by Willow Rose
“Yeah, well, it’s this environmental thing too, to make awareness and take pictures of how bad it really is, then send it to the commissioners in Cocoa Beach, hoping it’ll force them to react.”
“But paddle boarding, Joey? Come on. You hate paddle boarding. You’re a surfer, remember?” I say.
He chuckles. “I know. But Jackie loves paddle boarding, so, you know…”
Yeah, I know that you’re changing yourself for her. Why? You never changed yourself for anyone else, let alone me.
“All right then. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll bring Snowflake.”
I can’t see it, but I know Joey is smiling. “Sounds good, Mary. The animals are going to be very happy.”
“I bet.”
I hang up feeling a lot better. I grab another cookie and eat it while wondering how long Salter is going to last in that house with Jackie in it and how long Jackie is going to like having Salter there. Suddenly, I worry about him and if he’ll feel rejected by her and then maybe by his dad because he will feel like his dad spends more time with her than his son.
He’s going to come back here all heartbroken, isn’t he? How did we get to this, Joey? We weren’t supposed to be the ones that got divorced. We were the ones that were supposed to last, remember?
I empty the package of cookies while obsessing over the thought. When my phone rings again, I pick it up.
It’s Chloe.
“Hey there. I was just about to call you about my next article; I know you want to…”
“That’s not why I am calling,” she interrupts me. Her voice is so serious it feels like a punch to my face.
“What’s going on, Chloe? You’re scaring me.”
“It’s Danny,” she says. “I didn’t know who else to turn to. You’re the only one who can afford to bail him out.”
I stop breathing. “Bail him out? But what…does that mean?”
“That he has been arrested, yes.”
Chapter Seventeen
April 2016
It’s been six months since he last did a pick-up. Not that the demand hasn’t been there for more, but he has to be careful. Boxer knows it is important to lay low for a long time after he has delivered the goods. He has to make sure the police aren’t on to him. In the meantime, Boxer reads the paper every day and watches the news closely. It still amazes him how easy it is.
So far, no one seems to be missing the woman and the girl he picked up in October. What are their names again? Marie and Tara. Yes. Or is it Maria? Boxer doesn’t remember anymore. It’s all in the past. The girl and her mother have already moved on to their new owner, as have all the others Boxer has provided. He sees himself as a sort of a farmer selling off the cattle.
Never get attached to the cow. Don’t give it a name.
“Latest news on the fish kill in Banana River Lagoon, when we get back,” the lady from News13 says as they cut to commercial.
Boxer gets up and walks to the kitchen. It’s time to start dinner. Boxer loves to cook. Today he’s preparing lamb. Thyme-garlic lamb with strata, horseradish gremolata and roasted veggies.
He puts on music while he chops the veggies and sings along. This is the time of day he feels the best, when he gets to create something with his hands. It has taken him years to get this good, but luckily Boxer has a lot of time. Since he was fired two years ago from his job, time has been all he has.
A message ticks in on his iPad. It’s from one of the secured chat rooms, so he knows he must answer right away. He wipes his hands on his apron and checks who it is from.
His client’s name is Dr. Seuss. Needless to say, it is a cover. Boxer isn’t his real name either.
Boxer waits for Dr. Seuss’s answer, but hears a sound coming from the front of his house. He turns the iPad to face the screen down, and then walks outside.
“Hello?”
On the wooden porch, he spots the body of a man. He is lying on his back, eyes closed. Boxer sighs and approaches the man.
“Get up, you drunk,” he says.
The man blinks his eyes, and then looks at Boxer and smiles. “Hey, brother. Nice view you have here.”
He nods in the direction of the neighbors across the street, where the woman is bringing in groceries from her mini-van. She glances cautiously towards Boxer’s house. His brother waves.
“Hello, Mrs. Dawson,” Boxer says.
She waves nervously. Boxer looks at his brother. “Come on. Couldn’t you at least have used the back door?” He reaches out his hand and his brother grabs it. He pulls him up, even though he is heavy. Boxer is strong.
“This is a nice neighborhood,” he grumbles, as he pushes his drunken brother inside. “People don’t pass out drunk on porches in nice neighborhoods.”
“I know, man. I’m sorry.”
Boxer helps his brother get onto the couch, and then runs to the kitchen to take the lamb off the stove. It is burnt black. Boxer sighs. He was looking forward to it.
He returns to his brother, who is half asleep on the couch. He sits down next to him.
“So, how much this time?” he asks.
The brother doesn’t even open his eyes to look at him. “Only three-hundred-thousand.”
Boxer sighs and nods while his brother dozes off. “All right,” he says, and looks at his brother while stroking his leg gently.
“All right.”
Chapter Eighteen
April 2016
“What are the charges?”
Chloe hasn’t even gotten in the car before I ask. It’s the morning after she called and gave me the news. I haven’t slept all night. Chloe didn’t want to tell me over the phone. Said she wanted to wait till she could tell me face to face. I can’t stop wondering what is going on. I have a bad feeling about all this and really hope I am not right.
Tell me he was speeding; tell me he stole something from a store because he couldn’t afford it; tell me has too many unpaid parking tickets. Tell me something I can accept. Not what I won’t, not what I fear this is about.
Chloe sighs and closes the door to the car. Danny will be put in front of a judge and hopefully the judge will allow bail so we can get him home. That’s what we’re going to hear.
“If I am to pay for his bail, then I at least deserve to know what this is all about,” I say, and get back out on A1A.
Chloe nods. She is not looking at me. It makes me feel very uncomfortable.
“Chloe!” I say, frustrated. “Please tell me. Why was he arrested?”
“All right. All right. Take it easy. It’s just…really hard to say. I spent last night avoiding Junior’s many questions.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Danny wanted me to say that he had to go out of town for a few days and would be back soon.”
“Wow. So you lied. Well, you’re not lying to me, Chloe,” I say, as we drive onto the bridge leading us to Merritt Island, the island separating our Barrier Island and Cocoa Beach with the mainland.
“Danny was arrested at the airport yesterday afternoon,” Chloe says.
“At the airport?”
“He was…taken in because he was trying to…” Chloe looks at me, then out the window.
“Trying to what? Geez, you’re killing me here, Chloe,” I say, as we reach the last bridge over the Indian River leading to the mainland. The smell was worst going over Banana River, but I can tell the fish kill is in the Indian River as well. I see many dead fish and, with the warm weather, it smells bad.
“He was trying to buy a girl.”
I almost crash the car into the guardrail. “He was what?”
“Trying to purchase a girl from Indonesia. She had just arrived in the country, thinking she was going to work in the hotel business, but it was a trafficking ring that was behind getting her here. They were trying to sell her in an auction. A slave auction. The police raided it. It was a set-up.
There you have it.”
“And Danny was there?”
“It appears so. Please keep your eyes on the road and please slow down a little, will you?”
“Why? What…how? How old was this girl he was trying to buy?” I ask, ignoring her comments about my driving. I am a great driver and right now I am very upset.
“Fourteen,” she says.
“FOURTEEN?”
“Please watch out for the truck,” Chloe says with a moan.
“Oh, my God,” I groan. “I knew it. I saw him with those girls. I knew something was off, Chloe, didn’t I tell you?”
“Mary!!”
I hit the brakes when the truck in front of us suddenly stops. I manage to stop our car before we hit it, but Chloe apparently doesn’t think that I will and starts to scream. I stare at her while we wait for a green light.
“So, you’re telling me Danny, our Danny, the firefighter, the captain of Cocoa Beach Fire Department, the sweetest guy I have known since we were just children, Danny, that Danny was arrested trying to buy a fourteen year-old Indonesian girl. And now…now, on top of it, you want me to bail him out?”
Chloe looks at me, and then she nods. “Yes. That is exactly what I am saying.”
Chapter Nineteen
April 2016
“I simply don’t understand how you talked me into this.”
I stare at Chloe, sitting next to me outside the courtroom in Orlando. It is all over. The judge set the bail for one hundred-thousand dollars. I have paid it.
Chloe grabs my hand. “You’re a good person. Danny had to get out of there. We couldn’t just leave him. You did the right thing. Trust me.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like the right thing. It feels like I have just bailed out a pedophile.”
Chloe closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. “Danny is a good man, Mary. And you know it.”
“What the heck was he buying a young girl for?”
Chloe bites her lip. “I think we should ask him about that when he gets out. There he is. I see him.”
I look up and spot Danny walking towards us, flanked by two court officers. Chloe gets up from the bench and walks towards him. I stay seated. I don’t know what else to do. All I really want is to kick Danny and yell at him for being such a pig, a disgusting pedophile. I can’t get myself to hug him like Chloe is doing right now. I simply can’t.
Danny lets go of Chloe and approaches me. I feel my heart pounding in my chest. I want to run away. I want to grab my purse and just start running.
“Mary!”
I can’t even smile. I look up, but my eyes are avoiding his.
“Chloe told me you paid my bail. Thank you so much.”
I clear my throat and press back my desire to scold him. It can wait till the car, I decide.
Oh, my God. I have to give him a ride back!
Finally, my eyes meet his and I sense my tension ease up. In them, I see the same Danny I have loved for so many years. My Danny. My friend.
My creepy friend who buys kids! What else does he do with them?
I don’t want to think about it. I close my eyes and get up.
“Mary…I…”
“Not now,” Chloe says, and grabs his hand. “Let’s get you out of here. Let’s get you as far away from this place as we can.”
I stare at her, wondering what the heck she is thinking. Why isn’t she about to explode with anger and frustration? She, of all people I know, should be so enraged with Danny she can’t bear to look at him. Chloe! Chloe who has devoted her life to fighting child-porn online. Chloe who has created the organization Nochildporn.org. Chloe who…created software that automatically tracks…who gives the information to the authorities…”
Hey, wait a minute!
I clasp my mouth and gasp. Both of them turn to look at me as the last piece finally falls into place.
“You…you…you two have…”
Chloe approaches me, eyes wide open, hands stretched out in front of her. “Wait till the car,” she says. “Wait till we get there. Then we’ll talk. We’ll tell you everything you need to know, but you’ll have to wait. We can’t do it here. Do you think you can wait that long, Mary? Do you?”
I hold my hand tight over my lips, then nod while storming into the parking lot.
Chapter Twenty
April 2016
Danny takes in a deep breath as he steps outside the courtroom again. This time as a free man. All he really wants to is to forget the past twenty-four hours and move on, but that is not going to be so easy.
He’s got some explaining to do. Some serious explaining.
“Tell me everything,” Mary says, as the three of them are in the car.
Chloe and Mary are in the front seats, Danny in the back. He feels like a child being questioned by his parents. Well, at least Chloe knows the entire story, so basically he just has to tell everything to Mary.
“How, how long, when and why?” Mary continues. “I mean, I can sort of guess the why, but…the rest?”
Chloe and Danny exchange looks before she starts to speak. “It started about a year ago. I ran into these ads on Craigslist where they sold young girls, you know…people pay for having sex with them. Usually, I work cases farther away and hand everything to the FBI, but these small local things…in the beginning, I alerted the sheriff’s office, but they don’t have the resources to crack down on all of them. They don’t have a special department working sex trafficking. It’s everywhere. I see it all over, Mary. These girls are being hurt and abused. I can’t wait till they get the resources or till the FBI thinks it is big enough for them to deal with. It happens all over. Every day that passes by, someone is raped hundreds of times, or sold into slavery. It’s nasty. I can’t just sit here…and neither can Danny. We got to talking one day and I let out all my frustration about not being able to do anything…knowing about all this.”
Chloe looks at Danny, who nods.
“She showed me some of it,” he says. “Some of the addresses were local and I got to thinking…I mean, if I could save just one girl, then it would be worth it, wouldn’t it? If just one girl could get out of this slavery. I would gladly go to jail for that.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Mary says. “How does it work? Chloe, you…”
“I do the research and Danny goes to check it out. He goes to the bars, like the dancing places, you know gentlemen’s clubs and he asks to pay a bar fine, that’s the code word for wanting to purchase a girl. They take him out back and he tells them what he likes.”
“Usually,” Danny takes over, “I go for the youngest girl there. Or the one with the most fight left in her eyes. These people break the girls before they’re sold, but some of them remain fighters and you can tell by the look in their eyes. They are the ones who won’t last long. They’ll get killed within a few months, often beaten to death because they refuse to submit.”
“And what do you do next?” Mary asks.
It is painful for Danny to talk about this and he closes his eyes as he continues. “I buy them. If I can, I buy them for the night and tell them I want to take the girl with me. It’s expensive, but worth it. I take her to a local shelter in Titusville, where she’ll get the help she needs.”
“How do you even afford it?” Mary asks.
“I got a huge insurance settlement when Jean died. Her life insurance. I don’t need that money. I don’t want it, to be frank. I use it to get the girls instead.”
Mary stares at Danny. It makes him uncomfortable.
“Now you might understand why I was defending him, right?” Chloe asks, looking at Mary.
She holds a hand to her chest. Danny sees tears in her eyes. He doesn’t want her to get emotional. He doesn’t feel like he deserves her tears.
“I can’t believe I thought…” she says, her voice breaking. “Oh, my God, I feel like the worst person on the planet right now.”
“It’s all right,” Chloe says. “How could you have known? We kept
it a secret for a very long time and would have preferred it stayed that way.”
Mary reaches back and puts her hand on Danny’s knee while driving. She looks at him in the rearview mirror.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she says. “Can you forgive me? I should have given you the benefit of the doubt at least. I should have known you were a hero.”
Danny sighs and puts his hand on top of hers. He doesn’t feel like a hero. “The worst part is all the girls I can’t save,” he says. “I’ve seen them. I was there. I’ve looked into their eyes and chosen someone else to save. That’s what’s keeping me up at night. That’s what’s torturing me every day, every hour of my life.”
Chapter Twenty-One
April 2016
You’re the worst friend ever!
The feeling of guilt is killing me as I drive the three of us back towards the beach. I can’t believe I was so quick to conclude this about Danny. Danny, who has always been there for me, well for everyone really. Danny who likes to take care of everyone and every problem. Of course he was just trying to save these girls.
Of course.
“I just can’t believe they would hold an auction like that in the middle of the airport, where thousands of people pass by every day,” I say.
“It’s not the first I’ve been at,” Danny says.
“It happens often,” Chloe says. “A lot more than you think. The airports are one of the worst places, because they fly the girls in from all over the world, tell them they’re going to be models or get work so they can send money home to their families, and then when they arrive some creepy guy brings them somewhere and they’re sold. Lord only knows where they go from there.”
“Most of them live many years in slavery,” Danny says. “They’re often drugged senseless and are transported from place to place, where they are used as prostitutes, or even sold again and again. I talked to a girl who had been locked inside a small apartment for three years where she was raped by different men between twenty and fifty times a day. She kept a diary with recordings of it.”
