The Fallen - Part 10.0
Chapter 28 - Post-Sale
Monsieur, that was very nice, even if I found it odd to break up my story at that point with more lovemaking. Of course, you knew my story could not end as badly as I believed it would as I was led away from the auction. As you know, we are in my bed in Room 215 of the Pleasure Palace. I did not die as a helpless sex slave in the basement of some Asian bar. Like Dr. Rieux, I have lived to speak of the plague that struck the city.
But about three years ago, nude, with a rope around my neck, I was led like a sacrificial goat through the warehouse door. In my gut, this was the worst moment of my life. There could be nothing good about going from being a sex worker in a city where people knew me and would complain about obvious maltreatment to being in a place where my life was worth 155,000 € to be depreciated rapidly. The door loomed through which I'd pass to some sort of vessel that would take me to hell.
About two feet out of the auction hall, a number of men seized the man who had been leading me. Seconds later, a mass of police officers and plainclothesmen ran into each door, guns drawn, with others covering each window. I heard several shots as I was led by an agent to a van.
In the van, there was clothing for me. Cathy was already dressed. The nurse in the van gave us a morning-after cocktail and said we would be examined carefully in a hospital before being taken home.
After the lengthy examination, a nurse told me that I was remarkably healthy and there was a driver outside to take me home. I recognized the driver as the Jim who had been among the party that had kidnapped me five years before. As he drove, he smiled and said, "please to see you again, Ms. Lightkind," chatted about his job at the federal attorney's office and handed me an envelope containing an electronic key to get into my condo as I left the car.
Home. Home really home? Monsieur, I was in the condo I had left before I headed to my office the day I was ravished and enslaved. Someone had dusted and taken care of the mail. Nothing was rotting in the refrigerator. Everything was pretty much as I had left it except that the suit I had worn to the office the day I was kidnapped had been dry cleaned and left hanging on the closet door doorknob.
On the television was a report of a large-scale sex slave business being busted in Baytown by federal officials with over 20 arrests and more men sought for questioning. There were no details on victims, just pictures of the warehouse and men being taken into custody with their faces concealed.
I opened a bottle of wine for the first time in five years, had a glass, and went to sleep for about 12 hours. I woke up about 4 AM the following day. I read a romance novel for about a half hour, thought about how hard it would be to stay on a diet and get enough exercise once no one was forcing me to do it, went back to bed, and slept until there was a knock on my door about 10 AM.
At the door was Bert Sturmer or Alan Storm depending on what you want to say. He had breakfast bagels with lox, some fruit and a flask of coffee. We ate like we were having a quick meal during a break in a trial. He did not apologize for anything. He said that the films they had confiscated of the gang rapes of Candy and me and the sales at auction should eliminate any need for me to testify.
Do not ask me why Monsieur, but I was overcome with an urge to either kill him or to take his cock into my pussy immediately. I'm sure you know what happened.
Afterwards as we showered, I had to ask him if he could not have at least warned me that I was going to be used as bait for the Baytown slave auction raid. He said that they did the raid on sort of on an impromptu basis and did not have time to get a message to me even if they had wanted to. He added that they would have caught more traders if they'd had more sales items to offer than me and Cathy. They were lucky, though, that a lot of guys who would not have been in town just to bid on two women over thirty, were in town because of the gun show at the convention hall.
Naturally, I asked him how he got Cathy to do this. He said she had volunteered. I asked incredulously how she could have volunteered knowing she would be gang raped and sold at auction even if, unlike me, she knew she was going to be liberated. Sturmer said that you just never know about the private kinks of people around you. Boring legal secretaries might have fantasies you cannot imagine. At least the mystery of why Cathy was so remarkably calm during the auction was solved.
When I asked him if Cathy had volunteered to become a sex worker at the Pleasure Palace five years earlier, Sturmer said that we were not going to discuss anything older than the last year anymore ever. "Look to the future, Stacy," he said, "you have a bright future ahead."
I thought to myself that if Cathy volunteered to become a sex worker five years ago, she most certainly had helped Kroesek, Mayor Murphy and Sturmer catch and enslave Donna and me. Yes, if she was that treacherous, it would work perfectly for her. She would have received a lot of money to help turn me and Donna into sex slaves, have gotten away from her boring husband, and engaged in her prostitution fantasy for six months before outwardly returning to life as a legal secretary. But I don't know what happened. Maybe she was raped as Sturmer told me in my office and enslaved for six months as Alice Wissen thought.
Sturmer left for his office and I looked out of my 30th floor balcony. The City of Orange had changed a bit physically. The big casinos and the convention center were new. The billboard on which I had advertised my law practice now advertised the "loosest slots in town." I could imagine the jokes that created particularly among those who had seen the ads with my picture on the sign before.
For three years now, I have been free. I've been a grand success. So far, even with the last pregnancy and my fifth child, I have been able to keep up my figure and strength, as you've noticed. It has been hard to diet and exercise without someone torturing me if I failed to do so, but I've done it.
Chapter 29 -- Aftermath and personal decisions
Yes Monsieur, I will try to tell you what happened in Orange and to all the people involved in the sex slavery operations as villains or victims the best I can. Much, though, is still unknown and I am sure you do not wish to hear of all the legal and political maneuverings that followed. I will summarize what I know.
One of the men in the hall made things simpler by being stupid enough to pull a gun. He was instantly killed by the federal agents.
The others involved in the auction, including Jimmy, quickly surrendered. The fact that many of the men in the warehouse were foreign nationals kept numerous domestic and foreign agencies busy. Some of the slave traders were wanted in many jurisdictions. A huge number of freshly purchased weapons were confiscated.
I would like to tell you that all the criminals got what they deserved. Most did not. Truth can be stranger than fiction. It is almost never as tidy or morally satisfying as fiction. In this case, where the prosecutors were as concerned to cover facts as to disclose them, guilty pleas were accepted for rather light sentences even when they made no sense.
Initially, Jimmy and all of the other men caught in the warehouse auction hall were charged with kidnapping and a smattering of other offenses. Charges involving the rape and kidnapping of Elizabeth Stewart, Hanna Kathy and a few other women taken in the last few months soon followed. Bail was set at levels Jimmy could not afford. I hope he was raped in jail.
The men swept up in the warehouse got long sentences here or abroad except for two that had some sort of diplomatic immunity and the support of their government.
As to the rest of the crooks connected with the brothels, no one piece of evidence that federal attorneys Storm, Rausch and others collected was decisive. But the combined weight of the legal and political pressure brought about the fall of the mobster Junta and bankrupted many of their quasi-legitimate partners.
The pictures from the camera I slipped to Tucker or rather Eduard helped convince Nitto, Satyrioni, and Tong to accept deals that would end their control of the brothels. They all claimed not to know that what their underlings were doing. Nitto, Satyrioni, and Tong did go to prison for a few years after pleading guilty to racketeering and tax fraud charges based on the facts that they had deducted expenses from the income of their brothels for money paid to women that was never paid out and had skimmed funds from the businesses.
Dick's Delight and the Playroom had purported to pay women but never did. The Pleasure Palace did pay some money into the accounts Sturmer had set up for me and other women and paid taxes until Kroesek left. Then Nitto decided to take 100% of the money from our sex work for himself and his partners.
Obviously, the fact we were not paid implied that we were slaves at least the last year, but no one sought to draw that conclusion. The federal prosecutors never presented evidence as to any victim except the women enslaved long after Kroesek and Murphy were gone.