Nancy called Annie Hooper before we left and put in a good word for us. It must have worked because Annie agreed to meet us for lunch at noon at a popular Caribbean-style restaurant in Fremont called Paseo. “Do you know where it’s at?” Toni asked as we headed north. I was trying to get on Highway 99, but it was closed throughout a good part of the city for construction work.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s on Fremont Avenue just north of Forty-Second Street. Just off 99.”
“You ever been there?”
“No. But they have one in Ballard-I’ve been to that one. It’s spicy stuff. You’ll like it.”
“Good,” she said. We fell back into silence for a few minutes.
“Did you ever do it with a prostitute?” she asked.
I suppose I should have seen this coming.
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Would it make a difference to you if I had?”
She thought about this. “Maybe,” she said. “Depends on the circumstances.” She turned to me. “Why? Did you?”
I stared straight ahead and didn’t answer for a minute. She continued to look at me.
“I came close once,” I said. “Long time ago.” I paused for a few moments.
“What do you mean-‘close’?”
I turned onto Aurora at Denny. I finally had a clear ramp to get on 99 northbound. “It was at Fort Benning in Georgia. We’d just graduated from Advance Infantry Training like two days before New Year’s. I was all of eighteen years old. We’d all just received our new assignments and were set to ship out the next week. Three of my buddies and I had passes for New Year’s Eve, so we were out to do some celebrating. Naturally, we got completely shit-faced at one of the local redneck bars down there and-well-there was this place you could go-this house. One of the guys heard about it, so we got a cab to take us there. Turned out to be a full-on whorehouse-set way back up off a country road. Had a red light out front and everything. The place was full of soldiers-soldiers everywhere. We actually had to wait our turn. But they had beer and loud music, and everyone was hootin’ and hollerin’ and having a good time, so we didn’t care. I was young and stupid.”
“What happened?”
“We finally got our turn and went inside,” I said. “They had this lineup of girls-women really-they were older than I’d expected. They all looked like they were in their thirties-maybe forties even.” Despite being halfway drunk at the time, I remembered the lineup. I guess something like that is one of those things that gets permanently burned into your mind’s memory chips.
“Were any of them cute?”
I shrugged. “A little, I suppose. They weren’t ugly. Remember, I was a little shit-faced by then. Anyway, I was last in our group to pick. When it got to be my turn, I looked at the four women who were standing there.” I shrugged, seeing the women in my mind. “They were okay-looking, I suppose. They were all wearing this slinky lingerie, supposed to make ’em look sexy. And as I looked at them, that’s when it hit me.” I shook my head. “They didn’t look sexy. Far from it, really. They actually looked kind of sad. I looked in their eyes and bam! — the switch got thrown, and I was instantly turned off.” I paused for a moment, remembering. “They all had sad eyes. It changed things for me-kind of woke me up, I guess.” I paused for a moment, remembering. “So then I just turned and walked back outside. I had another couple of beers and waited for my friends.”
Toni thought about this for a few moments, then she said, “Do you imagine under different circumstances-?”
I shrugged. “What is this? A test? Who knows. I do know that that’s the closest I’ve ever been to being with a prostitute. And there’ve been plenty of opportunities since then.”
“Like you got close to the fire once, and you don’t want to go back.”
“Got that right-I definitely don’t want to go back. It was twelve years ago and today-just thinking about it-mostly all I see are those sad eyes.”
“We’re buried.” Annie Hooper was sitting across from us at an outside table at Paseo, explaining the shortcomings of Angel House. We’d just finished lunch. Annie was a cute, vivacious woman, I’d say in her early forties. She had wavy red hair that fell to her shoulders. Her bright, infectious smile was made all the more endearing by the band of freckles on her face. She wore a black dress with a black necklace. “We’re up to six houses now-that means beds for thirty-six girls-a couple more in a pinch. And that means that at any one time, I probably have four more girls on a waiting list-girls I don’t have room for.”
“There’s that many girls trying to get straight?” Toni said.
“That’s right. The girls are all minors-by our charter with the city, we can only accept minors. Nearly all of them have been working for pimps. We give them a safe, secure home. We try to keep the locations secret to keep the pimps from coming by. They tend to find out anyway, but we have cameras, alarms, and heavy locks-and nearly instant response from the police. If a pimp shows up, he gets hit with a restraining order and a pretty firm warning. After that, most of them figure it’s not worth the trouble, and they don’t show up again. Most of them seem to get the message. At least so far. We’re diligent.” She smiled. “And maybe, just a little lucky.”
She paused and then continued. “Anyway, we work with the girls. We have classes and counseling for them. We encourage them to get their GEDs. The houses have normal house-type rules and structures, but we don’t have real heavy-handed enforcement. And it’s all voluntary-it’s not jail. The girls are all there because they want to be. If they want to leave, they can. But if they want to stay, they have to follow the rules.”
“How successful are you?”
“Let’s have Carla answer that,” Annie said. She turned to the dark-haired girl sitting to her left. When we’d arrived, Annie had introduced herself and Carla Nguyen. Carla was a pretty Asian girl, probably about eighteen years old. She lived at one of the homes in the Angel House network.
“It works pretty good,” Carla said. “The girls are uncertain when they first get there, but they’re surrounded by other girls who’ve already been through it. After a while, most of the girls take it pretty seriously.”
“You went through all of this?” Toni asked. “Out on the streets?”
Carla nodded. “Yeah. I worked. I had a pimp.”
“How long, if you don’t mind me asking,” Toni said.
“I don’t mind,” Carla answered. “Four years. I started when I was twelve. I got arrested for the fourth-no, the fifth time when I was sixteen. That time they told me I could come to Angel House. The first house was just opened then. I got to meet Annie.” She turned and smiled at Annie, the love and respect easy to see. “I’ve been there almost two years. My time’s about up now.”
“You’re happy?” I asked.
She smiled. “Yes. Happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life. For the first time, I feel like I’m in control of my own destiny. I got my GED. I’m already enrolled in U-Dub for the fall semester.”
“That’s great,” Toni said. “Danny and I went to U-Dub, and my little sister’s going this fall, too. What are you going to study?”
“Psychology, I think,” Carla said. “I want to be a therapist. I want to be a counselor for girls in the same position I’ve been in.”
“See?” Annie said, fairly beaming. “What a success story. And Carla’s not the only one. All of these girls are special-every one of them. They all have something to offer this world. They just need a little love and encouragement-sometimes the first they’ve received in their young lives. And protection. They need to be protected. They need people to stop taking advantage of them. We give them that at Angel House.”
“Sounds awesome,” I said. “A very noble cause.”
“Thanks,” Annie said. “It’s hard work, but I go home proud.”
“And thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice,” I said. “I think Nancy told you about our particular problem.”
“She did. Carla and I talked about it on the way over.”
Carla nodded. “Since I got to Angel House, I’ve talked to a lot of girls who got picked up at the Mall and the Alderwood Mall,” Carla said. “I’m pretty sure that there’s a gang working up there-they call themselves the North Side Street Boyz. That’s Boyz with a ‘z.’”
“Do you know anything about this gang?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No-only that they hang out at the north-side malls a lot.”
“And you think they’re basically recruiting these girls and pimping them out?” Toni said.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“How’s it work?” I asked. “After they get recruited, do the girls live with the pimps?”
“Some work it that way,” she said. “Sometimes, if it’s a gang of guys, they live somewhere else, and there’s like a house boss who lives with the girls. I think that’s the way it is with NSSB.”
“Would they at least live close together in that case?”
Carla thought about this. “I don’t know,” she said. “It makes sense, I guess.”
I nodded. “In our case, the only names we have to go by are a woman named Crystal, and two guys-one named Donnie and one named Mikey. Have you ever heard of these people?”
“I haven’t. But I’ll ask around when I get back home. Probably one of the other girls has.”
“I’m going to give you another name, too,” Annie said as she wrote something down on the back of her business card. “Reverend Arthur Jenkins. Reverend Art lives in the area where a lot of the gang members are from. He’s pretty close to a lot of the current gang members.”
“Where would we find him?” I asked.
“He’s the pastor at the Twenty-Third Street Baptist Church on Capitol Hill. If you’d like, I’d be happy to give him a call for you and introduce you.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “We could use all the help we can get.”
“Reverend Art might know these guys,” Annie said. “And he’s a wonderful, caring man. I think the guys in the gang respect him, but still he won’t protect one of them if they’re involved in running prostitutes.”
“That’d be great,” I said. “Meanwhile, let me ask another question. Apparently, Isabel’s been gone about a month-that is, she was recruited about a month ago. Carla, can you describe the process of what happens after someone gets recruited? Maybe the first month?”
“I’ll try,” she said. “First, they’ll try to make her comfortable-safe and secure. They’ll treat her nice and buy her things. She’ll start to feel special. Then, the pimp will probably have sex with her. Even if she’s scared, she’ll go along because he’s been so good to her. She won’t want to disappoint him. He’ll keep treating her nice, and then she’ll start to think she’s in love with him. He’ll even tell her he loves her.”
“And all this happens when?” Toni asked.
“I’d say the first couple of weeks,” Carla said.
“Wow, they move fast.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Then, not very long after, he’ll tell her he needs her to have sex with a friend of his. As a favor to him. She’ll do it because she wants to make him happy. Then it’ll be another. Next thing you know, she’ll have her picture taken, and he’ll tell her she has to start going out on dates. He’ll give her a quota. He’ll tell her that she can’t come home until she brings in her quota. And she’ll want to come home, believe me. When she does, he’ll make her turn over all the money. She can’t keep anything.”
“So she’ll be totally dependent on the pimp?” I asked.
She nodded. “She’ll love him, and she’ll think he loves her. She’ll do anything for him.”
“And what happens if she doesn’t?” Toni asked.
“Then he’ll get mean,” Carla said. “I’ve been punched. I’ve been burned with a cigarette. One time he made me stand naked in front of other girls while he beat me with a belt. Another time, when I complained, he called some of his friends over and they gang-raped me. He even threatened to sell me to another pimp in California.”
“Did you ever get to the point where you wanted to just leave?”
“Not really,” she said. “At least, not until I was a lot older. Once you’re in it, it’s kind of all you know. Besides-through it all, I felt like he cared about me. He was like, ‘you know I love you baby, but I need you to do this for us.’ I know now that he was lying-he didn’t love me. Well, maybe he did. I don’t know, even now. It’s weird, you know? But I know now that whatever he thought of me, he cared a lot more about himself. And he cared a lot more about using me to make himself money.”
“But still,” Toni said, “while you’re there, you do what he says.”
She nodded. “Yeah. You don’t feel like you have much of a choice. You don’t want to make him upset partly because you love him-or think you do. And partly because you’re afraid of him.”
“How many guys would you have to see?” Toni asked.
“Until I made my quota, which was usually $500,” Carla said. “If it was a good night, I could make that with two or three guys. If it was a bad night, it might take ten.”
“Did you have to walk the streets?”
“Sometimes. Not too often. Mostly we had dates with guys who called in from the Internet ads. We’d get our pictures taken in a sexy pose, and he’d put it up on Backpage. We’d get tons of calls. If we had a gap and weren’t close to making quota, then they’d drive us over, and we’d hit the streets.”
“Where?”
“Mostly a place we called the Track. It’s between Lake Union and downtown. Kind of by the Space Needle.”
“And you did this every night?”
“Pretty much. I figure in four years I was with four thousand guys.”
“What?” Toni asked, incredulously. “Did you say four thousand guys?”
“Yeah. Figure three to five guys a night-six days a week. Sometimes more.”
“Pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it?” Annie asked.
I shook my head. “It leaves you speechless.”
“We figured it out-we think I made my pimp probably a half million dollars,” Carla said.
“Half a million!” I said.
“That’s right. And I wasn’t his only girl.”
“How many girls did he have?” I asked.
“Most of the time, three or four,” she said.
“And they all worked the same way?”
She nodded. “Pretty much.”
“So that works out to what-” I calculated in my head, “-$1.5 million in four years-that’s almost $400,000 per year for the pimp! Wow. I guess that explains why they’re drawn to it.”
Annie nodded. “They make a lot of money off these girls.”
“And you didn’t get to keep any of the money?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We got an allowance-twenty-five dollars per week. If we did something really good-like bring in a really big night-we might get a bonus: fifty dollars or something. But mostly, we didn’t get anything.” She paused. “I mean, he bought food and clothes, but we didn’t get any money.”
“Carla,” Toni said, “let me get your opinion. In her last text message, Isabel says that it was ‘too good to be true.’ What do you think was happening?”
“This was like three weeks after she was recruited?” Carla said.
“Yeah. It was on May 28, and she was picked up sometime around May 7.”
“It sounds like they were telling her she was going to have to go to work, and she didn’t want to go.”
“Did you ever see that before?”
“Yeah, a few times. It happened to me. I was twelve. I didn’t want to have to start meeting other men.”
“What happened?”
“I got beat up. Usually, that’s what happens.”
“And you had to give in?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He beat me-said he’d kill me. He said he’d kill my family if I ran. So I did what he said. It’s not like I had much of a choice. This always happened when I pushed back. Later, he’d come and make up, and then things would be good for a while. As long as I did what I was supposed to.”
“And what about the men you were forced to see?” Toni asked.
“They were the worst,” Carla said with disdain. “I’ve been beaten by johns. I’ve been stabbed twice. I’ve been choked. I’ve been raped three times. I even got thrown out of a moving car once. We were just like garbage to them. Basically, they suck.”
“I’m so sorry someone put you through all that,” Toni said. “Thank God you made it through in one piece.”
Carla smiled. “I did,” she said. “I made it.” She reached her hand across the table. Annie took it and gave it a squeeze.
I watched them. Carla’s nightmare was over-at least the physical part. I suspected that the mental part might take longer to deal with. A young girl can’t be forced into sex with four thousand men in a four-year period and come out without serious emotional scars. These were going to take a while-maybe a whole lifetime-to overcome. Thank goodness for caring people like Annie Hooper-people who gave a damn and weren’t content to turn away and pretend the problem didn’t exist.
But Carla was safe now. For Isabel, though, it was different picture. Unless we could find her and pull her out-and do it fast-Isabel’s long nightmare was just about to begin.