Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

“Let’s go get him.”

“How? Where do we start when we get there?”

“With a trail of telephone calls.”

F lying in, Donnally remembered the two Cancuns he’d observed when he made a trip down with other rookies the day after they graduated from the police academy. Despite having grown up a few miles from the Pacific Ocean, he hadn’t been a beach kid, had never stood on a surfboard, never sat around a bonfire, nor passed out drunk on the sand.

He’d gone along to Cancun not because he wanted to, but because solidarity required it, and what he found was fragmentation: separating him and his friends, the beach from the town, and the rowdy Americans from the better selves they’d left back home.

Rising at dawn the next day and leaving his hungover friends still asleep, he’d caught a cab in front of their hotel, one of a dozen in the artificial district imposed on a sand spit along the Caribbean. The ride from the Zona Hotelera took him to Centro, the core of an expanding city that seemed to be wearing itself out as it grew.

He found it crowded with migrants who’d come to service the tourists. They lived in shacks built of cinder-block walls and corrugated aluminum roofs, and shopped in small markets after their bus rides home from work. He’d recognized their faces and their manner: They were the same as those who populated East LA, who suffered divided hearts and ate beans and rice and sent most of their earnings home.

The Cancun that he and Janie met when they flew in was a city the size of San Francisco, with the mercados of old replaced by big block Sears and Wal-Mart stores that he had been able to recognize from the air.

The one-story barrios had been replaced by stucco apartment blocks.

The beach was now covered with bunkerlike resorts.

And now Porsche and Cadillac dealerships had pushed aside the used car lots that once provided the hand-me-down vehicles for immigrants’ dream rides into prosperity.

“D onde esta el orphanage de las Arenas del Blanco? ” Where is the White Sands Orphanage?

Janie did a double take as Donnally spoke to the fifteen-year-old Indian-looking boy selling flowers from a bucket on a corner near their downtown Cancun hotel.

William Sherwyn’s telephone records showed regular calls to the orphanage and his credit card statements revealed monthly week-long visits to Cancun.

Donnally had been unable to find a listing for White Sands in the local directory, so they had walked around town for a couple of hours searching for a streetwise kid to help them out.

After watching the teenager make sale after sale by tuning his pitch to his customers’ vibrations of greed or guilt or sympathy, Donnally decided that he matched the profile.

“I didn’t know your high school Spanish was that good,” Janie said.

Donnally glanced over at her and smiled. “Just because I don’t say ‘Chee-lay’ for Chile?”

“Something like that.”

The boy held out his small palm and said in English, “Two dollars and I show you.”

Donnally reached into his pants pocket for his wallet. “How about five and you just tell me?”

He pointed at Donnally’s green John Deere cap. “And the hat.”

Donnally took it off and handed it to him, along with the money. “You’re a helluva negotiator…”

“Eduardo, but you call me Lalo.”

Lalo looked up at Janie. “No women allowed inside.”

“In Arenas del Blanco?”

“No women. Not even maids.”

Janie looked at Donnally. “So much for that plan.”

“How do you know?” Donnally asked Lalo.

The teenager reddened.

“The man who runs it, Senor William, took me there once, like he does with all the boys who work on the street.”

Lalo gestured with his chin toward a sixty-year-old Anglo in slacks and a loose shirt soliciting a boy at the corner.

“Like that man. He promised me money, but I ran away.”

Lalo glanced around to make sure none of the tourists walking by was paying attention, then made a circle with his thumb and finger and poked the forefinger of his opposite hand through it.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Are there many who do?”

Lalo shrugged. “ La vida es dura.” Life is hard. “ Y los hombres malos aprovechar de los muchachos. ” And evil men take advantage of boys.

“Who knows about this?” Donnally asked.

Lalo’s eyebrow went up again. “ Suspechar o estar seguro? ” Only suspects or really knows?

“Someone who really knows.”

“There is a lady.”

“Maybe you can take us to her.”

Lalo held up his bucket of flowers. “My boss says I have to sell all these.”

Donnally withdrew his wallet and opened it. Lalo thumbed through the bills and pulled out two twenties.

“ Gracias, senor.”

C orazon Camacho stood next to an armed guard inside the wrought-iron gate of the high-walled women’s refuge on the eastern edge of Cancun, two blocks from the White Sands Orphanage. Her gray hair, pulled back tight against her head, reflected the stark Caribbean sun like burnished steel. Her sorrowful eyes surveyed Donnally, Janie, and Lalo on the other side. Donnally was wearing a hooded sweatshirt to conceal his face should Sherwyn happen to drive by behind them.

A soccer ball rolled to a stop next to her, but the young girls who’d been playing on the dirt patch behind her didn’t approach them to retrieve it. The children seemed to Donnally like abused puppies that felt safe only when caged and out of reach.

“I already have one defamation lawsuit against me for naming the names of the predators and the people who protect them,” Corazon said to Donnally. “I’m not sure I want to risk another.”

Corazon’s eyes moved from Donnally toward the distant rooftops as though she was scanning for snipers.

“At least I wasn’t murdered like the reporter who wrote the story, and the twenty other journalists killed for writing about other sex traffickers.”

She then looked down at Lalo and pointed at a bus stop across the plaza behind them.

“ Espera alli, por favor,” she said to him. Please wait over there.

Lalo peered up at Donnally like a child who was left unchosen after the sides in a schoolyard game had been picked.

“We’ll come get you when we’re done,” Donnally told him.

Lalo nodded and walked away.

“I think we know what goes on over at White Sands,” Donnally said. “I’m just after the man who runs it.”

“Senor William.”

“Yes. Senor William.”

“Is he at White Sands now?” Corazon asked.

“I believe he’s in Mexico, and a number of calls were made from a cell phone in the United States to White Sands during the last week.” Donnally pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward Lalo. “We drove by the place, then sent the kid back to take a look, but he couldn’t spot Senor William.”

“You won’t get any help from the police in finding out,” Corazon said. “Not even if you hold an Interpol warrant in your hand. It is them that protects him and those who back him.”

“I know all about that.”

“How?”

“You ever heard of a cop named Gregorio Cruz?”

Corazon clenched her teeth at the sound of the name. A thin dust devil spun upward from the dirt ten yards behind her.

“The worst. Him and his twin brother, Jago. Snakes. Both snakes.”

“They like molesting boys, too?”

“No.” She glanced over her shoulder at the girls now collected together in the middle of the yard, huddled like ducklings in a storm. “Not boys.”

Corazon gestured to the guard to unlock the gate.

Donnally followed Janie inside, then reached down and rolled the ball back to the girls. One came forward to intercept it, giving Donnally a hesitant smile as she gathered it into her arms.