Downstairs, she rifled through her mother’s desk and found her more recent checkbook registers. She flipped through pages, but did not have to go back very far. A little over a month before her death, Kathleen DeRose wrote a two hundred dollar check to the MCEDC on March the fourth.
Angie sat in her mother’s office chair, spun it a few times, thinking what it could mean, knowing she would end up calling Bao.
Angie’s phone rang. She was sure it was Bao calling her. “Were your ears ringing?”
It wasn’t Bao. It was Mike. “Ange, I got a joke for you. Three pimps walk into a bar.”
Angie gasped. “They’re there?”
“Mr. Fedora, Casper the Friendly Killer, and some tall, thin, good-looking guy I hate on account of those very attributes. A couple girls are with them and they don’t look like they subscribe to Good Housekeeping, if you get my drift. I’m going to strike up a little conversation. See what happens.”
“You be careful as can be.”
“Hey, I’m Captain Careful, the world’s dullest superhero.”
“Listen, if you can’t get inside, see if one of the girls can get Nadine the burner phone and my business card. The message is we want to help. Don’t play the hero, Mike. Got it?”
Mike hummed a few bars from Superman’s theme song in response.
CHAPTER 29
Exhibit D: Excerpts from the journal of Nadine Jessup, pages 44-50
I am here in the basement on my bed (my bed, ha that’s a good one, like I want to claim it for my own . . . mine, mine, mine). Anyway, here I am on a bed in my, oh let’s call it “designated area,” my cube (like where my dad’s employees work) down in this bogus maze of makeshift rooms. I’m staring up at a ceiling carpeted with so much mold I want to gag, waiting for something to happen, something I don’t want to have happen. I don’t want another job, another man, but someone will show up because someone always shows up. To pass the time, I’m sneaking in a little journaling, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I still feel sick and dirty and disgusting. Whatever was me, the old me, I think has rotted away and now whatever I am is all that’s left.
At least I have something inside me to numb the pain, something Tasha gave me, something small and blue that makes the mold on the ceiling ripple like waves and my body feel weightless and my soul feel free. I can do anything in this state of mind. Even let them use my body as an ATM for “Stinger” Markovich, Ricardo, and the others. I understand that I’m here, trapped in this situation because of me and nobody else. I could have said no to the pictures. I could have somehow not fallen for Ricardo, not trusted him, escaped from that first apartment when he gave me the chance. I could have said no to the work, no to using my body, but I didn’t fight them because I was afraid—afraid of them—and now I’m a part of this. You can’t separate a part from the whole without suffering, Ivan said to me. He told me you can’t cut off an arm and not have it bleed.
I could try and leave this place, sure, but I know it’s going to hurt if I do. Somehow it’s going to hurt badly, so I’m stuck here and probably I’ll stay here until I disappear like Jade, the older girl they starved until she wouldn’t eat. I’ll stay here until the day another girl takes my place and lies on this very bed (my bed/her bed), staring up at the same mold-covered ceiling.
I saw Ricardo for the first time in a while. He kissed me on the lips, but I played possum, acted like I was dead, didn’t kiss back at all, and he didn’t like it so he didn’t stick around for anything more. He said he’s with a new girl now and he’s not going to bring her here because he loves her too much. Strange. For all the horrible things Ricardo has done to me, horrible horrible things, I thought he couldn’t possibly hurt me anymore than he already had.
I was wrong.
The craziest thing just happened. I mean crazy! I’m still freaking out. My heart is racing like mad and Tasha gave me something to calm me down, but I don’t think it’s working. I don’t know what to do. I’m so happy I want to burst into tears, but I’m so scared I want to cry, as well, so I’ll be back in a minute because I’m going to the bathroom to cry my eyes out and probably puke.