Lady Justice and the Broken Hearts Read online

  “What kind of money are we talking about?”

  “Our fee is a flat thousand. The girl gets five hundred, we get four hundred and the driver gets a hundred.”

  “Then what does the girl usually get for a roll in the hay, nothing kinky?”

  “Usually another thousand.”

  “Holy crap! That’s an expensive date!”

  “Nobody ever complains,” Veronica said, with an air of pride. “They get their money’s worth.”

  I looked at Kevin. He just grinned and nodded. A satisfied customer.

  “Okay, the girl collects her fee. Then what?”

  “Then she texts her driver who has been waiting out front. The usual time allotted is one hour. It doesn’t take long to get these guys off. If it’s the normal hour, the driver will hang around and take the girl home. If she has negotiated an all-nighter, which is rare, the driver takes off and the girl takes a cab the next morning.”

  “Do the girls ever run into any trouble?”

  “Hardly ever, but we’ve got that covered too. Each one has a panic button on a necklace --- like old people wear in case they fall and can’t get up, only our signal goes to the driver. If that beeper goes off, our guy is ready to bust through the door and take care of business.”

  “So what happened the night of Candy’s last date?”

  “Nothing unusual. It was the typical hour appointment. The driver waited and took her straight to her apartment. That’s the last contact we had with her.”

  “Have you contacted the police? Filed a missing persons report?”

  “We were hoping to avoid that,” Bart replied. “We’re a legitimate business. All we do is schedule an appointment with one of our girls and the client. What the girls do from that point is their own business. If we get the cops involved, it could put all our girls at risk.”

  “You know the score, Walt,” Kevin interjected. “Think about it. How excited are the cops going to be when they find out that the girl is a hooker and only been missing twenty-four hours?”

  “Okay, I see your point. Any chance Candy might have had a snootful of the business and decided to call it quits?”

  “I might be able to help with that,” Veronica replied. “I let Candy stay at my place for a few months until she got on her feet, so I know her pretty well. For her, Elite Escorts was just a means to an end. She was using the money to pay her way through college. She was a sophomore at UMKC. She attended school during the day and worked the service in the evenings. She was determined to get her degree. A lot of the girls do that.”

  “Really?”

  “Think about it,” Kevin said. “A good secretary might make fifteen bucks an hour for an eight hour day spent filing, typing and getting coffee for some jerk boss. That’s six hundred a week. Candy could pocket fifteen hundred for one evening’s work.”

  “Very well then, she didn’t run off and she wasn’t abducted by her john, so what does that leave? Any jealous boyfriends? Jilted lovers? Angry wives of cheating husbands?”

  “I’m pretty sure Candy wasn’t involved with anyone,” Veronica replied. “She was really focused on her classes and --- well, it’s not easy finding a decent guy in her line of work.”

  She patted Kevin on the knee. “I was lucky.”

  “There’s absolutely no way a john or his spouse could get any information on one of our girls,” Bart added. “No names, no addresses, no phone numbers. Everything goes through the service.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t give us much to go on.”

  “We realize that,” Emily replied, “but Candy was part of our family. Please help us find her.”

  I looked at Kevin and as I expected, he gave me a nod.

  “Sure, we’ll give it a try, but no promises.”

  “Thank you so much,” Bart replied, shaking my hand. “I’ve already given Kevin our file on Candy. If we think of anything else, we’ll give you a call.”

  After Bart and Emily were out the door, I turned to Kevin. “Already had the file, eh?”

  “I knew you’d take the case. You’re just an old softie.”

  “One more thing. Did you really pay two grand for your first evening with Veronica?”

  “If you’ll remember, when I came to you for a referral I had one foot in the grave. You know the old saying, ‘You can’t take it with you.’ One choice was to leave all my money to my sister and her snarky husband. The other choice was to spend a glorious evening with a beautiful woman. What would you have done?”

  “Sorry I asked!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Candace Carter lived in a modest apartment building on Brookside, not far from the UMKC campus. The building was a four-plex and she occupied #3 on the second floor.

  Kevin knocked several times and, getting no response, pulled his set of lock picks from his pocket. Moments later, we were inside.

  It was a typical bachelorette pad, living room, eat-in kitchen, bedroom and a bath. Everything was neat and tidy, no signs of a struggle. A coffee pot and cereal bowl had been washed and placed in one of those wire drainer things to dry. The bed had been made.

  Kevin looked in the closet while I examined the contents of a chest-of-drawers.

  “Clothes are here,” Kevin said. “She didn’t bail.”

  There was nothing of interest in the living room, just a few women’s magazines and a couple of DVD’s.

  I took another quick look around. “You know what’s missing?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Books! Text books. If Candy was a student, where are her books?”

  Kevin thought for a moment. “You’re right. We might just make a P.I. out of you yet. That tells me that she had her books with her and was on her way to class when she disappeared. Good work.”

  We locked up and were on the way out when we met an elderly lady carrying a bag of groceries.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am,” Kevin said, “do you live in this building?”

  “Sure do, going on twenty-two years.”

  “Then you must know Candace Carter. We stopped by for a visit, but she doesn’t seem to be home. I don’t suppose you’d know where she is?”

  “Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help you. The last time I saw her was two days ago. She had her book satchel and was off to her classes. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  Our next stop was the registrar’s office on the UMKC campus.

  Kevin gave the secretary some cock ‘n bull story about a family emergency and wondered how he could get a message to Candace. The secretary looked up Candace’s schedule and buzzed the teacher on the intercom. He informed us that Candace had been absent the last two days.

  There it was.

  Something had happened to Candace between the time she left her apartment and before she arrived on campus.

  We just had to figure out what that was.

  Kevin had come to the office and we were trying to decide our next move over a cup of coffee when the phone rang.

  It was Bart James.

  “Walt, another of our girls has gone missing. Adriana Accardo. She goes by Lolita on our website.”

  “How do you know she’s missing?”

  “Adriana has a child. He’s five. She dropped him off at his kindergarten class and never returned to pick him up. The school tried unsuccessfully to reach her by phone and eventually called her sister to pick him up. No one has seen her since the drop off.”

  “Did she have a date the night before?”

  “Yes, and according to her driver, it was uneventful. He dropped her at the Phillips Hotel on Twelfth Street at eight o’clock. It was an hour gig. At nine, the driver picked her up and took her home.”

  “Two girls in less than a week. By any chance were they similar in looks?”

  “Exactly the opposite. Candy was an all-American, girl next door type, sandy hair and a few freckles. Adriana was a dark-haired, olive skinned Italian.”

  “I’m wondering if th
is may be more about you and Emily and your company rather than the escorts. Can you think of anyone that might be abducting your girls to get back at you?”

  He thought for a moment. “Not that I know of. We run a clean business and take care of our own. We’ve never had any threats or problems. But I will tell you this, if someone is trying to hurt our business, they’re succeeding.”

  “How so?”

  “Word gets around quickly. Our other girls have heard about Candy and Lolita and they’re reluctant to take any calls until we find out what’s going on. I can’t say I blame them, but if this goes on very long, we’ll be out of business. When clients call, they don’t want to hear that no one is available.”

  “How many girls work for your service?”

  “They come and go, but we have at least twenty at any given time.”

  “Look, Bart. I know you don’t want to involve the cops, but it may be coming to that. You know their families are going to file missing persons reports and it won’t take the cops long to connect both girls to your company. You might want to think about getting ahead of this thing and not wait until the department comes banging on your door.”

  “You’re probably right. I’ll talk it over with Emily. I’m just hoping that you and Kevin can get to the bottom of this before it comes to that.”

  “We’ll do our best. Email what information you have about Adriana so we can get started.”

  After hanging up, I got out my hand calculator and did some math.

  “Kevin, Elite Escorts has twenty girls working. If each one only has one customer each day, that’s eight grand a night, almost a quarter of a million bucks a month for the company. That’s not exactly chump change. If someone was trying to muscle in on the action, knocking off the competition would certainly do the trick.”

  “That’s a pretty drastic marketing tactic,” he replied. “Who do we know that would commit murder to eliminate the competition?”

  “I have an idea, but I’d like to confirm it with someone who knows the players. I think it’s time for a visit with Louie the Lip.”

  I first met Louie the Lip through my old friend and maintenance man, Willie Duncan.

  Back in the day, those two could pull a con with the best of them. Willie gave up the life after coming to work for me, but Louie stayed on the shady side of the law. Willie and Louie maintained their friendship over the years and Louie actually became my unofficial confidential informant while I was on the force.

  Louie is my age and abhors the violence of the modern gangbangers as much as I do.

  We caught up with Louie at one of his favorite watering holes on Independence Avenue.

  “Well, well, if it ain’t Sam Spade and his sidekick,” Louie said, referring to the crusty private eye played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1940’s. “What can I do for you?”

  We told him about the missing girls from the escort service.

  “Our working theory is that someone is trying to put them out of business and muscle in on the escort trade. Does that make any sense?”

  He thought for a moment. “Jus’ might. Here’s how things are playin’ out on the street right now. The Mexicans control the west side of town and have a lock on the crack and weed business. The Italians are solid on the northeast side and have a lock on gambling, extortion and street prostitution.”

  “I heard the brothers were running the street hookers,” Kevin interjected.

  “The brothers may be runnin’ the girls, but the Italian mob is in charge. It’s like a McDonald’s franchise. One guy gets Independence Avenue, another guy gets Troost and so on, but they pay a fee off the top to the mob to protect their territory. If some guy gets greedy and crosses de line, he ends up in de river.”

  “So how about the high end hookers that work for companies like Elite Escorts?”

  “Far as I know,” he replied, “dey’s just independent business folks with no mob connections --- at least not yet.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “De Russian mob has been tryin’ to get back in Kansas City but just can’t crack the status quo. De Mexicans and Italians are just too strong. Dey tried to come in de back door by backing John Spivak for city council, but I heard through de grapevine dat he got caught wit a Russian hooker and some gumshoe got photos. I don’t suppose you dudes would know anything ‘bout dat?”

  “We heard the same rumors,” Kevin replied with a wink.

  “Thought so. Anyhow, if I was the Russian mob, I might just see the escort business as easy pickin’s and a way to get established in Kansas City.”

  We thanked Louie for his help.

  I had a real bad feeling as we headed back to our car.

  I left the police force to get away from dangerous people, and suddenly it looked like we would be locking horns with the Russian mob.

  Kevin was deep in thought as we headed back to the office.

  “The drivers! It has to be the drivers.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Stay with me here. Elite uses the same drivers all the time, so it wouldn’t be difficult for the Ruskies to put a tail on one of them. They watch where the driver picks up the girl and where he drops her off. Chances are it’s where she lives. Now that they have that information, they can just pick her off when the time is right, like Candy on her way to school.”

  “Makes sense to me. Any ideas?”

  “Let’s watch the driver ourselves and see if he picks up a Russian tail.”

  We called Bart who set up a meeting with his driver.

  The driver’s name was Otto, but it could have been Auto because he was built like one of the muscle cars from the 1960’s. He had been with the company five years and was well acquainted with all of the girls. They felt safe with him and for good reason.

  With the abduction scare, Elite had only booked one call for the evening. A gal named Dolly had been as apprehensive as the other girls, but needed the money.

  Dolly was to meet with her client at the Holiday Inn by the sports complex. We made arrangements for Otto to pick her up at the Independence Center Shopping Mall so that anyone tailing him would have to wait until after her rendezvous to find out where she lived.

  Otto picked Dolly up at six-thirty and dropped her off at the Holiday Inn just before seven. He found a parking place in the spacious lot and settled in for his hour’s wait.

  Kevin and I parked across the lot where we had a good view of both Otto and the entrance to the hotel.

  At eight, we saw Otto’s lights go on and he cruised to the hotel entrance where Dolly was waiting.

  As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, a grey, non-descript Ford sedan pulled into the street behind them.

  “Bingo!” Kevin said. “Perfect tail car, not flashy, just like any joe blow would drive.”

  We followed the grey Ford which was staying back a safe distance from Otto. At one stop light, Kevin got close enough for me to jot down the license plate.

  Otto dropped Dolly off at her apartment on Kenwood and headed home. The Ford idled a block away and slowly eased up to Dolly’s building when Otto was out of sight.

  “Probably writing down the address,” Kevin observed.

  A moment later, the Ford drove away.

  “Let’s see where they go,” Kevin said, pulling into traffic.

  We followed them to one of the fancy estate homes on Ward Parkway, south of the Country Club Plaza. An electronic gate opened and the Ford disappeared inside.

  Now it was our turn to write down an address.

  Not a bad evening’s work. We had confirmed that the drivers were being followed, and we had an address and a license number.

  On the way back to our office, I mulled over what Louie had told us earlier. The information we had garnered so far certainly made sense if the Russian mob was behind the abductions, but if that was the case, they would have to be targeting all of the escort services in the city, not just Elite.

  I had an idea, so I ga
ve Bart James a call.

  “Bart, I’m guessing you aren’t the only escort service in town. Who are your competitors?”

  He thought for a moment. “Well, there’s the American Girl Escorts, but our biggest competition is probably Worldwide Escorts. They specialize in girls from different countries, Spanish senoritas, petite little geisha girls, you get the idea. A different nationality to satisfy any guy’s fantasy.”

  “Do you know who runs the place and how I can get in touch?”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  I heard him shuffling some papers. “Here it is. Mario Mendez, and here’s his number.”

  I wrote it all down. “Thanks, Bart. We’ll be in touch.”

  Kevin had been listening to my conversation. “What’s that all about?”

  “Think about it. If it’s really the Russians who are behind this, they’re not just going after one company. They’ll want them all. I want to see if any of Mario Mendez’ girls have disappeared.”

  I called the number Bart had given me.

  A sexy female answered. “Worldwide Escorts. We can make your fantasy a reality. How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Mario Mendez, please. It’s very important.”

  She hesitated. “I’ll see if Mr. Mendez is in.”

  A moment later, a gruff voice came on the line. “Mendez here. Who the hell is this?”

  “My name is Walt Williams and I’m a private investigator. I’d just like to ask you one question and I won’t bother you any further.”

  Silence.

  “Please don’t hang up. This is very important. My question is this; have any of your girls gone missing?”

  More silence, then finally, “How do I know you’re not a cop?”

  “Like I said, I’m a private investigator. I was hired by Bart James of Elite Escorts. Two of his girls are missing. If you’re having the same problem, I think I can help you.”

  I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he processed what I had told him.

  Finally, “Yeah, I’ve got a girl missing. Bridget. She had a gig, then went missing the next day. So what can you do?”