Inhuman Trafficking

by Mike Papantonio

  Gina said, “I was talking about the pushback we can expect from Bines when we personalize the narrative of our Jane Does. By putting them on the stand early, we can humanize them and show the jury that they’re victims and flawed humans, not the dregs of society they might imagine. I said the only problem with that is it will allow Bines to tangle us up in the weeds by hammering them on their own complicity and participation in the sex trade.”

  Deke chewed on his lip. “That’s it, but it’s not it. One moment I feel like I’m close to the answer, and the next it’s gone.”

  “We could do word association and play a game of hot and cold.”

  “I don’t want to waste our time. It will come to me. Or it won’t. Let’s get back to the story.”

  Gina said, “I think we need to introduce Jake’s undercover videos early in our presentation. That will demonstrate the complicity of Welcome Mat’s truck stop management working in tandem with human traffickers.”

  “And we should follow that up with the testimonies of our hospitality witnesses, the truck stop attendants and motel desk clerks.”

  “We know Bines will try to counter that testimony by citing chapter and verse of Welcome Mat’s official anti-trafficking corporate policies,” Gina said. “The onus will be on us to show that’s merely lip service, and that their self-policing has not only been woefully inadequate, but demonstrably disingenuous.”

  Deke didn’t respond. Once more, Gina’s bringing up Bines had waylaid his thoughts into trying to identify what was bothering him.

  “Warm?” Gina asked.

  “I guess my subconscious is insisting upon that game of hot and cold. Keep talking.”

  “After we finish with the former Welcome Mat employees, that would be a good time to put our expert witness on the stand and let him talk about how he’s successfully trained employees on how to observe signs of human trafficking. Of course, that’s when Bines will jump on his soapbox and start talking about governmental intrusion, and how businesses shouldn’t be required to be their brother’s keeper, and that in a free society the onus shouldn’t be on the business to interrogate its clients. That’s when we redirect his red flags by pointing out that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to identify human trafficking, nor do you need to ask twenty questions of your clientele.”

  Deke held up his index finger, as if touching something. “Warmer,” he said.

  The thought was almost there.

  Gina tried some word association. “Bines. Soapbox. Free society. Defender of businesses. Guardian of individual freedoms. Creator of smoke screens.”

  Deke’s finger jabbed out. “Hot.”

  “You got it?”

  “We need to turn the heat up on Bines,” Deke said. “We need to come at him and make it look as if we’re not only gunning for him personally, but for those hiding in the shadows.”

  “Bines will know it’s a fishing expedition. There’s no way he’ll rise to the bait.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you,” Deke said. “But in this instance, I believe no one will be happier with our pursuing a new and aggressive agenda than would Nathan Bines.”

  “What leads you to believe that?”

  “An anonymous source,” Deke said.

  He was about to explain further, but was stopped by Carol’s appearance at the doorway. “One of your billboards in Jacksonville struck pay dirt! Guess who’s on his way to the detention facility at the Leon County Jail in Tallahassee?”

  Deke was already on his feet. “What’s his ETA?”

  “No later than two o’clock.”

  It was a three-hour drive to Tallahassee, but that would allow enough time for Deke to be there to greet Rodríguez, as well as make arrangements with his welcome committee.

  “Sorry,” he said to Gina. “Got to run.”

  And he did just that, racing from the office.

  Under her breath, Gina muttered, “Cold. Really cold.”

  L

  Deke paced back and forth at the entrance to the Leon County Jail detention center. Having Rodríguez land here wasn’t just happen-stance. After Lily’s disappearance, Tallahassee State Attorney Bill Fuller had issued a warrant for Rodríguez’s arrest. Because of that warrant, and at the behest of Fuller, Tío Leo was now in Tallahassee.

  A door opened, and State Prosecutor Gabriella Fuentes interrupted Deke’s pacing: “I think you’re wearing out the pavement, Mr. Deketomis.”

  “Deke,” he said.

  “We’re ready for you,” she said.

  “I appreciate your arranging all this.”

  “It was my pleasure. The state attorney said that any efforts on my part would be a small price for the admission of seeing you in action.”

  “I’d like to believe you, but Bill Fuller warned me I shouldn’t be taken in by your many charms. I believe his exact quote was, ‘State Prosecutor Fuentes can cut off your head, and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.’”

  The prosecutor smiled, her white teeth aglow. “This way.”

  * * *

  Deke entered the interview room, where he was introduced to the sheriff’s deputy who had transported Rodríguez, and to Duane Griffin, the court-appointed attorney. No introduction with Tío Leo was necessary. Deke took a seat and was flanked by Fuentes.

  Griffin was that rarity of rarities in Florida. Not only didn’t he have a tan, but he had somehow also managed to retain his pasty-white complexion. Griffin immediately began voicing his objections. “May I say that all of this is highly unusual? My client hasn’t even been arraigned.”

  Deke leveled a look at the young attorney that gained him the silence he wanted. “The best thing you can do for your client, Mr. Griffin, is to hear me out.”

  Then he turned his attention to Rodríguez. “I would advise you to inform your mouthpiece that you’re interested in what I have to say, and that he should hold off any interruptions until I’m done.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Griffin said. “That’s a violation of my client’s rights!”

  “Your choice,” Deke said to Rodríguez. “Just know that I’m not in the mood for games. You can hear me out, or I can walk.”

  Griffin said, “We don’t have to submit to blackmail. All of this is a clear violation of your rights. That’s . . .”

  “Shut up,” Rodríguez said. Even though he was chained, that didn’t stop him from leaning back a little. He offered a mocking smile to Deke and said, “Your show, Joe.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Deke said. “The last time we talked you were holding a gun on me, Mr. Rodríguez. When I informed you that I was an attorney, that seemed to greatly amuse you. If you’ll recall, you said to me, ‘What are you going to do? Sue me?’ I don’t think I ever got a chance to adequately answer your question, but will do so now. I don’t see the need to sue you, because unless you comply with what we want, you’ll be long dead before I even get a chance to file the paperwork.”

  “That’s it!” Griffin said. “We’re done here.”

  Deke ignored the lawyer. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a picture that he had been holding at the ready for months, and tossed it on the table. The photo showed three men arm in arm. One of the men in the picture was a much younger Nick Deketomis.

  “They called us the ‘three amigos’ back in the good old days. I’m the guy on the right. On the left is State Attorney Bill Fuller. As for the man in the middle, that was the chief investigator in the office where Bill and I worked. He is dead now, God rest his soul, but he’s not forgotten. Bill was the best man at his wedding, and I was given the honor of being godfather to his only child.”

  Deke reached out his index finger and slammed it in the center of the picture. “Does this man look familiar, Mr. Rodríguez? Please take a close look. Do you see a resemblance?”

  “I never seen that dude.”

  “I didn’t ask whether you’d ever seen him. I asked if you knew anyone who bore a resemblance to him.”

  Tío Leo
looked at the picture and then turned away from it. That was his tell. He’d made the connection.

  Deke said, “Art Reyes is the man in that picture. Maybe you should have asked Lily Reyes, the fifteen-year-old girl you sexually trafficked for the better part of a year, about her father.”

  Rodríguez attempted a look of befuddlement. “Lily who?”

  “That’s a nonstarter. You ran pictures of Lily on the dark web, saying she was available for good times. We can link you to those. And we have statements from three other underage girls whom you also sexually trafficked that will corroborate what I just said. You’re not going to be able to walk away from what you did.”

  Rodríguez shrugged. “Then why we talking?”

  Deke laughed. “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “You seem to think that you’re the one holding the cards. If there’s any begging that’s going to happen here, you’ll be the one doing it.”

  “You’re loco, pendejo.”

  “You want to live? That’s the question you have to ask yourself right now. This isn’t about our last go-around. Both of us know that should you live long enough to see a trial, you’ll be convicted of aggravated battery and attempted murder. That’s a given. And in combination with your criminal record, that would result in you getting put away for a long, long time. But I’m not going to go there. You can get a pass on what you did to me. My interest is Lily.”

  Deke slid his finger over to the picture, settling under the man on the left. “That’s the state attorney’s interest as well.”

  Tío Leo looked from the man in the photo back to Deke.

  “Sylvia Reyes retained the services of my firm. That means I’ll need to periodically ask questions of you in regards to what transpired with her daughter, Lily. State Attorney Fuller tells me his office will need to be asking their own questions of you as well. Because of that, he’ll want you somewhere not far away. Since Raiford Prison is in nearby Bradford County, that seems like the ideal venue to serve both our purposes.”

  Rodríguez slammed his hands on the table. “That’s bullshit!”

  “Bullshit? I don’t understand.” Deke’s tone made it clear he did understand.

  “I go to Raiford, I’m dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what went down with Cortez, pendejo cabron.”

  Deke pretended to search his memory. “Cortez?”

  “MS-13 thinks I had something to do with his death.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Rodríguez, but it’s been a long time since I was a prosecutor, and I’m afraid I don’t know jack about this gang or that gang.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Florida’s prisons were arguably the worst in the country. The gang violence was so bad, prison authorities tried to keep feuding gangs from being placed in the same penitentiaries. Rodríguez was a Latin King. Since MS-13 dominated the cells of Raiford, it would not be a good place for a Latin King to go. Especially a Latin King who was believed to have participated in the death of Pablo Cortez, formerly of MS-13.

  Griffin said, “This is a blatant abuse of my client’s rights!”

  Deke said nothing, just let his finger travel once more to the picture of State Attorney Fuller. Rodríguez and Deke locked eyeballs. The stare-down lasted maybe ten seconds, long enough for Tío Leo to get a take on who he was dealing with. Deke welcomed his scrutiny. Rodríguez had survived on the streets by being able to read people. Deke wanted him to see he wasn’t bluffing. Either Rodríguez complied, or he’d be dead in a matter of days. And Deke wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over the other man’s death.

  Finally, Rodríguez said, “You want what I got to say, then I serve time where I choose.”

  Deke exchanged glances with the prosecutor seated next to him. When she nodded, Deke said, “The state prosecutor believes that can be arranged, provided you give me what I need.”

  “Pinche madre.” Rodríguez said, but his curse sounded more tired than anything else. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where’s Lily?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. You’ll have to ask that Russian bitch.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “She got in touch with me through a members-only message board on the dark web, responding to one of my advertisements. Her interest was in Lily, or at least a part of her. Some clients got specific tastes. Usually they want to see shots of tits, ass, or snatch. But this lady had a different fetish. She wanted close-ups of Lily’s eyes. Lady had a thing for green. So do I, but a different kind of green.”

  “All your communication was through a message board?”

  “Not all. She called me on a burner phone. That’s when I learned she was female, and when I heard her accent. I figured she might be Russian mob.”

  “Did you meet her in person?”

  Rodríguez shook his head. “She sent the money along with her muscle. The help that took Lily away also sounded Russian.”

  “You ever learn the woman’s name?”

  “Her hired help called her Vicky.”

  LI

  Jake entered Michael’s hotel room carrying a bag and two large cups of coffee. In the almost three days they’d been in Las Vegas, coffee had been a constant companion of theirs. Michael cleared a space at the table, and Jake set the food down.

  “Feels like déjà vu,” Michael said, reaching for the coffee.

  It was late afternoon, but the two men had stopped being mindful of the time. The hours seemed to blend together, with little difference between night and day. There were no clocks in Las Vegas casinos; management didn’t want gamblers to be aware of the passage of time. Michael and Jake had mostly ignored their own sleep needs, but it was possible they were playing for more than high stakes. Lives could be on the line.

  “You need to see this,” Michael said.

  He turned his cell phone in Jake’s direction and played a short video. The footage was shaky, with jerky camera angles. There was also the screaming. A young woman was being held by her ankles while being dangled over the side of a building.

  “My god,” Jake said.

  “The woman you hear screaming is Suzanne Cleary. At the time this video was shot, she was an aspiring actress. The man holding her is a young Max Miller. The footage was taken more than a dozen years ago at one of his notorious full moon parties. At the time, Max was a Hollywood producer. That’s how Ms. Cleary entered his orbit.”

  “How high up are they?”

  “Seven stories.”

  The footage neared its end when others came to Cleary’s rescue and pulled her up to safety. In the background, party noise could be heard. The camera zoomed into a close-up on a sobbing Suzanne Cleary. Michael hit the pause button, so that he could better see the woman’s face.

  “Notice her eyes?” he asked.

  Jake leaned closer to get a good look. “Green.”

  “I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Fewer than two percent of the population has green eyes, so why do women with green eyes keep turning up around Miller? After what he did to her, Cleary sued him. Miller’s defense claimed that they were both drunk, and that what they did was consensual.”

  “Her screams kind of make me doubt that.”

  “So does her story. Cleary said Miller had a thing for her eyes. It wasn’t sexual, she said, but it was bent. Miller told her that the goddess Circe and all great enchantresses had green eyes, but he had the power to resist such spells. She was convinced Miller would have dropped her if the others hadn’t been there. He was babbling to her about being a sacrifice to the full moon. She stopped singing, though, when Miller bought her silence and got her to sign an NDA.”

  “How much was the payoff?”

  “Unofficially, five million dollars.”

  “By the sounds of her screams, she settled cheap.”

  “I’m sure she wanted to put the whole incident behind her. The problem with that was it allow
ed Miller to walk. People like him don’t change. There’s a whole neuroscience around uncontrollable urges.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” Jake said. “I got to know opioid addiction firsthand, and the urges that came with it, when I became an unwitting junkie.”

  “So, here’s Miller with these overpowering urges. How does he go about satisfying them? No matter how much therapy gets thrown at them, pedophiles can never be trusted around kids. I’m betting Miller’s sickness runs just as deep.”

  “Where’s all this taking us that we haven’t already been?” Jake asked.

  The men had spent their time in Las Vegas learning everything they could about Max Miller and the Yin-Yang Casino and Convention Center. Michael and Jake’s initial hope was that they could somehow penetrate or compromise Miller’s security team, but they’d made no headway on that front. Miller’s inner circle lived on the penultimate floor of the hotel and took their meals there.

  “We free our princess from her high tower.”

  “How?”

  The top two floors at the Yin-Yang were surveilled about as well as a maximum security prison. Like all casinos, throughout the property there were eyes in the skies.

  “While you were getting our food, I did some printouts.”

  Michael passed Jake photographic images of the Yin-Yang shot from above. Jake said, “It looks like quite the foreboding castle.”

  “That’s pretty much what it is. And let’s not forget there are trolls at every drawbridge we need to cross.”

  “What’s your interest in all this eye in the sky stuff?” Jake asked.

  “We’ve been spending most of our time scoping out the inside of the casino. I wanted a bird’s-eye view of the building, especially the penthouse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the best way to meet my client.”

  “You’re not telling me much,” Jake said.