Anybody's Daughter (Angela Evans Series No. 2) (17 page)

“Shep never came looking for you?” Angela asked. “You’re basically trying to put him out of business.”

“Let’s just say we have a gentleman’s agreement. I have enough information to send him away for a very long time.”

“Then why don’t you then?” Dre asked, his tone critical.

Loretha’s gaze fell to the table. “Because I’d be in jail right along with him. I can’t make excuses for the horrible things I did. That’s why I work so hard now to save every girl I can find. I want to get to them before some pimp turns them into the kind of person I used to be.”

She paused. “But don’t worry. Shep’s eventually going to get everything he deserves.” Loretha’s words sounded more like a prediction than a statement.

Though little of what she’d heard was news to her, Angela felt saddened.

“I want to help,” she said in a determined voice. “I completed your training program and got certified late last year, but I never made the time to volunteer. I need to do more than just represent these girls in court. I want to help them get out of the life.”

Loretha hung her head. “I hate that term.
The life
. Makes it sound as if it’s something glamorous or special. It’s no life at all.”

When embarrassment clouded Angela’s face, Loretha reached out and patted Angela’s hand.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so touchy. I’d love it if you could come speak to our girls and maybe even mentor some of them. They really need to see someone who looks like them making it in the world.”

“I could probably get some of my friends from Black Women Lawyers and California Women Lawyers to be mentors too. Maybe I could even set up a formal mentoring program for you.”

“Excellent.”

Loretha turned to Dre.

“If you want to get to Shep, you have to get to one of the guys closest to him. They’re not all that bright. Clint Winbush is his main gopher.”

“I’ve met him,” Dre said.

She smiled. “If a cop ever got him in an interrogation room, he’d start wailing like a baby in two seconds flat. If anybody knows where Brianna’s being held. He does.”

All three of them appeared exhausted by their dire discussion.

“You need to do everything you can to find your niece,” Loretha said. “Fast. She’s only been with Shep a couple of days, so he probably hasn’t put her out there yet. But it won’t be long before he does.”

“Human trafficking is a low-risk, high-profit business—an estimated $32 billion-a-year global industry that has recently attracted the participation of increasingly sophisticated, organized criminal gangs. Domestic street gangs set aside traditional rivalries to set up commercial sex rings and maximize profits from the sale of young women.”

—
The State of Human Trafficking in California,
California Department of Justice

N
ot long after their meeting with Loretha, Dre received a frantic call from his sister. She was talking a mile a minute, making it difficult for him to comprehend what she was saying. When he finally did understand, he couldn’t believe it.

Three other girls from Brianna’s school had disappeared in the last eighteen months.

What in the hell was going
on?

Dre had immediately rushed back to his sister’s house in Compton and spent much of the night trying to calm her down. The next morning, they made multiple calls to the police as well as city hall, but no one seemed to be taking their concerns seriously. Dre finally decided that they needed to speak to Brianna’s principal. Donna had promised Bonnie Flanagan not to disclose how she’d learned about the other girls.

They were now sitting in the parking lot just west of the school’s main office.

“Let me do the talking when we get inside, okay?” Dre said.

If Donna started crying, they’d get nothing accomplished. She looked a mess. Her hair was barely combed and her eyes were so swollen they bulged from her face. He rubbed his scratchy chin and silently acknowledged that he wasn’t a pretty sight either.

Dre climbed out of the car, then walked around to open the passenger door and helped his sister out.

She looked up at him with a weak smile. “You never did that before.”

He simply smiled back, placed his arm around her shoulders and led her into the school.

They signed in and told the receptionist that they wanted to see the principal.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No,” Dre said. “But it’s pretty important.”

The woman started to give them attitude, but must have taken in their sad demeanors. She glanced down at their names.

“Oh,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth. “You must be Brianna’s mother and father.”

“Mother and uncle,” Dre corrected her. “Her father’s deceased.”

“Mr. Ortiz is in a meeting with our assistant principal, but I’ll see if he has a few minutes.”

The woman disappeared down a hallway.

A short while later, a chubby man in a suit that fit too snugly around the middle sloshed down the hallway.

He extended a hand long before he reached them.

“I’m Manuel Ortiz. I’m so sorry to hear about Brianna. Let me show you to my office.”

Dre and Donna followed him back down the hallway and into his office. He introduced them to the assistant principal, Richard Wainright, who remained standing after they were seated. Dre made no mention of their earlier meeting. Frankly, he was pissed off that Bonnie and Wainright hadn’t told him about the other missing girls on his prior visit. According to what Bonnie told Donna, Ortiz had forbade disclosure of the information. Dre wanted to know why.

“Brianna is one of our brightest students,” Ortiz said. “Her disappearance is so tragic.”

“Yeah,” Dre said awkwardly. “We’re hoping you can help us with some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“We understand that three other girls from this school have also disappeared.”

The principal’s easygoing manner faded away. He hurled a look at Wainright. “And where did you hear that?”

“Does it matter?” Dre said.

“Yes, it does?”

“Well, we’re not at liberty to say.”

The escalating tension seemed to unnerve Wainright. He rubbed his hands together.

“That’s fine,” Ortiz said. “I think I already know who told you. You need to know that Bonnie Flanagan has a very vivid imagination.”

“So there haven’t been any missing girls?” Dre pressed.

“I have close to eight hundred students at this school,” Ortiz said. “Some officially check out, others never show back up. There’s no concrete evidence that any of my students have met with foul play.”

“But what about those three girls?” He looked down at the paper Donna had given him. “Leticia Gonzales, Imani Johnson and Jasmine Smith. Did they disappear?”

“I don’t think
disappear
is the right word. Are they no longer students here? Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know the full story and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you because that information is confidential.”

“Fine,” Dre said. “I’ll contact their families myself. Just give me their addresses and telephone numbers?”

Ortiz scratched his head. “I’m not able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“That information is also confidential. So I can’t do that either. Not without the family’s permission.”

“Okay, then.” Dre pulled out one of his business cards and placed it on the desk. “I’d appreciate it if you could contact each of the girls’ families, pass along my number and ask them to give me a call.”

Ortiz rubbed his forehead. “Uh…we really can’t get involved in this. We just don’t need this kind of attention focused on our school right now. Have you contacted the police?”

“Yeah,” Dre said. “They’re not much help, which is why we’re here talking to you instead of them.”

“I’m really sorry that Ms. Flanagan took it upon herself to get you all riled up. We have no reason to think that there’s a connection between any of these girls.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

“Well, I just think that…” His voice trailed off. “Ms. Flanagan is a good teacher, but she’s also a bit of a busybody. I wouldn’t put much stock into anything she told you.”

“We won’t know for sure that there isn’t a connection until somebody looks into it and I’d like to do that.”

There was a gentle knock on the door. The receptionist who’d greeted them earlier stuck her head into the room.

“Mr. Ortiz, you better get going. You’re going to be late for your meeting.”

He glanced at his watch and stood up. “I’m sorry, but I have to cut this short. I have a meeting in the Valley and I’ll need to leave right now if I’m going to make it on time.”

Donna started to sniffle. “I don’t understand why you don’t want to help us find my baby.”

Ortiz tugged at his tie and picked up a folder from his desk. “We’re all praying for Brianna’s safe return. I wish there was something more I could do for you, but I can’t. I have to run. Mr. Wainright will show you out.”

“I’m really sorry,” Wainright said apologetically, after the principal left.

“You told me you wanted to help,” Dre challenged him. “Can you get us telephone numbers for those girls’ families without the principal knowing about it. We won’t tell anybody how we got ’em.”

Wainright glanced at the open door, then walked over to close it.

He paused for a long moment as if he was weighing the impact of what Dre was asking him to do might have on his career.

“Give me those names,” he said, just above a whisper. “I’ll contact the families myself and see what I can find out.”

A
ngela stepped onto the porch of Harmony House and happily knocked on the door.

“Wow,” Loretha said, welcoming her inside. “I didn’t expect you to show up this soon.”

Angela smiled. “My calendar was completely open this morning. So I figured why wait.”

“Let me give you a quick tour of the house. We’ve made lots of changes since the last time you were here. We have a GED program for the girls now.”

She walked Angela over to a small area of the living room that had been sectioned off with a room divider. “We have two teachers from Crenshaw High who come over twice a week to help the girls prepare for the exam. And this is where we have our group counseling sessions.” She pointed to the far side of the living room.

“Most of the girls are at school or work right now,” Loretha explained. “We have a new girl who came in last night.”

They walked down a long hallway into a large wood-paneled room where a young Latina was watching television.

“This is Carmen,” Loretha said.

Carmen looked Angela up and down. “You my new social worker?” the girl asked, loudly smacking on gum.

“No,” Loretha said, “she’s going to organize a mentoring program for us.”

“You look like a social worker,” the girl said. “Or a lawyer.”

Loretha smiled and backed out of the room. “It might be a good idea to dress down next time. Jeans are fine. Less intimidating for the girls.”

Angela looked down at her black suit, embarrassed that she hadn’t realized that.

“Let me show you our bedrooms. They’re—”

Loretha’s smartphone rang.

Angela watched Loretha’s face and could tell that she wasn’t receiving good news.

“Just hold on,” Loretha said into the phone. “I’ll be right there.”

Loretha started moving toward the door. “Anamaria!”

A pretty Latina bounced into the room.

“I just got a rescue call,” Loretha said to the woman. “Keep an eye on Carmen in there.”

She turned to Angela. “You wanna come?”

Loretha hit the streets like a race car driver, darting in and out of traffic. If a traffic light took more than a few seconds to change, she pounded the steering wheel and cursed.

Loretha explained that they were going to pick up a girl Loretha had approached on the track in Compton a couple of nights ago.

“It’s hard to get the girls to just walk away. They’re scared and they have no idea how they’re going to make it without their pimp. I tell them I can help, but they don’t believe me. So the best I can do is give them my card and tell them to call me if they need help—day or night.”

“So she called you?”

“Yeah. Said her
daddy
beat her up cuz a john ran off without paying after getting a blow job.”

“How is that her fault?” Angela asked.

“Don’t try to apply logic to something that’s completely illogical.”

“How often do you get calls like this?”

“Lately, about three times a month. I wish it was more often. Every time I get one of these calls, it means I have another shot at saving a child.”

“So is this how most of the girls come to Harmony House?”

“About three-fourths of my girls come to me through a social worker or referral from the court system. The rest call me after they’ve been beaten half to death.”

“They must feel relieved to get away from their pimps.”

“For a while,” Loretha said. “Then they start to miss him and want to go back. You ever break up with a guy who was a complete asshole, but three weeks later, you wanted him back. It’s the same thing.”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t beating me.”

“It’s like a domestic violence victim who refuses to testify against her husband or boyfriend. It doesn’t seem so bad once a few days have passed.”

Angela recalled her mixed emotions when her ex had been stalking her. Her family didn’t understand her reluctance to get the police involved. Angela hadn’t wanted him in jail. She just wanted to be left alone.

“Do many of the girls go back to their pimps?” she asked.

Loretha laughed loudly. “Oh, about ninety percent. It can take three or four cycles, or even more, before they begin to get it. To understand that nothing’s going to change. The younger the girl is when she’s first exploited, the harder it is for her to break away.”

“I thought my job was tough defending the girls in court,” Angela replied. “How do you do this day after day after day?”

“I
have
to do it,” Loretha said. “I owe it to them. I consider it my penance. And when I have a victory, it’s all worth it. My assistant, Anamaria, is my biggest and best success story. Her first abuser was her father. After she told one of her teachers what her father was doing to her every night, she was placed in a foster home. There, her seventeen-year-old foster brother raped her. Repeatedly. She was eight. Her pimp got her at the age of twelve when she ran away from her third foster home. Her pimp was the first person in her life to show her any real affection. If you can call it that.”

“Her mother never came back for her?”

“Her father was the sole breadwinner. When he went to jail, her mother never forgave Anamaria for breaking up the family. The entire time she was in foster care, her mother never came to see her. Not once in four years.”

This was so depressing that Angela wanted to cry. She’d been so excited about helping out at Harmony House. But now she wondered if she had the emotional stamina to handle it.

Loretha pulled to a stop in front of a laundromat that appeared to be empty. She looked up and down the street.

“Get behind the wheel,” she said, dashing out of the car. “And keep the engine running.”

Loretha dashed inside and less than a minute later, she walked out cradling a young black girl. She hustled her into the backseat and climbed in alongside her.

“Hit the door locks!” Loretha yelled. “Let’s go. We gotta get her out of here before her pimp comes.”

Unfamiliar with the car, Angela fumbled to find the door locks. She finally took off into traffic with a lurch and a screech.

Loretha pressed the girl’s head into her lap. “You’re safe now, Peaches,” Loretha said in a soothing voice.

“We should call the police,” Angela said.

“I will,” Loretha said. “As soon as we get her out of here.”

Angela glanced at the sobbing girl in the rear-view mirror. One side of her face was bruised and bloody.

“Don’t worry, baby, it’s going to be all right,” Loretha said, softly stroking the girl’s hair. “You’re safe now.”