The Traffickers

FOUR

1344 W. Susquehanna Avenue, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 5:46 A.M.

Walking around the laundromat and surveying his workers, Paco Esteban considered himself a very lucky man indeed. Assembling his crews had not only gotten easier, the quality of his workers, being family, of course, had gotten better.

Yet he well knew that so many other immigrants were not so lucky. There were those who were devoutly grateful for a chance to better themselves, yet they just did not enjoy what El Nariz considered the opportunities that he and his extended family had.

And then there were the truly unlucky ones who were preyed on by other immigrants, some legal and some not, unbelievably mean bastards with evil intentions who shamelessly-without any conscious whatever-took obscene advantage of their own.

Treating them like animals, profiting from them, worse than the gringos, who could be bad enough.

Esteban had seen examples with his own eyes-occasionally he suffered the nightmares, the vivid flashbacks of the bloated sunbaked bodies in the desert-and had heard of so many other examples. The worst were the coyotes who simply stole the smuggling fees they were paid-leaving the males to wander and die in the desert, and raping the females, sometimes selling them into prostitution-never intending to fulfill that for which they’d agreed.

He found those particular bastards despicable beyond description and made a quiet oath that if he could-within reason, of course, as he could not jeopardize his family and all that he’d worked for-that he would save the needy from the evil ones.

And El Nariz had done just that. As he glanced around the room, his eyes fell on his most recent rescue, a teenage girl who now was working at the folding station.

It all had happened the previous Thursday afternoon, when El Nariz had been driving the minivan with a load of dirty laundry he’d just collected from the Liberty Motel in Northeast Philadelphia.

On Castor Avenue, the engine of the minivan had started to sputter. Despite the needle of the fuel gauge resting past the F, he knew that the tank was not full-it never was filled more than halfway, for fear the fuel would be stolen-but instead was bone damn dry.

He had seen Gas amp; Go signage on the corner up ahead, and was able to roll to its island of fuel pumps.

El Nariz had no credit cards, which required him to prepay with two ten-dollar bills. When he went inside the store, he was not surprised to find, in addition to the arrogant young Asian man behind the register and the pungent smell of kimchee and garlic that hung heavily in the air, that there was a pair of more or less attractive and young Latinas. They were filing their nails at a folding table, clearly bored. In a nearby corner, under a sign with an arrow to the XXX video room, stood a midtwenties Hispanic male with arms crossed and keeping a somewhat intense watch on the door.

El Nariz was not surprised, because he had seen the same situation at the Gas amp; Go next door to the Susquehanna Avenue laundromat: a shopkeeper, hookers, and their guard. Considering himself a principled man, he’d stopped going into that Gas amp; Go when he’d learned what they did-Paco Esteban took pride in helping people, not enslaving them-and had it not been for the minivan running out of gas right then and there, he would have chosen to buy his fuel at some place-any place-other than a damned Gas amp; Go.

Paco Esteban had made no eye contact with the guard. He did catch himself glancing at the girls, but only out of sadness for them. One, who had a cold hard expression, paid him no attention. But the other one caught his eye, and he saw in hers both fear and hope-the hope likely coming from not having long been forced to do what she was doing.

After paying the young Asian man at the register, El Nariz began walking toward the door. He made eye contact again with the girl. This time, her expression turned to one of sad desperation.

She quickly glanced over at her guard. He had noticed her look and made a face at her that showed he was at once annoyed and menacing.

Outside, as El Nariz pumped his gas, he thought about what had just happened. He had heard that girls in such a situation who did anything but what was expected of them faced harsh consequences. He’d wondered if what this girl had just done would result in that.

He’d shaken his head at the thought of all the misery in the world, and was glad that he didn’t have to go back inside the store and again witness this small pocket of it.

After a few minutes, the pump shut off at eight dollars, not the twenty he’d prepaid.

This was not the first time that El Nariz had experienced this. The first time, not sure of what to do and having just arrived in the big city, he had simply driven off and tried to forget about the lost hard-earned money.

But then it happened to him again two weeks later, and at a different gas station. He kicked himself for not having earlier figured out the scam: The setting of the pump at a lower cutoff amount had been done intentionally, on the assumption that if the person pumping gas was an illegal alien, he’d almost certainly not be stupid enough to want to make a scene over a couple bucks. Rather, he would, as El Nariz had done the first time, simply drive off.

If, however, the person did come back inside the store and called the attendant on the discrepancy, the attendant would blame the faulty machinery, or offer up some other bullshit excuse, and with a knowing smile hand over the money in dispute.

Back inside the Gas amp; Go, El Nariz saw that the girl had not been punished for her look-at least not yet.

After he explained to the young Asian male at the counter that he’d been shorted, the clerk said nothing. The young Asian simply peeled twelve bucks from a wad of cash he pulled from his own pocket. He handed the singles to El Nariz with a look of utter disgust that anyone would worry about such a paltry amount.

Paco Esteban said nothing, just pocketed the cash and started to leave, making an effort not to look again at the girl. Then the front door of the Gas amp; Go swung open and all eyes turned to it. A swarthy thirtyish Hispanic male in baggy blue jeans and white T-shirt swaggered in through the door.

The newcomer was drinking from a bottle of Budweiser. That earned him an admonishment from the Asian that there was no drinking beer in the store and to throw it away.

El Nariz saw the newcomer make eye contact with the Hispanic male who was keeping guard from the corner. He then drained the bottle and casually tossed the empty into a trash container. The guard looked at the girl with the cold expression, which seemed suddenly to turn even harder. Then she turned on a patently artificial smile, put down her nail file, and, without a word, got up and crossed the floor in the direction of the XXX video room, then made the turn to disappear behind the door labeled LADIES.

The newcomer passed El Nariz, then went past the guard and into the dimly lit room beyond the signage reading XXX VIDEOS MUST BE OVER 18 TO ENTER.

As El Nariz pushed the handle of the front door, he saw that the guard had stayed where he was until certain that El Nariz definitely was leaving. Then he followed the newcomer into the XXX room.

El Nariz shook his head sadly as he got behind the wheel and started the engine. He knew the odds were very high that money was being paid to the Hispanic male guard for fifteen minutes with the girl-probably twenty bucks, about the same amount he’d paid to put gas in his tank, with ten for overhead going to the Asian, even more if any coke or meth was sold-and that the girl and the newcomer were now in a dark, discreet space somewhere between the ladies’ room and the XXX video room.

As Paco “El Nariz” Esteban put the van in gear and tried to shake the image from his mind, the passenger door swung open. Instinctively, trying to evade whoever he believed was probably trying to rob him, he’d floored the accelerator. The passenger door slammed shut with the force of the sudden forward movement-but whoever it was had managed to make it inside, onto the floor.

A horn blared angrily, and El Nariz swerved to miss hitting a car that was turning into the parking lot. Then he slammed on the brakes.

He turned to look toward the passenger floor, bracing himself for the view of a gleaming knife or the muzzle of a pistol being pointed at him.

Instead, he saw the young girl from inside the Gas amp; Go staring up at him, her eyes now at once terrified and pleading.

“Vaya! Vaya!” she cried, begging him to go, to drive.

El Nariz glanced around the parking lot. He could see no one coming after her-or him-but he floored the accelerator again anyway.

Paco Esteban smiled as he now watched that teenage girl, Rosario Flores, being quick but meticulous with her folding and stacking. Within the last week, she had worked hard to prove her thanks to El Nariz for his kind act of rescue, and for him and his wife taking her into their home. If she had not quite become as dedicated a worker as all his others, she was very close.

Slowly, first with El Nariz’s wife, then with them both, Rosario had shared her story. It was sickening-her being fed drugs and forced to have sex with up to ten, twelve men in the course of fifteen-hour workdays. If only a small part of it was true-and El Nariz had no reason to believe she’d made up any of it-it was one of those horrors beyond description that he, as a God-fearing human being, despised to his very core.

And so Paco Esteban now smiled again, not only for Rosario in particular, but for all that he’d accomplished in general, both for himself and for his people.

They all had risked much, and they all had come far in their lives, and while-God forbid-some mistake they might make could send them back to that which they left far behind, they were being careful and invisible and integrating well in their adopted country. He’d even begun mailing small payments-no return address on the envelope, but his account number on the Western Union money order-to Saint John’s Hospital in Tucson.

One of the workers came up to El Nariz and told him that she had heard a knock on the pair of steel doors at the back of the building.

Esteban looked at his cellular phone’s clock, nodded appreciatively, and thanked her. The six-thirty delivery apparently was early, which meant his crew would have that much longer-nearly an hour-to process it before quitting at eight.

El Nariz went to the back door and looked out the peephole. All he saw was a darkened loading dock. So he went over to the electrical breaker box and opened its door. When he found the breaker, to throw that would power the mercury floodlamps that bathed the loading dock in a gray-white light, he saw that there was no red line on the breaker, indicating that the breaker had tripped. Still, he rationalized that with the recent renovation, anything was possible, so El Nariz threw the switch to the OFF position, then back to ON, then closed the door of the box.

At the steel doors, as he started to look out the peephole again, there came a steady and hard-bordering on impatient-banging. The mercury bulb was still out. El Nariz knew it took them a little time to come fully on, but thought that he could make out the silhouette of the laundry’s minivan and the driver gesturing for him to open the door.

Paco Esteban sighed. He did not want to lose the advantage that the early delivery afforded him. There was a wooden brace, a heavy square timber that rested in U-brackets bolted to the wall on either side of the set of double doors, that secured them shut. With some effort, he removed the brace, then unlocked the lower deadbolt, then the upper one.

The door suddenly flew open, its leading edge striking Paco Esteban in the forehead and causing a great deal of blood to start flowing down his face. He staggered back as in strode a tall muscular Hispanic male in black boots, pants, shirt, and hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled up on his head.

Hanging from a thin black sling on his right shoulder he had what El Nariz thought looked oddly like a long pistol or a short rifle. Whatever it was, it was futuristic-looking, unlike any weapon he’d ever seen.

In the man’s left hand, El Nariz saw what looked like a wet brown ball hanging from a black rope-although, with Esteban’s vision blurred, he could not tell if the blood he saw belonged to the object or to him.

“Rosario! Where is Rosario?” the man called out in almost happy singsong Spanish as he trained the muzzle of the weapon on El Nariz, then walked purposely past and on to the front of the building. Then his tone changed. “Rosario! Where the fuck are you?”

When the man reached the big room of washers and dryers, the workers moved to the side, out of the man’s way, in effect creating a path for him. The man looked to the end of this path, to the folding station along the far wall, and grunted at what he saw.

He held up the grotesque ball by its black rope.

“Let this be a lesson to all of you,” he bellowed as he swung it around.

Then he slung it, in a fashion oddly like that of a bowling ball, down the polished concrete floor toward Rosario, then turned to walk out the way he had come.

As he passed El Nariz, who was trying to get up from being down on his hurt left knee, his right hand holding his bloody forehead, the man again waved the muzzle of his futuristic-looking gun at him-but this time let off a burst of fire. The fifteen rounds loudly made a neat arch of pockmarks in the newly painted white brick above El Nariz’s head, pelting him with chips of masonry.

The man went out the door, and moments later the minivan roared off in a squeal of tires.

The bloody object had slid the length of the room and left a long, sloppy trail. As the crew of workers had recognized what exactly it was, they started wailing and shrieking-and running past El Nariz to the back door.

The object had stopped just short of Rosario’s feet, and when she looked down and saw that the rope was a ponytail and the ball was the bludgeoned decapitated head of Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez, its lifeless gaze staring up at her, Rosario Flores fainted to the floor.