Page 99 of Nobody's Fool

“What does this have to do with the Belmonds?” Osorio asks. “Or was using their name just a ruse to get a meeting with me?”

“It was no ruse,” I say.

Osorio spreads his hands. “Then?”

“The girl who ran that con on me—the one I thought had been murdered.”

“What about her?”

“She was Victoria Belmond.”

Osorio blinks, absorbs the words. “The kidnapped daughter?”

“The very,” I say. “The FBI has had no clue where she was for the eleven years she was missing. Now we know that she was in Fuengirola three years after she vanished, running scams on at least one naïve, young tourist.”

Osorio sits back. “I don’t even know what to say. Are you sure it’s the same girl?”

“Yes.”

“Have you met her?”

“Just recently for the first time.”

“I assume you asked her about robbing you?”

“She claims no memory of those eleven years.”

Osorio rubs his chin again. “I remember reading that,” he says. “But come on. Amnesia? That has to be a lie, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I need your help.”

“How?”

“She didn’t run that con on her own. She had an accomplice. He went by the name Buzz.”

Osorio arches a skeptical eyebrow. “Buzz?”

“Yes. He was also her drug dealer.”

“More likely, her handler,” Osorio says.

“Meaning?”

“Look, twenty-two years ago—that was before we fully understood about trafficking and all that. But this is how it worked: You know, I’m sure, that a lot of young women—and men too—were forced into sex slavery.”

“Yes.”

“These were often run by organized crime families. They were into a lot of illicit things, of course. Not just sex. They exploited other avenues for revenue.”

“For example?”

“For example, a destitute, desperate young woman looking for work could be told there’s a job waiting for her at a tourist destination, something like waitressing or being a club hostess. Once she arrives, her handler takes her passport away and forces her into other lines of work—sex work being the most obvious. But some of the girls would be put out on the streets to beg. Some would be taught to pickpocket or shoplift or roll men. And some would run more elaborate cons.”

“Like the one on me.”

“Precisely.”

I try to put it together. Did Victoria get kidnapped and then forced into a life of petty crime? It seems a stretch. She certainly wasn’t destitute or desperate. And what do I make of her memory loss? Is that for real? Is it a cover? I try to rewind to the beginning, to that New Year’s Eve party above McCabe’s Pub.