The phone rang twice.
“Billy Rainwater, original and authentic American Indian. How may I direct your call?”
“It’s Jesse.”
“No kidding, Kemosabe. You think I’d actually answer the phone that way if I didn’t know it was you?”
Billy and I had become blood brothers when we were kids. We’d grown up together, hunting and fishing the Caloosahatchee River and the Ten Thousand Islands area. Later, we’d served side-by-side in the Marine Corps. We’d been covering each other’s six for over forty years.
By blood, Billy was, in fact, the acting chieftain of the Calusa people, the first settlers of Florida’s southwest coast. Roughly translated, Calusa means “fierce people.” Even the conquistadors sailed wide around Southwest Florida after Juan Ponce de León first landed in Charlotte Harbor and got an arrow in his gut for the discovery.
Few had ever seen Billy’s fierce side. But I had.
Since leaving the Corps, he’d guided hunting trips in the Everglades and built incredible 4x4s that could go anywhere. Later, he’d received a law degree and worked to secure a place for his people. He’d helped Deuce on occasion with legal matters. And he’d helped me dispose of a body once. He was an odd mix, but I trusted him implicitly. We’d put our lives on the line for each other more than once.
“I’ve got a situation,” I began. “And I’m hoping you might be free and willing to help. A woman called me earlier tonight. She sounds like a nice lady and tells me this story about her sixteen-year-old niece, who’s gotten herself jammed up with MS-13 in Fort Myers.”
“Why would that be something you’d get involved in?”
“Couple of reasons,” I replied. “From what the aunt tells me, the girl sounds like a really good kid, but I also think it’s because this gang is so clearly out of control. Apparently, they’re going around these days thinking they can kidnap innocent girls off the street, gang-rape them, addict them to drugs, and then run them as prostitutes, all without fearing retribution of any sort. The police are powerless over them because they’re so effective at intimidating and killing anyone willing to testify against them. Apparently, this girl, Callie, interrupted one of their kidnappings and, in the process, took down two members of the gang. That obviously made them look like fools, so they’ve been going after her hard. The aunt’s worried about the girl and her family.”
“How did the woman hear about you?”
“A PI she knows up north knows a guy I once worked with. I agreed to have her call me at Rusty’s, thinking I might be able to help, but I’m leaving at the end of the week.”
“I don’t like MS-13, Jesse. They make the whole human race look bad.”
“I was hoping you’d feel that way.”
“I’ve got some time,” he offered. “Want me to go down there and scalp a couple of them?”
I explained the situation with as much detail as I knew, including the part about how he would have to basically offer invisible protection to the girl’s family for the next three days and then to the girl herself once she got back from Boston.
“So, I have to provide this protection silently? Like a ghost?”
“Yup,” I replied. “You’ll need your moccasins, for sure. But don’t put your life in danger over that aspect. I’d much rather the girl and her family find out that her aunt arranged protection than have anything happen to you.”
“You said the girl drives a motorcycle?”
“That’s what her aunt said.”
“I recently treated myself to an Indian and have been looking for an excuse for a road trip.”
“Vintage?” I asked, knowing Billy’s dislike of most modern things.
“No, not this time. She’s a brand-new 1200cc, blacked-out, Indian Roadmaster. She’s even got a GPS nav system built into the fairing.”
“Jeez, Billy, what happened to old school? Your ancestors are probably rolling over in their middens.”
“You forget; I’m chief of the Calusa. It’s called executive privilege. Iron horse is heap powerful.”
I chuckled.
“Text me the girl’s address after we hang up,” he said. “I’ll head over to Fort Myers tomorrow. You said the girl will be back on Sunday?”
“That’s what her aunt said. And thanks, Billy. I’ll owe you another one. Give me a call once you get settled in and keep track of your expenses. I’ll pick up the bill on this.”
“You can’t afford me, brother. I’ll put it on your tab, though.”
In a darkened motel room in Fort Myers, Manuel “Bones” Bonilla patiently waited, though he was excited at what the night might bring. The motel was on MLK, just a few blocks from Harlem Lakes.
Bones’s gang, MS-13, had sprung up in Los Angeles, ostensibly to protect Salvadoran people and businesses. It had quickly turned to more lucrative and illegal activities and soon spread across the globe. But unlike most of his MS-13 fellow gang members, Bones was of mixed heritage.
His mother was Salvadoran and his father, whom he never knew, was black. His darker skin and African-American features allowed him to move around in the Lake Boyz-controlled part of Fort Myers as if he were invisible. And Harlem Lakes was the center of the other gang’s territory.
Having been raised by a devout Catholic mother, Bones couldn’t wait to get out of that confinement. By the time he reached thirteen years of age, he’d already had numerous run-ins with the law. At fifteen, he moved out of his mother’s house, quit school, and lived with friends under a bridge, or in one of the many abandoned crack houses nearby. He soon started selling crack, but he never used it. The roots of Catholicism ran deep.
Bones was bigger than most of the Hispanic people who lived in his neighborhood, and he took care of those who lived on the streets. While they slept or smoked, he was armed and alert. Left to their own devices, most would end up dead or in jail, and they couldn’t very well buy more drugs from him if they ended up in those conditions. He didn’t care about them. They were a means to an end, nothing more. Over time, he’d gained a reputation for dealing fairly with suppliers and customers, and people liked and trusted him. He quickly rose from selling dime bags of skunk weed to moving several ounces of meth every night.
But a chance encounter with a man called Razor had changed things. Razor worked for a Salvadoran named Diego Alturaz, who’d come to the west coast of Florida from Miami to organize the many street gangs in the predominantly Hispanic communities. Razor and Diego were MS-13, and soon grew the gang to a couple dozen members.
Given the choice of remaining on his own and competing against the notorious gang or joining it, Bones had agreed to work for Razor. He still made the same money, maybe a little more, even though he was now moving over half a pound of product every night. The upside was, he no longer had to babysit his customers, which suited Bones just fine.
In just the last two weeks, his customers, mostly hookers, had begun to disappear. Five days earlier, Razor had learned that the disappearances were caused by a rival gang to the north—the Lake Boyz of Harlem Lakes. He and Diego began making plans.
MS-13 had been providing protection for a number of crack whores, in exchange for a fee. They’d started there and then expanded their extortion to legitimate businesses in the area. The disappearances of the prostitutes they were protecting was an embarrassment to the new chapter of the gang.
The disappearance of one of the hookers hit close to home for Bones. His cousin, Carmel Marco, had vanished earlier in the week. While Bones and Razor were out looking for her, a bunch of the Lake Boyz had kicked in the door of Razor’s place and trashed everything. Carmel’s little boy had been staying there while she worked the streets, and he had also turned up missing.
With the hookers gone, MS-13 lost an income stream, and acquired the shame that loss brought from other chapters. The answer was simple. Get more hookers. Diego came up with the idea of just making them, instead of finding them.
Bones had been assigned to sit on several new g
irls that other gang members had snatched up from more affluent neighborhoods in the suburbs and surrounding towns.
The girls the gang kidnapped had been taken to one of the many crack houses in the area, where they’d been gang-raped repeatedly. All the while, they were shot up with meth until they’d become as addicted as the average street whore.
Bones’s job was to keep them as high as he could without killing them, until it was determined they were loyal to the gang. If one got out of line, he raped and beat her until she became submissive. Bones enjoyed that part of the training and was good at it.
Razor had come up with the idea to strike back at the Lake Boyz in the same way. That was why Bones was sitting in a motel room, waiting.
With his African-American looks and Salvadoran heart.
The first time, he’d been nervous. Bones had picked up a black hooker on MLK four nights earlier. He’d taken her to a crack house a few blocks away, where he’d offered her a rock of crack cocaine, which she’d greedily smoked. When she’d lain back on a dirty mattress, he’d simply fallen on top of her and strangled her.
She’d struggled, but not much. Her brain had been so fried, she’d thought he’d just wanted rough sex and even urged him on. The excitement of killing her and avenging his cousin had stayed with Bones for the rest of that night.
The second murder was even easier, but Bones took advantage of the moment and did have rough sex with the puta, waiting to choke her to death until the end.
There was a knock on the motel room door.
Bones rose slowly from the bed and moved quietly to the door, like a jungle cat stalking its prey.
He looked through the peephole and just outside, a black woman stood, fidgeting nervously.
There wasn’t anyone with her, so he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“You the guy who called Tavarius?” she asked.
She wore a simple blue tank top with a square neckline and short, cutoff jeans, both of which she filled out quite well. Bones could tell by the way she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other and rubbing her arms that she was a tweaker.
“Yeah,” he replied. “If that was who I talked to. Never got his name till now. I got a number from a brother—a number I could call if I wanted to party.”
“Let’s get this party started,” the hooker said, as she came into the room. “You got any party favors?”
Bones closed and deadbolted the door. “Yeah, I got a little weed.”
She turned and rubbed at both forearms. “Just weed?”
Bones grinned, as the rubbing of her arms caused her boobs to bounce up and down. “I got a little ice.”
The woman eyed him cautiously. “How do I know you ain’t a cop?”
Bones just shrugged and took a small vial from his pocket before unfastening his pants and pulling them off.
Inside the vial was a dime rock of meth. He placed the container next to a cheap crack pipe and a fat joint lying on the table. Then he picked up the joint and lit it. The pungent smell of marijuana quickly filled the room.
“Cops don’t get high ’n’ naked with someone they about to bust.”
Lying on my bunk in the aft stateroom, I thought about what I’d asked Billy to do. Sure, it could get dicey, but knowing him, if anyone got hurt, they’d have had it coming.
I knew the area where Callie and her family lived. I’d grown up not far from there. It was a rural area, just up the river from Fort Myers. Billy knew that part of the Caloosahatchee better than anyone, except maybe his dad. He’d be in his own element and able to keep an eye on things. If he had to intervene, I knew it would be swift, silent, and from a distance.
I drifted off to sleep around midnight, the sounds from the marina and bar reaching my ears through the open hatch.
When dawn came, I was well rested and ready for the day. Instead of going to the galley for coffee, I just locked up the Dog and went up to the bar, carrying my Thermos. It was more than a one-mug ride back to the island.
To say that the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill was just another bar was an understatement. Rufus and his niece made breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all the liveaboards in the little marina, as well as many of the locals and a few fishing guides and their clients. Information was shared over coffee about what was biting where, who got drunk and fell off a pier, or what boat was down for repairs. And whenever trouble came, like a hurricane, the Anchor was a rally spot for volunteers and displaced locals.
It’d been that way since before Henry Flagler’s railroad had arrived to build the long bridge beyond Vaca Key and what would later become the city of Marathon.
I had a quick breakfast and filled my Thermos before going back down to the dock, stepping aboard El Cazador, and starting the engine. While it warmed up, I called Savannah to see if she needed me to bring anything out, though I doubted she would. Our little island home was quite self-sustaining.
“How was your night alone?” I asked.
“I’m hardly alone,” Savannah replied. “These two are a handful when you’re not around.”
“Finn and Woden? All they do is lie around and watch me work.”
“That’s their favorite thing,” she agreed. “But you’re not here. So, they were both bugging me all day and pacing the floor all night.”
“Need anything?”
“Just you,” she replied.
I smiled. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you from Rufus. A bag of his “swimmer” spices.”
“How’d you get him to part with that?” she asked.
“I didn’t. Rusty handed it to me and said it was a gift for you.”
“That’s sweet,” she said. “Be sure to thank him for me. Have you heard anything from Detective Andersen?”
I spotted Rufus walking toward the dock.
“Nothing yet,” I replied. “I’ll give him a call before I leave.”
We said goodbye and I stepped back up to the dock.
“Savannah says thanks,” I said, holding up the bag.
“I and I hear what yuh and Miss Savannah did yestuhday,” Rufus said in his lyrical island accent. “She a brave woman, dat one.”
“No big deal,” I said. “The kid needed help, so we just swam the boat to shore.”
“Not talkin’ bout dat, Cap’n,” he said, looking all around. Then he lowered his voice, conspiratorially. “I see and hear tings, Cap’n Jesse. And not jest from udduh peoples. Whut yuh and Miss Savannah are gwon do will bring trouble, mon. Dat boy will bring trouble to yuh.” Then he smiled broadly, his teeth like white Chicklets against his dark features. “But di gods smile on peoples like yuh and Miss Savannah. Everting gwon work out. When tings look bad, jest remember dat.”
Without another word, Rufus turned and crossed the lawn toward the deck and his kitchen.
I scratched my head. Rufus always talked in riddles and often spoke of hearing from the gods. He was Rastafari, which was a monotheistic religion, but he once told me that the souls of his ancient African ancestors dwelt within him and he often spoke to them and their gods.
Shaking my head, I scrolled through my contact list and called Andersen’s cell number.
“Detective Andersen,” he answered.
“This is Jesse McDermitt. Any word on the boy?”
“I was holding off calling you until a respectable hour,” he said. “I should have figured a man like you would be up with the roosters. Yes. I spoke with the doctor who’s treating the kid just a few minutes ago to see if there was any change.”
“Has he remembered anything?”
“He’s doing great, physically,” Andersen replied. “The doctor said he could be released later today or tomorrow morning. But no, he hasn’t regained any of his memory.” There was a pause. “Are you sure you want to do this, Mr. McDermitt?”
“My wife wouldn’t have it any other way, Detective. Which means it’s what I want.”
“Happy wife, happy life,” he said. “I get that.”
“She’s already had me move a bed from the bunkhouse to our living room.”
“I should have word this afternoon,” Andersen said. “If he’s ready to be discharged, I can have him up there before nightfall. How do I find your place?”
“Got a pencil?”
“Shoot.”
Put these numbers in your GPS,” I said. “24.788714 degrees north and –81.452636 west. That’ll bring you right to my dock. Just don’t try going between Howe Key and Water Key unless you have a skinny boat and know the area.”
“Got it. I’ll phone as soon as I hear anything.”
We ended the call and I untied the lines.
Idling out of Rusty’s canal, I continued at slow speed through the channel until I reached deep water. Then I brought the beefy center console up on plane and swung a wide turn around East Sister Rock, headed toward Moser Channel and the high arch of the Seven Mile Bridge.
This whole notion of kidnapping girls and turning them into drug-addicted prostitutes was unsettling.
I’d learned that Cobie Murphy had undergone a similar experience during her captivity. Willy Quick had shot her and several other women up with what was later learned to be a barbiturate cocktail. The effects of the drugs, in his captives’ cases, was a depression of the central nervous system, making them completely compliant, but still conscious. When he’d used them up, he’d just dumped them, semi-conscious, for the gators to finish off.
What Quick used wasn’t nearly as addictive as heroine or crack cocaine, but the two survivors did have to go through treatment.
I feared that the drugs MS-13 was hooking their abductees on would be a lot more addictive. Enough so that a morally upright young woman with a fantastic future ahead of her would do anything to get more.
Including selling herself in back alleys.
I shuddered as I slowed down a little to pass under the bridge. Clearing it and the remnants of the old Seven Mile Bridge, I opened the throttle again and turned slightly east of due north to follow the natural deep channel.
The idea of an innocent girl like Cobie or Nancy’s niece being transformed into a near-lifeless shell of a human, to be rented out by the hour to the sickos that frequented those dark alleys, disgusted me. But I’d seen firsthand what certain drugs would do to a person. A crack monster would sell their children for another rock.
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