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Don't Speak Ill of the Dead

Chapter 4

South Bureau Police Building, Los Angeles || May, 2010

Two weeks into the undercover assignment Detective Traynor came to Lieutenant Bates and demanded more of a role in the mission. Deeks had made a little progress with Emilio Ortega, finding out that the product that he wanted to ship across the border was not drugs or weapons, it was girls and young women. Ortega was planning to become the wholesale distributor of this commodity throughout the country, funneling them in through northern Mexico and southern California.

Once they were in the Lieutenant's office, Jess showed him a picture of two young girls, walking arm in arm through a backyard flower garden, smiles on their faces that just wouldn't quit.

"That was taken in 1987. That's me on the left, eleven years old, with my cousin Christina, who was thirteen. One night we were coming home from watching Spaceballs at the local theater. While we were walking past a park, just four blocks from my home, a van stopped just a little bit ahead of us. As we walked past it, two guys jumped out and tried to abduct us. Maybe they wanted Christina more, maybe I struggled more, but I got away and Christina was pulled into the van. I ran all the way home and by the time the police came, the van was long gone. There was an extensive search through the neighborhood, throughout the city. No trace of her could be found. Finally, it seemed as if everyone forgot about her, except for me. I could never forget her. Her body finally was found, 18 months later, just outside Reynosa, in Mexico, tossed aside by sex traffickers that no longer wanted or needed her."

"You know, if you make it personal, I am gonna have to pull you off this case?" Bates asked her. He looked at her and knew for her it was personal. It was so personal, that it would make no difference for her if she was officially on or off the case.

"You know I'm gonna do this, no matter what you tell me," Traynor said, defiantly.

"Yeah. Have you told Deeks about this yet?" Bates asked.

"No. I don't want to blow his cover by giving him something else to worry about. I thought I could get information about Ortega from a different angle. I want you to backstop me as a madam, looking to set up a whorehouse here in LA. I can get Captain Murray, my former boss in Chicago, to do the same thing. I could keep in touch with Ortega to negotiate for a supply of business girls. Maybe I can also ask some things that Detective Deeks can't get into."

"Why do I get the feeling that you are going to be just as big a pain in the ass as Deeks already is for me?" he said, shaking his head in dismay.

"You're the one who teamed me up with him," she said with a wicked smile on her face. "You know, if we play it right, I could also play a high-rolling call girl. If we need to have a face-to-face, Detective Deeks could make an appointment with me and we could meet up at some motel for an hour or so."

"He and you haven't already been hooking up, have you?" Bates wondered, not believing that even Deeks could work that fast.

"No, we haven't had enough time to do that, although I wouldn't mind getting to know his body a little better. He sure fills out a mean wetsuit," she said with a mischievous grin that just wouldn't quit.

"You have this all figured out, don't you?" Bates asked.

"Yup. After I talk with him tonight, you can have my new lawyer, Dale John Sully, bail me out of jail. Choose some corner where I can get picked up and charge me as a streetwalker known as Felicite Grandmaion."

Bates continued to shake his head. "Hell, what have I gotten myself in for," he moaned. In spite of the fact that red flags were going up in his mind at every single point of her plan, the Lieutenant knew that he would go along with it.

. . . . .

Deeks didn't like the situation his partner proposed at all. With what he found out about Emilio Ortega, he didn't want Jess anywhere near the man. Emilio didn't care who was standing in his way; he would find some way to eliminate them. His dealings with females were even worse. Ortega was one of those men who felt that the only reason women were placed on this earth was to be the sexual servants of men. If they could not fulfill that role, or worse, if they refused to fulfill that role for him, they had no business existing at all. Their lives were forfeited, and would be taken from them in the most painful and degrading way. Deeks needed to protect his partner from that, knowing how opinionated she was. He made Jess swear to him that the only contact she would have with Ortega would be over the phone. She did, but somehow her oath to him didn't really sound convincing.

. . . . .

Two days later Dale John Sully took on a new client. After bailing Felicite out and getting a court date, he put her in a cab outside the station. Then he started to determine how to casually get Jess into Emilio's good graces. He figured that money and power were the two things Emilio loved the most. Somehow he would have to get that to work for him. Maybe he could try to get Ortega to give Felicite her needed start-up funds and accept a healthy percentage of Felicite's business in return. If Ortega would agree to set up and use her bordello as one of the safe houses for shipping his girls, maybe she could get close to him. Traynor's plan had a lot going for it, and could work well barring any complications. Yet, in a lot of ways, the shaggy-haired detective hoped that it would just not come about.

That night the nightmares started for Deeks. He saw himself as an eleven-year-old boy again, cowering at the voice of his father. "You think that you will be able to protect her, boy? You know that will never happen. You're a worthless failure. You loved your mother and tried to protect her. Remember what happened? She was beaten to a pulp. How well did you protect her? You failed at that, miserably. I know you tried to blame me for it. But you know, deep down in your heart that you were at fault.

"You and the law tried to protect Roberta Sanchez, and she got beaten to death. Where was your protection for her? You were the one who failed her. You can't even blame me for her death. I was nowhere around that time that you failed. It was all your fault. You lied to her. You said she was safe. You knew better. The words that you told her and were printed on that paper were not enough, and you knew that. Totally worthless, that's what you are.

"You're just kidding yourself if you think you're gonna protect your partner. Someone is gonna get killed. You? Her? Ortega? I don't know. Maybe all three of you. But you know, it will be your fault no matter what you do. Haha, haha, haha,"

That voice of Gordon Brandel continued to echo in his ears as he woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, "Nooo... You can't hurt her."

. . . . .

The further they got into the operation, the less comfortable he was with it. It almost seemed as if someone was working to undue everything that they worked so hard to find out. Pieces of evidence that had been properly logged into the evidence room suddenly went missing and there was no record of them ever being there. The few witnesses that they finally dug up either refused to testify or decided to skip town. Both of the detectives knew that crimes were being committed by Emilio Ortega and the people under his control. The problem was that no matter how hard they tried, they just couldn't prove it.

Then, one day, Deeks got lucky. He was transferring the property rights from the estate of an old lady in the southern part of Tijuana, Mexico to the syndicate that Emilio had set up.

He overheard Luis Manuel Fellano, Emilio's bodyguard, talking with his boss, saying how nice it was that the old lady met a fortuitous accident. Then he said that their 'friend' in the LAPD might be wanting a bigger payday because of all the help he was giving them.

Deeks could not believe it. They had a dirty cop on the force. Someone was on Ortega's payroll. No wonder they were getting nowhere on this case. Everything that they were doing was being blocked by someone being paid to stop them. He had to get this information to Jess, but wondered if he should tell anyone else. He had not idea who the crooked employee was. The worst thing would be if either he or Jess were burned, and Ortega would find out they were detectives trying to take him down.

. . . . .

Sully put in a call to Felicite. "Hello," she answered the phone in a husky, sexy voice that Deeks almost did not recognize.

"Hi there, Felicite. Remember me?" he said cryptically.

"Hey, Sugar, I have sooo many men in my life. I just can't keep track of all of them. Give me a little hint about who you are and I'll see if I want to continue talking with you." The words just oozed with her professional sexual seduction, an artificially, saccharine sweet voice, not one with any genuine sweetness to it.

"You seemed to want to talk to me quick enough when I bailed you out." Sully reminder her.

"Oh, hey, Sugar, how are you doing? I really want to thank you for what you did for me. Imagine, those detectives must have had me mixed up with some other girl."

"Well, you know 'thanks' don't pay the rent. Your bill with me is starting to mount up. I wonder if we could do something about that?"

"I thought I told you, Sugar, that all my cash is tied up in my business venture. But I would be open to a barter arrangement."

"Yeah, I kinda thought you would. This afternoon?" Sully asked.

"I think that could be arranged. Where?" Felicite inquired.

"Best Western on Sunset in West Hollywood?" Sully wondered if this would be close enough for her.

"That's perrr-fect, Sugar. I'll give you a call before I arrive to find out what room you're in."

"See you then," he said, as he ended the call.

. . . . .

Best Western Motel, West Hollywood || June, 2010

Sully welcomed Felicite into his motel room. As soon as the door closed, those two characters disappeared, and Marty and Jess emerged. Jess walked into the middle of the room, and started taking off her clothes. Marty looked at her in shock.

"You know that I really didn't want to call you here for that? I'm not really that kind of guy." Marty tried to explain to her.

"Relax. I'm not gonna take everything off. But I figure if someone breaks in on us, it will look a heck of a lot more realistic if we are just dressed in our underwear, than if we were fully dressed. Even that might be a stretch, unless you want to claim to have a lingerie fetish." Jess explained.

"Well, I can live with that." Deeks said, and started taking off his own clothes. He stopped when he was just in his boxers.

Jess stopped disrobing when Marty got down to his skivvies. The man had his back to her, and she admired his tight butt. "You know," she said, partially startling him, I thought you really looked good when you were dressed in your wetsuit. Let me tell you, you really look a whole lot better without it on."

Deeks turned and looked at her. She still wasn't down to her bra and panties. "Well, Sugar, are you going to catch up?" he asked, trying to mock the same voice she used over the phone.

"All for you," Jess said, as she shucked off the last of her outer clothing. Again she twirled in front of him and asked with a look of amusement on her face, "see anything you like?"

"I would have to be a stone statue not to like what I see. Damn, lady, you are one truly fine piece of womanhood." he said.

"Well, let's mess up the bed a little bit, and you can tell me what you need to."

"Making sure the stage is fully set?" Marty asked

"The only way to survive in our business."

They ended up sitting with their backs propped up by pillows at the head of the bed. Deeks turned to Jess and told her what he had overheard.

"I have no clue how we are gonna get this assignment done. I overheard Emilio and his bodyguard talk about having a paid informant within the police department. This has to be someone high enough to change the reports that we file."

"Do you have any idea of who it actually is?" Jess was mentally trying to run through the people she knew in the department, trying to think if any of them could be their betrayer.

"No, but I also get a bad feeling in my gut that we need to be careful and find out who this source for Emilio is and get enough evidence on him to convict him. Otherwise, he might actually try to pin the failure of the operation on us, or even worse, make one of us out to be the informant."

"Why do I feel that this job just got a whole lot more difficult," Jess asked, turning toward her partner with a look in her eye that could only be described as pure lust.

Marty looked at her and wondered, Was she more intent on getting her hands on Emilio's paid informant, or him. From the look in her eyes, he wasn't sure anymore.

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