“The young women would become your territory,” Mike said.
I had seen this time after time in my role as chief sex crimes prosecutor in the DA’s office—girls abducted from their homes in Thailand or Montenegro, running away from abusive parents and desolate lives in Sri Lanka or Serbia, smuggled across borders in car trunks or leaky boats, often following their brothers or school-mates, hoping that hard work and physical labor would eventually gain them the freedom of a new life in the States.
But the girls rarely made it to farmlands and fields. The sex trade had become a huge transnational industry, as lucrative as it could be deadly. The teenagers on the Golden Voyage were doubtless bound for basements and brothels, to be broken in by their owners for the months and years of prostitution that awaited them in the promised land.
“Is there any way to identify these victims?” I asked.
“No better than usual. Each one is supposed to have a piece of paper with his or her family name and town of origin in their pockets when they ship out,” Baynes said. “Most of them tossed or swallowed the paper as the police launches arrived. The brother of one of the dead girls is among the few who are talking. He dove in and she tried to follow.”
A lanky man sat at the corner of the tented morgue, with a gray blanket covering his head and upper body. I couldn’t tell whether he was shaking from the cold or because he was crying so hard.
Stu Carella was making his way back to us, refusing the offer of an NYPD sweatshirt that one of the cops thrust at him.
“Another kid gone,” Carella said, throwing a tuft of algae at the ground in disgust. “Probably drowned in three feet of water, unable to handle the pull of the rip.”
“From his hand?” Mike knelt down and picked up the slimy green vegetation with the tip of his pen.
“Yeah.”
Mike whistled and the closest cops looked up. He signaled one, who jogged to us. “Carry this over to the medical examiner. Goes with that latest body.”
The fact that the victim had been clutching algae, and I’d bet a handful of sand, as he was dragged across the ocean floor meant that he had been alive when he went into the water. Drowning, I had learned over the years, was a diagnosis of exclusion. A complete autopsy would be necessary for each of the Golden Voyagers who had washed up on the windy beach, despite how obvious the circumstances appeared to be to us.
“What do you plan to do, Donny?” I asked. “I mean, with the survivors.”
There was no good answer to this question. It was commonplace for these individuals whose lives at home were already overcome with despair to risk everything for this run to freedom, only to find themselves handcuffed in the backseat of a patrol car to begin the next leg of their ugly journey. A few might eventually be granted political asylum, some would be deported, but the majority would wind up in immigrant detention centers somewhere in the heart-land of America.
Baynes stammered as he surveyed the bleak scene stretched out across the waterfront.
“I—I haven’t had an operation of this size since I—uh—since I was appointed to the task force. Frankly, I don’t know what becomes of these poor souls.”
The noise overhead was a police helicopter, probably carrying Commissioner Keith Scully, whom Donovan, Mike, and I all knew well.
“Not jail,” I said. “We can’t let them rot in jail while we sort it out.”
“Scully’s too smart for that,” Mike said.
“You’ll have to start working with the women right away, Alex,” Baynes said. “We’ll have them checked out medically and then each one needs to be interviewed. You’ve got backup?”
“The senior people in the bureau will be on it with me.” I had a great team of lawyers assigned to my unit by Battaglia, experienced in the courtroom and compassionate in their interactions with traumatized victims.
I could hear wailing now, a cacophony of voices that seemed like it could carry for miles. Cops were trying to move a small cluster of bedraggled survivors toward the dunes, to the vans waiting in the street that would shuttle them to whatever police facility Scully designated. The men were refusing to separate from their comrades despite prodding—all still focused on the others being ferried ashore, all still searching the waves for signs of missing friends.
“C’mon, Coop. You’ll rerun this movie in your brain all day and all night,” Mike said, taking my arm to turn me away from the sight. “You got what Battaglia sent you for. Donovan’s not doing anything on this case without your input.”
My feet were firmly planted in the sand. “I want to talk to Scully, Mike. Let go.”
“Scully’s running late.”
My head whipped around as I recognized the voice of Mercer Wallace. I squinted in the sunlight and shaded my eyes with my hand to look up at him. His six-foot-six frame towered over my shivering five-foot-ten-inch body.
“Good to have you here, buddy,” Baynes said, shaking his hand. “We’ve got a monster of a problem on our hands.”
Mercer was one of the only African American detectives in the city to make first-grade. He was my best ally at the Special Victims Squad—a former partner of Mike’s from his days in Homicide—and I had urged Donovan to include him on the JTTF—the Joint Trafficking Task Force, assembled to combat the increasingly desperate fight against human trafficking into the New York area.
“I’m waiting on the commissioner to land,” Baynes said, staring as the chopper banked and circled out over the freighter. “We’ll fill you in.”
“You sleep in today or what?” Mike asked Mercer. “Half a tour?”
“Scully’s not making it here, guys. I’ve been with him for hours,” Mercer said, sipping from a cardboard cup of coffee.
“Where at?” Mike said. “Anybody think to tell him this slave ship just capsized in his very own territorial waters?”
“The commissioner knows all about it, Mr. Chapman. He’s got his hands full with some other business.”
“The mayor won’t want to be stonewalled on this one,” Baynes said.
“He and Scully are together as we speak,” Mercer said, offering me a slug of his coffee. “Counting on you to hold this down, Donovan, till they get on it.”
“Something more important than this, huh? Lemme guess,” Mike said, tugging at the fringe on the end of my scarf. “You got a mayor who wants to be president and a commissioner who wants to be mayor. Ship of fools gets trumped by what? A whiff of political corruption with maybe a dollop of sex. Am I warm? Somebody passing money to a cross-dressing candidate in the stall of a men’s room at Grand Central Station?”
Mercer was taking in the panorama of disaster that spread out before us. He crossed his arms and walked off to the side. “You’re not too far wrong.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Ethan Leighton.”
Mercer Wallace had everyone’s attention with the mention of the name of the forty-two-year-old congressman from Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“What’s he complaining about now?” Mike asked. “That guy’s been a whiner since he was born.”
“Ethan’s a good guy. You know we were classmates at Columbia Law,” said Donny Baynes. “His dad’s always had big plans for him, he’s under a lot of pressure.”
“Yeah, well, either way, this time he’s on the other side of the complaint,” Mercer said. “Leighton’s the perp.”
Donovan Baynes seemed blindsided. I knew he and Ethan had even worked together after law school in the Southern District. “What are you talking about?”
“Ethan Leighton flipped his car on the FDR Drive at three thirty this morning. Hit a van before he plowed into the railing. The two guys in the van broke some bones, but they’ll make it. The congressman was intoxed. Maybe tanked’s a better word,” Mercer said. “Where do you want me to start? DWI? Reckless assault? Leaving the scene?”
“Is Ethan hurt too?” I asked. He was a rising congressional star who hoped to be New York’s next governor. In all likelihood Donovan B
aynes was one of his closest advisors.
“A few bruises. Dead drunk, and somehow he fled the scene—or staggered away from it—before the cops got there. Tried to have one of his former aides take the weight.”
“I don’t believe it,” Baynes said, squaring off against Mercer. “Ethan’s such a straight shooter.”
“I guess he had a rough night with his girlfriend,” Mercer said. “The baby was sick, spiking a really high fever, and they fought about whether to rush her to the emergency room.”
“That’s nonsense,” Baynes said. I’d never seen him so agitated. “Where did you hear that crap? It can’t be true. There’s no sick baby. Ethan doesn’t have a girlfriend. Just because the mayor’s got a grudge against his old man—or, or he’s looking for some bait to get the paparazzi off the scene of this shipwreck—you’re buying into that? Who’s peddling these lies?”
“There’s apparently more than enough fodder to go around,” Mercer said, breaking away from Baynes as he headed in the direction of the morgue. “Ethan’s got a girlfriend, all right, and what the tabloids will undoubtedly call a love child.”
“Who fed you this story?” Baynes said, charging after Mercer, challenging him to answer. “I want to know where you picked that up.”
Mercer turned and put his arm out to bring Donovan to a stop. “You got a sea of misery right here, Donny. Let’s deal with that. Don’t be getting in high dudgeon over Leighton.”
“He’s my closest friend, Mercer. I need to know where this is coming from.”
“It’s Ethan’s wife who told me, okay? I heard every sorry detail from Ethan Leighton’s wife.”
TWO
Shouts went up from the beach as a small speedboat nosed into the sand, the driver lifting and tilting the engine as he came to a stop. Five guys stepped out of it into the shallow surf to the roaring cheers of their friends, and one of the rescuers hoisted a young woman over his shoulder and carried her in. When he reached a dry spot at the foot of a low dune, he lowered her onto her feet, steadying her while she caught her breath.
A man broke loose from the group and ran to embrace her. Before any cops could reach them, both dropped to their knees and began praying together, the girl’s body wracked by sobs.
“Cooper! Give me a hand,” one of the homicide detectives yelled to me as he tried to break them up.
I took off running and Mike jogged beside me until we reached the terrified pair. The girl picked up her head and noted the dozens of people staring at her. She dissolved in tears again as I knelt beside her.
I stroked her back and tried to calm her. “The interpreters, Mike, get me one stat.”
“Is okay, lady,” the male said to me. “I speak little English.”
The girl looked back and forth between our faces, fearing that I was the enemy.
“My name is Alexandra. I’m a lawyer for the government,” I said, “and I’m going to help you.”
He repeated my words to her, but the idea of government and help in the same sentence didn’t seem encouraging to either of them.
“Are you related to her?”
“Is girlfriend. Is my girlfriend.”
This was not the time to break investigative rules. One victim, one friend or relative, should not be translating for another. There was nothing I could ask her about her ordeal in his presence that she wouldn’t try to filter as she answered questions through him.
“What are your names?”
“Cyril,” he said. “Am Cyril. Her is Emilia.”
I looked back over the beach to see whether any other shelter had been put up, but the only covered area was the morgue.
“Let’s get Emilia warm first. Let’s make her more comfortable,” I said. Then I whispered to Mike. “Find a place where I can talk to her without the boyfriend.”
“We’re waiting on buses to take all of them to the hospital to be examined.”
“Good. I’ll ride with her. Get her alone. See what she knows, where she thought she was going.”
“I don’t mean ambulances.” They were known in police parlance as buses. “I mean big yellow school buses that can take groups of them at a time.”
“What’s that building behind the cabanas?” I asked, pointing past the morgue. “What does that sign say, Sun and Surf?”
“Yeah, it’s a private beach club, all closed up for the winter. They’ll be calling it Surf and Turf if any more dead meat washes up in front,” Mike said. “Wait till she’s been examined and treated. Then you’ll have her by herself with all the support you need.”
Cyril had wrapped his own blanket around Emilia’s shoulders. A strong gust of wind blew the woolen cover off and revealed a large, raw patch of skin on her forearm.
“What happened to her, Cyril?” I shouldn’t have asked him the question but I worried about particles of sand becoming embedded in the open wound.
“Was so crowded below docks—decks? What you call it in the boat? Decks. She was burned against one of the engines in boiler room.” He raised Emilia’s arm so that I could see the injury.
“Please tell her she’ll be examined by a doctor in a few hours.” I could only imagine the inhumane conditions during the ocean passage.
I wanted the travelers to be made safe and I wanted the criminals behind this operation to be identified as quickly as possible.
Plainclothes officers were setting up folding tables at the foot of the dunes as a food station. Others were carting coffee urns and passing snacks out to the bewildered victims.
“Yo, Chapman,” one of the new arrivals called out, his gold shield case hanging out of his jacket pocket. “You want a shot of vodka with your coffee? A little hair of the dog?”
“The dog didn’t bite last night, Rowdy. Didn’t even lick me. Why, I look hung over to you?”
“Nah. I thought maybe you stopped for a few pops with the congressman.”
“You heard about Leighton already?” Mike asked. “I never drink with guys I can’t stand. Irritates my throat and my mood. Didn’t know word was out.”
“The parking lot’s buzzing,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “The reporter from the Post wants to clone himself so he can get exclusives on that story without missing any of this one. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Alex.”
“Sorry, Rowdy,” I said, feeling the blush running up the side of my neck and coloring my cheeks. We had a professional history together, history I didn’t relish reliving. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Never left. Just hit a bump in the road that had me sidelined for a while. The department kept me rubber-gunned for eighteen months but restored me full blast in the fall,” Rowdy Kitts said, the right side of his mouth drawing back into a grin. “And that paragon of congressional virtue—Ethan Leighton—was one of the people who made my life stink.”
“Am I interrupting a personal reunion here? What’s your problem, Coop?”
“No problem at all.”
“I think she’s still peeved at me ’cause the jury tossed one of her unit’s cases when I got jammed up. The judge threw out my testimony. Didn’t find me credible. Can you imagine that?”
“Coop doesn’t hold grudges, Rowdy. She takes body parts,” Mike said.
The last time Rowdy and I had worked together it hadn’t ended well. He was a smart cop who had chosen the wrong professional allies and paid a price for it. I could never tell if the chip on his shoulder was permanent or a result of his political troubles on the job.
Roland Kitts had been an active rookie in a rough neighborhood in Washington Heights, with a great record for getting guns off the street that earned him the nickname Rowdy and led to his promotion to detective after only four years on the job. While working on a special antiterrorist project after 9/11, he caught the attention of Bernie Kerik, who was commissioner at the time.
Kitts was glib and self-promoting—like Kerik—and it was no surprise to most cops who knew him that the brash, freewheeling commissioner chose him t
o serve on his personal detail. A few years later, when Kerik was charged with accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts while serving in office, the feds cast a wide net, which landed the young hotshot back in uniform during the lengthy investigation. He’d only recently been able to work his way up again.
“You remember that case, Alex?” Kitts asked.
“Let’s not go there now,” I said. “We’ve got enough real grief right here.”
“We start moving these folks off the beach before we bring everyone in safe or there’ll be a riot,” Mike said. “Where you working these days, Rowdy?”
Kitts was a bit taller than I, with straight blond hair slightly darker than mine, slicked back without a part, and sharp features that matched his lean physique. “I’m on the mayor’s security detail. Same stuff I was doing for Kerik.”
“Talk about landing on your feet, man. Sweet deal,” Mike said.
I leaned over to talk to Cyril, biting my tongue so as not to swipe at Kitts’s uncanny ability to work his way back into such a plum assignment. I asked the young man if he would tell some of the other passengers we were going to move them to the buses.
“No, no, lady. Nobody gonna leave till ship is empty.”
“Who’s looking out for you?” Mike asked Kitts.
“I got a good lawyer. Once they cleared me, he fought to get me reinstated to the same kind of position I had when I was dumped,” Kitts said. “Scully’s not my biggest fan, but I used to get along fine with the mayor, back in the days before he got elected. Still got my street cred, Chapman.”
“You here with him?” Mike asked. I looked around to see if Vin Statler—the popular businessman who had succeeded Bloomberg to the mayoralty—had arrived.
“Nope. I’m on my own dime. For years I’ve had a piece of a small marina just over the border in Nassau County. Sent a couple of my guys around with their boats to assist.” Kitts shaded his eyes and tried to make out his craft among the growing flotilla surrounding the old freighter. “They’re out there somewhere.”
Hell Gate Page 2
