Act of Deceit

Chapter 54

C orazon Camacho stood next to an armed guard inside the wrought-iron gate of the high-walled women’s refuge on the eastern edge of Cancun, two blocks from the White Sands Orphanage. Her gray hair, pulled back tight against her head, reflected the stark Caribbean sun like burnished steel. Her sorrowful eyes surveyed Donnally, Janie, and Lalo on the other side. Donnally was wearing a hooded sweatshirt to conceal his face should Sherwyn happen to drive by behind them.

A soccer ball rolled to a stop next to her, but the young girls who’d been playing on the dirt patch behind her didn’t approach them to retrieve it. The children seemed to Donnally like abused puppies that felt safe only when caged and out of reach.

“I already have one defamation lawsuit against me for naming the names of the predators and the people who protect them,” Corazon said to Donnally. “I’m not sure I want to risk another.”

Corazon’s eyes moved from Donnally toward the distant rooftops as though she was scanning for snipers.

“At least I wasn’t murdered like the reporter who wrote the story, and the twenty other journalists killed for writing about other sex traffickers.”

She then looked down at Lalo and pointed at a bus stop across the plaza behind them.

“ Espera alli, por favor,” she said to him. Please wait over there.

Lalo peered up at Donnally like a child who was left unchosen after the sides in a schoolyard game had been picked.

“We’ll come get you when we’re done,” Donnally told him.

Lalo nodded and walked away.

“I think we know what goes on over at White Sands,” Donnally said. “I’m just after the man who runs it.”

“Senor William.”

“Yes. Senor William.”

“Is he at White Sands now?” Corazon asked.

“I believe he’s in Mexico, and a number of calls were made from a cell phone in the United States to White Sands during the last week.” Donnally pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward Lalo. “We drove by the place, then sent the kid back to take a look, but he couldn’t spot Senor William.”

“You won’t get any help from the police in finding out,” Corazon said. “Not even if you hold an Interpol warrant in your hand. It is them that protects him and those who back him.”

“I know all about that.”

“How?”

“You ever heard of a cop named Gregorio Cruz?”

Corazon clenched her teeth at the sound of the name. A thin dust devil spun upward from the dirt ten yards behind her.

“The worst. Him and his twin brother, Jago. Snakes. Both snakes.”

“They like molesting boys, too?”

“No.” She glanced over her shoulder at the girls now collected together in the middle of the yard, huddled like ducklings in a storm. “Not boys.”

Corazon gestured to the guard to unlock the gate.

Donnally followed Janie inside, then reached down and rolled the ball back to the girls. One came forward to intercept it, giving Donnally a hesitant smile as she gathered it into her arms.

Corazon led them across the playground toward the converted hacienda, then upstairs to her second-story office, her open window overlooking the yard and the city beyond.

Against the background of the laughs and squeals of the restarted soccer match, Corazon described Sherwyn’s founding of White Sands ten years earlier, his contributions to local charities, his socializing with the head of the local child welfare agency, his payoffs to the police and the prosecutor, and his luring of boys with gifts of money and drugs and video games.

“Do the boys ever escape?” Janie asked.

“That’s the wrong word,” Corazon said. “They come and go as they wish. Since Senor William has all of the connections, the city itself is their prison. There is no escape.”

“How does he pay for it all?” Donnally asked.

Corazon shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not an alcahuete -”

Janie looked over at Donnally.

“A pimp,” he said.

“Men travel down from the States and pay the boys directly. I assume they also contribute to the cost of running the place.” She smirked. “Maybe they even take charitable tax deductions back home.” She thought for a moment. “There were rumors years ago that there was a very powerful man behind it all in the States, the one who bought the property that houses White Sands, but I’ve heard nothing of him for many years.” She shook her head, her lips pursed. “Since then it’s become like a timeshare for predators.”

Corazon picked up the telephone and ordered coffee from the kitchen.

“And there’ve been no investigations?” Donnally asked.

“A year ago I made taped interviews with a couple of the boys and gave the transcripts to the newspaper. But Senor William’s lawyer and the police paid or threatened the boys into recanting. That’s why I was arrested for defamation.” She smiled at Donnally’s puzzled expression. “It’s a criminal matter down here, not a civil one like in the States. The law was passed to protect drug dealers from exposure in the press. Even worse, they charged me in Chiapas because the prison sentences there are longer. I’m facing nine years.”

Donnally doubted that Sherwyn would’ve sounded as matter-of-fact as Corazon about nearly a decade in custody, but Sherwyn also knew that it was something he’d never face, at least in Mexico.

“If there was a way to do it without exposing yourself to jail time, would you help us put together some evidence that we could use to get Sherwyn indicted in the States? It’s a federal crime to travel outside of the U.S. to engage in sex with minors. And the U.S. extradites in these cases.”

Corazon thought for a moment, then said. “I’ll need to know more about what you plan to do and whether you can really do it.”

Donnally reached for his cell phone to call someone who could pitch the idea to the United States Attorney in San Francisco.

“This is Harlan-”

“Stop.” Perkins’s voice was edgy, almost to the point of panic. “Don’t say anything else. I’ve been ordered not to talk to you anymore. We’ve been retained on behalf of William Sherwyn.”

Donnally pushed himself to his feet and walked toward the office door. He waited until he was in the hallway before he said, “You can’t represent that asshole.”

“Not me, someone else in the firm. A name partner. Al Barton. He’s practically dancing and shadowboxing in his office. The statute of limitations has long run on criminal charges for molesting Melvin and it’s too late to file a civil suit.”

“If Sherwyn has no exposure, then what does he need Barton for?”

Rattling cups and saucers caught Donnally’s attention. A girl holding a tray stood feet away, mouth gaping, staring at his face, which he realized had darkened with rage. He turned away and walked to the end of the hallway, then glanced back and saw her flee into the office.

“Damage control,” Perkins said. “Barton has already called the chief of police threatening a lawsuit if there are any leaks from the investigation and they sent someone to serve you with a letter saying the same thing.”

“They’re not going to find me.”

“Why not?”

Donnally looked out through the slats of the shuttered window. He could see White Sands in the distance. He imagined Sherwyn holed up inside, orchestrating his defense, gazing over his stable of boys.

“Let’s just say I’ve gone fishing.”

He disconnected and called Navarro.

“I’m getting heat like never before,” Navarro said. “The chief wants everything kept locked up in his office. Reports. Evidence. Everything. And nothing in the computer system.”

“You mean he’s trying to bury this thing?”

“Exactly the opposite. He wants to protect the investigation from outside manipulation. But there’s a problem… hold on.”

Donnally heard Navarro’s office door close.

“The chief wants you put on a polygraph about how Sherwyn’s fingerprints got into the shooter’s car.”

“He wants, or you want?”

“Let’s say that I have my doubts, too.”

“Sounds to me like an abuse of prosecutorial power,” Donnally said. “Maybe I should contact the Albert Hale Foundation. Now that the Charles Brown case has gone bust, maybe they’re looking for a new cause.”

“This one would be as wrongheaded as the last.”

“I don’t think so. If Sherwyn wasn’t behind the attempt to kill me, why’d he run?”

“Because it’s possible to frame a guilty man.”

“Hey, why didn’t I think of that?”

“I think you may have. When can you come in?”

“As soon as I bring Sherwyn back from Mexico.”

“Mexico? How do you know about Mexico? I never told you where ICE said he went.”

“It was just a lucky guess.”

“You search the rental car before you called me?”

This one Donnally answered truthfully. “The shooter’s clothes and shoes were new and all had Mexican labels.”

“ICE says Sherwyn flew from SFO to Mexico City,” Navarro said. “You know where he went after that?”

Donnally looked again at White Sands. He could see a man dressed in a white shirt and slacks standing on a third-story balcony looking down into his walled courtyard: Sherwyn.

“No idea.”

D onnally disconnected. He watched Sherwyn take a sip from a glass in his hand, then wave to someone below. He realized that the man wasn’t holed up. He wasn’t at all afraid of being seen. Didn’t seem to care.

Only now did Donnally’s gaze widen enough to take in the scope of White Sands. A nineteenth-century hacienda consuming half a block, three stories of stucco and stone and glazed ceramic tiles centered in courtyards and gardens, and framed with vine-covered walls.

A five-million-dollar velvet fortress.

Was it arrogance? Donnally asked himself. Or just the fact of government protection?

Immunity, Donnally answered. That’s what Sherwyn had. Immunity.

But not in the States.

The question was what would scare him enough to make him run back, thinking the U.S. was safer? And make the Mexican police think it was wiser to send him packing, and wait for another foreigner to take his place?

Donnally knew it wouldn’t be the Mexican press that would force Sherwyn to flee. Corazon had made that clear. And Donnally knew that no American newspaper or television network would take him seriously, not after he’d made a fool of himself in the courtroom just before Brown pleaded no contest. And, even worse, not after he acted like a lunatic when he pushed his way through the reporters on his way out of the courthouse. Cameras sure as hell wouldn’t arrive at his request. It would take something more.

“W e’re going to need new interviews,” Donnally said to Corazon, striding back into her office. “Pick three boys, the most articulate and sympathetic, and with no arrest history. And I want not only the facts of what happened, I want to hear how it affected each kid and their families.” He looked at Corazon, but pointed at Janie. “She can formulate the questions in a way that can’t be attacked for being suggestive.”

Corazon propped her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her folded hands. She thought for a few moments, then said, “What happens to these children later, in the months or years it takes for your Justice Department to extradite and convict Sherwyn? If their parents had enough money to care for them in the first place, they wouldn’t have ended up on the street. I don’t doubt your intentions, Mr. Donnally, but you’ll leave here in a few days and this will remain a children’s prison.”

“Isn’t there someplace that will take them in?” Donnally asked. “Some kind of children’s shelter.”

“It’s more complicated than that. These are teenage boys who have become accustomed to abuse. Not only do they need to be protected, but other children need to be protected from some of them.”

Donnally realized that she was right. There was a tomorrow he hadn’t thought about. He spread his arms and glanced around.

“How much does it cost to run a place like this?” he asked.

“Forty thousand pesos a month. About thirty-five hundred dollars.”

He nodded. “I know somebody who’ll cover it.”

“That’s over forty thousand a year,” Janie said. “In ten years that’s almost half a million dollars. I can contribute some and I know you will, but who’s got the rest of the money?”

Donnally smiled to himself as he watched the circle close.

“Mauricio.”