by Jon Mills
He glanced down at the Bible in his hand. He wasn’t a religious man, neither was Eddie. That’s why he was surprised to find it in his apartment. Scribbled on the front was the name John Dalton. On the back of the photo that showed palm trees was an address in Skid Row.
He wasn’t too sure why he felt the need to seek out this man but anyone who knew Eddie had to have been someone worth trusting. Eddie wasn’t a social man. He kept to himself. Perhaps that’s why he and Jack got along so well.
Though finding out that Eddie was his father was a little too much to handle.
He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Sure, he had heard the rumors growing up and there was the fact that Eddie had helped him and his sister after all the shit they went through at home but it was still weird.
Upon arrival at the Greyhound bus station on Seventh Street he approached the main information booth. A black woman ahead of him was arguing about her baggage being lost and what were they going to do about it. When one of them finally managed to calm her down, she was led away.
“Quite a handful,” Jack said stepping forward.
The clerk behind the counter didn’t crack a smile. She certainly didn’t look as if she found anything about the job amusing.
“How can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’m wondering if you know this address?” Jack showed her the photo with the address of 545 South San Pedro Street.
She grimaced.
“Skid Row.” She thumbed out a direction wildly in the air. “Take a left out of here, head down Seventh Street, then hang a right on Alameda Street. Go a few blocks down to East Sixth Street and hang a left, then keep on going until you reach San Pedro. If I’m not mistaken that’s Unified Rescue Mission.”
“Mission?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Next,” she bellowed.
Jack nodded slowly and was about to walk away when he turned back to ask another question. By then someone had already squeezed ahead.
“Oh one last thing.”
“Hey, you had your turn, go to the back of the line.” Some guy in a grey suit and pants piped up before turning back to the clerk who didn’t seem to give two shits who she was dealing with. Jack could see she didn’t even want to be there.
He thumbed over his shoulder. “I was just going to ask if there are any lockers here?”
“Buddy, I just told you. You want to ask another question, get in line.”
“Just settle down, I wasn’t even finished and you barged in.”
He pushed his finger into Jack’s chest and without batting an eye Jack flipped his wrist and held it in an agonizing position while he got an answer to his question.
“Hey, hey, let him go,” an old security guard with a beer belly yelled as he tried to make his way through the crowd of people streaming in and out of the building. The place was total pandemonium.
Jack released him but not before he got the directions to where the lockers were. The woman behind the counter just smirked. It was probably the most entertainment she’d got in all the time she’d been working there. The guy cursed as Jack strolled off towards the lockers. It was only when he saw the size of the darn things that he realized they weren’t going to be an option. What the hell did they expect you to keep inside them? A hamster? The duffel bag contained ammo, grenades, a shotgun, and two 9mm Glocks, along with clothes. He cursed those who’d stolen the truck. It was a beauty and would have saved him having to fart ass around with storage lockers. Besides, they only let you keep personal belongings in them for up to a day, and you had to have a ticket to show you were traveling.
He sighed, slung the bag over his shoulder, and headed out the sliding doors into the early morning rays. A bright sun had just begun to rise above the horizon.
Chapter Three
LAPD Officer Deon Smith had patrolled Skid Row for over sixteen years. He’d seen it all. Psych patients, crack addicts, heroin users, soccer moms, gangs, artists, Agent Orange vets, and even kids tucked away in boxes up against the walls. It was an endless cycle that few escaped. If he wasn’t keeping the drug dealers away and handing out flyers for rehabilitative services, he was dealing with mental health patients. He knew he couldn’t change them. The place was a minefield full of homeless people. Some wanted help, others just wanted to exploit the weak.
This morning however he’d been assigned to the south side. He’d got a call to assist INS investigators down on Terminal Island. There was only one reason they showed up. They had found another cargo shipping container. A week ago they discovered fifteen Chinese who had spent the past eighteen days inside a steel box. It was beyond unsanitary — it was a death trap.
It wasn’t about helping the unfortunate start a new life. It was huge business. Every single one of them would owe anywhere from fifty to seventy thousand dollars. Most would be held at gunpoint and made to work under horrendous conditions in restaurants or as prostitutes.
Deon pulled up in his cruiser. Two INS agents were already standing by waiting.
“Officer Smith,” Gavin Westbury said. “Looks like we’ve got another one. Coast Guard found forty-eight of them inside that container over there.”
Deon fell in step with him as they walked up a steel ramp to the huge ship. The place smelled like bad fish and rusted metal. Usually the INS handled it all. They would take the Chinese to a detention center, where they would then seek asylum. All of them would undergo medical exams and be held until they could sort out the red tape. It was just another headache among the many that U.S. officials were dealing with.
Gavin led him along the steel starboard side until they reached a ladder that went up the side of a forty-foot-long steel box. They had already taken all those who had survived the journey. Three of them hadn’t. They had died within the first five days. It would be a while before their bodies were removed.
“It’s not a pretty sight, I can tell you that. We are pretty sure that one more container managed to get through with at least eleven more.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Chinese translator got those who’d survived to speak. They said there were fifty-nine loaded into containers in the port of Hong Kong. We have been through every single damn container and we can’t find anything. We’re assuming the others were in a soft-top container, and jumped ship or were unloaded prior to the others being found.”
When they reached the top. Deon peered over the edge into the squalor. The stench inside from human waste, spoiled food, and unwashed bodies caused his stomach to lurch. He placed a hand over his nose and mouth.
It was a filthy sight. Human waste all over the floors, mixed in among sleeping bags and boxes of food and water. Most would spend five days stuck inside a container in Hong Kong before crossing the Pacific, where they would endure extreme cold temperatures and unsanitary conditions, and arrive in L.A thirteen days later.
“The only reason these guys lived was because it wasn’t a hard-top container.”
Most of the Chinese smuggled in were inside cargo containers with hard tops to prevent them escaping. It was serious business. Every single one of them was worth a minimum of fifty thousand on the market. It didn’t help that local businesses in Chinatown worked closely with smugglers so they could obtain cheaper labor. Quite often those that were smuggled over could spend up to five, even ten years trying to pay off the money they owed.
The worst were the kids.
Deon would never forget their faces. Some as young as ten years of age were sent by their parents to earn money for them. None of them would know exactly how much their parents owed the snakeheads, so they would just keep sending what little money they had back and never get out of their situation.
“These suckers are getting cleverer by the day. The container last week had electric lights, fans hooked up to car batteries, bottled water, canned juice, and four 30-gallon waste receptacles.”
“Guess they are tired of losing their investment.”
After showing Deon the first containe
r he led him to another that had a trap door on the side. It was a 36-by-24 door that would allow for the immigrants to escape.
“Bastards concealed all the cracks with some epoxy-type substance and then painted the doors red to match the container’s exterior. All they needed to do was pull it inward and they could slip out. Snakeheads probably unloaded them.”
U.S Customs called them “snakeheads.” They were a group of Chinese human smugglers that constantly changed up their tactics. Most of the time Customs would just check the soft-tops and that was enough, but smugglers were getting better at concealing humans inside the all-metal containers. Hard-tops were preferred because they made it virtually impossible for those inside to alert the ship’s crew.
“The top they ripped off had blood on the inside, where they had tried to claw their way out.”
It was hard to hear, even worse to see. Deon rubbed the bridge of his nose as he stared at the blood smears. Often, if the snakeheads didn’t get to them first, those who did manage to escape ended up on Skid Row or in one of the missions. Over the past four years, he’d been working closely with INS to keep them informed of any Chinese that were found at the mission.
The problem was, so many on Skid Row didn’t have papers, so it was hard to tell between the illegals and those who just wanted to disappear from society.
“Do me a favor, keep your eye out for them,” Gavin said running a hand over his tired face. “This shit never seems to stop.”
“When money’s involved, it never will.”
And that was the harsh truth.
The Chinese criminal underworld rarely dealt in importing drugs when they could earn three and a half billion a year transporting humans. If they were caught, the sentence was a pitiful six months in jail.
Chapter Four
In Chinatown, Sheng Ping sat behind a mahogany desk snorting a line of coke. He was in his late fifties, though he appeared older from his habit. He’d picked it up back in his twenties when he was a runner for the Triads. It wasn’t by choice; he had to check it was legit before they paid for anything. After the first few times he was hooked. Now that he was at the top, he used the same method to reel in others. Compared to ten years ago, distribution now was less risky. He let all the Crips and Bloods sell it on the streets. None of them ever saw him and those that were problematic were handled swiftly. Police were as crooked as they were. He had several on payroll. It paid to have ears on the inside.
The double doors swung open and he gestured to the two scantily dressed women to get out. In his profession, he rarely did more than count money, give orders, and oversee the day-to-day operations of money laundering, human smuggling, and narcotic distribution. At one time he was importing millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine but after several shipments were seized, he decided to move on to bigger game. Now he bought drugs from the Mexicans and let them handle the bulk of that business. A lot had changed after he shifted gears into being a snakehead.
Yu Cheng glanced at the door. He’d been working for him for over fifteen years. A child smuggled into the country, he had been raised by Sheng and trained to be nothing more than a fighter. At first it was for business. Another means of work for a whole line of Chinese that had to pay him back a hefty seventy grand just for bringing them to the States. Eventually he brought Yu on board as his own personal bodyguard. At twenty-eight years of age, he barely had any fat on him. It was pure muscle. But not like the meatheads who he’d employed in the past. Yu’s body was athletic. Though short in stature, he made up for it in his fighting ability.
Sheng didn’t go anywhere without him. The number of times he had stopped a rival gang member from assassinating him seemed countless.
Two of his men stumbled through the door, out of breath and with a look that could only mean one thing — bad news. There were very few things he allowed. Those who worked for him were expendable. They all knew it. He used that fear to his advantage.
“Sir, they’ve impounded the ship.”
It was the second week in a row that INS had swooped in and cost him over a million dollars. Those detained by INS didn’t care. They were on U.S. soil and no longer under the control of a snakehead. They would go on to seek asylum while he suffered the loss. It was beginning to become harder to sneak them in.
He stared down at the remains of the lines he’d snorted. He ran his finger through it creating a figure eight. “All of them?”
“No, we have the other eleven.”
“Three million, three hundred and sixty thousand dollars lost.” He breathed in deeply feeling rage coursing through him.
“Where are the eleven?”
“At Ju Huang’s.”
“Ages?”
“Oldest sixteen, youngest twelve.”
“Put them to work.”
He gave a short bow and backed out of the room.
Years ago if he had received such news he would have had Yu Cheng kill the messenger. It wasn’t that it was the man’s fault but it was to send a clear message to others. Back then he didn’t have someone working for him down at INS, so he couldn’t verify if his men were telling the truth or not. Of course a statement would be released in the media, but that usually didn’t come out for a few days. There had been a few instances where the ship hadn’t been impounded. His own men had lied to him in order to profit on the side through their own connections. When he discovered that was the case, the men weren’t the only ones killed — so were their families. Times had changed. Now he could make a phone call and find out in a matter of minutes if that was the case. Unfortunately, for all his connections, he couldn’t pay the guy in INS enough to take the risk of releasing any.
Work varied for each of the illegals he brought in. Most of them ended up in restaurants in and around Chinatown. All businesses paid him a generous fee. In many ways he saw himself as an illegal job agency. Filling needs, supporting the Chinese economy, and in turn giving those who made the long trip a life that was better than where they had come from. At least he saw it that way. Depending on the age, and demand, females were prostituted out. The look on their faces when they discovered how they would be making money was priceless. Most of them had been sent by family members from Fujian Province, China, in the hopes the children would send back money to make their parents’ lives better, and that they did but not before he took his cut, which amounted to eighty percent or more of their wage. Those who refused to work or repeatedly tried to escape were killed. They were a liability. He had no time for excuses and he certainly couldn’t have them running off. He prided himself on having a low number of runaways. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the opportunity. But most wouldn’t run. Where could they go? How could they survive? They were thousands of miles from China and had been sent by their own parents. Sheng chuckled to himself. The culture was the reason they stayed. They lived in the knowledge that if they didn’t do as their parents said, they would be disowned. A culture that was deeply rooted in the need to respect fathers, elders, and ancestors; Sheng used this to his advantage.
What will your father say? Do you want to embarrass your family? Don’t you think you are being ungrateful for the opportunity to come to America?
That was all he needed to say. Killing them was a last resort, unless of course they chose to run. Most didn’t get far. Without being able to speak much English, without any money, and being in a strange country, those that did run usually were back within twenty-four hours on their own accord. Those that didn’t return were found and suffered the same fate as those who refused to work.
One more chance would be given, then he would give them what they really wanted. Release. Sheng glanced at Yu wondering if the faces of those he’d killed haunted him.
Chapter Five
After returning the dog, Jack downed another coffee before heading in the direction he’d been given. Two hours in the city and he had already screwed up.
Trying to take his mind off it, he thought back to the events that had led him to k
ill members of the Sicilian Mafia.
In all his years as a hit man for Gafino he had never imagined he would ever get out. Heck, he hadn’t even seen beyond New York. His entire life had been wrapped up in doing work for Gafino. He caught his reflection in one of the shop windows. His chin was sporting several weeks of growth, a few flecks of silver were at the side of his temples. Besides needing a shave, he looked better than he had in years. He notched it up to his sobriety. It had been several months since his last drop of alcohol. That was a road he didn’t want to head down again. While it numbed his pain for a time, it didn’t fix the problem. The thought of his sister and Eddie dead continued to haunt him. They were among the many faces that he saw at night when he rested his head on a pillow. He was lucky if he managed to get five hours of sleep a night.
As he reached the area that had become synonymous with homelessness and poverty, he cast his eyes the inhabitants. He couldn’t help wonder what had brought them here in droves. Certainly, there were those that may have had nowhere to go but surely that wasn’t the case for everyone, was it? Were they like him? Searching for a place to disappear? They looked as lost as he had before meeting Dana. She was never far from his mind. If it hadn’t been for her, no doubt he would have ended up caving in to Gafino and working for him again. The pull to a life of crime was easy when it was all you knew. It’s why so many of them went right back inside after getting out. It was like an addiction. Where else could you earn thousands of dollars a day, want for nothing, and have your choice of women any night of the week? But it came with a price and one that Jack paid not only with time inside, but with the loss of those he loved.
He passed by several offices for social services. Sweat trickled down his back. It had to have been at least eighty degrees. He passed by tents that had been erected against the sides of buildings. An old woman sat perched on a small chair. In front of her was a shopping cart full of junk. The stench of urine-stained sidewalks and grime permeated the air. It was hard to imagine that poverty was so rampant. A police car turned onto the road ahead of him and Jack felt a twinge in his gut. He kept his eyes fixed ahead as it rolled past him slowly. There was a lot of artwork all over the walls. One section of wall that went for a block was covered from top to bottom with color. But it wasn’t smothered in gang signs. It was a mural. Surprisingly it hadn’t been ruined. Not even one gang sign. Strange. Jack passed past several small stores selling convenience food, parks with drunks drinking out of brown paper bags, and community centers that looked as if they needed a makeover. Every building looked as run-down as the next. Cardboard shacks, bicycles stacked, and discarded clothes. A reggae tune blared out from a coffee and sub shop. A few men stood under a streetlight smoking. He caught the aroma of marijuana.
