by Неизвестный
“You saw the videotape, on the news?” she blurted.
“Yes. Did you know them?”
“No. Yes. No.”
She began to cry. I let her sob for a moment. She opened her purse and took out some tissues and blew her nose.
“I didn't know them by name. I'm not even sure I met them. But there are hundreds of us from Albania.”
After a few moments, she reached into her purse again and took out several sheets of paper listing names, addresses, and phone numbers. I glanced at them quickly, “Which one is you?”
She pointed. I put that sheet on top.
“Xochitl Gálvez?” I stumbled over the words. “That's your name? How do you pronounce that?”
“Zo-shee-til Gal-vez.”
“That doesn't sound Albanian,” I said.
“It's not. My real name isn't important.”
Pulling a cell phone from her purse, she displayed it in the palm of her hand. “This phone number is where I work. A restaurant called Nonie, the Creole restaurant in Tucson. On Grant near Campbell. You can find me there from Tuesday through Saturday nights. You know the place?”
“No.”
Loudspeakers crackled.
“The Desert Museum will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your way to the exits, and thanks for spending your day with us.”
The announcement echoed across the grounds from several loudspeakers. A gentle woman's voice, not insistent, just informational.
“I don't understand what you want of me,” I said.
“You know about the coyotes and you know about the people who cross the border illegally.”
“Yes.”
“There are many ways to come across. Me, I came through the water tunnels. Hundreds of people every day gamble on those tunnels. They pay lots of money, they hope they've found an honest coyote. Most of us have crossed several times, but La Migra caught us and sent us back. The Albanian women discovered a special connection, and once we believed we were safe in this country, we began to organize.”
“Is there a group in Mexico?” I asked. “Somebody who helps?”
“It's called Basta Yo. They get us across, they get us new papers, and then we all help each other.”
“My Spanish isn't very good. Basta, I know what that means. 'Enough.' ”
“Basta Yo is a workers' organization. Like the Zapatistas in Chiapas. Basta Yo is organized in Sonora, first for Indian women and mestizos. They are involved with foreign women, they help us get out of Mexico illegally. A special coyote arranges these things. He takes only special clients. Women only, like me. My Mexican identity papers were fake. But very good fakes. This coyote from Basta Yo, he worked only with Albanian women. But things have changed.”
“How?” I asked.
“Somebody called the water man.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know. Probably somebody connected with those tunnels.”
“Wait,” I protested. “I'm really confused. There are two competing groups that smuggle women across the border?”
“Yes.”
“And this new connection, this 'water man' or whatever, he takes money but doesn't really do what he's paid for?”
“No, no, no. He brings in women from Albania, Russia, Rumania, from all over Eastern Europe. They paid enormous amounts of money to get as far as Mexico. Thirty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand. But once they got to Mexico, they found out they owed the water man so much money that he demanded immediate payment. If they didn't pay, they could go to the US and work as strippers. As whores. Sex slaves.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I'm not a detective, like, a private investigator who goes out looking for real people. Everything I do is on computers. I find out where people live, but I never see them personally, and I really don't want to get involved in something so dangerous as messing with the Mexican drug cartels. You need to hire somebody else.”
“But it does involve computers.”
“Xochitl!” I complained, “you're really not making much sense.”
“Okay, okay,” she said excitedly, holding my arm when I started to stand up. “Listen to my story, to the story of my sisters, my friends. Then decide if you want to help me or not. Okay?”
“Make it a short story.”
“In Albania, there are organized criminal gangs which control illegal trafficking in women and children. Albanians are desperately poor. Mothers and fathers sometimes cannot feed their young daughters. Teenage daughters. Maybe as old as eighteen, but maybe as young as twelve or thirteen. So men offer to marry these girls, take them to the big cities, give them a stable life with good food, clothing, a nice apartment. Except there really is no marriage. In the earlier years, the girls were smuggled by boat from Albania to Italy, where they were sold to other men as prostitutes.”
“You were sold this way?” I asked.
“Three times. From one man to another. By auctions. All girls would be stripped down to their underwear, sometimes, even not underwear. Just naked. The men would feel our bodies, make bids, pay in cash. Some men demanded sex before they would bid.”
“Jesus Christ, Xochitl. That's slavery. You became a slave?”
“Yes. But please, my story is not the story. Hundreds of girls are kidnapped like this every month. Many thousands a year, not just from Albania, but all over eastern Europe and Asia.”
“If you were smuggled into Italy, how did you come to Mexico?”
“Many of the smuggler's boats were seized, so the trafficking cartel started to use, um, what do you call them, ship containers?”
“Inside the containers?” I gasped. “You came to Mexico by ship, living inside a metal container? How long were you trapped inside?”
“Two, three weeks, I'm not sure. Thirty of us in one container. Very little food and water. Buckets for toilets. We landed at Vera Cruz, where there was another auction, and groups of girls were sent to different places in Mexico. With fifty other girls, I was bought by the water man. He took us to Nogales.”
“And you want me to find this water man?”
“Yes.”
“No way,” I protested.
“His money. You find his money. Others will take care of the man.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No. But we just learned there is a money trail. Isn't that what you do? Find money in secret bank accounts?”
“Yes. But usually I also know the name of the person who has the money.”
She took one last scrap of paper from her purse and handed it to me.
LUNA13.
“This is how we talk among ourselves.”
I fingered the scrap of paper.
“LUNA13? What does that mean?”
She hesitated for a very long time before taking a Palm Pilot V from her bag.
“Chat rooms. Message boards. Things like that.”
Extending the thin antenna, she began working the keypad, keeping it out of my line of vision. A series of message exchanges took place quickly. She handed me the Palm Pilot. Although the screen was tiny, barely an inch and a half square, I could clearly see the user name and message.
LUNA13: > give this to her
“That's you?” I said, watching the tiny blinking cursor. “That's your user name?” She nodded. “What does he want from me, this LUNA13, whoever she is.”
“Just answer anything. You will get a message.”
RoadSkyRunner: > hey
LUNA13: > can you help us?
RoadSkyRunner: > how?
LUNA13: > Xochitl told you about the murdered women?
RoadSkyRunner: > yes
LUNA13: > You can track down people who have disappeared, that's what you do?
RoadSkyRunner: > what people?
“The Desert Museum is closing in five minutes.” This message was crisper, more businesslike than the earlier one. Get out now, they were saying. Sorry about that, but get out.
RoadSkyRunner: > we can't stay here much
longer—what people?
LUNA13: > do you see policia?
RoadSkyRunner: > no, no—the museum is closing, we have to leave.
LUNA13: > Ok. Here's what you do. Write down this email address.
[email protected] RoadSkyRunner: > you're going to send me email?
LUNA13: > Remember how they caught that man Kopp? Who killed the abortion doctor and ran to Europe? RoadSkyRunner: > yes, i remember how they found him
LUNA13: > Do that tonight. The list of names will be there.
She logged off. Xochitl held out her hand for the Palm Pilot.
“I don't understand,” she said, “about the email messages.”
“James Kopp. He murdered an abortion doctor and fled to Europe. He and his supporters used AOL in a very original way. Instead of emailing each other to set up his escape route, they just put messages in the Draft folder. Everybody read the messages, but nobody sent emails.”
“Aha!”
She stashed the Palm Pilot in her bag and stood up.
“Whoa!” I protested. “Whoever that was talking to me, she said nothing about a money trail. She sounded like I'm expected to find who murdered those women.”
“I apologize,” Xochitl said. “There wasn't enough time to discuss things. You follow the money trail back to the water man. He's the one who ordered the murder of those two women as a warning. He knows we are close to him, sniffing at his money, trying to take him down and stop his smuggling cartel.”
“And what do you expect me to do?” I asked.
“You saw the messages on the videotape? In Albanian?”
“Yes.”
“That's a warning to all the other women still in Mexico and the ones in the US. You can't escape from us, you can't get away. If you try, you will die. Like Ileana. Like Veraslava. Whatever name they want to use, it doesn't matter. It's a warning.”
“Sounds more like a death threat.”
“Exactly.”
“I'm not sure what I can do,” I said. “I'm not sure that I trust you.”
“Do whatever you can.” She spoke softly, without insistence, sadness, or even anger. “I paid a fee just to meet you. If you can do more work, I will pay more money to your boss. Mr. Bobby McCue. He's who I dealt with for the business end.”
“How did you find him?”
“Money. I paid somebody who paid somebody else. It goes down a chain until the answer comes back.”
“Who gave you Bobby's name?”
“That doesn't matter. My friend from the chat room, she also has connections to people like you. She got names of people who may be involved with the slavery ring. Policia in Sonora, politicians from the old Zedillo government. I was hoping. . . we thought, maybe you could secretly read their email, you could find out who controls the smuggling. Then we can learn how they bring the women into Mexico, and how they get them across the border.”
“The Desert Museum is closed.”
I saw a museum guard coming purposefully toward us. We stood up.
“If I find the people who run the smuggling ring, what will you do?”
“Kill them,” she said quietly. “Free the women.”
“I want no part of that.”
She took my hand, and I dreaded the contact for a moment, thinking I was going to get a tearful plea for help. But she just shook my hand, pumping it twice, and then let go. She walked to Luis, and they both hurried away. As the museum guard approached me, I waved at him and started toward the exit.
“I'm on them,” Rey said. “Already got two rolls of film, and I'll get their car and license plate. Call you late tonight when I find out where they live.”
“Don't bother with the car. We've got to talk.”
The parking lot emptied fast, and we waited until no cars were left nearby.
“How well do you know Nogales?” I asked.
“Arizona or Mexico?”
“What's the difference?”
“The Arizona city is only twenty-two thousand people. Across the line, three hundred thousand, double what it was just five years ago. With any one hundred thousand of them changing every month.”
“What are these water tunnels that the smugglers use?”
“They're huge,” he said. “Big enough to drive a tractor through. They start about a mile inside Mexico and come up all over on the Arizona side.”
“Have you ever heard of a smuggler called the water man?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe it's not a man but a group.”
“Could be one of the tunnel gangs,” he said.
“The drug tunnels, the ones that go right into people's homes?”
“No. The water tunnels. Lots of kids hang out in the tunnels. Vatos, cholos, some really bad kids. But kids are more into petty crimes, not smuggling.”
“Is there water in these tunnels?”
“Really bad water,” he said with disgust. “And it runs north. The whole aquifer flows north into the US, just like the Santa Cruz river. During the monsoon season, rainwater floods the tunnels, brings all kinds of contaminated water across the border.”
“Rey. Do illegals come through these tunnels?”
“All the time. A few hundred a day.”
“Do the coyotes smuggle people through the tunnels?”
“No need. Everybody knows they can walk through, squeeze through a curbside drainage gate and be in Arizona. One fat guy, he got stuck. The fire department had to pry open the drain and let him out.”
“So you don't think the tunnels have anything to do with a smuggler called the water man?”
“I'll ask around. Laura, can you tell me what this is all about?”
“Somebody is trafficking in women as sex slaves. Not just smuggling them across the border. But owning the women. Selling them.”
“Your client, the woman you just met. Was she one of them?”
“Yes. I'm not sure I trust her or trust her information. She says she belongs to a group that helps women escape from the sex trade. She says that the smuggling organization is responsible for the murdered women shown on TV.”
“Luca Brazi,” he said.
“What?”
“Luca Brazi sleeps with the fishes. A warning.”
I touched his nose, pulled my hand back quickly.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
“You'd be surprised,” he said, reaching for my hands, “at how I've changed. Let's go get some dinner.”
“No. I've got work to do.”
“Then let me follow you home. I'll cook a meal while you work.”
But I was nowhere near ready for that.
10
A hacker contact told me about the AOL chat room server.
WOODCHIP5: > aol may be possible cuz their world is not enuff against my power
GIRLZ2HACK: > bux? 4 the programming code?
WOODCHIP5: > one time offer, twenty large, usual bank drop. . . can 'probably' say again 'maybe' guarantee access to their server farm for a twenty-four hour period, no more.
GIRLZ2HACK: > surprised you can get into aol at all
WOODCHIP5: > theyre paranoid about hackers, what you want, girl? cuz i can't get sysadmin level access, but from your msg i figure you want logfiles of user names?
GIRLZ2HACK: > yup yup, never done this b4
WOODCHIP5: > ive got access to program scripts u can launch from shell account and do realtime download, just remember, twenty-four hour period only then they close the gates that's all she wrote, sol
I called Bobby Guinness and left a voice mail message to set up the money transfer. I almost called him Don, but I figured that Man might not have told him I knew his identity. My hacker friend replied in twenty minutes.
WOODCHIP5: > havent got money transfer but i know youre cool for it so im setting up the hack now. . . with minimum six-ten million chat sessions this is gunna be monster file transfers so im dumping it by realtime mode into web DIR, usual FTP & pwd protect, user mello69fello & pwd 34$&22@HZ so check f
or it 1300zulu tomorrow & i will keep it there 24 only. . . girl, hope you got plenty of multi cpu boxes cuz Ml take a lot of ton of em to crunch all this data
GIRLZ2HACK: > if its not aol, will the same hack work for msn, yahoo, whatever? i'm guessing no way
WOODCHIP5: > jose
GIRLZ2HACK: > you got hacks for those portals?
WOODCHIP5: > no got, can get, dont know how much bux you got for this stuff???
GIRLZ2HACK: > major bux if needed
WOODCHIP5: > tnx girl, wuz wonderin how i wuz gonna afford my new harley;-)))
I figured I'd buy ten more computers, each with at least two Pentium V chips and tons of RAM. Knowing how to hack into Internet satellites, I knew I could easily get a complete download of the user logfiles.
This was tricky. AOL chat room people had their user names stored in a central AOL database. These people had chosen their user names, but in the process had also provided AOL with a chunk of personal information.
Supposedly true information, that is. But anybody who knew their way around chat room registration could create an AOL account with false data. So I wasn't counting on getting address or phone number information I could rely on. But AOL chats weren't as anonymous as users might think. All chats were recorded on backup computers in daily log files. Since the files were so huge, they were deleted on a regular basis to make room for newer data. But before they were deleted, AOL swept the messages for specific contexts, mostly related to Internet porn.
Before a day's log files were deleted, I'd download a copy. Once I'd broken them down into manageable chunks, the search task was easy.
Run the search program for one thing only.
LUNA13.
If I was lucky enough to get a hit, the hard work would start. There was nothing I could do for twenty-four hours. I was really fatigued, and my shoulder throbbed with pain. I took two Vicodin ES tablets. One wasn't enough any more. I soaked in my spa as the analgesic kicked in, the combination of hot water and mild narcotic relief making me so sleepy I started to doze. My head slipped on the plastic cushion and I woke up snorting water and thinking Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Rey called an hour later.