Illicit Trade Read online

  The first toilet wasn’t working. The next was too disgusting. He chose the last of the four. A shuffling sound behind him made him turn around. The sixth gangbanger, the one he’d called “Thirteen” because that number was tattooed across his cheek, stood by the wall that separated the sinks from the toilets.

  “Hola,” he said with a broad grin on his face. He said something else.

  Joseph couldn’t even guess the meaning and shrugged. Thirteen was shorter than he, but built like a truck. His arms looked like braided ropes. He came closer. Joseph sighed. There went his plan. Thirteen would just sit on the toilet next to him. He turned to go back upstairs.

  “¿Adónde vas?” Thirteen said and held out one arm to keep Joseph from passing.

  “Okay,” Joseph said, hoping that the universal word of agreement would make the arm drop down again.

  It didn’t.

  Instead, Thirteen grabbed Joseph’s shirt and pulled him closer.

  Joseph’s first thought was that Thirteen wanted to give him a hug. But that made no sense at all. Thirteen wouldn’t even hug his mother. He considered resistance. He was taller. Shouldn’t he use that to his advantage? Before he could develop a plan, he found himself chest to chest with Thirteen.

  An odd smell entered his nostrils. Was that Thirteen’s? Or his own? He decided it was Thirteen’s, probably that stuff he put in his hair. He raised his own arm, intending to separate Thirteen’s hand from his shirt. He succeeded and pushed the other back. Thirteen let go of his shirt. That was a surprise. Maybe he needed to be a little more assertive. His confidence lasted ten seconds. That’s how long it took for Thirteen to hook his foot around Joseph’s right leg and jerk it forward. Joseph, unprepared, fell back.

  He tried to break the fall with his left elbow, which made a terrible cracking sound when the joint hit the tile floor. The pain shooting through his arm was excruciating. He opened his mouth to let out a scream. Only a muffled sound came from his mouth. Thirteen had clamped his large hand over it. He started to hyperventilate. Except Thirteen’s hand didn’t let him open his mouth. Joseph sucked air through his nostrils, snorting like a horse in distress.

  He felt Thirteen’s knee on his chest. And not just the knee. Thirteen’s entire weight bore down on that knee. The hand stayed clamped over his mouth. He couldn’t breathe through his nose anymore. His chest couldn’t move with all that weight on it. He gasped. His lungs screamed for air. None was coming in. He bucked like a zebra, trying to shake off Thirteen. It didn’t work. Thirteen had stretched out his other leg and used it as a lever against any effort to dislodge him. He tried squirming, hoping to slip out sideways. Thirteen’s weight kept him pressed down. The tips of his fingers began to tingle. His toes did the same thing. The tingling moved from his extremities to the core of his body. The pain from the elbow didn’t seem to matter anymore. His bucking and squirming became more feeble. His body didn’t want to struggle against Thirteen anymore. It was too hard.

  He closed his eyes. His little photography studio, if you could call it that, was suddenly there. The chair, the different colored pieces of cloth he used for the backdrop, the old tripod and the Minolta camera. He’d taken good pictures. None of his customers ever came back to complain that the size was wrong for the passports or IDs. Oddly, everything looked blue. He felt his muscles relax. There was more blue light. He forced his eyes open one more time. Thirteen’s mouth was close to his ear. The ugly “13” tattoo hovered right over his left eye.

  “Hello from the Broker,” Thirteen whispered.

  Joseph had never met anyone called ‘The Broker.’ It didn’t matter anymore. He closed his eyes and never opened them again.

  Chapter Six

  Vermeulen was back at the detention center at five o’clock sharp. Alma’s account of random transfers worried him. Once Joseph Odinga disappeared into the system, it would be difficult to find him again. The chairs in the reception area were still empty. Which didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t anyone waiting to visit the inmates?

  The hostile female guard had been replaced by a black man with grizzled hair and white stubble. As Vermeulen approached the window, the man pointed to a hand-scrawled sign taped to the inside of the glass: NO VISIT’S TODAY!

  He stepped up to the window.

  “No visits today,” the guard said.

  “The sign outside says that visiting hours are five to ten.”

  “That’s true. Can’t argue with that.”

  “So why are there no visits today?”

  “Lockdown.”

  “What?”

  “Lockdown. All inmates are in lockdown. They can’t leave their dorms.”

  “I have to talk to one of the detainees.”

  “Not today. Gotta come back tomorrow.”

  “I can’t come back tomorrow. This is an official visit.” He presented his UN ID.

  The man seemed duly impressed. He’d heard of the UN somewhere. “Is that like an embassy or consulate?” he said.

  “Exactly,” Vemeulen said, remembering his earlier experience.

  “Never seen one of those. But you know what they say ….”

  Vermeulen shook his head. “No, what do they say?”

  “Hang around long enough and you’ll see everything.”

  Vermeulen nodded and waited.

  It took the guard a moment to understand.

  “Oh, you still ain’t gonna visit today. Lockdown means no visits, not even consular or lawyers.”

  “Why is there a lockdown? I was here three hours ago and nobody said anything about a lockdown.”

  The guard gave him a pitying look. “You don’t know much about prisons, do you?”

  As a matter of fact, Vermeulen did. When he was a Crown Prosecutor in Antwerp, he visited prisons all the time, just never one that had a lockdown.

  “Lockdown ain’t something you schedule,” the guard said. “It happens when there’s trouble. And you don’t know before when trouble’s gonna happen, now, do you?”

  “So there was trouble here in the last three hours?”

  “Just a half hour ago.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know. They never tell me nothing. Just got the word, lockdown. No visitors.”

  “How can I find out?”

  “You can’t. Hell, if I don’t know, how are you gonna find out?”

  “Isn’t there a supervisor I can speak to?”

  “They’re busy with the lockdown. This here’s a private prison. They gotta make money, and they do that by not hiring enough people to run it. Best come back tomorrow.”

  The telephone on the guard’s desk rang. He reached for the receiver and answered. Vermeulen shuffled to the side. What was he supposed to do now? There was no way around the guard. Asking for a supervisor didn’t seem to have any effect. He could feel his anger over a wasted afternoon rising. But he’d eaten pie with Alma. So it hadn’t been a complete waste.

  The guard said, “Yes, sir. Will do.” He hung up the receiver. Before he could ask Vermeulen why he was still standing there, another guard came running into the glass cage.

  “Man, you’re not gonna believe it,” he said. “One of the guys is dead.”

  “Somebody kill him?” the guard said.

  “I dunno, they found ’im by the johns.”

  “What happened?”

  “I dunno. Coulda been a heart attack.”

  “Was it one of the Maras?”

  “You wish. It was the quiet guy who came couple’a days ago. From Africa, I think.”

  That got Vermeulen’s attention. “Was his name Joseph Odinga?” he said through the window.

  The second guard did a double take.

  “Oops, didn’t even see you there. You didn’t hear nothing, did you?”

  Vermeulen didn’t play along. “Was his name Joseph Odinga?”

  “Sorry. I can’t tell you nothing. Lockdown.”

  “Listen, I came here to talk to that man. I need to know if h
e’s dead or not.”

  “The company won’t let us say anything. We could lose our jobs.”

  “How can I find out? It’s really important.”

  “You got a card? I can give it to the supervisor.”

  Vermeulen pulled out a card and scribbled his cellphone number on the back. “Please make sure he gets it.”

  The trip back to Manhattan was dreary. The fading daylight turned the Jersey landscape into a monochromatic tableau with nothing worth looking at. Vermeulen was certain that the dead man at the detention center was Joseph Odinga. How many quiet men from Africa could there be in Elizabeth? Odinga’s death caught him by surprise. After listening to Alma, he’d considered the possibility of a transfer, but death? Poor man. Maybe he did have a heart attack. The man must have been stressed out, traveling for the first time in his life and ending up in prison, without having done anything wrong.

  Vermeulen didn’t buy the fake letter story Sunderland had spun. ICE had a siege mentality—us versus the brown hordes of the Third World. He’d seen it often enough at JFK. And it had gotten worse since 2001. But just to make sure, he’d follow up with Bengtsson, head of the Nairobi OIOS office, and run the scenario past him. Since the Darfur audit a year ago, they got on well. Bengtsson would ask the people whose names were on the letters. They’d explain that it was a legitimate invitation, and he could wrap up the case.

  His phone rang. He answered. “Vermeulen here. I’m driving. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  It had taken him a while to resist the urge to conduct a phone conversation while driving. But rules had gotten stricter, and he didn’t need a ticket for something that was better done while stationary. He pulled into the Alexander Hamilton Service Area, stopped, and dialed the last caller’s number.

  “Yeah,” a man answered. “Are you the embassy fellow who was just at the detention center?”

  “Yes, I am. Who’s this?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The voice didn’t sound like that of the old guard behind the window. It could be the guy who’d come in later.

  “You still wanna know the name of the dead man?”

  “Sure.”

  “It was Joseph Odinga.”

  “Thanks. Why are you telling me?”

  “The company I work for is shit. They treat their employees like shit and they treat the inmates like shit. I hate them. You seemed like an okay guy. So I called you.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “They’re gonna do an autopsy. Maybe you can get those results.”

  Vermeulen doubted that. “Yes, maybe. Have you heard anything else?”

  The man was quiet for a moment. “Mind you, this is just gossip. I was passing by Dormitory B, getting ready to go home. One of the Mexicans pulled me aside and said that he saw Odinga and one of the Salvadorian gangbangers go at it near the johns. The other guy was on top of Odinga. The Mexican didn’t see what happened. But the gangbanger came back into the dorm and a little later someone found Odinga dead.”

  “Are you saying that Odinga was murdered?”

  “That’s what the Mexican fellow was implying. I’m just passing it on.”

  Chapter Seven

  Vermeulen got back to his apartment at ten that evening. An accident at the Lincoln Tunnel, an argument with the car rental clerk, and the search for a cab took time and a toll on his patience. He’d picked up some Chinese takeout for dinner and was ready for a quiet evening. As soon as he shut the door to his apartment, he opened a bottle of De Koninck and lit his first Gitane of the day.

  He’d been thinking about quitting. There were fewer places to smoke now. The office, restaurants … pretty much everywhere was off limits, except the street and his apartment. And his daughter Gaby had been on his case. She was stubborn and mentioned it every time they talked. Still, a beer and a smoke after a crazy day were his preferred way to relax.

  The Clash, his favorite band, were playing via the set of Bluetooth speakers he’d bought at the Düsseldorf airport duty-free before his trip to Darfur. Lately, he’d been listening to the album Sandinista!, the band’s experiment with rhythms from around the world.

  He’d just dumped the rice and General Tso’s chicken on a plate when the Clash played “Somebody Got Murdered.” It startled him. Odinga had been murdered? Prisons in the U.S. were dangerous places. But a detention center for undocumented aliens? That seemed unlikely. The guards described Odinga as a quiet man. A quiet man wouldn’t pick a fight with a gang member. And Odinga didn’t have anything anyone might want to take from him.

  A thought he hadn’t entertained startled him. He put the fork down. The chicken didn’t live up to General Tso’s reputation anyway.

  Odinga’s death didn’t make sense unless the invitation letter was fake. So far, he’d assumed the letter was real. Call it prejudice against Sunderland and ICE.

  If the invitation was forged, Odinga’s death made a lot more sense. He became a liability the moment he was detained. He knew who was involved. Maybe not everyone, but certainly those who helped him get the visa. Whatever scam Odinga got involved in was big enough to require his elimination.

  But why? He was likely to be deported. Maybe he had applied for asylum, but Vermeulen was pretty certain Odinga would have difficulties proving a credible fear of persecution in Kenya. So, in a month or two, he’d be back in Nairobi. What was the big deal? According to Sunderland, he didn’t speak much English. He wasn’t likely to blab the story of how he got the letter.

  Vermeulen stirred some rice into the sauce and raised the fork. When it was halfway to his mouth, he stopped. He knew why Odinga had to die. It was his visit to the detention facility that set the wheels in motion. He showed up at two, was told to come back at five. In those three hours, while he had coffee and pie with Alma, someone made sure that Odinga wouldn’t speak to him.

  He put the fork down again. His appetite had disappeared. He got up, lit another Gitane, and paced up and down his narrow kitchen.

  He took a long swallow of beer. This was crazy. There was no evidence that Odinga was even murdered, just rumors relayed by an employee who probably had an ax to grind. Even if the letter were fake, it wasn’t something so extraordinary that it would have gotten Odinga killed.

  At eleven, he called Bengtsson in Nairobi. It was seven the next morning there, and he hoped Bengtsson wasn’t sleeping in. He answered reassuringly fast.

  “Hey, Arne. Valentin here. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “You’ll have to call earlier than that. Good to hear from you. When are you going to grace us with your presence?”

  “I have no idea. Right now I’m chained to my desk at headquarters. A dubious reward at best.”

  “That just doesn’t sound like you.”

  “You’re right. I’m realizing that myself. But, on the upside, I don’t miss cheap hotels and lousy food.”

  “There’s that. Just know I’d love a visit. It doesn’t have to be official. Kenya is a wonderful place.”

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “So what’s up?” Bengtsson said. “You didn’t call just to hear my melodious voice.”

  The quip made Vermeulen smile. Bengtsson’s voice, with its nasal Scandinavian accent, was anything but melodious.

  “No. I didn’t. We have an issue here. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have detained two Kenyans who they claim obtained visas using forged invitation letters issued by UN-HABITAT. I have copies. They were both signed by a Salif Traoré, at least that’s what the printed name is. There’s no title or anything else. Could you check out Mr. Traoré? Does he exist? If so, did he sign these invitations?”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, there are two more letters that came from the UN Environment Program office in Vienna. Do you know who runs the Vienna office of OIOS?”

  “Sure, that’s Pierre Dufaux. Do you want his number?”

  “If you have it, please.”

&
nbsp; Bengtsson took a moment and then rattled out a number. Vermeulen noted it on a scrap of paper.

  “Thanks, that was really helpful. Please call me when you find out something. Anytime.”

  Vermeulen ended the call. A familiar sensation coursed through his body. The dull errand to New Jersey had turned into just the kind of case he’d been hoping for.

  Chapter Eight

  Okeyo Abasi felt terrible. His legs didn’t want to support him anymore. It was ten in the morning and he stood outside Broad Street Station in Newark, waiting for a bus to take him back to JFK. All the seats at the bus stop were taken. He leaned against the support column, hoping that taking a little weight off his legs would make the pain bearable. It didn’t.

  “Please God, let the bus come,” he mumbled to himself. “If I can just sit down, I’ll be okay.”

  He had no idea when the right bus was supposed to arrive. He needed to sit. The stairs to the elevated train were the only option. He dragged his aching body across the sidewalk. His legs had no strength left to lower his body gently. The concrete was hard when his backside hit it. A flash of pain shot through him. He almost toppled over. Once the pain subsided a little, he worried about getting up again, but decided to face that challenge when his bus arrived.

  He felt inside his pocket. It was still there—the envelope with twenty-five hundred dollars. Only a fraction of what he’d been promised. But he hadn’t been in any condition to fight back. He was lying on a gurney, his brain swimming from the drugs they had injected and his left side pulsing with a dull pain. The man who gave him the envelope said that cost and transaction fees had been deducted. Back in Kibera, nobody had mentioned cost and transaction fees.

  If only the bus would come. He wanted to be on the airplane and sleep, sleep until he was back home. His sister would care for him if he didn’t feel better by then. But he would feel better. He knew it.

  * * *

  Earle Jackson leaned against the old clock tower of the Broad Street Station in Newark. It was a casual pose. Just a black dude, waiting. He was tall, but not in an intimidating way. He didn’t sport fancy cornrows or dreads, no gold chains or teeth, and certainly not pants halfway down his ass and some loud big jacket that would’ve done well in the arctic. No, Jackson was a businessman, and a businessman had to project a proper image. Especially when looking for clients.