The Fort (Aric Davis)

solicitation,” said Van Endel, appearing behind Dr. Martinez with his badge out. “I’d rather just have you answer a couple of questions, though, OK? Nobody has to go to jail. We talk, and then we leave and you go back to what you do.” The girl’s eyes twitched to the left, where Van Endel had noticed an alley when he parked. He spun, getting his body between whatever was coming and Martinez, and his pistol free of the holster.
    Van Endel ducked under the blow from the baseball bat and shoved Dr. Martinez aside, nearly toppling her. The man swinging it was obviously doped out of his mind. His eyes were dull and sunken, and he bore the ghastly pallor and racist tattoos of a neo-Nazi junkie who didn’t like the outdoors too much. Van Endel punched him in the stomach with a left, doubling the skinhead up, and then brought the Glock down on his head, easing up a bit at the last second. Nonetheless, Van Endel pushed the barrel into the idiot’s head plenty hard, dropping him to his knees. “Stay down on the ground,” he barked, and the man did. Van Endel knelt on him, pushing his knee hard into the junkie’s back, then cuffed him. “You stay there, got it, asshole?” The man grunted, and Van Endel stood before reholstering the pistol. It had taken only a few seconds.
    “Make her talk,” Van Endel said to Dr. Martinez. “Ask nicely if you have to, but make clear that if she doesn’t soon, I’m making a call.”
    “You heard him, honey,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi. “Can we have a conversation?”
    The girl gave a look to the now-docile man on the ground, the one who probably forced her out here, kept her on drugs, and told her he loved her after the occasional beating. “I can try,” said Bambi. “Not like I have a choice.”
    “You’re right,” said Dr. Martinez. “You don’t, so we may as well get started. Word is you might have seen some folks who didn’t fit the neighborhood all that well a couple days ago.” She held up the picture of Molly. “Is this one of them?”
    “I saw some kids, sure,” said Bambi. “But I never got much of a look at them, and I don’t really know what they were up to. Not for sure, anyways. I mean, you hear things, but—”
    “Let’s see what you got on your person, playboy,” Van Endel said, kneeling next to the boyfriend/pimp. He rifled through one front pocket and then the other, careful to avoid the old junkie trick of a vertical needle above the stash, point up. The second pocket revealed a couple of small and mostly empty baggies, with traces of a white dust, Van Endel figured either cocaine or speed. “Now we’ve got a problem. Either you tell your girlfriend to start spitting out the truth, or we’re going downtown. Don’t let the suit fool you—I’ve walked a beat, and I know the look a junkie gets when he thinks he might get a spot in a cage.”
    “Just fucking tell him!” screamed the idiot on the ground, and had he not been yelling exactly what Van Endel wanted to hear, he might’ve received a kick to the ribs.
    “Your call,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi.
    “All right, fine,” she said. “But I already pretty much told you everything. Some suburb kids were out fucking around. I don’t know for sure what they were doing—”
    “I love a good rumor,” said Dr. Martinez. “Spill it, Bambi. Everything you heard. My friend and I are very good bullshit detectors.”
    “OK,” said Bambi. “I heard there were some kids going around scamming johns. I couldn’t tell you for sure what they were doing, but what I heard was that there were some chicks that might have been working, but might not have been, really. Like, they were acting like hookers but were setting up guys to get robbed. I can’t prove any of it, and I won’t testify or anything. This is just all stuff I heard. Can’t believe half what you hear. Everybody’s been talking and talking, with all these girls turning up killed. And then this other girl goes missing.”
    Van Endel was a little surprised. “You heard about our high school girl? Our missing Molly?” He held up Molly’s picture again.
    Bambi gave him a look. “Molly who? I don’t know any Molly high school girl. I’m talking about Shelly. She’s a friend of mine.”
    “Shelly who?”
    “I don’t know Shelly who, I just know she’s my friend and she disappeared that night. Shelly’s her real name, but she goes by Angel. She went missing, but nobody knows anything but that they saw her get