Victor looked at me like I was a horrible person, which certainly I was acting like I was. But I needed to get an appointment with Stephano that day and I wasn’t willing to sit around and wait to see if Victor could hurry it up. If he thought I might kill the girl off, I knew he would work faster for me. He wasn’t the type of guy who wanted to see the girls harmed. He seemed like a good guy who was just trying to navigate a very bad business.
“Wait here,” he said as he looked at me with disgust.
I needed this to work. Nothing was as important as getting an appointment with Stephano so we could sell PJ. Once PJ was in his custody, she could ascertain what had to happen so we could get the women out of there. It was the best option we had to safely getting Ana out of the home.
I sat on a small stool and looked around the warehouse as I waited for Victor to return. It was clear to me that I wasn’t a priority to him though as he took well over twenty minutes before he finally made his way back to me.
If I had really been trying to get rid of a girl, I’m sure I wouldn’t have sat around waiting for a guy like Victor. If I was as horrible of a person as I was pretending to be, I would have already dropped the girl off at a shelter or killed her.
The thoughts that ran through my head as I pretended to be that guy were horrible. It disgusted me that people like that actually existed. But I was positive about one thing: we had made the right decision to try and sell PJ to Stephano. I was 100% sure that trying to buy Ana would not have worked out at all. Especially with Victor. He was worried about me and why I had come to him. If I had been asking around about buying women, I was sure he would have thought I was a cop and denied having any information at all.
“You can go to the club called Feather Kitty at noon. He’s going to be having some girls dance there. Your girl will need to be ready to dance. If she’s not pretty, he won’t take her, though.”
“Thanks,” I said as I started to walk away. “She’s pretty. Really beautiful, just a pain in my ass and I can’t deal with that in my life.”
“I need to be paid, man,” Victor said as he stood in front of me.
“Oh, sorry. Is this enough?” I said as I handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
“No, fuck that shit. It’s one thousand dollars for the introduction.”
Suddenly, little old Victor had some balls and was much tougher than I had expected. I doubted that he normally charged people a thousand dollars to get connected with Stephano and I had probably set up the price increase by making my situation seem desperate. Luckily, I had the cash on me because I certainly didn’t want to have to let an old man kick my ass.
I pulled out the cash and handed it to him. I had been around long enough to know a guy like Victor probably had a gun nearby if he was acting all tough like he was. So, there was no need for me to act tough back with him. Instead, I nicely handed him the money and thanked him for his time as I made my way back out of the port authority warehouse.
Chase, Nate, and PJ had made their way to the parking lot and seemed ready to get things moving. It was happening – everything was going to st
art moving very fast now and we needed to get ourselves organized.
“You guys have what you need? I’ve got a location and we need to be there at noon,” I said to Chase from the parking lot.
“Yep, we’ve got a van for you to watch the footage from and got an outfit for PJ. Really wish Roxanne had been there to help. Any word from her?” Chase asked.
My stomach sank at the mention of Roxanne. There had been no word from her. She didn’t have a phone because I had smashed it. For the time being, I was going to have to just wait until the evening and hope she returned to the hotel like she had told PJ she would. It made me sick that she might be thinking I had tried to use her.
I needed to stay focused so we could get PJ into the building with Ana and hopefully get both of them out safely. We couldn’t have very many days left before Ana was going to be sold. We had to act fast. As bad as I felt about Roxanne, that didn’t matter at the moment. We had a job to do and I was going to get that job done that night. I didn’t feel comfortable waiting any longer.
I followed Chase, Nate, and PJ down the road and switched from my car into their van. We sat parked for a few minutes while we discussed the specifics of what needed to happen once we got into Stephano’s club.
This was the part of any job that I loved. I liked working with people when I was in the Seals and I liked the teamwork that the four of us had. We communicated well and it was clear that we all had the same idea about getting Ana out safely. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I had a good feeling about what we were about to do.
“They are going to want you to dance. It’s part of his test. Do you feel comfortable with that?” I asked PJ.
“Sure.”
“All right, what’s the video and audio feed look like from the glasses?”
“It’s good. Here, take a look,” Nate said as he handed me a small pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
The glasses were the latest hi-tech lenses and frames. You could not tell there was a camera or microphone in them. From the lay person’s view, the glasses looked like a simple pair of reading glasses.
“If you need to set them down at anytime, just try and point them toward where the action is. Or leave them in a room where Stephano is, that would be useful,” I said to PJ.
“You do remember that I work for the CIA, right? I kind of know what I’m doing here.” She laughed.
I didn’t mean to be condescending to her. It was just that once I was working on a case, I liked to make sure everyone clearly understood what their role was so there wasn’t any confusion once things got rolling. Situations like this one could get pretty hairy pretty fast, and I needed everyone to be on their best game.
“Okay, you guys take my rental car and I’ll drive the van a block or two away from Feather Kitty. Stephano is supposed to have all the girls there to do some dances or something. It will give you two a good chance to her PJ into his hands. Nate, you will need to do all the work. Chase, just go along as a friend to support him and pretend you’re there to keep him safe or something. If Stephano asks you to leave, you leave. We don’t need a power struggle.”