Deadly Traffic Page 2
We put the bikes away and sat on the front deck of Jimmy’s houseboat.
He said, “Now that we’ve been virtuous and exercised, how about a beer?”
“Sure thing.” I’d been trying to cut back on my Red Stripe consumption lately, but I felt like I deserved this one.
“How are things with Callie?” Jimmy knew that we’d had some issues lately.
“We’re okay. She’s pretty happy about the new job with the Bradenton Journal. Even though it’s not an office job they gave her a new MacBook Air and a dedicated iPhone for contacting the editors and Dillon Haverhill. Having a sense of purpose is doing her a lot of good.”
“Is she working on anything big yet?”
“No, she’s been poking around some of the environmental problems in the state, but doesn’t have any new information yet to hang a story on.”
Jimmy took a sip of his beer and looked over the bottle at me. “You don’t seem in a big hurry to start something new.”
“Hey, I haven’t looked for stories since I moved to Florida. They keep dropping in my lap. I’m perfectly happy just working out, doing a little creative writing, and sitting around on the boat the rest of the time. I’m not looking for projects.”
He toasted me with his bottle. “To doing nothing.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
§
Carmelina was exhausted. The days of vacuuming, ironing, dusting, seemed to go on forever. The Palm Beach mansion had thirty rooms, and even with the help of two other immigrant workers they finished cleaning the house only to start over again.
She got one twenty-minute break for lunch, and at night she was locked in her room in a distant wing of the massive house. There she would lie in her single bed and write endless letters to her sister, Leilani and her brother, Pablo, telling them of her daily life.
She feared she would never get the chance to give them the letters, but it gave her hope to write them.
The other thing she feared was the master of the house. He was gone much of the day, working in the office where he ran the giant sugar company, but he was home most nights. His wife traveled alone often, and when she was away there was a steady stream of pretty young girls who were brought to the house by the chauffeur.
They were for the entertainment of the master, and Carmelina had no doubt about what that meant. He generally left her alone, barely noticing her existence. One night that changed.
She had heard the master talking to one of his attorneys as she cleaned in the hallway, seemingly invisible to them.
“Listen, sir, with the big sting that went on in Jupiter, I’d advise you to cool it with the female ‘visitors’ for a while.”
“What the hell does that have to do with me, Carson? I’m not stupid enough to go to those storefront massage parlors like the idiots who got arrested.”
“No, sir, but the authorities are attempting to track the girls themselves, and you certainly don’t need that kind of negative publicity.”
The master cursed and complained but had apparently acquiesced. That was when he began noticing her.
“Hi, honey, are you new to the staff?”
She answered in her heavily accented English. “No, sir, I’ve been here for ten months.” One of the other girls had helped her pick up some of the language.
“How old are you?”
“Almost eighteen years, sir.”
Ah, old enough. “Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and come sit with me in my library.”
She looked at him nervously. “Sir, Mrs. Lopez, the head housekeeper, she will punish me if she sees me sitting instead of cleaning.”
“Bah, she works for me! If I say sit, it’s fine to sit.”
Carmelina followed him into the library where she watched as he sat on a short leather couch. He patted the cushion next to him. “Come, sit down.”
She sat as far from him as she could, perched on the edge of the cold, leather cushion, ready for flight.
The master said, “Let’s have a drink.” He got up and filled a tumbler from a crystal decanter, then poured a second tumbler with a smaller amount and handed it to her.
“Sir, I have never had alcohol before. I should not drink this.”
“What’s your name?”
“Carmelina, sir.”
“Well, I don’t like to drink alone, and I’m the boss, comprende?”
“Si.” She took a small sip and coughed violently as the fiery liquid burned her throat.
“Dammit, girl, you’re wasting expensive liquor and getting it on the leather!”
“I am sorry, sir, it burned me.”
He took the glass from her, diluted the amber liquid with water and handed it back. “Try it this way.”
She reluctantly tried it again. She winced, but managed to keep it down without coughing.
“See, that’s better, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned into the corner of the couch and turned to look at her. “You fill out that uniform pretty well, honey.”
She didn’t know if a reply was called for and kept silent while taking another sip of the diluted whiskey.
The master downed his glass, shook his head to clear it, then stood and poured himself another tumbler full. “Drink up. Things are lot more fun with a little lubrication.”
Carmelina took one small sip, then another. Before long, her head was swimming. She barely heard it when the head of housekeeping came into the library.
“Sir, would you like me to return this girl to her room for the night?”
“No, I’ll take care of it. I have a key.”
He saw the disapproving look on the woman’s face, but he didn’t care. He paid all the staff he didn’t own. Every person in the house. I’ll do what I damned well please.
The master slowed down his own drinking but poured another glass for Carmelina. He needed her pliable but awake for what he had in mind.
“Come on, honey, I’ll show you my private wing of the house.”
Through the fog of alcohol her hopes rose. Only the most trusted servants were allowed into that part of the sprawling mansion. Maybe she’d find a way out from there.
§
Sweat poured off Pablo in the Florida heat. He’d been picking tomatoes ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. When he was sold to the foreman who ran the crew, he was told he’d be paid fifty cents per thirty-two pound bucket of tomatoes. He needed to pick just over three tons of tomatoes every day to make $50. It was only possible to pick that much when the days were long and the fruit on the vines was healthy and plentiful.
The pay didn’t seem all that bad at first, until he discovered the charges that were being withheld from it. He shared a broken-down mobile home owned by the packing house with nineteen other immigrant pickers. He was charged $50 a week for that. The food was miserable, often just dry tortillas and water. Another $50 a week for the meals. $5 a day for the sixteen mile ride to the fields in the elderly school bus.
It would be impossible at that pace to pay off the $5,000, the amount the smugglers told him he owed for his freedom.
He saw what happened to workers who tried to escape. One picker who couldn’t take it any more ran off. The crew boss saw him and chased him down in the old pickup truck the supervisors used to roam the fields. They returned without him an hour and a half later. They’d beaten him so badly that they just dropped him off at the hospital
The man never recovered, and a message was sent to the rest of the workers. There is no escape.
Pablo kept his head down, trying to get through every day the best he could. His arms had become strong from the work even as his knees and back suffered. There was no day off for pain.
Those who were identified as troublemakers were shackled, making the work that much harder. Pablo did his best to avoid that, but one day he’d had enough. Boss John, the crew boss, had spent the morning following him aroun
d, kicking him in the ass and calling him a worthless spic. Pablo had stumbled over a tomato-sized rock in the field, a rarity in the heavily cultivated soil. He picked the stone up and put it in his pocket.
When the crew boss started in on him again, Pablo rose up, pulled the rock from his pocket, and struck him in the side of the head. The boss fell to the ground, blood pouring from the wound. Pablo dropped the rock and ran. He ran like his life depended on it, and it did. With Boss John down, no one followed him.
Hours later, he finally reached a main highway, and began the long, slow walk to freedom. Now he had to find his sisters.
§
Leilani had lost track of day and night. She spent most days locked in the cabin, moving with the rocking of the boat. The lights were on, and she had no way to turn them off. When men came through the door, she wished she could turn off the lights, but the lights stayed on. When they left after they had used her, she kept her eyes closed, praying for darkness to overcome her.
Chapter Two
Carmelina awoke in the softest bed she’d ever felt, covered by a silken sheet. For a second it felt heavenly, until she became aware of the pain in her head and between her thighs. She turned her head and saw the master beside her, huge belly rising and falling as he snored.
She almost screamed but stifled it before it escaped her throat. She needed silence to escape. She put her feet on the floor, trying hard not to make any move that would awaken the beast in the bed. She rose, found her discarded clothes on the floor and dressed quietly.
Looking around the room, she saw a dresser against the wall, with the master’s wallet laying atop it. She removed a hundred dollar bill and four twenties from the billfold, leaving the rest. She was not a thief, but she needed money to get away. She had earned it.
Carmelina eased the bedroom door open, peeked into the hall and found it empty. The bedroom clock had said 7:45 am, and all the staff knew not to awaken the master this early. He often entertained the women who were brought to him in his bedroom, and she knew that the women arrived and departed through a rear staircase into the upper hall.
Carmelina had to find a way out. Hesitant to open any doors and raise the alarm, she noticed that several of them seemed less ornate than the master’s bedroom entry. Trying the first of the plain doors, she found it opened into a storage closet. The second one was a linen closet. The third disappeared into a staircase heading down.
She entered and closed the handle quietly, then stopped to listen. The house was silent at this early hour, by order of the master. She tiptoed down the carpeted stairs, past a landing, then further to a door that latched from the inside. Carmelina prayed that it didn’t lead to the kitchen or anywhere else she would be seen by the staff.
She was in luck. It opened onto a covered porch at the side of the huge house, shielded by hedges. The very spot that helped the master sneak his women into the house was helping her to escape from it. Now the question was where to go next.
She hid in the bushes, afraid to walk into the open. If she was spotted, she’d be returned to the house, punished and locked up again, with no hope of future escape. This was her only chance.
At 8:15, a pickup truck towing an open-topped trailer with enclosed sides drove on the pebbled driveway past her hiding space. Limbs trimmed from the hedge surrounding the outside wall of the Palm Beach estate filled it nearly to the top of the sidewalls. Two men got out of the pickup cab and spoke to each other in rapid Spanish.
“Jorge, you trim the side by the pool, I’ll do this one. Remember, work quietly. When the trailer is full, we’ll make a trip to the landfill, then take a lunch break, okay?”
“Si,” was the only reply.
Carmelina watched as the man nearest her walked to the end of the row of shrubs, turned away from her hiding place, unzipped his trousers and urinated. She took advantage of the moment and raced to the trailer, climbed over the side and wormed her way under the brush inside. The slight clatter of the trimmer from the far side of the hedge was enough to cover the sound.
She lay under the scratchy limbs, blood welling from small scratches on her arms and face, and she prayed.
§
Things had been going smoothly with Callie and I since we’d returned from Key West. At least I thought so. We’d worked through her feelings of being smothered by my fears for her safety, and now, with her new job at the Bradenton Journal, I was prepared for a period of calm in our somewhat stormy relationship.
After my morning’s exercise with Jimmy and a nice nap after lunch, I woke to find Callie at the salon table on the WanderLust, pounding furiously on the keys of her laptop.
“Working on something good?” I asked. It seemed like an innocuous remark.
“Yes. One of us has to get some work done for the Journal.”
“Whoa, what’s this all about?”
She pushed her laptop away. “It’s been more than a month since we were offered a deal to write and research together by Dillon Haverhill, and nothing is happening, that’s what.”
“Callie, we can’t just manufacture a story from thin air. The facts have to present themselves.”
“Well, they won’t present themselves to you while you’re out riding bicycles with Jimmy.”
“Let me remind you that Haverhill said there were no deadlines, no editors pushing us. That means we have the luxury to wait until the right story comes along, not try to force one that isn’t worth the time it takes.”
She glared at me. “Is that what you think, that I’m trying to force a story to happen? I just think there are enough serious problems in the state of Florida that I don’t have to force myself to pick one.”
“Calm down, Callie, this isn’t worth fighting about.”
“You think my job with the Journal is a joke, don’t you? Well, I take it damn seriously, and it’s about time you took it seriously too!” She stomped off the boat, setting it rocking in the slip as she skipped the boarding steps and jumped over the side onto the dock. Good grief.
As I watched her stomp down the dock, I heard Captain Rick coming from the other direction.
“Trouble in paradise, Will?”
“That’s one way to put it. Can I offer you a beer?”
“Sure.” He stepped aboard. “Looks like you could use one yourself.”
I opened two Red Stripes and handed one to Rick. We went to the covered rear deck and sat down.
He said, “Callie sounds pretty riled up. What’d you do now?”
“That’s just it, nothing.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing.”
“Callie is mad because we haven’t started on a new story series since the Bradenton Journal hired us.”
“Well, why haven’t you?”
I sighed. “Because I haven’t found the right story, and because Dillon Haverhill said we could take as long as we please. There’s no rush to work on something that doesn’t catch my interest.”
He shook his head. “Will, you are a slow learner sometimes.”
“What did I do?”
“You helped Callie find her purpose in life, and now you’re keeping her from doing anything with it.”
“Nothing is stopping her. She’s been researching a couple of things, but none of them have grabbed my interest yet. I can’t just make up something to write about.”
He laughed. “She’s got her race car revving at the starting line and you’re back in the garage polishing the hood, dummy.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
“If you want to hold on to her, you’d better find something constructive to do. She’s not gonna wait around forever for you to get motivated.”
Well, hell. There goes my vacation.
§
Carmelina had waited more than an hour lying under the branches in the trailer as more debris from the bushes was dumped on top of the pile. She held her breath every time as dust and clippings filtered down on her, trying to stifle a sneeze. Once she held her breath for more than a
minute, holding her hand over her mouth to mute her sneeze until she finally heard the trimmer start up its clatter again.
The piles of leaves weighed down the branches on her body, and when the workers spread a tarp over them and winched it tight, she thought she might suffocate. When the truck began to move, she bounced off the trailer floor, but relaxed when she felt air flowing between the boards as they sped onto a highway.
After a half an hour on the road the truck drove into a parking lot far from Palm Beach. She heard the landscape workers open their doors and slam them behind them, then heard the phrase “Descanso del amuerzo.” Lunch break. They walked into a restaurant.
This is my chance. She struggled free of the press of the branches, and reached up to the tarp itself, only to find it attached from the outside. Forcing her body through the tightly packed branches, she felt all around the edges until she came to a loose section where the eyelet had ripped free. Carmelina covered her eyes and pushed upward, ignoring the scratches, getting her back against the tarp, then pushing with all her strength until she felt the fabric rip.
Freedom! She climbed out of the trailer and made her way to the gas station next to the diner. She needed to wash her face and rinse the blood from her scratches before she asked anyone for help. The last thing she needed was a Good Samaritan calling the police.
Carmelina kept her head down as she walked into the mini mart, made her way to the restroom and locked the door behind her. She looked in the mirror, startled at the scratched and bloody face that looked back at her. It took her ten minutes, during which someone grew tired of waiting their turn and began pounding on the door, but at last she felt presentable.
She walked to the drink cooler, reached in and got a soft drink and walked to the register. The woman behind the counter looked Latina. Carmelina put one of the twenty-dollar bills on the counter to pay for her drink, and said “Iglesia?”
The clerk said, “What? Speak English.”
She tried again. “Church? Close?”
“Ah, you need to find a church. Looks like you might be on the run, honey. I know just the place for you. Let me call em.” She saw the confusion on Carmelina’s face. She held her hand to her ear. “Telefono. For help.”