My bike route soon became my most affluent means of target intel collection, what with me living in the geographic dead center of “The Kill Zone” as the gentry of Albuquerque affectionately named my neighborhood.

Easily 90% of the toads I have come to investigate end up living right here in my own hood, where I don’t have far to go to keep tabs on them. I start every bike ride with a list of Requests For Intel (RFIs) to answer on my ride.

Several times I have had the good fortune of spotting key vehicles on my route, and have been able to mentally grab hold of their license plates to pass on to the LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers) to run for me.

Occasionally I suffered the horrendous annoyance of spotting a car very early on in my ride. Spotting the plate, I knew it was going to suck singing those numbers and letters of the license plate to the tune of “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land” in my head for a whole freakin’ hour… but it had to be done!

I ride by the illusive Mr. Chan’s house. He’s a real shut-in, seen with less frequency than the North American Yeti. He is a suspected ringleader for an undetermined number of massage parlors who are illegally holding girls to work in their establishments, forcing them to sleep in the parlors overnight, only to get up and work again the next day.

Today the weather is so nice that Mr. Chan is no kidding standing in his yard profiting from the splendor of the season. He is standing right next to the street talking on his cell phone, omnipresent cigarette bouncing up and down as he speaks. Ah, Mandarin Chinese he is speaking; I just collected another piece of intel from Mr. Chan—thanks!

I even speak Mandarin Chinese (doesn’t everyone?), and I swear to this day to me it still sounds like they are just saying “Ching chang ting tang tong bing bang bong.” I tell ya I don’t know how I do it. I know if someone is speaking Spanish, and I don’t understand, it’s probably Italian or Portuguese… that’s just how I keep it all straight.

My victim vetting operation has a very low overhead, so low that it almost doesn’t actually exist. Here’s how it works: traffickers frequently post photos of their victims on Back Page advertising sex. I find myself a new residence to pretend to live at. I may select a place I find on a drive or bike ride, or from map and google satellite photo reconnaissance. I find a place that lends me the advantage to set up and watch for (1) her arrival so I can get Facial Identification photos (FID).

In the social media prostitution parlance there is the ‘in-call’ where a hooker offers the John a date at her location, and the ‘out-call’ where the hooker will travel and meet with the John at his own residence. It’s all about the money and the convenience. I developed what I can the in-call/out-call (2) jilt, and here’s how it works, mes amis:

I communicate by text to the victim with a masked phone number that I create using an iPhone application. I set up a date and give the hooker my ‘new address.’ I go immediately once I give the address out, because I know the victim will be driving by early to scout the location out. Now I wait. I get updates from her as she approaches the residence, and am at the ready with my (3) DSLR camera.

If she arrives by her own car, she will park away from the residence, just as Johns at a massage parlor will typically park anywhere but right in front of the parlor. Brilliant ruse on their part… “I couldn’t possibly be at a massage parlor because I am parked at the gay bath house next door… I rather liken it to kids who go to a quick-mart to buy their first condom: you know, they pile a bunch of red herring buffer items on the counter to bury the condom and, maybe the cashier won’t notice, because if he does he will certainly hold it up in the air and declare (boisterously): “Lookee here… my boy think he gonna get LAID!!”

By parking her car at a standoff from the jilt residence, I have a valuable opportunity to tag her car with a GPS tracking beacon. I once realized my own apartment building had a superior layout for a one-manned clandestine beacon implant slash in-call jilt. Alas though… a bit close to home for so much reality.

As she approaches ‘my house’ I have already taken photos of her plate and her face. I have positive identification of the victim from my own photos, compared to her Back Page posted photo. I have finished with her folder. I did this same jilt with every victim in my particular trafficking network of focus; sometimes I have done more than one jilt in a single day, and several on the same person; I just can’t seem to nail a slam dunk on a woman wearing Lucky Penny eye shadow, so I get frustrated and schedule a re-shoot.

Photos below: the extremely agitated (justifiably so) Coco types me a scathing message as she leaves the site of her jilt, compared with the photo she posted on Back Page.

In fact, once while I was watching a target residence, I came to notice that there was a really sweet spot for an out-call jilt only a couple of houses down. Since I was stuck there by my surveillance mission and bored, I set up an out-call jilt to avoid having to use my stun gun on myself to wake up, and was successful. A bit ambitious you ask? Perhaps, but you can’t argue with a successful mission profile.

So there she is banging on some stranger’s door dressed like Miley Cyrus and Cindy Lauper collided at detox. “But, what if someone answers the door” you ask? My answer is: “So what?” If someone does answer the door then it is a rather awkward moment for everyone… everyone at the door, that is. I don’t give a tenth of a rat’s ass, because I’m not there, and I don’t owe either of them an explanation. She (victim) fumbles through apologies, sends me a very rude text note, and I go have a snack.

The in-call jilt, my friends, is also very low overhead and simple. I make a date with a victim to come to her location. This is very valuable when trying to pinpoint the location of the victim. We agree on a price for the date and she gives me her hotel/motel (hmotel) minus her room. I drive to the hmotel and notify her that I have arrived.

She finally gives me her room number so I position my surveillance platform in a tactical advantage where I can get her photo from her doorway. Agitated, she eventually asks me where the hell I am. I appear to stumble about with apparent (or actual?) stupidity, and inability to find the right room. She inevitably opens her door and looks around for a really stupid, lost white dude, and… ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching… I have her FID photos.

Sometimes they drive themselves, and sometimes a second party drives them and drops them off. In my experience, these delivery vehicles have had temp tags and no plates. Interesting discovery, and where the hell are they getting all these transient autos? There must be a whole motor pool of them out there somewhere. We’ll find it eventually. And how do I manage to get all these remarkable Facial Identification Photos? I hide, hide in plain sight–a subject for a follow-on essay.

Trouble is, when the girls are dropped off, there is no potential to beacon (tag) the car. Well, I can never say never. We have accepted the risk, and have planned for even a daytime vehicle tag of an occupied vehicle. That, you could say, takes balls, something the task force is inherently equipped with. I plan to, in the fine style of fellow Contributing Editor Drew Dwyer, publish tech essays on some of the tactics and techniques that I have developed along my personal Shang Hai; you may embrace them, or be horrified by them, but they work.

Perhaps you may recall from my previous writing: there is real life, and there is the game, and sometimes the most important thing of all is the ability to differentiate between the two. The weasel best blessed with that ability will likely be sitting in the last chair when the music stops—POP!

Here’s a creepy dose of reality: most trafficked persons on Back Page only want you to text, not call… why is that? It is because you are not texting the person in the ad, you are texting a person that is responsible for managing them. Guys, you are texting another guy, in case you were wondering. The pimp may just as well be the person you are actually sexting.

In the end, you may show up to a date and the person you meet is not even the same person in the ad. How do these people get away with that? The answer is that the pimps/traffickers know that statistically, a John who goes through with making a date for sex, DOES NOT ACTUALLY CARE who he ends up with, as long as there is sex in the deal at some point.

Yes brothers, we are part and parcel the worse human beings on the face of the Earth… second only to females, but cause in the end WE… are not guilty of any pretense, a measure of elemental behavior I waiver in good faith to award to my sisters of the flesh. Don’t hate.

What good does all this jilting and deceit do for us? Well, once we have located a victim and established a sensible Pattern of Life (POL), and typically we can only get this one week at a time before they move about and re-establish themselves as open for business on Back Page.

We actually get to know the victims a little bit at a time, and we can get a feel for which of them, by order of priority, WANT THE HELL OUT of their predicament. When that time comes, it would be great if law enforcement authorities can pay the victim a timely visit. If the fools are not ready to rush in, then treads do it. That would be me; I tread up to the motel rooms with a lumbar gat (6).

Next step, take a deep breath and knock on their door.

“Hey, the real reason I came here today is, well you are looking pretty unhappy in your photos on BP and wanted you to know there is a way out of this mess if you want help.”

“What? No, I am doing just fine here (typical expected initial retort).”

“Well it looks sort of like maybe you are being held here against your will, and might want out.”

“No, no… I’m fine. I am independent and chose to do what I’m doing.”

“Ok then that’s it. Here’s an email address if you change your mind and some $$ for your trouble.”

The email address is of course, a shadow account that I established through a VPN from a Linux Virtual Machine on my Mac, while it is logged onto a nearby wireless network in the hood that is unprotected by encryption. Protected network? Nice try anyway (my other computer is your computer).

So far none of the women I have offered an exit to have accepted. We don’t expect them to right away at first meeting, but give them time, and watch that shadow email account for a frail grasp at help.

When my children were young and in daycare, a brother asked me by and by how much I thought the women of the day care should make in a day for their work. I thought about it and, those women are guardian angels, the lot of them. How much is it worth to me for them to watch my babies? The answer is one trillion dollars per day. Well, I can’t pay them that much, but I am good for it.

Even when my babies outgrew the daycare, I occasionally would stop by with a vase of flowers to leave at the front desk “For the house: Love you all madly.”

So, for those of you out there who ever dared to fall insanely in love with a child, ask me now how much it is worth to me to save just one of these gems from their demise. I would be lying if I suggested I would not risk my life for any one of our little jewels.

Gods creatures we are, all of us. And not one of us is any less deserving of God’s grace, and a second chance at life. I had mine, and I pay forward generously, at all frequency.

In the end, there is life and there is the game; the victor is who best can separate the two.

Geo sends

(1). The use of ‘her’ and ‘she’ and the constant reference to female does not presume to purport that trafficking victims are only females; there are indeed males afflicted. The number of males, however, is so far dwarfed by the sheer number of female victims that this harvester of souls has yet to find one.

(2). To jilt is to leave someone at the wedding altar; that is, to promise to marry someone, but then get ‘cold feet’ and then back out by literally not showing up for the wedding.

(3). Digital Single Lens Reflex. Class of high quality cameras offering detachable lenses and high-resolution photos. Author shoots with (day) Canon 7D/Tamron 18-270mm lens, and (night) Canon 6D with L-Series 70-200mm f:4.0 fixed

(4). A pistol that is carried between the trouser belt and the small of the back; concealed carry