The Death Box

“You were here ten minutes and figured out the concrete angle.”

“A conjecture.”

“It’s the kind of thinking I need. And don’t worry – I’ll deal with any delicate tootsies.” He slapped his hands – conversation over – and headed outside. I followed, thinking that if his people let a newbie waltz in as lead investigator on a case this big, they must be the most ego-free cops the world had ever produced.

4 (#u1c272a9a-a57c-5d98-b54d-f1b3d45cec31)

The semi-truck rumbled down the sandy lane in the South Florida coastal backcountry, a battered red tractor pulling the kind of gray intermodal container loaded on ships, traversing oceans before being offloaded to a truck or train to continue its journey. Tens of thousands of the nondescript containers traveled the world daily and it had been calculated that at any given moment over three per cent of the world’s GDP lay within the containers of Maersk, the world’s largest intermodal shipper.

But those were official loads. This particular shipment was a ghost, its true contents never recorded in any official documents. With the complicity of bribed clerks and customs agents, this simple gray box had boarded a ship in Honduras, sailed to the Port of Miami and been offloaded to the red tractor, with only the kind of glancing notice that came from eyes averted at the precise moment the container ghosted past.

“Looks quiet to me, Joleo.”

The passenger in the cab porched his hand over a scarred and sunburned brow, his dull green eyes scanning a stand of trees in the distance. Between the treeline and the truck was a corroded Quonset hut, a hundred feet of corrugated aluminum resembling a dirty gray tube half sunk in the sand. The passenger’s name was Calvert Hatton, but he went by Ivy, tattooed strands of the poison variety of the weed entwining his arms from wrist to shoulder.

“Our part’s almost over,” the driver said, pulling to a halt. He was tall and ropey and his name was Joe Leo Hurst, but over the years it had condensed to Joleo. “Go move ’em to the hut, Ivy.”

Ivy jumped from the cab and walked to the rear with bolt cutters in work-gloved hands as Joleo climbed atop the hood to scan the area.

“I still hate opening that damn door,” Ivy grumbled. “After that shipment last year …”

“We’ve done a bunch more since then. You remember one shipment that went bad?”

“I get nightmares,” Ivy whined.

Ivy wore a blue uniform shirt that strained over a grits-and-gravy belly and his thinning hair was greased back over his ears. He reached the bolt cutter’s jaws to the shining lock on the container and snapped the shackle. He climbed the tailgate to undo the latch on the doors, jumping down as they creaked open.

“The goddamn stench,” Ivy complained, pinching his nostrils as he peered into the module. “OK, monkeys, welcome to the Estados Unitas or whatever. Come on, get off your asses and move.”

A rail-thin Hispanic man in tattered clothes lowered himself from the container on shaky legs. He was followed by twenty-two more human beings in various stages of disarray, mostly young, mostly women. They blinked in the hard sunlight, fear written deep in every face.

“They all OK?” Joleo asked, now beside the cab and smoking.

“All up and moving.”

The Hispanics stood in a small circle at the rear of the truck, rubbing arms and legs, returning circulation to limbs that had moved little in a week. Ivy was lighting a cigarette when his head turned to the incoming road.

“Cars!” he yelled. “Orzibel’s coming.”

Joleo squinted in the direction of the vehicles and saw a black Escalade in the distance, behind it a brown panel van.

“Relax, Ivy. He’s just gonna grab some of the load.”

“That fucker scares me. He gets crazy with that knife.”

“Right, you get nightmares.”

Joleo was trying to joke, but his eyes were on the Escalade and his mouth wasn’t smiling, watching the car and van drive round the final bend and bear down on them. The black-windowed Escalade stopped hard at the rear of the truck, the van on its bumper. The Hispanics, senses attuned to danger, backed away, the circle re-forming beside the truck.

The driver’s side door opened on the Escalade and a man exited, as large as a professional wrestler and packed into a blue velvet running suit bulging with rock-muscled arms and thighs. He seemed without a neck, a round head jammed atop a velvet-upholstered barrel. The head was bald and glistened in the sun and its features were oddly small and compact, as if its maker’s hand had grasped a normal face and gathered everything to the center. And perhaps the same maker had tapped the eyes with his fingers, drawing out all life and leaving small black dots as cold as the eyes of dice. The dead eyes studied Ivy and Joleo as if seeing them for the first time.

“Yo, Chaku,” Joleo said. “S’up, man?”

If the driver heard, he didn’t seem to notice. The package of muscle nodded at the passenger side of the Escalade and another man exited the vehicle, or rather flowed from within, like a cobra uncurling from a basket.

His toes touched the sand first, sliver-bright tips of hand-tooled cowboy boots made of alligator hide. He wore dark sunglasses and walked slowly. His black silk suit seemed tailored to every motion in the slender frame. His snow-white shirt was ruffled and strung with a bolo tie, a cloisonné yin-yang of black enamel flowing into white.

The man was in his early thirties with a long face centered by an aquiline nose and a mouth crafted for broad smiles. His hair was black, short on the sides and pomaded into prickly spikes at the crown, a casual, straight-from-the-shower look only a good stylist could imitate.

A brown hand with long and delicate fingers plucked the sunglasses from the face to display eyes so blue they seemed lit from behind. The eyes looked across the parched landscape admiringly, as if the man had conceived the plans for the intersection of earth and sky and was inspecting the results. After several moments, he walked to the Hispanics, a smile rising to his lips.

“Hola, friends,” the man said, clapping the exquisite hands, the smile outshining the sun. “Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Bienvenido a gran riqueza.”

Welcome to the United States. Welcome to your fortunes.

Eyes rose to the man. Heads craned on weary necks.

“I represent your benefactor,” the man said in Spanish. “We are happy you made the journey. If you work hard you can make vast amounts of beautiful American dollars.”

His words sparked a nodding of heads and the beginnings of smiles. This was why they had left their homes and villages. The man gestured to the Quonset hut. “Most of you will go to the building and wait. Soon you will continue to Tampa, Pensacola, Orlando, Jacksonville. Some will be returning with me to Miami. Wherever you go, money awaits. All you have to do is honor your contract, and …” the hands spread in munificence, “the divine cash will shower into your palms.”

The smiles were full now, the heads a chorus of bobs. Someone yelled “Viva el Jefé.”

Long live the Chief.

The smiling man entered the group, basking in smiles and Vivas and hands patting his back as though a saint walked among them. He studied each face in turn, paying particular interest to the dark-haired women. One kept shooting glances through bashful, doe-like eyes. He took her small hand, holding it tight as she instinctively tried to pull it away.

“What is it, little beauty?” he said, patting the hand. “Why were you staring so?”

A blush crept to her neck. “I first thought … when you stepped from the beautiful car … we were in the Hollywood.”

“What makes you say that, little one?”

The blush swept her face as her eyes dropped to the ground. “You are so handsome,” she whispered. “Surely you are in the cinema.”

“You are far too kind. What is your name?”

“Leala … Leala Rosales.”

“I need four women and one man for Miami, Leala Rosales. Would you like me to show you the most beautiful city in the world, my city?”

“I … I … don’t know if …”

“You have stepped into a new world, Leala. Now you must trust yourself to jump.”

“I will … Yes, I will go with you, señor. Can my friend Yolanda come as well?” She pointed to a nearby girl.

“Perhaps the next time, Leala. There is only so much room in the car.”