Page 56 of Dirty

“Let me do the talking,” Crip whispered.

Dressed in khakis and a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms, the detective walked within ten feet of us and stopped.

He nodded at Crip and then Pee Bee. “Navarro. Peanut Butter.”

He looked me over, and then fixed his eyes on Crip.

“Detective,” Crip said dryly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well.” He paused and gazed around the shop. After taking in all there was to see, he looked at Crip. “I was headed to the donut shop for my morning routine, and I got to thinking about a case that slid across my desk. A gang case. I dabble in those. You knew that, right?”

“Rumor has it,” Crip said.

“Well. Over the last month, half a dozen girls have been abducted from one 7-Eleven here in our great city. Hell, there might have been more, but only six got reported. We didn’t have many clues to go off of, other than the color of an old Ford truck, and a plate number. Plate was stolen off a late model Toyota Prius, so that didn’t pan out. Anyway--”

“We don’t abduct girls, detective,” Crip said, interrupting him mid-sentence. “They come willingly. Bitches love bikers. You can write that on your little notepad.”

The cop cocked an eyebrow and gave Crip a one-eyed glare.

“See any girls in here, detective?” Crip asked.

“Can’t say that I do, Navarro. Hear me out, though.”

Crip nodded. “I’d be delighted.”

“So, with nothing to go on, we get nowhere with these disappearances. Six girls, ranging in age from 14-20, all missing from one fucking 7-Eleven. The owner adds security cameras, we add a patrol to the area, but we come up empty-handed.”

“Sounds like bad cop work,” Crip said sarcastically.

Through the officer’s entire speech, I remained stone-faced, nervous about what he knew, and what he thought he knew.

“Wait. It gets better,” the detective said. “Magically, they all surfaced.”

“Big hoax?” Crip asked.

“One might think,” the detective said flatly. “But then there was something that connected to it. Loosely, but a connection, nonetheless.”

Crip crossed his arms and gasped like a scared girl. “The hell you say?”

The detective nodded. “Place over on 14th. Four of Calle 18’s boys were gunned down in a shitty little dope house. We got to it long afterward, and although there wasn’t any dope or money left on the scene, there were four dead vatos and some other interesting effects.”

Fuck.

“Do tell,” Crip said.

“Room in the back had a five-gallon bucket full of piss and shit, a couple hundred oatmeal bar wrappers, blood-stained sheets, a few fistfuls of hair, and some other shit that leads me to believe that the deceased were keeping girls in that room. Sad thing was I couldn’t ask the vatos, because they’d all died from lead poisoning.”

Double fuck.

“Somewhere in that sad exchange, you lost me, detective. What brings you to darken my door?” Crip asked.

The detective rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “As you might guess, the neighbors in those neighborhoods are all blind and deaf when it comes to giving testimony against Calle 18. There was a little boy who lived across the street that was fond of lollipops, though.”

“And we both know you’ve got a pocket full of those, don’t we?” Crip snapped back.

He grinned a false grin and nodded. “I’ve got one less after this morning.”

“Kid give you a handjob for that, detective?”