Free The Lost Brother by Rick Bennet Page A

load it with the video equipment and go to this motel out on New York Avenue. We set up a hidden camera in one room and monitor it from the next room. I’m nervous with these three guys, because, I don’t know, they were scary. One of them asked me if I’d ever been in prison, and when I said no, they all laughed. I wasn’t liking any of it, but I had to see it through, you know?
    “So maybe two hours later, we’re in action on the next room. A white man comes in with a hooker, a black hooker, only she’s a he, you know. I’m calling her a her, but it’s a him. Okay, they enter the room, and me and the New Africa guys, we’re watching the monitor, and the white man, he looks familiar to me, but I can’t place him at first, and then they tell me it’s the director of the FBI. That freaks me, because I’ve been smelling some deep shit, and now I know what it is. These motherfuckers are getting shit on the man. I want out, but what can I do? Right? Okay, so this sick shit goes down. I mean, this hooker, she’s tying this man up, and whipping him, and fucking his ass. Man, I didn’t watch, really. But I heard the New Africans giggling and one of them talking about how he knew the bitch from prison. Okay, so it ends in the next room. And the hooker, she tells the Director she wants more money. He tells her to fuck herself. A couple of minutes ago
he
was
her
bitch, but now he’s a man again, right? And he throws a twenty on the floor and tells her not to forget that one word from him and she’s right back in prison. He leaves. The New Africans, they take the tape we made, turn off the monitor, and tell me to wait there a minute. They go out, and a second later I hear talk in the next room. I can’t help it, I turn the monitor back on.”
    He lets out a deep sigh. Scrunches his eyes tightly closed. His hands go to his face, rub his temples. He says softly, hurt, “They killed her. The hooker. Him. They beat him to death with their fists. Took a table lamp and crushed his skull.”
    Ottaway looks up at Kellogg. “You understand?” Kellogg nods.
    Ottaway says, “They got the Director on tape, in that room with that whore, the same day her body will be found by the police. Who’s not going to know he’s the one who killed her? They even had her mention that she was going to the Bullets-Lakers game that night. You know how often the Lakers come to town?”
    “Once a year.”
    “So it dates the videotape. They even had her mention some new player the Lakers had, so not even the year would be in question.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then the New Africans came back. I’d turned the monitor off, because I sure didn’t want them to know I’d seen what they’d done. They’d washed up in the bathroom, but there was still blood on their clothes. They asked me if I’d heard anything. I said no. Some yelling, maybe. They said they’d had to hit the hooker a few times to keep her in line. They said I could wait in the car while they got the equipment together. Thanks for showing them how to set it all up. I went out to the car. They drove me back to BTN.
    “That night, the New African woman at BTN calls me. Asks me how it went that day. I said fine. She asked me what happened. I told her we got the director of the FBI on a blackmail tape. She said cool. Asked me what about the hooker. I said I didn’t know anything about her. She asked me if I wanted to do more work with New Africa. I said not really, no. She asked why. I said I just didn’t feel comfortable with them. Then she was quiet. I started talking, like an idiot, saying I liked them all right and believed in what they were about; I just didn’t feel comfortable doing things like that. She didn’t say anything. Just let a minute pass and then hung up. I never heard anything more about it. Never saw anything in the paper about any hooker’s body being found, either.”
    “A hooker murder ain’t exactly pressworthy these days.”
    “No.”
    “So. The