Desert Jade

by C. J. Shane

  “I sat in my truck for a while, then I started knocking on doors. No one would tell me anything. They were mostly women at home with kids, and mostly they looked scared. They would glance at his house and then tell me that they hadn’t seen anything. So I went off and had something to eat. Then I remembered Denise, my cousin.”

  “I went back to the neighborhood to find Denise. Remember her? She doesn’t come out to the reservation very often. She pulled me inside really quickly. She told me that the coyote did a lot more than just find jobs for the migrants. She said she was pretty sure he was involved in trafficking humans. For months, she’d seen groups of young girls come out of his house and be put into vans. She said there were these Asian-looking guys that always came with the van, and they seemed to be in charge. But she said that about a year ago, she stopped seeing the girls.”

  This was about the time Carlos disappeared, Letty noted to herself.

  “So, no more girls?”

  “Denise said she couldn’t be sure because she didn’t always see what was going on, but either there weren’t any girls or far fewer than before. The vans still came, but now boxes were taken into the house. Later a moving truck would come and the boxes would be carried out of the house and put into a moving truck. The Asian men are still there, Denise said. She said once she saw an Anglo man, too.”

  “Did she have any idea what’s in the boxes?”

  “No. She said she doesn’t want to know. She stays away. She told me that I should forget the migrant girl and go back to the rez. The coyote and his pals are too dangerous, and I should stay out of what they are doing.”

  Letty sat back in her chair. She was dismayed. How both her siblings could have gotten mixed up in this was a truly awful development. She wished she could send them away until this was all over. But there was nowhere to send them, and they probably would resist going anyway. They weren’t little kids any more, and she couldn’t just tell them what to do.

  “And they aren’t telling the cops because they are all too scared?”

  “Right. Denise said that a year ago some of them had even been sending their teenage girls to live with relatives so the Asian dudes wouldn’t see them. There are a bunch of undocumented workers in the neighborhood who are afraid to call the cops. That includes Denise. She’s O’odham born on the reservation, but on the other side of the border. Her husband, Alonzo, is undocumented, too. He’s been here twenty-three years. He’s made a good living working for a plumbing company. He and Denise raised four kids. They see this stuff going on, but they are afraid to report it these days, especially since there’s all this hysteria now about illegals. They are afraid they might be arrested and deported if they contact the police. So nobody’s talking.”

  Eduardo looked very unhappy. “I have to find Esperanza, Letty.”

  He paused.

  “After I talked to Denise, I called Mando and Valerina and asked their advice. Valerina suggested going south across the border to look for the coyote smuggler who had originally brought Esperanza across the border. But Mando didn’t like that idea. He suggested I talk to Hu'ul. She will help."

  Mando had used the O'odham word for Eduardo's maternal grandmother.

  “Mando also said to call you, Letty. He said you’d know what to do.”

  Letty sighed. She wished she knew what to do, but it just wasn’t that simple.

  “Eduardo, this is bad. I didn’t tell you the whole story. But first, you have to agree not to talk about this with anyone until we figure out what’s going on. There is a gang of Chinese criminals called triads operating here. I’m trying to help Jade Lopez, remember her? They broke into her house. And the man who assaulted Will was one of them – a triad gangster. Now we’re learning that there’s a connection to human smuggling. I assume that they are selling these young girls as sex slaves. Probably they are being transported to Las Vegas or maybe the West Coast. Maybe there’s something else, too, in those boxes, something illegal.”

  Letty paused.

  “There’s more. I’m working with a guy from the Chinese police and Interpol who is trying to stop them. His name is Zhou. It sounds like “Joe” but spelled Z-H-O-U. I’ll meet with him tomorrow, and we’ll do our best to figure out what happened to Esperanza. Okay?”

  “Thanks, Letty. You are the best big sister in the world. This is really important to me. Esperanza is really important to me.”

  “We can’t do anything more tonight. I’ll get you some blankets and a pillow and you can sleep on the couch. Okay?”

  After she got Eduardo settled down for the night, Letty went to her bedroom. She turned on her computer and started searching about the sex trade and about the triad gangs’ role in it and other crimes. The list was long: counterfeiting, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, illegal gambling, credit-card fraud, and software piracy were big, along with various types of smuggling – people, endangered animals and plants, drugs, weapons, you name it. Triad love of violence was notorious. Torture, mutilation, murder, arson, and bombings were common.

  Over an hour later, Letty turned off her computer. She pulled a box down from the top of her shelf of her closet and retrieved her handgun, a semi-automatic Glock. She took the gun apart, cleaned it, reassembled it, and loaded it.

  Letty hated guns. She hated handguns and she hated rifles and she hated artillery and rockets and she hated bombs, and she especially hated IEDs. She hated violence. She hated war. Waves of Iraq memories washed over her as she worked, leaving her with a tremendous sense of grief.

  Starting tomorrow morning, Letty Valdez would be packing heat.

  Chapter 11

  Letty woke Will and managed to get him out of bed and into the living room with a cup of coffee in his hand by eight a.m. She handed him some pain medication to take with the coffee.

  “Does it hurt a lot?” she asked sympathetically. Letty had a sudden memory of carrying Will in her arms when he was just a toddler. Her feelings toward him were as much motherly as sisterly. Motherly usually won out, considering that neither she nor her siblings had been mothered very well at all by their real mother, and god knows, little Will had needed a mom.

  “Yeah, a little. Not too bad. It’s okay unless I move my arm.” He snorted. “Guess the solution is not to move my arm for a while. I’m not sure I can ride a bike. My shoulder won’t support my weight on the handle bars…unless I get one of those recumbent bikes. Hmmm…that might be fun.”

  Oh, my cheerful baby brother, Letty thought. Always looking on the bright side.

  “Better wait on bicycling right now. We’ll need to take you to the doc and see how you are doing before you try anything too physical.”

  “Letty, I like Clarice,” Will blurted out.

  “Yes, she really helped a lot.”

  “I mean, I really like her. Do you think she likes me?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I mean….really like?”

  “I don’t know if she would make so much effort for someone she didn’t really like. And remember? She said she thinks you’re good-looking.”

  “Oh, she said that about all of us,” he said dismissively. Will hesitated. “I think I might …you know…see if she wants to spend some time with me.”

  “Good idea. Now when the cops come, just tell them what you did and saw. Don’t speculate on anything.”

  They heard a knock on the door a few minutes later. Letty knew one of the officers slightly, and to her relief, the other was her friend Adelita García.

  “Sorry to make you come out on a Sunday,” Letty said.

  “I asked for this assignment. I’m here to help.” Adelita was every inch the professional detective, dressed in a trim navy blue suit and a white blouse. Her dark hair was cut short, and she wore pearl earrings A bulge at her waist suggested that she was wearing a holstered gun. Adelita sat down opposite Will and took out her notebook. Will gave his statement, and Adelita took notes. Will described seeing the girl trying to run from the three m
en and how she was pushed back into their van. He described them all as “Asian.” He went into some detail about how his shoulder was dislocated by one of the men and about his trip to the hospital.

  When he was finished, Letty asked, “Do you have any reports of missing persons? We’re wondering if anyone is looking for the girl.”

  “No,” Adelita responded. “But we’re spreading our net wider to see if she was reported missing elsewhere. We’re starting with southern Arizona and extending into metro Phoenix.”

  Just as they were leaving, Clarice drove up and parked.

  “Adelita,” Letty said in a low voice.

  Adelita turned toward her and stepped closer.

  “I have more. I’ll fill you in later.”

  Adelita nodded. “Later,” she said. Then she turned and walked to the squad car where her patrolman was waiting to drive her back to police headquarters.

  Millie greeted Clarice like a long-lost friend.

  “Hi, Millie!” Clarice patted Millie’s head. Then she leaned over Will, who was still on the couch, and pecked him on the cheek.

  “How are you doing?” she asked him.

  Was Will blushing? Letty laughed to herself. So their friendship is not just bicycling.

  “Oh, my shoulder really hurts,” Will, who had just a few minutes before told his big sister that the pain wasn’t so bad, was now doing his best to get Clarice’s full sympathy.

  “Poor baby,” Clarice said.

  Well, that worked, Letty thought to herself.

  “Clarice, I just gave Will his pain meds.”

  “Okay, I’ll sit with you for a while, Will.” Clarice plopped herself down on the couch next to Will. Millie joined her.

  “That dog is not supposed to be on the couch,” Letty said. She was ignored. “Okay, I’m off to Maggie’s house. Call me on my cell phone if you need something.”

  ***

  Zhou looked at his watch. Early morning in Tucson meant late evening in Beijing. He called his boss Yang and got him relatively quickly.

  “What have you to report?” Yang was his usual abrupt self.

  “I met with the local authorities. A man named Lambert. He was not happy to see me. I’m not sure he even believes the Interpol reports about a triad gang here. Actually he was almost hostile. He expects me to report to him.”

  “Stupid laowai. What do they know about these Hong Kong criminals?” Yang snorted.

  “Right now I’m trying to track down how many of the triad gangsters are here and where they are headquartered.”

  “You’re not making much progress.”

  “I don’t have much to go on. The woman here, Jade, identified Chong Ma from a photo. And you know I had a brief encounter with Bao.”

  Yang fell silent. Finally he said, “Chong Ma?”

  “Maybe. The photo was bad, and it’s been a year or more since she saw him. I can’t be sure that it was Chong Ma.”

  “Okay. Keep me informed.” Yang abruptly hung up.

  Zhou hesitated. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t say what. Just a vague, uncomfortable feeling. After some thought, Zhou picked up his cell phone again and connected to a number in Paris. He spoke briefly with his friend and Interpol colleague Jean-Pierre Laurent.

  ***

  For at least two years, maybe nearly three, Letty had joined her friends Maggie, Seri, and Jade at Maggie’s house on Sunday mornings for coffee. Maggie’s husband, Brian, always disappeared with their kids during what he called “The Girls’ Coffee.” The four women – or three if Seri was off on one of her trips – would gather around Maggie’s dining table in a wonderful room that Letty loved. The dining room was small and intimate, and it seemed that the fragrance of delicious foods lingered. There was a big sliding glass window at one end of the dining room that led outside to a deck and a view of the garden beyond. Sometimes on cool winter mornings, they sat out on the deck in the sun.

  Letty had known Maggie for nearly fifteen years. Letty had been only fourteen years old and Maggie’s student in English class at Tucson High when it became apparent that Letty was on the verge of becoming homeless. Since she was nine years old, Letty had been living with her dad, Neto Valdez, and his second wife and kids. But her dad got tired of being a father and husband and took off for Los Angeles in the middle of the night. Later, after Letty had been in Iraq for a while, she came to understand her dad’s abrupt departure. He was a Vietnam War vet. He had always been distant. He drank too much during the years Letty lived with him. She remembered very clearly that he went camping alone in the desert every New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July. He said he couldn’t handle the sounds of exploding fireworks. Now after Iraq, Letty totally understood. After Iraq, she had come to forgive her dad for abandoning his family – twice. He left Letty’s mother, and then he left his second wife and their kids. He suffered from untreated PTSD, and he just couldn’t handle family life.

  When her dad left, his wife, Letty’s stepmother, had small kids of her own to take care of. She told Letty that Letty better find another living arrangement. The stepmother insisted she couldn’t support her kids and Letty, too. Letty’s only choice was to go back to the reservation and live with her grandmother, who was struggling to care for Elena, Eduardo, and little Will. Somehow Maggie found out about this and asked if Letty would agree to be fostered by Maggie and Brian. So Letty moved in, and Maggie became a best friend, a big sister, and the caring mother that Letty had never had. Over time, more children appeared at Brian and Maggie’s house – two were Maggie and Brian’s biological kids – and two more were fosters. Maggie made sure Letty saw her siblings on a regular basis, a practice Letty continued into adulthood. Letty lived with Maggie’s family until she entered the U.S. Army.

  Those years with Maggie were Letty’s easiest years. Earlier in her life, before going to live with her father, Letty had lived on the reservation with her mother. But then, her mother married a man named Rudolfo Antone. He would become the father of Eduardo, Elena, and Will.

  “You’re going to live with your dad,” her mother abruptly told Letty when she married Rudolfo. “My new man shouldn’t have to live with another man’s child.” So off Letty went to her father, Neto Valdez, whom she barely knew. She coped by becoming a very quiet child who tried to disappear from view. That was hard to do when a girl is six feet tall in the eighth grade. Years later, she would learn from her brothers and sister that their father had actually wanted Letty to stay with the family. It was her mother’s rejection that led to Letty being turned away. Occasionally Rudolfo would pick her up and take her to the reservation on weekends to visit. Letty quickly fell in love with her new siblings and missed them terribly when she had to return to Tucson.

  Sadly for them all, her siblings’ father was killed in a car accident. During a summer monsoon rain storm, another driver hydroplaned his car on the narrow road through the reservation. He hit Rudolfo head on. Rudolfo was dead before the emergency medical team arrived. The children’s mother tried to cope. But she couldn’t seem to live without a man. Elena, Eduardo and Will went to live with their grandmother, and their mother took off with that Navajo cowboy. None of her children had heard from her since.

  That meant that Letty had lived her early life on the reservation as an O’odham, the years nine to fourteen in an extended Mexican-American family, and after fourteen, with an Anglo-white family. Chava teased her about being multicultural. “You fit in everywhere, Chulita,” Chava told her, when she said she didn’t really belong anywhere in particular. He hugged her and told her, “Most of all, you belong with me, mi vida. Don’t forget that.”

  Maggie put her arm around Letty’s shoulder and kissed her on her forehead. “Hello, my sweet Letty. How are you?”

  Letty smiled. “I seem to be doing better than my friend here.” She gestured to Jade. “She’s got Chinese gangsters after her. Have you met Zhou yet?” Maggie nodded.

  Seri nodded. “Jade told me he’s a Chinese cop here because of Interpol info
rmation. Impressive. It looks like he’s become Jade’s bodyguard. And he looks like someone you don’t want to mess with. He’s handsome, too.” She waved her hand at Zhou, who was out on the deck.

  “That’s exactly what he’s doing, Seri,” said Letty. “He’s trying to keep Jade alive and well and so am I. We’re in a difficult situation right now.”

  “Yeah? Tell me more,” Seri’s natural curiosity was awakened.

  Letty gave Seri a summary of recent events, including Will’s being attacked.

  “Maybe we could talk about something more pleasant,” Jade interrupted. “Tell us, Seri, what did you do in New York City?”

  Letty only half-listened to Seri who recounted trips to art galleries and jazz clubs and various libraries and museums. Letty was watching Zhou who was alert as usual. He seemed to be looking everywhere and nowhere at once. Letty realized to her surprise that she was very glad he was there. She didn’t know if she could manage the triad gangsters on her own.

  “It’s time for me to catch up with our Beijing-by-way-of-Paris detective inspector,” Letty left her friends and joined Zhou on the deck.

  “You start. What have you learned?” Letty asked.

  “Jade and I discovered that Bao is using the alias of a Chinese-American from Tucson named Kevin Kwok. I googled him. Very interesting. There were occasional small news particles about him until one year ago and then nothing.”

  Particles? Letty thought about that. She decided “news particles” made as much sense as “news articles.”

  “Hmmm…that is interesting,” she said. “That was around the time Carlos disappeared. I’ll look into this tonight and see if I can find more information.”

  “Also,” Zhou continued. “I showed Jade some photographs – mugshots – of triad gang members. She identified one as Chong Ma. He is a Red Pole, what is called an ‘enforcer.’ He came to Jade’s house a few weeks after Carlos disappeared. He was dressed as a termite inspector. He told Jade that her husband had ordered a termite inspection. Jade allowed him entrance. She said he stayed longer than one hour and looked everywhere.”