The Traffickers (Badge of Honor 9)

The new arrivals found work, but, as El Nariz had experienced, it was spotty and sometimes dangerous, and, if it could get any worse, it wasn’t unusual to work for days-and then never to get paid.

To what authority could they complain and not have to explain their situation?

El Nariz believed that he could do better, especially now that he saw how many damn towels got dirty in one hotel in a single day. He knew he couldn’t personally handle such a large volume-not yet-but maybe he could do the towels and sheets that came from a smaller place.

He’d gotten the idea because one of the cousin’s nieces now worked as a housekeeper at a motel in Northeast Philly. And after learning from her how many sheets and towels the motel needed laundered on an average day, he’d worked up some numbers and put together a proposal. He then approached the head of the motel’s housekeepers, a plump, balding Puerto Rican woman in her forties who, most important, spoke both Spanish and English.

She agreed, after haggling for a handling fee in cash up front, to present El Nariz’s proposal to the motel manager, a white male of sixty who was so morbidly obese that his engorged gut had popped off two buttons on his greasy polyester shirt, and his striped polyester necktie hung only as far as the bottom of his rib cage, unable to cover his sweaty T-shirt exposed by the missing buttons.

El Nariz had had no real idea of what such a job ultimately could bring. But apparently it was more money than his proposal requested. The manager had asked El Nariz a few perfunctory questions, which were translated by the Puerto Rican head of housekeeping. The manager then had grunted, and after some moments declared, “Aw, why the hell not? Less for me to deal with, especially keeping the damn employee books.”

Esteban’s initial excitement was tempered by the fact that the manager had been slow to pay for the laundry services. But Esteban did not complain-he quietly had begun using the motel’s machines to clean the laundry of another motel that had accepted his proposal, this one more lucrative.

Apparently, though, the late-paying manager was nonetheless pleased with Esteban and his crew’s work, as he eventually did pay and, further, offered Esteban the laundry detail of another motel, one across the river in Camden, New Jersey, that he managed.

Not long after that, El Nariz had offers of more work than he could handle. His limitation wasn’t manpower. His stable of available workers continued to grow. And with more in the process of being brought up from Mexico City-including two who’d been caught by the U.S. Border Patrol near Laredo, Texas, and sent back south, only to get across the Rio Grande unnoticed on their next attempt-they soon filled additional South Philly houses, the rent paid of course in cash.

El Nariz’s limitation was, instead, infrastructure. The motel’s old machines, even if they weren’t breaking down, simply could not keep up with demand.

So, as Esteban found himself having to feed coins to the heavy-duty machines of a real laundromat, he came up with another idea. He again worked up a proposal, and not only had the laundromat manager accepted it-leasing the facility during after hours on a cash-only off-the-books basis-the manager, who Esteban learned also was the owner, offered him the same deal with some other laundromats that he had in Philadelphia.

El Nariz suddenly found that he had more machines than he could use in one location, and when ready to expand, he had others that would be closer to the various motels he serviced.

THREE

All-Nite Diner 6980 Fran

Matt Payne worked his way through the crowd milling in the parking lot and along the sidewalk outside the diner. He noticed that they appeared to be those displaced from the motel, mostly a mix of black and Hispanic males, as well as a few Anglo families. Some wore night clothing, some had on street clothing, and all looked haggard.

These people really were rudely awakened.

Inside, he found the place packed with more of the same, and it took him a minute to find Chad Nesbitt. That was mostly because Chad was slumped down in a booth by one of the front windows and more or less hiding under a red Philadelphia Phillies National League Champions ball cap, the tip of its brim pulled down almost to his nose.

Chad Nesbitt looked very much like Matt Payne, only a little shorter and a little heavier. He wore faded blue jeans, athletic running shoes, and a gray T-shirt with big black letters spelling BRUUUUUCE! The shirt had been bought six years earlier at a Springsteen show. Matt knew because he’d bought one, too, and that made him think of that well-built, very high-maintenance blond Aimee Cullen wearing his-and damn little else-as she left his apartment one Saturday morning, promising to give it back. But their relationship hadn’t lasted long enough for that to happen.

When Matt reached the booth, Chad did not get up or look up. Instead, he stared out the window at the pulsing red and blue lights. Matt slid onto the red-vinyl bench seat opposite him. On the table in front of Chad, next to his cellular phone, was a cold plate of fried eggs and bacon and toast, all of it barely touched. He had his left hand wrapped around a cheap plastic coffee cup that was nearly empty.

Chad finally slowly turned to look at Matt, and Matt could see that he hadn’t shaved and that his eyes were sleep-deprived.

“Thanks for coming, pal,” Chad said in a flat, tired tone. “I wasn’t sure who to call first.”

Matt tried to lighten the mood. “Nice shirt. I miss mine, but I think losing it when Aimee left was worth the price just to see her go before she bankrupted me.”

Chad glanced down and shrugged. “First damn thing I grabbed in the dark-” He stopped when he looked across the street toward the Philly Inn.

Matt Payne glanced around the crowded noisy diner, and when he saw a waitress, a plump black woman in her forties snapping orders to a young Latino busboy, he waved and got her attention, then pointed at Chad’s plate and coffee, then pointed at himself. She curtly nodded her understanding of his order.

“Oh, Christ,” Chad exclaimed.

Matt looked to see what caught his attention.

At the motel, one of the Philly cops was walking to undo from a light pole one end of a length of yellow and black POLICE LINE-DO NOT CROSS crime-scene tape.

Behind the tape, next to a fire department hazardous materials unit, waited a flatbed unit from the Philadelphia Police Department Tow Squad, the doors of its white cab having the same scheme of the police cruisers, bold blue and gold stripes running diagonally up the door with a large blue-and-gold Philadelphia Police Department crest centered on the door. The wrecker’s light bar on its roof was flashing red and blue, as were the wigwag strobes at the front and back of the vehicle. Chained down on the flatbed was a silver Mercedes-Benz SUV, the nose of which showing burned paint, the windshield missing, and the front and rear right-side passenger doors cut completely free, revealing the interior of the vehicle.

“Ouch,” Matt said. “Besides being outrageously expensive, I’ve always thought that that Generalissimo Benz-it looks like something the dictator of some sub-Saharan country would drive-could not get any uglier. Yet it appears that it can.”

“That’s Becca’s,” Chad said.