The Container Affair Page 4

  As the boat pulled into the marina, John began barking orders to the young crew. He pulled the smaller boat next to his boat and fendered it off his port side. This way, he could bring it alongside the gas dock, have the boys drag it free, then get it to the guest slip where it would wait for JD’s father to fetch it to its trailer. As the young people made the other boat fast, John went to the marina office and asked Andy, the marina manager, to take care of the kids and send him the bill. Andy, one of the few people who knew Mr. Malone, was taken back by his kind gesture and assured John all would be arranged.

  John walked back to his boat and asked if they needed anything else before he moved his boat back to his slip. Both Cate and Jeanette quickly came up to him and gave him a hug and a big thank you for rescuing them. JD and Frank shook his hand and admitted they were out of their league and really appreciated his help. Doing this in front of the girls took courage and showed John these two young men had character and promise for the future.

  John looked at them for a moment and then said something he had never said to anyone in twenty years, “Thank you for the time and the conversation today. I’m glad to have met you. I want to ask you a question.”

  Malone quickly looked at each person and then said, “Take this seriously; there are no hidden agendas.”

  His voice was now that of a captain of industry and his tone was serious enough to make the young people take immediate notice of the change. “I’ve heard your stories and your situations. You seem to be strong and resilient people who could use a break. I don’t know exactly what this break could be, but I have an acquaintance who is the vice president of human resources for a very large technology company. He might need some young people like yourselves to do some work for his company. This includes you, Jeanette. Fifteen dollars an hour is not a lot of money and this guy should be able to make something happen for you. Does this seem to be an offer you might be willing to accept?”

  Each of the four looked around at each other with smiles, and then Cate said, “Sure thing, Captain John, we’re always looking for a better opportunity and would appreciate even the chance to interview with a big company.”

  John wrote down Max Benoit’s name and telephone number and gave it to Cate and then told them to call Max as soon as possible for it was always best to move quickly when opportunity knocks. He smiled at each one, shook their hands, and gave them instructions on how to heave the dock lines onto his boat. With a last wave and a smile, he pulled away from the gas dock and began the five-minute journey to his slip.

  He thought about what he was going to tell his vice president of human resources. He needed to tell Benoit what to say to these young adults when they called and how much they should be paid. He was sure Max would be angry as hell about having to find jobs for four unsolicited hires with limited skills. John was certain Max would become angrier when he told him to keep his name a secret from the young people. John never gave his last name or contact information. He wondered if they would find him out over time. Interesting, he thought, to see what their sleuthing skills are.

  *****

  MIAMI The rusty container had been sitting at the dock for only a few days when some of Jerry’s workers noticed a strong smell. The locks were still attached, and no one had come to pick it up. This was not unusual for many of the containers from small ports in the Caribbean. This one was from the Dominican Republic and had been trans-shipped from the big Port of Miami to his wharf. When it arrived, he had asked the driver for information, had seen only the bill of lading and the shipping manifest, which showed the container being stored at his place for two or three days. Then it would be picked up and moved onto a barge up the Intracoastal Waterway.

  Again, nothing unusual about this particular container, but the smell worsened. Jerry, sensing things were not on the level, decided to call ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to check it out. Nothing worse, he thought, than to bring in the Feds after the situation got out of control.

  When ICE agent George Carreras and his partner Leland Parks showed up a few hours later, Jerry took them to the container. The ICE agents walked around the unit, inspecting the seals and locks, then scanned the paperwork Jerry provided.

  George took another whiff and said, “Wow, this one stinks bad! What do you think, Leland?”

  Parks read the paperwork and quietly stated, “I think we have something bad in there. Jerry, you said you have heard nothing from a noise standpoint coming from the box?”

  He quickly said neither he nor any of his workers heard anything coming from the box just the smell.

  “Okay,” Leland said, “let’s open it up.”

  George went to the black ICE vehicle and got the largest set of bolt cutters Jerry had ever seen. Parks told Jerry to stand behind the SUV as he pulled out his service pistol—just in case.

  Parks, a huge man standing six feet five inches and looking like an NFL linebacker, snapped off the first of two large locks and cut two restraining cables tying the handles together.

  He looked at his partner and asked, “Are you ready?”

  George motioned to open the doors and pointed his gun at the door.

  With a snap and a creaking noise sounding like the worst case of rusting hinges the world has ever heard, the door opened slowly. The putrid smell rolled over them in waves.

  “Shit,” George said, “something is dead in there, and I don’t think it’s bad fruit.” He quickly pulled out his flashlight and held it along with the .40-caliber H&K automatic. As he scanned the dark container, he could see lots of boxes stacked almost to the top and what looked like a wood frame holding the boxes in place, giving an appearance that the entire container was stacked deep with them. But on top, a few of the boxes had been pulled loose and had evidently fallen backward into an open area.

  Leland became a bit more cautious and pulled out his radio. He quickly called for backup from other ICE agents as well as local police. He then told George to pull out a few of the boxes to see what else was in the container. Both agents wore leather gloves even though it was steaming hot outside. The gloves were part of their dress code and helped them clear a possible crime scene without adding additional fingerprints.

  George pulled out one box at a time. With each removed box, he could see deeper into the container. Finally, he had a hole through to the center portion of the container. Lying on the floor was a body of a woman. They removed more boxes until they had cleared a path. George walked slowly to the body, knelt carefully, and yelled back at Parks, “Black female, probably twenty years old or so, and by the look of her she has been dead for three to four days.”

  George stood knowing there was nothing more he could do for the young woman, probably a Haitian who had paid a lot of money to get to America. He scanned the room, noting blankets, water bottles, food containers, and a set of large plastic buckets with lids which served as toilets.

  “Whew,” George yelled to his partner, “she’s in bad shape! There must be fifty pounds of shit in these buckets too. How do you breathe in a place like this?”

  Knowing the crime scene was going to take a while to process, he backed out of the container and told Leland to close the door.

  He radioed his superiors to report what he had found and asked for the Dade County Medical Examiner to come to the site as well as the Crime Scene Investigators. He always chuckled to himself about the real CSI people who he had spent too many hours with over the past years. They were not the TV types portrayed on the tube nor were they ghouls or weirdos. Just good people who did their jobs, but none of them looked like the beautiful TV people. Boy, he thought to himself, what kind of good looking gal would want to dig around in filth like this for a living.

  Within a few minutes the first police units showed up and taped off the area shortly before the second team of ICE agents arrived. As the newcomers began going through the container, George and Leland asked Jerry a few more questions.

  George examined the paperwork Jerr
y had provided and asked, “When did this box show up on your wharf?”

  Jerry said, “Like I was telling you, it showed up at 4:30 p.m. on Monday and somebody noticed the smell late on Tuesday. My guys told me about it this morning. That’s when I walked down to see it—and smell it. That’s when I called you.”

  “Alright,” George said. “Did you notice anything unusual when you checked it in on Monday?”

  Jerry thought for a moment and said, “Nothing unusual. We get these trans-shipments every few days. This one was supposed to be put on a barge to go up to . . . looks like, Jacksonville.”

  Leland asked him about the delivery truck. Again, Jerry pulled his information and said, “It was a standard delivery from the Port of Miami. These trucks are all bonded and controlled by the Port. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.” He mentioned the videotape system and offered to pull the tape for that day.

  Leland agreed the tape would be helpful and it would be returned, or they would send a copy for his records.

  Jerry laughed, dismissing the comment. “You know, I keep the paperwork required by the government, the insurance companies, and my accountants. But the tapes are for our protection and are continually reused. You never know when some asshole might come in and steal stuff from us. If you want to keep it, just let me know so I can get some replacement blanks.”

  Jerry then asked about how long this investigation would keep him shut down.

  George replied, “We should be out of here in a few hours, Jerry, then you can go back to doing whatever you do, legally or illegally.”

  Jerry smiled and let the remark pass. He had met both agents on other inspections as well as most of the ICE team in Miami. His operation was one of the smaller locations in the greater Miami area which made him a target for drug enforcement, knockoff smuggling, immigration violations, and other assorted misdeeds. He knew they would be back looking around for more things which did not seem to make sense to the Feds.

  The medical examiner spent about twenty minutes in the box. The smell was getting really bad now. Finally, the body was wrapped in a body bag and taken to a waiting van for transportation to the county morgue. The M.E. quickly discussed his findings with the waiting ICE team as well as two detectives from the Miami police department.

  The medical examiner’s name was Joseph, and he had worked in the M.E.’s office for four years. As the newest member of the team, he got all the basic deaths, which meant you never heard of them on the evening news.

  “Okay folks, here’s the skinny on Jane Doe. African descent, approximate age nineteen, seems to have been in poor health for some time. The probable cause of death is dysentery with possible total renal failure. I’ll know more once I get her on the table. But she died probably four days ago from the look of the corpse. Not a pleasant way to die and especially in that box. The temperature most likely stayed upwards of 110° in the daytime with little to no ventilation. I think she was in supreme agony for most of her voyage to America.”

  George asked if there were any signs of trauma or distress to the body.

  The M.E. replied there was no indication of foul play except being locked up in a box for God knows how long.

  Leland then asked, “Based on her condition and the living area within the box, can you estimate how many people might have been in the container with the dead woman?”

  Dr. Joseph looked at the ICE agent. “Now that is an interesting question I had not thought about until you brought it up. Let’s see, based on where the body was found, it looked like it had been moved from a cardboard box on the right side of the container looking forward. I think she died sometime during the last part of her voyage and was stuffed in the box to keep her hidden from the others. There is bodily fluid in a few of the boxes. I am quite sure we will match these with the deceased. So, based on the position of the body before its discovery, I think the container could have held ten or fifteen people tops.”

  George was not surprised by the number. He had seen reports of stowaways coming to the West Coast from China in shipping containers. “But with the heat in the tropics being so bad, how could people survive?” he asked the doctor.

  Dr. Joseph walked the ICE agents back into the container which still smelled of death. He showed them where the boxes were, where people had slept, and even where it looked like someone had sex. He then showed them a set of small windows the people inside could open and close allowing some ventilation. He also showed them a camouflaged opening in the top. It was large enough for a human being to enter or for food and water to be lowered.

  Jerry watched all of this with great interest. He saw the ICE agent peer through a hole in the top of the container and wondered who in their right mind would want to take the risk of being stuck in there for at least a week in this heat. Wow, he thought to himself, these people are more desperate than I thought to get to America.

  After another hour or so of photo taking and questioning the members of his workforce, the ICE agents came back to his office to tell him they were leaving. Jerry asked what would happen to the container.

  George said it was sealed and another ICE team would be by in a day or so. The new team would search the entire box for additional evidence about the other stowaways and any other information about who brought it into the country. He also told Jerry he would be paid to keep it at his location. It could be moved elsewhere on his wharf once the team cleaned it for clues.

  Jerry then asked, “Well, how long is that thing going to be stuck on my wharf even if the Feds are going to pay for it?”

  Leland now rose to leave and said, “Jerry, don’t worry, the government is going to pay you to sit on that thing for some time. I doubt anybody wants it, so just keep it and take our money, okay?”

  Jerry knew he was stuck with the box unless someone in the government wanted to use it in the future for evidence or whatever. He smiled back at the two ICE agents and waved them away saying, “Thanks guys for the gift that not only keeps on giving but also smells to high heaven.”

  The agents left laughing and wondered aloud about how long the box would stay at Jerry’s dock.

  Three months later, the shipping container was still there. No one had inquired about it since the day they found the body. All the reports were properly filed in state and local archives. The federal reports by ICE, the FBI, and the Coast Guard were all sent to their respective headquarters and then dutifully loaded into computers and then into the “cloud” where all the government’s data was backed up for future use. Only a few people or organizations would have any knowledge about these reports, except of course, for those digging into crimes and government inaction.

  Part Two

  Bad Bishop

  WASHINGTON, D.C. The on-air sign was still off, and the coffee was already cold. The overweight and graying man looked at the control booth and motioned to his coffee cup and an empty water bottle. The girl sitting next to the producer quickly got up and headed for the door.

  Less than thirty seconds had elapsed when Rose, the young female assistant, had a new coffee cup and a bottle of water sitting on the desk next to the radio personality’s controls and ever-present microphone. The man said thanks quietly, then looked up at the producer giving him a signal to be ready to go live in one minute.

  Ralph Samson, “America’s Conscience,” was about to change direction for the first time in nearly a year. His theme had been all about America’s values. He harped about evolution, prayer in school, gay marriage, teenage sex, overt government action to halt the lawful sale of guns, and his favorite thing of all, government corruption. He had been having a field day for the past month when he “uncovered” a scandal in the Transportation Department. The New York Times uncovered the scandal, but it was way back on page eleven and appeared to have little traction. He read the Times each day along with other papers and magazines; plus, his staff covered regional papers, the Internet, local TV outlets and letters to the editors. They even scoured the numbing arr
ay of blogs on a full range of subjects. All of this was near and dear to his constituency of nearly two million people who tuned in daily or read his blog on the Internet.

  This all changed last week when his “source,” as he loved to say, James Benden asked him to dinner. He always took his calls and always met him whenever and wherever James wanted. He owed Benden his entire career and knew full well that James and his friends could wipe him off the networks in days if he didn’t play ball.

  The dinner conversation was as usual pleasurable and memorable, not only for the incredible dinner but for the wines ordered. Every sommelier in Washington knew James and provided him with only the best and usually the rarest of the gems in their cellars. The price was never an object with Benden, and even though Ralph thought of himself as somewhat of a gourmand, he did not have the encyclopedic mind of James when it came to wine.

  As the dessert was served and some fine ports offered, James finally got down to business.

  “Ralph, we need some help from you and your team.” He held the port glass closer to his nose and sniffed. He took a sip and beamed at the sommelier who was relieved the thirty-year-old port was up to measure.

  Ralph immediately replied, “Whatever I can do for you and your friends, James, just name it.”