by Matt Lincoln
I rolled over fast and grabbed his arms, pinning him to the ground in the mud and rain. He started yelling, “Get off me! Get off me!” but I held on to him. Rosa appeared and slid down next to me, placing her hand over his mouth. We really didn’t need the kind of attention we were going to get from two adults tackling a kid in the rain.
“Nohemi! We’re not going to hurt you!” I rapidly explained. “We’re trying to stop those dealers in Miami. The ones that inject people against their will.” He was struggling so hard that he wasn’t hearing me at all. “Nohemi! I promise you! We’re not going to hurt you.”
Rosa looked up at me and tried to sign with only one hand. I think I got the gist of what she was saying. I looked around where we were to see if anyone was watching us from windows or doorways. I didn’t see anyone, so I reared back, squared my shoulders, and punched the kid to knock him out.
Rosa had split-second reflexes and moved to keep from letting me even touch her. The kid stopped struggling and was out. I checked around again to make sure that we’d not been seen, then together, she and I hoisted him up between us and dragged him away.
“That was less than ideal,” I joked with her. It was a good time, too, as she couldn’t respond to me. “Now, you have any ideas about how we can get him back to the boat without all of Vera Cruz seeing us?” Of course, I would want an answer for that, and I grinned at her.
From behind a plaster and adobe house, Xavier and an older lady with long, skinny, braided, gray hair and a cane started walking toward us. Once she saw us with him, and in that condition, she placed her hand over her heart and exclaimed, “¡Mi pobre niño!”
Xavier took her arm to help her along, talking to her in low, hushed tones. He smiled at Rosa and me to reassure us as we got closer.
“It’s okay,” he said calmly. “She wants us to bring him back home. I told her that we weren’t going to hurt him, and she believed me, for some reason.”
“You have an honest-looking face, Xavier,” I pointed out. “But to be fair, I told him the same thing, and he kept running.” I hoisted him up one more time so that Rosa could hold on better. Together, he got him into a little place with plain wooden windows and floral curtains in the single window. The rain was really heavy, and there was almost no one on the streets at this time. Maybe that was good. We might not be seen going into this woman’s house.
Xavier motioned for us to lay Nohemi on a ratty looking pink couch. The old woman scampered off to get whatever, and that left the three of us alone for a few minutes.
“I knew that you had to have a plan,” I said to Xavier as I smiled and wiped my dripping face on my equally soaked tee shirt.
The room was small and cozy, with a dingy white armchair and a standing lamp over in the corner, beside the open doorway. The rest of the house had to be through there, but I didn’t think we’d be seeing much of that. The walls here were plain plaster, a kind of tan color with water damage along the ceiling and windows.
We all looked a little worse for wear. Soaked in rainwater and sweat, muddy and dirty, but none of that could be helped. Rosa looked down and stepped back suddenly. I followed her gaze to see that we were all standing on a rich, vibrantly colored wool rug. We were all dripping muddy water onto it, so we moved away and tried to find a safe place to dry off, or at least not ruin this family’s furnishings.
A few minutes later, the old woman walked in, leaning heavily on her cane and carrying several bath towels. She handed one to each of us and then took the rest to Nohemi, still lying on the couch. We all thanked her and began to clean up. Xavier was conversing with her in Spanish, but she always answered in short, one-word responses or with only the nodding and shaking of her head. He stepped over closer to us so that we could converse privately.
“Her name is Yolanda Tinos. Nohemi is her grandson, but she doesn’t like his father. He’s a bad man, she says. Anyway, I told her that there might be other people coming to look for Nohemi, but that we were only here to talk to him and to try to help him stay out of trouble.” Xavier nodded Nohemi’s way, as he was still non-responsive on the couch. “She liked that. She said that that’s why he’s here with her. Some guys from Colombia are after him, and she’s worried that he might, you know…”
He didn’t want to say it out loud, but we understood that the kid’s life was in danger and that he was at risk of being killed. At least there was extra verification that the Yabut were still active and hostile in Miami. For everything else, we were going to have to wait until Nohemi woke up, and then we’d have to convince him to not only tell us the truth but tell us anything at all. That was going to be a tall order, and we all knew it.
26
Jake
Nohemi woke up to find Xavier, Rosa, his grandmother Yolanda, and myself all standing around watching him. It startled him, to say the least, but his grandma’s presence kept him from running away or fighting us. Luckily, I hadn’t hit him very hard, just enough to do the job of knocking him out and shutting him up. Now, I might need to apologize to him.
“Hey, kid, sorry about hitting you.” I raised my hands in front of me so that he could see that I wasn’t a threat to him now. “We really are just here to talk to you.” His eyes darted to Yolanda and back to me several times.
“They will help you, hijo.” Her voice was kind as she patted his arm to comfort him. Once she said that, she moved away and went to sit in the chair in the corner of the room.
I appreciated her efforts. I hoped that they would give us an edge in convincing him to tell us everything he knew about the trio and their operation. Nohemi struggled a bit to sit upright and placed his feet on the floor. Once he was in a seated position, he nodded his head.
“How did you people find me?” Of course, that was the first thing he wanted to know.
I glanced at Xavier and then back again. I was standing over Nohemi, but a few steps back. I didn’t want him to feel that I was trying to intimidate him in any way. I could if I had to, but I didn’t want it to go that way if I could help it.
“Facial recognition software,” I informed him. “And you post a lot from your grandma’s house here.” We needed him to trust us and to see that we didn’t have time for lying or games.
“You like cops or something? From Miami?” It seemed Nohemi was aware of the situation. That was good for us.
“No,” I replied. “We’re independently contracted. And right now, we’re working on the overdoses in Miami. The ones where three people grab someone, take them into an alley and inject some weird drug into them. Sound familiar to you?” I wanted to give him the chance to come clean with us. But if he didn’t, I’d press him on what we knew and already had.
The kid squirmed in his seat on the couch, and he ducked his head down. I imagined this was because he didn’t want his grandmother to see him or to know everything he had been up to.
“I stopped working for them,” he muttered. “The night they killed that lady.” He kept his voice low so that Yolanda wouldn’t hear him, so I was right.
I didn’t know which lady he was talking about, but with all the homeless and runaways being used as test subjects and possible murder victims, he could mean anyone.
I just nodded at him. “Good, that’s good. But we need to know where they do their business. We found one of the labs, but we need to locate the rest of them.” I didn’t actually know if there were any more, but I was willing to stretch this truth in the hopes of him seeing that if we’d gotten one, we could get others.
He latched onto my face with his dark eyes, watching everything I said and all my facial expressions. Maybe he was trying to read me, maybe not. But he shook his head, and then he spoke. “You got the one on the docks or the one in the city?”
Hallelujah, the white lie paid off!
“The one in the city,” I answered him, much more calmly than I felt. I chanced that it was the correct and only one they had there. “We need to bust the one on the docks. And you know where it is, don’t you
?”
Nohemi was turning a pale shade of nervousness, and he looked about ready to vomit. I backed off, but I wasn’t ready to give up questioning him by a long shot.
“We just need information, Nohemi. Names, addresses, that sort of thing. That’s all.” I’d love to get more from him, but I didn’t want to press my luck.
“I know their names.” He nodded his head and looked okay with being able to give away something so basic. “The little guy, the one with the funny voice, they called him Voyda. The Mexican lady called him that a few times.”
Whoa. A Mexican woman. That could be the Latina lady I’d heard about once before. Or it could just be that this kid didn’t get accents too well, and this might actually be the Middle Eastern woman. But one thing at a time.
“Okay, tell me about this Voyda guy. What’s he like?” I noticed that Xavier had taken out his cell and was typing and texting very quickly on it.
“He’s short, like a little guy, you know?” Nohemi motioned with his hands, showing someone about five-foot-five or shorter. I guessed that this was only speculative on his part. “White, but not American. His voice, you know, it’s funny.”
“He has an odd accent then, right?” I was trying to help him along without putting ideas or words into his head. “So then, what does he do with these drugs? What’s his job?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded at us. “He, um, he runs the machines. When they get the powder and the liquid bottles, he’s the one that puts them together and adds the other stuff.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I felt my pulse quicken with a surge of adrenaline as this new information could only help us find and stop them. I figured that the powder was the cubed substance I found, and the liquid bottle might be the other one. But if Nohemi mentioned a third product, that was interesting and unexpected. “So, he’s the one that handles the chemicals for the group then?”
He nodded. That sounded like some sort of chemist or scientifically trained person to me.
“And the woman, I thought that there were two women doing the work?” I really needed some clarification on that front—good, bad, or otherwise.
Nohemi shook his head a little, but not as a negative response. It was more like he was trying to remember or figure it out himself. “Yeah, there’s two, I think. Two that I’ve seen, anyway. The Mexican lady doesn’t do much. She just gives the orders.”
This was news, too. I glanced over at Rosa, who was standing back from us a bit and covering the outside door on the off chance that he decided to rabbit. I admired her common sense and rational thinking on the matter. I turned back to Nohemi and kept up the line of questioning. “And what’s her name?”
“Ah… um… it’s a weird name, you know? I’d never heard it before.” He was really working hard to recall it, so I didn’t pressure him. I heard Xavier make an excited little noise to my left and scanned him quickly. His eyes were glued to his cell, and he had a huge smile on his face. I was dying to know what he was so happy about, but I’d have to wait. “Starts with an ‘A’ I think? Real weird.” Nohemi was still trying to recall it.
He was losing focus, and I couldn’t let that happen now. “An ‘A’ name. A woman’s name?” I started to wrack my brain, coming up with ideas and possibilities.
“Astreya?” Xavier offered out of the blue with a smug tone and a gratified look on his face. I glanced up and caught just a hint of arrogance from him. Then the name clicked. That was the odd name from the red notebook that stuck out in the list with Nace and Caris.
“Yeah! That’s it!” Nohemi got excited and nodded eagerly. “Ah-stray-ya.” He sounded it out to himself. “She’s the one in charge, and she’s always at the docks.”
I would have hugged Xavier right then and there if it wouldn’t have been too weird. I gave myself a mental note to do it later, though, for sure.
“Okay, good,” I continued. “That’s a big help, thanks. What about the other woman? Do you remember her name?”
“Mirror, or something like that. She never talks too much. But I don’t think those two like each other. The two ladies, I mean. But yeah, she’s usually the one that jabs the people with the little metal gun needle thing.” I tried not to grin at the way he described things. I fought to keep a straight face about that.
“Mirror? Maybe she’s a doctor or something then? What do you think?” I asked him earnestly.
“I hope not, man. She just stabs people in the arm with that stuff. She doesn’t care where. I mean, it should be in the blood, right? That’s how those drugs work. But sometimes, I’ve seen her just slam it into their arms. Into a guy’s neck once, too. Creepy stuff. She just, ugh…” He couldn’t finish that thought, and I didn’t blame him for it.
“Yeah, sounds pretty harsh.” I sympathized with him because I knew how awful it was to watch people get treated as less than human. “But there’s another guy, isn’t there?” I was asking about Caris, but I wanted to make sure he was telling us the truth about all of this so far, so I led him with this. “Big, muscle type guy?”
He moved his head, and I swear I saw him shudder at what he was thinking about. “Caris. He’s a real mean dude. I saw him punch a guy for trying to get away, and he just fell to the ground. Then Mirror injected him anyway, and he started shaking. The guy on the ground, not Caris.”
“Strong guy, then? Powerful?” I added, just to make sure that we were talking about the same man.
“Yeah, for sure. All I remember him doing was grabbing the people and dragging them into the alleys. I guess that was his only job.” The kid stopped talking and lowered his head again. I got what we needed, and now I wanted to ease off.
“Hey, Nohemi, thank you.” I was completely sincere about this. “You don’t know how much you’ve helped us. But you better go get into some dry clothes. We don’t want you getting a cold or anything.” I reached down and offered to shake his hand. He reacted and took mine, giving it a good grasp and shake back.
He slid off the ratty pink couch and went over to kiss his grandmother on the forehead before he disappeared in the doorway that led to the rest of the house.
Xavier and Rosa got very close to me, and Xavier started to whisper what he’d found from his cell phone search. “He’s right on a lot of this, Header. I don’t know that you want to talk about all of it here, but I’m verifying as we speak, and most of it is checking out.”
“Most of it?” I questioned him.
“Well, I can’t find anyone named ‘Mirror,’ but I’m still looking. It could be a nickname or a code name or something.” I knew that he wouldn’t stop searching until he found something that might match up.
“Sounds good.” I looked back over at Yolanda, thinking of how best to help them and make this work out. “What’s the consensus? Do we leave them here, hope for the best? Hope that the Colombian Cartel doesn’t find them? Or do we do something and move them to a safer location?”
How would we do that? Rosa asked. We can take the kid back to Miami with us if he wants to go, but his grandmother? This is her home. And those other kids said that she was sick.
“Yeah, I don’t think we should do that again,” Xavier commented. “That’s actually human trafficking if we move her across the border without proper authority and representation.” I had to concede the point. We had already done that with Mia, the nurse from the Azores. We had rescued her from the Yabut that had kidnapped both her and Arik and brought her with us, but that had been a singular situation. IT wasn’t one we needed to make a habit out of.
“Then what are our options?” I asked. “Should we offer to take Nohemi with us on Wraith? I don’t necessarily approve, but it would be the more secure way to get him back home.” I was calculating the risk of exposure, but if the kid would be willing to tell his information to the police, especially Detective Musik, it could help the criminal case against the Yabut, the Judge, and the DEA. But first, we had to find out if he’d go and talk to the MPD.
Are you planning on doin
g this the legal way, Header? Rosa inquired of me, trying to keep us on the securer side of things and the law. I thought that this was a personal mission, a case that no one else would take on. If the MPD is going to get involved and do this for us, why are we bothering with it at all?
“Yeah, well, justice doesn’t always look the same when you have a few strikes against you like most of the victims do or did,” I pointed out. Some of them would never even be remembered as murder victims, just homeless junkies and addicts, whether they were or not. “Maybe the kid’s safer here. But if we don’t take him with us, there’s no way we can substantiate any of what he’s told us with the actual authorities, and that puts it all on us to make it right. Are you prepared for that? Because I am, but I won’t make that choice for either of you two.” I wanted them to have the option to say no and to go about this in a legitimate way if they wanted to.
Xavier was already shaking his head. “This will never hold up in court. If you, or if we, want to stop them, it’s going to be just us doing it. They have too many friends in high places and too much to lose to let the genuine law get in the way of their business.” He smiled to let me know he was with me so far. “I’m for taking them down by our own means.”
Crap. Well, you two can’t do it by yourselves, so I guess I’m still in. Rosa signed rather exasperatedly. But let’s leave the kid here. I don’t want to see him get hurt in any more of this. She looked toward the doorway for the rest of the house. Plus, I think he’s told us all that he can. It’s time to go.
We thanked Yolanda for her hospitality and told Nohemi goodbye before we left. He promised to try to stay out of trouble, and I wanted to believe him. But I guessed that only time would tell if that happened. As we were already soaked and the rain hadn’t let up, the three of us trudged back outside and headed for the docks and our little rental boat.
