Babylon Sisters (22 page)

62

The police arrived five minutes after Louis came over with two of Blue Hamilton’s guys with him in a big black Lincoln, in case we had some more uninvited company. One officer looked around outside while the other one took a statement from B.J. and a shorter one from me. I couldn’t tell them what I was really worried about. Not until I talked to B.J. first. Did this happen because I told Ezola what I knew? Did she activate Sam, who sent Ponytail to take care of the problem? The thought of what might have happened made me feel sick at my foolishness. We were at war and I had called the enemy with our battle plan.

The police sergeant was talking to Louis in his office, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I sat at Miss Iona’s desk and listened to B.J. tell the police officer that the Escalade they were driving had no plates in the front and a vanity plate in the back that read simply
SMOOTH
.

The cop shook his head. “That shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“Is that it?” B.J. said, glancing over at me. I wondered if I looked as miserable as I felt.

“That’s it,” said the officer. “Are Hamilton’s men going to be out here the rest of the night?”

B.J. nodded. “Tomorrow, too.”

The
Sentinel
office wasn’t in West End, but Blue was a friend.

“Good. Then call us if you need us.”

“We will.”

Louis and the sergeant had closed the door, so B.J. sat on the edge of Miss Iona’s desk and looked at me. “You okay?”

“I think this is all my fault.”

He shook his head. “How can it be your fault? We’ve been getting threatening phone calls all week.”

“All week?”

“Ever since Miriam’s story came out. Somebody’s onto us, and they want us to know it.”

“I told Ezola.”

He looked at me, surprised. “You told her?”

I nodded. “I’m so sorry! Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you now if you paid me. I was mad at you for not telling me about Sam. It was just stupid. I’m so sorry!”

“Listen, Cat,” he said, breaking in when I choked up in the middle of my apology. “It doesn’t matter. All this means is that Sam’s the one who’s onto us. It doesn’t mean Ezola told him anything.”

I wanted to believe him. “How do you think he found out?”

He shrugged. “How did they find us at the restaurant? It doesn’t matter. It’s Sam who’s got something to lose, and burning up this building is probably not all he’s prepared to do to shut us up.”

“What are we going to do?”

He pointed through the glass cubicle wall, where we could see Louis and the sergeant shaking hands. “I think we’re about to find out.”

Louis walked him to the door and they shook hands again.

“Twenty-four hours,” said the sergeant. “Then we’ll have to move on it. Arson is a serious crime.”

“I hear you,” said Louis. “Twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours for what?” B.J. said.

Louis glanced over at me. “You look like hell.”

“I feel like shit,” I said. “Are they going after Sam?”

“I got them to give us twenty-four hours. That’s it.”

“Twenty-four hours for what?”

“To see what he’ll do next,” Louis said. “If B.J.’s source is telling us the truth, Sam’s borrowed money from some people in Miami and he can’t pay it back.”

“He’s had to shut down some of their operations,” B.J. said. “Now his name is in the paper, and that makes them very nervous. It’s bad for business. They haven’t been able to move the girls through here as easily as he told them he’d be able to.”

Those pictures of Miriam and Etienne were doing their job. Miriam was still lying low at Miss Iona’s, but the problem was no longer abstract. It had a face and a smile and a big sister who would never stop searching.

“My contact says Sam offered them some girls he’s been holding back as collateral,” B.J. said softly. “I think Etienne is one of the girls he’s going to use to buy himself some time.”

I stood up and looked at him and then at Louis. This was Atlanta, Georgia, a place where B.J. said black women
rule
and people were coming here to trade in human beings like slavery was still legal as long as nobody saw it except the slaves. “Tell me that’s not going to happen.”

“We’ve got twenty-four hours to make sure it doesn’t,” Louis said. “If I’m guessing correctly, he’ll lead us right to the girls. Then we’ve got him.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” I said, suddenly exhausted.

“Yes,” Louis said. “Go home and get some sleep. Something tells me tomorrow is going to be a very long day.”

63

Louis wanted me to stay at his house, but I wasn’t ready to go into hiding yet, so B.J. had volunteered to spend the night, and I had agreed to let him. If Sam knew where I lived, that guy with the ponytail probably did, too, and I’d had enough excitement for one day.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, after I locked the front door behind us. “There’s plenty to eat if you’re hungry, and there are clean sheets on the bed in Phoebe’s room if you want to get some sleep.”

He smiled at the specificity of my invitation to sleep over, but seduction was the last thing on my mind, and I didn’t want to send any mixed messages. “I can just stretch out down here on the couch.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, heading for the stairs, “but it’s not nearly as comfortable as the one in Louis’s office, so don’t be shy if you change you mind.”

“I won’t. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said, but I could feel him still looking at me, so I turned around. “You were great tonight.”

“I specialize in scaring off first-time arsonists,” he said, refusing to play hero.

“I don’t just mean that part. I mean the part right before that, where we promised to always tell each other the truth. That means a lot to me.”

“I like that part, too,” he said, “but there was one other part I liked even better.”

“What was that?”

“The part where you said you loved me.”

“That’s one of my all-time favorites, too,” I said, but I was too exhausted to surrender. Inside my house, there was peace, but outside we were still at war. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Around four, his footsteps on the stairs woke me. He passed my half-open door without slowing his steps and turned into Phoebe’s room. I heard him turn on the lamp and I heard the bed creak a little under his weight. It made me feel good to know that he was sleeping in her space to protect her mother. I knew it would make her feel good, too, and I needed a visual so I could describe this moment for her later. I got up before I lost my nerve, slipped on my big white terry-cloth robe and my Tweety Bird house shoes so he wouldn’t think I was trying to lure him into a predawn tryst, eased out into the hallway, and looked through Phoebe’s open door.

B.J. was sitting on the side of her bed reading a book I recognized as one of Phoebe’s favorites, Alice Walker’s
The Temple of My Familiar.
I remember discovering that book at Spelman, loving it, and begging B.J. to read it, but he never did. Now here he sat, twenty years later, wide-awake at four
A.M.
, hunched over it like there was no place else he’d rather be.

I tiptoed back into my room without letting him see me and closed the door quietly. I didn’t even need to look at the grubby little card Louis had given me that I’d been carrying around for days with Phoebe’s cell phone number on it. The number was a permanent part of my memory bank. I picked up the phone and dialed up my daughter in Massachusetts. Her lovely voice clicked on instantly.

“It’s Phoebe. Leave me a message and don’t forget to do something for freedom today.”

That made me smile the same way I bet it made Louis smile every time he called her.

“Hello, Baby Doll,” I said. “It’s me. I miss you more than you know.” I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t start getting all sentimental. “I’m sorry I lied to you about your father. There is never a time when you deserve anything less than the one hundred percent truth from me. That’s always been our deal and it still is. We’ll talk when you get here for Thanksgiving, and I promise, no more secrets,
ever
!” Then I got a little sentimental in spite of myself. “I love you, baby. Good night.”

I hung up before my voice got all weird and she could hear it, although I think she would forgive me a little quavering. Her message said I had to do something for freedom. It didn’t say I couldn’t get a little emotional while I was doing it.

64

When the phone woke me up again at seven thirty, I hoped it was Phoebe, calling me back, but it was Louis. He didn’t even say good morning.

“Is B.J. there with you?”

“Yes, what’s wrong?”

“You two need to get over here as quick as you can.”

“We’re on the way.”

The neighborhood around the
Sentinel
office was coming alive. The stores were opening for business. Blue’s guys were still sitting out front. People who were headed out to work gave them a wide berth. In West End, we knew they were on our side. Over here, it was still every man for himself, and two well-dressed, unknown gentlemen in a big black car were nobody you wanted to mess with unnecessarily. B.J. and I spoke to them as we hurried inside, and they tipped their hats to acknowledge the greeting.

Louis was in his office drinking coffee with a young woman who was eating a take-out order of pancakes and sausage from Thelma’s restaurant next door like it was her last meal. When we walked in together, she stopped with her fork halfway home and looked at Louis.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Finish your breakfast.”

She did, with a single-mindedness of purpose that was either a testament to Thelma’s ability to burn, or to the girl’s extremely healthy appetite.

“Good morning,” Louis said, coming out from behind his desk. “Let’s get you two some coffee. I’ll introduce everybody in a minute.”

He shooed us out the door and over to the coffeemaker where it sat behind Miss Iona’s desk to discourage anyone else from trying their luck with the ancient machine.

“Who is she?” I said as B.J. poured two mugs and handed me one.

When I had gotten up to tell him Louis wanted us at the
Sentinel
ASAP, he was still sitting on the side of Phoebe’s bed reading. He hadn’t been to sleep at all. We hadn’t taken the time to make coffee before we left the house, and I breathed in the rich aroma gratefully.

“Her name’s Celine Hudson. She works for Ezola Mandeville.”

“She’s a maid?”

“She’s Ezola’s personal maid, hired by the woman herself and sworn to secrecy with a thinly veiled threat of great physical harm if she ever told anybody what she saw.”

My heart sank. Ezola was all up in this madness. How could I have been so naive?

“Go on.”

“Miss Mandeville has three or four houses,” Louis said, “but this girl has been working at the one where they’ve been keeping Etienne.”

I almost dropped my coffee. “She’s here in Atlanta?”

Louis nodded.

“This woman has seen her?”

“According to Miss Hudson, she sees her several times a week.”

“Where?”

“She doesn’t know. They blindfold her before they take her to the house. She said it must be in the country, since she hasn’t seen any other houses around it, but it only takes about twenty minutes to get there.”

That wasn’t much to go on, but there wasn’t a lot of country left within twenty minutes of Atlanta. She was probably being taken to some kind of subdivision.

“What kind of place is it?” B.J. asked.

Louis sighed deeply, like he wished he had a better answer to the question. When he spoke, his voice was flat and sad, or angry, I couldn’t tell which one. “They’ve got four women there. All under twenty. All beautiful. All virgins.”

B.J.’s surprised face mirrored my own. “What do you mean, all virgins?” I said. “What are they doing with them?”

There was no way to make the words sound any nicer, so Louis didn’t even try. “They’re keeping them for sale.”

I leaned against Miss Iona’s desk. “For sale to whom?”

“Probably to these guys from Miami who loaned Sam the money.”

“What are they going to do with them?”

“Keep them for their own or sell them again, probably. There’s always a market for virgins.” B.J. spit out the words with more than a reporter’s outrage. He had been sitting in his daughter’s room all night. What I heard in this voice was a father’s cold fury.

“Can I talk to her?” I said.

“Come in and let me introduce you,” Louis said. “She should be done with her breakfast.”

Celine Hudson was wiping the corners of her mouth delicately, like she had just finished tea with the queen. This time when we walked in, she smiled nervously.

“Miss Hudson, these are my colleagues, Ms. Sanderson and Mr. Johnson,” Louis said. “Will you tell them what you told me?”

She looked at each of us, then back to Louis. She was a short, fat woman who was probably ten years younger than she looked. It wasn’t just the extra thirty or forty pounds she was already lugging around. There was something in the way she carried herself that made her look like she had already given up. Like she had looked around and food was the most interesting and reliable option, so she took it. She was wearing the same uniform that the maids wore in the main Mandeville building, and her short, dark hair was neatly pressed and curled. She looked old-fashioned, solid, and very nervous.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Tell them why you came here this morning.”

“It was that picture,” she said, pointing at the issue of the
Sentinel
on Louis’s desk with Miriam holding the picture of Etienne on the cover. “When I saw that picture of her and her sister in the window, I knew it was her. That’s all she ever talked about was her sister. I wasn’t supposed to be talking to ’em no way, but she was so nice. She was always askin’ me stuff. She begged me to tell her where they were—you know, what city—and even though I wasn’t supposed to say, I told her they were right near Atlanta. What did I say that for? After that, she was always asking me would I smuggle a note out so she could contact her sister. Asking me would I call the police for ’em. You know, stuff like that.”

“Did you ever take a note out for her?”

Celine shook her head. “No, ma’am. They search me when I come in and they search me when I go out. They real paranoid about somebody comin’ to get those girls. If I help ’em, I’ll lose my job for sure.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder what was going to happen to them?”

She shrugged. “I sorta knew they was keepin’ ’em for some men.”

She knew exactly what they were keeping them for, but she had decided to keep quiet anyway.

“They wasn’t livin’ bad. They up in that nice house. They got they own clothes and cable TV, and they let ’em do each other’s nails sometimes. They even did mine once, but I had to take it off before I went home. They ain’t payin’ me to be out there getting my nails done.”

The fact that they were being held hostage until they could be sold or bartered off didn’t seem to bother this woman at all.

“What were they paying you for?” B.J. said.

“Nothin’ bad,” Celine Hudson said quickly, sounding a little defensive. Maybe she did feel a little guilty after all. “Just regular maid work. Cleanin’ up, washin’ clothes. It’s not bad, and once she trust you to work at the house, Miss Mandeville pay real good.”

Tell me about it,
I thought, but she still hadn’t answered the first question. “If you’re not prepared to help them, why are you here?”

She raked her fingers through her hair and then looked at me. “Damn if I know,” she said. “I just kind of like that one whose picture y’all had in the paper. She always tryin’ to help me clean up or do their wash, even after I told her if she do my job, what they need me for. They sure ain’t gonna let me do hers.”

She chuckled to herself at the idea, but we just looked at her. “So yesterday, she came up to me and she was crying. I ain’t never seen her cry before, so I thought one of the guys they have watchin’ ’em had got after her, but she said no. They told them they were having company this weekend and to fix themselves up nice.”

“What kind of company?”

“Some men comin’ to buy ’em,” she said softly. “That guy with the sexy voice told ’em to get ready to move by tomorrow night.”

Sam’s voice was better than a fingerprint.

“Why was she crying?”

“She don’t wanna go. She said if she have to leave Atlanta, her sister will never find her.” She looked down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “I think she scared, too, you know, of what they gonna do after savin’ ’em up all this time. She ain’t never had no man before.”

I took a deep breath. “So what did you tell her?”

She looked straight at me. “I told her I had to worry about keeping my own job and I was sorry I couldn’t help her, but when I went home yesterday, I kept thinking how scared she was and how keepin’ ’em like that to sell ’em wasn’t nothin’ like what Miss Mandeville says when you read about her in the magazines, and how would I feel if that was my baby sister, if I had one, you know? I used to be proud I worked for her, but how can I be proud of doin’ this?”

She frowned a little and shook her head. “Then when I went to Thelma’s for my pancakes this morning, I saw that picture in y’all’s window and it just . . . I couldn’t go past her, so I come inside and told him.”

She pointed at Louis, then looked back at me and B.J. again like she hoped the three of us could do what she didn’t know how to do by herself.

“Thank you, Miss Hudson,” Louis said. “You did the right thing.”

“So what y’all gonna do about it?”

“We’re going to go get her,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows and her eyes looked surprised. “For real?”

I nodded. “For real.”

“The rest of ’em, too?”

“Every last one,” I said. “I promise.”

She grinned at all of us then, like the way I said it, maybe it was true. I could tell she hoped it was, and I forgave her for being so indecisive about coming forward. She wasn’t ready for the complicated questions her situation had presented to her. The choice between helping a stranger and feeding yourself is always difficult, and acting like it wasn’t devalued the courage of what she had done.

“Can I ask you a few more questions?” B.J. said.

Celine Hudson shrugged her shoulders. “Go ahead. I ain’t got to worry about getting to work on time. Soon as they see I didn’t show up for work this morning, I’m fired anyway.”

“What you did is really important,” I said, trying to take the sting out of the hard times she probably had ahead.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, “but that’s not why I told on ’em.”

“Why did you do it?” I really wanted to know.

“Because some stuff is just wrong,” she said. “And if you know it and you don’t do nothing, you wrong, too.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” I stood up and headed for the office door. “Excuse me, please.”

I left Celine Hudson talking to B.J. and went out to Miss Iona’s desk and picked up the phone.

Louis followed me out. “Who are you calling?”

“I’m calling Ezola Mandeville,” I said, punching in her private number. “She has to answer for Etienne.”