by G. M. Ford
“Seems like either they outsmarted us and got outta Dodge in the nick of time, or they’ve still got the final act to play out,” Gabe said.
“It’s not much,” Carolyn said. “Nothing we can take to the authorities.”
“Let’s take a ride instead,” I suggested.
“Where?” Carolyn looked grim.
“Lemon Grove,” Gabe and I said in unison.
The porch light snapped on. I watched as the knob turned, and then the door cracked open as far as the brass chain would allow. Her eyes were nearly black. At least the one I could see through the narrow opening. I was about to ask if she remembered us, but she beat me to the punch.
“You two sure been workin’ on your tans,” she said.
“After a fashion,” Gabe muttered.
The door closed. I heard the chain rattle and then watched as the door swung open. She gave Carolyn a curt nod and then turned her attention back to Gabe and me.
“What brings you back to these parts?”
“We’ve got a serious bone to pick with Mr. Reeves,” I said.
“You do look a bit overcooked,” she said, stifling a smile.
“That’s what the bone’s about,” I told her.
“Reeves and his friends left us out in the desert to die,” Gabe said.
She thought it over. “You two seem to have a nose for trouble,” she said after a while. She gestured at the house at the bottom of the hill. The yard lights were on, casting long, interlaced shadows across the ground. “You mean to cause trouble for Reeves?”
“As much as we’re able,” Gabe assured her.
“Good,” she said. “Big doings down there today. Several big rigs pulled in earlier. Had cars coming and going ever since sun up. Bunch of ’em.”
The deep rumble of a diesel engine caught everyone’s attention. As the smoke-spewing stacks appeared at the top of the hill, she said, “Another one.” We watched as the rest of the cab and then the trailer rolled over the rise and into view.
The driver took one look at the steep hill and began feathering the air brakes. Squeaking and hissing his way down at about one mile an hour.
I looked over at the woman. “If all hell breaks loose, call the cops,” I said.
Some things don’t require discussion. We instinctively knew we were never going to get a better chance than this. Without a word, all three of us crossed to the south side of the street and began inching our way downhill, moving furtively among the cactus and shrubbery, from house to house, yard to yard, watching the eighteen-wheeler, brakes screaming and steaming and whining, until it turned right at the bottom and rolled slowly toward the gate over on the side of the grove. We trotted alongside, with the trailer between us and the cameras, too close to the trailer to show up in his mirrors.
When the truck turned left onto the gateway, we hurried over to the south side of the dirt road and threw ourselves over the edge. By the time I belly crawled back up to where I could see again, somebody had pulled open the gate and was using a flashlight to direct the truck through the opening.
I reached out and grabbed Carolyn by the shoulder and started scooting along the embankment until the truck was once again between us and the guy with the flashlight, then crawled up onto the dirt road and scampered over to the far side of the truck, staying even with the trailer wheels so our feet wouldn’t be visible from the other side.
That’s how we got through the gate. Tiptoeing along in lockstep with the trailer until the gate started to close behind us, at which point we all took off running toward the long metal shed at the back of the property.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, backs plastered against the corrugated metal siding, huffing and puffing from the exertion, listening hard for any indication that we might have been seen. None came. Just the steady rattle of the diesel creeping along.
I stepped around Gabe and peeked around the corner. The semi was backing up toward what appeared to be the largest building on the property. Two eighteen wheelers were still backed into the brightly lit opening, as the guy with the flashlight kept walking and urging the driver backward with the light.
Out at the front gate, a car was easing out onto Santa Rosa Street. They’d gotten about a third of the way to the top of the hill when another car, coming in the other direction, lit ’em up like a ballgame. Two adults in front. Biggest one driving. Looked like the silhouette of a kid in the back. The car coming our way nosed up to the gate, which slid out of the way, allowing the car to drive into the yard and around the circle.
I levitated about a foot and a half off the ground when Gabe tapped my shoulder and pointed at the short chain-link fence behind us. I walked over and looked down into the canyon on the far side of the fence. Took my eyes a while to sort out the huge tangle. Lobster traps, big purse seiner nets, ropes, pulleys, buoys, floats, several old wooden dories bottoms up. Coupla metal net tenders. All the fishing equipment they were supposedly bringing back to the States for sale, dumped in a huge pile down at the bottom of the ravine.
“Pssst,” Carolyn hissed, pointing around the corner. I hurried back over and snuck a peek. The driver was out of the truck. Smoking a cigarette. Pemberton was standing in the yard, talking to him.
“If they’re not running fishing gear, what’s in the trucks?” Gabe asked.
“Dope,” I suggested.
Carolyn shook her head. “It’s not like you can just start up a large-scale drug business in Mexico. You start moving any real weight, one of the cartels is going to be up your butt so far you’ll be able to smell hair gel. And once they get involved, what you’re most likely to end up is dead.” She made a throat-slashing gesture. “You and everybody you know. Those people don’t give a shit.”
I had an idea, pulled my burner phone out of my pocket, and scrolled back through the numbers I’d called in the past week until I came to the one Gabe had gotten from the woman at the Tijuana dump. The one she called when she had a kid to deliver. I dialed it and then peeked around the corner.
My eyes found Pemberton in the semidarkness. I watched as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his oversize phone. Looked like he was holding a piece of toast in his hand. He stared at the screen and then poked a finger at it. I hung up. He stuffed the phone back into his pocket, said something to the driver, and walked quickly out of sight.
“Kids,” I said. “They’re selling kids.”
Carolyn looked over my shoulder at the screen. “That’s the same restricted number we tried to look up the other day.”
“Yep,” I said.
Gabe: “We gotta have a look inside the building there.”
I knew what Gabe was thinking. This was the point where things were about to get hairy. We were trespassing. Carrying unregistered firearms with a suspended police sergeant covering our backs. Under normal circumstances, if anybody got shot, all three of us were looking at hard time. San Quentin. Some sketchy shit like that.
If, on the other hand, these guys were running a human-trafficking ring and we could bring the heat down on their heads and save some of these kids from fates I didn’t even want to think about, then all bets were probably off. We could kill all of them and most likely walk away. Hard time vs. heroism. No middle ground.
I pointed down the narrow space between the chain-link fence and the back of the building. Gabe began moving that way. Carolyn fell in behind as they edged their way through the thick, waist-high field grass, sidestepping along the corrugated metal, until Gabe went down with a thud. Gone in a whoosh. Carolyn and I hurried to the spot where Gabe had disappeared. An eight-foot section of the embankment had eroded itself down into the canyon, leaving a gaping hole between the building and the fence. Gabe was folded up in the bottom of the pit, looking up at me and shaking that big head in disgust.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“Other than the heartbreak of psoriasis,” Gabe growled and struggled to one knee.
“Moderate to severe?” I asked.
“
Of course.”
Gabe raised a hand. I took ahold and heaved for all I was worth. From there on, we moved more carefully, pawing like blind horses, making certain of our footing as we inched down toward the end of the building. I dropped to one knee and peered around the corner.
The big building had four windows on the back side, throwing bright-white chevrons of light across the browned-out grass. Carolyn didn’t hesitate; she took off running, covering the distance in about five seconds and then sitting down with her back to the building, motioning us forward. Gabe and I lumbered over.
All three of us duckwalked under the first window, getting out of the light and into the deep shadows. Gabe kept going down to the next window. Carolyn moved on to the next.
I flattened myself against the building and peeped around the corner of the window as if Methuselah himself were probably going to be staring back at me.
Big, huge room. Probably where they used to store the grove’s farm equipment. Except now . . . it was . . . I was at a loss for words . . . couldn’t decide whether it looked like a room full of storage units or the biggest dog kennel I’d ever seen. I looked over at Gabe, who was, not coincidentally, looking at me. Gabe’s face bent into a question. Are you shitting me? it said.
They were chain-link enclosures. Maybe forty of them. Eight by eight by eight. About two-thirds of which were filled with kids. My eyes took it in. I had a ready-made label for everything I was looking at, but on some deeper level, a part of me refused to process the sight into a coherent whole. Selling kids, some voice kept screaming at me. Are you fucking kidding me . . . you can’t be serious . . . you can’t be . . .
That’s the point where the door on the far side opened up and five people came into the room. What looked like a couple of the security types leading the way, Reeves, Pemberton or whoever the hell he was, and some fat little rat-faced guy I’d never seen before.
Reeves and the two security mopes walked halfway down the front row of cages. The taller of the two security types walked over to the wall, opened the door of the gray electrical box, checked the box, checked the cage number, and threw the switch up. Wasn’t till the other guy frog-walked her kicking and screaming out into the aisle that I could get an unobstructed view. Somewhere between ten and twelve years old, wearing what looked like a long white nightshirt. Reeves grabbed her around the middle, hoisted her up onto his hip, and carried her out into the middle of the space. She was screeching as he carried her along and then finally set her on her bare feet in front of the fat guy.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. As the new guy stepped up close to her, Reeves reached down, put his hands on her shoulders, and pulled the nightshirt up over her head and off. She was standing there naked, sobbing so loud I could hear her hiccupping hysteria through the closed window.
It was all I could do not to lose it and kill somebody right then and there. My head felt like it was going to explode as I forced myself to watch the guy reach into his pants pocket and pull out a thick envelope. He handed it to Pemberton, who opened it up and fingered his way through the contents.
With a nod from Pemberton, Reeves stuffed her back into the nightshirt in the moment before the security duo lifted her from the ground by the elbows and began carrying her toward the door at the front of the building.
I made a stay where you are gesture with my hand. Carolyn and Gabe nodded in the semidarkness. Then I turned my back and hurried back to the south corner. I peeked around. The three semis were still lined up there. I trotted over to the first truck, ducked around the front, then around the second one, and finally around the third.
I got there just in time to see the two security slugs force the girl into the back seat of a new Cadillac Escalade. I had to clamp a hand over my mouth while I watched the Cadillac drive across the yard and out the gate. I wanted to scream at the taillights to stop as they bounced over the top of the hill and winked from view.
When my lungs remembered how to work, I hurried back around the trucks. Gabe and Carolyn had moved down to my end of the building. I slid to a halt and knelt down beside them. “This is a fucking drive-up window. People are showing up and taking kids with them,” I said. “We gotta keep that from happening. God knows where they might end up. We’ll never be able to find them again.” I swung my arm in a short arc. “I mean . . . I don’t see these motherfuckers keeping any kind of records about where they send these kids.”
“Nobody else leaves this place,” Gabe said. “Not one fucking kid.”
“Did you see what that asshole did?” Carolyn asked.
“Don’t remind me,” I snapped.
“When he . . .”
At that point I gave up any pretense of adult behavior and clamped both hands over my ears. If she hadn’t shut up, I’d have started yammering like a monkey.
Might have been better if we’d talked about it. Gotten it out of our systems. As it was, each of us was left with nothing but the psycho conjuring of our own minds, where unwelcome images looked a lot like unseemly desires—where black-and-white nudie pictures boiled up from some steamy caldron we’d never admit to putting on the stove. I had just pushed myself to my feet when the lights in the big room suddenly went out. I peeked inside. A single mercury-vapor light high on the metal wall cast a ghostly purple shadow over the interior.
I was still figuring out what to do next when headlights swept over the yard. I heard the gate clatter closed. Heard a car door slam shut and muffled chitchat.
Carolyn crawled to my side. “Kids first,” she whispered. “We need to get the kids out of harm’s way before we do anything else.”
I looked at her hard. “This is where the rubber meets the road,” I said. “I’ll understand if you don’t want any part of this.” When she didn’t say anything, I kept talking. “I only know two things here. One, I’m not letting these assholes take any of these kids anywhere. And two, I’m not letting anybody shoot me if I can help it—and I can help it.” I pulled my weapon out of my waistband.
She was shaking her head as if she were having an argument with herself—and losing. “I wanted to be a cop since I was ten. I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living.” She pulled her weapon from her waist. “And I’m not leaving these kids here either,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I turned toward Gabe. “I’ll get to the panel and unlock everybody. You tell ’em we’re the good guys and that we’re gonna get them out of here.”
“How we gonna get ’em outta here?” Gabe growled. “Ain’t like we can do a Pied Piper routine with ’em.”
I thought about it. “One of the trucks, maybe,” was the best I could come up with.
Gabe opened the door of the nearest truck and heaved up into the cab. A second later Gabe hit the ground with both feet. “No keys.”
Carolyn took the cue and climbed up into the truck in the middle.
“Keys are in it,” she stage whispered.
“Can you drive one of these?” I asked Gabe, who laughed in my face.
“I could barely shift that damn pickup truck.”
“I can drive it,” Carolyn said.
The look on our faces gave her the urge to explain. “I drove a garbage truck when I was an undergrad. Three years. Paying off those damn loans. I can drive the damn thing.” She pointed at Gabe and wagged a finger. “And you, of all people—you really ought to lose that but you’re a girl look on your face.”
Gabe managed a grudging grunt and headed for the back of the truck, where we opened the overhead as quietly as we were able and then slid the built-in ramp out onto the concrete floor.
I duckwalked around the front of the first truck and peered down the space between it and the next trailer. Gabe was close enough that I could hear a round jacked into the chamber as I crawled along. Once I made it to the back of the trailer, I got to my feet. Gabe was hard by my right elbow.
“You ready?” I asked. When nobody answered, I took that for a yes. Rather than crawl or attempt to hide u
s from any cameras that might be filming, I took off for the far side of the room at a lope, keeping my gun up by my right shoulder and my eyes glued to the door at the north end of the building.
I skidded to a stop in front of the electrical box, jerked open the door, and used my left palm to flip every damn switch in sight. The air filled with the clatter of electric locks snapping open. Somewhere in the semidarkness several children began to cry out.
Gabe was talking to the kids in Spanish now. Moving down the rows of cages, repeating the message over and over, moving slowly, making sure everybody heard.
Most of the kids seemed paralyzed, but three or four of the older ones opened their unlocked doors themselves and started moving our way, an action that seemed to embolden many of the others to do the same thing.
They looked like angels in that faltering light. A line of white cherubs first walking and then running headlong toward the rear of the building, Gabe jogging alongside encouraging them in Spanish.
That’s when the door popped open. I can’t tell you whose head it was, but I can say I definitely used my gun to make a serious dent in the top of the head. He must have been holding the knob at the moment of impact because the door slammed closed as the slug drove him backward, a series of actions that seemed to seriously discourage further peeping.
Out in the middle of the cage compound, two of the kids were frozen in place by fear. I ran that way, stuffing my gun back into my waistband on the way. I grabbed a little girl around the waist and hauled her up onto my hip. She was screaming like a thousand seagulls and wiggling like a beached eel when I heaved the other kid up onto my other hip and started running toward the rear exit.
My vision was bouncing up and down like a tennis ball as I covered the distance. I caught a glimpse of children running up the ramp like angels ascending to heaven in the nanosecond before I saw Gabe lift that shiny automatic and let loose with three rounds. Behind me someone began making noises like a gored matador. I had no idea what was going on behind me or what Gabe was shooting at, but I was real glad it wasn’t me.
