by Don Travis
Paul got out of the car and crossed the street. The girl brightened appreciably at the handsome man but lost her smile when he spoke for a few seconds before taking her arm and leading the way to the car.
“What is this?” she protested in a childish voice when he pushed her into the back seat and shoved in beside her. “I don’t do twosomes.”
“Not asking you to,” I said. “We just need to talk to you a few minutes. I’m going to drive downtown to my office. After we talk, I’ll bring you back here and give you your price for a trick. How’s that?”
“You fuzz? Show me your shields.”
“No, we’re private. Talk and then pay, okay?”
She settled down on the drive back to my office parking lot. Paul held her arm in a firm grip on the way into the building.
Hazel’s eyes widened when we entered my door on the third floor. Then she inclined her head toward my private office. “In there.”
The girl stopped dead still when she spotted the thin teen sitting at the table with Charlie and Henry.
“Streak,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Spot. What’re you doing here?”
“Kidnapped like you was, I guess.”
“Not kidnapped,” I said in a rough voice. “But if you want to be certain of that, I can call APD and ask for a detective to join us. Would that make you feel better?”
“Uh-uh,” the kid said.
“No way,” the girl agreed.
“Then sit down, and let’s start.”
I got my digital voice recorder from my desk, plopped it in the middle of the table, and identified the date, place, and participants, identifying the two victims by their street names. After finally getting the two teens to audibly agree to being taped, I started with the interview.
“First off, let me reassure you we mean you no harm. We are looking for a specific ring of sex traffickers who brand their victims with white spots in their hair. We know one of the pimps controlling some of them is a Dominican by the name of Florio Gaspard, the man who just picked up both of you and relieved you of your earnings. We want to hear your stories and learn whatever you know of their network.”
The girl broke first, but out of fear of her pimp, not intimidation by us. “Flo will kill me when he finds out!” she moaned. “He’ll beat me and lock me in a box. He makes me sleep there when I act up. And when I don’t make enough money.”
The girl called Streak turned out to be a fifteen-year-old orphan named Barbra Swan who ran away from a bad foster home and lived on the streets until Gaspard picked her up, bought her a good meal, and described how much better life would be if she let him become her “daddy.” She agreed and found herself sharing a room with five others—both boys and girls—at a dump called My Other Home Motel off West Central somewhere on Nine Mile Hill. Whenever she rebelled, Gaspard locked her in a perforated four-by-four pine box in a small building behind the isolated motel. Every time she ran away, he tracked her down and beat her before locking her away.
The boy’s story was similar. Spot’s real name was Clancy Truscott. His father beat him before throwing him out of the house after catching him naked beneath a rampant older boy in their detached garage. An immediate outcast in his little Oklahoma Bible Belt town, he thumbed his way west, headed for golden California. Broke and hungry in Albuquerque, he stole a purse from the front seat of a car parked at a busy shopping center. Gaspard, who apparently had been watching him troll the streets, confronted him and threatened to take him to the police.
Spot hadn’t proved to be much of a problem. After he serviced Gaspard, he was introduced into the life and controlled by regular doses of heroin. Nonetheless, he came in for his share of beatings, although he wasn’t taken to the “pines,” as the kids referred to Streak’s pine box. I was shocked to learn he was only seventeen. He looked to be at least two years older.
The two teens knew of at least a dozen other kids housed in the motel. Not all of them wore dyed hair, the identification mark of the White Spot family. Some carried actual tattoos or intentionally inflicted scars to brand them for other pimps. Hunger, fear, disease, beatings, and worry about the law haunted the minnows every day of their lives. The two knew of a couple of their group who suddenly disappeared after becoming obstreperous or threatening to go to the law. They assumed the recalcitrants were murdered. If they were to be believed, at least fourteen kids were collected, trained, controlled, and turned loose by trafficking thugs upon the city.
I thought of passages in the Book of Revelations speaking of Abaddon the Destroyer releasing locusts from the underworld upon the land. I’d once sat through an impressive series of lectures on the End Times and recalled that when the fifth—or maybe it was the sixth—angel sounds his trumpet, the Abyss opens, and a horde of demonic “locusts” rise out of it to torture anyone who does not bear God’s seal. The pain they inflict will be so intense the sufferer will crave death, but that relief will be denied him.
Our lecturer was careful to point out these were not actual insects but rather a demonic army inflicted by God as a scourge upon mankind for five months. Why five months? The answer given was “Perhaps because that is the lifespan of the actual insect.”
And now this horde of children was being trained and turned loose on the world. How many houses or motels such as this were spread over the state and beyond? Over the entire nation. Over the world. Like the lord of the underworld’s locusts, these victims were not designed to kill or destroy—although they might inadvertently result in such damage—but to wreak mayhem. But these locusts—our locusts—were victims as well as perpetrators. A new world—one hidden from me all my life—opened up before my eyes. And it had claimed someone I held dear.
Despite the teens’ fear, I phoned Gene and told him what we’d uncovered. He and a female officer came over immediately, almost undoing what we’d accomplished.
Barbra let out a cry and broke for the door when she spotted the woman’s uniform. The officer, who wore a name tag reading Glenann Hastings, caught her and hugged her tight.
“It’s all right, child. We won’t harm you,” she cooed.
But the street urchin fought to free herself from the embrace. “You’re gonna put me in jail! Please don’t.”
“Hush now, nobody’s going to put you in jail.”
“Yes, you will! Flo told me so. And… and he’ll beat me when he hears. Lock me in the box.”
“Why would he do that?” Officer Hastings asked.
“Because I let myself get caught.”
I transferred my gaze to the boy. He seemed to have shrunk. He huddled in his chair, pale and shaking. Slobber dribbled from his lips onto his ragged shirt. He flinched when Gene moved to his side and dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, son. We’re going to take you somewhere that fella Flo won’t be able to find you.”
Streak turned hollow eyes on Gene and blurted, “But you won’t give me my fix. Flo’ll give me my fix. I need my fix, man.”
The rest of us withdrew as the police officers sat the two juveniles side by side at my conference table and spent some time convincing the two runaways they intended them no harm but rather offered a way out. New Mexico, Gene explained, had laws to assist underage victims in these exact circumstances.
Gene paused long enough to call headquarters and arrange a raid on the motel on the west side before taking the two children away. The timing needed to be right. If Gaspard discovered two of his minions were missing, he might suspect they’d been picked up and move the rest of his people. On the other hand, the raid had to be planned for a time when at least some of the kids were in the motel.
After he left, Henry shook his head. “Something about this don’t make sense to me. This Juan dude spends all that time baiting and hooking Jazz just to put him out on the street? You said they wouldn’t use him like that.”
“We haven’t found Jazz’s kidnapper. That gang goes for quality. Gaspard’s goes for quantity. Bu
t remember two things. Juan, or rather Juan Jose Flores-Gurule, and Florio Gaspard, were arrested together for a crime similar to this, so Gaspard knows Juan. And secondly, Juan has the brand. The white spot in the hair that marks one of Gaspard’s people.”
“Which means,” Paul said, “they’re both part of the same gang.”
“Gaspard doesn’t have a white streak. At least, I didn’t see one when he passed us in the car. Of course if he’s the boss, maybe he doesn’t need one.”
“There’s another possibility,” Paul said. “I’ve been reading up on sex trafficking, and I understand sometimes pimps sell their victims to other pimps. Maybe this Juan was bought by someone else and his hair hasn’t grown out enough to get rid of the white brand.”
“Possible. But if we can run down Gaspard, he might know where and how to contact Juan. Cross your fingers and hope Gene’s raid snares the Dominican.”
“I wanna be there when it goes down,” Henry said.
I shook my head. “Gene won’t permit civilians on such a raid. There might be violence.”
“I’ll sign a waiver or whatever you call it. I wanna be there, BJ.”
“The best thing we can do is be at headquarters when whoever they snare is brought back. Gene might let me sit in on the interviews.”
WAITING WASN’T going to do it for Henry, so to forestall a potential explosion, I suggested that Paul email Juan and express disappointment they hadn’t met last night at the C&W. After huddling in my office, Paul sent a message from his laptop.
Juanito, disappointed you didn’t show up at the C&W last night. Hoped we’d get a chance to meet. You know, see if we’re compatible. Don’t want to sound desperate or anything but… damned if I don’t think I am.
Paul
After that message was sent, I phoned Susie Garcia, a supervisor at the Motor Vehicle Department who was once sweet on me before I knew who I really was. She usually helped me out in the information department so long as I was willing to put up with her occasional needles.
“You must want something. I never hear from you unless you do.”
“We went to lunch just the other day.”
“Yeah, just the other day… three months ago.”
“Can’t be that long.”
“It was, but what do you want?”
I fed her the information on Florio Gaspard and his LeSabre, and she went to work. In a few minutes, she was back. “You still a licensed private investigator?” she asked.
“Uh…yeah.”
“So why didn’t you look this up yourself? Or have Hazel do it?”
“I’m not at the office where I have access to my program,” I fibbed. “And I can talk to Hazel anytime.”
“If you weren’t a three-dollar bill, I’d think you were hitting on me. You haven’t switched sides, have you?”
“Afraid not.”
“Thought not. Anyway, here’s what I have on Florio Gaspard.” She provided a year and make on the automobile and an address 145 Ocotillo SW, which I recognized as the My Other Home Motel.
I thanked Susie, hung up, and asked Hazel to give the license number and address to Gene. He likely already had them, but better safe than sorry.
From the table in the corner of my office, I heard Paul’s laptop ping. “It’s him,” he announced. “Juanito himself.”
We all crowded around. He paused with his finger over the email notice. “Whoa now, guys. This might be highly personal. Maybe—”
“Open the damned thing,” Henry said.
Paul, baby. I was there and my heart reached out to you. You looked good enough to eat, but dude, you were having too much fun dancing with the ladies (and looking good swinging your thing, too). Not sure you’re looking for what I’m interested in.
Juanito
“You’re losing him,” Henry said.
Without bothering to reply, Paul placed his long fingers on the keyboard and pounded out a response.
Juanito—that means “little John,” doesn’t it? Sure hope that’s not an accurate description. We started this off with me looking for Jazz, right? Let me put it this way, if I could find him, I’d tear off his clothes, throw him on the bed, and not think about a damned thing except what I was doing to him for the next hour. Have you heard from him, by the way? But since Jazz isn’t available, I’m hot and hungry. We both know I can go on campus or walk up Indian alley and find plenty. But I’m looking for quality. I’m looking for a lot more than just a one-night stand. Now what do we do about it?
Paul
“My stars!” Hazel exclaimed. “Have you done this before?”
“Well, maybe practiced on BJ when he was out of town a couple of times. But other than that, no.”
The laptop pinged, startling us all. Paul opened the message.
Paul. Why don’t you give me a look at what you’re carrying. Then maybe I give you a peak at Juanito’s Juan.
Juanito
Paul didn’t hesitate.
Uh-uh, I don’t send photos when I don’t know where they’re going to end up. Wouldn’t want to meet myself on some weird website one of these days. And if I don’t send you one that shows my face, as well, it could be anybody. Jazz’s brother Henry, for example. Paul
Henry started to protest, but it was too late. The message was already winging its way to Juan.
Ping.
This Henry dude, was he that good-looking Indian you talked to at the C&W? S-E-X-Y. But what is it you wanna do? Meet somewhere?
Henry turned two shades darker but kept his mouth firmly closed.
Don’t see how we can get our needs taken care of if we don’t. Any suggestions? Paul shot back at him.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That was quick. How did he put a casual reference to Jazz’s brother together with the man you talked to at the C&W? Henry, I didn’t see any photos attached to the emails except for those of Jazz. Did you?”
Henry shook his head. “Nope.”
“Of course, we don’t know what went on after they switched to Skype,” Paul said. “Maybe Jazz showed him one in their face-to-face.”
“Uh-uh. Jazz don’t mix me up in his business. Knows better.”
“Then it doesn’t make any sense. Unless….” I let my voice trail off as I thought. “Henry, does Jazz have any family pictures in his wallet? One of you, specifically?”
Henry pulled out his billfold and extracted a snapshot. It captured the two brothers standing with arms around one another’s shoulders as they smiled into the camera. It would be hard to pick out the more attractive man from that photograph. “He carries one just like this on him.”
We didn’t wait for Juan’s response. Paul typed as I dictated.
Juanito, you’re fast on the uptake. How’d you know that was Jazz’s brother at the C&W? He moved down here to take a landscaping job a month ago and got in touch with me. That’s what got me to thinking about Jazz. Course, Henry could take care of my needs, but suggesting that would earn me a black eye. He doesn’t swing that way. But Jazz sure does. Have you heard from him?
After the message was sent, Charlie asked if I shouldn’t have included a place and a time to meet. I shook my head, explaining we needed to let Juan do that.
Ping, again.
Bet that hunky Indian could take care of us both… at the same time. But I hear you, man. Not everbody feeds outa the same trough, right? Nothing from Jazz. But okay, maybe we oughta sit down and size one another up. Be at the C&W tonight at 8:30 p.m. If you can’t make it, then that’s the way it was meant to be.
“Bingo, we got him.” Paul gave a thumbs-up sign.
I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. Let’s think this thing through. The last time we went to the C&W, they bugged your car. It went to a motel parking lot, where it stayed until the car rental people picked it up the next day. How does Paul explain that?”
“He crashed there that night and turned in the car the next day.”
“Why?” I asked.
“That’s easy,”
Paul said. “I’m as careful as Juan is. I wasn’t about to drive my own car into a situation I wasn’t sure of.”
I smiled. “Defending paranoia with paranoia. It might work. Someone as secretive as Juan will understand caution on the other side. Okay, let’s go for it.”
Chapter 7
GENE’S RAID on the My Other Home Motel went down at 5:00 p.m. that afternoon and was a total bust. He sounded tired when he gave me the results by phone.
“Not a kid in sight. Matter of fact, there was a sign the place was closed for renovations. Searched every one of the twenty-five rooms anyway. Nothing. Nobody. Zilch.”
“They were warned,” I said.
“Yeah, we got hung out to dry.” He hesitated. “Or there was nothing to find. Those two kids made up the whole thing.”
“How’d they know about a motel way out on the west side of town?”
“How do kids know anything these days? Heard about it. Snuck in to sleep in a vacant room a night or two. Some trick took them there. Who knows?”
“Okay, then explain to me why Florio Gaspard’s address on his New Mexico driver’s license lists the hotel as his home address?”
“You got me there. Can’t be coincidence.”
“Hell of a big one if it is. And we know Gaspard is connected to those two. Paul, Henry, and I saw him with the Truscott boy, and Paul and I saw him with the Swan girl. So let’s talk about the other possibility. They were warned.”
“How? Nobody knew about it except those involved. And you people, of course. How about this Henry Secatero guy? He seems about one step short of a hood to me.”
“Henry’s okay. Grew up rough is all. He’s the one who kicked this off by looking for his brother, remember? Who else in your department knew?”
“Plenty of people involved in arranging, planning, and executing the raid. But I don’t believe it was any of them. Course, there’s lots of money involved in human trafficking, and more’n one cop’s been turned by money. Not many, but a few.”