The Bus to Beulah, page 20
“Ed paused, and said, ‘Sam, I sure hoped that was the case, but there’s a lot of weird stuff going down these days and I needed to check it out. Will Moser has an investigation in Hogg County on a similar matter, which is why I asked him to come with me today.’ I felt like I ought to say something here, so I asked Sam, ‘Sam, did Jimmy pay you with an NCFC check or personal?’
“Sam paused, then said, ‘I think it was personal, but he said it was for NCFC.’
“Ed closed his notepad. ‘Sam, I’m gonna call the folks at the Labor Department and Immigration tomorrow, so wanted you to know. If all these women have valid H-2A visas, it means they’re legal, but I guarantee you the Immigration folks are gonna want to know what farm they’re supposed to go to. I told them to stay put and said that if they tried to leave, we’d find them. I don’t think you have a thing to worry about, but you should be prepared for a bunch of questions. I’d suggest you not go over to the house.’
“Sam said, ‘You don’t have to worry about that, Sheriff, and thank you, I appreciate it, and guarantee you that I’ll be on the phone to Jimmy Ross tomorrow morning first thing.’ Ed looked over at me, so I said, ‘Mr. Elliot, Jimmy Ross is dead. He was killed in Jackson County in a traffic accident on Thursday night.’ I thought he was gonna faint.
“‘What the fuck is going on?’ he asked.
“Ed replied, ‘Sam, it was an accident as far as we know. Sheriff Hoots has issued a preliminary report that says it’s a case of hit and run. But the driver of the truck that hit Jimmy has disappeared.’
“Sam, still dumbstruck, said, ‘Then I guess I’ll call Albert Waters.’
“Ed said, ‘Sam, you might wait for a day or two. At least until I finish my investigation.’ Sam didn’t say anything, just nodded.
“There not being a lot more to say, Ed and I left.”
Eli blew another smoke ring and said, “You think he’ll wait to call Albert?”
Will replied, “No. I think he’ll stew about it for a few hours, down a couple of stiff shots of whiskey, then call him tonight.”
Eli smiled as he finished his drink, “That should flush the quail out of the bushes.”
Lana got up and said, “Eli, looks like you need a fresher-upper, and the sheriff looks like he could use one as well.”
Will started to say something, but before he could, Eli said, “Sheriff, hold just a minute. I need to call Olan.”
Lana came back on the porch with a bottle and two more glasses. She poured Will a drink, then topped off her own and Eli’s.
Eli finally put down his phone and said, “Will, while you and Sheriff Haines were out hobnobbing with the hookers, I kept thinking about informer options, and the only one I kept coming back to was Richie Simon. You gotta confront Mr. Simon, and confront him soon—like first thing tomorrow morning. When Albert finds out about the whores, and he will, all plans move up. If Rich is being blackmailed, as we think, then he’s scared shitless and praying for a way out. Short of some irrational act of grabbing Albert and his buddies on sex-trafficking charges, which will never stick based on what we know now, Rich is the best chance we’ve got to find out what’s going on.
“I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things, while Olan cruises around Beulah to see if he can find out where everybody is. My communications guy at Guardian is monitoring office and home phones, plus scanning all cell transmissions, but if Albert believes he’s been compromised, he might use other phones. Let’s hope he ain’t that smart.
“Will, you might want to call your buddy at the SBI and tell him to be available. We’ll need him if we discover a drug angle or get anything concrete on human trafficking.”
Will nodded. “I’ll call him tonight, and given our relationship, he may be open to a little snooping around without concrete proof.”
Will stood up, “If I’m gonna visit with Richie Simon tomorrow morning, I’ll need to drive to the beach tonight. Lana and I have a house at Figure Eight, just north of Wrightsville, so I can spend the night there and go see Richie early in the morning. I might even go by his place tonight to make sure he’s still there.”
Lana stood up and, looking at her husband, said, “Will, I’ll drive. You may need to use the phone, and if so, I’d rather you didn’t have an accident while driving. Plus, I might be of some help with young Richard.”
As Will and Lana started to go inside, Will turned, and smiling, said, “Eli, go easy on my scotch. That bottle of Lagavulin costs over $100 at our local ABC store. I’d hate to dock my first paycheck to Ares.” Eli smiled, raised his glass, and said, “Dock away, Sheriff.”
Will replied, “I’ll call you as soon as I leave Rich’s.” Then Will looked at Hank and said, “You’re in charge, Henry.”
Saturday
11:00 p.m.
Will and Lana had only been asleep for about an hour or so when his phone rang.
“Yeah.”
“Will, it’s Hank. Get awake ’cause you ain’t gonna believe this.”
Will sat up in bed and said, “What time is it?”
“Eleven o’clock. You awake?”
“Somewhat.”
“Okay, just when you think it can’t get any weirder, it does. I just got off the phone with Nathan Holloway, the deputy in…”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
“Okay, he is on duty tonight at the jail in Cranston. About an hour ago, a young woman comes into the station hysterical. She can’t speak any English but is clearly in a panic. Nathan doesn’t speak any Spanish, but they happen to have a Hispanic prisoner in jail for a DUI who was sober enough to translate.
“The long and short of it is this: the young woman is one of the hookers who you saw at the Elliot place this afternoon. It seems that after you left, some of the girls were in a panic and the older woman who was there started yelling at them to calm down. After a while most of them seemed okay, but this woman decided that she wasn’t gonna stick around. After the others went to sleep, she sneaked out and took off. She ended up at the Sheriff’s Department after hitching a ride with some long-haul truck driver.
“Anyway, the young woman says she’s a prostitute who was brought to the states to work the labor camps on various farms around the area. She and the other women have been here for about a month, and the Elliot house is the second one in which they’ve been kept. It seems that an older woman named, get this, Valeria Ovaldo, came into the country last week to run the business.”
Will interrupted, “Which means that the girl killed Thursday night is almost surely Julietta Lampe.”
Hank continued, “Right. Valeria had only been here for three or four days when, on Thursday afternoon, Jimmy Ross came by the house and picked her up. He said she would only be gone a few days and for the women to stick close to the house. Nathan said the girl only knew two men, Luca Castro and Jimmy Ross, but they haven’t seen or heard from Castro for four or five days, and from Jimmy Ross since he picked up the Ovaldo woman.
“Since Valeria left with Jimmy Ross, nobody has been by the house until this morning. Two men came by early to see if they were all right and told them that Valeria had to go back to Mexico for a while.”
Will said, “Did she get a name?”
“Of who?”
“The men who came by this morning.”
“No. Only one of the men said anything. The other man stayed in the car. They were there for maybe five or ten minutes, then left. A few hours later, the girls were out sunning themselves when Ed’s first deputy came by, and by the time you and Ed got there, they were in a panic. The oldest woman, the only one who speaks any English and is maybe early forties, told them to keep their mouths shut.
“After you left to go to Sam Elliot’s, the older woman got hysterical. She said for them to calm down and that they would find out what was going on tomorrow, meaning Sunday morning. That’s when the young woman decided to run away. The girl says she was taken from her family in Mexico by the cartel and forced into prostitution. She was sent to the US with the other girls to start a new business, but she ran away because she doesn’t want to be a prostitute. What she’s really scared about is the safety of her parents in Mexico.”
Will said, “We gotta get moving. When Albert finds out about all this uproar, he’s likely to panic. This will undoubtedly mean a change in plans. With Jimmy Ross and the two drivers dead, and probably Luca Castro and the Ovaldo woman, Albert and Jared Hill are gonna be on the hot seat, and if the fellow sitting on Jared’s porch this morning was Dante Sandoval, then their seats are gonna be red hot! The Immigration people…”
“Hold on,” Hank said. “The whores may have never seen Albert or Jared. Jimmy Ross and Luca Castro were the only ones the young prostitute talked about, plus Valeria Ovaldo, and like you say, she’s probably dead or gone; so, what would the Immigration people…”
Will interrupted, “Wait a minute. You just said that two men came out early this morning, Saturday morning. That one of those men spoke to the older whore, so they have seen other men?”
“Yeah, but they didn’t get a name and they had never seen the man before, plus the other man never got out of the car, so like I was saying, what would the Immigration people have on Albert? He can deny everything. He can say that NCFC was misled by the women, that according to his records they were supposed to go to New Hanover County. He’ll say that Jimmy Ross and Mr. Castro, plus the two dead Mexicans, must have been running a sex-trafficking ring behind his back. He’ll call his buddies in Raleigh and cry foul. If Ed and the Immigration people jump on him too soon, he’ll get off the hook.”
Will said, “That may be, but finding the whores will accelerate everything, and the ‘everything’ we should be most concerned about is Maria Puente. With the runaway whore now in Ed’s custody, the others are bound to get itchy feet. Ed needs to go out there early tomorrow morning and get the rest of them. Has Nathan talked to Ed?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, call Eli at my house and fill him in. I’ll talk to you first thing tomorrow.”
Lana Moser sat looking at Will. He paced around for a minute, then turned to her and said, “Just when you think things are going in a certain direction, shit hits the fan.”
She smiled and said, “Like I said, Sheriff, we’ve seen shit hit fans before. We just gotta step back, dodge the shit, and move forward.”
Saturday
11:10 p.m.
Albert woke with a start. The ringing seemed to come from everywhere. When he had reoriented himself, he reached for the phone on his bedside table.
“Yeah.”
“Albert, whash the fucking idea of parking a bunsh of whores in my howse in Shmith County?”
Albert still hadn’t fully focused. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Sam Elliya, you ashhole.”
“Sam Elliot. What the hell time is it?”
“Iss eleven somin’.”
“Morning or…”
“Night, you dum shit.”
Albert sat up and put his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed his head and face and wiped the sleep and tears out of his eyes. “Sam, hold on. I need to trade phones.”
Albert’s wife was awake by this time and leaned forward as she said, “Who the hell is that? What does…?”
Albert put the phone on the bed and said, “I’m gonna take this downstairs. Hang up when I pick up.”
“Who is…?”
“Nobody,” he said as he stood up. “Just do what the hell I’m telling you.”
Albert went downstairs and into the kitchen. “Sam, you still on?”
“Goddamn righ, I am.”
“Ruth, hang up the phone.” He heard the phone click upstairs. “Okay, Sam. What the hell is going on?”
“Whores is goin on, thash wha.”
“Sam, you’re drunk. Why don’t you call me back in the morning?”
Sam rubbed his face and blinked. “Hod on. I’m gonna wash my fash.” That seemed like a good idea, so Albert walked over to the sink and splashed a little water on his own face. After a couple of minutes, Sam returned to the line.
“Okay, better. This afternoon Sheriff Haines called me and said he wanad to come by the howse and talk. I said okay, come on. He showed up wif Sheriff Mozher from Hogg Couny. He said that one uf my nabors called his office to say that a bunsh of women was at my howse. The howse I rented to Jimmy Rauss for NCFC. I toll him I got no idea who wuz in my howse, that it wuz rented to NCFC. He says that the women haf visas for farmwork but they don’ look like farm pickers. He says that he gonna call emagrachon tomorrow. I don’ need no fuckin’ guvment ashholes commin’ roun’ my fuckin’ farm lookin’ for no whores. You godda…”
Albert finally couldn’t take it. “Sam, just be quiet. I know the place and know that we had some pickers living there until we could get them resituated. They were supposed to go to another farm, but the guy backed out. I’ll have them out of there tomorrow. Stop worrying about it. Nobody is putting whores on your property. As you may have heard, poor Jimmy Ross was killed in a terrible automobile accident Thursday night just outside of Beulah. His funeral is this week and I’m trying to organize things around that, but rest assured that you won’t have any problem with the Immigration authorities. I know everybody in the department, and it will only take a phone call tomorrow to straighten this whole thing out. Sheriff Haines is a bit over his head when it comes to immigration matters, and that arrogant asshole Will Moser is just sticking his nose where it don’t belong. Go to bed and we’ll talk tomorrow. Sam?”
“Yeah, okay. Les’ talk tamarra.”
Albert hung up and closed his eyes. He walked over to the refrigerator and took out a beer. “Goddamnit. Why don’t I fucking follow my own instincts? This whole thing was a clusterfuck to begin with! Jimmy and that dumb shit Luca Castro were exactly the wrong people to trust with this shit. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to them. Jared’s got something to answer for as well.”
With that he picked up the phone and started to call Jared, but before he got through dialing, hung up.
Albert’s mind was racing. “Shit, if Ed Haines and that fucking Will Moser have already been to the Elliot farm as well as Sam’s house, then they may have already called the Immigration people and maybe even the SBI or Labor Department. No phone—they may check phone records. I gotta get dressed and go over to Jared’s. No phone.”
* * *
Albert parked in front of Jared’s house. The lights were still on upstairs but out in the living room. He knocked on the front door until he heard someone moving around.
From the top of the stairs came, “Who the hell is it?”
“It’s Albert. Come to the door.”
The curtain covering the front door glass panel pulled back and Jared Hill, clearly annoyed, stared out. “Your phone broken?”
Albert, equally annoyed, said, “No, it’s not, but given the mounting number of fuck-ups going on, I thought it best not to leave a phone record for the various state and federal agencies that might currently be monitoring our ass.”
Jared opened the door and said, “What are you talking about?”
“We got problems with the whores in the Elliot house. I…”
“Bullshit, you were out there this morning and said they were fine. Unless something has happened that I don’t know about, and no one has called me, then I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Albert said, “No you don’t, that’s why I’m here, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and listen?”
Jared walked out onto the porch. “Sorry. What’s up.”
Albert told him about Sam Elliot’s call and ended by saying, “Let’s meet at my office in ten minutes. You get Dante.”
Jared nodded and without saying a word went back inside.
Saturday
11:25 p.m.
In his office when Jared and Dante walked in, Albert looked up at the two men without saying a word. “Dante, I assume Jared filled you in, but just in case something was lost in translation, let me reiterate. Sam Elliot just called me yelling about a visit he had this afternoon from Sheriff Ed Haines and Will Moser, the sheriff in Hogg County and the one who has been looking for the Puente girl. They asked Sam why a bunch of prostitutes were staying in a house on one of his farms. They told him that one of his neighbors called a deputy around noon today when he saw people milling about at a house that has been vacant for a year. Apparently, the man was on his way to a family lunch or something, so it was after we were there this morning.
“The deputy went out there and found five or six women in the house, and then called Sheriff Haines, who showed up with Will Moser and another deputy who spoke Spanish. The deputy talked to the women and the one who seemed to be in charge told him that they were here on H-2A visas and were waiting for transportation to their new jobs. She said they were supposed to go to a farm somewhere else, but the farmer changed his mind.”
More to himself than to the men sitting in front of him, Albert said, “At least the woman had the good sense to give the party line.” He shook his head, then went on. “The sheriff said that since they weren’t illegal, he couldn’t arrest them, but he did take their phone for now. He told Sam that he was gonna call the Immigration people, but if they were really farm workers, he had nothing to worry about. Clearly Sam didn’t believe him, because he is plenty worried.” Albert stopped for a minute to let this sink in, looking from Jared to Dante, then continued. “This is the kind of shit that I’ve been warning about. I think you’ll agree that we need to pull the plug right now. I don’t…”
Jared held up his hand, “Hold on, Ruff. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, we have a new problem, but I don’t think it’s something we can’t handle. You say that Sam said the sheriff left the women there because he didn’t have anything to arrest them on, right?”
“Yeah.”
