“Sounds good.”
Together, we scoped out three locations for cameras wherewe had a good visual of what we thought was the tunnel entrance. There was a standard subway entrance at the bottom of a staircase, except it was boarded up and closed off. Graffiti covered the wood, and trash piled in the corners of the alcove. It didn’t have any obvious entry or exit points, but they had to be using it somehow. It was too close to where Lucchese dropped off Vokshi for it to be useless.
I made sure our bikes were secured and lo-jacked, just in case, but if anyone took them, there would be hell to pay. Then, I walked over to the two women still waiting on the corner for customers. Someone had to have seen something.
“Hey, baby,” one of them said when I got close.
I nodded my head to both of them. “Ladies. Not looking to buy, but I have a picture I’d love for you to look at.” I pulled out the pictures of Arion and Ervin Vokshi. “Seen them around recently?”
They exchanged a look, then looked back at me with mistrust. “Why?”
I tucked the picture away. There was no point in lying. These women could smell lies and danger from a mile away. “I want to kill them, and any of their friends I can find.”
They didn’t even flinch—a testament to the shadiness of this area—but one of them smirked. “What’s your name?”
“Wynn.”
Some women around here knew me or knew of me and the work Willow and I did.
“Hmm.” One cocked her head back and took a drag of her cigarette, seemingly making a decision. “I seen that one before.” She pointed at Ervin Vokshi’s picture. “A few of his guys, too.”
“When?”
She jerked her head toward the stairs that led down toward the sealed off tunnel. “Awhile ago. Hovering over there.”
“Did he go inside?”
“Nope. Just stood out front.”
I huffed a breath. “What about the other guys you saw? Ever seen them go into the tunnel?”
She shook her head. “No, but yesterday, I thought I seen one of them walking down the street. I got a customer, and when I came back to the corner, he was walking two girls down the road with two other guys.”
So, theywereusing the tunnel. We just didn’t know how yet. “What happened then?”
“A car picked them up, and they drove off.”
They were moving them in smaller groups, using the cars from the auto-repair shops. Nondescript and inconspicuous travel means. They probably used multiple tunnel exits, too, so not every transport came through the same location.
“How often does that happen? Could you describe the car for me?”
The other woman shook her head. “Never seen it again. But I have seen the guys a few times. Sometimes they get into cars. Sometimes vans. Sometimes the guys just walk away.”
I ground my teeth. If they were using all kinds of cars, it would be almost impossible to track them down.
“You know what they’re doing?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nope. Don’t care to ask, especially if you gonna kill them.”
I was certainly going to kill them. I’d kill them all.
I looked back at the tunnel. “What time do they usually come around?”
“Around 1:00 a.m. Like clockwork.”
I glanced at my phone. It was only just past midnight. We’d have to wait. I pulled a wad of cash from my jacket and held it out. “Thank you for the information.”
The older girl took it and stuffed it into her pockets. I waved goodbye while I hunched my shoulders and headed back toward Ciel.
