I replied, “I’ll be the judge of what’s beautiful and what isn’t. If you don’t mind.”
The woman hesitated, wondering if I was going to kiss her. She gave it a moment, looking into my face, then she took my hand and tugged. Suddenly we were returning to my stilt house, walking faster than before.
After a minute or so, she was talking again, back on a safe subject. “Trafficking is big business,” she began. “A lot bigger than the average citizen realizes.” Because I was momentarily confused, she explained, “You asked, so I’m telling you what I know. More than a thousand undocumented workers, men, women and children, arrive in Florida daily. They’re smuggled in by Mexicans, mostly. And a lot of the smugglers are Latino gang members. Coyotes—that’s what they’re called in the trade. But you know about all this. Of course you do.”
I was thinking about recent headlines that detailed the gang wars now going on in Mexico and California. Mass murders, men, women, and children pulled from their beds and shot in the back of the head execution style. Eighteen near Ensenada. A dozen gangbangers killed the same way in Chiapas. “Ceremonial-style murders,” as one survivor had described it.
I replied, “I’ve never learned anything in my life while my mouth was open. Keep going. You just filled in a couple of blanks.”
“Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want. Coyotes are usually in the drug business, too. It’s a natural. Prostitution and pornography, those are the other primary sidelines. The people they screw over ... it makes me furious to even talk about it because the people they use have nowhere to turn for help. They’re slaves by every definition of the word. The way coyotes and their gangs abuse women and children is beyond despicable.”
Emily started to continue but then hesitated. “I’d rather not go into some of awful things they do. It’s really upsetting to me. Not if you already know.”
Along with the news stories, I had also read Florida Law Enforcement reports that detailed how traffickers recruited sex slaves and controlled them. Fear was the common weapon. One gang, the Latin Kings, had videoed a live vaginal mutilation. They showed it to new recruits to keep them in line. There had been at least one ceremonial beheading, the perpetrators all wearing bandannas to cover their faces, their tattoos hidden by long-sleeved raincoats.
Cell-phone video cameras. It was what they used.
“No need for details,” I told Emily. “Keep it general.”
The woman let her breath out, relieved. “I’m not going to tell you why I appreciate that, but I do. Okay ... so come up with the very worst punishments you can imagine and that’s the daily reality for a lot of small brown women and boys. These are people we see every day working in the fields, riding their bicycles, hanging out at the supermarket and cashing their checks to send money home.”
I said, “That’s why Tomlinson’s so worried about the girl. Me, too.”
“Tula Choimha,” Emily said. “Is that how you pronounce it?”
I said, “The girl . . . she’s a very different sort of thirteen-year-old. Religious, but religious to a degree that borders on hysteria. You know what I mean? For the wrong sort of egotistical asshole, she’d be an inviting target. Humiliate the saintly little Guatemalan girl. There’s a certain breed of guy who’d stand in line to do that.”
“That’s a volatile age. For girls especially it can be a nightmare,” Emily said, sounding like she had lived it. “Fantasies range from sainthood to whoring. A scientist from Italy published a paper that gives some credence to what’s called poltergeist activity. You know, crashing vases, paintings falling from the walls—all caused by the turbulent brain waves of adolescent girls. Which all sounds like pseudoscience to me, but who knows? Maybe there’s a grain of truth.”
I had stopped tracking the conversation when Emily mentioned poltergeists. I was reviewing what Tomlinson had told me earlier on the phone. He had returned to Red Citrus, but Tula was nowhere to be found. Her few personal possessions were still in the trailer, untouched since the night before. But it looked as if her cot had been slept in.
Tomlinson had called and asked me to join in the search. But, at the time, Emily and I were stuck at the necropsy site, waiting for the medical examiner’s investigator. So he had driven his beat-up Volkswagen, hopscotching from one immigrant haven to another searching for Tula, but no luck.
“Did he stop at churches?” Emily asked me now, regaining my attention.
“Tomlinson didn’t mention it. You’re right, that would’ve been smart. Maybe the girl was afraid of something. Or someone. And ran to the nearest Catholic church for protection. She couldn’t risk turning to the authorities.”
The woman said, “Please tell me your friend contacted the police, right? Her safety’s more important than her damn legal status.”
“Of course,” I said. “I called, too. Tomlinson insisted.”
“Because he was afraid the police wouldn’t take him seriously?”
I said, “It wouldn’t make any difference. The state has a whole series of protocols that go into effect when a child is reported missing. Illegal immigrant children included. There’s a long list of agencies, from cops to the Immigrant Advocacy Center, that get involved. Tomlinson thinks they’re going to issue an AMBER Alert tonight, if they haven’t done it already. It’s the best system in the world for protecting kids. But it’s still an imperfect system.”
I continued, “The problem is that people at her trailer park—the family Tula lives with?—they don’t believe the girl’s missing. At least, that’s what they told the cops as recently as this afternoon. They say she goes off by herself for hours at a time. Police will do more interviews tomorrow. We may not like it, but that’s the way it is for now. An AMBER Alert, of course, if it happens, will change everything.”
Emily asked, “Do you think she was kidnapped? It’s a possibility, I hate to say it. The coyotes, the things men like that do to young girls and boys . . . I don’t even want to think about.”
I said, “She left behind a family photo that she’d carried for three thousand miles. That bothers me. There was a book we found, too. And some clothing. So, yeah, I think something happened.”
“A book?” Emily asked.
“Not a Bible,” I said. “It’s a book of quotes from Joan of Arc. I took a close look. A lot of dog-eared pages and fingerprints. Some underlined passages. She kept it with her for a reason.”
“Joan of Arc,” the woman nodded as if that somehow made sense to her.
I gave it some more thought. “A church could be the answer,” I said. “It’s plausible. She got scared and ran. There were cops all over the place, so she probably scooted off to the nearest church so she wouldn’t be questioned.”
I wasn’t convinced, though, and neither was Emily. Why hadn’t church authorities contacted state authorities if they had a runaway girl on their hands?
“Doc?” Emily said. “If you’re going back there tomorrow to check the churches—let me come with you. My Spanish is pretty good. Your friend was right. I think I can help.”
I found it interesting that she seemed to intentionally avoid using Tomlinson’s name. Was it to reassure me that she had no interest? Whatever the reason, I found it endearing.
From my pocket, I took a little LED flashlight. I clicked it on, took Emily’s hand and led the lady down the mangrove path to the boardwalk that crosses the water to my house. When we got to the shark pen, I switched off the underwater lights and pocketed the flashlight.
We stood for a moment in the fresh darkness, listening to a waterfall of mullet in the distance, seeing vague green laser streaks of luminescence thatch the water.
“Enough talk about coyotes and kidnappings, and every other dark subject,” I said, putting my hands on the woman’s shoulders.
I felt Emily’s body move closer, her face tilted toward mine. She was ready and smiling. “Is that why you turned off the lights? To brighten the mood?”
“No,” I said as I slid my han
ds down to her ribs. I took my time, stopping just beneath her breasts, my index fingers experimenting with a warm and weighted softness.
“I was starting to wonder if I’d have to make the first move,” Emily Marston said—said it just before I kissed her.
TEN
LATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, LAZIRO VICTORINO WAS SITTING at Hooters in Cape Coral with a tableful of wings and low-level Latin King brothers when the news lady came on the television, reporting from a swamp near Fort Myers Beach, about a dead alligator that had a human hand in its belly.
Probably a woman’s hand because they had also found a wedding ring.
Victorino recognized the place immediately. It was Red Citrus trailer park. Hell, most of the Indígena who lived there, he’d personally arranged for their transportation to Florida and jobs, which meant that he owned those people.
He’d probably also owned the woman the hand had belonged to.
Victorino wasn’t the only one paying attention to the news lady. One by one, his Latin King pandilleros turned to look at him, not staring but letting him know they weren’t stupid.
In the last few months, Victorino—the V-man—had mysteriously lost three, maybe four, chulas, and, goddamn it, it had to stop. Next, his homeys, his pandilleros hermanos, would do more than just stare at him. They would be laughing behind his back, making jokes that the jefe had lost his balls.
Victorino had suspected for months who was stealing his girls. Maybe selling them, maybe starting a prostitution business, maybe killing them, too—not that he cared, not really. There were always plenty of immigrant girls to choose from. But he couldn’t tolerate a public display of disrespect, and the bony hand of one of his dead chulas on the six o’clock news was as public as it could get.
This bullshit had to stop. Laziro had worked too hard building an organization, recruiting soldiers, disciplining his Indígena girls, sometimes even his pandilleros when a soldier got out of line.
Yes, it had to stop. And Victorino knew exactly who to see to make that happen.
He stood, dropped a fifty on the table from a turquoise money clip, then threw his homeys a hand sign before pushing his way to the door—two fingers creating devil horns. He paused for a moment to confirm the nods of deference he deserved. Then he drove his truck to Red Citrus trailer park, where he expected to find Harris Squires. The gringo giant was all muscle but no backbone. V-man had bullied the shit out of the dude more than once, so no problem. He was looking forward to cutting this white boy down to size.
Instead, he found the dude’s hard-assed lady. Victorino had done business with her, but he had never tried to push her around because the puta was pretty scary herself.
The woman’s name was Francis-something, but everyone called her Frankie. The woman was old, which was intimidating to begin with. Probably early forties, and she had muscles like a man from shooting up all that gear shit the couple made to sell. She had a hoarse steroid voice like a man’s, too, but everything else was all woman, particularly her store-bought double-D chichis, which she showed off braless, wearing muscle T-shirts and tube tops, probably trying to look like the muscle-magazine covers she’d posed for ten or fifteen years ago.
Mix the lady’s chichis with a body covered with tats, dyed scarlet hair, pierced tongue and her nasty attitude, it was no wonder that even Latin King soldiers watched their behavior, and their asses, around Frankie. Harris Squires probably believed they showed the lady respect because of him and his muscles. But the dude was wrong.
Frankie was the scary one, which is why even the V-man had never crossed her. How you gonna win, crossing a gringa ballbuster who was six feet tall with biceps the size of his own calves?
That was about to change.
Standing outside a new double-wide, Victorino got up on his toes, looking through a bedroom window into Squires’s private trailer. The place was a mess. Closet and drawers ransacked, clothes on the floor, a suitcase lying open on a bed that hadn’t been made, so at first the V-man thought, Shit! They’re already gone.
It made sense they’d run off, and not just because of the six o’clock news. There were cops all over the place, which is why Victorino hadn’t turned into Red Citrus. Instead, he had parked his truck at the shrimp docks down the road near a rum bar. Then he had walked through what reminded him of a boat graveyard and jumped the fence, saw a squad car and two unmarked SUVs waiting by the garbage dumpsters, where, he guessed, they would soon be dragging the lake, looking for more pieces of the dead girl. Or maybe dead girls.
Three of Victorino’s ladies had gone missing, so the timing was about right. It was a year ago that Squires and Frankie had started shooting porn up there at their fancy hunting camp, small-time at first, but then with a special video room with lights, a water bed and all kinds of weird black leather contraptions hanging from the ceiling.
Neither Squires nor the redhead had appeared in any videos that Victorino had seen. But he’d heard they both got off behind the scenes, enjoying all kinds of kinky shit. The couple had taken a special interest in the V-man’s girls once they got seriously into the business. They’d hired more than a few Indígena as talent, and several Mexican cuties, too.
About ten months ago, Victorino’s first chula had disappeared. After that, about every three months, he’d lose another one. The V-man had suspected them for a while, but bones inside the belly of that redneck asshole’s pet alligator was the final proof he needed. His pandilleros realized it, which is why they’d given him those looks at Hooters.
Maybe the cops suspected, too. No wonder the pair had split before police started asking questions, so the V-man figured he’d missed them. But then he saw Frankie walk into the room, carrying an armful of folded clothes, a joint between her lips, curling smoke, and he felt better about the situation. The woman hadn’t finished packing, so maybe Harris was still here, too.
No ... the white giant was gone. Victorino confirmed it when he circled the trailer and saw that the dude’s big V-8 Roush Ford monster truck was gone. Squires wasn’t smart, but he wouldn’t have loaned that sweet ride to nobody.
Victorino checked a couple more windows, then went to the door where a sign read NO ENTRY! in Spanish and English. He tested the knob and was surprised to find the door unlocked.
A moment later, he was standing inside, seeing a big-screen TV and stereo equipment, then a kitchen that didn’t look like most kitchens, but that was no surprise to the V-man. On the counters were four big gas-burner plates, each with its own canister of propane. The shelves were lined with a mess of medical-looking shit, bottles of oil and chemicals, and measuring beakers that looked like they belonged in a lab. Which was exactly what this place was—a lab for cooking steroids.
Jesus, just a spark, the whole place would explode like a bomb—maybe not a bad way to handle the situation, Victorino decided, if he could get Frankie and her muscle boy into the trailer at the same time.
Victorino had seen a kitchen like this before, only a lot bigger. It was at Squires’s hunting camp, where Victorino and his pandilleros had partied themselves on a couple of occasions. They weren’t invited often, but, when they got the call, the V-man and a few of his boys made an appearance because it was a mutually beneficial business association.
Squires and Frankie ran three trailer parks, which provided handy instant housing for newly arrived illegals. On the side, they shot porn, which the Latin Kings also made and marketed as a sideline, and that put money into everyone’s pocket.
Victorino’s soldiers pedaled the videos to dumb little Indígena dudes, who’d probably never seen a naked woman in their pathetic little lives. The gringo couple needed girls for their movies, of course, which meant they also needed weed and blow, which put cash right back into the V-man’s pocket.
Not that Victorino trusted the gringos. No way. It was business, nothing more. The couple treated him like just another wetback. To them, there was no difference between him, a Mexican stud and some scrawny little Indio from
Guatemala or El Salvador or some Nicaraguan pendejo.
A wetback was a wetback, to most Americanos. That’s how clueless they were. But the V-man never let it show that it bothered him. When he looked into a gringo’s eyes and saw the contempt or indifference, all he did was smile his great big gold-toothed smile, pretending to be their Mexican amigo. But he was really thinking how goddamn stupid they were.
These two especially, an old woman with wrinkles on her muscles and her redneck boyfriend, the two of them acting like bigmoney hotshots until the cops finally took them down.
Which would happen. If the V-man didn’t get busy and take them both out first.
The V-man wasn’t smiling now as Frankie came into the room, stumbling because he surprised her, then yelling at him in her deep voice, “What the hell are you doing in my home?”
Then she caught herself because she recognized Victorino as the V-man yet didn’t sound any friendlier when she added, “Oh. It’s you. What the hell are you doing in here without knocking? I’m in a hurry. We don’t need any more grass or shit today. Get out. Get out of here right now.”
Victorino let the woman watch him react slowly, making her wait as he turned his back to her. He made sure the door was closed but unlocked in case he wanted to get out fast. He pivoted to face her, then snapped on the surgical gloves he had brought along for effect.
First the left glove. Then the right.
Then he surprised the woman again by flashing the box cutter he was palming and asked, “You don’t want any smoke or blow—but what about girls? You don’t need any more of my pretty little chulas? The way you been killing my girls off, I thought you’d be in the market by now.”
The V-man expected the woman to squat right there and piss her panties, she should have been so scared, seeing the rubber gloves and the razor. Instead, it was the woman’s turn to surprise him.
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