The Trade

by Chris Thrall

  “So, who are you anyway?” Logan’s eyes flicked to the bag of coke, like the proverbial kiddy in a candy store. “A vigilante or something?”

  “Private detective,” Hans replied, and told Logan the bones of the story, feeling a pang of guilt his head butt put paid to the man’s powdery pleasure.

  “So were you on my boat the other night?” Logan reached for the scotch. “I wasn’t sure if the phone call was one of my mates having a laugh.”

  “How do you mean?” Hans’ antenna pricked up.

  “Some guy called from a Cape Verde number saying my boat was being broken into and I should get down to the dock right away. I didn’t see anything, but my dog was behaving pretty weird.”

  “Was the guy a Westerner or local?”

  “He spoke English, put it that way. But I was pretty drunk, and his voice was muffled.”

  “Is the number still on your cell phone?”

  “Yeah, but I Googled it already – a pay phone in Praia.”

  Hans thought back to the murders of the Fulani, Alvarez and Silvestre. The traffickers always seemed to be one step ahead. He admitted to Logan that he’d broken into the boat and explained his reasons, then accepted another drink and turned the subject back to Jessica.

  “They call it the Trade here.” Logan shrugged. “Everyone knows about it, but . . . you know, it’s underground.”

  “Do kids ever go missing from the orphanage you visit?”

  “Hell, Hans, I hadn’t even thought about it.”

  “Do you think your contacts might know anything?”

  “I can ask around.”

  “And to clear up a couple of loose ends, where were you the evening the fishing boat blew up in the harbor?”

  “Saturday I was at the restaurant. In fact, Sergio Horne walked in. He’s an actor, pretty famous in these parts. I texted a photo to Krystal. Here, check it out.”

  Hans looked at the picture on Logan’s cell phone and read the date and time of the text.

  “And my sources mentioned something about you being arrested for having a kid on the boat.”

  “Ha! Police harassment more like. Look, Hans, I did a stretch in jail in the UK for laundering profits for a cigarette smuggling ring through a betting shop I ran. I got completely ripped off and didn’t make a penny. But when I was released from prison early, they expected me to pay a whole load of money back under the Proceeds of Crime Act. I didn’t have any bloody proceeds, so I skipped the country and moved to Cape Verde. The authorities here have been on my back since I arrived.” He paused to dab his finger in the coke and rub it around his gums.

  “And the boy?”

  “Hmm.” Logan licked his lips. “A local street urchin, Hans. I told you, me and Krystal love kids. It’s not like the UK or the States here. You don’t have to undergo a criminal record check or sign your life away to the health and safety muppets to take a youngster for a spin in your boat. You just have to make sure the little beggars don’t rob you blind while you’re doin’ it!”

  From his own experiences, Hans knew it to be true. The sense of community and extended family in African culture meant children were far more trustful of adults. He didn’t bother interrogating Logan further. He’d heard enough. But one question remained.

  “Eddy?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can you think why anyone would want to set you up for my daughter’s disappearance?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Is my cell working yet? I wanna show you something.”

  While Logan put the Samsung back together, Hans told him about his meeting and the subsequent demise of Djenabou, the Fulani.

  “Look at this.” Hans flicked through the phone’s picture gallery.

  “That’s harsh,” said Logan, squinting at Djenabou’s ugly bloody scrawl. “But to me that’s not a dragon’s claw.”

  “What is it then?” said Hans, taking the phone back to look for himself.

  “It’s a downwards-pointing arrow.”

  “And why would she write that next to your name?”

  Logan shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  - 63 -

  Cobra Azul, “Blue Snake,” ripped a slip of paper from his youngest sister’s schoolbook and formed a V-shaped tray, into which he sprinkled a good amount of ground-up marijuana. He took a rock of crack from a vial worn on a thong around his neck and placed it on a CD case lying on the simple wooden table. After bashing the rock into powder with the base of his cigarette lighter, he added it to the potent tray of herb, twisted it into a reefer and sparked it up.

  Cobra always smoked his crack this way, since the pipe method produced too intense a high, one that only lasted a few seconds, leaving you craving for more. He’d witnessed many of his fellow pimps and dealers go down that route, desperately chasing another hit to produce the elusive initial euphoria, spending all their earnings and then hustling and cheating to buy more.

  Adelina, the middle of his five sisters, curled up on the shack’s dilapidated couch watching cartoons on a beat-up television set. Every so often her eyes flicked to her brother, for in the shantytown of Rocinha most kids smoked the rock, and this eleven-year-old was no different.

  “Nau!” Cobra yelled in Creole. “You wanna get high, you buy it yourself!”

  “Phuh!” she pulled a face and went back to watching ThunderCats dubbed in Portuguese.

  Cobra’s real name was Artur, after his late father, stabbed to death in an argument over a card game when the boy was four. His mother, a crack addict, smoked herself into the sanitarium, recovered and returned home only for the cycle to repeat. She would get cleaning jobs and sex work to provide for the kids, staying sober for a while until the addictive psyche took hold, conning the poor woman into scoring “just once,” seeing her mental health, promises and earnings go up in bittersweet smoke.

  The young mestizo stood up and looked in the mirror. He fingered the mini-dreads in his bob-length hair into place before putting a black baseball cap on backwards. Then he reseated his faux-gold chain and medallion and admired his trademark blue eyes. He was Cobra Azul, and it was time to go to work.

  - 64 -

  Two blocks over, fourteen-year-old Angel sat in the front room of her grandfather’s shack as the drunken pig slept in a chair. Listening to emphysemic snores emanating from a pathetic skinny chest, she wished the half-empty bottle of cane spirit he clutched like a baby would slip and pour all over his filthy pants. Angel hated the sick old pervert for subjecting her to so many heinous acts over the years but knew if she didn’t take the bottle from him she would pay dearly: the cigarette burns on her arms testified to that.

  The teenager went to the bathroom and filled a bucket with cold water from a sole faucet, then stripped off and rinsed herself down with a wetted washcloth. Cobra would sniff her armpits before work that evening, and if they smelled of body odor she could expect another beating and an even smaller share of the cash.

  Angel shut the door of her bedroom and pressed “Play” on an antiquated cassette player, her mood lifting to the na-na-na of Kylie Minogue. After putting on a skintight pink minidress and a pair of hand-me-down yellow heels – two sizes too big – she began gyrating in the mirror the way the girls in the lap-dancing clubs taught her.

  The mirror was a triangular shard not much bigger than a dinner plate. Angel had to keep adjusting its angle on the tea chest serving as her dressing table and repeat the dance routine to analyze her moves top and bottom. She fantasized about the day she would be old enough and suitably accomplished to work the poles herself.

  A bottle of cedar oil perfume she had bought from a Moroccan in the Várzea quarter sat alongside an Afro comb and a pair of earrings on the purple, sequined headscarf draped over the tea chest for decoration. Angel shook a drop of the oily, woody-scented essence onto her fingertip and rubbed it behind each ear, intending to make the tiny amount of perfume in the small but deceptively bulbous bottle last. It was the only fragrance she had ever own
ed, and buying it used up all her savings. The earrings were a cheap mock-gold hooped affair. Angel inserted one into her left piercing without a problem, but the right lobe was infected and swollen, and having located the hole, she forced the dirty wire through, resulting in a trickle of pus and blood running down her neck.

  Angel didn’t own a cell phone or a watch but could tell from the growing darkness that it was time to leave the slum and meet Cobra on Rua Ribeiro in the red-light district near to the harbor.

  - 65 -

  Penny opened the door of the villa to find her dripping-wet boyfriend on the doormat.

  “Hans! I was worried!” She threw her arms around him. “What happened, and why are you so wet?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve just swum ashore from Eddy Logan’s boat?”

  “What?” came the expected reply.

  “Let me get out of these clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it. And if there’s a beer going spare, I wouldn’t say no.”

  Hans went into the bathroom and, after taking his wallet and cell phone out of the resealable bag Logan gave him, threw his clothes in the tub. He put on a bathrobe and joined Penny in the living room.

  It wasn’t until they’d drunk a fourth beer and polished off half a bottle of rum that Hans finished retelling events.

  Penny cupped her chin, shaking her head as she stared down at Karen’s marble-tiled floor. “So, we’re right back at square one.”

  “Afraid so, honey.” Hans could see the exhausted Penny was on the verge of tears. “Let’s sleep on it and come up with a plan in the morning.”

  Neither of them could stomach breakfast, so after a shower and coffee Hans drove them back to the previous night’s drop-off point to go and retrieve the gear from the hide. By now Hans’ saran wrap package stunk to high heaven, so he placed the backpack in the rear of the jeep and wound down the windows.

  “Don’t ask,” he told Penny, seeing her face screw up.

  Hans was about to turn the ignition key when his cell rang, a Praia number he didn’t recognize.

  “Hans Larsson.”

  “Senhor Larsson, Chief Inspector Barbosa Amado. Can we meet?”

  “Is this so you can arrest me?” Hans asked, with so many implicating factors buzzing through his mind – the Fulani, Alvarez, Silvestre, Mike Davenport – that he made a concerted effort to clear his head and focus on Amado’s words, listening for any nuances giving a clue as to what was afoot.

  “No, Hans. You have done nothing I would want to arrest you for,” Amado replied. “But something has come up, and I feel it is time to share what we know. Or if you prefer, you can just listen to what I have to say.”

  “Do you want me to come to the station?”

  “No, no! Erm, where are you now?”

  “About five miles from town on the coast road east.”

  “Okay, then there is a turning right, about one kilometer. Fifty meters up is a bar called O Cacto, er, The Cactus. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  “And?”

  “Interpol? No, only me I promise.”

  - 66 -

  Toweling dry after her shower, the Malian considered the clothes in her functionalist wardrobe. Not wishing to appear too smart for the evening’s mission, she opted for lightweight beige pants, a dark-blue tank top, flat shoes and a cheap denim jacket. As a precaution she slipped a switchblade into her pocket and, having checked the tourist map, left the ramshackle hotel to head in the direction of Rua Ribeiro.

  The woman passed by open-air bars playing upbeat folk music and taverns and tapas restaurants frequented by locals, but there was no nightclub district to speak of, most of the tourists enjoying entertainment laid on in their hotels. Although on her own in a rough part of town, the woman felt safe, and no one paid her unwanted attention. Arriving at one end of Rua Ribeiro, she decided to take a brisk walk along it to familiarize herself with the street scene. Before doing so, she entered a small convenience store, bought a soda and a loaf of bread and placed them in a plastic bag so it looked like she lived in the area. Keeping her head high and adopting a purposeful pace, she headed up the street, giving the appearance of minding her own business but taking in every movement with her peripheral vision, along with the sheer poverty of her surroundings.

  The working girls weren’t difficult to spot. Three, all of different ethnicity, leant against a brick wall leading off down a side street, waiting to step forward when a punter pulled up. Others – some of them white, likely Russian or Eastern European – stood on their own in doorways, hands and feet fidgety from the prework smoke of the crack pipe. There were no pimps in view, although the woman felt certain they were around, and the girls looked to be of legal age. This did not fit with her plan, so she continued down the street, and when there were no more sex workers in sight, she took a left turn at the next junction and a left again to bring her back to where she’d started.

  The woman took a seat outside a café and ordered a beer. She was in no rush, and it was important to get this right. In the meantime she familiarized herself with life on Rua Ribeiro, keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might prove trouble.

  An hour passed and a good many sex workers too, either arriving for work, rushing to the nearest drug dealer with their latest payment, or hurrying a car-less tourist off the street into an unlit alleyway in case the police appeared.

  Finally, the woman spotted a contender. Walking several yards behind his “property” – a girl no more than fourteen wearing a skimpy pink dress and stumbling along in oversized yellow heels – the pimp had a cocky air about him and wore a black backwards-facing baseball cap on top of short dreadlocks. He had his shirt open to the waist, exposing a fake-gold medallion, and only looked to be a teenager himself. But what stood out the most was the young man’s eyes. Like the woman’s, they were turquoise blue and unmissable against his brown skin.

  The woman watched as they continued up Rua Ribeiro and made a left down a side street. She threw a five-hundred-escudo note down on the table, picked up her shopping bag and went after them. Turning the corner, she saw the pimp and the girl arguing on the sidewalk. Perfect, she thought, taking out her cell phone and hitting the video mode. Then, walking down the street pretending to have a conversation, she turned the phone at a slight angle to capture the couple’s dispute.

  Having a Mozambican father, the woman spoke Portuguese and although not entirely fluent in Cape Verdean Creole, a variant of the mother tongue, she understood the gist of what they were shouting. Drawing level with the pair, she stopped, making no attempt to hide her actions.

  Cobra continued his dressing down of Angel, having not forgiven her for mistakenly charging a tourist the locals’ rate for oral sex the previous night. He backhanded her across the face, and as she fell to the ground he noticed the woman filming.

  “Wha—?”

  “Do you know the punishment for forcing underage girls into prostitution?” she asked in Portuguese, putting the phone back in her pocket. “Especially right now, when the police are having a major crackdown and looking for arrests.”

  “Fuck you,” he scowled, and threw a lightning punch.

  The woman blocked it with her forearm, barreling his arm downwards and gripping his thumb, levering the vulnerable digit away from his body.

  Pain rocketed up the pimp’s wrist, sending him crashing to the ground. “Ah-ah-ah, okay, okay!” he screamed.

  Angel watched in astonishment, then, contemplating the beating Cobra would give her for not coming to his aid, she took a step forward.

  “Don’t even think about it, amiga!” the woman warned, stopping a high kick short of Angel’s nose.

  The girl looked to Cobra for direction. He shook his head rapidly, his eyes saying the consequences would be painful for both of them.

  “Okay, I’m going to let go, but if you try anything funny you have my word I will break your arm.”

  “Sure, sure,” Cobra replied, the thought of no more pain far outweigh
ing the humiliation he’d received.

  The woman released her hold.

  “Arrh!” He shook his arm out. “So who are you – a cop or something?”

  “I’m in the same business as you.”

  “Yeah?” He eyed her in disbelief.

  “Yeah,” the woman replied, pulling a photo of one of the orphans from the pocket of her denim jacket. “See this girl?”

  “Uh-huh.” Cobra massaged his wrist.

  “There are many more in my care, and I’m looking to trade.”

  “Why you telling me this?”

  “Because I need to see the Man.”

  “Which man?” Cobra tried to get smart.

  “That’s up to you. But if it’s not someone I can do business with, then the video in this phone” – she tapped her pocket – “will be on the vice squad’s desk first thing tomorrow morning, and I will write a full statement about what I saw tonight and then testify in court.”

  Cobra and Angel made eye contact, unable to hide their nerves, the girl about to burst into tears any moment.

  “What jail term are we talking for pimping a minor – five to seven years?” the woman said and tutted. “That’s if you don’t get shanked by a fellow prisoner for preying on a child.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll speak to my boss,” Cobra pacified her. “He knows a guy. How can I get hold of you?”

  “Room Eighteen, Pensão Lisboa. Ask for Brenda Umchima.”

  - 67 -

  O Cacto was the most authentic establishment Hans and Penny had visited on Cape Verde, with none of the glitz or faux-culture associated with the touristy places. Not much more than a wooden shack, it was reminiscent of a truck stop out West, though with bare floorboards and rust-blemished road signs adorning the walls – genuine signs and not the Route 66 type bought off the Internet – it was a deal humbler.

  Hans and Penny took up seats at a table by the window. After ten minutes it became obvious the man wearing a white cotton tank top and eyeing them with suspicion from behind the bar wasn’t going to take their order, so Penny went up and asked for a beer and a bottle of mineral water. The barman made a show of taking his time, refusing to look Penny in the eye, and then slapping the change down on the graffiti-engraved bar.