by Jack Hardin
Zedillo nearly laughed. “Blake, you went to prison. Remind me why?”
Blake’s lips were dry. He tried wetting them and said, “Well, sir, because I embezzled some money from my uncle’s company.”
“Indeed. And I needed a good accountant.” He turned suddenly and stepped forward, placed a hand on Blake’s shoulder. It was small and light and felt as though a bird had perched there. “And that was why I made sure that you and I could come to a deal. How is your daughter, Blake?”
“She’s great, sir.”
Zedillo smiled that fake, serpentine smile again. When he removed his hand, Blake felt like a boulder had just slid from his shoulder. “But you got caught, Blake. Let me make the business decisions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You both have done very well,” Zedillo said. “And you’ll be compensated well. Blake, someone will come to see you the first of next week and help you shut everything down in a way that is satisfactory to me.” He turned his attention to Cruz. “You will continue as usual. I will let you know where we will be funneling the cash instead.”
And it was a lot of cash. Eight clients, all foreigners in the U.S. on business, paying ten thousand dollars for three hours each Saturday night. Eighty thousand a weekend, over five million a year. Cruz knew Zedillo had many such operations around the globe. Miami was just one.
“Of course,” Cruz replied.
Zedillo took a sip of his drink and nodded thoughtfully. “I have postponed my return trip to Mexico City. I will be on your side of the state this weekend,” he said. “Please ensure there is a place for me at the card table.”
The request took Cruz off guard. He hesitated.
“Will that be a problem, Victor?
“No, sir. No, of course not.”
“Good.” Zedillo smiled that easy, plastic smile again, but this time his eyes were elsewhere. His interest in his present company had come to an end. He turned to the window and looked back over the cityscape. “Thank you both for coming.”
Blake glanced uncertainly at Cruz, like a pauper who was unsure if it was all right to leave the presence of the king. Cruz nodded toward the elevator before saying, “Thank you, Mr. Zedillo.”
As they rode the elevator back down, Blake wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his pants. He looked over at Cruz. “He wants to play cards? Has he done that before?”
“No. He hasn’t.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”
“He owns the place. I guess that means he can do whatever he wants.”
“Yeah,” Blake said. “I guess it does.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“That’s incredible.” Jet shook his head as he leaned back in his desk chair and tossed an ankle over a knee. Ellie had spent the last ten minutes relaying the events of her morning: the revelation that Nick was actually alive and the details of what had really happened. “And Nick is certain it was a police officer he saw?” he asked.
“He swears by it. I asked him again just before I left.”
“Well, that keeps things complicated, doesn’t it?”
“Did you get anything on the Tundra’s license plate?”
“I did. It’s registered to a Victor Cruz. Which matches what you said the other guy called him last night. Unfortunately, the address on the truck’s registration points to a defunct trailer park in Immokalee that was bought up and torn down by a condo developer a few months ago.”
“What about Cruz’s background?” she asked.
“Nothing recent. He spent two years in jail for beating the pulp out of someone and breaking his back. He got out last year but no work history or known addresses.
“He only got two years for a violent assault?”
“Yeah. A little strange, isn’t it? And I thought about calling his parole officer. But guess what?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
“He doesn’t have one,” Jet echoed. “Cruz commits second degree assault, is charged with third degree assault, and is out in less than three years with no parole.”
“And what about the fingerprint?”
“The print belongs to a Blake Duprey. That name mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Well, I had to peel back a few layers of paperwork, but Mr. Duprey is El Presidente of Breakwater Construction.”
And finally the dots were connecting, a clearer picture beginning to emerge. “What’s Blake’s background?”
“Oddly similar to Victor Cruz,” Jet said. “He was an accountant for a financial services group and wound up in prison for embezzlement. Got nine months for it.”
“Nine months? That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“And no parole,” Ellie guessed out loud.
“Correct.”
“So we can probably assume that they aren’t the decision makers,” Ellie said. “If someone helped them shorten their prison terms, it would have to be someone with deep pockets and a big influence.”
Jet stood up and went to the coffee maker, started brewing another cup. “Here’s how I see it,” he said. “Victor Cruz was in possession of dubious invoices from Breakwater. Nick accidentally comes across them, and they tried to tie off that loose end by throwing him over a balcony and making it look like suicide. Cruz is also connected to Felipe, who was involved with grabbing girls off the street and forcing them into the sex trade. The money made from that is laundered through Breakwater. Sound right?”
“It fits,” she said. As she worked to piece everything together, she could feel the ache of Nick’s death begin to melt away. But she was no less anxious to find justice for his brother and for the trauma the Barlow family had experienced. Even more, she wanted to find Juanita. She wanted to find all those responsible for taking her and using her.
Ellie had started this investigation on her own, but she and Jet were in this together now. In spite of her persistent reluctance to accept his request to join his agency, something had successfully conspired to make a team out of them. “So how do you see us moving forward?” she asked, and then unenthusiastically added, “We probably have enough to take this to the authorities.”
“I think we have plenty here that I could take it to my friends at the FBI,” he said. “But what concerns me is that assuming Juanita is still alive, we have no idea where she is. I don’t think Cruz or Blake know we’re on to them. If I take it to the FBI, there’s a small but legitimate chance a bad cop could catch wind of it. Other than what you saw with Felipe, and what Nick saw, we have nothing concrete to give them. We don’t have any invoices. No smoking gun.”
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “So let’s find her.”
Jet grabbed his coffee and returned to his desk. He snatched up a Post-it Note and handed it to Ellie. “I can’t find any work history for Cruz since he got out. But he has a young son by an ex-girlfriend. Best I can tell, she broke up with him after he went to prison. That’s her address. Might be worth a shot to pay her a visit. She may know where he frequents or lives.”
“Great. What are you going to do?”
“I was thinking I’d set a camera on the roof of that old fiberglass factory where we bumped into each other. I want to see if I can catch anyone else coming or going. And I’m going to see what else I can dig up on Blake too.”
Ellie stood and studied the address in her hand. “Sounds good,” she said, and felt a determined resolve hardening within her. “Let’s find her.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The apartment building was Section 8, part of a large cluster of tumble-down edifices that took up most of the block. The landscaping, however—St. Augustine grass, azalea bushes, and date palms—was well maintained. The stairwells were open-air, and Ellie took a flight to the second floor. She located apartment 203 at the end of the corridor where a clay flower pot, filled with artificial yellow roses, sat next to a purple doormat. Ellie’s knock was followed by the voice of a small boy calling out to his mother inside the apartm
ent.
The door chain rattled, and the door opened a few inches, a young lady’s face appearing on the other side. “Yeah?”
“Hi, are you Abby?” A small boy with a pudgy stomach materialized beneath the lady’s legs.
“Yeah.” She looked suspiciously at Ellie, who quickly noted the hardened, embittered expression of someone who had clearly been hurt one too many times.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Ellie said. “I was hoping I could get a minute to ask you about Victor Cruz.”
On hearing Victor’s name, Abby tensed and looked down at the boy between her legs. “Nino,” she said urgently, “go watch TV.”
His little head was tipped backward, and he didn’t take his eyes off of Ellie. “I don’t want to. Who is Victor?”
“Nino!” She stepped back and grabbed him by the arm, drilled her eyes into his until Ellie thought lasers might shoot out and turn him to ash. “Go watch TV. Now.”
The boy laughed like he enjoyed being the one in control and then vanished around the corner. Abby took a final glance toward him and stepped out of the apartment, pulling the door closed behind her. “Victor is his father,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know that.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine. What do you want? Did he get arrested again?”
“No. Nothing like that. But I was wondering, when was the last time you saw him?” And before Abby could ask, she added, “I’m with a collection agency. We haven’t been able to reach Victor.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “What, he owes you money?”
“Possibly. Frankly, it could be a misunderstanding. That’s what we’re trying to clear up. We just fell under new management, and they’ve been going through old paperwork. We can’t see where an old debt was paid, and my records had you down as a past connection.”
“Past connection,” Abby repeated scornfully. “I guess that’s what I am now.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “Well, I don’t know where he is.”
“Do you know of any places he likes to hang out? Any old friends?”
“I wouldn’t know what he does these days. If you really need to find him, he used to spend a lot of time at the Ugly Pelican. It’s in Cape Coral. Someone there should know where you can find him.”
“Thank you,” Ellie said. “And thank you for your time.”
Abby uncrossed her arms and grabbed the door handle. “Please don’t mention anything about me if you go over there. I don’t want Victor coming over here and asking me about this.”
“Of course.” Ellie took the stairs back down and returned to her truck, hoping they had just gotten that much closer to the man who might know where they had taken Juanita.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Her breathing was a quiet rhythm now, her chest rising and falling in a gentle cadence.
A stark contrast from five minutes ago.
Juanita stroked Almeda’s forehead a final time and slowly stood up, rising from her sitting position on the edge of the mattress. She walked to the bedroom door and, taking a final look at Almeda, quietly opened it before stepping into the hallway and shutting it behind her.
She closed her eyes and set a hand on the wall to steady herself against the onslaught of sadness and hot anger that bloomed full force within her. She drew in a deep breath before continuing down the hallway and entering the common room.
The concerned eyes of six other girls fixated on her.
“How is she?” Cami asked.
“Asleep.”
Cami nodded soberly. Her eyes were wide, fearful and uncertain. “Do you think they know? No one came down here.”
“Maybe they don’t care,” Juanita said. “Or maybe they weren’t watching.” But Cami’s question only echoed one that Juanita had had for some time now. Was someone always watching what the cameras were sending back? It seemed that they were not. Or someone had simply fallen asleep at the controls.
“Will she be okay?”
“Yes. She’ll feel better when she wakes up.”
Over the last couple of days, Almeda had entered a gradual slide away from reality. Everyone saw it in her eyes. Or rather, what wasn’t in her eyes. Almeda started looking at everything with a mechanical stare, blinking or smiling at the appropriate time like someone had pressed a button on a remote control. A few hours ago, she curled in the fetal position on the couch and began to cry. The tears came quietly and slowly at first—thin trickles of water slipping down her face. But the tears quickly escalated into sobs and then, like someone had broken a levy, she entered a full-on panic attack, her body heaving in great terrified gasps and sobs. She was inconsolable, and like a scared, wild animal, unresponsive to their pleas for her to calm down.
It took her two hours to come off it. Gradually, like someone had slipped her a Vicodin and it was slowly unfurling inside her, she calmed, her screams diminishing into soft whimpers and finally, nothing at all. The girls waited for her eyes to close and her breathing to stabilize before carrying Almeda to her bed.
Cami filled a cup with water from the tap and handed it to Juanita. “Here,” she said.
“Thank you.” Juanita had it down in three gulps and handed the cup back. She suddenly felt very tired herself. “I think I’m going to go lie down.” She returned to her room and lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling like an elephant was sitting on her chest. In moments like this, when she felt like she couldn’t do this anymore, when she felt like she would rather be dead than be here, Juanita would think of her brother.
She wondered where he was and if he was happy. Several weeks ago, Juanita came to terms with the knowledge that she would never see Junior again. By now he would be in a foster home, and she could only hope that they were caring well for him. So many foster children were just a means to another paycheck for the adults, additional cash to be spent on themselves—new clothes, food, or nights on the town. Many times the children left under their care were neglected, if not downright abused. Juanita met plenty of girls and boys at Hope House with those kinds of stories. Juanita knew there were good foster parents. But she had never met any.
Junior would have told someone—Alex most likely—that Juanita had not returned as promised. She knew Alex would have gone to the police. But there was no one else who would care that she was gone. Junior wasn’t old enough to make a loud enough noise, one that might keep the authorities sufficiently motivated to keep looking for her.
Cami had a little sister and an elderly grandmother. But both of them were still back in Cuba. The remaining girls had no one. They understood now that they had been selected in part because no one would come looking for them. The world did not miss them because it didn’t remember that they existed in the first place.
And that was half the nightmare. That they had come to America to live a new life, and this is how it was going to end.
Not two years ago, she, Junior, and their mother were living in the Mexican State of San Luis Potosí, on the outskirts of the city of Matehuala, where generations of their family had called home.
But the drug lords steadily overtook the region, making it unsafe to even walk to school. At night you would hear the sound of gunfire; during the day you would see the capos ride through town in their Mercedes, caring nothing for whoever had been gunned down the night before so they could enjoy lives of luxury. Their mother finally persuaded a relative already in the U.S. to pay the $25,000 it would take to get the three of them across the border.
They were some of the lucky ones who managed to make it across without being betrayed or getting caught by Border Patrol. They knew as they got on the bus to Florida that they were fortunate. They were in America now where they would be safe. Juanita and Junior started school, began learning English, and were happy. Until their mother got sick with cancer and died. That was, for Juanita, when the happiness ended.
And now Junior was living with someone who did not know him or love him the way Juanita did. T
hat, above anything else, was what made her feel crazy. She was stuck here with no way out.
That elevator at the end of the hall taunted them. It was the only way out, and it did not open without a key card.
They wouldn’t keep Juanita forever. They wouldn’t keep any of the girls forever. Eventually, they would each be replaced. Discarded like a rancid piece of garbage. And the great haunting, of course, was when? Next week, next month. Next year?
Juanita had no way of knowing. But she couldn’t do this anymore. She would no longer be the means to fulfill someone else’s twisted and misaligned fantasies. She was worth more than that. If she knew anything at all, if her mother had taught her anything, it was that.
And it was in that moment, as she stared at the ceiling, thinking of her brother and weighing her worth on the scales of her mind, that Juanita decided that she was done with all this. She was done with being a prisoner.
Somehow, someway, she was going to escape.
Or die trying.
Chapter Thirty
How in the world someone could stay at IHOP for nearly two hours was beyond Jet’s comprehension. Especially on a Friday afternoon when there was no wait, and they weren’t busy. Blake Duprey had gone in with his daughter a little after 2pm and had yet to reappear. Jet was now in full-regret mode, wishing he had just gone in soon after them and gotten a table of his own at the opposite end of the restaurant. But now he didn’t want to chance passing them on their way out. So he waited, listening to a Spotify playlist that included ZZ Top, Van Halen, and AC/DC.
He drove by Blake’s house soon after lunch and parked his Maxima four lots further down in front of an undeveloped lot. The house was well-to-do for someone who had recently been released from prison. Two stories, a flagstone driveway, and well-kept Bermuda grass in a neighborhood with homes starting at half a million dollars. It even had a white picket fence. Soon after, the front opened, and a small girl in bright pink shorts and blonde pigtails flew down the steps and ran to the F-150 parked in the driveway. She was followed by her father, who helped her buckle before getting in and taking them out of the neighborhood.