Gina Romano came running into Deke’s office, waving her phone and interrupting a meeting he was having with Carol. “Sorry for the interruption, but this is something Deke needs to see. Social media is blowing up.”
Holding her phone in front of Deke, Gina began playing a video. An African American woman wearing a platinum-blond wig and sunglasses was addressing a roomful of cameras and reporters.
“I’ve always tried to be real with my fans,” the woman said. “But there was one period of my life I never talked about. I was just too ashamed. But the more I tried to put what happened behind me, the more it kept hurting. I couldn’t bottle it up no more. It had to come out. Chains is raw, and ugly, and real.”
Reporters started yelling questions, and Gina paused the video. “Could we have asked for better timing?”
Gina was one of the most talented lawyers at Bergman/Deketomis, but she was as mercurial as she was brilliant. For her, upsetting the apple cart sometimes wasn’t enough; blowing it up was more her style.
Deke tried to understand Gina’s excitement. “What am I missing here?”
“You know who’s doing the talking, right?”
Deke shook his head.
“It’s Storm!”
Gina turned to Carol, who was also shaking her head in disbelief. Even though Carol was a few years older than Deke, she gave him her “you’ve got to be kidding” look.
“All right, tell me who this Storm is, and tell me why you’re so excited.”
Almost as if she were explaining to a child, Gina said, “Storm is the hottest hip hop singer on the planet, and at her press conference today, she came out and said she was sexually trafficked as a teenager. She was, and I quote, ‘Used, abused, bruised, and utterly confused,’ and peddled from one man to another at truck stops and motels. Storm said that what she endured wasn’t human trafficking, but inhuman trafficking.”
“She said that?”
“More than said it. She sang it on her single ‘Inhuman Trafficking.’ They even teased a couple of lyrics at the press conference. Her album Chains comes out next week. I’m all for beating the drums and making it our anthem for the trial.”
“Tomorrow’s hearing suddenly got more interesting,” Deke said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Gina said.
The two lawyers were going to appear in federal court in Atlanta. When they had filed their human trafficking suit against Welcome Mat Hospitality earlier in the year, the media had been remarkably disinterested in reporting on what Deke called the “invisible epidemic.” With Storm’s new revelation, that would probably no longer be the case.
Deke said, “Try to reach out to Storm’s people to see if she might be willing to talk to us. Short of that, try and determine if she has gone on record as saying she was trafficked at any of the Welcome Mat properties.”
“Will do,” Gina said, and with a wave to the others hurried out of the office.
Deke turned his attention back to Carol. “Let’s get back to Tío Leo.”
“I wish we had better news, but he’s fallen off our radar. We know he doesn’t have any shortage of false identities, so he’s probably using a new name.”
“I want to turn the heat up on him. Give me your best guess as to where he’s likely to be, and I’ll saturate the area with billboards that have his name and picture, and most of all, the promise of a reward for his capture.”
“I’d target the corridor between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. That’s where he grew up, but there’s no guarantee that’s where he is. In the past six months, we know he’s done his trafficking from Mobile to Miami.”
“Were the girls we freed able to tell us anything about Lily?”
“The sixteen-year-old, a girl named Guadalupe, saw two big white guys carrying Lily out to a large van. She said Rodríguez was expecting them, and thinks he gave Lily enough drugs to be out of it. Guadalupe said the two men spoke English to Rodríguez, so she couldn’t understand what was being said, but judging by their accents, she said they weren’t Americans.”
“She wasn’t more specific than that?”
“Afraid not. Before coming to America, she’d never been out of her village.”
“How long were the girls with Rodríguez?”
“He’s been trafficking them for almost two months. They came into the country on a classic bait and switch, believing they’d be working as housekeepers. Rodríguez manipulated them through all kinds of threats and coercion. They feared not only for their lives but the lives of their families. In fact, he had the girls convinced that he was a brujo—a male witch. Rodríguez cut a lock of hair from each of them and said that were they to cross him, he would use their hair to cast a spell on them, and they would waste away. I guess Lily wondered why the girls were so scared of Rodríguez. She only spoke a little Spanish, though, so it took her a while to figure out what was going on. Lily assured the girls that Tío Leo was full of bullshit—está lleno de mierda—which I guess was one of the few phrases she knew in Spanish. Guadalupe said Lily was protective of them.”
“What’s the current status of the three girls?” Deke asked.
“They want to go home, and the sooner the better.”
“I would too,” Deke said.