Human Trafficking Tale: Sister Sister -- Moving Targets are Hard to Hit

You can read part one here

Dedication for this work goes to Adam Cortez (Biggy-Small) Biggs, convicted trafficker of this essay’s protagonist.

Adam Cortez (Biggy-Small) Biggs looks out over the balcony of the motel where he trafficks multiple young women.

Little Sister appeared on www.backpage.com with the rigid regularity of a trafficked little sister, her and her other sisters. I think there were five in all at the time. The sisters’ posts appeared at around 0530 every morning, and then again at about 1930 in the evenings. Their posts never varied in time stamp more than a minute among all five of them. Reason: all of their posts were done on their behalf by their trafficker.

Biggy-Small used his “Bottom Bitch” to affect the post of his harem on BackPage. The term bottom bitch is misleading, as it is actually his top girl, one who he is in a relationship with, has the most tenure in his trafficking network, and is trusted with her own car to handle the logistic requirements of his network:

Transport the sisters to different motels around the city
Feed the sisters, typically only fast food day after day
Keep the sisters in clothes
Fetch errands for the girls to keep them in toiletries, makeup, incidentals, etc.
Take the sisters to a clinic for checkups and treatment for maladies
I don’t know what else …

My own surveillance photo of Biggy outside his apartment on the day the feds finally rolled him up.

Pimps like Biggy-Small are pretty smart, but not very smart. Worse than that, they historically don’t have the endurance to keep up their security posture. Ideally, they need to move their girls around at least once per week; moving targets are hard to hit. Oh, but that means more work for his bottom bitch, and if she is impaired somewhat — she might not perform swimmingly in her assigned role.

Such was the case of Biggy’s bottom girl, Angelica G; hard-core addicted to heroin — oh dear!

Angelica G.; she was anything but angelic — all the way up until Biggy discovered her secret boyfriend and she disappeared.

I tracked Angelica many times as she moved through town in her Chevy Impala. Several times a day I noted her as she pulled over in an intentionally nondescript location where she remained for nearly an hour without leaving her car. “Heaven knows,” I could only wonder until I figure it all out through the most intriguing event.

Given my method of remote tracking, I pinged her locations once every ten seconds and found her to pause for nearly an hour in a Walgreen’s parking lot on our Central Avenue. When she moved again, low and behold she pulled into the parking lot of yet another Walgreens farther east on Central. After a half hour I had to wonder:

“Jesus Paste, how many shades of lipstick can there be to look at in there?”

Being in close proximity to, and bored at the time, I elected to jump in my truck and do a walkthrough of the drug store to catch a glimpse of her and her activity. I never made it into the store, because as I arrived I could see Angela’s car parked with her headlamps on. I cruised slowly behind her car; I could hear her engine running and see that she was slumped in the driver’s seat with her head on the steering wheel.

She was passed out from her last opiate fix — rough day, hon?

Little Sister as she appears in one of her many mugshots for drug-related arrests.

I left a parking spot empty next to her car and pulled into the next. I, being a strong proponent for the ruthless exploitation of Targets of Opportunity (TOP), did phone 911 post-haste:

“Good eve, I’m at the Walgreens on Central and Black Widow, there’s a woman passed out in her car here. She is unresponsive and her engine is running.”

I don’t carry NARCAN with me. I don’t carry it because it would be illegal for me to save the life of an overdosing victim. I accept that. I learned here very quickly within the first few times I called 911 for an overdosed person that they never send an ambulance first. They send a cop with NARCAN to assess the situation before they waste an ambulance on a feckless moron passed out on the street.

The cops were timely. The windows of my truck were completely covered with several layers of black mesh screens. My window was rolled down so I could hear outside but no far enough that a person could insert their hand/arm and grab me. My seatbelt was off in case I needed to exit my truck and defend it against some cretin emboldened by morphine and hell-bent on damaging my vehicle. Hommie don’t play that.

The cops were punctual. They tapped and tapped on Angela’s window. When she didn’t respond they eased her door open and shook her firmly until she regained a groggy clue. They pulled her out of her car and cut the lights and engine. They sat her on the curb between our two cars. I listened to their questions to her:

Angelica seated on the curb between our two cars; photo taken with my camera from behind my screening.

“Where do you live?” Score, I got her address and can vet it with what I already had.

“Do you have any children?” She had one, she said, and her name is Rachel, six-years-old. I would note later in a surveillance photo that Angelica had the name Rachel tattooed on her back just under her shoulder. Now I had the answer to why Angelica made a dash every night around midnight to a particular apartment complex. It was there that her daughter was in the care of friends.

The cops let Angelica walk away, as long as she left her car parked at the Walgreens. I remained after everyone else left, and, after about 23 minutes the angelic one crept back and recovered her car — like a rat! It was because Angelica was bingeing on heroin and letting her job slip that Biggy found himself more and more often dealing with the logistics of his band of sisters himself, and that very exposure lead to my discovery of Biggy in April of 2016 — oops!

Police remove Angelica from her car where she was passed out from a spirited dose of heroin.

The day I found Biggy and his sisters’ clan I had texted Little Sister for a “date” under the pretext of client status. “She” gave me her motel location early on. I say “she” because rarely did Biggy let his girls conduct the date dialogue themselves. Typically he or his bottom bitch did the dialogues; his girls just bedded and spreaded.

Once at the motel I got her room number and set up in the parking lot for a photo advantage. Midway through the dialogue, I got switched from Little Sister, who was somehow indisposed, to another girl named Starr. I learned some minutes later that Biggy was, in fact, late bringing Little Sister to the motel, so he ushered a stand-in.

This was an In-Call Jilt operation. In-call is when you come to the hooker’s location; Out-call is when the hooker comes to your location. I don’t like the In-call Jilt as much as the out-call, because I don’t have nearly as much control over an in-call. Such was my dilemma at this time. The person whose photo I wanted for my report for Law Enforcement was behind a closed door. I had to socially engineer a method to get her to show her face, short of knocking on her door and then diving behind a bush with my Canon.

This isn’t rocket science by any stretch, I played the dumb guy — a role that I am depressingly skilled at performing:

(Texting; tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…)

geo: “Hey bae, wer U?”

Little Sister: “221 … I told you already”

geo “Ok … which side of the building are you on? I’m walking around to the other side now.”

Little Sister: “I’m on the same side as the mountains.”

geo: “What mountains?”

Little Sister: “OMG, are you sirius??”

geo: “Well, fuck! … I’m not FROM here!”

The door to room 221 opened and Starr stepped out, leaned over the balcony, and scanned the ground below. I worked my shutter. As she went back inside something caught my eye. Anything that moves catches my eye when I’m in shooter mode. I swung my camera and instinctively snapped the motion.

Peering through my 300mm zoom lens I was mildly stunned at the sight of Biggs walking along the second-floor landing, cradling Little Sister in his big fat arms. She wore a beguiled smile for her big strong man who was carrying her. Her hair now had grown out and was bleached blonde since I had last seen her. Her right lower leg and foot were in a cast, broken just a few days earlier from a fall down some stairs.

Little Sister wasn’t a particularly smart lady, she was mildly autistic and utterly dependant on her pimp for life!

Biggs carries Little Sister with her right calf and foot in a cast from a recent fall.

Biggs wasn’t carrying her to be chivalrous; he was just tired of yanking her around by the arm as she tried to walk, and had just scooped her up to get her moving quicker. He took her to room 221, kicked Starr outside, and put Little Sister back to work on her back. That took me aback, but what really did I expect?

“Hey, it’s me, Kelly (Little Sister’s stage name). I’m back now. So, I can make your date if you are still interested,” came the text string over my phone. Ah, the doctor was in, and ready for service. Biggs stepped out on the landing and leaned forward on the balcony. He waved and smiled to motel staff below, telling me that he was known for his frequency at their establishment.

Up in 221 Little Sister probably snoozed. She always dropped off to an opium-persuaded sleep before a date. My shutter opened and then slammed shut on the license plate of Bigg’s late-model Caddilac. I had what I needed to begin a 19-month trial of Biggs and his network. I developed his network and built up my report for Johnny Law. 19 months seemed like god-awful long time to me back then but if we can save just this one child … you know the rest.