completely sane. He coached soccer, drove Lauren and her friends to gymnastics, and generally lived the life he had taken for granted years before.
But tonight he was on the street with a real purpose.
The analyst in the detective bureau had tried searching for anyone named Jamais arrested for procurement in the last five years but came up dry. This was a long shot like most leads on a big case, but it was real, and Stallings knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t make an effort to find this guy and see what he had to say.
The other detectives were searching for Jamais as if it were a competition, and they all seemed to play by the same rules, looking in the same kinds of places, talking to the same kind of people in the same stupid, cop way. It was more like talking at someone. There wasn’t one working girl on Arlington Avenue who would admit to knowing Jamais to one of the homicide guys if they didn’t have a reason to. And no one had a reason to give up someone to the cops. Not in J-ville or any other town with a street community. Talking to the cops was bad for business and bad for your health. That was why Stallings decided to go at this in a slightly different way, only talking to people he already knew-specifically former runaways who had reached eighteen and still lived on the street.
He headed into the Springfield area because he happened to know that Lee Ann Moffit had hung in the central Jacksonville neighborhood a lot. One of the times he found her she’d been in a house on North Liberty Street.
Prostitutes walking the streets were not as obvious as when he started on patrol as a green twenty-three- year-old. Back in those days of unbridled enthusiasm and endless energy he’d arrest prostitutes and their clients parked in the rear of Publix shopping centers or in dark, quiet parks. Slowly he started to prioritize his duties, and prostitution usually didn’t rank up there with robberies or drive-by shootings in his daily professional life. But Stallings, like most cops, had a particular distaste for pimps. The popular stereotype of a flamboyant, benevolent manager could not be further from the truth. The world of street prostitution is filled with violence and mistrust. Pimps essentially enslave women, usually young women, and use threats of all kinds to keep the girls out working and giving them the lion’s share of the money.
Rolling into the lot of a shopping plaza that shut down at sunset, he waited like all lonely and desperate men did who were looking for a woman. He knew that parked here in the innocuous, unmarked Impala he’d probably have a lead on this Jamais in a few hours. This was an area where Stallings had spent a lot of time. He’d know someone on the prowl.
The activity on the street, which might not be obvious to the average driver, blinked like a neon sign to cops. The three men sitting on a bus bench were selling crack to a specific group that knew who they were and what they were doing. An undercover couldn’t buy from them because the dealers wouldn’t know them. A man sitting in a car across the lot was looking for a prostitute. A young man on a park bench across the street was available for sex. It was a parallel universe to normal life that most people chose to ignore and Stallings liked to avoid at this stage in his career. He didn’t want to think that his oldest daughter might be part of this subculture in some other city.
After fifteen minutes of sitting in the car with the windows down, he had ignored two different women because he didn’t know them. They were older than the crowd he had caught as runaways and he didn’t want to broadcast what he was doing if the likelihood of success wasn’t good.
Finally a young woman approached the car slowly, high heels slowing her progress over the uneven asphalt, sounding like an old telegraph, tapping out an uncertain message. She leaned into his open window and said, “Hey there…” Then stood up, “Oh shit, Stall.”
Stallings eased out of the car so the girl wouldn’t start running in those high heels and break her leg.
“Don’t worry, Tabitha. I’m looking for someone. You’re not done for the night yet.”
She placed her hand over her large fake breasts and smiled. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were a real cop.”
Stallings smiled at the comment. Many of the young people Stallings looked for in missing persons got to know him as a person, not just a cop. He always talked to them before bringing them into a shelter or back to their parents. It was as much for him and his efforts to understand his own Jeanie as it was to help the kids. But they realized he was doing what he thought was best for them and they told their friends. After three years in the missing persons unit, he had a network in the city unlike any other cop. He may not have been able to work drug cases with informants like this, but he damn sure could find anyone that was in the city whether they wanted to be found or not.
Stallings said, “What’re you doin’ out here anyway? I thought you were dancing over near Fernandina.”
“I lost the gig and can’t renew my adult entertainment license yet.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated.
“I won’t do anything, just curious.”
She nodded and said, “I got paper on me.”
“What for?”
“Possession, failure to appear.”
“Why didn’t you go to court, Tabby? You’re smarter than that.”
“Just got caught up in things. I’m gonna take care of it, I swear.”
He shook his head. “I’m out here because I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“All I have is a name-Jamais.”
She thought about it, her pretty face running through the database of names and aliases she’d learned while living in Jacksonville. Finally she shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
He made a note, then looked back at the young woman and noticed the makeup covering a mark on her neck. “What’s that from?”
She looked at the ground.
“Tabby, I’ve known you since you were sixteen. Tell me what happened.”
“I was light on the take Monday night. My manager wasn’t too happy about it.”
“Who’s your manager?”
She looked up at him. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Who is it?”
“Davey Lambert.”
Stallings knew the name and could picture the atypical pimp. He wasn’t known for his rough stuff and had some kind of computer sideline. He combined the two professions to become the wealthy king of Internet prostitution.
“Why’s Davey got you out on the street? I thought he only worked online?”
“He had trouble with someone and they knocked Davey off-line for a while.”
“Knocked him off-line? How?”
“Smashed up all his computers, tried to burn down that house he owns over on Beaver Street. He always thought it was funny selling pussy from a house on a street named Beaver.” She still had an engaging smile.
“Hysterical.”
“He ain’t so bad.”
Stallings looked at her. “C’mon, Tabby. You were light, so he choked you.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Stall, it wasn’t nothin’.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna kick his ass.”
She smiled. “And you won’t tell him it was me?”
“You know better than that.”
She hesitated but not for long. Her smile spread at the thought of her pimp meeting up with someone like Stallings. “He’s at the house now trying to get the computers up and running. And he’s plenty pissed off. That’s why this happened.” She pointed to her discolored neck.
Stallings smiled, handed her half the cash in his pocket, and said, “Take the night off, Tabby. Your manager is going on vacation.”
William Dremmel stopped at a Wendy’s off Beaver Street after the pharmacy closed at nine. It had been a quiet night, and he’d spent the last three hours organizing one of the storerooms and tossing the newspapers and
