Searching for Pilar, page 27
Mary looked at Diego. “I’m afraid so, Diego.”
Diego’s arms dropped to his sides. He sat down, looking totally defeated.
• • •
Two days later, Pilar sat at a table with a young FBI agent, a forensic technician, Diego, and Mary. James was in court on another case. The technician had isolated and created pictures of each of the security guards. There were ten men in all and multiple shots of each.
The agent passed the photographs to Pilar. Diego saw that one shot included a young woman in a white dress talking to a big man. Marisa! Diego had refused to focus on what all this could mean for her. He did not believe she knew her father was engaged in illegal activities. And without her, Diego might not have found Pilar’s location. Ay, have I ruined the life of another innocent young woman?
“Por favor, may I see that one?” Pilar asked the agent. She picked up the picture of Marisa with the head of her father’s security force. She studied it carefully. “That’s him,” she whispered, shuddering. “That is Chacho.”
Diego recognized him as the man standing behind Marisa’s father on the terrace the night of their party.
“Are you sure?” the agent asked.
“Do you see the tattoo below his right ear? My husband is an artist, señor. I know how to look at pictures and observe details in what I see. It’s a tattoo of el tigre. The men who raped us in Mexico before they brought us to the United States had the same tattoo.” Pilar dropped the photo as if it were red hot.
“What about the girl?” the agent asked.
“I’ve never seen her,” Pilar said. “She is very pretty.”
“That’s Marisa, Arturo’s daughter,” Diego spoke up. “She doesn’t know anything about her father’s illegal activities.”
“How do you know?” the agent asked.
“She comes to all of the Storm home games, and we became friends. Before I knew what her father was, I confided to her that a man named Eduardo Ayala had kidnapped my sister from Mexico and taken her to Houston and that I was searching for her. She knew her father’s security guards spent time in the cantinas. Without my knowing, she asked one of them if he knew Eduardo, and the guard told her that Eduardo hung out at Los Arboles. When her father found out about it, he immediately sent her out of the country. She called me before she left and told me where I could find Eduardo. Right after that call, they blocked Mary’s car on Studewood and threatened her.”
“I find it hard to believe she didn’t know that her father was mixed up in illegal activities, especially with all that security around the house,” the agent persisted.
“Please, señor,” Diego said. “I am sure Marisa knows nothing. Do not bring her into this.”
CHAPTER 27
THE RECKONING
The FBI worked quickly to close in on Arturo Escobar after Rosa’s arrest. They wanted to link him somehow to Rosa’s business in order to get a search warrant for his home and Houston office. The low-lying fruit was Angel.
It was easy to find Angel. He was an American citizen that HPD had arrested before for minor offenses, so they knew where he usually hung out. An FBI agent and HPD detective began shadowing him. After a week, they followed Angel to a produce truck—with an out-of-state license plate—that was full of drugs and two tied-up thirteen-year-old Mexican girls at a stash house in Channelview near the Port of Houston. As soon as the Federal Magistrate issued a warrant, they arrested Angel on charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, harboring illegal aliens, and smuggling illegal drugs. They waited until Angel was alone so as not to tip off Escobar that they were closing in.
Once in custody, Robert met with Angel and his court-appointed lawyer while Michael and Mary watched from behind the dark window.
“Angel, do you have any idea of the severity of the crimes with which you have been charged?” Robert roared at him. Standing, he leaned forward against the interrogation table. “This isn’t stealing hubcaps and a few months in jail. We have everything we need to send you away to federal prison for a long, long time.”
Angel knew enough to have asked for a lawyer. He’d been assigned David Cerillo, who had only recently been licensed. Angel sat loosely in his seat, a smirk on his face. David sat beside him. Angel was a slightly built young man with long, stringy black hair tied in a ponytail. He had prominent tattoos on his body and wore jeans and a black leather jacket. David was a little overweight, dressed in what was probably his only dark suit, and wore an out-of-style tie and brown shoes.
“Mr. Grossman,” David said in a less-than-steady voice, “my client is a young man who has never been arrested for a felony charge before. I believe the prosecution should grant him leniency.”
“Your client,” Robert replied, leaning closer to David to make his point, “has a rap sheet with the local authorities that started when he first learned to walk. But he’s big-time now. Angel pimps innocent young girls that gangs kidnap in Mexico. He picks them up at stash houses and forces them to let men rape and beat them for money in seedy cantinas and bordellos. We are preparing to try Rosa Rodriguez and her dirty gang. We’ll lump Angel into the conspiracy trial with the others, since he pimped girls at Los Arboles. A witness saw him there paying money to a bag man for the cartel.”
Angel’s eyes widened. Hearing the word “cartel,” David sat back as if reconsidering his position. He hadn’t realized the seriousness of this case. But he couldn’t help but cast a skeptical eye at his client, who looked like a scared teenager. “I’d like a minute to consult with my client, please,” he said.
“Five minutes,” Robert said, feeling confident he was dealing with an inexperienced defense lawyer. Then he turned off the microphone and left the room.
Out in the hallway, Robert joined Mary and Michael. “He’ll talk,” Robert said. “Just watch.”
Reentering the room, Robert glared at Angel. Then he turned to David, who looked uncomfortable. He didn’t say anything for several minutes.
“But I am a reasonable man,” Robert said, “and I may be able to offer your client a deal if he pleads guilty and helps us find the people who were pulling his strings.”
“What do you want?” David asked.
“We know he was paying at least part of the money the girls earned to a man named Chacho. We want Angel to tell us who Chacho worked for and where he took the money. We want to know anything Angel knows about the people who operated the stash house. We want to know if he picked up girls anywhere else and where he took them.”
“And what are you offering in return?” David asked.
“Reduction in sentencing and placement outside a maximum-security prison. A scrawny little pimp like Angel would be somebody’s bitch in no time if he wound up in max.” Robert stood up. “I expect Angel will be ready to cooperate, or he’ll be getting out of prison decades from now, at least what’s left of him.”
Angel’s face reddened, and he leaned into his lawyer’s ear, mumbling.
“My client will cooperate,” David said.
“Okay, let’s start with who owns the stash house where we spotted you picking up the drugs and girls?” Robert asked.
“Not sure, man. Word on the street is that Sangre Negra operates the house,” Angel said.
“Who does Chacho work for? Where does he take the money?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s not like I’m important. I know that she-devil Rosa and I know Chacho, but nobody tells us padrónes who is getting the big money. Word is he drives the money to Laredo.”
“Where else do you pick up girls?” Robert asked.
“There’s another stash house off Wayside,” Angel said. “And sometimes Chacho sends word to pick them up at the port.”
Robert narrowed his eyes.
“What ship do you meet?”
“There’s a couple. They come from Mexico carrying produce.”
“Is that all?”
“And drugs … and girls sometimes.”
Robert asked for something from the young attorney sitting beside him. He showed Angel a picture of a tiger. “Do the ships have this symbol on them?”
“Yeah, man,” Angel nodded. “El tigre.”
• • •
One week later, the joint task force procured a warrant and conducted a raid on the Wayside stash house, as well as one of Escobar’s ships as soon as it arrived at the Port of Houston. They found cocaine and marijuana hidden in produce containers and three bound, terrified girls between the ages of ten and fourteen.
Simultaneously, another team advanced on Escobar’s Tanglewood home. A guard at the Tanglewood house called Chacho on his mobile phone when he saw the first federal agents approach.
The family was not there when they arrived. Arturo, his wife, and his children were attending a family dinner at the home of a cousin in River Oaks. It was a welcome home celebration for Marisa and her mother, who had just returned from their long trip to Europe. When Chacho received the call and whispered to Arturo that the FBI was raiding the Tanglewood house, Escobar quickly gathered his wife and children and ordered Chacho to drive them to Hobby Airport, where he kept a private Lear jet. Staffed by Sangre Negra, it was always waiting with a pilot ready to take off.
Agents, deputies, and HPD officers had hid in surrounding hangars, assuming that Escobar would try to make his escape by air if they failed to pick him up at his home.
When Chacho arrived at the private plane area of Hobby Airport, the airplane’s door was open and its engine running. Chacho parked, and Escobar and Chacho got out of the car.
The FBI agent in charge gave the order, and the authorities ran onto the tarmac, yelling, “FBI. Stop where you are! Arturo Escobar, Chacho Cardenes, we have warrants for your arrest!”
Escobar stopped and turned toward the agents, his hand reaching into his jacket. Chacho pulled out his semiautomatic. Three loud gunshots pierced the air. Suddenly, Escobar fell forward. The pilot had shot him in the back twice and once in the back of his head. Blood flowed onto the ground as his body hit the tarmac.
Escobar’s wife and Marisa screamed, horrified. The pilot shot Chacho in the head, killing him instantly. Then he dropped his gun, closed the door of the plane, revved the jet engines, and taxied quickly down the runway, not waiting for clearance from the tower.
Agents and police ran after the plane, shooting at the engines, but it was too late. It was on its way to Mexico. Sangre Negra did not like those who knew too much to come into the hands of the US authorities. Escobar had been in charge of US operations. He’d been important to the cartel, but no one was irreplaceable. Their pilots had been under standing orders from El Tigre, who was now heading Sangre Negra, to kill Escobar and his lieutenants if they were ever about to be apprehended.
Escobar’s body lay on the tarmac. His wife knelt over him, weeping. Marisa, confused and crying, tried to keep the younger children from seeing their dead father.
Marisa screamed.
CHAPTER 28
THE TRIAL
Pilar and Josefina sat huddled on a bench in an alcove between the courtrooms on the eighth floor of the federal courthouse in Houston in late October 2012. One of the odd square windows in the perfectly square marble building lit the brown and cream marble walls and floor. James, Mary, and Josefina’s lawyer sat on either side of them, attempting to buffer them from the spectators, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and reporters who had gathered for the trial. Pilar thought everyone was looking at her—some with disdain, a few with implicit threats in their eyes, others out of simple curiosity. Josefina kept her head down. She would not testify that day but wanted to be there to support Pilar.
As James had predicted, for one reason or another, all the other victims who had promised to testify against Rosa had disappeared. It would be up to Josefina and Pilar to tell judge and jury what terrible things had happened to the girls imprisoned on the second floor of Los Arboles. The small courtroom would be packed. The government was anxious to showcase their prosecution of the biggest sex-trafficking case in Harris County history.
After what seemed like hours but was actually only twenty minutes, the doors of the courtroom swung open, and the spectators and reporters rushed in, trying to get seats close to the front. When all were seated, the bailiff announced Judge Paul Rhimes. The trial of The United States of America v. Rosa Rodriguez, Eduardo Ayala Perez, and Guillermo Ayala Perez commenced.
James had told Pilar that the prosecution and defense counsel would make opening statements. They needed to stay close, but it would be a while before she would be called to testify. Waiting was painful. Diego attempted to relieve some of the tension. But attempts at lighthearted conversation were awkward, and Pilar preferred to stay silent, concentrating on what she wanted to say. Robert’s assistant attorneys and James had been coaching her on answering planned and potential questions simply and in good English. James had told her the defense would cross-examine her and try to make her look like she was not telling the truth. That, in particular, frightened her. She had never spoken in front of a crowd or strangers. She was afraid she would be too frightened to answer or would be tricked by Rosa’s lawyer into saying something she did not mean. She was still not comfortable when confronted by men.
The hours dragged by, and her fear grew. When it finally grew too intense, she stood up and looked for the exit—she wanted to run out of the courthouse. She felt cold and panic all over. James seemed to know what she was feeling. He gently put his arms around her and carefully sat her back down. He held her hand.
Mary got Pilar a bottle of water. Josefina laid her hand on Pilar’s other hand. Pilar looked in the younger girl’s eyes and saw quiet resolve. Josefina’s attitude surprised Pilar and also calmed her.
“Don’t worry, Pilar,” Josefina said. “We have gone through hell together, and we will survive this together too. When we are done, Rosa and the others will have their turn in the flames.”
This sober assurance from Josefina broke the tension Pilar felt. She realized the frail child had become a strong young woman. Josefina was wearing a conservative blue sheath dress, her curly hair short and neatly combed; she bore little resemblance to the unkempt waif who had been rescued from Los Arboles.
Finally, just after 11 a.m., James told Pilar that it was time for her to testify and led her to the closed courtroom door.
All eyes were on Pilar’s petite form as she walked down the short aisle of the courtroom, past the court reporters, through the bar, and to a spot in front of the judge. Mary had dressed Pilar in a navy-blue wool dress and jacket, clothes suitable for a young professional. Her only jewelry was a simple strand of white pearls, borrowed from Mary, and pearl stud earrings. Pilar’s natural pink color had returned to her face, and her hair was once more full and shiny. Onlookers saw an attractive twenty-four-year-old woman who could have been anyone they knew—a friend, a daughter. The bailiff swore her in and told her to be seated.
As she slid into the big leather witness chair, Pilar looked up, directly into the defiant eyes of the woman who had kept her imprisoned and brutalized for two years. Pilar had feared she would be cowed by Rosa’s glowering stare, just as she had been so many times in the office they’d shared.
To her relief, that did not happen. Rosa wore a pink suit for the trial and no makeup except red lipstick. She looked old and washed out. Looking at Rosa’s sneering face, Pilar felt herself grow stronger, indignant. Pilar wanted badly to tell everyone what this evil woman had done to her and to so many other helpless girls. She wanted the American authorities to put Rosa where she could never again do those terrible things to other girls. She sat up straight and steeled herself to admit to these strangers her embarrassing personal horrors.
Pilar looked at Eduardo and Guillermo sitting at another table. Eduardo wore the same arrogant smirk she had come to know and hate during the four years she had been under his control. Guillermo looked less confident. He always did what his older brother told him to do, even now, refusing to enter a guilty plea and take a deal from the prosecution.
Robert had made a strategic decision to forego the usual introductory questions of the witness and plunge directly into her testimony, which he knew would be explosive.
“Have you always lived in the United States, Señora Chavez?”
“No, señor. I was born and lived in Mexico, in the town of San José.
“What did you do there?” James asked.
“I was happy there, living with my husband and our nine-month-old daughter, Concepción. I worked as assistant to the owner of a pottery factory in the office.”
“How did you come to be here?”
Pilar looked across the courtroom at Diego and Mary for grounding, as James had instructed, while she answered. “In 2007, bad times came to the pottery industry where my husband was an artist, and he lost his job. We were starving. The man I now know as Eduardo Ayala came to the factory where I worked in the office, pretending to be a buyer from a Mexico City department store. He gave me an ad for a secretarial job in Mexico City. He said it was a good job and would pay more money. I didn’t think about it at first, but when all our money was gone, I thought it could help my family survive.”
“And did you go to Mexico City and get this good job, señora?”
“There was no job. When I went to the interview, a woman named Alma, who worked for Eduardo, drugged me and two other girls, Josefina and Teresa. When we woke, we were all tied up. Eduardo came and said he owned us and if we didn’t do what he told us, he would kill our families. He knew where they were, so I was afraid for them.”
“What did Eduardo do to you then?” Robert asked.
Pilar had been speaking in a soft voice. When she continued her story, her voice became stronger.
“He gave us to terrible men who raped us, beat us, and treated us like animals. We were in a stone building with no clocks or windows, so we didn’t know where we were or for how long. Then they stuffed us together in a small place inside a big truck. It took us across the river to Texas. Then a guard, a white man, raped me over and over in a warehouse before he put us in a smaller truck with no air or water. There were so many Mexican men we could not sit down for the long trip to Houston. They took the men’s pants from them and locked all of us in a little house that smelled awful. We escaped and I made it to another house, but no one would help us. The guards caught us and kicked me, threatening to kill us if we did it again.”
