage. They had their heads down, staring at the canvas between their feet. The slim young man started to speak in the rapid-fire jargon of all auctioneers, and that was when the actual business of the Stem sank in to Jack’s mind.
“Now, for our first cherry, we have a tender morsel indeed, fresh from the shores of Odessa.” The auctioneer stepped closer to the first girl on his right. “Only twelve years of age and guaranteed a virgin, good gentlemen, so with that premium in mind we’ll start the bidding at fifty thousand dollars.” He cupped the girl’s chin, lifting her head. “Just look at this cherry! Look into those blue eyes, regard that golden hair, the creamy skin. And, gentlemen, this cherry is guaranteed completely free of lice!” He continued on in this abominable and dehumanizing vein, as if he were selling Texas steers or Arabian horses.
In a trance, Jack descended the stairs, holding tight to Alli’s hand. Part of him wanted to get her out of here now, but another part knew that that choice was long past. Turning around now would only call unwanted attention to themselves. He reminded himself that they were here as part of a triple homicide investigation in which Alli was the prime suspect. They had to go forward.
At that moment, Alli whispered in his ear. Now that they were nearer to the action, he could see what had drawn her attention. All the girls had burns or welts marring their flesh. Some were clearly old, but others appeared quite new. The sight was almost too much to take in and, in fact, it was Alli’s presence that calmed him down.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said.
At that moment, the auctioneer yelled, “The bid is against you, Sergei. No? One hundred twenty, then, going once, twice. Sold!” and pointed to a man in sunglasses lounging in one corner, arms folded across his chest.
A man appeared, climbed into the ring, and led the girl out. The auctioneer was about to move to the next girl, when his eyes caught sight of Alli.
“And what have we here?”
Heads turned as he pointed. “Mathis’s sub is here with something fresh, and by the look of her, what a load of fresh she is.” He beckoned to Jack and raised his voice to fever pitch. “Come on, bring that next cherry up here! I have no doubt she’ll fetch a pretty penny, sir, a pretty penny, indeed!” He moved to the front of the ring, taking his mike with him.
Alli clung to Jack, but the man who had escorted the first cherry out of the ring now reappeared and gripped Alli’s free arm so hard she cried out. At once, Jack whirled and slammed an elbow into the man’s nose. Blood gushed as he went down. The auctioneer made a hand signal and two large men detached themselves from the shadows. One had drawn a Glock, the other was content with displaying his fists.
“She’s not going into the ring,” Jack said.
“The fuck she isn’t,” the gunman said.
Jack backed into him, trod on his instep with his heel, and, at the same time, brought the edge of his hand down on the gunman’s wrist. The Glock fell to the floor as the gunman grunted in pain, but almost immediately, the second man wrapped his arm around Jack’s throat.
“Make a move and I’ll snap your neck.”
Alli bent down, but the gunman stopped her from reaching the Glock by grabbing the back of her hoodie and dragging her back to her feet. While Jack watched helplessly, the gunman pushed and shoved her toward the ring. The girls stared down at her, shivering and glassy-eyed. But as the gunman began to manhandle Alli up the wooden steps, she tripped. As he reached down to pull her up, she delivered a backward kick to the pit of his stomach. He fell toward her and she twisted, taking the brunt of his weight on her right shoulder, which she twisted away and down, so that he fell against the metal rim of the canvas floor. She took his head and slammed the side of it down, then reached for his gun.
Turning, she aimed the Glock. The man tightened his arm around Jack’s throat.
“Let him go,” Alli said, “or so help me I’ll put a bullet into your brain.”
“By the time you do,” the man said, jerking Jack’s head around, “he’ll be dead.”
A deathly silence stole over the room. Even the glib auctioneer seemed struck dumb. Alli and the man continued to glare at one another. No one else so much as breathed. Jack had cause to wonder where Thate was. The shock of being in the middle of a white slave trade ring had driven thoughts of the kid right out of his head. He could use him now.
Then, abruptly, a door in the rear of the room swung open and a voice said, “A Mexican standoff is to no one’s benefit.” A shadow filled the doorway. “Put up your gun and we’ll talk. No one’s going to get hurt, right, Evan?”
The big man nodded. “Whatever you say.”
