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She’s known me long enough to jump right in. “It sounds like a shell company.”
“What do you know about shell companies? You’re a lawyer!”
“Yes, but I’m an immigration lawyer. And my firm does a lot of pro bono work, especially the younger members like me. And pro bono cases don’t always have strictly legal circumstances.” This is a side of my sweet as pie friend I’ve never seen before. A hidden gritty layer I wasn’t expecting. “As I was saying,” she continues, “shell companies. They don’t really exist, except on paper. Most are foreign but a few US states are easier than others to set up in.”
I’m chewing on my thumbnail, nodding along. “Would Delaware happen to be one of them?”
“Ding ding ding, we have a winner.” I can hear her smile through the phone. I migrate to the kitchen and pour a glass of wine.
“Are you drinking all our wine?” Damn her supersonic hearing.
“Not all of it.” I hear her bubbly laughter from the other end of the line. I flop down on the floor, propped up by pillows against the wall. The apartment looks like a copy machine blew up, papers everywhere, sticky notes, highlighters, my laptop.
“How do you track down who really owns the shell company?”
“Honestly, you usually don’t. The government spends months trying to figure it out and is only partially successful. Sometimes the fronts are just businesses or individuals hiding from taxes, sometimes they cover up money laundering or more serious criminal enterprises.”
“Great. So Black Sea Shipping is a dead end basically?” I sound dejected. I feel it too. I’ve got connections, but low-hanging fruit. It’s not like I have the FBI on speed dial. It’s pretty clear that Hensley isn’t going to help me on this. Actually, it’s damn clear he wanted me off the story, a little detail that floats back to mind. I realize the other end of the line has gone quiet.
“Black Sea Shipping owns your ships?” Tasha sounds nervous.
“Yeah, looks like two that keep coming back routinely from Ukraine and always check in with the same customs officer. The dates line up with my deaths, but they also come in on other days too, when there aren’t any deaths.”
“Rocky, you need to let this go.” She’s quiet, and very serious. “That company is dangerous. Our firm won’t touch anything even close to related to them.”
“Why?”
She starts to speak and then stutters. “Ok, so, I don’t know anything for sure, but Robertson talks about them like they are the boogie man.” She pauses again. “Rocky, they are owned by the Russians.”
“Like the government?”
“No, babe, the Bratva.”
The bomb she just dropped hangs in the air for a minute. Holy. Shit. I think about the NYPD business card stuck on the fridge. J. Reynolds, Organized Crime.
“Ok, what do you know about the New York Bratva?” I ask her.
“Oh, no, you don’t! Nope! You are not going there. Babe, they kill people. For a hell of a lot less than this.”
“I know, Tasha, their bodies are at the morgue right now, and their families will never know what happened to them.”
“Rocky, your family will never know what happens to you. You’ll just disappear, unless they decide to dump your body on the front steps of theNew York Timesto prove a point.” I’ve never heard Tasha talk like this, this fear, this anger in her voice. “Russian families teach their children to stay away from the Bratva. Killing you might be the nicest thing that happens to you.”
“Tasha, what about the girls that didn’t show up dead? What happened to them? How many more are going to end up here?” I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks.
“Rocky, it’s not like Nicole.”
I don’t respond.
“Rocky, it doesn’t bring her back.”
“I fucking know that!” I take a deep breath and try to bring my anger down a notch. Or twenty. My mind flashes back to the night I found my sister’s body, her suicide note folded on the nightstand. “Tasha,” I breathe. “Nicole was stronger than I’ll ever be. One night broke her, babe. They raped her, and she killed herself. One night. What the hell do you think happens to these girls? Night after night? More than just rape? How many of them pray to die every day and don’t have the power to make it happen?” My voice cracks. “Tasha, this is what I do. This is why I am a reporter. The police obviously aren’t getting anywhere. These girls need someone to tell their story. They will never get justice any other way. More girls will keep dying.”
Tasha doesn’t speak for a long while. When she does, the tears are obvious in her voice. “Ok, babe. But don’t you dare fucking leave me.”
CHAPTER10
Jesus, it’s cold.The wind whips off the water and blows across containers piled across the loading docks. I’m lying on my belly, on top of a stack of containers three deep to get a better view.
