Bad Penny

by John D. Brown

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not a drug dealer. You’re a tough operator, but you don’t have the right tattoos. You don’t have the look. I saw your face when you saw those children. You were angry. You were full of righteous indignation. You knew exactly what they were. I’ll tell you why the Gorozas have a bounty on you, Matanarcos—you’ve been messing with their operations. You’re a vigilante, an abolicionista. You’ve been helping free the Goroza’s merchandise.”

  She smiled ruefully. “You’re a clever man. But still way off.”

  No, he was much closer than way off. He could see it in her face. “Work with me. I cut the head off the snake, and that’s one less snake you have to deal with.”

  “They will kill you.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  A beat passed.

  “Carmen.”

  Another pause.

  “Show me I can trust you,” she said.

  “Sam,” Frank said.

  “What are we doing?” Sam asked.

  “Can I have your phone?”

  Sam pulled his phone out of his pocket, tossed it to Frank. Frank caught it then thumbed the icon for the keyboard and typed in Tony’s phone number. Then he thumbed dial. A moment later, Tony’s phone rang in Frank’s pocket. Frank disconnected the call. He held Sam’s phone up. “My number is now in the call log. We do not have much time. But we’re going to walk away. Give you space. I hope you decide to help save some lives. All you’ve got to do is push the call button.”

  He slipped Sam’s phone into the center of a cluster of beet leaves. It looked like something in a spring basket. Like something for a TV commercial. “Do not let them kill an innocent boy, Carmen.”

  “You’re giving her my phone?” Sam asked.

  “Lending it. Is that okay?” Frank asked.

  Sam looked at his phone: a man parting with his best friend, making the sacrifice. “The password is cocoa puffs,” he finally said. “One word, lower case.” Then he spelled it out for her.

  “Be nice to Sam’s phone,” Frank said to Carmen. Then he signaled to Sam, and they both turned their backs on her and the phone in the beet leaves and walked to the edge of the field. They climbed over the fence and up the shoulder to the van.

  “What’s the range of your Bluetooth?” Frank asked.

  “Not very far,” Sam said.

  “We’ll get it back,” Frank said and opened the passenger door.

  Back in the field, Carmen hadn’t moved. She was still watching them.

  Frank got in and closed the door. Sam walked around and got in on the driver’s side.

  “Drive a couple hundred yards down the road,” Frank said.

  “You know we can track her? I set up that GPS service on my phone when we were looking for you. Figured better safe than sorry.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need to track her.”

  “Let’s hope you are right.”

  Sam put the van in gear, turned it around, then headed away from Carmen and the girls.

  To the north, the fire truck had gone to work on the house. A long cloud of thick smoke smeared the sky, but the fire was dying down, the smoke thinning. All about the house, the lights of the emergency vehicles flashed. Soon the cops would start canvassing the houses within view of the fire, asking if anyone had seen anything. He was sure those two guys on four-wheelers were already there, giving a full report.

  They drove past the shed where the children had been waiting. They were nowhere to be seen.

  A few hundred yards later, Sam said, “You want me to stop?”

  “Keep going.”

  They came to the intersection at the end of the road, and Sam turned south.

  “You think she’s going to call?” Sam asked.

  Frank pulled Tony’s phone out of his pocket and held it in his lap. Would he call if he were in her shoes? He gave it a forty percent chance. “She’ll call,” he said.

  19

  Instructions

  FRANK HELD THE phone as Sam drove south along the road. One mile. Two. Five.

  Carmen did not call.

  They came to an intersection that led to a gas station. Frank had Sam pull over. Bison grazed in the field next to them. They waited and watched the bison, which didn’t do anything spectacular except chew grass.

  Fifteen minutes later Carmen still hadn’t called.

  “Maybe you should call her,” Sam said.

  “She’s going to call,” Frank said.

  At that moment the phone rang. But it wasn’t a call originating from Sam’s phone. Frank thumbed an answer.

  “Jockstrap,” Ed said. “You picked up on the first ring. Good boy.”

  Frank said, “You need to think about your future because if Tony doesn’t come back to me, I’m going to hunt you down. I’m not going to rest. Your end will not be pretty.”

  “Let’s not get nasty, Frank. You don’t want to scuttle this deal in a pout.”

  “Last chance, Ed.”

  Ed chuckled. “You got a pen and a piece of paper? You’re going to want to write this down.”

  Frank asked Sam for paper and pen.

  “Who you with there, Frank? Did you get all stupid on me and call the cops?”

  “I’m with the Lone Ranger.”

  “You get all stupid, and our deal goes south. You listening to me?”

  Frank didn’t think he could bear to hear one more word from Ed.

  Sam fished around in his pink diaper bag and came up with a pen that had some crud on it. Then he fished around and found an envelope.

  Frank said, “Talk.”

  “Four a.m. tomorrow morning you’re going to be waiting at the truck stop on the west side of the freeway in the fine little town of Hudson, Colorado. You’re going to have the children and that whore with you. You’ll receive a call.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it, Frank. See how easy this is going to be?”

  “Yeah.”

  “T-T-F-N,” Ed said. Then he hung up.

  Frank googled Hudson on his phone. It was a small little place north and east of the Denver metropolitan area. It was right at the edge of nothing. Miles and miles of open farms. It would be very hard to hide a police tail out there.

  Frank figured he knew how it would play out. They would call, tell him to move along to a second spot. They would watch as he moved to see if he was alone. Not many people out at four a.m. Not even out there in the rise-and-shine countryside. If they saw he was alone, they’d give him another destination, and tell him to drop the children off at some lonely spot. They would watch from afar. Then they’d direct him to another location to make an exchange—the woman for Tony. Except Tony wouldn’t be part of the deal. Frank would be driving to the location of his grave.

  Or maybe they would do the whole deal in one place. They’d have him drive to some barn out in the middle of nowhere. They’d have him line the girls and Carmen up. They’d send Tony over, and then, with everyone in one spot, they’d gun all of them down.

  The fact was that they weren’t planning a trade. They were planning a killing. And those were two entirely different types of operations. If Frank were planning it, he would send a backhoe out this evening to dig a nice deep pit. Have the guy wear a uniform from the gas company. Have him dig a hole big enough for ten bodies. It would be a piece of cake.

  “So?” Sam asked.

  Frank told him what Ed had said and showed him Hudson on the map.

  “You need to call the cops.”

  “Think it through. The Gorozas are using false identities. We don’t know where Tony is. So they show up, hassle the Gorozas, find nothing, and go home. Or they put up some surveillance, find nothing, and go home. Either way, Tony’s buried in a hasty, but deep grave out in the middle of someplace nobody will ever find.”

  “What about the FBI? You have Ed’s old phone number. They could look through the Goroza’s phone records; link the two. Tie it all together.”

  �
��That’s TV magic. Things don’t work all lickety-split in the real world. But let’s say they did. Ed’s using pre-paid cell phones. Probably paying cash. Which means it tracks to a dead end. He knows phones can be traced. He’s the one that sent us off to Eden. But even if they catch him, the Feds can’t prove anything without a body.”

  “DNA in his vehicle. Fingerprints.”

  “I’m sure Ed’s watched CSI too.”

  “You sure he’s that smart?”

  “What I’m sure of is that I can’t take chances. Some cons are as dumb as rocks. Some are mean. Some are crazy. And some will do calculus on top of your head. Ed isn’t one of those you want to underestimate.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Frank looked down at the phone. He had a name. Not much to go on.

  If his guess about Carmen was correct, then she wasn’t operating on her own. She’d be part of an organization. She wouldn’t have called them on Sam’s phone because then the call would be captured in his log. So she’d go down the road and made a call with a stranger’s phone. Or find a public phone somewhere else. She could still be en route to make that call. Or she could have decided to get out while she had the chance. That would be the smart move. What was the life of one boy when hundreds or thousands of others were on the line?

  He sighed. “Looks like we’re going to have to go to plan F.”

  “The FBI can put a drone in the sky,” Sam said.

  “This is an operation that smuggles drugs and slaves. I think they know that.” Frank exited the app and put the phone in his front shirt pocket. “I’m going to have to go in loaded for bear.”

  “You’re going to round up those girls like he asked?”

  “No.”

  “Frank, I’m not comfortable with this.”

  Frank wasn’t either, but he didn’t see how he could increase his odds. If he called this in, it would be his word, the word of an ex-con who had just killed some guys and committed arson, against that of the Gorozas. A classic he said, she said. No body, no witnesses. Just the off chance that they might find some hair off of Tony’s head in that pickup, which they could match against what? Nothing. They’d have to get DNA back in Rock Springs and it would take a week and even then they wouldn’t be positive it was Tony’s because they hadn’t taken anything from him.

  He needed firepower. He needed that P90.

  “You think she left the phone in the field?” Sam asked. “It’s got a lot of information on it.”

  “I know,” Frank said. “Let’s go back and see if she did. Then I need you to take me to that big pond.”

  They went back to the beet field, walked out to where they’d talked to Carmen. They pushed back the plants and looked about. The phone was gone.

  What did that mean?

  “Dang it,” said Sam.

  “I’m sorry,” Frank said. He was sorry for a lot of things. Most of all to Tony and Kim. He just hoped he wasn’t sorry for more things by this time tomorrow.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Sam said. “It’s a phone.”

  They got back into the van. Sam turned it around. In the distance the fire was out. The smoke had changed from black to gray.

  Maybe Frank should go to plan G and call the Feds, but he knew in his heart where that would lead.

  Tony’s phone rang. It startled him and he fumbled it out of his shirt pocket. It rang again. It was Sam’s number.

  Frank pressed the icon to answer the call. “Carmen?” he asked.

  “The girls are safe,” Carmen said. “Now you and I can talk.”

  * * *

  She was waiting for them on an empty stretch of farm road, one of the prettiest hitchhikers he’d ever seen. Sam pulled up next to her and stopped. Frank turned around and pushed back the minivan’s sliding door.

  Carmen did not get in. She said, “If I feel uncomfortable at any moment, you will stop and let me out.”

  “Okay,” Frank said.

  “You will not give my name to the police or even mention I’m involved.”

  “We can keep that quiet.”

  She looked at Sam.

  “I have more secrets packed away in this brain than both of you combined.” He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  She said, “I gave your phone to the girls. The quickest ride I could arrange for them is going to take a little while. I didn’t want them to be cut off.”

  “No better use for a phone,” Sam said, although Frank was sure his phone separation anxiety had just ticked up a notch.

  “We’ll make sure you get it back,” she said.

  “Get in,” Frank said.

  Carmen climbed into the back seat and slid the door shut. She said, “I’m dying of thirst. I’ve had exactly two bottles of water since they took me.”

  Sam gave her the rest of the vitamin water, then fished around in his pink diaper bag and came up with a small, half-empty bottle of orange Gatorade. “This ought to wet your whistle.”

  She didn’t even bat an eye. She took both from him, screwed off the lid to the Gatorade, chugged it, then went to work on the vitamin water. When she finished, she said, “Do you have anymore?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Looks like we need to get you something to eat and drink,” Frank said. “That will give us a table and a place to get together a plan. We can kill two birds with one stone. Of course, I don’t have much money.”

  “The Gorozas will pick up the tab,” Carmen said.

  Frank remembered the wad of loot she had. He said, “Let’s head back to the interstate, and see if we can’t find the lady a place to dine.”

  Sam said, “You still need to go swimming in that pond?”

  “I am indeed going to have to take a plunge,” Frank said. They were going to need a gun. They were going to need Pinto’s eyes in the sky and his binoculars. They were going to need a couple of other things. And they were going to have to be quick because there weren’t nearly enough hours to pull a thing like this off between now and four a.m.

  20

  Carmen

  SAM HEADED DOWN the same stretch of road for the fourth time. Frank turned around in his seat and said to Carmen, “Where does this Flor Goroza operate? Where’s headquarters?”

  “They have a business at the south end of the Denver area. H. C. and Sons.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve only recently come in contact with the Gorozas.”

  “And yet they have a bounty on your head?” How could that be? What had she done? “Carmen, I need information. I need all the data you have. I proved my intentions. I need you to trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anyone completely,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I know. The Gorozas are part of a trafficking ring. It’s like a web. I tickled one end of the web and awoke all the spiders.”

  “How big is this web?”

  “It stretches from Mexico, up through Colorado, and on to Seattle. Parts in Arizona. Parts in Texas. I think there’s someone up in Chicago.”

  “You tingled all those webs?”

  “Probably.”

  Frank said, “We need to know what we’ve gotten into here.”

  Carmen glanced out the window at the fields. In the distance by the Goroza’s half a house, the lights of the emergency vehicles flashed. She said, “What do you think they do with those children?”

  “Sell them to agricultural and construction contractors. To temp agencies.”

  She shook her head. “No. These are assets with an ROI. They generate a lot of money. Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand each. Easily. They move them every five or six weeks. Keep them on a circuit. A few months around Denver. Then up to Seattle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about high-volume, low price. I’m talking about little houses in residential neighborhoods. Or maybe a mobile home behind a rural bar. They’ll put two
or three of these kids in each. They’re usually a little older. But you have to have young ones in stock because they command a high price for the right customer. And the customers come. A girl might have to service five people a day or forty. Thirty or forty bucks for fifteen minutes with one of those kids. The little ones go for more. They can charge seventy or eighty for that. They can deliver them right to your door.”

  Sam said, “Sex? They’re selling them for sex?”

  “This isn’t a pimp operation,” Carmen said. “It’s not some massage parlor. This is big business. You’re in, you’re out. Next customer please. In restaurants you measure table turns. Here it’s bed turns and utilization rates.”

  Frank shook his head. The little boy had thrown him off, but he should have seen it. He did the math. Forty men at fifteen minutes each—the girl would have to suffer for ten hours. And then she’d have to get up and do it again the next day. And all the while her owners were making thirty bucks a pop. “$1,200 dollars on a busy day. $8,400 per week. $400,000 per year. Or maybe they only did that level of business sometimes. Maybe each only made them $200,000 per year. Three or four houses, two or three in a house, and you’re clearing close to two million a year.”

  “They’re doing that much business?” Sam asked. “Surely someone would notice.”

  “Think about it,” Carmen said. “These are repeat customers. A guy comes back two or three times a month. Maybe more. You don’t need a huge clientele. And they’re not selling to just anybody. There are no advertisements in papers or on websites. No hooking on the street. You don’t see this. They hand out tarjetas, little business cards in Spanish, at bus stops, parks and other places for phony products. Only to Hispanic men. If the johns are illegal, that’s even better. So the card advertises for ‘Gorditas 24x7,’ or house-call manicures, or men’s cologne. The Goroza’s have one card that says ‘Mi Casa, Su Casa,’ the other says ‘Botas Y Tejanas.’ It’s all in Spanish. If you’re looking to buy, you know what it means. If not, it’s just some dumb card.”

  Frank knew the first phrase: mi casa, su casa. My home is your home. But the second didn’t make any sense. “Boots and Texans?” Frank asked. That couldn’t be right.

  “Exactly,” Carmen said. “There’s a number on the card. You call the number. They ask you questions to make sure you’re not a cop, not a Gringo, just some Pedro wanting some action. Then they tell you how to approach the house. Some of these places get a lot of men.”