Eliana smiled.
I stepped down into the stateroom and grabbed a folder with the photographs of the three dead women. I walked back into the galley and laid them on the table.
“Do you know any of these women?”
Eliana closed her eyes and nodded “Sí.” Then, through Maria, she said, “Señor Frank kept the Chicano girls in the club at all times. We each had our own tiny room. Like a prison—Señor Frank posted a guard in the hall outside. We couldn’t leave during the day. We couldn’t talk to the other girls. But we found a way. We shared a bathroom. We were not allowed to use it at the same time. So we left messages for each other in lipstick on the toilet paper.”
Eliana pointed to the picture of Juanita Gutierrez.
“We called Juanita Mamasita because she had been there more than a year. Longer than any of us. Señor Frank told her to use the name Francesca with his clients. A few weeks ago, Juanita left a message that she, Melinda, and Carmela planned to escape. She asked if I wanted to go with them. I wanted to, but I’d heard that if Señor Frank caught a girl trying to escape he beat them badly. So I said no.”
Eliana pointed to the pictures. “I did not see any of them for several days. But they returned.” Fingers splayed, Eliana moved her hand in the air in front of her face. “Beaten. Bruised. Black eyes. Then one day, all three disappeared again. I did not hear of them until Maria told me they had been pulled from the ocean. I did not see them again until you showed me these photographs.”
Eliana dropped her head in her hands. “I would not be surprised if they took their own lives,” she said. “Many times I wanted to take mine.”
I asked Maria to explain that we found bricks tied to the women, suggesting that they hadn’t committed suicide. When she finished, I had another question for Eliana.
“Did Juanita, Melinda, and Carmela share any clients?” I asked.
I’m not sure what Maria said, but Eliana narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “No comprende,” she said.
I tried again. I held up a finger. “One man.” I pointed to the pictures. “Three women?”
“Sí. Sí. Some men always wanted the same girl. Some men always wanted a different girl. Some clients liked more than one girl at a time. So it is possible that Juanita, Melinda, and Carmela could have had the same client.”
“Off-site?”
Eliana frowned.
“Away from the club,” I said.
She nodded. “Sí. Sí. Once girls had worked at the club for some time, Señor Frank would send them from the club to visit a client in a hotel room, at his home, or even at his office. You, for example”—Eliana pointed to me—“when I came to your hotel room it was the first time that I had been allowed away from the club.”
“Do you know the names of any of the men who paid to be with Juanita, Melinda, or Carmela?”
Eliana shrugged. “Who is to say? I did not use my real name. The men who paid for me I am sure often did not use theirs.”
“Would you recognize them?”
She dropped her head and mumbled to the table. “I wish I could forget the face of every man who paid to have sex with me, but I can’t. As for those who paid for sex with these women? I probably would not recognize them. Especially if a man paid for all three women at the same time. Very rarely did such men come into the club. These were Señor Frank’s more wealthy clients, who paid for the girls to be delivered to them.”
I sighed. “Thank you. No more questions from me.”
Eliana held up a finger. “Uno momento. I . . . have . . . one . . . for . . . you.” She struggled through the English, then switched to Spanish, translated by Maria. “Señor Noble, would you promise me that all I have been through and all you have put my mama and papa through has not been for nothing? Would you promise me that no more girls will become sex slaves for bastards like Señor Frank?”
I stared directly at Eliana. “I suppose there are many men in the world like Señor Frank and I cannot stop them all. But I promise you this: I will do my best to see to it that Señor Frank no longer sells young women for sex.”
A weak smile spread over Eliana’s lips. “Mucho gracias, Señor Noble. No más. No más.” And then in English she said, “Thank you, Señor Noble. No more. No more.”
Naida wrapped her arm around Eliana and pulled her close. Then she rose and spoke to Maria, who rose as well.
“Naida said they must go and speak with Miguel,” Maria said.
Naida opened the cabin door. She and Eliana stepped out. Raven stepped in. I took a seat at the galley table next to Maria. Raven slipped in beside me.
“What happens next for Eliana and her family?” I asked Maria. “They can’t go back to their migrant camp.”
Maria shook her head. “No, they can’t. So, I will make arrangements for them to relocate to a farm in central California. Abadi won’t find them there.”
“And Eliana will be with them?”
“I hope not,” Maria said. “A young woman who’s been through what she has needs help. Professional help, and plenty of it. She has to reclaim a feeling that she owns her life and her body, both of which have been owned by Abadi for all these months. She has a long period of healing ahead, but she’s a strong, smart young woman. She’s a survivor. And she can make it. I mentioned that I knew of a program to help young women like Eliana. It’s in Portland. If she agrees to enter it, I’ll drop her off there when I drive her parents down to California.”
“It’s hard to know if what I’ve done has helped or hindered Eliana and her family,” I said.
Maria touched my arm. “In this work, you never really know. All you can do is your best. So you do what you’re best at—finding out who killed these women and stopping them; maybe even putting Frank Abadi out of business. And I’ll do what I’m best at—helping Eliana and her family take the first steps toward a new life.”
Maria slipped out from behind the table and walked to the cabin door. When she opened it, Miguel stuck his head in. He placed his hand over his heart, “Gracias, Señor Noble.”
“Por nada,” I said.
Miguel smiled, and the Noble Lady bowed to starboard as the Morales family, accompanied by Maria, stepped off.
I turned to Raven. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“That a man uses his megayacht to transport illegal immigrants from an offshore freighter into the United States,” Raven said, “and that it’s time we found Longhorn and put an end to all this.”
“You know.”
twenty
The following morning I awoke with a gasp, bolting upright in bed. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, but a dream’s gossamer web still ensnared me.
A voice whispering, “Tight packers versus loose packers,” whistled through my mind, like the wind through a boat’s rigging. I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head again. An image of the hand-drawn, black-and-white plans of a nineteenth-century slave ship flickered on and off behind my closed eyes. Rows of small, silhouetted figures packed side by side, head to toe filled every available inch of cargo space on a ship specifically designed for carrying human chattel.
“Tight packers” gambled that their loss in profits from slaves dying during the horrors of the Middle Passage would be more than offset by the number of live slaves they delivered. “Loose packers” preferred to arrive in American ports having suffered fewer deaths among their precious cargo.
Sleep slowly drained from me. Through the skylight, a weak shaft of morning light struggled with the darkness in the stateroom. I swung my feet around and sat on the edge of my bed, resting my head in my hands. The Noble Lady rocked gently in the wake of a boat leaving its slip.
I felt overwhelmed by darkness. My mind meted out a Promethean torture, serving up images of crab-eaten women one after the other. I pulled the clock from the nightstand and squinted at the glowing red numbers. Seven o’clock. Raven would be here in thirty minutes. I stuffed clothes under my arms and grabbed a small ditty bag.
H
alyards clacked against masts as I walked up the dock toward the main gate and the showers. Halfway up the ramp, I turned around and looked out over Bellingham Bay. Urged on by southeasterly winds, dark clouds rapidly advanced against the pale blue sky. I pounded the ramp’s aluminum railing. It rang with a dull, hollow sound. That dream about tight packers and loose packers still gnawed at me.
By the time I stepped from the showers and headed back to the boat, I could no longer see the sun. When I reached the Noble Lady, I climbed up into the pilothouse and switched on the NOAA weather radio station. Donna and Craig pronounced small craft warnings throughout Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They also warned of fog, which made me laugh and finally broke the morning’s pall.
Both Donna and Craig pronounced the word “fog” with such a hard f and short o that it came out sounding like . . . well, like what I had said to myself over and again as I listened to Eliana’s story. I punched the channel selector a few times until I reached the Environment Canada weather station. Essentially the same forecast—a low in the north sucking winds up from the south—but at least a human had recorded the broadcast, and the announcer didn’t “fuck up” the word “fog.”
When I got back down to the galley, I pulled a can of protein powder from the cupboard and a carton of cold orange juice from the refrigerator. Someone stepped aboard the rear deck. The Noble Lady dipped to starboard. I opened the cabin door, and Raven walked inside. A dark cloud seemed to follow him in. He walked over to the galley table without speaking. I went back to making my smoothie. I poured the orange juice into a glass, then added a heaping scoop of protein powder. The mixture turned puke green. I raised the glass to Raven.
“You want a protein smoothie?” I asked.
Raven glared at the glass. He didn’t say anything.
“It doesn’t look very appetizing, I’ll admit that,” I said.
I took a couple of swallows. Damn. I’d gotten the mixture wrong by adding too much protein powder. It tasted like wet sand. I held my breath, turned the glass nearly upside down, and finished it in a few giant gulps. Then I got some coffee going. I leaned back against the sink, facing Raven. He stared aimlessly out the side window.
“Something on your mind?” I asked.
He turned toward me, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, jaw tight. His expression suggested that either an angry yell or a plaintive wail might follow. His eyes moved back and forth, scanning my face as if to ascertain whether he’d answer my question.
I turned away from Raven and poured two steaming cups of coffee. By the time I’d turned around, he’d gone back to staring out the window. I slid a cup in front of him. He didn’t turn back. I slipped into the seat next to him. He finally turned away from the window and picked up his cup. He started to drink it, then set it down.
“I take mine black,” I said. “You want sugar, cream, milk?”
Raven stared with a look that penetrated right through me, as though he didn’t see me next to him.
“Residential schools,” he said.
“Residential schools?”
“My mother and her brother were forcibly taken from their homes when they were children. Split up. She went to a residential school in Alert Bay. He went somewhere in the British Columbia interior.”
I squinted. “Who took them from their home?”
“Canadian government. The schools were often brutal. Beatings. Rape. Starvation. No one ever saw him again.”
“What happened to your mother’s parents?”
Raven spoke into his coffee cup. “My grandparents were forced to move from their coastal village to a town on Vancouver Island. The Canadian government burned the village so no one would ever return.”
“That’s brutal.”
“All Miguel wanted was a better life for his family. But brutality’s what he got instead.”
I squeezed Raven’s shoulder and held it. He dropped his head. After a few minutes, I let go.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
I climbed up into the pilothouse again. The Noble Lady swayed under me. Wind blew her against the dock. She bounced off her fenders, moving away from the dock until the lines pulled tight and reined her in.
Standing at the wheel, I reached overhead toward my collection of charts, rolled up and fitted into holders. I peeked inside a few charts until I saw the number 3001. I pulled that chart out and partially unrolled it. “Vancouver Island from Juan de Fuca Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound,” the title read. I let the chart spring back into a roll, then I climbed down to the galley.
I unfurled the chart on the galley table. Raven’s coffee looked untouched. I set his cup on one edge of the unfurled chart. I took a sip of my coffee, then placed my cup on the opposite edge.
“Where do we start looking for Longhorn?”
“Big boat,” Raven said.
I tapped on the chart. “Bigger ocean.”
“Ahab’s problem,” Raven said. “Finding the white whale.” He drummed with his finger on the side of his cup, then he pointed on the chart to the vast area of white off the west coast of Vancouver Island. “You think she’s somewhere out here, coming into Puget Sound with another group of immigrants?” He let his finger run in from the Pacific, down the center of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“Maybe. Eliana said she landed on one beach, and then she was walked over hilly terrain to another beach, where she boarded a small boat for a trip that eventually put her in a car.”
“So Longhorn anchors at Smuggler’s Cove,” Raven said. “A boat picks up the immigrants and ferries them to shore. Then they’re marched overland to Eagle Harbor, where they’re taken by another boat to the mainland.” Raven tapped on Cypress Island. “So we wait at Cypress.”
“But what if Kincaid diverts to another location because Cypress no longer seems safe?”
Raven looked at me askance. “You playing devil’s advocate?”
“I am.”
“In that case, we’d need to find Longhorn on her way in from the Pacific, before she gets a chance to unload.”
I pointed at Raven. “That’s Plan A.”
Raven stared at the chart and shook his head slowly. “Port Renfrew. Sooke. Esquimalt. Victoria.” He tapped on each Canadian harbor. “Neah Bay. Clallam Bay. Crescent Bay. Port Angeles.” He tapped on the American ones. Then he pointed to Cape Flattery, next he pointed to Race Rocks. “More than fifty miles of ocean. Lots of little places for Longhorn to slip into.” He pulled the blinds back and looked out the window. “On a day like this, big seas and high winds. What if they slip by because we picked the wrong port?”
“That’s Plan B,” I said. “Where you come in.”
Raven picked up his cup from the chart and held down the edge with his hand. He took a sip of coffee, which must have been cold, though he didn’t grimace.
“I’ll take the Noble Lady out looking for Longhorn. You’ll stay here in case I don’t find her and she slips into Cypress with another load of immigrants.”
“In case Kincaid does use Cypress Island again?”
“Right. There are other drop-off places he could use. But if I were smuggling illegal immigrants into this country by boat I’d use Cypress too. Few people live on the island. None at Eagle Harbor or Smuggler’s Cove. It’s a straight shot up Rosario from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Close to the mainland. Since boats are frequently in Eagle Harbor, Longhorn pulls into Smuggler’s Cove, where no one ever anchors. They unload the immigrants in a matter of minutes, weigh anchor, and steam away.
“Then someone else on shore walks the immigrants over the island to Eagle Harbor, where small boats whisk them away to Anacortes. They’re placed in cars, and they disappear. With all the trails criss-crossing Cypress, Kincaid could still unload the immigrants at Smuggler’s Cove and have them taken overland to someplace other than Eagle Harbor, if he feels it’s now unsafe to have them picked up there.”
“You want me to stake out Cypress?” Raven asked.
“I do.”
“While you hunt for the white whale?”
“Uh huh. We need evidence if we’re going to stop Kincaid.”
“Catching them with illegal immigrants on board.” Raven said.
“Or catching them in the process of unloading the immigrants.”
“Not much catching in this boat.” Raven patted the wall beneath the galley window. “Longhorn must do at least twenty knots.”
“I won’t try to catch her. We need to figure out where she’ll likely be. If I can intercept her while she’s in port, then maybe I can determine if she’s carrying illegal immigrants.”
“How?”
I patted Raven’s shoulder. “Doing my job . . . investigating.”
Raven looked off into space. “A private eye on the water.”
I patted his shoulder again. “Not a private eye. A ‘fisheye’ maybe. Someone who sees the world a little differently from the rest.”
Raven winced, but he finally smiled. I smiled back. I picked up my coffee cup and took a sip.
“It’s cold and it’s bitter,” I said. “You want a hot cup?”
Raven waved me off. I walked over to the stove and lit a burner. The coffee didn’t take long to heat. I returned to the table and smoothed the chart out, resting my cup at the edge of the chart, on top of Bellingham Bay. Then I tapped in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A gust of wind howled, and the Noble Lady shivered on her lines. Raven peeked outside. He shook his head.
“So where’s Longhorn now, and where’s she headed?” I asked.
“Coming in from the Pacific,” Raven said.
“When I talked to the captain over the VHF, he said they were taking the boat to Port Alberni to fish.” I pointed to Alberni Inlet, a deep gash in the lower third of Vancouver Island, then I ran my finger due west out of the inlet, through Barkley Sound and into the open Pacific. “So, maybe they pick up the immigrants somewhere offshore from Barkley Sound.”
“And come back in through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Means they’re in Canadian waters.”
“They’d have to clear Canadian customs outbound, and American customs inbound.”
Precious Cargo Page 18
