xp_logs | Vanessa and Angelo, Monday morning (Reply)

Vanessa visits the Elpis offices and a flash drive full of information about mutant sex trafficking mysteriously lands on Angelo's desk.

Normally once she was inside the ELPIS offices Vanessa made a beeline for Nathan's office, but this wasn't a social call. She was pretty sure his job description these days meant being so important he wasn't allowed to see mere mortals such as herself on business so the metamorph made her way to the desk of the next best thing. Really, he told Nathan what to do often enough and made apologies for the man cussing out diplomatic uppity ups enough that Angelo was very possibly better than the top of the food chain these days. At least that was the story she was sticking to.

Falling gracefully into the chair that sat opposite Angelo's desk, Vanessa smiled at him. It was the smile of someone who had a really good secret. "I have something for you, my love. I'm not sure how much of it you can use but I'm fairly certain at least some of it will be useful for the fine work you paper pushers do around here if you feel like getting your hands a bit dirty. I know it's hard to maintain the manicure when you veer into the dirty stuff, but you seem like the sort of man who does dirty better than manicure."

He blinked at her for a moment, but his smile grew as her speech continued. "You know me so well. Manicure's got its place, but I'm not gonna say I don't still like a bit of dirty once in a while. What'd you bring me?"

Vanessa held up a finger "Ut-uh. First you need to understand our terms. This is a contract between you and I. One," she ticked the point off on a finger, "you don't ask how I obtained the information. Two, you don't ask why I obtained the information. Three, you don't ask what happened to the person from whom I obtained the information. You can rest assured that said person will not be a problem for you at any point in time. Any associates of his will have no way of tracing said information back to you. Whatever you do with said information never involves my name, my agency's name or the names of anyone associated with it."

A white eyebrow raised in a near perfect arch. "Agreed?"

Angelo leaned back in his chair, considering, and his expression turned abruptly serious and businesslike. "I... am going to assume whatever this information is, the person you obtained it from was dirty in ways you and I would never even think about being, and that whatever happened to him or her was well deserved. If that's right, and I'm free to do whatever I think fit with your information provided it doesn't involve you or yours, we're agreed."

She hadn't made any stipulations about assumptions, though his were suspiciously like questions. Vanessa would give him that much, but only this once. "The information is yours to do with what you like. Once I hand it over I leave it to your judgement and fully in your hands. If you feel like doing the chacha on it then that's your prerogative. I would laugh and see about a psychiatric evaluation, but still within your rights."

Angelo nodded, accepting the answer and apparently choosing to take his assumptions as confirmed whether or not she'd actually said so. He wasn't going to ask outright, either way. "Agreed, then. Far as anyone will ever know, this information just dropped out the sky onto my desk."

Vanessa smiled and pulled a small flash drive out of her pocket. She tossed it upward. It made a high arc over his desk before landing in the middle of some papers in front of him. "What do you? It did just drop out of the sky." Vanessa flashed a grin at him for the briefest of moments before her expression closed down to something more serious again. "There's a lot of business data on that from a now former mutant trafficker. Financials, e-mails, phone records...if it could be found or 'obtained' then it's on there. My guess is like as not some of those people either came from or went to the sorts of countries you lot deal in. I'm not sure if you can do much to help the ones in second or first world areas, but I assume you'll at least know who to get the information to so they can be found and maybe even returned to their families. If they're alive." She didn't care what happened to the people who had bought them, that much was clear. Turn them over to authorities, kill them, skin them alive and cover them in honey...whatever made people happy. As long as those who were alive were found and taken out of wherever they were Vanessa would be happy. Or at least as many as could be found.

"Mutant trafficking." His face closed down into stony disgust at that, as his hand closed over the flash drive. "They came from the third world, they're ours. They're being used in the third world, they're ours. Either way, I'll do everything I can do or get done to shut this down. Personally, as far as I can."

Angelo's resolved determination and clear disdain for trafficking brought a rather fond smile to Vanessa's face. She ducked her head a little in a nod. "I appreciate that greatly. There's contacts as well, not just buyers. The middle men and scouts, it's all there for you. Or at least as much as could be found."

"Isn't it nice when the bad guys keep efficient records for us?" he asked rhetorically, then stared at the device in his hand. "We talkin' sweat shops here, prostitution or both?"

"I didn't look through it all because I didn't want to put holes in my walls and I would break my hand on the brick walls," she told him quite calmly. "From what I saw you're looking primarily at prostitution. Non-consensual mail order brides, sex slaves, prostitutes shipped between pimps or madames, et cetera. There could be some labor stuff, but from what I know of the supplier the sex trade is more his thing."

"Jesus Christ", he muttered. "As if mutant kids in developing countries don't have it hard enough staying at home... you can trust me on this, Vanessa. I will find out where every one of those girls - and boys, there's probably boys too - went and... get my hands dirty. I've got contacts on both sides of the law to do parts of it I can't."

"I've a mate who is a 'contractor' of sorts should you need someone willing to get particularly dirty for you." She wasn't sure if Angelo was the kind of guy who would put a target on someone's back, but she knew Thom was the sort to happily put a bullet through it's center. For something like this he'd even do it pro bono. The benefits of retirement. "I think some of those people came from the US. I know he at least had designs on some American citizens being sold off. I figured the FBI was likely the place to go for that bit but I didn't want to talk around truths to Garrison and he would have questions. Possibly many." She respected the Canadian enough to not want to lie to him, even by omission. And he had a set of ethics that she thought would make an arrangement like the one she had with Angelo difficult or even impossible.

"If he took American citizens and any of them are still here, that'll even make it easier." He thought about it for a moment. "You know, I did some undercover anti-terrorist stuff for the FBI a couple of years ago. Bet I could still get a favour out of my handler from then."

"Sounds like I picked the right man to hand my intel off to, then." She had been iffy on bringing it to ELPIS originally. They seemed the most likely organization to help out the trafficked individuals, but she hadn't been completely certain ELPIS would have the sort of connections one would need to attempt to right the situation. Apparently any misgivings she'd had were in error. Vanessa had come to exactly the right person, clearly.

He grinned, a fierce edge visible to it. "I'd like to think so. And I also think sex traffickers are the lowest form of scum on the Earth, so, you know."

Vanessa stood up, braced her hands on the edge of his desk and leaned over so she could drop a chaste kiss on Angelo's cheek. With a small wink she told him, "This is why I like you."

He patted her nearest hand as she pulled back, amused. "And I like you 'cause you bring me entire networks to destroy. I'm going to enjoy this."