The Death Box

by J. A. Kerley

  A rail-thin Hispanic man in tattered clothes lowered himself from the container on shaky legs. He was followed by twenty-two more human beings in various stages of disarray, mostly young, mostly women. They blinked in the hard sunlight, fear written deep in every face.

  “They all OK?” Joleo asked, now beside the cab and smoking.

  “All up and moving.”

  The Hispanics stood in a small circle at the rear of the truck, rubbing arms and legs, returning circulation to limbs that had moved little in a week. Ivy was lighting a cigarette when his head turned to the incoming road.

  “Cars!” he yelled. “Orzibel’s coming.”

  Joleo squinted in the direction of the vehicles and saw a black Escalade in the distance, behind it a brown panel van.

  “Relax, Ivy. He’s just gonna grab some of the load.”

  “That fucker scares me. He gets crazy with that knife.”

  “Right, you get nightmares.”

  Joleo was trying to joke, but his eyes were on the Escalade and his mouth wasn’t smiling, watching the car and van drive round the final bend and bear down on them. The black-windowed Escalade stopped hard at the rear of the truck, the van on its bumper. The Hispanics, senses attuned to danger, backed away, the circle re-forming beside the truck.

  The driver’s side door opened on the Escalade and a man exited, as large as a professional wrestler and packed into a blue velvet running suit bulging with rock-muscled arms and thighs. He seemed without a neck, a round head jammed atop a velvet-upholstered barrel. The head was bald and glistened in the sun and its features were oddly small and compact, as if its maker’s hand had grasped a normal face and gathered everything to the center. And perhaps the same maker had tapped the eyes with his fingers, drawing out all life and leaving small black dots as cold as the eyes of dice. The dead eyes studied Ivy and Joleo as if seeing them for the first time.

  “Yo, Chaku,” Joleo said. “S’up, man?”

  If the driver heard, he didn’t seem to notice. The package of muscle nodded at the passenger side of the Escalade and another man exited the vehicle, or rather flowed from within, like a cobra uncurling from a basket.

  His toes touched the sand first, sliver-bright tips of hand-tooled cowboy boots made of alligator hide. He wore dark sunglasses and walked slowly. His black silk suit seemed tailored to every motion in the slender frame. His snow-white shirt was ruffled and strung with a bolo tie, a cloisonné yin-yang of black enamel flowing into white.

  The man was in his early thirties with a long face centered by an aquiline nose and a mouth crafted for broad smiles. His hair was black, short on the sides and pomaded into prickly spikes at the crown, a casual, straight-from-the-shower look only a good stylist could imitate.

  A brown hand with long and delicate fingers plucked the sunglasses from the face to display eyes so blue they seemed lit from behind. The eyes looked across the parched landscape admiringly, as if the man had conceived the plans for the intersection of earth and sky and was inspecting the results. After several moments, he walked to the Hispanics, a smile rising to his lips.

  “Hola, friends,” the man said, clapping the exquisite hands, the smile outshining the sun. “Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Bienvenido a gran riqueza.”

  Welcome to the United States. Welcome to your fortunes.

  Eyes rose to the man. Heads craned on weary necks.

  “I represent your benefactor,” the man said in Spanish. “We are happy you made the journey. If you work hard you can make vast amounts of beautiful American dollars.”

  His words sparked a nodding of heads and the beginnings of smiles. This was why they had left their homes and villages. The man gestured to the Quonset hut. “Most of you will go to the building and wait. Soon you will continue to Tampa, Pensacola, Orlando, Jacksonville. Some will be returning with me to Miami. Wherever you go, money awaits. All you have to do is honor your contract, and …” the hands spread in munificence, “the divine cash will shower into your palms.”

  The smiles were full now, the heads a chorus of bobs. Someone yelled “Viva el Jefé.”

  Long live the Chief.

  The smiling man entered the group, basking in smiles and Vivas and hands patting his back as though a saint walked among them. He studied each face in turn, paying particular interest to the dark-haired women. One kept shooting glances through bashful, doe-like eyes. He took her small hand, holding it tight as she instinctively tried to pull it away.

  “What is it, little beauty?” he said, patting the hand. “Why were you staring so?”

  A blush crept to her neck. “I first thought … when you stepped from the beautiful car … we were in the Hollywood.”

  “What makes you say that, little one?”

  The blush swept her face as her eyes dropped to the ground. “You are so handsome,” she whispered. “Surely you are in the cinema.”

  “You are far too kind. What is your name?”

  “Leala … Leala Rosales.”

  “I need four women and one man for Miami, Leala Rosales. Would you like me to show you the most beautiful city in the world, my city?”

  “I … I … don’t know if …”

  “You have stepped into a new world, Leala. Now you must trust yourself to jump.”

  “I will … Yes, I will go with you, señor. Can my friend Yolanda come as well?” She pointed to a nearby girl.

  “Perhaps the next time, Leala. There is only so much room in the car.”

  “It looks very big.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving. Hurry to the car, Leala. I will meet you there in a moment.”

  The girl ran to the Escalade. The man’s white teeth flashed. “Did you want a fresh boy, Chaku?” he said in English. “Come look at the selection.”

  The first sign of life in the driver’s eyes. He tapped the skinny shoulder of a male youth no older than fourteen, and pointed to the van. The boy understood nothing but that he was to move toward the vehicle, so he moved.

  The handsome man walked among the Hispanics, directing three more women to the van, pointing the others toward the Quonset hut. The driver and passenger jumped from the van, two bandana-headed Hispanics with tattoos on arms and necks. They hurried the four selections into the rear of the vehicle. As the new occupants climbed inside, the driver opened a side door and retrieved two magnetic signs saying A-1 WINDOW TREATMENTS and applied them to the sides of the van.

  The handsome man turned to the hulking driver. “Let me talk to these gentlemen in private, Chaku.” The comment was followed by a small and cryptic flick of the blue eyes. The driver retreated to the Escalade as the man gestured Ivy and Joleo to the side of the trailer. In the distance the Hispanics walked toward the gray hut. They were smiling and laughing.

  The handsome man’s eyes flicked between the men. “Did it go smoothly?”

  “Yes, sir,” Joleo said. “Like always.”

  “Are you receiving your compensation correctly?” He turned his eyes to Ivy.

  “Yes, sir,” Ivy said, trying to keep his gaze from falling to his shoes. “A day after every delivery. Th-thank you, Mr Orzibel.”

  Orlando Orzibel flashed his supernova smile. “Good work deserves no less. And good work means quiet work, right?”

  Both heads bobbed. Orzibel nodded in satisfaction and turned away. He stopped and turned back. The smile had disappeared. “So how is it I heard of lips speaking my name in a filthy little bar last month? A rathole called Three Aces?”

  Ivy seemed to waver on his knees. His mouth fell open to show darkened teeth. “I … I … it was a mistake, Mr Orzibel. It’ll never happen again. And all I said, was—”

  An arm from nowhere wrapped around Ivy’s neck, lifting him off the ground. The huge driver had somehow left the Escalade and crept across the crunchy sand and beneath the trailer without making a sound.

  “And your lips not only used my name,” Orzibel said, “they implied my business.”

  “A mistake …” Ivy gas
ped, pulling at the arm around his neck as his face reddened. “It’ll never hap … gain. Please—”

  Orzibel nodded and the hulk named Chaku opened his arms and Ivy fell to the ground. Orzibel lowered to a squat. A knife had appeared in his hand, a dark-bladed commando knife with few purposes but destruction.

  “Please, Mr Orzibel …” Ivy begged, tears falling down his cheeks. “Remember how I helped you with the cement last year … made your problem go away? How I worked all night for you …”

  The knife whispered through the air and Ivy’s lower lip dropped in the dirt below his face. His eyes were disbelieving as his fingers touched the open teeth, coming away shining with blood.

  Orzibel picked up the lip with the point of the knife and held it before Ivy’s horrified eyes. “Eat it,” he hissed. “Eat it or die.”

  “No, pleagggh …” Ivy wailed.

  “Eat,” Orzibel commanded. “Eat the lip that spoke my name.”

  “I ca-ca-cand,” Ivy bubbled, blood spattering with his words.

  “You have three seconds,” Orzibel said. “One …”

  Ivy’s shaking hands plucked the flesh from the knife, tried to bring it to his mouth, dropped it in the sand. “I c-c-cand,” he moaned, his words mushy through blood and the mucus pouring from his nose.

  “Two.”

  Ivy retrieved his lip and brought it to his open teeth. He began to bite gingerly at the strip of meat, but a torrent of vomit exploded from his throat and washed the lip from his fingers.

  “Three!” The knife whispered again and Ivy grabbed at his throat, his forearms glistening with the blood pouring from his slit neck. After scant seconds his eyes rolled back and he fell backward. Orzibel bent over the twitching body and wiped the knife on its shirt.

  “You have the plastic in the trunk, Chaku?”

  “Always.”

  “When he drains, wrap him tight and put him in the trunk. Tonight we’ll drop him down the hole in the world. Be sure to purchase ample concrete.”

  5

  Ernesto “Chaku” Morales took the shining Escalade on little-known dirt roads skirting the Everglades, driving beside mangrove-studded drainage canals as the sun burned toward zenith in a cloudless sky. The air reeked of heat and stagnation. Lizards darted across the path as listless vultures hunched in low branches.

  Chaku thought about his new boy. The old one had grown vacant in the eyes; the drugs, Chaku knew, both blessing and curse. At first the boys liked flying to dizzying heights where the village lessons turned to vapor. But later they started to hide in the drugs, becoming sullen and useless.

  A new boy would be fun, Chaku knew as he spun the wheel, turning right, then left, ignoring the sounds in the rear of the Escalade. There was much to teach them, although the learning always started hard. Like with the fresh girl in back, Leala Rosales. Once they’d stopped so Mr Orzibel could have Chaku thrust the girl’s sobbing face beneath black water in a drainage canal. That always got a new arrival’s attention and made lessons easier.

  It was a simple lesson Mr Orzibel had started the girl with today, basically a lesson in English.

  She was learning the meaning of the word Blowjob.

  Roy said he’d meet me in Miami and climbed into his vehicle. I aimed in the same direction, taking Highway 1 and angling through South Miami and Coral Gables toward the heart of the city.

  Miami was basically foreign to me, known on a pass-through basis when a vacation found me drifting over from Mobile, my pickup bed clattering with fishing gear. It seemed less a defined city than a metroplex sprawling from Coral Springs to Coral Gables and including Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Hialeah, and two dozen more separate communities squeezed between the fragile Everglades and pounding Atlantic. Drive a mile one way and find homes that could satisfy Coleridge’s version of Kubla Khan, a mile the other and you seemed in the slums of Rio.

  The main headquarters of the FCLE was in Tallahassee, in the panhandle. Though it didn’t make logistical sense – Florida crime centered in large cities in the peninsula: Miami, Tampa/St Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and so forth – Tallahassee was the state’s capital and thus the political center. Like every government agency, FCLE had to keep its ears and voice close to where the funds were allocated.

  But the bulk of the employees in Tallahassee worked on legal and clerical staffs to adjudicate crimes in the capital’s collection of courts. The investigators were spread across the state. The main South Florida office was in Miami. The department leased office space in the towering Clark center, Miami-Dade’s governmental seat, and I figured Roy was somehow responsible for getting FCLE into such a plum address in the heart of the city.

  Roy’s official title was Director of Special Investigations, but the title was misleading, as Roy had never carved a wide swath in the investigative world. He was a showman, a dazzler, a back-slapping reassurance salesman who could zigzag a conversation so fast you wondered where you’d left your head. I’d heard Roy McDermott could waltz into a budget-cutting meeting in Tallahassee, work the room for a few minutes (he knew every face and name, down to spouses, kids, and the family dog), give an impassioned speech too convoluted to follow, and leave with his portion of funds not only unscathed, but increased.

  To pull this off required results, and the endless to-the-ground ear of Roy McDermott tracked careers the way pro horse-track gamblers shadowed thoroughbreds. He had a gift for finding savvy and intuitive cops stymied by red tape or dimwit supervisors and bringing them to the FCLE, filling his department with talented people who credited Roy with saving them from bit-player oblivion. To pay him back, they busted ass and solved crimes.

  I found a parking lot and paid a usurious sum for a patch of steaming asphalt, the attendant staring at my pickup as I backed into a spot.

  “That ’ting gonna start up again when you shut it off?”

  I walked to the nearest intersection and felt totally discombobulated. The streets were a pastiche of signs in English and Spanish, the gleaming, multi-tiered skyline foreign to my eyes, the honking lines of traffic larger than any in Mobile. A half-dozen pedestrians passed me by, none speaking English. Palms were everywhere, stubby palms, thick-trunked palms of medium height, slender and graceful palms reaching high into blue.

  What have you done? something in my head asked. Why are you here?

  The breeze shifted and I smelled salt air and realized the ocean was near. Water had always been my truest address and the voice in my head stilled as I took a deep breath, clutched my briefcase, and strode to the looming building two blocks and one change of life distant.

  “Grab a chair, bud,” Roy said, waving me into a spacious corner office on the twenty-third floor of a building rabbit-warrened with government offices.

  I sat in a wing-back model and studied the back wall. Instead of the usual grip’n’grin photos with political halfwits, Roy’s wall held about twenty framed photos of him hauling in tarpon and marlin and a shark that looked as long as my truck. I smiled at one shot, Roy and me a few years back on Sanibel, each cradling a yard-long snook and grinning like schoolboys.

  “First, here’s your official job confirmation,” Roy said, handing me a page of paper. “Before you leave we’ll get your photo taken for a temp ID. It may not glow in the dark, but even Viv Morningstar will let you live if you show it.”

  “When comes permanent ID?” I asked.

  “When we decide who you are. You’re the first of the new specialists we’ve hired who’s a cop. Are you cop first, consultant second? Or vice versa? Details, details.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes indeedy-do, my man. In a state-sized bureaucracy every description has its own weight and meaning. F’rinstance, are you a consultant, which gives you the scope to go outside the office and initiate actions on your own? Are you an agent, which means full police powers but stricter adherence to chain of command? Are you solely a specialist, which means you can only be involved for certain crimes? There�
�s a bureaucratic niche for everything and a word to describe it.”

  “Where’s Yossarian?” I asked.

  “What?”

  I waved it away. Roy leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “I’m looking for the job description that gives you the most clout without having to sit through every useless goddamn meeting. We’re still feeling our way along here.”

  “But I am able to command an investigation?”

  A wide grin. “You already are, in fact. Or will be after you meet the group. I told them that you’re the lead investigator on this thing, the freak angle and all.”

  “How’d they respond? My taking the case?”

  Roy seemed to not hear, busy checking his watch. “Whoops, the crew’s been cooling their heels in the meeting room. Let’s put you on the runway and see how pretty you strut.”

  I followed Roy to a windowless conference room, fluorescent lights recessed into a white acoustic tile ceiling. A large whiteboard claimed the far end of the room and beside it an urn of coffee centered a rolling cart. I saw four people at the conference table, three men and a woman. They were tight and fit and looked like they knew their way around a gym floor. I tried a smile but got nothing back but eight eyes studying me like a rat crossing sanctified ground.

  “My top people, Carson,” Roy boasted. “There are fifteen other investigators and you’ll meet them all soon enough, but this is the A-plus Team: Major Crimes. When it’s too much or too big for the munies to handle, even the big-city departments, it comes to our division of the FCLE, right, my cupcakes?”

  No one so much as nodded. A squealing sound pulled my attention to the guy heading the table, pressing fifty and looking like a retired heavyweight boxer, six-four or five, two-fifty or thereabouts, heavy features under a slab brow and steel-gray crew cut. Thick fingers were busy pinching pieces from the lip of a Styrofoam cup. He’d pinch, add the piece to a growing pile beside the cup, pinch again. Each pinch made the cup squeal.

  “This is Charlie Degan,” Roy said. “It was Chuckles here who almost single-handedly took down the Ortega mob back in 2004.”