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Authors: Norah McClintock

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BOOK: Nothing to Lose
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“You know Mom. She was paranoid she was going to miss her flight.”

My father grinned. “Why be merely on time when you can be an hour early, just in case?” He padded by me in bare feet, heading for the kitchen. I took a seat on a stool at the counter that divided the cooking area of the kitchen from the eating area. I watched him fiddle with his coffeemaker.

“How about breakfast? You hungry, Robbie?” he said. Robbie is my father's nickname for me. It irritates my mother, who is opposed to nicknames on principle. “If I had wanted to call her Robbie,” she always tells my father, “I would have named her Robbie.”

“I'm okay, Dad. Besides, Nick will be here any minute.”

“Knowing Nick, he'll arrive with an appetite,” my father said. He poured himself a cup of coffee and asked if I wanted one. I said yes. If I was going to spend the day with Nick, I wanted to be wide awake. My father poured me a cup, and then he flipped on the radio to catch the news. He pottered around the kitchen, making plenty of noise during the political news stories. But, as usual, he stopped what he was doing when a crime-related story came on. Once a cop. . . I got busy rummaging through his fridge for some milk.

“I knew it,” my father said.

“Knew what?”
A-ha!
There was the milk, way in the back behind a jar of pickles.

“There was a murder in Chinatown the other day.”

Morgan and Billy and I had been right near Chinatown, but I hadn't told my mother. She, like my father, followed the crime news. My father did it because he couldn't help himself. My mother did it because she was a concerned citizen and worried parent. If she knew I had been mere blocks away from where a shooting had taken place—especially in the pitch black with hardly anyone around—she would have freaked out for sure.

“At first, the police couldn't identify the victim,” my father said. “Now they're saying he was in the country illegally. Apparently he's from the same part of China as those people they found in that shipping container. You heard about that, Robbie?”

I nodded. Nineteen dead bodies had been discovered in a shipping container down by the docks. It had made the front page of every newspaper in town.

“The man who was shot had been in the country longer. It looks like a human-trafficking ring is responsible—just as I suspected.”

“Good for you, Dad,” I said as I pulled out the carton of milk and reluctantly took a sniff. Fresh as a baby's breath. Victory!

“It's appalling,” my father said, undeterred by my lack of interest. “There may have been close to fifty people in that shipping container. Nineteen of them dead from illness and dehydration. Can you imagine? And the ones who made it here alive aren't out of the woods yet. They'll be exploited till they can pay off what they owe.”

I poured some milk into my coffee and took a sip. Perfect. “I read about it in the paper, Dad,” I said. “They think the people were locked in there for over a month.” I shuddered as I thought about it—people locked up like prisoners for a month-long voyage in a container intended to hold cargo, not human beings. They had eaten in there, slept in there, done everything else in there—and, according to the news, the survivors had spent at least some of their time locked in with dead people. “Why would anyone agree to conditions like that? Why would they take the chance?”

“We have it pretty good here,” my father said. “But a lot of people aren't so fortunate. A lot are downright desperate—so desperate that they'll do anything for a chance to better their lives. Anytime there are people who are that desperate, there are always other people who find a way to profit—who'll bring people into a country illegally, for a price. Happens all over the world. The Mexican-American border is a human-smuggling hotspot. People pay smugglers to get them across the border. In Mexico they call the smugglers coyotes. In China they're called snakeheads.”

“Snakeheads?”

He nodded. “They're criminals,” he said. “But in some places, the big snakeheads—the ones who finance the whole undertaking by providing a ship, for example—those guys are often so-called legitimate businessmen. They invest in trafficking the same way they invest in legal business opportunities. Of course, they always make sure that nothing can be traced back to them. Most of them have some kind of link to one or other of the triads—Chinese gangs. They're into all kinds of criminal activities.”

“Including smuggling people.”

“Exactly. The past few years, there have been reports of groups of Chinese immigrants being smuggled into a lot of different countries. Australia, across Europe, Canada, the U.S. They pay big money to be smuggled in. For a price, the smugglers also forge identity papers—visas and passports.” He took a sip of coffee. “Smuggling is one thing—people pay smugglers to help them get around the law. But human trafficking? That's even worse.”

“There's a difference?”

“Smuggling and trafficking are similar, except trafficking involves exploitation—coercion. Say the people who want to be smuggled in don't have enough money to pay the snakeheads. The snakeheads'll offer to lend them the money and tell them that they can pay it back after they reach their destination. Once the immigrants get where they're going, the snakeheads force them to work long hours in illegal sweatshops to pay off their debt. Sometimes they force them to get involved in activities like the drug trade. The immigrants can't do anything about it—they're in the country illegally. They complain, they're deported. Sometimes the traffickers threaten to kill them if they don't cooperate. Or they threaten their families back home.”

“Why would anyone agree to that?” I said.

“Like I said, we have it pretty good here, Robbie. And the snakeheads don't always tell the immigrants what they're in for.”

“But the people who pay the smugglers must know that they have a chance of getting caught and sent back.”

My father shrugged. “Sometimes they believe rumors circulated by the snakeheads, like the ones about amnesties.”

“Amnesties?”

“A few years back, a rumor went around that there was going to be a general amnesty for all illegal immigrants, to mark the new millennium. Wasn't true. But it encouraged a lot of people to book passage with snakeheads. There are always a lot of rumors about kids, that children have a better chance of being allowed to stay if they're caught by Immigration. As to the conditions. . .” He shrugged again. “I used to know a guy”—knowing my father, he meant a cop—“who did liaison work with the immigration department. He told me that one Chinese man who got caught said that the snakeheads told him that he would arrive here on a luxury ship. A movie theater on board, good food. It was an out-andout lie. But by the time the guy found out, it was too late to do anything about it.”

“The man who was shot—do they think he was a snakehead?”

“That I don't know.” My father snapped off the radio. “I'm making eggs,” he said. “Sure I can't interest you?”

“I'm going to wait and see what Nick wants to do,” I said. I glanced at my watch again. “He said he would pick me up early. He has plans for us.”

“Suit yourself,” my father said. “I'm making them scrambled. . .”

My mouth started to water. My father made excellent scrambled eggs. His secret ingredients were a touch of cream cheese and some fresh chives.

“I'll wait,” I said.

My father shrugged and opened the fridge.

“Dad?”

I think it was the hesitation in my voice that made his ex-cop radar blip. When his head emerged from the fridge, he was on full alert.

“I was robbed this morning,” I said.

“What do you mean, robbed? Where? Did someone break into the house?”

“I was downtown with Billy and Morgan. Someone stole my backpack.”

He shut the fridge door without taking out any eggs. “Were you hurt?”

I shook my head. “I wasn't wearing my backpack at the time.” I explained what had happened. “There wasn't a lot of money in my wallet,” I said. “But I had my bus pass in it, my student ID. Some pictures.” Snapshots of Nick and Orion, the dog he walked regularly, and one of Nick with his arm around me.

“Cell phone?” he said.

“No.” That had been in my jacket pocket. I had lost my last phone a while back and my father had replaced it for me.

“You didn't have your credit cards in your wallet, did you, Robbie?”

I shook my head.

“Dad, I don't have any credit cards.”

“Did you report the loss to the police?”

“I didn't even report it to Mom,” I said. My father nodded. He knew what would have happened if I'd told my mother.

“I'll call someone,” he said. “I don't know if you'll get your stuff back, Robbie, but you never know. If there have been other similar thefts in the area, maybe they'll catch the guy.” He poured himself another cup of coffee before picking up the phone and calling the police.

“Someone will be here in a few minutes,” he said when he hung up.

“A few
minutes?
” I said. That was fast. “Lemme guess—a friend of yours?”

My father grinned. He knew a lot of people and made a point of keeping in touch. “It's not what you know,” he said, over and over. “It's who you know and what
they
know.” He believed that in his line of work— private security and investigations—you were only as good as your contacts.

While we waited, my father cracked some eggs into a frying pan and put some bread in the toaster. While he stirred the eggs, he said, “So, has your mother made up her mind yet about what's-his-name?” He tried to sound casual, as if no matter what the answer was, it was no big deal. Maybe he really thought that. Maybe.

“His name is Ted Gold,” I said, even though my father knew it perfectly well. Ted had asked my mother to marry him. She hadn't said yes yet, but she hadn't said no, either. “And you know I'm not supposed to talk about him.” My mother had forbidden me to discuss any aspect of her private life with my father.

“Well, what do
you
think, Robbie? Do you think she's going to marry him?”

I shrugged. I really had no idea. I knew that my mother liked Ted—a lot. But I also knew that she didn't seem in any hurry to remarry.

Someone knocked on the door. It couldn't have been my father's police officer friend—he would have to be buzzed up through the ground-floor security door. That meant it had to be Nick, who lived directly below my father.

I was right. Nick came in, glanced around—checking, I think, to see where my father was. When he didn't see him, he pulled me close and kissed me. “I missed you,” he said in a low voice.

“I missed you too.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, and we just stood there for a moment, my head resting against his chest so that I heard his heart beating, until I heard a noise behind me—my father, clearing his throat. I pulled away from Nick.

“I was just about to have breakfast, Nick,” my father said. “Can I get you something?”

“Uh, no, thanks,” Nick said. But I could tell he was torn. My father was probably right. Nick was probably hungry. “Robyn and I have plans. We'll grab something downtown.”

My father sat down with his eggs and toast and a fresh cup of coffee. On the surface he looked friendly and relaxed. But I knew him better than most people, which is why I knew that he was doing what he always did: examining, assessing, analyzing. “So how's everything going, Nick?” he said.

“Good,” Nick said.

My father looked him over carefully. Nick looked pretty much the same as he always did. He was wearing black boots, a black hoodie, and black jeans. His jet-black hair, which was getting long, was tucked back behind his ears. A lock of it fell over his purple-blue eyes. A hairline scar ran from the bridge of his nose clear across to his right earlobe. Nick smiled pleasantly at my father but raised a hand to adjust his collar. That's when I noticed the mark on his neck. It was an ugly black-and-purple bruise. I caught a glimpse of it just before he hid it under his hood. I was sure my father had also noticed, but he didn't mention it. Instead, he doubled down on his eggs.

“We should get going,” Nick said.

I was about to explain that I had to wait for my father's police officer friend when the buzzer sounded. That's when it hit me.

“The dog,” I said.

“Huh?” Nick said.

“See who it is, will you, Robbie?” my father said, his mouth full of eggs.

I pushed the button on the wall next to the intercom and said hello.

“Stan Rogers here to see Mac Hunter,” a voice said.

“Buzz him in, Robbie,” my father said.

I buzzed the visitor through. While I waited for him to reach the top of the stairs, I turned back to Nick. “There's a dog that lives somewhere around here,” I said. “It must practically live outside. It barks every time someone gets close to this building. You can always tell when someone is coming. You haven't heard it?”

Nick just shrugged.

“The thing is,” I said, “I didn't hear it this morning. I knew something was different, but I couldn't figure out what. Maybe they took the poor thing inside for a change.” Then another thought struck me. “I hope it didn't die or anything.”

I heard footsteps out in the hall and opened the door. Stan Rogers turned out to be a uniformed police officer, which didn't surprise me. What
did
surprise me, though, was the look on Nick's face when I ushered Stan in. His smile vanished. He stared at Stan Rogers as if he were facing down an old enemy.
Uh-oh
, I thought.

BOOK: Nothing to Lose
3.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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