The Traffickers

ONE

826 Sears Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 7:55 A.M.

Paco Esteban, a bloodstained gauze bandage on his forehead, walked swiftly toward his South Philly row house. The two-story flat-roofed structure-like the row houses on either side and many others up and down the street-had a fa?ade of old red brick with dirty brown corrugated aluminum awnings above the door and windows.

In his left hand, Esteban carried two packed grocery bags, the sheer plastic stretching with the weight of their contents. He grabbed the black iron railing of the brick stoop and pulled himself along, quickly taking the three shallow steps up to the front door.

At the door, he nervously looked over his shoulder as he juggled the grocery bags and reached for his keys to open each of the door’s three locks. About the time he got the second one unlocked, he heard the familiar metallic clunk that told him someone on the other side of the door was unlocking the third, a deadbolt.

As he pulled out the key from the second lock, the door swung open.

Standing there in a dingy beige sleeveless cotton dress was his wife. As much as El Nariz’s head hurt, he still managed to think: My beautiful Salma. My Madonna. It is not fair that she should suffer such pain and worry…

Se?ora Salma Esteban was a swarthy black-haired twenty-nine-year-old who stood five-foot-four and weighed 160 pounds. Her face was puffy, the eyes somewhat swollen from crying. She clenched a wadded used tissue in her right hand.

On her left shoulder she held a toddler, the Estebans’ three-year-old nephew, who had a thick mop of unruly black hair and wore only a diaper. He was sound asleep and snoring.

Se?ora Esteban, sniffling, motioned for El Nariz to quickly come inside. When he had, she pushed the door shut and rushed to relock the doors.

“How is she doing now?” El Nariz asked his wife in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Better,” Salma Esteban said softly.

“Bueno,” El Nariz said, nodding thoughtfully.

He carried the bags into the cluttered kitchen. His wife followed.

She watched her husband, his coarse face still showing a mix of anger and fear, wordlessly unpack the bags with a heavy hand onto the counter. One bag held packs of flour tortillas, cans of frijoles negros and corn, and other staples of a heavy-starch diet. From the other he pulled out a pack of disposable diapers and handed them to his wife, then a box of gauze bandages, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide antiseptic, and a bottle of aspirin.

“While you were at the store,” Salma Esteban said softly, “Rosario did say she wanted to tell us more.”

Paco Esteban looked up from the bags. “More?” he said. “We know what she said about her being forced…”

He could not bring himself to repeat the sexual slavery part of her peonage.

He then shook his head and added, his tone incredulous, “There is more? Madre de Dios.”

“I will go and put the baby down,” Salma Esteban said.

On the loading dock of the laundromat nearly two hours earlier, El Nariz had had to slap a wildly hysterical Rosario Flores twice across the face. Not that he necessarily felt that she was overreacting to the severed head and the shooting. He himself was in shock from that-and from his bloody forehead, which throbbed beyond belief. But he had made the immediate decision that anywhere else would be better for them to be than at the laundromat.

And her banshee screams were about to attract some unwanted attention, if the sound of the gunfire hadn’t already accomplished that.

At least I hear no sirens, he’d thought.

At least not yet.

All of the other workers in his crew already had fled. He was not really worried about them. They knew how to take care of themselves, and for now that meant lying low, out of sight. He knew he would see some of them back in South Philly-particularly the ones who lived near his house, and especially the sister-in-law of his wife, who lived in his house with her husband and three-year-old son.

The others would at different times come out of the woodwork as they felt safer, as they collected information through their underground grapevine about what the hell had happened. And why. And how it did-or did not-directly threaten them.

The two slaps were enough to get Rosario’s attention-and more important, to get her to shut up and listen to reason. He had then been able to convince her to get in the Ford minivan, and that it was safer for her in the backseat, lying on the floor under a pile of bedsheets.

El Nariz then had gone back inside the laundromat.

Considering what had just happened, he thought that the scene did not look that bad. Or certainly not as bad as it could have.

El Nariz looked at the arch of bullet holes in the brick wall.

That crazy bastard!

What if he’d shot me-shot us all-instead of just leaving?

The wire baskets between the walls of washer and dryer machines were scattered wildly, a few toppled on their side. The severed head lay where it had slid to a stop, down by the table along the wall used for folding. He walked to it, afraid he might throw up, and quickly covered it with a white bath towel. The bloody slime trail it had left was becoming more and more dry, and he grabbed a damp towel from a wire basket and quickly wiped up what he could.

Then he found a box of plastic garbage bags, pulled two from the roll, and went back to the towel-covered head.

I still do not know who this is, may God rest her tortured soul.

Or how she is connected to Rosario.

But I do not question that she is.

He crossed himself, then carefully gathered the white towel around the head, lifting it all at once. He placed the severed head and its towel in one of the plastic garbage bags, then placed that bag inside the other. He added the bloody towel that he had used to wipe the floor, then knotted the bags closed.

He scanned the room and shook his head in resignation.

Nothing more to do right now.

Nothing but get the hell out of here.

Then, carrying the bag, he quickly moved to the steel double doors of the loading dock. He pulled them closed from the outside, locked them, then went to the minivan.

As the rear door of the minivan swung upward, he could hear the muffled sobbing coming from under the small pile of bedsheets.

“It is okay, Rosario,” he said softly. “It is only me.”

El Nariz carefully placed the garbage bag inside the rear storage area of the minivan-If she knows this is here, it will not be good for either of us; but it is not right to just leave it-and pulled the door down and closed it as gently as he could.

Rosario had sobbed uncontrollably on the drive to the South Philly row house.

And she was still inconsolable after Se?ora Esteban sat with both arms around her on the well-worn couch in the back-room parlor.

El Nariz had gone to clean up his head wound. He then took the double-bagged head down to the basement and, not sure what the hell else could immediately be done with it, he put it in the Deepfreeze, buried under plastic zipper-top bags of frozen vegetables.

Back upstairs, he’d stood watching from the doorway to the kitchen, taking an occasional pull from a liter bottle of agave liquor he held by his hip.

As Rosario continued sobbing, he’d finally gone back into the kitchen and poured two fingers of the tequila into a plastic cup. He’d then added twice as much orange juice to that and taken the drink into the parlor. With some effort, they got the girl to drink it.

After a short while, the alcohol had the desired effect. Rosario became somewhat calmer. She still trembled at times, but at least she no longer wailed.

Rosario now sat on the back-room parlor couch as Paco and Salma Esteban came back into the room. She had her knees pressed to her breasts and both arms wrapped tightly around the outside of her knees. She slowly rocked to and fro as she tried to hold back the sobs that seemed to rise from deep down inside.

“Rosario,” Salma Esteban began softly, “you do not have to do this thing now. You have been through very much.”

She shook her head vigorously.

“No,” she said. “It must be done.”

She sobbed.

“And I must go to church,” she added, “to confession.”

Paco and Salma Esteban exchanged glances.

Paco Esteban said, “Who’s the girl?”

His wife glared at him for asking such a question at such a delicate time.

He shrugged, in effect saying, What did I say?

Rosario buried her face in her knees and breasts. Then she looked up and between them.

She wailed, “I killed my cousin!”

Paco and Salma Esteban again exchanged glances, this time ones of deep shock.