by Matt Lincoln
I knew about the sex industry in Barbados, but this was the first time I saw it firsthand. It wasn’t like in the movies where stunning, half-dressed women draped themselves over hapless men on missions. While some women matched that description, some women looked like death was on their shoulders, men in all states of dress, cross-dressers, and boys and girls who were barely legal, if that. There was no way to tell who was there by choice.
Some approached, much like kiosk workers at shopping malls. They called out and let go as we strode past. At the end of the street, we milled about a few shops that remained open into the evening, all the while watching for Sealy’s distinctive look.
“There,” Holm quietly said. He tilted his head to his right.
I moved in Sealy’s direction while juggling a bag of jam puffs and a large drink I’d bought in a bid to blend in. Okay, maybe I liked the crispy, sweet jam puff I’d tried ten minutes earlier, so I’d bought a bag for the flight home. Sharing with my team was negotiable.
Sealy was a scrawny guy. His orangish-red dreads hung from underneath a Chicago baseball cap, and he wore a matching white jersey with black pinstripes and a number thirty-five.
My attempt to look innocuous failed as I closed in on Sealy. When I got close, he spotted me and split.
“Holm! Forde!” I dumped my drink in the closest garbage can. “He took off in this direction.”
We sprinted after Sealy. The further we got from the red-light district, the thinner the crowd on the street. He ducked down an alley. I drew up to the corner and unholstered my weapon, as did Holm. Forde lingered behind us and kept his hands free. I tossed him my bag of jam puffs. If he wasn’t gonna get his hands dirty, he could have dessert duty.
I pointed my gun to the ground and leaned to see around the corner. It went through to another street, and Sealy was halfway there.
“Stop, Sealy,” I yelled. “We just wanna talk!”
Sealy tripped, caught himself, and kept hauling ass. We ran after him and went left at the next corner. There weren’t as many pedestrians, but there were cars aplenty. As Sealy wove through traffic, he almost got plastered by a box truck, but he got to the other side in one piece. I hated when suspects did that because that meant I had to do it.
Horns blared at the three of us as we juked between vehicles that crept along because of a detour down the way. I only noticed the signs because that’s where Sealy headed. He paused at the Road Closed sign long enough to push it away from the chain-link fence adjoining it.
Holm, Forde, and I squeezed through, but something ripped my shirt. I didn’t have time to look for the culprit, as Sealy darted down the empty street toward what looked like a park with swaying palm trees.
I rounded the corner at full speed, but Sealy had vanished. The park was a small oasis in a sea of stucco homes, which were bright in the street lamps. I scanned shadowy areas and found no signs. Holm gestured to a home.
“Check out the half-walls,” he said in a low tone.
Many of the homes had bushes and other plants outside their front doors. Some had half-walls which matched the houses and surrounded those small landscapes. All over the area were flowers I recognized as the Pride of Barbados from the tattoos, and it was the common plant of the two species we found at the crime scene.
Holm and I went through and checked behind the half-walls. Forde volunteered to watch our backs should Sealy jump out. The white jersey gave him away at the fifth space I checked. He’d tucked under a bush. I leaned over and pointed my gun at him.
“Come out, Sealy,” I spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. “We need to talk.”
“C’mon, man, I ain’t buying that. You got a gun out.” He slowly raised his arms, palms up and open. “Don’t shoot, I got nothing on me.”
I blinked. The guy really did have a squeal of a voice, as though it never got past puberty. He also had an American accent. Based on his jersey and cap, I guessed he was from Chicago.
“Get out of there,” I ordered. I holstered my gun, but Holm kept his at the ready. “Slow and steady, then we’ll go have a chat.”
He complied but grumbled under his breath. I did a quick search for weapons and found he was telling the truth. Score one for Squealy Sealy.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Forde said. “We don’t want him in trouble for talking to us.”
“Where are your offices?” I asked. “We can question him there.”
Forde’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “No, no, no. We’ll go to a place I know. We don’t want the wrong people to see you or him.”
“Or you can forget me,” Sealy offered. “I ain’t important.”
“Nice try,” Holm said with an eye roll.
“What do you have?” I asked Forde. “We aren’t necessarily arresting him. No need to make paperwork.”
“This way.”
Forde led us two blocks away. There was a schoolyard with a busted lock on its gate. I raised a brow as Forde manipulated it into popping open. The gate whined as it opened, and I hoped none of the neighbors noticed or cared.
We walked along the fence rather than crossing the well-lit playground. The other side of the school backed up to a gully. Trees, ivy, and bushes pushed through the metal links of the fence. There was an alcove for staff to access along that line of the school, and that’s where Forde directed us. Cigarette butts littered the ground, and on the other side of the crumbling access road, I noticed a few bottles and cans with cheap beer names on them. I could imagine what else we’d find if we wanted to look. Fortunately, we didn’t.
Sealy slouched in the corner of the alcove with his arms crossed and hat pulled low. He stared at his feet.
“Your name reached Miami, Agustin,” I said. “We flew here just to meet you.”
He raised his chin a little. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Holm said. “Word is you know something about sex slaves being sold out of Bridgetown.”
Sealy pressed back but couldn’t escape the wall. He shook his head so hard that his hat tumbled to the ground. Holm picked it up and spun it on his finger.
“Are you from Chicago?” I asked. “You don’t look or sound like you’re from Barbados, Agustin. What gives?”
He looked around as if expecting Death to ride in at any moment. The whites of his eyes showed more than good ole Bug Eye’s from the bar.
“I can’t talk to you,” he whispered. “They’re everywhere.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. A paranoid informant was next to useless. Forde walked away a few paces but came back.
“Why do you think they are everywhere?” Forde asked. “Sounds exaggerated to me.”
“If I tell you anything, they’ll kill my fam.”
“In the States?” I loomed over him. “They’d go to the States and kill your family if they knew you spoke with us?”
Sealy nodded with vigor. “And here. My folks came back here about ten years ago. I wasn’t old enough to stay in Chicago.” He made a wry grin. “I’m a Bajan now.”
“This operation sure is big for one tiny island,” I said.
“Maybe,” Sealy answered. “I wouldn’t know.”
I snatched Sealy’s left arm and pinned him to the wall.
“We think you do,” I growled. “If you don’t work with us, two murders fall on your head instead of where they belong.”
“Two?” he squeaked. “But there were three!”
I dropped his arm as he realized what he’d just said. He sucked in his breath and then kicked the wall. Which was a dumb thing to do when wearing open-toe sandals. He swore and hopped around for a minute before settling into a fidget.
“You all gotta promise to keep my family safe,” Sealy begged. “It’s how he keeps us quiet. Somebody talks, they the last to die. Everyone they love goes first, and he forces them to watch it over and over.” He shuddered. “I seen it, man. The last dude? He had to watch the video of what they did to his sis. All day, he had to watch.”
“Give us your family
members’ names.” I nodded to Holm. “We’ll get your folks out tonight.”
“I ain’t kidding about Chicago,” Sealy kept going. “He gots people who go wherever he say. How you gonna protect my sibs and nephews and nieces? There’s lots of ’em.”
“Give my partner their info,” I told him. “We’ll do what we can. The best we can do is end this little enterprise fast. Help us, and we’ll get it done.” I crossed my arms and drilled him with a look. “Or you can go down for those murders.”
“Fine,” he breathed. “What d’you want?”
“Who runs the show, Sealy?” Holm asked. “Start there.”
12
“They call him ‘the Trader,’” I told everyone on our team. It was the next morning, and we were in the conference room. “His people go to countries in crisis, like Venezuela, and scam girls and young women by promising jobs in America. In reality, they’re taken to a location in Barbados where they’re ‘seasoned’ for their new lives as sex slaves and prostitutes. When they’re ready, they’re branded with the Trader’s tattoo and sold to screened buyers.”
I clicked for the next panel in my ad hoc presentation. It was the photo Holm took of Luciana Ramírez the night she was rescued from the shipping container. The tattoo was heavy, menacing, not the lightly crafted art we saw on the perps the other night.
“On our victims, they used that tattoo as a warning to anyone who might cross them. Sealy said Luciana Ramírez, Sofia Renteria, and Maria Ramos were punished for disobedience. They resisted the seasoning process and tried to get other captives to rebel with them. These three had no chance. The Trader’s people branded these women in front of everyone else, assaulted them, and then dragged them away. All three were still alive when Sealy last saw them.”
“How do these sales work?” Muñoz asked with a frown.
She and Birn had to deal with bad weather conditions most of the flight back, so we waited until this briefing to fill them in as well.
“They scout for buyers,” I answered. “Most are brought in through word of mouth. On the ground, Sealy and a few other scouts keep their ears out for potential clients. Rich foreigners who have a taste for the finer things. They make contact, and if the men are interested, they wait for a day or two to get screened to see if they have the funds or are law enforcement. Robbie?”
“Once they pass the screening, they go to the buy.” Holm took my place at the laptop projector. He brought up a bulleted timeline. “They’re texted a place to meet the intermediary. Sometimes, that’s Sealy. He blindfolds them, a vehicle picks them up, and they’re driven to the warehouse location. Sealy has only been to the location four or five times, and he was blindfolded. He estimates there are fewer than ten people who know where the building is, security is that tight.”
“Loose lips,” Birn said.
Holm nodded. “Right. When the victims are brought in, they’re moved to box trucks that are driven by one or two of those men.” He clicked again, and this time, a photo of Danny DeVito appeared. Someone laughed. “Sealy swears the salesman looks like DeVito. Buyers only meet with this character, and everyone calls him ‘the Proxy.’ Nobody meets with the Trader except the Proxy.”
“So no one knows the Trader’s real name or what he looks like,” Diane observed. “To get to him, we go through the proxy.”
“Partly.” I turned the projector off, and someone brought up the lights. “The Trader attends every sale. He stays behind a one-way mirror while the buyers look at the so-called ‘merchandise.’” The word tasted like slime in my mouth. “He speaks to the Proxy through an earpiece and uses that to direct the sales or to point out certain attributes he thinks will appeal to certain buyers. Sealy wasn’t clear on how victims are delivered to their buyers.”
“You’re thinking of getting to the Trader through the Proxy.” Ramsey made it a statement rather than a question. She knew us well. “And you’ll do that as buyers, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Holm confirmed before turning toward the rest of the team, Muñoz, Birn, and Bonnie and Clyde. He added, “We’ll need rock-solid undercover identities.” He paused and then pointed at Bonnie. “Have you heard anything back about the person who hacked Rucker’s phone?”
“The person who cracked Rucker’s phone was good, but there are some breadcrumbs,” she reported. “I have a nasty little crawler code looking for them, and Cybercrimes is still working on it, but nothing yet.”
I dropped into one of the wheeled conference chairs and rocked back. The mystery hacker, or cracker, whatever, was a loose end I didn’t like. Sealy didn’t seem capable, and there was no indication he’d left Barbados in months.
“If this person does the buyer vetting, it could be a problem,” I said. “Last thing we need is to get our covers blown in the middle of the op because of some code jockey.”
“When did I say they were better than our people?” Bonnie asked. She appealed to Clyde. “Did you hear me say that? I didn’t hear me say that.”
“Don’t get me involved,” he said as he spun in his chair. “I’m just here for the coffee.”
“The coffee sucks,” Holm told him with a half-grin. “Did you have anything new for us?”
Clyde stopped his spin. “That supposedly extinct plant, metastelma barbadense? The twigs were clean. Like, no sand, no dirt. Just a little soil on the bigger ones. My guess is they were raised in a greenhouse.”
“A greenhouse in Barbados?” Holm furrowed his brow. “The island is a gardener’s dream. Why have a greenhouse?”
“Lots of reasons,” Clyde answered. “Wind, bugs, too much rain, not enough rain, temperature. A controlled climate gets better results. Greenhouses and vertical farms are the future.”
I rolled my chair up to the table and leaned my elbows on the edge.
“The Trader probably lives on the island,” I mused. “We don’t know anything about him other than he’s clever and rich. We’re looking for at least two locations. The first and most obvious is the warehouse where the business is run. We get in there as buyers and take him down. If for some reason that doesn’t happen, we look for the second location. My guess is an estate on the beach. It won’t be too far from the port, because the Somewhat There got that unmarked cargo from somewhere.”
“The Somewhat There had one crane,” Muñoz said. “It wasn’t a large hauler. All they had to do was get the container close enough for the crew to reach it without running aground.”
“It wasn’t that heavy,” Holm added. “Only a twenty-footer and basically empty. Yeah, I can see it being taken off a private property. Use a forklift to get it onto a commercial-sized skiff and then run it out to the ship.”
“Garnish with a side of native flora,” Clyde said.
“But why?” I looked around at the gathered faces. “Why fabricate a scene and send it to Miami? These traffickers are working out of Barbados, nowhere near us. They cater to high-end clients and stables and aren’t packing containers with dozens of victims to our ports. So why not shoot these three troublemakers and vanish the bodies?”
“We keep saying they’re sending a message.” Holm paced an oval at the front of the conference room as he spoke, “but we haven’t asked who the message is targeted to. I assumed it was to other people in the operation. It’s clear that they have people Stateside.” He rubbed the shoulder where he’d landed when I’d pushed him off the stool in the bar.
“The distribution network,” Muñoz said. “Sealy didn’t say how the ‘purchases’ are delivered. Maybe the handlers fly the victims in to hand them over to the buyers in person. The message from the docks is for handlers and the vics to stay in line or see what can happen to them.”
“Flying requires papers.” I looked at Bonnie. “The person who sets up the fake identities so they can fly has to be the one who vets the buyers. I bet that’s Rucker’s hacker.”
“Cracker,” she muttered with a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, there’s a good chance of it. I’ll go check on my crawler and
have a chat with Cybercrimes.” She stood. “You two ‘buyers’ will vet out fine. Our people are the best.”
Bonnie left with Clyde close behind. Holm gave me a long look.
“Well,” he said, “we better hope our guys are better than that hacker.”
I grinned at him and said one word: “Cracker.”
13
Emily Meyer was sick of her dad trying to play matchmaker. She got it, she really did. He and her Jamaican mom had an amazing marriage despite, or maybe because of, their completely different backgrounds.
Emily knew her dad only wanted the best for his daughter. What he didn’t understand was that she wasn’t ready, and his picks were never her type. She was in no rush to get married and have babies. Nowadays, women waited until as late as their forties, and she was barely past thirty.
She texted that Marston guy to let him know she’d arrived at the cafe early. Even though she wasn’t keen on meeting another of her dad’s clients, she was interested in the story behind the coins he’d found.
Her phone dinged back.
Just arrived. Silver Dodge Charger. -Marston
Emily got out of her car and glanced around the parking lot. Sure enough, someone was getting out of a silver-grey car a row over. She shut her door and took a step in that direction but stopped. The man who strode from that car to the cafe entrance was nothing like her dad’s usual pairings. This Ethan Marston was on the tall side of average with either dark blond or light brown hair. In the South Florida sun’s harsh glare, it was hard to tell. What wasn’t difficult to see was his finely sculpted face and fit build.
Wow.
She trailed him indoors and watched him interact with the people in line and at the counter. Polite. Thoughtful. And yet he gave off the sense of a man comfortable in his own trousers. Shoes! That was the word she wanted. Shoes.
“How can I help you?”
Emily blinked. She was at the counter and had barely noticed.
“Turkey club on tomato-basil bread, please,” she answered. To her left, Marston waited down the way for his order.