Power and Empire

Feng threw his head back, rattling his cuffs beneath the table. “How long do you really think anybody spends with one of those kids? Fifteen, twenty minutes, tops. I paid Parrot for two hours, just to keep her away from the other guys at the party.”

“How gentlemanly of you to keep her for yourself.”

“I told you we didn’t do anything!”

Callahan gave a little shrug. She had the upper hand now. “That’s not what Blanca says.”

“Well, she’s lying.” Feng wagged his head. “And anyway, she told me her name was Magdalena.”

Callahan sat up straighter in spite of the chair. “Magdalena?”

“Whatever her name is. She’s just a kid, you know. I felt sorry for her.” Feng’s eyes flicked to the mirrored wall. “Who’s back there? Who’s watching us?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Bourke said.

Callahan banged on the table to get Feng’s attention. “Tell me about this USB drive.”

“I lost the damn thing…” He looked up, coming to a sudden realization. “If you have it, Magdalena… or Blanca, must have stolen it. She did, didn’t she? After what I did for her…”

Callahan just looked at him.

Feng continued to study the one-way mirror. “Could I get some coffee or something?”

Callahan shot a sideways glance at Bourke. “He makes a lot of demands for a kiddie diddler.”

Feng’s head snapped around. “Stop calling me that!”

“What do you prefer?” Bourke said. “Pedophile?”

“I’d prefer you called me Eddie,” he said. “I’m a reporter for True Word Daily. Just look it up online.” He was pleading now. “Seriously, guys. I’m in the middle of a very important story and had to appear to engage in certain behaviors in order to get them to trust me enough to get access to the right people. It was my legend. You know, a legend, like if you were going undercover.”

“I know what a legend is, Eddie,” Callahan said. This guy was convincing. He’d even managed to get the snot flowing, a sign his tears were probably real. But he was looking at some serious jail time, so he was obviously going to be distraught. It didn’t mean he was telling anything close to the truth about his involvement with Blanca Limón. Men who assaulted kids were very often the weepiest sad sacks on the planet.

Callahan pantomimed drinking motions toward the mirror. If it took a little coffee to get this bird to start singing, so be it. More often than not, there was a great deal of smiling and nodding right before she stuck it in and broke it off.

“Okay, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll get you something to drink, but you have to tell us a few things. For starters, I need you to give me the location of the party you were at when you met Blanca. She was with another girl, and that girl is still missing. I’m worried something happened to her.”

“Sure.” Eddie nodded quickly, seemingly eager to help. “I’m not sure of the address, but it’s in South Dallas. Anyway, she’s not there. These parties are transient. They bring the girls in vans and cars and then take them away afterward. Blanca and the others all got carted off by a guy they called Reggie right before I left.”

Callahan shot a look at Bourke. Feng’s description of the guy who had Blanca matched up, anyway.

“I don’t know,” Eddie continued. “If she’s not with Reggie, I’d say Matarife has her.”

Sergeant Bourke looked up from his notebook. “Matarife?”

“That would be my guess,” Feng said. He was already working on the map, both hands moving with the pen across the yellow legal pad since they were cuffed together.

Bourke shot a sideways glance at Callahan. “Matarife means ‘slaughterer.’”

Callahan rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. This whole thing made her bones tired. There was a reason agents timed out of Crimes Against Children task forces. Her supervisor had warned her after her last emotional outburst that she was definitely coming to the end of her shelf life with the CAC.

Feng kept at his drawing, hunched over the legal pad. “I’ve never met him, but I hear Matarife is into some pretty nasty stuff.”

“Be more specific,” Bourke said.

Eddie shrugged. “I am actually onto something else for my story, so all this stuff with the girls was just extra. Believe me, once I got what I needed, I was going to make some calls and get the girls out of there.”

“Must have been really important,” Bourke said, “for you to leave them in slavery while you got your precious story.”

“You have no idea.” Feng hung his head. “But I understand how it looks… how it is. I should have called someone.”

“Yes, you should have, Eddie,” Callahan said. “But you can make a difference now. Let’s get back to what you know about Matarife.”

“All I heard was whispers. Rumor is he leads some kind of blood cult, but I think that’s just a story to scare the shit out of the competition. I haven’t put it together yet, but he’s somehow linked to a guy they call Coronet. That’s who I’m looking to find, Coronet. I suspect he works with a contact in mainland China. Sun Yee On triad, Tres Equis, Coronet — and the PRC. They’re all connected. I just haven’t put it all together yet.”