The meeting with Terri and Vito started off well. Meagan and Vito exchange pleasantries, talked about some mutual friends in the old country, and then Terri saw Joe and well it just sort of went down hill from there. It was nice to witness the Morelli temper without being on the receiving end of it for a change; but given everything that was going on, hearing Terri call Morelli enough names that I wanted to start taking notes so I could use them later, wasn't exactly productive. Meagan pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.
"They always been like this?" She asked Vito.
"Always. They will yell themselves out…."
"WELL IF YOU HAD JUST TOLD ME THE TRUTH INSTEAD OF LEADING ME ON I WOULDN'T HAVE BLOWN YOUR COVER, YOU IDIOT!"
"HAVE I EVER DODGED YOU WHEN I WASN'T GOING UNDERCOVER? USE YOUR FUCKING HEAD OR HAVE THE CHEMICALS YOU USE TO COLOR YOUR HAIR FINALLY SEEPED THROUGH AND AFFECTED YOUR BRAINS?"
"SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT AGAIN AND I'LL LET THE GUYS AT THE PRECINCT KNOW WHERE EXACTLY YOU GO TO HAVE YOUR ASS WAXED."
"YOU DO THAT AND I'LL TELL ALL YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS JUST HOW MUCH EXTRA ASSISTANCE YOU ADD TO YOUR WONDERBRA!"
"eventually," Vito finished.
I leaned closer to Vito, "All we need is for Terri to be in her cheerleader uniform and the feeling of being back in high school will be complete." When it degenerated into the shouting match, Ranger and Lester had abandoned us having better things to do. What really was pissing me off was that I was starting to identify with Terri in this argument, and it was all I could do not to step in and take her side against Joe. It was more than a little disturbing considering that we've always been rivals.
"Well, we don't have time for them to yell themselves out," Meagan said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small revolver. It was a little 22 and it wasn't loaded so she reached into another pocket and pulled some bullets out and remedied that problem. She pointed the gun at the window to her left and rapidly fired off three shots. Joe and Terri immediately dropped to the floor and covered their heads, I jumped about nine feet in the air, Vito stuck his finger in his ear to stop the ringing while Meagan calmly examined her cuticles.
"Huh. I need a manicure," she muttered.
On that statement the door burst opened behind us and Lester, Bobby and Ranger came rushing into the room, "Whoa whoa whoa." Lester gingerly walked up to his wife, "Baby, it's probably too early for you to be armed just yet." He put his hand over the weapon that wasn't actually pointed at anyone then lowered it. He took the gun from her and handed it to Bobby who passed it off to someone outside of the room.
That seemed to snap Joe and Terri out of their shock and they both hit their feet. "ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?!" they both yelled at her.
"Well, yeah." The look on her face clearly indicated that they had asked a completely stupid question.
"What the hell were you doing?" Joe shouted.
"I have a headache and you guys were yelling. I needed to get your attention."
"Baby, I'm sorry but you could have just flashed the lights, we're practically programmed in grade school to shut up when someone flashes the lights, or you could have whistled. That works too." Lester chuckled nervously, "The gun was overkill."
She turned and patted his cheek, "Relax, handsome, it's full of blanks. Wouldn't have hurt anyone."
That's when we all realized the window she'd shot at was still in fact, intact. Vito was beaming at her, "My brother was right. I adore you, Pixie." She winked at him in response.
"Think we can get them to work now or should you and I go find some place quiet to talk?"
"Sit. If they start screaming at each other again, you can prove to me that the story about the stapler is true." He pulled out a seat for her and noticed the IV cath in her hand. "What's that for?"
"I was drugged last night." With that she launched into the story so far. The case, the kidnapping, the victims, all of it. I was surprised with how forthcoming she was about it.
"Why are you involved in this? A serial killer is interesting but below your pay grade." He asked when she was finished.
"We think he's involved in a human trafficking ring and we want to bring the ring down."
"Tell me about this ring?"
"You don't deal in people, Vito, at least not in this sense."
"True, but I might be able to point you in the right direction, speak to people you might not be in contact with. It's in my best interest to get this mook off the streets."
She handed around an edited version of the FBI file concerning the human trafficking ring and waited while Terri and Vito got caught up. I went through the file again to refresh my memory.
Two years ago the FBI received an anonymous tip about a sweat shop operating in Miami. When they raided it and began questioning the women from the sweatshop, three of the women, and I use that term loosely because they were 19, had the same story. They were all from different small Eastern European towns. They received letters from different German Universities offering them full scholarships and an all-expense-paid trip to tour the campus. Their instructions were to fly to Munich Airport where they would meet with a representative from the school who would escort them the rest of the way.
Once in Munich, they were drugged and put in the back of a cargo van. When they woke up, they were wearing different color scrubs-some wore white and some wore blue. The girls that wore blue were taken straight to the sweat shops. The ones who were wore white were fed fertility drugs and forced into prostitution until they became pregnant. Once they delivered, their babies were sold, and the women went up for auction and sold to the sweat shops or back into prostitution. Those in the sweat shop were told that once they'd worked off the cost of their medical expenses and their purchase price, they would be free to go. They made $10 a day and half of that they had to give back to pay for their meals. Their stories were put into the FBI database and they discovered that the same story had been popping up all over the country for the last six years.
A week after the raid they got another tip, this one about a cargo ship. The ship came in and they found a container with 20 women in it-all with the same story. While going over the manifest of companies with cargo on that particular freighter, Nadel Clothiers International stood out.
NCI, a massive uniform supply company, was the maker of the scrubs the girls in container were wearing. It was too big of a coincidence not to investigate further and more coincidences kept showing up. Like their European Headquarters was in Munich. Some of the women who testified had overheard the crew talking about when they were due to land in MIami and these dates coincided with dates that NCI had major shipments arrive in Miami as well. It was enough to start a full scale investigation into NCI.
NCI was founded by a man named Walter Nadel. A man of many interests, Nadel had his fingers in many pies, anything from textiles to real estate and he made a lot of money doing it. Fifteen years ago, after being diagnosed with ALS, Walter was faced with a tough decision. Who would inherit his business? He was the father of 4 highly intelligent, well-educated children, all of whom had been working for his various companies since they had been legally allowed to hold paying jobs. His solution was to sell off all but his four top money makers and leave one company to each of his four children. The profits of the sales of the other companies were divided equally among his children; the rest of his assets were liquidated and divided up amongst his 11 grandchildren and 28 great grandchildren.
His youngest child, a daughter named Margaret, met and married an Army Captain by the name of Anthony Beals. Beals had received an Other Than Honorable discharge from the Army for failure to follow orders and was finding it difficult to find work. He came from a wealthy family himself but he was bored not being able to work. Upon receiving her inheritance from her father and having zero interest in working outside of the home, Margaret promptly signed the company over to her husband.
At the time NCI was making a steady profit manufacturing nothing but school uniforms, but the company was starting to stagnate and in 2008 they were hit hard. That's when Beals had the company expand into workplace uniforms. While others were losing money, NCI was cleaning up.
Around the same time, the first stories of the trafficking scheme started showing up. In every city where the authorities found women with the same story as the girls from the first sweatshop, NCI had a distribution center. About the time each of the women remember being in Munich, Beals was in Munich, and he was in the cities that had the auctions around the times of the auctions.
The problem-the reason they couldn't arrest him-was that all of the evidence was circumstantial. NCI was the leading global supplier of medical scrubs so the girls were wearing scrubs made by NCI was hardly a smoking gun and neither was the container of goods on a ship delivering thousands of containers. Simply being in a major city at the time of the auctions meant nothing because they couldn't prove he was involved.
During their investigation of Beals, an agent fresh out of the academy who was assigned to do grunt work on the trafficking case decided, for reasons passing understanding, to comb through newspapers looking for Beals. That's when she came across the first three Miami murders. Three times Beals appeared as either a feature in the Business Section or in the Society Pages of the paper and the next day the front page story would be of the home invasion and murder of a petite blonde woman with dark eyes. The stories and the murders were so spread out that nobody had connected them before. Once she found that she kept digging and found more bodies starting from 8 years prior to the beginning of the investigation until up to three years ago when the killings suddenly stopped.
Probably not so coincidentally, the last and (up until last night's killing) the most brutal of the murders, happened two days after the memorial service held for Meagan. There was nothing until January, again probably not a coincidence, another body showed up. Then Beals uprooted his family and moved them to New Jersey and the murders moved with them.
Vito read through the file, "You sure this is the guy doing the killings?"
"As sure as we can be without solid physical evidence. Everything we have is circumstantial much like the trafficking." Joe said.
"He's a patsy for the trafficking." Vito said, "I know who's running that circus and it ain't Tony Beals."
Meagan raised an eyebrow, "Who's doing it?"
"His name is Alphonso Abandonato. His family has a cheap clothing company that supplies big department stores. They use them as laundromats for some of their other less savory trade enterprises. He's been trying to break into the uniforms market for a while now. NCI keeps beating them out and Alphonso isn't so happy about it. He's been bringing his girls over to coincide with NCI shipments so that in the event of a bust you'd look at Beals. A public investigation of NCI would be very bad for business and would make room in the market for Alphonso's company."
"You know this how?"
"He told me over a poker game after he'd had too much to drink."
"But you wouldn't be willing to testify to that," Meagan said.
"And leave myself open to all kinds of questions about my own legitimate business practices? I will tell you, in an anonymous tip type fashion, that if you were to speak to Tommy Spellecki…"
"Tommy the Fish?" I clarified.
"That's him. He's what you would call a disgruntled employee. I'm sure he could be persuaded to testify and give evidence against his boss in exchange for protection and a deal."
Meagan rubbed her temples and put her sunglasses on, still rocking the headache I guess, "What's Tommy the Fish wanted for? Anything major?"
"He's a bagman mostly but he's been present to receive shipments in New York. I'll bet you find out he's been at most of the auctions around here," Vito said and stood.
"You're awfully free with the information. How do we know we aren't just getting rid of some of your competition for you?" Morelli demanded.
"Believe me, Morelli, this information isn't free. I wouldn't be volunteering anything if I didn't have orders to assist you in every way possible." He looked to Meagan, "This should make up for Prague."
She held his gaze and stated, "Beals is mine, Vito. Keep out of it and I'll consider Brussels even as well. If something happens to him and I find out your family is involved…"
"No need to continue that threat Little One, I'm not stupid. I have no desire to be on the receiving end of the wrath of all of the families because I got in your way."
"We understand each other then." Her voice was chilling and her black eyes glittered with the unspoken threat.
He nodded and walked out of the room.
"Do I want to know?" Ranger asked.
"I had to make some new friends after I died," Meagan said defensively, the hardness gone from her eyes. "I couldn't really trust many of the men I worked with; I was sure a lot of them were going to try to kill me. Alexander Ramos reminded me that while undercover I made some friends in some rather interesting places. I made sure I cultivated these friendships. If I am honest, it saved my ass quite a few times having people who could supply me with everything I needed from weapons to shelter without asking too many questions"
"What she means is that since she died nobody is sure where her loyalties lie and she's just fucking crazy enough that most of the major families in Europe decided that it was in their best interests not to piss her off," Terri said.
Meagan tossed her pen on the table and shrugged, "Well, you say potato."
