She tells him everything she knows and they sit in silence for a while, until she speaks up and warns him they'd better go before the other guys come looking.
"This is one of Mikey's places," she explains.
He tries to take her to hospital but she argues with him ("I'm okay, my lip's been busted worse before." "I'm not just talking about your lip, Pixie, come on."), and he doesn't think he can drag her kicking and screaming without drawing the wrong kind of attention. So he backs down and hands her the goon's phone, tells her to call her mom.
While she's on the phone - whispers turning into crying turning into apologies and I-miss-yous - he digs around and finds a wad of bills in the guy's pocket (along with ID, some extra condoms and couple folds of heroin - charming).
It's enough cash for her very expensive ride back to Cherry Hill, at least.
"Are you gonna get him?" she asks as they wait for the cab to pull up.
The henchman on the floor behind them takes a crackling, wheezing breath, but Matt can tell without moving muscle that he's still out cold.
"I'm gonna try," he says quietly. It's a promise, and he hopes she believes him. They've both got their elbows leaned up on the sill of the open window (the one he didn't dramatically smash through) and from this distance, three inches away from her, he can smell the middle-aged men on her skin and he wants to turn around and smash the guy's face until he's nothing but cartilage and pulp.
She pulls out a crumpled cigarette pack and goes to light one but he gently yanks the lighter out of her hand and pockets it.
"Don't," he admonishes.
She asks, "Are you a police officer?"
"Not exactly," he says. He pulls his mask slightly further down his nose.
"Are you gonna tell my mom? About all this."
"No," he says, shaking his head regretfully. "But you should."
"She'll be so mad," she says, rubbing her eyes. Her voice breaks a little. "I'm so stupid."
He wants so badly to put his hand on her shoulder, but he knows that's probably the worst thing he could do. So he tries to find his words.
"No, Pixie." He sticks with a safe cliché, but he means it: "Nothing - nothing that happened is your fault. You need to know that, okay? And when you get home, you need to tell your mom, get her to take you to the police. The hospital. Get her to get you some help."
She sighs and nods but doesn't respond, just mouths to herself I'm not a baby. He probably wouldn't have heard it if he didn't have his senses on overdrive, and he immediately wants to grab her by her tiny shoulders and shake her and hold her and explain to her exactly how delicate she is, she has no idea how delicate she is, how quickly she could just be in a ditch somewhere, but he doesn't.
They just stare out at the city together in silence and, after a while, the cab stops in front of the building, its old brakes hissing to a stop.
"Time to go," he says, nodding towards the Crown Vic below them and she stands up straight, wiping the windowsill dust from her shirt (which, from the smell of it, is soaked with blood from her lip or her nose and he prays it's dark enough that the cabbie won't notice). "Take care of yourself, Pixie."
"It's Amanda," she tells him, and he can tell she's being truthful. The cab honks a warning at them. "Thanks, mask guy," she says, waving a tentative goodbye. "Get everyone else out, too, okay?"
Matt nods and crosses his heart, watches her go.
He stays in the shadows of the filthy apartment until her cab turns the corner, towards the Hudson, whisking her down into the Lincoln Tunnel and out of Hell's Kitchen.
It's seven-fifteen and Matt tries to ignore the banging on his door but Foggy's too insistent .
"Late night last night, sleepyhead?" Foggy asks, crossing the threshold without waiting for an invitation. Matt steps aside automatically to let him in. "The hell happened to you, man?"
"Uh," Matt wipes the sleep from his eyes, not sure how to answer. Banter seems like the easiest way to tap the brakes on the fight that's about to happen: "I got lost on the way to the liquor store? Good morning."
"Sure you did. Vigilante stuff again, right?" Foggy's unimpressed - borderline pissy, actually. It's not a good look on him.
"I'm sorry," Matt offers sincerely, closing the door and following Foggy inside. "I didn't mean to run off on you guys like that. I just couldn't ignore this one."
"What, some tourist getting his wallet stolen on Broadway?"
"Ah, not so much." Matt sighs and collapses on the couch. He runs his hands over his face, over his stubbled jaw and almost-faded bruises. Exhausted and a little defeated. "It's bad, Foggy. Child-trafficking ring, looks like."
He can't help but wince as he says it.
"Oh," Foggy sighs, frowning. It's clearly not what he was expecting, and his annoyance falters before disappearing completely. "That's… that's rough. What happened?"
"Low-level henchman beating up a fourteen-year-old girl for trying to run away."
He can still smell the sex and latex and the cloying, fruity perfume hanging in the air in that shitty apartment and he notices his hands have started to vibrate. Strange, he thinks, clenching and unclenching his fingers. He didn't take a single punch but the night was tougher on him than he'd thought.
"And…" Foggy prompts Matt to continue, standing over him and studying his face.
"And I kicked his teeth in and sent her in a cab back home to New Jersey. Nothing else I could do. But I have names, now. And an address." He tries to keep his expression unreadable.
"Dude," Foggy shakes his head. He squeezes in at the end of the couch and Matt pulls his feet up to give him room. "That great and all that you saved that little girl, but that's the kind of stuff you hand over to the police, you know? They can handle it, it's what they're there for."
Matt shakes his head stubbornly. "You know I know that, Foggy, I already reported it. Right away when I got home. But if I leave it at that, it'll just get added to the backlog and you and I both know this can't wait. Those kids can't wait."
"How do you know there's more?"
"The girl told me. Amanda. She told me they're kept in little rooms - cages, practically," he spits the word out like a bad taste in his mouth. "They round up street kids, runaways, and rent them out. Bastards."
His words hang in the air for a while, and they both shift uncomfortably.
"Alright, well. Then I guess we'd better get to work on this one," Foggy says, after a minute, likely because he doesn't know what else to say and he knows he won't win the argument otherwise. "Let's start with coffee?"
"Yeah, coffee'd be good," Matt nods. He feels hungover, almost - like the morning after you make the mistake of mixing whiskey with wine with something sugary-sweet and potent and you wake up with a low, insistent throb at the base of your skull.
"Okay." Foggy stands back up, suddenly all business, the couch shifting as his weight lifts. "That means get yourself dressed and come on over to the office, where Karen's already made some. You know I can't make coffee worth a damn, Murdock."