Book II Chapter 9

“So you’re sure this incident last night was our guy, Molly?” Burke asked, as he scanned the file on his desk. Molly had prepared the report herself, and re-written it three times. She could practically tell which word he was on, just from the position of his eyes. She nodded positively at the Lieutenant’s question.

“It was dark, but the kid described our man pretty accurately. Tall, dressed all in black and wearing a mask. Jumped on the top of the car and drove that through the roof.” She jerked her head at the evidence bag on Burke’s desk, and the ice-pick like object it held. “If it’s not the same one he used to save my butt on Mt. Davidson, it’s one just like it. And just like the equipment he left at the crack lab, it’s hand made from parts available almost anywhere. No serial numbers and no trace evidence. It’s Freddy, no doubt about it.” ‘Freddy the Fed,’ the name they had taken to calling the mysterious man who was now making their jobs so much more interesting lately.

Burke grunted, still engrossed in the report. Molly waited patiently for the next fifteen minutes, until her boss finally dropped the pages back onto his desk with a disgusted snort. “Jesus Christ, ‘coon hunting’. You know, I haven’t heard that term in almost twenty years? I thought that kind of crap went out with cross burning.”

“We’re still waiting on the older perps’ rap sheets from Louisiana, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did some of that, too. These are some real backwoods bayou boys, LT. You know, that kid was twelve years old, but he could barely write his own name. I doubt he has more than a third grade education. And his brother isn’t much better.”

“Timothy and Donald McCurdy. And friends. The boy implicates his brother and the rest of them with last nights shooting, plus three more within the last two months, right? But he only witnessed the last one; all he can tell us about the other shootings is what they told him afterwards, so it’s all hearsay. He’s even unsure on the exact dates, and you can’t get ballistics on a shotgun. It’s pretty shaky, Molly.”

A smug grin was tugging at the corners of Molly’s mouth, but she held it back firmly. Wouldn’t do to let her boss think she was getting cocky. Instead she laid another evidence bag on Burke’s desk, this one containing a single unfired shotgun shell. “Normally, it would be, sir. But it looks like we lucked out. It seems the McCurdy

brothers got a hold of a batch of ammunition with taggants.”

Across his desk, the lieutenant raised his eyebrows in surprise. Taggants were microscopic plastic markers containing a bar code, inserted into most commercially manufactured explosives in the United States today. The markers were almost indestructible, and could be collected from the residue left behind from an explosion. They could then be used to trace the explosive back to the manufacturer, the particular factory where it was made, and in some cases even to the store it was sold from or the person that bought it.

“I know they put these things in commercial demolitions these days, but I’ve never heard of it being required in ammo before. I thought the NRA has been fighting that for about a decade now.”

“They have, and it’s not required, but several manufacturers have done it on their own with a few test batches. One of our lab people was using an ultraviolet light on the crime scene vehicle, and he noticed the markers in the gun residue. Turns out this particular batch was sold to three different gunshops, all of them in the same parish that the McCurdy brothers used to live in. We got a warrant and searched their place and found two unopened boxes of that batch, and matching rounds were found in Donald McCurdy’s pockets.”

Burke pursed his lips and nodded. “And?”

Molly finally let the grin she had been hiding show. “And about an hour ago they tested the shirt of a victim from one of the previous shootings, and found it covered with the same taggants. They’re testing evidence taken from the other two shootings right now, but even without those markers we can positively tie Donnie and his accomplices to two of the four, and that corroborates Tim McCurdy’s statement.”

“And that ought to be enough to get one of those losers to flip on his friends, we’ll just offer him immunity on the two weak charges. Great work, Molly. That boyfriend of yours is turning into a real asset around here.”

Molly frowned, irritated. “First off, he’s not my boyfriend; I don’t even know this guy’s name. Second, I’m still not all that comfortable with us using him like this, it smacks just a little bit like vigilantism. This town has too much history of that to make me feel comfortable. And Freddy’s beginning to get a reputation.”

Burke chuckled, dismissing her concerns. “C’mon, Molly. This isn’t the eighteen fifties, and no one’s forming a new Vigilance Committee. Besides, the guy’s a Federal agent.” He frowned, considering the rest of her statement. “But what’s this about him getting a reputation?”

“Just that, people on the street are beginning to talk about him, like he’s some sort of urban legend. They haven’t settled on a single name yet, I’ve heard him called the Spook, the Ninja, the Blacksuit. Different names, but obviously the same guy. Some say he climbs walls, some say he swings in on a bat rope, others say he can turn invisible. In fact, the only thing everybody agrees on is that he shows up when someone is in trouble.”

“Huh. You’re right, looks like Freddy’s been elevated to superhero status, at least on the street. Has anybody else begun to put this together?”

Molly sighed. “Yessir, I’m afraid they have. I’ve heard some of the uniforms talking about it, and there’s at least one reporter from SFGate who’s already asking questions. They may not be the Chronicle, but it’s only a matter of time before the other newsies start asking questions.”

“That’s not our problem, Molly. Not yet, anyway. Besides, if too much of a spotlight gets thrown on Freddy and his unit, they’ll probably just fold up shop and disappear. Our interest is in seeing just how much use we can get out of them before that happens. Any luck on arranging a meeting between me and him?”

She drew a deep breath before answering. “Yessir, this morning. They called, said they would meet tonight at nine o’clock, at the parking garage. Just you and me, no one else.”

Burke grunted, rubbing his chin, then nodded. “Third floor, right? And that place has how many exits?”

Molly blinked, startled by the question. “Uh, two. Street level, one on the east, and one on the south. But there’s also access to the medical building on the west side through the elevators, on three floors. I’m not sure how many exits from there, it’s a pretty large building. Why?”

“Because it sounds like it’s got too many exits for us to put surveillance on them. We’re going to have to set something up inside the parking structure itself. How many cars would you expect to be there at that time of the night?”

Molly gaped at her superior, aghast. “LT, you’re not saying… He’s a Federal agent! You can’t run surveillance on a Fed, you… you just can’t!”

Burke’s eyes, she noted now, were suddenly harder. “First off, Inspector, we have absolutely no proof of any kind that this guy is a Federal agent. We have his word, the word of a man who hasn’t even seen fit to give us his name. We are not going to let him hide behind the protection of a badge that I haven’t even seen, do you understand?”

Molly felt the weight of his stare, and bit back a retort. She nodded stiffly, but her expression showed just what she really thought of this idea. Burke returned her stare, until he was sure she had gotten the message. Inspector, and Lieutenant. She took orders from him.

“The latest I’ve ever been there was about seven thirty, and there were only maybe half a dozen cars on the whole third floor. By nine, it’ll probably be completely empty.”

“So no way we can park a surveillance unit in there without being spotted. We’ll have to put them out on the street. What else do they have in that place, Wu? Do they have trash cans, ashtrays, anything like that?”

Molly frowned, thinking. “Trash cans, metal ones, by the elevators. At least on the third floor, I’ve never been to the others. Why?”

“Because that place is thousands of cubic yards of concrete and steel, even if the sides are open. We’d never get a decent signal out to street level with anything small enough to be concealable. But if we can hide a booster unit in the trash can, we should be able to pick up anything within five or six blocks of the building.”

For the next half hour they made plans for the proposed meeting that night with Freddy. Molly sat through it all, listening to her boss, answering his questions. And all the time knowing the bile like taste of betrayal.

*****

“Commo check. How do you read, Bigdog?” Burke murmured, ducking his head slightly and trying not to move his lips. The precaution was instinctive, and almost surely unnecessary. But seventeen years on the job had given him plenty of undercover and surveillance experience, and such safeguards were more than habit now, they were instinct. The tinny reply from the surveillance van came through the pill sized microphones in both his and Molly’s ears.

“Five by five, Littledog. Everything checks. No sign of your friends on street level, anything showing up there?”

“Check your screens, there’s still nothing here. This place is a ghost town.”

Next to him he felt Molly shift restlessly. Although the surveillance teem had gotten here hours before to install the hidden cameras and the signal booster in the trashcan, he and Wu had only arrived in the parking garage at a quarter to nine, a little more than forty five minutes ago. At that time they had taken the elevator to every floor of the parking structure, and had found only two cars in the entire building, none of them on this floor. Nothing had changed in that time, no vehicle traffic had either entered or left, and there had been no sign whatsoever of the mystery man they were supposed to meet. It was still early yet, the rule of thumb in such situations was to wait no more than an hour for the suspect to arrive, and they were less than halfway through that. But the situation itself had its own inherent stresses, and he could tell by the way she was fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot every few seconds, that Wu didn’t like the waiting part at all.

Burke stifled a sigh and deliberately turned away from her. Molly was a good cop, she had guts and brains and cops’ instincts, and she wasn’t afraid to use any of them. He didn’t like putting her into this type of situation, it wasn’t fair asking her to do this to the guy who had saved her life, but that was the job. He had to know who this guy was, and if it was safe to trust him, or at least safe to use him. Burke had too much at stake to risk going with a complete unknown.

Who the hell was this guy?! He had asked himself that question a thousand times in the past few months, ever since that night Inspector Molly Wu had told him her incredible story. On the surface it was ridiculous, totally inconceivable. An undercover team of Federal agents, indulging in vigilante acts all over the city, his city, just because they were bored.

And yet, ever since 9/11 there had been all sorts of cowboy squads popping up all over the place. Was it really so hard to imagine such a team set in place, watching some suspected or imagined terrorist group, and then being forgotten? Burke knew from personal experience the tedium of a long surveillance, how day after day it could sap your energy, your mind, destroy that all important edge. How bad could it be, if you were stuck on such an assignment for a year or more, as the mysterious Freddy had hinted? If it had happened to him, could he honestly say he wouldn’t have become desperate enough to try something this crazy himself?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe he would.

So, if he was the real thing, just who would he be working for? Homeland Security again? Yeah, could be. Those guys were given a lot of slack these days. He’d heard that a lot of them were taking advantage of it, too. Some real cowboys there, he’d heard some stories…

The moment of introspection ended abruptly, as a whirling noise came from the elevator less than twenty feet away. He and Molly both looked up, tensed, as they watched the numbers over the door light up and advance. Burke murmured a quick update into his hidden microphone, falling silent just before the door opened.

No one stepped out as the metal doors slid back, but like a switch being thrown music did emerge. The two police officers blinked, puzzled, and then Burke advanced on the doors and held them open just before they could time out and close. They both stared at the small boom box tape player that sat on the floor, playing its musical message from the fifties. The Drifters, singing ‘Up on the Roof’.

Burke looked at Molly, saw her wide eyed stare, and let the brief laughter burst out of his chest. He shook his head, in disbelief or admiration, or maybe both. He slid the boom box out of the elevator with his foot, careful not to smudge any prints, then led the way into the elevator. When Molly stepped in he pressed the button for the top-most floor of the parking garage, murmuring one last hurried update to the surveillance team. Just before the closing doors cut them off completely, they heard him chuckling and making one last comment.

“The fucking Drifters. Christ.”

*****

When the elevator doors opened on the roof, Molly found herself hesitating, instinctively wanting to go cautiously into the unknown, especially now that they had lost radio contact with their backup. But by contrast her Lieutenant stepped out briskly, exuding confidence like it was an aftershave, and she had to follow.

The upper level of the garage was unroofed and open to the night sky. Pole lamps at each corner cast a harsh glare that completely blocked out any sight of the stars overhead, turning the flat and empty space into an area where nothing, not even shadows could hide. Other than the elevator and the door to the stairs there was nothing else on the parking lot, except for a single solitary figure at the retaining wall directly across from them. Freddy the Fed.

He still looked just as he had when she had last seen him, wearing the same pea coat and jeans. The change in location, having them come to the roof instead of meeting them below, suggested that he knew they might be wired. But if so, you couldn’t tell it from his attitude. Leaning oh so casually against the low wall just as he had with her car, again wearing mirrored sunglasses despite the night.

Burke stopped ten feet short of the mystery man, bringing Molly to a halt beside him. The Lieutenant paused, slowly and deliberately looked the other up and down, snorted and said, “I thought you’d be bigger.”

The mystery man laughed, then shook his head ruefully. “Yeah, I get that a lot. And you’re Lieutenant John Burke, S.F.P.D., Violent Crimes Unit. Nice to meet you.” The last was said with a rueful quirk of his mouth. He didn’t offer to shake hands.

“We’ll see how nice you think it is after this meeting is over,” Burke snapped, and Molly felt herself stiffen. “You’ve represented yourself to one of my officers as a Federal Agent, but in all this time you haven’t presented her or my office with any proof of that. You’ve spun this fancy little fairy tale about being on a long stretch covert assignment, and you’re helping us out because you’ve got nothing better to do with your time off. You’re bored. And then you expect us to buy into it without a single piece of official confirmation to back you up. You haven’t even given us your name, or the name of the agency you claim to work for. We’ve looked, and believe me, we’ve looked hard, but nobody seems to know who the hell you are.” Burke took another step forward, his whole demeanor that of one junkyard dog confronting another.

“Well let me tell you something, asshole, the only reason we haven’t brought you in for questioning has been the assistance you’ve given us on two recent major cases. But that sort of good will only goes so far. I want to know who you are, mister. You can tell me right here, right now, or you can tell me in an interrogation room downtown. Your call.”

Molly drew in a quick breath, glancing at her superior with wide eyes. That was not how this meeting was supposed to go down! They were supposed to talk to this guy, draw him out, and get him to talk. A soft sell approach. This was more like taking him into a back room and bringing out the rubber hoses. The LT had told her that he wanted to use this meeting to feel the mystery man out, and then maybe to set up a working arrangement with him and his group. Yet now it looked like he was trying to drive the guy away. What the hell was this all about?

But if Freddy was upset about the LT’s words, he wasn’t showing it. Instead he just returned Burke’s belligerent look with a calm one of his own, examining the hardened cop from behind the anonymity of the mirrored glasses. “Okay, I guess that means no small talk, right? You want to just get this on and over with. Fine by me.”

Abruptly then the man stood up, reaching into the pocket of the pea coat. Both officers tensed, but relaxed when he brought out what looked like a simple PDA.

The mystery man glanced at the face of the hand sized device, punching a series of keys with his thumb. He stepped forward, watching the miniature screen closely, as he held it within a foot of the Lieutenant’s body and slowly began to move it downward. There was a soft electronic squeal when it reached Burke’s chest and Freddy held it there, shifting his gaze to the Lieutenant’s eyes, and raising one eyebrow expectantly. Burke’s jaw muscles bunched, but he gave no other reaction as he reached up and began to unbutton his shirt. In another minute the tiny microphone that had been taped to his chest was in Freddy’s hand, and two seconds later it was over the edge of the roof and plummeting through space to the ground below.

“Yeah, I know they’re expensive, but they’re also solid state, a little fall won’t hurt them. Your people in the van can pick it up later,” the man said, his eyes once more on the detector in his hand as he continued to roam it over Burke’s form. There was another electronic squeal from the box, but with a different tone now, as Freddy paused it over the Lieutenant’s right hip.

“Tape recorder?” he asked, and Burke shrugged, unclipping the pager from his belt. If he was angry or embarrassed at having been found out, he didn’t show it. He pressed a catch, and a small tape cassette slipped out of the concealed recorder and into his hand. He tossed it to the other man, but pocketed the device.

“You can keep the tape, but this will break. But tell me, recorder’s are passive, they don’t transmit. How…?”

“Electro-magnetic field sensor. It can detect anything with the slightest bit of electrical current. It also contains about a hundred different magnetic signatures for comparison, which is how it knew the difference between a real pager and a mini recorder. It’s also why it didn’t go off when it read your watch. Okay, you’re clean. Molly?”

She spared a glance at her boss, and at his nod she turned around and started to undue her own blouse. A minute later and she was buttoned back up, and her own microphone had joined the other over the edge of the roof. She tried to keep her face blank when she looked at him, but he smiled, and even through the glasses she could tell he winked at her. She felt her face flush, as they both remembered the last time she had worn a wire around him.

Freddy had stepped back once more, and the sensor device had disappeared back into the coat pocket.

“Okay John, now that the small talk is over, let’s get down to business. If you want to know my name, it’s Danner. Hugo Danner. But no more of the empty chest beating, alright? We both know that you’ve got no excuse to take me in, and if by chance I am telling you the truth, you’d risk compromising a major Federal investigation that’s been two years in the making. As a career move, that’s not exactly a winner, is it?

“You’re also not going to bring me in because you don’t want to burn a highly useful resource. We didn’t just ‘assist’ you in two major busts, we gave them to you on a silver platter. We have training and resources that you don’t, equipment you can’t get even if you did have the budget, and almost none of the legal restrictions you have. In fact, that last is the reason you don’t really want to know who we are, why you won’t try too hard to find out. If a proven confidential source gives you some key information or evidence, you don’t have to account for where or how he got it.

“So now that we’ve established all of that, what say we quit the pissing contest and get down to what you really want tonight.”

Molly felt her whole body tense as she watched Burke’s impassive face, waiting for what sort of reaction she didn’t know. When he suddenly relaxed and smiled, she let out a sigh, feeling a cold trickle of sweat run down her back.

Her boss reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He raised one eyebrow as he offered one to Danner, but the mystery man shook his head in the negative. Burke lit up, then took a long, slow drag from the butt, holding it in and letting it out slowly, watching the other man through the curling smoke. As if coming to a decision, he deliberately took another long drag before dropping the butt onto the concrete, not bothering to crush it underfoot. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a large manila envelope, thick with paper and folded in half lengthwise. He handed it to the mystery man, who took it in a gloved hand.

“This is something that first came across my desk about three weeks ago. It’s nasty, and guaranteed to give any decent man some bad dreams. We haven’t gotten anywhere solid with it, so I’m willing to see what you and your people are capable of. Call it a test case. You interested?”

Danner raised one eyebrow, but otherwise he gave no reply. Instead he opened the envelope and pulled out its contents, walking slowly towards the light of the nearest lamppost as he paged through them. When he was safely out of earshot, Molly hissed her frustration to the other cop

“Dammit, LT, what the hell was that all about?! Are you deliberately trying to screw this up? I thought the idea was to get him to work with us, not send him running.”

“The idea, Inspector, was to find out just who the hell this guy is.” Burke was smiling tightly, and had answered her through thin lips that barely moved. “Is he a legitimate Fed, or some poseur stringing us along? He screwed that up when he changed the location of the meet, we weren’t even able to get a picture of him. So yeah, I’m pushing him, to see how well he handles it. And so far he’s doing pretty good. He’s not rattled, he knows exactly where he stands with us, and doesn’t give a damn how hard I come off. Very professional. I’m beginning to think Freddy Boy might just be the real thing.”

He stared unwaveringly at the mystery man under the bright light, with a concentration that almost frightening in its intensity. Molly found herself staring at her boss, then abruptly shook herself, and wondered once again what the LT’s real agenda was. Whatever it was, he wanted it, and bad.

The young police officer turned her attention back to the mystery man, where he stood under the harsh light across the roof, reading the LT’s report. She watched, trying to read his body language, to anticipate how he was going to react to their proposal. Which was how she caught him pause and stiffen when he came to a page about halfway through the report.

He stared for a long time, flipping once to the next couple of pages, but then returning back to the one that had captivated his attention. Abruptly, he closed the file, paused to put it back into the manila envelope, fold it in half and then stuff it inside his own jacket. He shoved his gloved hands back into his pockets, his back rigid, as he strode towards them at an angle.

“We’ll be in touch,” he snapped as he passed by. The two San Francisco cops watched, bemused, as the stranger approached the elevator, only to bypass both it and the door leading to the stairs, disappearing instead around the corner. For several minutes Molly and Burke watched the spot where the man in the pea coat had disappeared, before it finally sank in that he wasn’t coming back. They shared a quick, puzzled glance, then hurried forward.

The space behind the corner of the elevator shack was empty of everything but shadow, and of the other man there was no sign. The puzzle of where he had gone was quickly solved, by a thick cord wrapped around a utility pipe, trailing over the edge of the retaining wall.

Molly stood there gaping at the slender cord, which wound two flights down to the roof of the medical building below. She looked over at Burke, but for once her boss looked to be at as complete a loss as she was. She swore under her breath in frustration, then said, “Dammit, who the hell is this guy, the freaking Batman?!”

Burke shook his head, bemused, a smile beginning to tug at the corner of his mouth.

“No, he’s not Batman, Molly. But I’ll tell you what, I don’t think he’s Homeland Security, either.”

*****

Two days later Tom called an emergency meeting of the planning committee. As before, Mike and Pablo rode down to San Francisco together, risking death a dozen times in the heavy highway traffic as they squabbled the entire distance. They were still at it when the elevator opened for them onto the warehouse loft, but stopped abruptly when they were greeted by Holly Reisbach. She led the two men into the living room where her father was already waiting. The three of them shared small knowing smiles, and then Murray grinned openly at the blonde girl.

“So, I guess this means you’re officially back in the club, huh?” he asked.

Holly dropped her head and smiled, and when she raised it there was an unfamiliar twinkle in her eye. Part mischief, but also part something else, something both calm and joyous at the same time. Murray’s eyebrow rose, as he thought he recognized that look.

“Yes, you old busybody, it’s true. Tommy and I made up, and not only am I back on the committee, but he and I are together again. And before you ask, no, I’m not going to go into details. You can just go get your kicks off the Playboy channel, like always.”

Pablo threw his head back and laughed, then gathered Holly into his arms in a ferocious hug, his delight with her and the situation obvious. She hugged him back just as hard, resting her chin on the top of his head, expressing her own happiness in kind. When she let go she looked at Tom’s brother a little anxiously, but his own smile and the approving nod he gave her set her at ease. She gave him a hug also, and a quick kiss on the cheek to seal the deal.

“So, how do you feel about this, Dieter?” Pablo asked, glancing over at his old friend as he took a seat. The big German frowned briefly, as if he were considering the question for the first time, but then shrugged.

“I’m not sure it really matters how I feel, Pablo. It is a fact, my daughter has chosen her own path, as she usually does. But she is happy, and Tom is good to her, so I am of course content with that. Although I’m not sure how I feel about her spending the last three nights over here, or that she has dropped hints about moving in permanently.”

“Yes, but you can’t say anything about that, can you, Poppa? Nana told me how you and Momma lived together for six months before you got married,” Holly put in, smugly.

Dieter rolled his eyes and sighed, dramatically. “And I knew someday it would come back to bite me.”

There was general laughter, and the group soon settled into their accustomed seats in the living room. Holly played hostess and passed out drinks, informing them that takeout had already been ordered and would be there soon. When asked about Tom’s whereabouts, she replied “He’s online in the den right now, making some last minute notes. He’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Any idea what this meeting is about, Holly? Tom didn’t tell me or the gnome, he just said to get out asses down here” Mike asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, frowning. “It’s about that file Lt. Burke gave to him, that’s obvious, but he hasn’t shown it to me and says he doesn’t want to talk about it yet. It’s been driving me a little nutty, but there’s something in there that’s hit him pretty hard, and I have no idea what it is.”

The three men questioned her some more, but all she could do was shrug and say that she didn’t know. Her response though caused Dieter no small surprise. He knew his daughter, and was all too aware of her often intrusive curiosity. Holly could never resist a secret, and when one had caught her attention, piqued her interest, she would track it down like a she wolf on a hunt. Neither propriety nor the rights of privacy would deter her, and the fact that she seemed to be respecting Tom Blackwood’s wishes so readily now told him volumes about their relationship. Dieter was now more than glad that he had ceased his efforts to divide the two and gave in to the inevitable. It was obvious that he would only have been wasting his time.

“Pablo, you and Mike were the ones monitoring the meeting. Did anything unexpected happen?” he asked.

The little man snorted. “If you can call it monitoring. With that surveillance van there we decided it would be too dangerous for Tom to go there wired. We use frequency hopping and some pretty tight encryption, which is good enough to spoof almost any kind of scanners I know about, but you never know. So we went in almost blind.”

“Almost?”

A grinning Mike answered the question. “Yeah, we couldn’t use our wire, so we set up some scanners of our own and monitored their equipment. Audio and video both, at least until they went up to the roof. Wanna see a picture of Molly Wu and this guy Burke?”

At Dieter and Holly’s agreements he pulled a file folder from the equipment case he and Murray had brought with them, and then handed out a sheaf of grainy digital pictures. Molly they were both familiar with, but this was the first time any of them had seen the police Lieutenant, who they all suspected was going to be an important figure to the future of the flying man and the Planning Committee.

“You know, I’m still not all that convinced that we really need the cops. I mean, we’ve done okay so far haven’t we?” Mike asked, looking around the room to see if there was agreement for his comment.

“What’re you, retarded or something?” Murray snorted. “We need the cops to arrest the bad guys. Tom can beat the crap out of any lowlife he can lay his hands on, but so what? They’ll be back on the street a week later, doing it all over again. We can’t press charges, hell we can’t even testify in court. The only way we can put these guys behind bars is if we can turn them over to the police. That’s why we need them.”

“Not always. How about those yuppies who tried to rape Penny? We waxed their asses pretty good, you know they’re not going to be kidnapping any street girls again.”

The incident Mike was talking about had occurred when three men had developed a late night hobby of going out on the town together, kidnapping prostitutes, and then beating and raping them. Tom had come across them just as they had snatched a streetwalker named Penny Girl, and had rescued her.

Since neither of them could afford to bring the police into it, it had seemed that the three rapists would get away with their crimes with nothing more serious than a thrashing at Tom and Penny Girl’s hands. But the flying man had gotten creative, and had used the camera in his mask to photograph the contents of their wallets. Before the night was out Mike had posted their driver’s licenses, social security numbers, and credit card numbers on some of the most illicit hacker websites he could find. Their credit history was ruined, and they would probably have identity theft nightmares for years to come. For his part, Pablo had taken pictures of the three from after the fight, and created a flyer that declared who they were, where they lived, what they had been doing and what had been done to them in turn. He had then printed up a hundred copies and sent them to the men’s families, their neighbors, and the companies they worked for. In effect, Tom and the Planning Committee had turned over the rock those three had lived under, and shown a spotlight on them for all the world to see.

Although he had been a major player in the event, Murray waved their actions away dismissively. “Yeah, fun, but it wasn’t enough and you know it. Not near enough. Those guys raped and beat maybe half a dozen women, but they’re not spending a single day in prison for it. They get embarrassed and inconvenienced, maybe get divorced or even lose their jobs. But they’ll probably just move away and start over some place else.

“Alright, maybe the cops couldn’t have done anything, either. But then it’s their job, so maybe they could’ve. If we want to do anything serious, make a real difference in this town, then at some point or other we have to have a working relationship with the police.”

Mike looked around at Holly and Dieter, and saw by their expressions that they too agreed with the little man’s conclusion. Mike shrugged, not really against it himself. He had just felt that it needed to be said. He was about to say so when the door to the back of the loft opened, and his brother stepped out into the living room. In his arms Tom was carrying a laptop computer, a projector, and several file folders. He nodded to the new arrivals, as he set his burden down on the coffee table before addressing them.

“Hi, guys. Thanks for coming. Look, I know you’ve all had questions about the meeting with Molly Wu and her boss, and I appreciate you’re patience. But what Burke handed me that night was pretty intense, and I needed to study it by myself for awhile. I also didn’t want to have to go over this twice. Anyway, if someone will help me set this up, maybe we can get started before the food arrives. Mike?”

Mike blinked, looking closely at his brother, then rose to his feet and began to help set up the laptop and projector. The room was silent while they did so, an air of expectancy gripping everyone but Tom. Yet all the while he was doing so, Mike kept shooting surreptitious glances at the younger Blackwood.

Tom wasn’t saying anything, he wasn’t acting unusually, but he didn’t have to. Mike knew his younger brother, in some ways better than he knew himself, and everything he saw was setting off alarm bells in the back of his skull. Something was wrong, something that had shaken Tom badly, and Mike could see the obvious strain. He looked around briefly as he finished and took his seat, watching the other members of the Committee, and wondered if they could read the signals as plainly as him. Could Holly?

He need not have wondered. Holly may not have asked Tom any of the questions that had been burning inside her, but she could see. And the warm gray eyes she loved to watch had turned to cold smoke two days ago.

The lights in the loft were turned down and the projector turned on. Tom sat on the couch next to Holly, typing on the keyboard of the laptop, as the image on the small screen was projected against the expanse of white wall for everyone to see. As he called up and opened various files, he began to explain to his guests what they were seeing.

“Broadly, the subject of this investigation is called ‘debt bondage’. It’s not a new phrase, it’s actually pretty old, but most people in this country don’t know what it means. At least not by that name. Other names that aren’t really known or understood are ‘peonage’ and ‘indentured servitude’. But they all mean pretty much the same thing.

“Slavery.”

Tom clicked on an icon on the laptop, and on the wall a picture appeared that brought a gasp from Holly, and the shocked hissing of indrawn breath from the others. A young black man stood, half turned away from the camera, somewhere in his early teens. He was handsome, a good looking kid but with grown up eyes that looked like they had seen way too much. Lost eyes. His bare back was an ugly, obscene mass of scar tissue.

“Slavery still exists,” Tom said, as he proceeded to flip through a gallery of more pictures like the last. People both young and old, male and female, many of them children. “It’s illegal worldwide, by both local law and international treaty, but a lot of third world countries just don’t enforce it. In most cases the victims are the lowest level of that society, the dirt poor and religious minorities, the people with no power or the means to protect themselves.

“Before you ask, no, this isn’t small, isolated cases in rural areas out in the badlands. This is big, international business. For instance, about 40% of the world’s chocolate is grown and harvested in Cote d’Ivore, the Ivory Coast. And it’s estimated that about 90% of that comes from slave labor. In other words, about every third bar of chocolate you eat probably came from the sweat and blood of someone like him.”

Thankfully, the image on the wall soon returned to that of the computer’s desktop. Tom continued his briefing in the shocked silence that followed the disturbing pictures.

“Debt bondage is simple. You owe a debt to somebody, and they force you to work to pay it off. Maybe your crops fail, and to keep your family from starving you borrow money, usually at loan shark rates. When you can’t pay it off, they take you, or maybe one of your kids, to work it off.

“How do they get away with it? Simple, really. Mostly it’s apathy. It’s the same old story, the richer, more powerful countries have their own problems, and they’re just not interested in looking at the internal conflicts of some third world shit pile. Besides, they argue that it’s not technically slavery at all, because as soon as you’ve paid what you owe, you’re free to go. But the reality is that almost no one ever pays these kind of debts off. The UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery estimates that there are at least twenty million debt laborers in the world today, and most experts believe that number is ridiculously low.”

More clicking, and several newspaper articles were called up, staying on the screen just long enough to read the headlines before the next one came to replace it. ‘POLICE RAID DOWNTOWN SWEATSHOP: 27 FOUND CHAINED TO WORKBENCHES’. ‘8 DIE LOCKED IN TRUCK IN ABORTED BORDER CROSSING’. ‘COAST GUARD STOPS CONTAINER SHIP, 50 ILLEGAL ALIENS ABOARD’. ‘NEW YORK SEX TRADE FLOODED WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS’.

“And it happens here, too. In this country. Illegal aliens, mostly from Asia and South America, but recently lots of women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, too. Some low life smuggler promises to help them get into the States for a fee, and even provide them with a job and a place to live when they arrive. They get smuggled in inside shipping containers, moving vans, the trunks of cars, whatever. Some of them die on the way, sometimes abandoned out in the middle of nowhere, other times just robbed and killed.

“Those who do make it find that instead of the American dream, they’ve got the nightmare of slavery. They’re told they now owe additional charges, for food, rent, whatever. It keeps on piling up, and never ends. There have been cases of debt slaves being locked up or even chained, but they’re relatively rare, it’s not really necessary. These people are in a strange country, illegally, most of them don’t even speak the language. They can’t go to the police, and if they run they don’t have anyplace to go.” The gallery started again, only this time the subject seemed to be different. Instead

of scars and shackles, and headlines of atrocities, the screen filled with shots of women. Young, pretty, mostly brown skinned, and all wearing tight or revealing clothing. Many of them were smiling, but on closer look you could see that it did not reach their eyes. Those eyes looked closed, wary, or haunted.

“The big boom in the debt bondage industry these days, especially in large cities like San Francisco, is sexual slavery. There was a series of stories in one of the papers last year, about a young girl in South Korea. Her parents scrimped and saved to send her to college, but they had nothing left for her when she got there. Some girls introduced her to the joys of credit cards, and before you know it she’s ten thousand dollars in debt.

“Either the credit card companies in Korea have different laws, or they lied to her, they said they were going to take her parents’ house if she didn’t pay up. She’s desperate, so she answers an ad in the local paper offering big bucks to work as a restaurant hostess overseas in America. She ends up beaten, raped, and put to work in a message parlor down in the tenderloin. And unlike other exploited illegals, she wants to go home, she’d love to be deported. But now they tell her that if she doesn’t pay off her debt, they’ll kill her entire family.”

Tom paused, and then said, “There are approximately ninety licensed massage parlors in the city of San Francisco. Most of them are fronts for this kind of enforced prostitution.”

There was a stunned silence, one where the shock could almost be seen hanging in the room, as the rest of the Committee tried to take in the enormity of what they had just heard. To hear that such an abomination still existed in the modern world was disturbing. Hearing that it not only existed in your own backyard, but was flourishing, went so far beyond that it could barely be conceived.

“Jesus,” Pablo muttered, staring around at the others, knowing they felt the same things he was. Even the stoic face of his friend Dieter was looking gaunt, and Holly had curled her legs under her and was staring fixedly at her hands. “I’ve lived in this town for twenty years, and I’ve cruised past places like that every day, but I never knew… How do they get away with it? I mean, can’t the cops close those places down?”

“They can, and sometimes they do, but it’s hard. Most of these girls are too terrified to even talk to the cops, and there’s no one else to complain. They’d need to run a sting operation on each and every one of these places, and they just don’t have anywhere near enough man power. Sometimes the Department of Health can come in and take their license away, or immigration can come through and bust them, but so what? You only need one person with a massage therapists’ license to act as a front to open another one two blocks down the street. There have to be some fundamental changes in the law in how we handle illegals and those who exploit them to make any sort of dent in this kind of thing.”

“So then, what can we do, Tom?” Dieter asked, his words spoken softly yet with an underlying edge. “Why are we here? If the police in this city cannot stop this, what do they expect us to do about it?”

“We’re here, Dieter, because bad as this situation is, it’s about to get ten times worse. And we’re going to stop that.

“Like I was saying, there are three groups that specialize in bringing illegals into the US. The ones who smuggle Mexican and South American illegals are known as Coyoteros, or Coyotes. The ones who smuggle Asians are known as Snakeheads. And the new kids on the block who bring in from the Eastern Bloc countries are usually just labeled Russian Mob, although they’re actually several small groups from different countries there.

“In most of these third world places where slavery exists, it’s pretty open. Villages are raided, girls kidnapped off the street, the buying and selling of human beings just like any other commodity. Some places even have auctions. We don’t have things that bad here, it’s just not feasible to smuggle large groups of people in chains across the Rio Grande, or locked up inside a cargo container. At least, not until now.”

Another series of clicks, another montage of pictures danced across the screen. Children. Little girls, little boys, none more than thirteen years old. Many of them injured, sporting bruises and raw wounds, bandages and casts. Some of them were dead, in crime scene photos with tape around their young bodies.

Children.

Tom paused while the pictures of young victims filled the screen, taking a deep breath, trying to swallow the thing that was swelling in his throat. Eventually he gathered himself, and when he continued his voice was almost normal.

“Earlier I said that it wasn’t possible to smuggle slaves across the border, and it’s true, you need your cargo to be cooperative. There’s too much chance of one of them crying out or making a noise at the wrong time if they know what they really are. But someone found a cargo that could be cowed, one that wouldn’t run away or try to escape. About eighteen months ago the FBI reported a huge increase in kiddie prostitution all across the western and south western states. Foreign nationals, children speaking Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Czechoslovakian. Kids they couldn’t account for. Working in brothels, on the streets, living in the homes of known pedophiles. Most of them too scared to talk, but those that did telling the same evil story, of kidnapping and abuse by strange men. It became obvious then that there was one central gang behind the whole thing, but until a couple of months ago they had no clue as to who it was.”

Another click, and a photograph of a middle aged man appeared on the wall. Not posed, the man appeared to be walking, turning sideways as if talking to someone next to him and just off camera. The suit he wore was expensive, as were the gold rings that decorated his fingers. He was slender, his features a bit too plain to be called handsome, with jet black hair and brown eyes with just a touch of an epicanthic fold.

“Meet Ricardo Wing, half Chinese and half Mexican, born in a little fishing town off the Baja Peninsula called Rojo Ensenada. He’s now one of the richest, most influential men in Mexicali, which happens to have the largest population of Chinese in all of Mexico. He’s billed as an entrepreneur, owns several businesses outright, and has his finger in a couple of dozen more. Most of his wealth, though, was built on the slave trade. Wing is pretty much a one of a kind phenomenon in that business, he’s a strong leader with blood ties to both the Coyotes and the Snakeheads, and probably the only person who can get both groups to work together. Which is exactly what he’s been doing for the past two years.”

Another click, and the picture of Ricardo Wing was replaced by another photograph, that of a round eyed and solemn little girl, with long black hair cut into bangs and held by a blue silk ribbon. She wore a T-shirt with a picture of a teddy bear on it, and around her neck was a small, silver cross.

“The police finally recovered this girl, Mingyu Tanchez, age nine, here in San Francisco. It turns out she’s also from Rojo Ensenada, the same village Wing was born in and that he practically owns now. Apparently her father opposed the son of a bitch, so he was killed and she was taken as a reprisal. But she knows all about Wing, she saw him personally kill her father, and heard him give the orders to have her sold.”

“So the authorities not only have a name,” Dieter put in, “They also have a witness.”

“Had. Had a witness,” Tom said, and then stopped, looking away. Oh, God, it hurt. It hurt worse than when Miko left, and took his son. It hurt worse than when Grandma died when he was ten. It hurt.

“Mingyu was secretly placed with an out of town foster home, the family of a young sheriff’s deputy in Napa. A week ago she was playing on a swing set in her front yard, when a faded brown Camaro drove by, and someone with a machine gun nearly cut her in half.”

The Committee members stared at him, with a silence that seemed to echo, and he returned it with a stony gaze of his own. They had never even heard of Mingyu Tanchez until five minutes ago. But her picture was still up on the wall, and no matter how briefly a child that young may come into your life there is always some sort of connection. They all now felt the loss of this little girl that they hadn’t even known.

It was Holly who first saw it, the haunted look behind the stone in her lover’s eyes. “Tom? What else? What haven’t you told us yet?”

He stared at her for a moment, before stirring himself and rising to his feet. He walked from the room, and all eyes were fixed upon him when he returned, carrying a large plastic freezer bag. He tossed the bag onto the coffee table, where his gathered family and friends could see that it contained two men’s wallets, and a sheaf of folded documents.

“Mingyu… she was the girl in the alley. The one that was being sold, on the night I first met you and Dieter. And I never followed up on it. I had their ID’s, their vehicle registration, everything I could possibly ask for to track down both the guy who sold her and the one who bought her, but I never did. I was too busy playing comic book hero to remember.

“And now Mingyu Tanchez, age nine, is dead. And I might as well have been the one who pulled the trigger on her.”

Oh, God, it hurt.