Garcia stood up, spreading his hands, indicating it was all he could offer.
“Be very careful from here, Judge. It may be time for a quick flight back to California. There are large sums at stake. And the people involved are ruthless.”
CHAPTER 29
As soon as they got back to their room, the Judge called Palmilla, the resort where the cocktail party had been, and asked for a guest, Santiago Lopez, who was with La Opinión. The front desk put the call through to the room, but there was no answer. When voicemail came on, the Judge said, “I am a retired Judge visiting Cabo. I have a matter I must discuss with you, Señor Lopez. It’s of the utmost urgency and I’d like to talk to you today.” He left his hotel number and his email.
They traded emails through the balance of the morning and early afternoon, the Judge becoming more specific with each email, and more desperate. His final email said he had valuable information relevant to human trafficking in Baja California. Señor Lopez agreed to meet at the main bar of Palmilla at four p.m. for a drink.
The Judge left Katy in the hotel room, under protest, and taxied across the boot of Baha toward San José and Palmilla, repeating his earlier trip now in sunlight, watching the bright blue coast slide by punctuated periodically by one resort after another.
The main bar at Palmilla was adjacent to the dining room of the resort, modern, soft lavender lights, steel bar and stools, lots of silvers and greys in wallpaper and upholstery, complemented by dark wood paneling here and there. It could have doubled as a trendy bar in New York.
There was only one customer in the bar, perched on a stool, a small slight man, Mexican, late forties, huddling over his lone drink, a Jack and Coke. He wore tan shorts and a blue striped business shirt, tails-out, sleeves rolled up, skinny brown feet dangling sandals on the ends of his toes under a barstool just a tad too tall for him.
“Are you Señor Lopez?”
The man glanced sideways, squinting at the Judge in the dull light, then nodded slightly. The Judge piled onto a stool beside him, towering over Lopez, taller and unfortunately heavier. He’d become the typical fat American, the Judge thought, looking across the stacked bottles behind the bar at himself in the mirror.
“I’m the Judge. We spoke by email.”
“Yes. You are a man in trouble.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a newspaper man. I smell it on you. Not fear quite yet. Not yet. But anxiety. It’ll turn to fear later. It’s the way of these things. I’ve been a reporter a long time.”
“Then you know I’m hoping you can help.”
“Yes. Don’t we all hope that? It’s easier to hope than to admit we’re alone.”
“Can I tell you my story?”
“Better get you a drink first. Here.”
The man smacked his hand flat on the bar, making a slapping sound. The louvered partial doors at the other end of the bar swung open and a chubby Mexican appeared like Jack out of his box, dressed in grey slacks and white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, ready to take a drink order. The Judge ordered rum y Coca, tall, with lemon and sparse ice. Lopez nodded his approval.
A small middle-aged woman stepped into the bar, decked out in a short pink dress, displaying strong muscular legs beneath, raven hair cut short, and soft brown eyes which settled on Lopez. She made a bee-line for him, throwing her arm around his neck and giving him a kiss. Lopez brightened perceptibility, a smile spreading across his face, the tension lines disappearing.
“This is my wife, Alicia, Judge. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Color rose a tad in Alicia’s cheeks at the compliment. She extended a delicate hand with long fingers to shake the Judge’s hand, smiling, cocking her head toward her husband for information.
“The Judge may have a story for me, honey. I’ll just be a few minutes. Go get us a table and order us some wine. I’ll be there shortly.”
She gave the Judge another soft smile, then disappeared around the end of the bar into the dining room.
“Isn’t she wonderful? Twenty-three years together, and my pulse still races when she walks into the room. Don’t know what she sees in an old goat like me. But she loves me, Judge. You married?”
“Recently. And the problem I have appears to be my new wife’s problem as well.”
Lopez just nodded. By unspoken agreement they waited, silent, until the bartender set the Judge’s drink down in front of him and disappeared again behind his louvers. Then the Judge launched into his story. He started with the tour of the plant, not naming its corporate owner, then described the note passed to him in the restroom, the later discovery of the 14-year-old Cristina stowed away in the back of their van, the army blockade of the road, and the resulting re-capture of Cristina.
Lopez listened intently, scribbling a few notes on a napkin.
The Judge next described the attack on the beach by what he believed to be a drone, and the huge waves that nearly swept the Judge and Katy out to sea.
Lopez nodded, seeing it all in his mind’s eye, then stared into space for a time, considering the information, and its source.
“You left something out, Judge.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. The name of the company that owned this plant?”
“Yes. It’s ASAM.”
Lopez looked up sharply. He clearly knew the name.
“You’re sure, señor?
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“Is this a story of interest to you, Señor Lopez?” asked the Judge. “And perhaps to your cousin, who I understand is Vice Chairman of the Mexican Congress Commission on Human Trafficking.”
Lopez was silent again for a time, staring off into space. Finally, he turned back to the Judge. “Sorry, Judge. Not trying to be coy. Just considering the ramifications of your discovery, and the consequence of my delving into it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Mexico can be a very dangerous place. It was ranked the world’s second-deadliest conflict zone in 2016. There were twenty-three thousand killings in Mexico that year, second only to the Syrian Civil War that left fifty thousand people dead.”
The Judge paled.
“And it’s a particularly dangerous job to be a newsman in Mexico today, señor. One must be careful, just to stay alive. If one does too many stories, or maybe just one wrong story, or the wrong people are involved, a newsman can be gunned down.”
“But the government… the police… don’t they protect you?”
“Not like one would wish. In fact, sometimes they’re part of the problem. You see, Mexico is going through a freedom of expression crisis right now.”
“How so?”
“So many horrible things, all this year. Javier Valdez, one of our most beloved newsmen, correspondent for the daily La Jornada and a co-founder of the regional weekly RíoDoce, was shot on a busy street in broad daylight. His body, his trade-mark straw hat partially covering his head, was just left to lay on the street for a time, roped off by the police.
Another columnist was shot twice as he left a restaurant with his wife and son. A journalist and mother of three was fatally shot eight times outside her home while she was in her car with one of her children. A rolled-up piece of cardboard was left with the words ‘being a tattletale’.
A freelance journalist who founded La Voz de Tierra Caliente, was killed at a carwash. And another columnist was shot twice near the city of Cordoba in Veracruz.
More than one hundred newspaper and media journalists have been killed, or simply disappeared, since 2000. Many deaths have been confirmed as related to the victim’s journalist work. Most crimes have been improperly investigated and remain unsolved. Very few perpetrators are ever arrested or convicted.”
“That’s scary.”
“It is. So, you see why I’m cautious?”
“Yes.”
“Human trafficking is a sad story here in Mexico, señor. Forced labor, forced prostitution, inhuman treatment by human beings of fe
llow human beings. It is a discouragement for us all who would like to believe in the higher qualities of man.”
“You’ve done stories on trafficking before?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve tried to shine a light on this… ‘industry’. At the beginning of the year I did a story about a typical victim, let’s call her Yolanda. Sexually abused by a relative for as long as she could remember, rejected by her mother, Yolanda was twelve, waiting for friends in a Mexico City subway, when a boy selling candy came up, telling her somebody had bought her chocolates. A young man of twenty-two approached, introduced himself, chatted her up, made a date for the next day to drive to nearby Puebla. He picked Yolanda up in a bright red Firebird Trans Am the next afternoon. She was very impressed.
The young man said he loved her. A week later Yolanda moved in with him. She was only twelve remember. For three months it was wonderful. He bought her clothes, shoes, flowers, more chocolates, and treated her well. He seemed to have plenty of money. She finally asked him what business he was in. He told her. He was a pimp.
A few days later he told Yolanda everything she had to do for him, to pay him back for the clothes, the meals, the good times, the roof over her head. He explained the sexual positions, how much she needed to charge, the things she had to do with her client and for how long. How she was to treat her client, how she had to talk to him, how she had to pretend to sexually climax with moans and yelps so the client would give her more money. He took her to Guadalajara for a week and put her in service. She’d start at ten a.m. and finished at midnight. Twenty men per day for a week. Some men would laugh because she was crying. She said she’d close her eyes, so she wouldn't see what they were doing. And try not to feel anything as they used her.
Toward the end of the week, a john gave her a hickey. Her pimp was angry when he spotted it. That’s when she said she wanted to quit; to leave. This made her pimp even more angry. He beat her with a chain, punched her with his fists, kicked her, pulled her hair, spit in her face, and burned her with an iron. It was two weeks before he could put her back in service.
After that she was sent to brothels, roadside motels, streets known for prostitution, and even homes. There were no holidays or days off, and after the first few days, she was made to see at least thirty customers a day, seven days a week.
Yolanda was working at a hotel at one point. She’d turned thirteen. The police showed up and shut the place down. She thought she and the other girls would be rescued. But the police took the girls to several rooms and shot video of them in compromising positions. The girls were told the videos would be sent to their families if they didn't do everything the police then asked them to do. Yolanda said what the police then did to them was disgusting. Most of the girls were not even fully developed, all were frightened, sad, crying. Several were only ten years old. It didn’t matter to these police.
When Yolanda was fifteen, she gave birth to a baby girl, fathered by her pimp. He threatened to hurt the baby if Yolanda didn’t obey him. He took the baby away from her a month after it was born. She was not allowed to see her baby for a year.
Yolanda was finally rescued for real during an anti-trafficking operation in Mexico City. She was sixteen. Her ordeal lasted almost four years. By Yolanda’s estimate, she’d had sex with strangers some forty-three thousand times, up to thirty men a day, seven days a week, for almost four years.”
“That’s awful.”
“It is. But I’m afraid not atypical. It highlights the brutal realities of human trafficking in Mexico. And also in your country, señor. In the United States. Human trafficking has also become a trade so lucrative and so prevalent that it knows no borders. The trade links towns in central Mexico with cities like Atlanta, New York, and your own Los Angeles.”
“Will you look into my story, Señor Lopez? Consider doing an article on ASAM and its practices?”
“I’d like to. I should. But I want to see the sun come up each day also. Can you blame me?”
“No,” the Judge said, disappointment in his voice.
“Who is directing this trafficking at ASAM? Do you know?”
“I don’t know who’s at the top. The plant manager’s name is Castillo. He’s clearly involved.”
“Let me think about it, señor. I’d have to move quickly if I wanted to verify what you say and then expose it. Before ASAM moves everyone to some other plant, covers their tracks. Either way I’ll certainly call my cousin. I think he’ll be interested to hear about ASAM and its clandestine activities.”
The Judge sat back on his stool with some small relief. This was at least something. He hoped this was the beginning of a solution to the pickle he and Katy were in. As he did so, shifting his angle to the bar, he saw the partial shutters at the other end were open perhaps six inches. The barman was standing there, peeking out, eavesdropping on their conversation. The Judge hoped this was casual curiosity. Not someone prepared to peddle what he’d just heard to the wrong people.
The Judge thanked Lopez and they both got up. Lopez, over the Judge’s objection, insisting on taking the tab. They shook hands, Lopez looking the Judge in the eye and saying in a low voice, “Be careful. This is not California, Judge.”
Lopez swung around toward the dining room, brightening again at the prospect of seeing his Alicia. The Judge turned and left, feeling just as lonely and isolated as when he’d arrived.
CHAPTER 30
Promptly at seven a.m. the next morning the phone rang in their room, waking the Judge out of a nightmare of sorts, ugly mosquito looking robots diving out of the sky, swarming around his head, as though in some steampunk version of Pearl Harbor. He awoke in a cold sweat, cold because the air was still turned up full tilt, and scrambled for the phone, unfortunately now on Katy’s side of the bed.
The gravelly tones of Chief Inspector Garcia didn’t bode well, nor did the command he meet the good inspector immediately in the lobby. He threw toothpaste and brush into his mouth briefly, gave up on shaving, jumped into jeans and a rumpled shirt hanging over a room chair, and felt his way out of the room and down toward the elevators, hoping coffee would miraculously appear at the end of his march.
Inspector Garcia was pacing impatiently in the lobby, quashing the idea of coffee, and without discussion escorted the Judge out to a waiting black sedan, shiny and new, the words POLICE DEPARTMENT – CABO SAN LUCAS, emblazoned in small gold letters on its doors. They roared off, leaving a cloud of exhaust, hauling ass down the cobblestone lane through the resort to the street, scattering the hotel housekeeping people walking up the road to begin their shifts.
Garcia turned to the Judge without a smile, and stabbed his finger toward the town. “My Chief wants the murders of María Cervantes and Ana Cervantes solved now, today. No delay. I’ve decided to enlist your efforts again.”
“Where are we going, Garcia?”
“Back to your ASAM plant. Where you saw the drone. Let’s see if it, or one like it, is there.”
“At the plant?”
“Yes.”
“Look, I’m on vacation, Garcia. I’ve no interest in running around the countryside and….”
Garcia held up his hand, palm outward, into the middle of the Judge’s face.
“This isn’t for discussion, señor. You’re going to help me. And if we’re successful, perhaps you and your bride will no longer be targets for a disappearance.”
The Judge snapped his mouth shut. Garcia had a point.
They rattled over the same course north as before, traveling at a third again the speed, whizzing through toll booths and around traffic with impunity, everyone seeming to know it was a police vehicle and immediately steering clear. Neither man talked much, accepting the uncomfortable silence between them as a given.
Two-thirds of the way north, Garcia’s cell phone rang. He took the call, listening to a report from someone, the line of his mouth growing tighter as he listened. Hanging up, he turned to the Judge with a burr in his voice, “There’s a seafarer’s
word for you, Judge. You’re a Jonah.”
“What’d I do now?” the Judge asked, spreading his hands to indicate his confusion.
“That was my Chief. The newspaper man, my friend. The one I assume you saw yesterday.”
“Lopez?”
“Yes. Our Señor Lopez. Gunned down this morning outside a breakfast restaurant near Palmilla, in front of his wife and his two small children. Four shots to the chest. Died at the hospital.”
“Shit,” said the Judge. “I spoke to him, met his wife, just yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes, señor, I’m sure you did.”
The Judge slumped back in his seat, pale now, the enormity of his position hitting like a brick. A part of him wanted to reach for his cell phone and buy tickets for he and Katy on the first flight out of this desolate, miserable little place.
“This has got to be stopped, Garcia. For several days I’ve been sitting in the belly of this conspiracy. They attempted to drive us into the sea and drown us. It was only pure luck that we ended up back on the beach.”
“Like Jonah, Judge? In the belly of the fish for three days, then thrown up onto the shores of Nineveh?”
“Yes. Like Jonah.”
The Judge stared out the window for a time, wondering how a simple vacation had turned into such a mess. Finally, he turned back to Garcia.
“Are we wise, Garcia, tumbling into this plant like this? Just you, me and the driver. They have a ton of security people carrying guns around the perimeter and inside. We might be gunned down too.”
Garcia gave him a superior look, stretching himself a little taller in his seat. “I want that drone identified, Judge, and the person who used it. It would be their error to start trouble.”
Cabo Page 16