by Joan Mauch
Tiny whined, hoping for a morsel of food. Leon kicked him in the ribs, no sense spoiling the mutt. He was here for one reason and one reason only—to control the product and keep nosy neighbors away. The rot had been Seymour’s idea. Leon wasn’t a “dog” kinda guy and would just as soon have done without one. Damned dog barked at all hours, course the neighbors don’t say much, just gave him the evil eye. Guess they finally got the message: if they knew what was good for them they’d keep their pie-holes shut. So, maybe Seymour was right. The damned dog was good for something after all.
Boss never came around. Wouldn’t want to get his carefully manicured nails dirty. He wasn’t like that when they were both in the Vipers. How’d he get so high and mighty anyhow? Now the man just “directs and collects”. Makes Leon take all the risks. And if he got caught? Seymour wouldn’t be around to catch his back, that’s for damned sure.
Leon sat by the window and looked out. It was a pleasant enough house. At forty, he was glad to have a roof over his head even if it didn’t belong to him. But he couldn’t help wondering how long Seymour planned on keeping him around.
A few weeks back Leon had confronted his boss with the fact that his risk was far greater than Seymour’s, and that he should get a bigger cut. After all, he controlled the “product”—young girls and women intimidated through beatings and rape. And managed sales with the customers Seymour sent his way.
His boss’ reaction hadn’t been at all what he’d expected. Said guys like Leon were a dime a dozen and totally expendable. He’d pointed out that the girl’s suicide had jeopardized the whole operation, implying it was Leon’s fault—which it really was, since it was his gun the girl used to kill herself. Leon shuddered realizing Seymour’d retire him—permanently, if it served his purpose. He knew only too well what happened when someone failed to deliver.
Wonder how the press’d react if they knew Mr. Seymour Cottingham, the respected mortgage broker and philanthropist was not only a former gangbanger, but a money launderer and one of the powers behind the biggest human-trafficking rings in the country. It was worth considering.
Leon finished his coffee, yawned and stretched. Got to brand the product before the customer arrives. Let me see now, guess it’ll be I-4. He chuckled. Cops’ll go nuts trying to figure out what the mark on that dead girl means, that is if they ever find her body.
Branding the product was his way of tracking sales. It was like the bar codes stores use. He kept a ledger hidden under a loose floorboard in which he recorded the dates of the product acquisition and sale; the product’s code number: state of origin and number and the buyer’s name and address. That way he had a complete history of the transaction. Sounded cold, but after all—business was business. How else would he know if Seymour was being straight with him? Leon knew the ledger had to be kept out of the wrong hands, but then who would ever figure out what it meant anyway? It looked perfectly legitimate.
Too bad he’d never made it through school. He had a good brain and a nose for business. If it had been a legitimate product, he could’ve started his own company, even offered shares on Wall Street. He would’ve been an entrepreneur.
Leon sighed. Instead of high society, he was forced to live on the seamy side of life, staying in the shadows, carefully hidden by the hypocritical bastard whose bidding he did. He was only a puppet. It wasn’t much different from life in the gangs or at home with his brothers, for that matter. Seems like he was always under somebody’s thumb.
Chapter 5
Jackson sat in the edit bay; his hand cupped his chin as he stared at the monitor. The tape was paused at the point in his Gasparilla coverage where he’d panned down the street and zoomed in on a girl watching the parade from a balcony. He stared intently trying to figure out what he was looking at. Was that girl simply a recalcitrant teen being disciplined by her dad, or was it something more sinister?
Recently he’d been reading about human trafficking—mostly women from third world countries lured to wealthy nations on the promise of better lives, only to be forced into slavery—everything from prostitution to sweatshops—even servitude in private homes.
Surely that wasn’t happening here, not in front of his very eyes. That girl seemed young, couldn’t be more than thirteen or so. He took a closer look. His imagination was probably running wild as usual. He told himself to forget about it. Nothing unsavory was going on. Not in a beautiful place like Tampa.
He took a final bite of his cheese and baloney sandwich and a swig from a bottle of ice water. Several stray drops fell onto his blue standard-issue shirt with the station’s logo on the front. He wore khaki pants and jogging shoes.
Izzie poked her head around the corner. “Hey Jackson, I’m headin’ out for lunch. Want something?”
Jackson shook his head and gestured to the half-empty sack on his desk. “I brought my lunch, thanks.” A baggie with three chocolate chip cookies and an apple were all that remained. He was disappointed not to be able to take his reporter up on her rare display of kindness,
Izzie Campbell was attractive in that annoying “Aren’t I just the prettiest thing” way many beautiful women have. Intelligent and stuck-up, she apparently thought a year of broadcast journalism made her an authority. Her slim, five foot five figure, sapphire-blue eyes, long blond hair, milky white skin and a generous smile—the rare times she chose to use it—resulted in Miss America quality beauty, a fact upon which she too-often capitalized.
Self-absorbed and overconfident, Izzie didn’t seem to realize cameramen like Jackson, made her look good. She often treated him as though he was little more than a mule, schlepping heavy equipment around for her benefit. Jackson sighed. Working alongside people like that came with the territory.
“So what ’cha looking at?”
Jackson looked up, surprised to find she was still there. “Just something I caught on the shoot yesterday.”
“What?” Uninvited, Izzie leaned over, touching Jackson’s shoulder. She wore a short blue skirt, a crisp white blouse with a gold pendant and gold hoop earrings. Her black heels were low, styled for comfort. Jackson got a whiff of her perfume. It was the same stuff his mom often wore.
She squinted, sending vertical lines between her eyes.
“See that girl,” Jackson put his finger on the screen and pointed at the balcony. “Now watch.” He advanced the tape a frame at a time. They watched as a man came out and forced the girl inside.
“So? Maybe he’s her dad and she was s’posed to do chores or homework and disobeyed him.”
Jackson faced his partner. “You notice the look she gave him?”
“Play it again,” Izzie said.
He cued the tape and they watched, their faces close to the screen so they could catch every nuance of the unwitting performance being played out before them.
“I see what you mean. She looks scared.”
Jackson didn’t know if she really thought he’d caught a crime in progress or was merely humoring him. “So what do we do?” he said.
“Do? I don’t know,” Izzie shrugged her shoulders. “What can we do?”
When Jackson didn’t reply, she added, “Let me grab some lunch and I’ll think about it. Our next shoot’s not till two. We’ll talk about it then. I’m starving.”
Jackson turned back to the screen and decided to dub a copy to VHS. He’d review it at home. Maybe there was nothing amiss. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let his imagination run away with him. It had gotten him in trouble before, so he didn’t want to go off half-cocked yet again.
He finished his package and had a few moments to relax before his next assignment, so he decided to go online and see what more he could find out about human trafficking.
After twenty minutes, what he learned sickened him. According the Polaris project website, modern-day slavery run by multinational crime networks is the second largest and fastest growing illegal trade in the world. As many as nine hundred thousand victims a year are enslaved through frau
d or coercion. And the United States is a major destination country for as many as fifty thousand.
My God, it’s happening under our very noses. The problem’s so hidden we don’t even know it’s happening. Victims are broken down, “groomed” by beatings and rape, and imprisoned in dog cages, even kept in the trunks of cars. They’re forced to work as laborers, sex slaves, even beggars and are so intimidated they fear reporting it. People around them aren’t even aware that it’s going on.
Could that young girl be the victim of such a hideous crime? The prospect horrified Jackson. He couldn’t get it off his mind. He simply had to make certain she wasn’t a slaver’s victim. But how to find out? His mind began to churn out ideas: most of them bizarre and some downright illegal.
Chapter 6
Lifting his tripod and camera from the back of the station jeep, Jackson set up as close to the scene as the cops allowed. He leveled his lens and hit the “record” button. It was obvious something had died and not recently either. The area stank like rotting meat and spoiled eggs. He had to cover his nose and mouth to keep from gagging.
He tuned back in to hear Izzie report the corpse was a female, who apparently died from a gunshot wound to the head. The body was partially decomposed and bloated. A faded yellow blouse, shredded plaid skirt and some underclothes were the only evidence police reported. The victim had a tattoo behind her right earlobe, but they didn’t know what, if any, significance it carried.
Izzie concluded with a plea to the public to contact police if anyone knew the identity of the victim or the circumstances surrounding her death.
On the way back to the station Jackson tried to shrug off the tragic story, but a voice inside his head wouldn’t let it go. A woman was dead—and no one missed her? How could that be? His thoughts went back to that girl on the balcony. What if? No, don’t go there.
For a change, Izzie was quiet, for which Jackson was grateful. His mind wandered back to stories he’d covered in the past few weeks: A triple-fatal—three people dead at the scene of an accident; a beauty pageant with the typical gorgeous girls vying for a crown of fake diamonds; a bank robber threatening to kill hostages and the discovery of a dead body—like today.
Similar to first responders, news crews often developed their own cryptic language and gallows’ humor to help them cope with the mayhem they saw all too often. Jackson hadn’t been working long enough to develop an indifference to the tragic stories he covered, but, if only to preserve his own sanity, he was getting there.
Operating the live truck was a part of the job Jackson both liked and feared. A remote studio utilized by TV stations to broadcast stories at the scene, the live truck was a two-edged sword providing a jump on the competition, but also presenting a danger to those involved.
When the truck’s fifty-foot microwave mast was extended, if lightning was in the area or the operator got distracted, the results could be fatal. Not long before Jackson was hired, an inexperienced photographer drove off with the boom raised. It collided with high tension wires sending 8000 volts of electricity through his reporter’s body. The woman died instantly.
Chapter 7
Leon waited for the microwave to signal that his frozen spaghetti and meatball dinner was ready. With two minutes to go, he walked into the adjoining family room, found the TV remote and pushed the power button. Then he pressed thirty-nine. For some reason, he preferred watching that station’s newscast, he really didn’t know why. Maybe the reporters were prettier or the weather reports shorter, who knew?
Hearing the oven beep, he went back to the kitchen and retrieved his supper. He sprinkled it with salt and pepper, snagged a can of beer and a fork, then returned to the family room and settled into his aging rocker-recliner to eat and watch the day’s news.
He was swallowing his last bite when a story came that nearly caused him to choke. It was a piece covering the burial of the body found at the beach. A woman was making a speech over the coffin. And she was crying, for God’s sake.
“I never met you,” she began, “but I just know you were awesome. Growing up you must have had such promise. I’m positive your mom and dad were crazy about you and I know if they were here now, they’d tell you how much they love and miss you. Your passing has created an enormous hole in their hearts that never will be filled. They long for the day when they will be with you again. God bless you, little darling, may you rest in peace.”
When she finished, the camera panned the cemetery. The woman stood alone at the gravesite.
“What the hell’s she doing?” Leon startled Tiny, who lay on the floor next to the recliner.
His alarm made its way from the pit of his stomach through his chest and up to his throat, where it parked itself in a knot, making it difficult to swallow.
Leon leaned forward, spilling the last ounce of beer down the front of his pants. Damn it all. He stood up to retrieve a cloth from the kitchen. Who the hell was that?
His question was answered a few seconds later as a pretty reporter began the interview.
The lady’s name was Martha Simpson from Lutz, a city about sixteen miles north of Tampa. She’d come to experience Gasparilla and visit her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. When she heard about the unidentified woman found off Clearwater Beach, it touched her heart and she couldn’t bear the thought of someone going to their grave unmourned. So she appointed herself the unofficial representative of the girl’s family and attended the burial on their behalf. It was as simple as that.
Leon was dismayed. The woman had succeeded in making an obscure girl’s death into a tearjerker.
“Make me cry why don’t ya,” Leon muttered, disgusted. “Just my luck the network’ll notice and run the story on national television. All’s I need is for Seymour to see it. Or worse, for the parents to find out what happened to their precious daughter. They’ll put pressure on the cops for sure, then here we go. Seymour’ll go ape-shit and who knows what’ll happen. Why the hell don’t people mind their own business?”
To be on the safe side, he jotted her name and city down in his ledger next to the information on I-3. Now if things got out of hand, he’d know where to find her.
Tiny stood in front of him, whining and trying to make eye contact. The dog was hungry and he hadn’t fed I-4 yet either. Chores, chores, where does the time go? He also had to get the girl ready for viewing by a customer coming later. Leon hoped the buyer liked I-4. Hanging onto the merchandise too long was risky. Not only that, but he was getting used to having her around. No, better to keep the product moving.
Chapter 8
On their lunch break, which was neither really lunch nor a break, Izzie and Jackson sat by the side of the road in the news van inhaling pizza they’d been able to grab at a local convenience store. With nothing else to talk about, Jackson raised the issue of the girl on the balcony.
“You still obsessing over that?” Izzie snorted.
Izzie’s lack of interest annoyed Jackson, who usually managed to keep his opinion to himself. This time the words popped out before his self-censoring mechanism kicked in. “I guess if it’s not about you, then it’s not important.”
“Excuse me?” Izzie’s eyebrows shot up along with the tone in her voice.
Jackson felt his ears heat up as blood rushed to his face. “It’s just that you don’t seem to give a lick about anybody but yourself, let alone those young girls. One either committed suicide or was murdered and the other has some kind of issue going on with that man who yanked her off the balcony. Couldn’t you at least pretend to give a flying fig?”
He hadn’t meant to go on like that, but the door was open and he’d gone through it. He knew there’d be a price to pay, but it was too late to back out.
Izzie threw him a look that said it all: He was a stupid jerk not worth a response. She looked at her watch and said, “We’d better get going or we’ll be late.”
Those were the last words she said to him for the rest of the day.
Chapter
9
It was Friday night and Jackson had trouble sleeping. Throbbing pain from balancing the camera on his shoulder was more intense than usual. It was his constant companion these days. If that was the price he had to pay for pursuing his dream job, then so be it. To Jackson, a little discomfort was more than worth it.
He got up, took two Advils and then switched his laptop on. After making silly comments to a high school buddy on Facebook and watching some videos on YouTube, he checked his email. That was a big mistake. Izzie had posted a message that sent shivers down his spine:
Okay, Mr. Hotshot Cameraman. U think you no me? Like, what U no don’t scratch the surface. Just ’cause I’m a reporter and have looks, don’t mean I don’t care ’bout people. That girl they buried other day? The one nobody but that woman cared enough to stand at her grave? For your information, Smarty-pants, I felt real bad bout her. She made me think about the girl on the balcony UR so worried bout. I been going over there to see if I can find out what’s going on. Been back several times. That guy in the video started to notice. The last time he waved and asked me to go for a drink. I said no, but if he does it again, I’ll take him up on it. If I can get him to invite me in, I’ll check on that girl. So, see, Jackson, UR not the only one with a heart. I have one too, even if I don’t wear it on my sleeve like U do. See you at work. Izzie
Jackson’s heart pounded as he typed, his fingers moving furiously over the keyboard: