Momma Lupe, Book 1 in the Ty Connell 'Novella Series. A Mystery/Suspense Thriller. Cooking or killing -- Momma Had Her Funny WAys (7 page)

They came back through the town a few weeks
later and the scenario was repeated: dinner, a few gifts, some more
money. Just nice people.

Then they came back a third time.

"I 'ad no idea dey were
driving all 'round the countryside. All over Vermont and Quebec.
Talking to girls like me. Amateurs and newcomers who wanted out,
nor more in. Making friends with us. Giving us money. Buying us
tings. The tird time they came back we went to dinner again, and
dat's when Ma said I owed her two 'undred dollars, plus interest by
the week, which made it tree 'undred dollars. Then she said she
knew ‘ow I could pay her off fast and make lots more money besides.
I could make two tousand dollars a week, she said. Den I realized.
I knew what she was talking about, but I
needed
the money. I thought I could
‘andle it. That's how I ended up in Boston. But I had no idea what
they were like. What being a slave was like. Then the sons started
on me."

She said she was repeatedly raped by the sons
once they got back to Boston, and then they "sold" her to a biker
club in Revere and the bikers took turns raping her. Breaking her
down, locking her in, terrorizing her, getting her malleable. They
forced her to perform in their strip clubs, and to perform sexually
with customers both inside and away from the club. What made it all
possible, she said, was the fact that they had got her on the
smack. After one fix, she was theirs.

“I thought it was
wonderful
. I felt
so free
. After that,
they
owned
me.”
What Geddes had already said.

She also told them about her "quota" for
dealing dope in the clubs —mostly coke— and what happened when she
fell short.

None of this was news either to Connell or to
John. That that was the nature of Momma's operation, and every
other stripclub/whorehouse operation in the world with minor
variations. Trading in the misery of desperate addicted women. But
Ma had added a twist they hadn’t heard of before. A quote
system.

Connell regarded her sympathetically. “What
happened if you didn’t meet this quota?”

“She turned me over to the
sons, an she’d watch. They’d chain me to the bed so I couldn’t run
and go at me. Momma used to sit there drinking her absinthe and
making comments, like at a wrestling match. Then she’d ship me off
to one of the biker clubs and they kept me in their cub house. Ma
said I had to get my head right
.
That meant sell more coke.”

Connell and Morgan exchanged glances. They
knew there would be more if they just let the girl keep talking.
Eventually, she got around to what they were hoping for.

She claimed that her younger
sister had been grabbed the same way after she had. That the sister
too had had been brought to Boston and had also been turned over to
the bikers to
break her
in
, like you’d break in a young horse.
Break their spirit. But the sister, she said, was not like her. She
was frightened and passive. The sister, according to her, was a
wild cat. Fiercely independent, violently against having hard drugs
pushed on her, especially averse to needles and heroin. Impossible
for
anybody
to
manage or dominate. She cursed at Ma, had deeply scratched the face
of one of the sons, and kicked at the bikers, spat at
people.

“You couldn’t control Martine,” she said and
fell silent. “She was such a fighter. I so admired her.”

“Was she older?” Connell asked.

Ms. Dumont nodded. “By a fourteen
months.”

“How’d they know about her?”

“From me. It was so stupid and so trusting.
In the early days Momma just asked me if I had a sister, and I said
yes, and so they went and got her too,” she said, and looked away.
Obviously feeling guilt along with the pain for being the one to
have exposed her sister.

She dabbed at her eyes and Connell gave her a
few minutes.

"Where's your sister now?" he asked,
quietly.

She sat again in silence for a moment.

"I can't tell you," she finally said. "They'd
kill me."

Connell understood. And he felt for the girl.
Trapped into in a hellish world. Every word a trap. The truth more
dangerous than lies.

"Can you tell me if she’s still alive,” he
asked.

She was silent again for
another moment. Then shook her head
'no
.'

That was all they needed.

Connell leaned forward. "Miss Dumont, your
name won’t come up. If you tell us what happened to your sister, we
can put the piece together ourselves. Make our own case. There are
a lot of other girls involved here. You won't have to testify and
nobody has to know you spoke to us."

The girl agonized, looking so thin, pale, and
frightened. Connell thought she looked more like a frightened
little girl of maybe fourteen, than a worldly young woman of
nineteen. But the prospect of justice for her sister was obviously
strong. Something that no doubt had been eating at her.

Finally, she said, "Martine,
when she first came, she tried the dance business but it was not
for her. She tot she could do it for the money and keep everyone
away from her. Just her alone on a stage in her own world. No
drugs, no men, just dancing. But it is not the ballet business. It
is the sex business. And the slave business. She kept pushing and
kicking at men who came too close. Finally, dey came for her —Ma
and the sons— to try again to break her. What we didn’t know was
dat when Ma brought us to these places, to these people, she
sold
us to them. Twenty
thousand dollars. Doze bar owners, dey
owned
us! But it wasn’t only that. Ma
gave a guarantee. If any one of us din’t do ‘xactly what we were
supposed to, they could ship us back to ma and get their money
back. Or get a replacement girl.” She looked at them in horror.
“Can you imagine! A
guarantee
! For
owning
people!”

She paused again to re-gather herself. She
pulled her housecoat around her a little tighter.

“Anyway, what happened was Martine quit. Tol
them to go stuff themselves. If dey ever came near her again she
was going straight to the police. She got a small place and even
found a boyfriend. She went back to work as a waitress and found a
small place. Working downtown. In a nice hotel. Their coffee shop.
She was out of it. Out of the dance business. Away from the clubs.
Out of it all. Making a new life. But one day, those sons, dey came
for her. They 'ad a 'uge row on the street and Martine was pushed
into the car. One of her friends at the coffee shop tol me she saw
dat."

Then the girl fell silent again.

"Did you see her after that?" Connell
asked.

Again, she shook her
head
'no
.'

"Where is she, Miss Dumont?" Connell asked.
“Do you know.”

The girl hesitated for a moment, and then
broke into tears.

“She’s gone.”

Connell said nothing for several moments.

“Gone where?” he asked, quietly.

"De Reservoir."

Connell wasn’t sure what she meant. “Which
reservoir?”

“I dunno. Out of town somewhere.”

“The Wachusett
Lake
Reservoir?”

“Might be. I heard that name.”

It was near Worcester. About forty miles from
Boston in hill country. More a huge lake than a reservoir.

"Doze sons came for me too. They tol me dat
Martine was gone. Dat dey put 'er in a dog cage and filled the cage
with rocks so she wouldn't come back up. She was still alive when
they tipped her in. They had her hands tied and her mouth tied so
her screams wouldn’t get out. She screamed all the way to the
bottom. Bubbles coming up. Momma ordered it that way. He said Ma
was there. She’s de one gave the cage de push and watched as it
sank. Alain tol' me dat later to scare me back into line.”

Connell and John exchanged glances of
disgust.

“Were you trying to get away as well?”
Connell asked.

“Not like Martine. I was going crazy. Bit I
needed de stuff. I still do. Dey gave me a few days off and some
stuff. But I know dey’ll come back for me. Alain said, if I din
be'ave dis time, I'd end up in the bottom of the lake wit Martine.
Dat I'd still be alive when I 'it bottom. They scared me so bad I
couldn't sleep. But now I just want it to be over."

The Reservoir Lake was a big lake.

"Miss Dumont, do you have any idea where at
the lake they did this?" Connell asked.

She sniffled. "I heard dem talking one time.
About a spot they go to. An old log trail. Near a cemetery. A dump
grounds they called it and laughed about it."

An aerial search should find it. Maybe even
satellite view of the lake.

The girl broke into tears again, and Connell
shut his notebook. Suddenly tracking the death of a mob lowlife
like Vinnie Momesso seemed almost inconsequential.

The next
morning Ty, John Henry, and a marine diving unit from the local
State Trooper
detachment were gathered at a
small overgrown boat ramp down a little-used old logging road
leading to the Reservoir Lake. It ran beside a small pioneer
cemetery, an unused and forgotten heritage site. The State Police
boat went out about fifty feet from the east shore mid-way down the
Reservoir, and began to scan the area with sonar. There was a sharp
drop-off in depth at that spot, and there was something down there,
in the deep.

Divers went down and they ended up winching
to the surface a wire-frame dog crate. Then another. And another.
And another. Until they had four such crates loaded onto the rear
of the police boat. Each was encrusted with muck and ooze from
being on the bottom, but two things were clear: inside each crate
were remains of a body, slim and female, and inside each were large
river stones which would have held them under for eternity.

There wasn't much doubt that one body would
be that of Martine Dumont, or that the others would be girls who
had passed through Momma's hands.

“There’s two more fresh ones down there we
can get now,” the dive leader said. “And there’s others as well.
Packed deeper in the weeds and growth. Might need a heavier winch
to bring them all up.”

Connell felt sick.

Back in Mattapan, the phone rang in
Momma Lupe's kitchen. The sons, seated at the
table, looked up but made no move to answer.

Ma was at the sink. She wiped her hands and
picked it up herself.

"'allo."

She listened intently for several moments
without speaking. The sons could tell that the call was somehow
important, and they watched and waited to see what it was about,
staring back and forth.

Finally, Ma set down the phone. She stared
out the big window for several moments not speaking

"That was Worcester,” she finally said.
Worcester is the second largest city in the state. Ma’s operation
supplied girls to clubs all around the area. It is five miles from
the Wachusett Reservoir. “The police ‘ave been out at the Lake all
morning."

The sons looked back and forth. Ma had
biker contacts across the state who monitored police radio bands
and tipped her when police activity threatened.

"How could they know about the lake?" Alain
asked.

"How? Probably because of
you two and your big mouths. It's good to scare the girls, you
said. Dis is what comes from talking to
anybody
, about
any
of our business."

"Somebody must have talked," Alain said. "One
of Paulie's guys."

Momma wheeled around.

“
You
talked,” she said. “Paulie’s men
don’t know about the lake. How would dey? Just shut up.”

They could see that Momma was in that
quiet rage that came over her before decisive and brutal
action.

"We'll find out who talked, ma," Theo said,
trying to appease her.

"Oh, shut up. Both of you," she snapped. "
‘Oo do you think is going to talk to idiots like you and tell you
what 'appened."

Momma threw down the dishtowel and stomped
from the room.

"I'll ‘andle this myself."

When
divers brought up the other two crates that had been recently
dumped they were in
for a whole new kind of
shock

The bodies weren’t of young women.

They were of men.

Men dressed in nice suits and over coats,
both with large gunshot wounds in the back.

They called Connell with the news.

“Any idea who they are?”

“Not right now,” the State Trooper said. “No
ID and no hands. Maybe never know.”

Weird
, Connell thought, when he hung up. Who
were
these two? How did they fit into
Momma’s world?

The bodies had been sent to the State
Police Forensics Lab in the nearby town of
Sudbury, only twenty miles from the site. At the morgue, work
had already begun to establish identities of the girls.

When Connell and Morgan relayed details of
the discoveries in the Lake to Nolan, Nolan was both shocked and
relieved. The prospect not only of solving the contract murder of
Vinnie Momesso, but also of rolling up Momma Lupe's operation made
it a very good day in a very sad way.

And Connell had come up with a strategy. They
would get the tap back on her kitchen window, and he and John would
go to Ma's front door at a time when the sons would likely be home.
They would tell Ma that they would like to step in and have a word
with her, that they had some routine questions regarding the
activities of the late Vinnie Momesso. Connell predicted that Ma
would remain cool and calculating and would allow them to step in,
rather than make a scene at the door. Then she would buy time. She
would lead them to the kitchen, and attempt to deflect their
answers with vague answers and non-committal shrugs. When Connell
brought up The Reservoir Lake, Ma would continue to sit sullenly,
continue to shrug off all questions. Stay calm until they left.