Rogue Lawyer

When I stop, a figure suddenly appears from the darkness and yanks the passenger door handle. I press the button to unlock it and Swanger jumps inside. He points left, says, “Go that way and take your time. We’re headed back to the interstate.”

“Great to see you again, Arch.” He’s wearing a black do-rag that covers his eyebrows and ears. Everything else is black too, from the banda

“Where’s the money?” he demands.

I nod over my shoulder and he grabs the bag. He opens the cigar box, and with a small key-chain light counts the money. He looks up, says, “Take a right,” then keeps counting. As we are leaving the town, he takes a deep, satisfied breath, and offers me a goofy grin. “All here,” he says.

“You doubt me?”

“Damned right I doubt you, Rudd.” He points to the Shell station and says, “You want a beer?”

“No. I don’t normally drink beer at five-thirty in the morning.”

“It’s the best time. Pull in.”

He goes inside without the money. He takes his time, selects a bag of chips to go with his six-pack, and strolls back to the van as if he has no concerns whatsoever. When we’re moving again, he rips off a can and pops the top. He slurps it and opens the chips.

“Where are we going, Arch?” I ask with no small amount of irritation.

“Get on the interstate and head south. This van still smells new, you know that, Rudd? I think I liked the old one better.” He crunches a mouthful of chips and washes it all down with a gulp of beer.

“Too bad. Don’t spill any crumbs, okay? Partner gets really pissed off if he finds crumbs in the van.”

“That your thug?”

“You know who it is.” We’re on Route 63, still dark and deserted. No sign of sunrise. I keep glancing around thinking I’ll see some of the surveillance, but of course they’re too good for that. They’re back there, or up there, or waiting at the interstate. Then again, what do I know about such things? I’m a lawyer.

He pulls a small phone out of his shirt pocket and holds it up for me to see. He says, “Know one thing, Rudd. If I see a cop, smell a cop, or hear a cop, all I do is push this button on this phone, and somewhere, far away, bad things happen. You understand?”

“Got it. Now, where, Arch? That’s the first thing. Where, when, how? You have the money; now you owe us the story. Where is the girl and how do we get her?”

He drains the first can, smacks his lips, reloads another mouthful of chips, and for a few miles it seems as though he has gone mute. Then he opens another beer. At the intersection, he says, “Go south.”

Traffic in the northbound lane is busy as the early commuters head for the City. The southbound, though, is practically deserted. I look at him and want to slap the smirk off his face. “Arch?”

He takes another drink and sits taller. “They’ve taken the girls from Chicago to Atlanta. They move around a lot, every four or five months. They’ll work a town pretty hard, but then after a while people start talking, the cops start sniffing around, and so they disappear, set up shop somewhere else. It’s hard to keep secrets when you’re offering pretty young women at good prices.”

“If you say so. Is Jiliana Kemp still alive?”

“Oh yes. Very much so. She’s quite active, not like she has a choice.”

“And she’s in Atlanta?”

“The Atlanta area.”

“It’s a big city, Arch, and we don’t have time to play games. If you have an address, then give it to me. That’s the deal.”

He takes a deep breath and another long drink. “They’re in a big strip mall where there’s traffic, lots of cars and people come and go. Atlas Physical Therapy is the name of the company, but it’s nothing but an upper-end brothel. No number in the phone book. Therapists on call. Appointments only, no walk-ins. Every customer has to be referred by another customer, and they—the head therapists—know who they’re dealing with. So if you’re a customer, you park in the lot, maybe step into the Baskin-Robbins for an ice cream, stroll along the sidewalk, then duck into Atlas. A guy wearing a white lab coat says hello and acts real nice, but under the coat is a loaded piece. He pretends to be a therapist, and he does in fact know a lot about broken bones. He takes your money, say $300 cash, and leads you back to some rooms. He points to one, you walk in, and there’s a small bed and a girl who’s young and pretty and almost naked. You get twenty minutes with her. You leave through another door and no one knows you’ve had your therapy. The girls work all afternoon—they get the mornings off because they’re up late—then they load ’em up and take ’em to the strip clubs where they dance and do their routines. At midnight, they take ’em home, to a fairly nice apartment complex where they’re locked down for the night.”

“Who is they?”

“They are the traffickers, some extremely nasty guys. A gang, a ring, a cartel, a disciplined band of criminals, most with ties to eastern Europe, but some local boys as well. They abuse the girls, keep them terrified and confused and hooked on heroin. Most people in this country don’t believe there’s sex trafficking in their cities, but it’s there. It’s everywhere. They, the traffickers, prey on runaways, homeless kids, girls from bad families looking for escape. It’s a sick business, Rudd. Really sick.”

I start to rebuke him and curse him, remind him of his rather important role in a business he seems to detest, but it would serve no purpose. Instead, I go along with him. “How many girls now?”

“It’s hard to say. They split ’em up, move ’em around. A few have disappeared for good.”

I don’t really want to pursue this. Only a creep involved in the business would know so much about it.

He points and says, “Turn around at this exit and go back north.”

“Where are we going, Arch?”

“I’ll show you. Just hang on.”

“Okay. Now about that address.”

“Here’s what I would do if I were the cops,” he says with a sudden voice of authority. “I’d watch the place, Atlas, and I’d nab a john when he comes out, fresh from therapy. He’s probably a local insurance agent who’s not getting any at home and he’s taken a shine to one of the girls—you can actually ask for your favorite but the request is nonbinding; they got their rules—or maybe he’s a local ambulance chaser like you, Rudd, just another sleazy lawyer who’s hitting on everything but not scoring much, and for three hundred bucks he gets his therapy.”

“Anyway.”

“Anyway, they grab the guy, scare the living shit out of him, and within minutes he’s singing like a choirboy. He tells them everything, especially the layout of the interior. They make him cry, then let him go. They, the cops, already have a warrant. They surround the place with one of those SWAT squads, and it goes down beautifully. The girls are rescued. The traffickers are caught red-handed, and if the cops do it right they can flip one of them instantly. If he sings, he’ll implicate the entire ring. There could be hundreds of girls and dozens of goons. Could be huge, Rudd, all because of you and me.”

“Yeah, we’re a real team, Swanger.”

I take the exit ramp, cross over the interstate, and reenter it headed north. All the eyes watching my van must be wondering what the hell. My passenger pops another top, his third. The chips are gone and I’m sure there are crumbs left behind. I push it to seventy miles an hour and say, “The address, Arch.”

“It’s in the suburb of Vista View, about ten miles due west of downtown Atlanta. The strip mall is called West Ivy. Atlas Physical Therapy is next door to Su

“And Jiliana Kemp is one of them?”

“I’ve already answered that, Rudd. You think I’d tell you all this if she wasn’t there. But the cops better go in quick. These people can roll up and move in a matter of minutes.”