Illicit Trade

by Michael Niemann

  This time, Rosenbaum came on the line immediately.

  “Do you want money?” he said.

  “I like people who get to the point,” Jackson said. “Yes, I’d like to get a share of whatever racket you are running, Doctor.”

  “I’m not running a racket. Mr. Abasi’s death was very unfortunate and entirely his own fault. He should have stayed in the recovery unit. But he didn’t want to wait and just walked away. I’m very sorry, but it’s not my fault.”

  “Yeah, I get that, Doctor. He wasn’t following doctor’s orders. But I’m still curious about that money in his pocket. If you did right by him, he shoulda paid you. So why did you give him that cash?”

  “It was a simple transaction and the money was his reimbursement. He would have been fine if he’d stayed even a half day.”

  “A simple transaction? So he gave you something and you gave him cash for it?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t give him the cash.”

  “You’re losing me here, Doctor. You just said it was a simple transaction and the money was the man’s pay. But if you didn’t give it to him, who did?”

  There was silence.

  “There’s another party involved,” Jackson said. “I see.”

  Just as he thought. There was some racket going on. Poor Abasi got twenty-five hundred for whatever he contributed. That meant the total money involved was way more. Way, way more. Because Jackson had been around the block enough times to know that if a poor brother from Africa got paid twenty-five hundred, then the white folks who ran the thing made a hundred times as much.

  “You know what, Doctor? I don’t want to be paid off. You got something going that generates a lot of cash. I have a bit of experience in the medical field and I’m sure I can be useful to you. What do you say we meet somewhere and discuss terms?”

  “That’s not going to happen, Mister ….”

  Jackson didn’t fall for that trick.

  “Why not, Doctor? You need help. I know it. If you have more people from Africa coming, and bringing you whatever it is they bring, it helps to have someone who can relate to those folks. And, let me assure you, I can. It would avoid the kind of mishaps that happened with Mr. Abasi.”

  “I’d have to talk to someone first.”

  “Ah, yes, the other party. The one with the money. You do that. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The three-hour drive to York had turned into four hours by the time Vermeulen had stopped for a bathroom break and a cup of coffee. Listening to the London Calling album made the New Jersey and Penn Turnpikes bearable. When the player came to “Death or Glory,” he thought of the men who’d ended up dead. Had they come for glory? Probably not. Who’d leave their home for a foreign land? Those running away, like he had, and those in desperate need. He was sure Abasi and Odinga fell into the ‘need’ category.

  The prison lay on the outskirts of York, near warehouses and a large shopping mall. It was a vast concrete structure, all white like a Richard Meier building, but at the same time forbidding and fortress-like. A tall fence topped with razor wire surrounded everything but the parking lot.

  Vermeulen had wondered why a county prison would house ICE detainees. Once he saw the structure, he understood. The prison was far too large for a county. They’d have to jail people for jaywalking to fill up this place. So the empty beds were filled with ICE detainees, with ICE paying the county for the service. A different way to make money from prisons. Vermeulen couldn’t imagine anything like it in Belgium, or elsewhere in Western Europe.

  He’d checked the visiting hours and rules the day before and knew he had enough time to speak with Mihaly Luca. The trip was labeled an official visit and his office had faxed the particulars to the prison authorities. After having driven this far, he didn’t want a repeat of the Elizabeth experience.

  There was a line of visitors waiting to be checked in and searched. It took almost a half hour before Vermeulen reached the window. The check-in went smoothly. He followed a guard past a gate and through a series of automatic doors, each sliding shut with a clank that said, “You’re not getting out. Get used to it.” The clanks made the walls seem to close in even more.

  His visit, like most at York County Prison, was specified ‘no contact.’ The guard pointed to a chair in front of a plexiglass barrier. He sat down and waited.

  Luca arrived shortly afterward. The tan pants and shirt were cut too large for his slim body. He looked fifty, but on second glance, could have been as young as thirty. A profound sadness radiated from him. The furrowed forehead, the dull eyes sunk deep in their sockets, the beakish nose, and the thin lips that didn’t look like they would ever smile again. It was a face from which any hope of happiness had been excised.

  “Good morning,” Vermeulen said through the holes in the partition. “I hope you are well.”

  What an inane thing to say, he thought. It was obvious the man wasn’t well.

  “Do you understand English?” he said.

  An almost imperceptible nod.

  “I’m with the United Nations. I’m here to ask you a few questions about how you got your visa.”

  Silence.

  “I want to assure you that I don’t mean to cause you any more trouble. I’m not with immigration or any U.S. authority. I believe you are a victim of a scheme in which you had no part.”

  Another nod.

  “Who did you talk to in Moldova?”

  Silence.

  “Did they promise you money?”

  Luca nodded.

  “What were you supposed to do for the money?”

  More silence.

  “Did they promise you work?”

  Luca shook his head.

  Vermeulen couldn’t think of any other reason why someone would help smuggle people into the U.S. There was sweatshop work and sex-trafficking, and Luca obviously wasn’t a candidate for the latter.

  “How much money did they promise you?”

  The man frowned and leaned forward.

  “How much?” Vermeulen rubbed his right thumb and index finger together in the global gesture of money.

  Luca said something that sounded vaguely Italian, a language Vermeulen did not speak. There was no way to pass a piece of paper and a pen to the man so he could write the number down. Vermeulen made a writing motion with his index finger. Luca nodded, raised his right index finger and started to draw numbers on the plexiglass between them. One. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.

  “Ten thousand what? Dollars?”

  A nod.

  Ten thousand dollars. A tidy sum.

  “What did you have to do?”

  The man was struggling. Something kept him from answering.

  “Are you afraid?”

  A hesitation, then a nod.

  “Are you afraid for yourself?” He pointed to the man’s chest.

  Luca shook his head again.

  “Are you afraid for your family?”

  A vigorous nod.

  So whoever promised ten thousand dollars to Luca had threatened his family. Probably the most potent threat anyone could make, particularly when the victim was traveling abroad unaccompanied. But Vermeulen still didn’t know what it was Luca had to do to earn the ten thousand dollars.

  “Where are they?”

  Luca slowly recited what turned out to be a name and an address in Orhei, Moldova. Vermeulen wrote it down and held it up for Luca to check. He nodded.

  “Listen, Mr. Luca,” Vermeulen said. “I can’t help you unless you tell me who got you the visa. If you give me the name, I can investigate and help your family.”

  “You no help,” Luca said. “Write them. Please.”

  “I will,” Vermeulen said. “But you have to help me. You know what’s going to happen to you?”

  Luca shrugged.

  “You are going to be deported back to Moldova. You won’t be able to come back here. It
’s the end of the line for you. But there are other people who’ll become victims just like you did. If you tell me, I can help them.”

  Another shrug. He wasn’t going to say anything that might endanger his family.

  “Did you have an address in the U.S.?”

  A nod instead of a shrug.

  “Do you still have it?”

  Luca spelled out another address, this one on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Newark, New Jersey. A lead, but not the one that he’d hoped for or that Suarez expected. His job was to find out who forged UN letters.

  He looked at Luca’s sad face. Whatever he’d gotten himself into, all he ever wanted was to do right by his family. Now he sat in prison, scared out of his wits and without any hope. A familiar anger rose in Vermeulen’s gut. Two men dead and one scared to death. This had to stop. To hell with Suarez and his bureaucracy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jackson bought a new phone. He figured it’d be the safe thing to do. Maybe a bit paranoid, but safe. He’d spent most of the day just walking and thinking. Squeezing a surgeon was already way beyond his usual MO. But it turned out to be a surgeon who had to discuss matters with someone else. Now that was troubling.

  Doctors always had a racket going. Who asked their doctor what they billed their insurance? Nobody. You might get an insurance statement and say, “Damn, that cost a lot of money.” But you weren’t going to ask your doctor if he billed right or if an item on the bill should’ve been there in the first place.

  So Jackson wasn’t surprised that Dr. Rosenbaum had his own thing going. What surprised him was the fact that the doctor had to talk to somebody else and that he sounded worried, even scared. Somebody more powerful had to be calling the shots. That could mean a world of hurt or it could mean a serious bump in Jackson’s income. He was ready for that bump. Hustling old folks for fifty bucks a pop was yesterday’s one-at-a-timing. The downside—he had to be honest with himself—was that he might end up dead like that Kenyan fellow at the Broad Street Station.

  Jackson had always known his limits. No shooting or knifing. Once a gun was involved, everything got a lot more complicated. It got the police involved, for sure. The same was true for knifing. He wasn’t opposed to killing. Sometimes, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. But if you excluded the doped-up brothers who couldn’t think straight, shooting and stabbing were just signs of bad planning, a way to cover up the fact that you hadn’t thought through all the shit that could happen.

  Anticipation. He liked that word. That’s how he went about his work. What would happen when the old auntie stepping off the bus turned out to be a lot feistier than she looked? Or when the old man used his cane to deck him? Just like the Boy Scouts, his motto was “Be Prepared.” He grinned. Like a Boy Scout. Yeah, right.

  Anticipating what would happen the next day was foremost on his mind. He’d call the doctor in the morning, say about nine thirty. Since he got a new phone, he wasn’t worried about the call being traced right away. Best case, the doctor’d say, “Sure thing, let’s meet and sort things out.” Worst case, he’d say, “Get lost. You come near me and I’ll sic the boss man on you.” And Jackson was certain the boss man had ways of getting rid of him. Of course, even the best case could just be a setup for the worst case. So he had to play it smart. And playing it smart meant preparing for the worst case.

  That’s why he went back to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Good preparation starts with learning the lay of the land.

  * * *

  Vermeulen reached Newark at four in the afternoon. As he cruised past the airport, he wondered if Alma and her colleagues were out protesting at the detention center. There’d been no protesters at the York prison. Crossing the Passaic River, he saw the green turnpike sign announcing the junction with I-280 heading into downtown Newark. He had the address Luca had provided. Giving it no further thought, he exited.

  He crossed the Passaic again and took the first Newark off-ramp near the Riverfront Stadium. Once in the city, he stopped and programmed the GPS in his rental car with the address. It was surprisingly close. Following the voice instructions, he drove past a brick building with a tall clock tower. When he saw the sign reading Broad Street Station, he pulled over and stopped. This was where they’d found the dead Kenyan, Abasi. According to the GPS, he was only three blocks from the address. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  The address was a nondescript brownstone right across from a series of specialized medical offices that were part of the hospital. Vermeulen parked a few houses down. He got out, locked the car, and sauntered back toward the brownstone. The sidewalks were busy. People getting off work. He matched their pace, slowing only enough to read the sign next to the entrance. All it said was ‘Dr. Rosenbaum. Surgeon.’ No office hours, no telephone number. He kept walking.

  At the end of the block, he crossed to the hospital side of the street and walked back. There was no sign of life in the brownstone. He wondered if Dr. Rosenbaum saw patients there or if he used it for an office and did his surgery at the hospital across the street.

  Caught up in his thoughts, he barely managed to avoid bumping into a tall black man heading in the opposite direction. He muttered an apology and went back to his car.

  This was the moment of decision. If he got in and drove back to the city, it’d be the end of this case. Luca had told him nothing that could persuade Suarez to continue the investigation. He’d assign Vermeulen to whatever came next. If he turned around, went back to the house, and rang the doorbell, there’d be no knowing what kind of mess he’d step into.

  He leaned against the car and glanced back toward the house. He thought of Odinga, Abasi, and the fear in Luca’s eyes. It wasn’t really a difficult decision. He pushed himself off the car and headed back to the house. Before he got there, he saw the black man he’d almost bumped into heading toward him. Even though the man looked straight ahead, Vermeulen couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being checked out. His right hand slipped down and covered his back pocket. They passed each other. Vermeulen kept walking until he reached the house.

  It was a little after five.

  He rang the doorbell.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was no response. Vermeulen stepped back down to street level and peered in the windows. No lights, no movement. He climbed back up to the door and pushed the button again. It sounded like a buzzer. Something one would install in an office as opposed to a home, which made sense. Dr. Rosenbaum wouldn’t live across from the hospital. Not in Newark. There were far nicer suburbs.

  He rang again, this time a little longer than seemed polite. Still no reaction inside. He turned to leave. Scanning the sidewalk, he noticed the black man from his earlier encounter loitering by a lamppost. He stopped. The man was looking in the opposite direction. Vermeulen wasn’t fooled. He’d learned the basics of how to spot a tail. Seeing someone three times on such a short stretch of street was not random anymore. It couldn’t be related to the visa question. Nobody knew he’d be coming here. Unless he’d been followed from the very beginning. And that meant he was in way deeper than he imagined.

  The hesitation turned out to have its reward. Steps sounded from inside and a moment later the door opened. Vermeulen turned and faced a plump little man who spent a lot of money on clothes that didn’t suit him at all. He had a comb-over that failed to achieve its purpose, a fleshy face with sagging cheeks, and a full mouth. The face, probably unpleasant in ordinary circumstances, looked even more disagreeable because the jaw dropped at seeing Vermeulen, leaving its owner with the expression of a half-wit from a Bruegel painting.

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “I’m Valentin Vermeulen. Could I speak to Dr. Rosenbaum?”

  Vermeulen could almost see the gears spinning in the man’s brain.

  It took a few moments before the answer came. “I’m Dr. Rosenbaum. What do you want?”

  “I’m with the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. We had a sma
ll problem crop up in the last week and one of the people connected to that problem had a piece of paper with your address. I’m just following up.”

  He handed Rosenbaum his card.

  Rosenbaum’s reaction was immediate and the exact opposite of what he’d expected. Panic distorted the man’s face, making the earlier slack-jawed expression almost endearing. Clearly Rosenbaum wanted nothing more than to slam the door in his face. But Vermeulen had already slipped his foot forward far enough to keep that from happening.

  It took visible effort for Rosenbaum to pull his face back into what could pass for a normal expression.

  “Are you the man who called?”

  Now it was Vermeulen’s turn to be surprised. He only hoped his face didn’t look like Rosenbaum’s.

  “Uh, no. I didn’t call. Should I have?” Vermeulen smiled.

  Rosenbaum only managed a series of twitches, as if whatever was going on inside him had decided to fight it out on his face. Eventually one side, apparently the side advocating for continued conversation, won.

  “No, of course not. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’d like to know why a poor man from Moldova, sitting in prison in Pennsylvania, has your address in his pocket.”

  “I have no idea.” Rosenbaum had finally gotten himself under control.

  “He came to the U.S. using doctored documents. They nabbed him at JFK. He seems terribly afraid, but wouldn’t tell me why. This address was all he gave me. Can I come inside?”

  Vermeulen stepped up, expecting to enter the house. Rosenbaum moved back but didn’t invite him in. He ended up standing between the jambs.

  “It must be a mistake. I don’t know anyone from Mol …. What’s it called again?”

  “Moldova.”

  “No, I don’t know anyone from there.”

  “Have you had a patient from there in the past? Maybe the man was sick and someone recommended you.”