“Do you have any idea who might be behind it all?”
He shook his head. “No. But I know who to look at.”
“Who?”
Mick was intentionally being open with Roz, which wasn’t usually his style. But that ambush and all that time he had to think and rehab fundamentally changed him. He rememberedlooking up into her eyes when he was certain he was dying. He was scared. He was so scared. But Roz comforted him. She told him he was going to pull through. She told him he didn’t have to pull through, because she knew he was tired, but she wanted him to pull through. That kept him going. She was his anchor. She was his safe place. The least he could do was keep her in the loop. Even if it uncovered uncomfortable truths for him. “I’m starting with Cleo Burgess,” he said.
“Cleo? You mean that Cleopatra woman that called you the day of the ambush?”
When Mick nodded, Roz’s heart swelled with emotion. “Who is she to you, Mick?”
“Nobody,” he began saying. But he realized he was falling right back into his familiar pattern again. And that would not do.
“She and Ted were classmates back in the day. That’s how long ago it was when I met her. I didn’t know she even knew Teddy when I recruited her to entertain some of the men I sold arms to.”
“Entertain them?” asked Roz. “As in prostitution?”
“Of the highest order, but yes,” said Mick. “I’m not proud of it, but she was the one who approached me. She needed cash so I gave her a job. So yes, I turned her out. She became one of my top whores.”
Roz was confused. “Are you telling me you used to be a pimp too?”
Mick was offended. “Not a pimp, no. I just had a group of girls who, if they wanted to make some excellent cash, could do so through me. I didn’t get a cut, or any shit like that.”
But Roz still hated to hear it. “You can dress that dirt up any way you want to, Mick, but your ass was a pimp.”
Mick’s temper flared when she called him that dreadful name again. “And I told you that’s not what I was. I got nothingfrom those girls. They were paid. They were free to come and go as they pleased. I got nothing out of it.”
But Roz wasn’t buying it. “You got nothing out of it except for satisfying the base needs of all those heads of despot governments you made millions from by selling guns and ammo to them.”
Mick wasn’t going to argue with her about something that happened so long ago and that had so little consequence to his business at that time.
“So what happened to her?” Roz asked.
“She met this guy named Ricardo DeSouza and fell in love with him. She claimed, in between him kicking her ass, that he didn’t want her prostituting anymore so she got out of it. I tried to get her out of it years earlier, mind you, but only after she met him did she get out.”
“But you said he kicked her ass. Did he beat her?” Roz asked.
“Many times, yes.”
“And let me guess: You beat on him?”
“I sent guys to do it. But she kept running back to him so I told her to hell with her. She want that abuse, let her have it.” He paused. “Then about two years ago, she came to me for money. Which wasn’t unusual.”
“She was still with that guy?”
Mick nodded. “Oh yes. But on this particular day, she was ambushed, shot, or so I thought, and taken away. Teddy and I couldn’t help her because we were under attack too.”
Then he exhaled. “She resurfaced the same day you were arrested. She was very much alive and claimed Ricardo had kidnapped her and trafficked her during those two years until she escaped. But for her to show up the same day of that ambush is odd in and of itself.
“It’s odd, yes, but why start with her?”
“Something you told me after my surgery,” Mick said.
Roz looked at him. “SomethingItold you? What did I tell you?”
“You said when you were arrested that those cops used a tranquilizer gun on you.”
“They did. When they even mentioned something like that was when I knew it was an abduction and not an arrest. What police force go around with tranquilizer guns?”
