Bad Penny

by John D. Brown

  Except that isn’t what this was. Frank knew it. Ed knew it.

  A screen door squeaked open; the handle of a regular door turned. Someone pushed on Frank’s shoulder to change his direction, and then he walked up some steps into a dark house and onto some linoleum. It stunk like someone had been cooking fish.

  “Hey, qué hubo?” How’s it going, a new male voice said. So the house had occupants, but they probably kept the lights out just to make sure nobody saw what they brought in.

  “Primo,” Shotgun replied. “We got the puta.”

  “This way, people,” Ed said. “You’re going downstairs.”

  They walked around a corner, still in the dark, and then someone flipped a switch and a light went on. Not much, but he didn’t need much for it to make a big difference. Frank could see the stairs out of the bottom of his hood. They were narrow stairs, covered in old linoleum, going down into an old basement.

  He didn’t like this, but he followed the girl and Tony down the creaking stairs. It smelled of old cement and must. There was a whiff of old urine overlaid with something floral.

  Someone put a black nylon restraint belt around Frank’s waist, the kind used to transport prisoners. The kind that had a metal loop in the front to which hand cuffs were attached.

  Who said convicts couldn’t learn from their betters?

  They backed him up to a home-made 2x4 and plywood bench, knocked him off balance, and sat him down. He was going to protest, but Shotgun pressed the barrel of his weapon hard into Frank’s face and shoved his head against the wall. And then they broke out the zip ties again, looping one through the zip tie on Frank’s wrists, down through the loop on his restraint belt, and finally through a wide half-moon hole someone had cut out of the front of the bench. They’d run a long length of rebar all along the underside of the seat right at the front. This new zip tie was attached to that. But they didn’t stop. Two more zip ties came out, one to tie each ankle to one of the many bench legs. When they were done, they stood back.

  Frank tried to move, but they’d done a solid job, and he began to wonder if maybe he should have done something on the way in.

  They zip tied Tony and the girl next to him. Then Shotgun ripped the hood off Frank’s head.

  Jesus stood in front of Frank, his hand in a work glove, all wound up for an angry haymaker. He really did look like a bulldog. An ugly zombie bulldog. But hey, it’s not like Frank had been trying to make him look pretty. If Jesus had wanted to look good, he should have kidnapped the nephew of a hair dresser. Or a plastic surgeon.

  Jesus swung. Frank tried to move out of the way, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re tied to a bench that’s nailed into a concrete floor and wall, and Jesus connected. Frank turned his face and shed some of the power of the blow, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His head whipped to the side, and if he hadn’t been tied to the bench, he would have fallen off.

  Jesus definitely had an arm. A couple more of those, and Frank was not going to sleep so well. Jesus pulled back for another blow, but his effort had sprung a leak in his nose. A line of thick red blood ran out of his nose and dripped onto the floor.

  The side of Frank’s face was stinging from the previous blow; it was going to swell up real nice. He braced himself, figured he’d duck forward this time.

  Jesus smiled a terrible smile, his face bruised and bleeding.

  Shotgun said, “Vato, you want to get that on the night shift, man. You don’t want to be walking into the hospital during the day and having to wait in some line.”

  “Wait too long,” Frank added, “and they’ll have to break it again. Too many breaks, and it’s just not going to heal right. That’s only going to compound your problems with the ladies.”

  “Shut up,” Jesus snarled.

  “This dick fart isn’t going anywhere,” Shotgun said.

  Jesus glared then flashed some gang sign at him instead, the meaning of which was lost on Frank, but which probably meant he’d cut off Frank’s head, drink his blood, and then eat his brains, the brains of all his children, his dog, his goldfish, whatever.

  Jesus pointed at Frank with a vigorous and showy snap. “You and me, pendejo. You and me!” Then he turned and climbed up the stairs, leaving Shotgun behind.

  Shotgun was pretty pleased with his skinny self. He smiled, showing a set of black and brown things that used to be teeth. Definitely a tweaker. “Buenas noches,” he said.

  “You really need to see a dentist,” Frank replied.

  Shotgun flipped him a slow bird, then turned and walked back up the stairs.

  Now that was a gang sign Frank could understand.

  He wanted to touch the throbbing side of his head, but of course, the zip ties prevented that. He thought about Jesus’s little theatrical ambush. If your goal was damage, you didn’t punch someone in the side of the head. It’s the hardest part of the body. There were plenty of other areas that were softer and would cause more pain. Which meant his first assessment of Jesus had been correct. He was a brawler.

  Frank looked at Tony and the girl.

  “You okay?” Tony asked.

  Frank said, “I might have lost a few years of my life looking at the little one’s teeth, but I think I will survive. I hope you don’t have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Oh, man,” Tony said. “Why did you even have to mention it?”

  Frank noticed the urine smell was stronger here by the bench. If one of them did the deed, he or she wouldn’t be the first.

  “Don’t think about it,” Frank said, and then he caught the stare of the girl. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking with dismay at something past him. Frank turned.

  This was the basement of a small, old house, much like his 1950s bungalow in Rock Springs. They were in the main open area. One naked light bulb illuminated the room that seemed to stretch the length of the house. There were two small windows, both boarded up with plywood that had been driven right into the cement of the foundation. There was an old water heater and furnace. There was a door standing open to a tiny bathroom that looked like it didn’t have more than a toilet and sink in it. The toilet bowl itself was stained brown.

  But none of this is what dismayed their female companion. What dismayed her were the girls sitting on two filthy mattresses thrown on the floor in the shadows at the other end. Four were in their early teens. The fifth looked more like she was ten. She was holding a worn teddy bear, wearing pink pajamas. They were all Hispanic. Anywhere else, and you might think they were having a sleepover. But it was a little difficult when there were no movies, games, or party snacks and everyone was locked in, prison style, with Ed and Jesus upstairs.

  “Hello, girls,” Frank said.

  Then a boy moved out from behind the others. He looked about as old as the girl with the teddy bear. He had a bruise on his face.

  They said nothing. The giggly girlyness of youth that should have shone in the girl’s eyes was so long gone it wasn’t even a memory. The boy’s face was a stone.

  Frank had seen such eyes before. He’d seen them in Colombia. Seen them in Afghanistan. These were eyes that had seen fifty years of hard labor. Like maybe someone had taken their dreams by the hair and cut their throats.

  “Who are you?” Frank asked.

  The oldest girl gave a warning glance to the younger ones. “We are homeschooled,” she said with a thick accent.

  “Jesus is teaching you math and biology?”

  “Yes,” the oldest girl said.

  She was a terrible liar.

  Special Forces operators were required to learn a language. Frank had learned Spanish, forgotten much of it serving in Afghanistan, then learned a different type in prison. He wasn’t fluent, but he knew enough.

  He said, “Dios no quisiera que vivíeras con lobos.”

  “What are you saying?” Tony asked.

  “That God never wanted them to live with wolves.”

  A few of the other girls looked at Frank with fear. Like
something bad might happen if the oldest girl didn’t play this right.

  “We are fine,” the oldest girl said. “We are homeschooled.”

  Then somebody flipped the switch upstairs, and the light went out.

  12

  Locks

  THE ROOM WENT black. As Frank’s eyes adjusted, a wan light appeared on the other side of the room. It was cast on the floor by the tiny furnace pilot flame. Upstairs, Jesus and Shotgun talked about the hospital and urgent care. A few minutes later the back screen door banged shut. Then a vehicle started outside and pulled out. A chair scraped back, someone walked to the sink, turned it on, turned it off, then walked to another part of the house. Someone turned on a TV and tuned into a Spanish station. Someone else laughed.

  Frank spoke into the darkness, “Are they having you work in the fields or in the houses?”

  “Señor,” the oldest girl said. “We are homeschooled.”

  They weren’t. Not by a long shot. They were being transported. Out to the fields in California or the orchards in Washington. Or maybe to some fine buyers who needed someone to wash dishes in the back of their restaurant.

  Six kids. What was the going rate for a little slave these days? $800 to $1,200 bucks? They could sell them to individuals, but they’d more likely sell them to a subcontractor that would bid out harvesting services. He’d show up with his crews, including some children like these, and they’d pick the apples and strawberries that the rest of America ate. The contractor might pay them a pittance, tell them they were working off their fee, but it would never work out that way.

  There was a long-shot that Jesus was actually transporting these kids to uncles and aunts who had paid for a coyote to bring them over. Maybe even a parent or grandparent who’d preceded them into the land of plenty. But coyote services usually stopped close to the border. And willing kids didn’t need to be locked up in the back of a van with a bicycle chain.

  “Someone has these kids trained,” Frank said. And he hated Ed and Jesus even more.

  “Dude, what are we going to do?” Tony asked.

  “That all depends,” Frank said. This whole time the woman Tony had freed had not spoken a word.

  Frank said, “Señorita, you mind telling me why Ed had you in his trunk?”

  Silence.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  No response.

  “Habla Inglés?”

  “She speaks English,” Tony said.

  “Well, buddy, here’s what I think. We’re in a stash house. Those girls over there are being sold up the river. Literally. The one you freed, best bet is they picked her up in Utah. But what’s in Utah? Maybe there’s a small business owner they’re trying to extort. Someone undocumented who doesn’t have his paperwork in order. She’s his daughter. What would they ask? Fifty thousand, a hundred? Is that what this is, Señorita?”

  Nothing.

  “She wouldn’t tell me nothing,” Tony said. “Then Ed drugged us. He kept calling her his pot of gold.”

  Frank said to the woman, “We’re in this together. I personally hate Ed; so the more we work together, the better our chances of getting out of here.”

  “Right,” she said.

  She obviously didn’t believe him. Didn’t trust him at all.

  “At least tell me your name. I’m Frank Shaw. Frank Moses Shaw, actually. The Moses came from my Dad’s grandfather, a wild west preacher who is said to have shot a number of criminals in his time.”

  No response.

  She was not a happy camper. But then, if Frank had been beaten and stuffed in a trunk, he might not be Mr. Customer Service either. “I’m not the one that put you in the trunk.”

  “Does that matter?”

  All she knew was that Frank knew Ed; in her mind they could be buddies. It was the old guilt by association. “I’m not involved with Ed. I only know Ed because the great State of California assigned us to be cell mates for a while. That’s my crime; what’s yours?”

  “Talking,” she said.

  Frank waited, but she didn’t say more. “We’re going to get out,” he said. “The question is whether I take you and those kids with me.”

  “You’re just going to break your bands?”

  “More or less.”

  Tony said, “He was a Green Beret. Those morons upstairs don’t have an idea.”

  “There are five of them.”

  “They’ll need ten more to make it fair.”

  Frank smiled ruefully. If only. One unarmed guy against four or five with guns only worked out in the movies. But he appreciated a little hero worship now and again; besides, the oldest girl needed to believe, or she just might rat him out instead. And Tony needed to believe as well.

  Frank said, “In a couple of hours they’ll all be asleep.”

  “Should be a piece of cake then,” she said.

  This woman had some definite trust issues. Furthermore, she should be scared. Worried. Something. Kidnapped daughters of businessmen don’t act like this. Something else was going on here.

  Frank said, “Look, I don’t know what’s between you and them, but I’m fairly certain that the Jesus upstairs isn’t the forgiving type. I suspect this Jesus wants to saw my head off with the serrated edge of a steak knife. You were asleep at the time, but I’m the one that rearranged his face. I’m not too keen on losing my head or any other body part; that’s where I’m coming from.”

  “Then it sounds like you’d better get busy,” she said.

  “Thanks for the helpful advice,” Frank said. Why didn’t she want to talk? Why does anyone not want to talk? Because you think it won’t get you anywhere. Or you think it might make matters worse.

  “You think I’m a plant, don’t you,” Frank said.

  No response.

  “You’ve got something they want.”

  Silence.

  That was the only reason to keep her alive. But what she had wasn’t the riddle Frank needed to solve at the moment. He assessed his situation. Jesus was gone to get his nose fixed. Probably took Shotgun with him. That meant there were three men above.

  Three was better than five.

  The bench he was now zip-tied to appeared to have been built by the same guy who built the bench in the van. The guy had put some thought into it. He’d been a regular Leonardo. Except he hadn’t thought out all the things the Gorozas might attach to this thing. They hadn’t thought, for example, of Frank. If you’re going to engineer, you really need to build things to go above and beyond the regular expected use.

  He began to work the mouth of the zip tie binding him to the bench around so he could get at it. These weren’t landscaping ties. They were bigger and built for human restraint. Perfect for scared girls. Perfect for your run-of-the-mill guy.

  Frank said, “Jesus has an MS-13 tattoo. The Gorozas are into something big, aren’t they? Meth? Cocaine?”

  “You would know,” the woman said.

  So she did think he was in cahoots.

  Frank slid the locking mechanism of the zip tie around in front of his hands. With a finger he bent the loose end of the tie around his wrists and began to shim it into the lock of the zip tie binding him to the bench. It took some jiggering, and it was tight, but he soon had the end of the one zip tie inside the lock housing of the other, creating a barrier between the teeth of the tie and the lock. He pushed it in a bit further. With the strip between the teeth and the housing, there was no lock holding the tie tight. Frank quietly slid open the tie binding him to the bench.

  He stood up, used his teeth to slide the zip tie around his wrists so the lock was facing up. He grabbed the loose end with his teeth and pulled the zip tie as tight as it would go. Then he raised his hands above his head and brought them down hard against his gut, shooting his elbows out like chicken wings. The tie held. He adjusted the lock so it was in the center between his wrists, tightened it, raised his arms again. This time when he came down, the plastic lock broke, making a tiny snap.

  �
�Dude,” Tony said.

  “Shush,” Frank said. The fact was that the Stockholm syndrome was real. It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened enough. Just ask a veteran cop who has answered his or her fair share of domestic dispute calls. Ignore the wife and focus on her wife-beating husband, and you just might find a knife in your back. These girls were young. He didn’t want to think about the abuse they’d already suffered. They might be shot up with cocaine or heroin or meth. The last thing he needed was for one of them, in a poor twisted mechanism of self-defense, to warn their captors. It was called operational security.

  Same went for the woman. She might be a Goroza herself. Maybe she’d fallen out of favor with the family. Maybe she was a dealer who’d stolen drugs. Maybe she was a meth head and by tomorrow morning would be ready to sell him out for her next hit. The only one he trusted here was Tony.

  He bent over and used the end of the now worthless zip tie to shim the two that held his ankles. It was pitch black in the room, so he had to feel his way. When he finished, he sat back in the darkness. It was very dark down here. But it wasn’t quiet; the sound of the TV came right through the floor boards. That was a good thing. He leaned close to Tony and spoke in his ear. “Snap your fingers, and keep snapping them until I say stop.”

  Tony began to snap. It was a good masking sound and added to the TV soundtrack.

  Tony said, “How—”

  “Shush,” Frank replied. “Ancient Chinese secret. Now listen. In about an hour I’m going to get up. Do not trust anyone. If one of the kids or our mystery woman asks about me, you say I’m right here sleeping. Clear?”

  “Clear,” Tony said.

  “You can stop snapping,” Frank said.

  Tony stopped.

  “You want to sleep?” Frank asked. “Just lean on my shoulder.”

  “I’m not tired,” Tony said.

  “Then tell me about your ride with Ed.”

  Tony related their abduction and drugging with Benadryl. He described a snippet of one phone conversation he’d heard where Ed told the people on the other line that she’d be ready. But for what Tony couldn’t guess. And she didn’t fill in any blanks.

  When Tony ran out of things to say, Frank told him a couple of humorous stories from his days in the service. He wanted to keep Tony’s mind off of the situation. He also wanted some baseline of noise.