Searching for Pilar, page 22
Many girls escape the horror of this life through drugs. Death comes quicker that way. Perhaps it is the only freedom a slave can know?
The guards outside her door didn’t care how noisy they were at times. They would argue over sports or women. The door was thin, making it hard to sleep. Pilar was forced to lie awake, thinking thoughts she did not want to consider.
Pilar remembered that when she was at the men’s clubs near the Galleria, she thought nothing could be worse.
I was wrong. At least the clients were clean and did not beat us. They had to wear condoms. Some of the men were lonely or troubled and only wanted to talk to someone who could never reveal their secrets. None of them realized how small their problems were in comparison to those of the girls in whom they confided.
Before she became confined to the office with Rosa and this room, Pilar clung to the hope that somehow she would find a way to escape. Even when she’d been abused in the tiny room upstairs next to Josefina, she’d thought they could maybe get away when Esther was not watching and the bartenders downstairs took a break. Now, constantly guarded and isolated at night, with Rosa’s sharp eyes on her during the day, escape seemed impossible.
Sometimes, alone in the office they shared, before the cantina opened for customers, Rosa talked to Pilar for hours about her life, how she’d built her business, and her disappointment with her children. These conversations might give a stranger the impression that the two women were friends, but Pilar despised the old madam, and the wily woman was aware that Pilar knew enough to destroy her. She confided in Pilar because she was the only person around, and Rosa believed her secrets were safe since Pilar was her prisoner.
Years ago, when Pilar had been having her late-night conversations with Consuelo at the Jewel Box, she’d still prayed to the Virgin for help occasionally. After she experienced the living hell of Los Arboles, that changed.
God and the Virgin Mary have forgotten me, she had decided. Or maybe the loving, all-seeing God of my childhood was just a fairy tale after all. A beneficent God would not let girls suffer this way. An almighty God would destroy people like Eduardo and Rosa.
One afternoon, while Rosa was in the cantina working on inventory of the watered-down tequila they served the customers who were unlikely to notice, Pilar was sitting at her desk in the office they shared, thinking about Josefina, when Eduardo slinked into the room. Looking smug, he perched himself on the edge of Rosa’s desk, facing Pilar. Until Eduardo had abruptly removed her from the bordello and sold her to Rosa, Pilar’s maternal instinct to protect Josefina had been a sufficient reason to live: she couldn’t do anything for herself or her daughter, but she could keep Josefina from despair and away from drugs or suicide. She hadn’t seen Josefina for many months now. She wondered if the child was still alive. During a few months in this place, a girl could be beaten to death, die of disease or bad abortion, or kill herself. Teresa could well be dead.
Pilar forced herself to speak civilly to Eduardo. “How is Josefina, Eduardo? Has she recovered from her disease?”
Eduardo ignored her question. “Do you have anything to tell me, Pilar?”
Pilar asked him, “Does Josefina know I am close by?” She hoped so, but Eduardo’s silence made her fear the worst.
She hated Eduardo. He was more amoral, cruel, and brutal than she’d ever imagined a man could be. Rosa owned Pilar now, but Eduardo acted as if Pilar were still his property. He demanded that Pilar tell him the details of Rosa’s businesses and how much money she was making. He claimed Pilar owed him for all the years he had “taken care of her.” Hearing him say this, Pilar wanted to scream.
I will never tell that dog the truth. I am too valuable to Rosa for her to let him hurt me. At least I have some small power over him.
But guilt ate at Pilar. She was ashamed that she was helping Rosa to commit her crimes. She is as despicable as Eduardo, and she is a woman!
That made Pilar think of Alma, who had tricked her into being kidnapped. At the time, she couldn’t understand how a woman could take part in the enslavement of other women. Alma had told her that after working as a whore, she’d had no other choice but to do what her enslaver demanded. She did what she had to do to survive.
Is that what has happened to me? Pilar wondered. Am I no better than Alma?
“How is Alma, Eduardo?” Pilar asked.
“No idea,” Eduardo said casually, shrugging his shoulders and taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “I’ve been doing most of my business in the States in the past few years. I sold her to some guy in Mexico City. She’s probably walking the streets, or dead, or maybe she’s found another way to make herself useful to him. She was always smart and had more class than most whores.”
Pilar shivered. Alma was so beautiful.
Feeling more anger at Eduardo than she usually dared to exhibit, Pilar asked, “And how is Teresa, Eduardo?”
Eduardo lit his cigarette and slowly breathed out tobacco smoke in Pilar’s face. “I’m sure that one is dead,” he said. “She was half-dead when I sold her. I didn’t get shit for her. Damned drugged-out whore!”
Just then, Pilar saw Rosa headed for the office, shouting a loud command to Tito to sweep the cantina floor. Eduardo heard her and swiftly jumped down from her desk, turning to greet her with a smile. “I’ve been waiting impatiently to see your beautiful face, my dear Rosa,” he said.
Rosa gave him a skeptical look and sat down at her desk. Both of them then talked, ignoring Pilar as if she were a piece of furniture.
Sometimes, lying in bed, Pilar heard news from the outside world when her guard listened to the radio. But the local Spanish-language stations they listened to didn’t carry much in the way of real news. It was mainly advertisements for rodeos, dances, or Tejano concerts. To pass the time before she tried to sleep, she wrote on sheets of paper she stole from the office and hid in her room. Sometimes she wrote letters to Concepción about her happy childhood, even though she didn’t think her daughter would ever see them. She wrote about Eduardo and what she knew about his business. Other times she wrote the stories Rosa told her: how she’d built her business and even whom she had killed to become the queen of the Houston bordellos. When she was finished writing, she would stuff the pages behind a loose floorboard and push her bed over it.
Eduardo had figured out that Rosa was generally out of the office on Thursday mornings, when she made Tito drive her to a Vietnamese nail salon on Broadway. At that time, Pilar would be alone in the office. One Thursday, he stormed into the office, startling her with his angry appearance. He had found out that certain information Pilar had given him about Rosa’s business was fabricated. Pilar had tired of his constant verbal battery and made up a story one day just to get rid of him. To her horror, he threatened her with the only thing that she couldn’t ignore.
“You gave me bad information, Pilar,” Eduardo stormed. “You made a fool of me. You think now that Rosa regards you as indispensable, I can’t touch you. But you are wrong. I know your weak spot.”
“What are you talking about, Eduardo?” Pilar asked, not looking up from the work she was doing.
“I’m talking about your girlfriend—Josefina. I don’t think you want anything bad to happen to her. What if Guillermo gave her a few heroin shots to get her hooked? It wouldn’t take much. She’s a scrawny little thing.”
Pilar felt sick, but she didn’t say anything.
“I get what I want sooner or later. So start telling me the truth or Josefina will be joining the junkies walking the streets at the port. Maybe I will sell her to the Turks. They like to have a few girls in the holds of their ships when they leave port.”
Pilar was taken aback. She hadn’t counted on this. But then again, she really didn’t know if Josefina was still alive or Eduardo still owned her. After all, Eduardo had refused to answer that question every time Pilar had asked him.
She tried to seem calm when she asked, “How do I know Josefina is still alive? You haven’t done anything to convince me of that, Eduardo.”
“That scrawny bitch is right where you left her, Pilar. I may not be a trustworthy man in general, but you can trust me on that! I knew there was a reason I hadn’t moved her onto the streets by now, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I know now. She’s my leverage with you.”
That night Pilar lay in her bed with the lights out, but she couldn’t sleep. Her mind kept considering the terrible alternatives.
Rosa knows Eduardo tries to get information about her business from me. But she feels comfortable knowing I hate Eduardo and do not help him. I am not sure if Josefina is still here or even alive. But I cannot take the chance on letting him do to Josefina any of the unspeakable things he threatens. But if Rosa finds out I am helping Eduardo, Rosa will have Tito kill me, and Eduardo will destroy Josefina anyway. I am in an impossible situation!
That night, she wrote in her journal: This is the end. We are never going to get out of this alive.
CHAPTER 23
RECONNAISSANCE
John was anxious to get Mary out of the private detective business and have the FBI take over the search for Pilar. He called his friend Michael at the FBI and asked him to meet with Mary so she could tell him what she had learned about sex trafficking at Los Arboles.
Michael considered sex trafficking a high-priority crime for his team. He had grown up in Houston and had a strong personal interest in ridding his hometown of the insidious activity. So he agreed to meet with Mary in his office the following Wednesday. Mary took Steve with her, too, so he could describe to the FBI what he had seen and heard at the cantina.
Mary had always been an exceptionally good, persuasive speaker. She was captain of the debate team in prep school and had continued to debate in college. Her moot court professor at Yale had tried to convince her that she would be a great trial lawyer. He’d said Mary could persuade anyone that black was actually white. She had no interest in arguing or litigation as a full-time activity, however, preferring to use her legal training to help the neediest clients with their legal problems. But in preparing to meet with the FBI, Mary marshaled her facts and her speaking talent, knowing that Pilar’s life might depend on her being able to persuade Michael to take action against Los Arboles quickly.
Mary had met Michael Torres once when her brother and he were in law school. He was a tall, blond, attractive man who, even then, struck her as a serious, straightforward person. So, after the preliminary greetings and introductions in Michael’s government-issue office in the northwest part of the city, she declined a seat or coffee, getting right to the point. She told Michael how she, Diego, and Steve had traced Diego’s sister’s trail from the Jewel Box to Telephone Road. She told him how they’d identified her pimp as Eduardo Ayala, an international criminal, and about Arturo Escobar’s threats to them when he’d found out they were interested in Eduardo and Los Arboles. Then she asked Steve to tell Michael about his visit to the cantina and the bordello upstairs. When Steve recounted what Josefina had told him about how Eduardo had kidnapped her, Teresa, and Pilar in Mexico City, smuggled them across the border, and eventually brought them to Los Arboles, Michael grew excited. He asked Steve some questions, jotting down notes on a pad.
“My God, folks,” Michael said. “We need to move on this right away. Let me talk to the other members of the task force, Mary, and I will get back to you in the next few days on how we will go forward.”
As Mary was picking up her briefcase to leave, Michael said, “You are a very persuasive young woman. The Justice Department is always looking for good trial lawyers if you ever get burned out on Legal Aid. I would be glad to put in a word for you. And if you think you would like to use your investigative talents working for the Bureau, give me a call.”
“No thanks.” Mary laughed. “I love my clients, and I love what I do. They are not important people, but they deserve legal help too.”
Two weeks after Mary and Steve met with Michael, there was a planning meeting at the Legal Aid office with representatives of the sheriff’s office, the US Attorney, ICE, HPD, the investigative division of the IRS, and the FBI. When Michael told the local heads of the other agencies what Mary had found out, they were all interested.
The sheriff’s office and HPD had been quietly watching Rosa’s growing business for a while. Escobar was already the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation. Wealthy Mexicans owning homes in the best neighborhoods of Houston and the nearby Woodlands was not unusual. But as the Escobar family’s enclave of heavily guarded, expensive homes in Tanglewood had expanded over the past five years, the amount of marijuana and cocaine on Houston’s streets had also increased. Some midlevel distributors the police had arrested bore the full-arm sleeves of the Sangre Negra cartel. The FBI suspected that someone high up in the organization was living in Houston and directing distribution. The name “El Tigre” had begun to be heard on the streets. Michael Torres suspected Escobar might be El Tigre, but Escobar’s circle, so far, had been impossible to infiltrate.
About six months earlier, the FBI had mounted a surveillance camera on a light pole across from Escobar’s house. Most of the men coming and going were Hispanic and arrived in town cars from Intercontinental Airport. Some were white Americans, but they always wore hats and protected their identities from any potential surveillance. Diego was the first person they knew of who would talk to the FBI about what he had seen inside Escobar’s house. Michael realized that if Mary was correct in her speculation that Pilar might know the financial aspects of Rosa’s business and if Escobar was somehow involved, Pilar could have information that would bring down both the suspected drug lord and the madam. Michael had a high regard for John Chavez as a lawyer, and John had always told him his sister was the really bright one in the family. Consequently, he was inclined to give Mary’s instincts full consideration.
The temperature on the late September afternoon when the meeting took place was in the high nineties and humid, which was typical for Houston. The conference room at Legal Aid was small. Cardboard file boxes were piled along the walls, making it seem claustrophobic. The overhead fluorescent light cast a harsh glare. It was stuffy, too, which motivated everyone to make this an efficient meeting. Mary thought it was a safe place, especially if Escobar’s men were still following Diego. He had been stopping by occasionally to make this visit seem ordinary. The others had entered through a back stairway.
Steve, Mary, and Diego sat on one side of the table and most of the government agents on the other.
Michael sat at the head of the table and opened the meeting. “We’ve all been briefed on the facts. We’re here to establish a plan that will accomplish our goals.”
“Which are?” Diego asked.
“We have dual objectives,” Michael replied. “First, to take down Rosa Rodriguez. We believe Rosa is one of the biggest importers and sellers of trafficked Hispanic girls in Harris County. She also focuses on the youngest girls, some as young as ten years old. Sending her to jail will send a message to the other madams and pimps in the county that we are serious about sending all of them to prison.”
Michael had brought a PowerPoint presentation on his laptop computer. He flashed a couple of pictures of Rosa, all taken from a distance, onto a screen.
“We’ve suspected for some time that Arturo Escobar is involved in drug smuggling through the Port of Houston and the Rio Grande Valley,” Michael said. “He owns a relatively small commercial shipping line and a produce truck line that carries vegetables from Mexico up through the valley to Houston. Sangre Negra, a Mexican cartel that operates on both sides of the border, originated in the same part of Mexico in which Escobar grew up.”
Michael flashed a picture of Arturo Escobar onto the screen. It had also been taken from a distance by the surveillance camera. It was difficult to make out his features. Then he showed a map of Mexico with the area where the cartel originated. “If we can get proof he is supplying drugs or girls to Rosa,” he said, “it could help us get a warrant to search his home and business. Then we can take him down, too.”
“And what about rescuing Pilar?” Diego asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Michael said. “First, we need to establish that Josefina and possibly Pilar are at Los Arboles. Victims of this business are moved around a lot or may disappear suddenly.”
Diego seemed irritated and started to get up, but Mary put her hand on his arm. “Patience, Diego,” she whispered. “The law doesn’t move as swiftly as a soccer match.” He sat back down.
“Mary,” Michael said, “do you think you could convince the local priest who thinks he saw Pilar at the bank to help us? People tend to do their banking on the same day at roughly the same time.”
“I think so. Padre Roberto said he would do anything to help us.”
“Good. Steve, would you be willing to go back on active duty with the sheriff’s office and resume your undercover work? I’d like you to return to Los Arboles and establish that Josefina is still there. If so, question her to find out if she has any more helpful information about Pilar or Eduardo. Your testimony on an affidavit will be key to obtaining a search warrant.”
“Hell, yeah,” Steve replied. “I took early retirement in the last year before my wife died of cancer so I could take care of her. It’s been two years since she’s passed on now. Frankly, this case has made me realize how much I miss putting away the bad guys. I don’t think Escobar or Rosa’s men know who I am.”
“Good,” Michael said. “When we looked into it, we found out that the bank where Rosa has her accounts filed a Suspicious Activity Report a few months ago about the deposits Rosa’s daughter and Pilar have made. They suspect she may be structuring deposits so that the bank won’t have to report them to the IRS. All the deposits were made with the same teller, a white woman who has financial problems due to a child’s illness. The branch manager wanted to remove her from teller work, but I asked her to let the woman continue until we have firm evidence of a conspiracy. The IRS is looking into the bank records. When we talked to the manager, she said she’d first become suspicious because the amounts passing through the accounts far exceed what would be expected of a local cantina. If we find evidence of money laundering, we will ask the US Attorney to draw up a criminal complaint and application for arrest warrants for Rosa and the others associated and take them to the magistrate judge.
