I suppressed a shudder. “Is there much trafficking in the US?” I asked, aware of my country’s often dishonorable trek from slavery to freedom.
“The US is not Eastern Europe, or Thailand, or Russia,” she said. “but if there are places where people, especially women, are used in vice, trafficking is there.”
“Trafficking for sex, then.”
“Sexual slavery is the mainstay of human trafficking in the US, women brought here as sex machines. They’re forced to work until they fall apart, at which point they’re replaced with another machine.”
“Are they kidnapped from their home countries?” I asked.
“Most are as willing as contestants on American Idol, seeing the US as offering money, a glamorous life, beautiful places to live, delicious foods in every direction. They’re easy prey for vultures who ply the villages, men who seek out youthful girls and boys with wide dreams. The typical line is that they get here and do some simple work – gardening, cleaning – for a couple months. After that they have no obligation.”
“The garden never appears.”
“They arrive to be told they owe thousands of dollars and can work it off with sex acts. Refusal brings beatings, rapes, starvation, drugging. The slaves are stripped of will and do as they’re told.”
“Why not go to the police?”
A sad headshake. “The law where these people come from is often corrupt and biased against the poor: They’re terrified of authority. Secondly, these are rural folks, highly religious and attuned to mores regarding purity. Though their debasement comes at the hands of others, they believe the fault is in them. The overwhelming shame is reflected in the suicide rate.”
“Given their daily horrors, I still can’t understand why more don’t just hail a cop cruiser. It’s got to be better than—”
Victoree Johnson reached forward and touched my knee, her eyes filled with quiet sorrow. “There’s another form of leverage. The worst form.”
I thought a moment and closed my eyes at the simplicity of the hold. “The old stand-by,” I sighed. “Threaten the family back in the home country.”
Johnson mimed waving a knife. “Do what we say or your mama loses an eye, a sister gets a nose cut off. It’s not a threat. Those who traffic in their fellow humans have no bottom.”
“How do they get here? It’s not as if there’s a thousand miles of border to cross, like with Mexico. South Florida’s surrounded by water.”
“Lately we’re hearing rumors of human cargo brought here in containerized shipping modules. They’re packed in like sardines.”
“Into a port as secure as Miami?” I’d read how Homeland Security had ramped up checkpoints and procedures after being called on lax security a few years back.
“I figure it’s bribery. It takes many people to secure a port, but only one or two highly positioned people to know when human cargo is arriving and pay eyes to look the other way.”
I nodded. It was the same with drugs. “Why might these people have died?” I asked, returning to the problem of the column. “There’s no desert in South Florida.”
“They could have come in on an old truck or boat and carbon monoxide leaked. It’s not without precedent. They might have been on a small boat that capsized, that’s happened with Cuban refugees. Or perhaps they were inadvertently poisoned with bad food, or smuggled in beside bags of poisonous chemicals in a shipping container.”
“But if these people are worth so much when they get here – working for sex – why not keep them safer on the journey?”
A sad smile. “You ever see a hog truck out on the road, Detective Ryder? How much protection does it get?”
“There are millions of pigs shipped every year.”
“Exactly,” Johnson said. “Who cares about one lousy shipment of bacon?”
“Did you make the delivery to Madame Cho?” Amili asked. She sat at her desk with laptop in hand. Orlando Orzibel lounged on the couch and pared his nails with his knife. The late morning sun had brightened the cloudless sky to a brilliant hue and clear light streamed through the window.
“I had Chaku run the product over.”
A raised eyebrow. “You did not go personally?”
“I prepare them, others deliver them,” Orzibel sniffed. “I am not Federal Express.”
“Who did you select?”
Orzibel frowned at the open window and strode over to pull the drapes, then returned to the couch. “Luisa Mendoza and Leala Rosales.”
“Were they ready?”
Orzibel waggled his hand, so-so. “As they ever are when they’re that fresh. But Cho is stern with training and discipline, so Leala and Luisa will soon be industrious little tug-job factories.”