“Please.”
“Sugar, do you know how many kids come walkin’ down this street? Runnin’ away from a beating or trying to find their next fix?”
“Katie’s not like that.”
“Sure. They’re all good kids. They’re just lost in a world that doesn’t want them.” Maybe Cleopatra was speaking from experience.
But that wasn’t Katie’s story. “Please, ma’am—”
“Now, sugar, don’t you go ma’amin’ me—”
“I’m looking for one girl. One child. I have to find her.”
“Ain’t the cops lookin’ for her?”
“Yes. But they’re not having any success. She’s due to give birth this month. I can’t let her go through that on her own.”
“That’s rough.” Cleopatra lifted her gaze over the top of Maddie’s head and scanned up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. Then she held out her hand. “Give me some money.”
“What?”
“Give me somethin’. I can’t stand here talkin’ to you when I’m supposed to be workin’.”
“Oh, I see.” Maddie fished into the pocket of her jumper. One of the homeless men she’d talked to earlier had asked for money before sending her to Tenth Street to talk to the ‘ladies,’ as he’d called them. Maddie pulled out all she had left: a twenty.
Cleopatra snatched it from her hand and stuffed it inside the top of her boot. “Now give me the picture.”
Sparkly lashes fluttered against her dark cheeks as she studied Katie’s junior yearbook picture. Maddie prayed for a glimmer of recognition.
“I ain’t seen her.” Cleopatra pressed the photo back into Maddie’s hand. “She ain’t workin’ this street, at any rate. And the mission’s been closed for over a year now, so I haven’t seen her hangin’ around for a handout, either.”
Twenty dollars for another no.
Maddie lovingly straightened a bent corner of the photo before returning it to her pocket. She tried to focus on the reassuring notion that Katie hadn’t resorted to prostitution to support herself. Two weeks ago, Maddie never would have suspected a teenager who was eight months pregnant would be in demand on the streets. But she’d seen some disturbing things since she’d begun her search.
Still, the crushing disappointment of hitting yet another dead end kept her from feeling hopeful. “Thanks.”
It also kept her from sensing the large black man who’d walked up behind her.
“Zero!”
Cleopatra’s shout masked Maddie’s own startled yelp as two big hands closed around her upper arms. The first thing she saw was all the bling on each finger and wrist. The second thing she noticed was the stale smell of rum-soaked breath as the man’s lips brushed against her ear.
“I don’t know whether to cut you or kiss you.”
Cleopatra shoved at the man’s shoulder. “Back off, Zero. She’s just lookin’ for somebody.”
“Yeah, well, look somewhere else, sweetmeat.” He grabbed the hand Cleopatra had shoved him with and tugged and twisted. Even Maddie winced at the angle at which he bent the woman’s arm behind her back. “You. Get back to work. I don’t look out for you so’s you can shoot the breeze with no lady.” He pushed Cleopatra away. “Find a customer.”
With a proud tip of her chin, the black woman straightened what clothes she had on and sauntered across the street, leaving Maddie alone with the pimp.
Zero wrapped his arm around Maddie’s shoulders, pulling her tight against his side. When he forced her into step beside him, she knew a stark moment of wondering if she’d ever get back to her car, much less see her home again.
Still, the violence sickened her. How many times had her sister shown up at the house with a sprained wrist or black eye? “I was just asking her some questions. I paid her for her time. You didn’t have to hurt her.”
He squeezed her tighter, steering her toward a secluded archway beneath a concrete stoop. “Cleo’s been hurt worse than that. Now you tell me exactly what kinds of questions you were askin’.”
As she had so many times over the past two weeks, Maddie ignored her own terror and pulled out the photo to show him. “I’m looking for my niece.”
Zero snatched the photo from her hand. “Now she’s a fine girl.”
“Have you seen her?”
“You paid Cleo for an answer. You have to pay me.”
“I’m out of money.”
Zero stopped, laughed, crumpled the photo in his fist and spun Maddie around so that he could back her into a brick wall and press his thighs and hips and other vile things against her. “You gotta pay me somehow. That’s how things work around here.”
Maddie’s blood chilled in her veins, despite the humidity that lingered so long after sunset. She stared at the thick gold chain around Zero’s neck. “I can’t do that.”
He slipped one hand behind her to squeeze her butt and tangled the rest of his fingers in her hair. “You need a serious makeover, darlin’. But I like some meat on my women. And hair this color of red could be good for business.”
“Let me go.”
Her flare of panic only made him laugh. He pulled the hair from her ponytail and draped it over her shoulder, dragging his palm over her breast. “Uh-huh. Lots of meat.”
Maddie swallowed her gag reflex and batted his hand away. “My niece is pregnant. Don’t you have any heart in you to help her?”
Zero rubbed her reddish gold hair against his nose and sniffed. “Word’s out about a clinic in town that helps young girls who get knocked up. They’ll take the girl in until she delivers. Then, in exchange for the baby, they’ll pay a nice price. I thought about letting one of my girls go off the pill just to see how much money we could get off that scam.”
Revulsion aside, Maddie lifted her gaze to Zero’s hooded eyes. “They buy the girl’s baby?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Katie wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m just tellin’ you what I heard.”
“Does this clinic have a name?”
“Sweetmeat, you don’t pay me or flash a badge, you don’t get an answer.”
In a surprisingly quick move, he grabbed her arm and slung her toward the street. Maddie stumbled off the curb and smacked into the fender of a parked car. But she ignored the pain radiating through her hip and elbow. Katie could be suffering something far worse. Maddie had no right to complain.
“Please,” she begged,
