The Death Box

by J. A. Kerley

  “How much human trafficking did you see in Mobile, Detective?”

  “Almost zero.”

  “South Florida is the entry point for a fair amount of human cargo from the Caribbean and the Southern Hemisphere. Europe, even. I think we’re seeing a delivery that went wrong.”

  “This trafficking …” I said, suddenly feeling like the last runner in the Boston Marathon. “Where can I find out more?”

  17

  Morningstar made me an appointment with an expert. The next morning I threaded through lunchtime traffic up to the University of Miami, parking outside the Sociology department. I jogged the steps to the third floor and found an empty reception office. Classes, I figured.

  “Hello?” I called down a short hall with several doors. “Professor Johnson?”

  A woman rolled out a door in a wheelchair. That was the first thing I noticed, the second was the eye patch. She was of African heritage and looked to be in her mid forties, moon faced. Her hair was long and braided with bright beads and she beckoned me to her office. “You must be Carson Ryder,” Victoree Johnson said in a voice infused with Caribbean rhythms.

  “We were handling a case initially thought to be a serial killer, but Dr Morningstar—”

  “She told me the details. Have a seat.”

  I sat in a chair, she rolled around to face me. The office was small and jammed with books and bound reports.

  “Was that your opinion, Professor?” I asked. “Human trafficking?”

  “Hondurans, mostly female and too poor for regular dental work … add that to the quantity of bodies and I’d say it’s probable these people died together rather than being murdered by a maniac, though whoever trafficks in humans is as cold-blooded as any serial killer.”

  “It looks like sixteen or seventeen people died. This has happened before?”

  “In the Southwest it’s becoming common. As the borders tighten, the coyotes – human smugglers – turn to more desolate crossings, like the deserts. Remember the old westerns, Detective? The man on horseback in the desert looks down and sees a bleached cattle skull in the sand? Today he’s more likely to find a human skull.”

  I suppressed a shudder. “Is there much trafficking in the US?” I asked, aware of my country’s often dishonorable trek from slavery to freedom.

  “The US is not Eastern Europe, or Thailand, or Russia,” she said. “but if there are places where people, especially women, are used in vice, trafficking is there.”

  “Trafficking for sex, then.”

  “Sexual slavery is the mainstay of human trafficking in the US, women brought here as sex machines. They’re forced to work until they fall apart, at which point they’re replaced with another machine.”

  “Are they kidnapped from their home countries?” I asked.

  “Most are as willing as contestants on American Idol, seeing the US as offering money, a glamorous life, beautiful places to live, delicious foods in every direction. They’re easy prey for vultures who ply the villages, men who seek out youthful girls and boys with wide dreams. The typical line is that they get here and do some simple work – gardening, cleaning – for a couple months. After that they have no obligation.”

  “The garden never appears.”

  “They arrive to be told they owe thousands of dollars and can work it off with sex acts. Refusal brings beatings, rapes, starvation, drugging. The slaves are stripped of will and do as they’re told.”

  “Why not go to the police?”

  A sad headshake. “The law where these people come from is often corrupt and biased against the poor: They’re terrified of authority. Secondly, these are rural folks, highly religious and attuned to mores regarding purity. Though their debasement comes at the hands of others, they believe the fault is in them. The overwhelming shame is reflected in the suicide rate.”

  “Given their daily horrors, I still can’t understand why more don’t just hail a cop cruiser. It’s got to be better than—”

  Victoree Johnson reached forward and touched my knee, her eyes filled with quiet sorrow. “There’s another form of leverage. The worst form.”

  I thought a moment and closed my eyes at the simplicity of the hold. “The old stand-by,” I sighed. “Threaten the family back in the home country.”

  Johnson mimed waving a knife. “Do what we say or your mama loses an eye, a sister gets a nose cut off. It’s not a threat. Those who traffic in their fellow humans have no bottom.”

  “How do they get here? It’s not as if there’s a thousand miles of border to cross, like with Mexico. South Florida’s surrounded by water.”

  “Lately we’re hearing rumors of human cargo brought here in containerized shipping modules. They’re packed in like sardines.”

  “Into a port as secure as Miami?” I’d read how Homeland Security had ramped up checkpoints and procedures after being called on lax security a few years back.

  “I figure it’s bribery. It takes many people to secure a port, but only one or two highly positioned people to know when human cargo is arriving and pay eyes to look the other way.”

  I nodded. It was the same with drugs. “Why might these people have died?” I asked, returning to the problem of the column. “There’s no desert in South Florida.”

  “They could have come in on an old truck or boat and carbon monoxide leaked. It’s not without precedent. They might have been on a small boat that capsized, that’s happened with Cuban refugees. Or perhaps they were inadvertently poisoned with bad food, or smuggled in beside bags of poisonous chemicals in a shipping container.”

  “But if these people are worth so much when they get here – working for sex – why not keep them safer on the journey?”

  A sad smile. “You ever see a hog truck out on the road, Detective Ryder? How much protection does it get?”

  “There are millions of pigs shipped every year.”

  “Exactly,” Johnson said. “Who cares about one lousy shipment of bacon?”

  “Did you make the delivery to Madame Cho?” Amili asked. She sat at her desk with laptop in hand. Orlando Orzibel lounged on the couch and pared his nails with his knife. The late morning sun had brightened the cloudless sky to a brilliant hue and clear light streamed through the window.

  “I had Chaku run the product over.”

  A raised eyebrow. “You did not go personally?”

  “I prepare them, others deliver them,” Orzibel sniffed. “I am not Federal Express.”

  “Who did you select?”

  Orzibel frowned at the open window and strode over to pull the drapes, then returned to the couch. “Luisa Mendoza and Leala Rosales.”

  “Were they ready?”

  Orzibel waggled his hand, so-so. “As they ever are when they’re that fresh. But Cho is stern with training and discipline, so Leala and Luisa will soon be industrious little tug-job factories.”

  “And Yolanda – how is she?”

  “I don’t think medical attention is needed.”

  “How long until she’s fully recovered?”

  The unconcerned flick of a hand. “Does it matter? All expenses are paid by the client.”

  “The freak.”

  “Call him what you wish. I pad the doctor’s bill, of course,” Orzibel grinned. “We make more money when he hurts them.”

  “No amount of money covers the risk.”

  “What risk? Chaku stepped in when things got loud. The client was angry for the moment but thanked him later. He actually tipped Chaku for restraining him in his wilder impulses. Chaku said even he was frightened by the man’s … passions.”

  Amili tapped at the laptop and frowned. “The freak is getting more passionate, Orlando. Two sessions last year, four already this year. Last year the girls returned frightened but not injured. This year Mr Chalk has hurt three, two quite badly.”

  “He has the money to pay for his pleasure.” Orzibel paused and turned his gaze to Amili. “Once the client was in a clear mind, he wanted to have a discuss
ion, to feel me out on a subject. He stepped into this particular pond very delicately, and when he knew he could trust me, we went swimming together.”

  “Get to the point, please.”

  Orzibel turned. “The client would like to purchase a girl, Amili.”

  “He does. Several times a year.”

  “You don’t understand, Amili. Mr Chalk does not intend to return the girl. It would be impossible.”

  18

  “How long since you checked table fourteen, Michael?”

  Michael Ballentine and Alberto Fuentes spoke quietly and polished glassware behind the copper-clad bar in the Orchid Lounge, the main watering hole in one of the premier hotels in Key West. Far from the din and tumult of Duval Street, the hotel was near the airport, nestled amidst stately king palms and lush, multitiered landscaping that provided a buffer between the hotel and the highway.

  Ballentine glanced at his watch. “Eight minutes. I’ll head over soon. They’re guzzling hard tonight.”

  “They had a shitty golf round,” Fuentes speculated, drawing on two decades of experience. “Or the market dropped.”

  The Orchid was dark, candles flickering on tables and in booths cushioned with red leather, the candles in crystal chimneys. It was before the dinner hour and a dozen customers populated the lounge, businessmen mostly, talking business and golf.

  The door from the lobby opened and the pair turned to a man in an immaculate vanilla suit cut to make the most of a mesomorph build, the lapels slender and the shoulders padded for extra width. His shirt was cobalt blue, the tie a muted scarlet. The man’s face was smooth and strikingly round, with a button-dab of nose and high, pudgy cheeks above a red pout of mouth. His mouse-brown hair fell coyly over an eye, pushed back every few seconds, like a tic. Though the man was in his early thirties, he wore the face of an insolent child, a caricature, almost, like a smug ventriloquist’s dummy.

  The man paused inside the entrance and electric-blue eyes vacuumed the lounge, absorbing every detail, as if crucial to survival. The lips pursed in self-satisfaction and his beurre manié loafers sauntered lazily toward the bar.

  “Oh, Christ,” Ballentine said. “It’s Chalk. I thought he’d gone to one of his homes on the mainland.”

  “For some reason he’s stayed in KW this summer.”

  “How about you serve him, Alberto,” Ballentine said. “He’ll leave a twenty-buck tip on a thirty-buck tab.”

  “No, amigo,” Fuentes’s grin was wide beneath the expansive mustache. “I am in charge, and you need the money more.”

  Ballentine snapped his vest straight. He took a deep breath, forced a smile to his lips and walked to the guest, now pulling back a stool.

  “Good evening, Mister Chalk. Can I get you the usual?”

  The man started to sit but paused, head suddenly canting as if hearing a single discordant note in an otherwise perfect symphony. The blue eyes lifted and fixed on Ballentine. He doesn’t look at you, Ballentine realized. He looks through you.

  “My usual?” Chalk said as he resumed sitting. His voice was high, almost feminine. “When did I start having a usual, Michael?”

  “I, uh – don’t you generally order a Sazarac, Mr Chalk?”

  The guest regarded Ballentine. Seconds ticked by.

  “I have ordered Sazaracs before, Michael. That is quite true.”

  “Then may I prepare you a—”

  The man’s rising hand cut the barkeep off. “But I have ordered gin and tonic and the occasional margarita, Michael.”

  “Well, I can sure make you any of—”

  “Wait, Michael. I’m curious. How has the Sazarac become my signature drink?”

  Ballentine had served people for a year and had been in dozens of meandering, pointless, and often incomprehensible conversations, learning to handle people with skill and diplomacy. But somehow, with this guy, it was like being dropped in a box with the air drained out as the sides closed in.

  “I … my mistake, sir. I should have asked if I could get you what you had the last time I served you.”

  “And you recalled that as a Sazarac, Michael? It that my understanding?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure that’s what I recall.”

  “What if it was a gin and tonic, Michael? Did you consider that?”

  Ballentine slapped his forehead. “That’s what it was! I don’t know how I could have forg—”

  The man shook his head sadly. “It wasn’t a gin and tonic, Michael. Not a gin and tonic at all.”

  “The margarita, then?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Ballentine frowned, perplexed. “What was it, sir?”

  The man looked at Ballentine as if he were mentally challenged.

  “A Sazarac, of course.”

  Ballentine retreated into professionalism, bowing slightly and spinning away to the mixing station. “What is it about the guy, Alberto?” he said as he poured ingredients. “It’s like he’s from another planet.”

  Fuentes lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mr Chalk has wealth, and when people bow to his dollars he believes they are bowing to him. It gives him the illusion of strength and the more he plays with people the stronger the illusion. Yet for all his dollars, Mr Chalk is a confused child, albeit a nasty one, I think.”

  “Where did he get all this money?”

  “His parents give him vast sums of money to not bother them. They have homes across Europe and he gets the United States as his playground. There is no communication between them but money.”

  “That’s sad. It almost makes me feel for the guy.”

  Fuentes shook his head and waggled a no-no finger. “Mr Chalk is a monstruo and you must feel nothing for him, because that’s exactly what he feels for you. Be pleasant and professional, give him what he requests and nothing more. And never, ever tell him anything about your personal life.”

  “Why?”

  “He will use it to wound you.”

  Ballentine shot a glance at the guest, now smiling blankly into the air, if enthralled by a single, glittering thought.

  “Monstruo, Alberto? What is that?”

  “A freak, Michael,” Fuentes said. “The man is a freak of nature.”

  I returned to the site convinced I was seeing a trafficking operation gone awry. Evidently the news preceded me, Roy pacing outside the white tent smoking a cigar. “Doc Morningstar just found a man’s sandal in the mix, clearly made in Honduras. Everything’s pointing to a single origin for the bodies, which screams human trafficking.”

  “I’ve just come from a meeting with a specialist in the area, Roy.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard Victoree Johnson speak before. She’s big on public awareness, talks at libraries, social clubs, political get-togethers. Impressive woman who knows the ugliest aspects of the trade, which you’d expect.”

  “Because she studies it?”

  “Victoree was a slave herself. Haitian, sold by her parents when she was eleven. She was bought by a wealthy American couple to do housework. She did other things for hubby and the teenaged son. Oh, and the wife, too. Some family, right?”

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “They got tired of Victoree when she turned fourteen and gave her to a pimp who sold her to men who liked ’em with big eyes and little ages. She finally tried to run. But Mr Pimp wanted to teach a lesson to his other girlies so he carved out an eye and sliced off an ear, that’s why she wears her hair so long. Victoree stayed with the guy – what happens when being a piece of sexual commerce is all you know. He put her on the street doing mouth jobs at twenty bucks a pop, working from sundown until the last drunk john finally headed home. That was all Victoree Johnson knew for the next three years.”

  “How did she get free?”

  “She woke up one morning in a fourth-floor walkup and found her best friend dead on the floor, an OD. The friend looked so peaceful Victoree decided she wanted to go there. She didn’t have enough dope for a hot shot so she figured she’d dive off the
fire escape. She had her hooking bag slung over her shoulder, some huge leather thing. Victoree drops two stories onto a freakin’ flagpole sticking off the building and snaps her spine. But the strap of the bag catches and holds because Victoree weighs about seventy pounds. She’s hanging up there like the ragged flag of everything that could go wrong until someone calls it in.”

  “That was it? All over?”

  “Some cop got her into a program. She was clean in a month and in school in three. Intercessions were made on her behalf and she was naturalized. She’s about to get a PhD in Sociology and fights against human trafficking. It’s an incredible story. Most sex slaves never live to see forty.”

  “It’s amazing that she did.”

  A laugh from Roy.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Victoree Johnson will be forty in eleven more years, Ryder. It’s a rough life.”

  Roy reluctantly stubbed out his cigar against his heel and we entered the tent, the over-cranked air conditioning feeling like a meat locker. “Jesus,” Roy said. “One second it’s ninety-five, the next it’s sixty. Bet you won’t miss coming here, Carson.”

  His words threw me. “Is the operation heading to the morgue? Are they that close to dismantling the column?”

  “The case is over, bud. Gone.”

  “What?”

  “We thought the site was a dumping ground for a serial killer’s vics. But it’s a grave for victims of trafficking. Not our jurisdiction.”

  Five days into the case and I finally thought we had an angle to pursue. If Carosso’s murder was part of the scheme, we might make a connection and start zeroing in on the mastermind. And the case was getting stripped away on a turf technicality? “We’re looking at as many as seventeen bodies, Roy,” I argued. “And the person behind this is as cold and calculating as any sociopath.”

  “That may be true. What’s also true is the jurisdiction is shifting to Homeland Security. The borders got breached, bud. That’s their biz and fifteen minutes after I called, they were here.”

  We neared the column. I saw two suited men studying the diminished structure, which now resembled a four-foot gray pencil-tip poking from the ground.