Sanchez called that evening while Katie and David were relaxing by the pool at their hotel. She said that Susannah would see them the next day, Sunday, after Mass at St. Edward on North County Road.
        “I guess she’s a good Catholic, too,” said David.
        “God works in mysterious ways. ‛Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Care to come along?”
         David made a face and shook his head. “I’m just going to zone out at the beach. Catch some rays. Drink a bloody Mary and eat guacamole. I’ll meet you later.”
         The next morning Katie took the car to the Church of St. Edward, done in a Spanish mission style Katie thought resembled the Alamo. The pews were about half full of the usual complement of older women with rosaries, younger women who were praying intently for some minor miracle and young children in tow. All the women wore hats or shawls over their hair. The priest said the Mass in English but gave his sermon in Spanish, speaking on the need for his parishioners to contribute to the church’s annual fund raising event to repair the roof.
         Katie spotted Susannah in the rear of the church but decided to leave her alone during the Mass.
         When the Mass ended, Katie blessed herself, and walked out to find Susannah waiting for the priest to come out and meet parishioners. She was dressed in a skirt to her knees and blouse with long sleeves, her hair tied with a scarf.  She wore no make-up.
         The priest came out and began speaking with the parishioners, mostly in Spanish, then seeing Susannah, took her hands and said, “Ah, Haley, thank you so much for the gift from you and your friends. It is very much appreciated.”
         Katie thought, “So her real name must be Haley and she confides that to her priest.”
         Susannah saw Katie and came over to her, smiling like a schoolgirl, and said, “I know a café where we won’t be bothered.”
        The two women drove off to Washington Avenue—Susannah drove a white Acura—and parked across from the Cortadito Coffee House, which had a good complement of Cubans. Susannah ordered a café con leche and a pastelito pastry filled with cream cheese and guava, and Katie took her lead.
         Katie was not going to mention about Susannah’s real name, unless she was willing to give it to her. At first they just indulged in small talk about the beautiful weather, rain coming in that afternoon and where Katie had been eating. Susannah said she’d give her a list of good places to try.
         “So, the man I met, this David, he’s an ex-cop?” asked Susannah.
         Katie explained David’s presence and role in their investigation, which was zeroing in on the charges of sex trafficking.
         “It’s absolutely true,” said Susannah. “I was one of the girls he trafficked. It’s been going on for years, but Madam Sanchez wanted nothing to do with it. She was the one who got me out of Epstein’s clutches.”
         “Well, how did he get hold of you?”
         “Jeremy himself is never involved. It’s Ghislaine who finds the girls and entices them. Me and a girlfriend—I’m from Gary, Indiana—were down in Palm Beach for like a long weekend, and we were at the pool at our hotel when Ghislaine came up to us. She’s very charming and has that like nice little British accent. Seemed so nice, tries to act like a sister. So, we start talking and she tells us Jeremy’s having this party at his big mansion and like there’d be a lot of important people there, some celebrities, and we really should come. For two girls from Indiana, that’s like quite a proposition. Then she clinched it by saying, ‛You girls are so pretty. Have you ever thought of modeling?’ Which we hadn’t. I once won homecoming queen but that’s as far as that went.”
         “So you agreed to go.”
         “Not only that, she took us to a boutique where she knew the owner and told us to pick out some new clothes—with her guiding us to some very sexy party clothes. I don’t know what they cost, but they were like real expensive. We found out just how much while we were trying them on and looked at the tags. Then Ghislaine just piled them on the counter, whipped out her credit card and told her friend to wrap them up. Then she said she’d send a car to pick us up at five, which turned out to be a limo. My first time in one of those, and there was an open bottle of Champagne in the back. I didn’t even drink, but I tasted it and liked it.”
         “What was your friend’s name?” asked Katie.
         “That doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s back in Gary, I guess.”
         “So what happened when you got to Epstein’s house?”
         “Well, we thought five was like a little early for a party, but what did we know? When we got there, Jeffrey, who is a nice-looking guy, came out all smiles, welcoming us, telling us to just relax because no one was getting to the party till nine. He was dressed in shorts or maybe a bathing suit with like a robe over it. He and Ghislaine sat on this huge sectional couch in this huge room by the swimming pool. They’re like asking us like a million questions as if we were the most important people in the room, then after a while, Ghislaine says, ‛Jeffrey, wouldn’t these girls make great models? They’re so young and so fresh.' And Jeremy says, ‛And so WASPy.’ I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. Apparently white girls with blonde hair and blue eyes were rare among local models.”
         “So what happened next?”
         “By then it was after six and Jeffrey excused himself, said he was going to lie down, and Ghislaine says, ‛Jeffrey’s got these terrible knots in his back muscles. He’s got to lie down and usually he has a masseuse come over but he couldn’t find one today and he’s going to be a mess this evening at the party.’ She then asks us if we could possibly help by just, y’know, rubbing his back muscles for a few minutes.”
         “That didn’t seem way out of the ordinary?”
         “My friend did, but I was, like, I guess a little in awe of the whole set-up, and I said, sure, I’d give him a little rub down for a minute. So Ghislaine leads me into this darkened little red room and there’s Jeffrey naked on his stomach with a towel over his rear end.”
         “And what did he and Ghislaine tell you to do?”
         “Ghislaine left the room, saying, ‛I’ll let you two be together,’ closes the door and Jeffrey tells me where I should massage his muscles. So, do I have to tell you what happened then?”
         “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” said Katie.
         “I mean I had like some hand-job episodes with boys back in Gary, but that was mostly playing around. I was scared of what was going on in that room, but Jeffrey wasn’t aggressive about it, so I did it and that was that.”
         “And what happened afterwards?”
         “Jeffrey just laid there. Ghislaine knocked, cracked open the door and said something like ‛You wanna freshen up before the party?’ like nothing had occurred. She showed me to this big bedroom, where my friend was waiting and asking me what happened. I told her I’d tell her later, then I took a long hot shower and took a nap.”
         “So how was the party?” asked Katie.
         “Unlike  any I’ve ever been to. Not a whole lot of people, almost all men acting way younger than their age, and about an equal number of beautiful girls; most of them looked Cuban.”
         “Were any as young as you and your friend?”
         “No, not that I could tell. So, we were feeling real out of place but Ghislaine came over, like I said before, acting like our sister, and said she wanted to introduce us to this guy or that guy. And Jeffrey was standing around putting his arm around the guys and the girls, with a photographer taking pictures of everyone.”
         “Did you see anybody famous at the party?”
         “I don’t read the papers, just like People magazine, and there weren’t any of those kind of celebrities there. Mostly older men who looked like they were from up north, ‘cause nobody had a tan but the girls.”
         “So what went on?”
         “There was a lot of Champagne passed around, and I drank a glass, maybe more, and like everybody’s being friendly, the way guys always are before they put the moves on you. And Jeffrey introduces me to this one guy, like maybe in his thirties, saying he’s the head of a big modeling agency in New York. Right away the guy—he said his name but I forgot it—starts flattering me and saying I like really had a great look and he’d like to see what I looked like alone. Jeffrey showed us to this room off to the side, he closes the door and the guy like tells me to strip. Just like that. I said no way was I going to take my clothes off and then  he pushes me on the couch.”
         Susannah stopped talking.
         “What happened then, Susannah?”
         She looked intensely into Katie’s eyes and said, “What do think? The little prick raped me. And when he’s finished he says he wanted to see me in New York. He’d fly me up there and all this bullshit.”
         “What did you say?”
         “I just wanted to put my clothes on and get out of there. I head for the door and he says, ‛See you again soon.’ And when I got out of the room, Ghislaine was like still standing there, smiling that smile, and noticing I was tearing up. She takes me into the kitchen, gives me a Kleenex and asks what happened. I told her, and she says, like, ‛What did you expect?’ Like nothing had happened! I said I just wanted to go back to my hotel—my friend had already left—and she put an envelope in my hand with money in it, saying, ‛I wouldn’t tell anyone about this. At your age it wouldn’t be a smart idea. You’re in a lot of the photos taken tonight,’ then says she’ll take me to my room and that I could leave in the morning.”
         “Then?”
         “I dropped my clothes  bags and looked into the envelope. There was like  two thousand dollars in there. I fell asleep fast, and when I woke up Ghislaine was in the kitchen with Jeffrey, dressed in his shorts. He says, ‛Well, well, you sure made an impression on” whatever his name was and ‛he wants to shoot some photos of you before you go home. He said he could get you work fast because you’ve got a special look and you’re so young.”
         “And that’s how it started.”
         “That’s how it started,” said Susannah. “I never did go home. I never did get to go to New York. Ghislaine said I could like stay at the house for as long as I wanted and swore that what had happened the night before would never happen again. But by then, I knew I could make the kind of money I could only dream of back home. So I stayed awhile.”
         “How long?”
         “I don’t know. Like four or five months maybe. Then I turned eighteen, and it was like Jeffrey didn’t want me around anymore. That’s when I met Madam Sanchez, who took me in but didn’t want to use me as one of her girls. But a few weeks later I was like out of money, so I started working for Vargas. And here we are.”
         Katie sighed, knowing any show of sympathy would ring false. Instead she asked, “During the time you were at Jeffrey’s did you see any other underage girls at parties?”
         “All the time. Like every week, unless Jeffrey and Ghislaine were in the Caribbean or New York or wherever. Otherwise the girls came and went.”
         “Did you ever speak to any of them? Warn them?”
         Susanna rubbed the back of her neck. “Whores don’t do that. Maybe I felt guilty or maybe I felt like a sense of satisfaction  that I wasn’t the only one they’d corrupted.  I don’t know. I stayed away from them.”
         She paused, then said, “Wait, there is one. Her name was Virginia Roberts (right). Maybe that was a fake name, but I remember  when she arrived at one of the parties, she was like seventeen, lived right here in town, blond, blues eyes, the usual type, and Jeremy hooked her up with this English prince.”
         “Was that Prince Andrew?”
         “I don’t know. Is he like related to the Queen?
         “He sure is,” said Katie. “He’s her son.”
         “Well, that must have been him, because I know what the other one looks like, the one who was married to Princess Diana? That was really sad what happened to her.”
         “Know anything more about this Roberts girl?” asked Katie.
         “Ghislaine told me she went to London with her and to Jeremy’s place in the Virgin Islands.”
         “And seeing Andrew there?”
         “Yeah, she even bragged about being in the Queen’s castle.”
         “Do you know where she is now?”
         “Not a clue.  Maybe your cop friend can track her down.”
         “Maybe so.”
        With that Susannah said, “I hope you get to expose all this bullshit, Katie. I’ll be the first in line to testify, but, nobody’s going to put a working girl in front of a jury. Jeffrey’s lawyers would rip me to pieces.”
         “Have you thought of getting out of . . . what you do?”
         “All the time. I’m not like hopped up on drugs like a lot of the girls. Never did crack, no track marks on my lily white arms. But it’s the life I’ve led now for a long time, like three, four years, and Vargas is not so bad. He knows I’m one his best girls, best paid girls. The problem is, what do I do if I get out? Like where am I going to make the kind of money I do now? What, go home and start college? Work as a nurse’s aide? You  ever been to Gary? It’s not that easy a decision, Katie.”
         “No, I guess it isn’t.” Katie picked up the check and thanked Susannah, wanting to say, “You take care, Haley,” but stopped herself.
            Susannah said, “Y’know, Jeffrey’s very, very well connected. He even threatened me—and like, I’m nobody—if I ever told anyone anything. He’s got a lot of power in Palm Beach and a shitload of money. Watch your back, Katie.”
            With that she waved goodbye, got into her Acura, honked twice and drove off towards the mainland.