Trapped in the Mayan Tattoo (28 page)

“You can walk from
here?” Abbi asked Louise. Abbi wanted to get off the Metro at the last moment. Quickly
before the man had a chance to catch up with them. She nodded to get Louise’s
OK. 

Louise looked at
the people riding with them. Suddenly, she rubbed her left earlobe and nodded.
The look of concern was worth it.

“J and R,” Abbi
said. Their old jump and run trick. They successfully left the man behind.

Just before the
metro took off again, Abbi waved at the frumpy man.

            Signs of Chinatown were
all around, and Louise could not help pointing to the oriental designs on signs
and exotic architecture of the buildings as they hurried past.

            “You’re still looking all
wide-eyed!” Abbi said, looking around to see if anyone else followed them.

Fully aware of the
seriousness of their mission, the last thing she wanted was to draw attention. A
half block away from the museum, Abbi slowed her pace. She relied fully on
Louise now for her well-being. Not a safe thing to do. Suddenly she regretted
leaving Lowell in the dust.

            “Thank you,” Louise
said, panting loudly. “My feet and my legs all ache, but we lost him!”

            When they came to a
corner drugstore, Louise asked to stop for something to drink. They went inside
and took a few minutes to find some food, anything. Louise settled on a candy
bar and soft drink. Abbi bought nuts and water.

When they walked
out, Louise started toward a corner trashcan to dispose of her candy bar
wrapper. She stopped and barely avoided pointing to the same frumpy-looking man
rummaging through the trash can as if he hadn’t eaten in awhile, as if hoping
to find his next meal wrapped up and waiting for him. His back was toward them.

Louise lowered her
hand, backed away, and stuck her wrapper in her pocket. Then she reached for
her phone and speed-dialed. Abbi followed when Louise stepped back into the
drugstore. She went toward the back and began talking to Lowell.

Abbi followed her
inside but waited at the window, looking out, taking in the man’s full shabby look.
How did he get off the Metro? He looked up, on the phone, as his soft brown
eyes met her green ones. Those weren’t the eyes of a hungry man. The eyes held
knowledge. Recognition. But something more. Abbi grinned.

            Abbi could hear Louise.
She was talking much louder than she should have been. The drugstore clerk
looked alarmed.

“Lowell, we’re
being followed. We’re in the drugstore at the corner of 16
^th
and
Wilson and a man is waiting outside, pretending to be searching through
garbage. I don’t think he’ll come in, but I’m scared.”

            “Hang tight. I can be
there in five minutes,” Lowell said. “Just keep talking to me so I’ll know
everything’s OK. Tell me what the man looks like.”

            Louise gave the
description of the man, from his beard and misshapen hat to his baggy clothes
down to his dingy brown shoes. She was disgusted with how he rummaged in the
trash can on the street corner.

            The clerk asked Louise
if everything was OK while she held onto the phone.

            “Yeah,” Louise said.
“We just need to wait a few minutes for my brother. Mind if we stay inside?”

           
When Tina
arrived at the hospital, she was not sent to triage where she might have to
wait hours. Instead, she was whisked immediately to an examination room. Her
father showed paperwork of what the nurse practitioner had found so far and handed
the little vial of medicine to the E.R. doctor who quickly agreed with the
diagnoses and treatment plan.

            “I’d like that office
to fax us any additional lab findings. We may want to run another test. In the
meantime, you can see there has been some liver damage. Sorry, little lady, but
I’m guessing yellow is not your usual skin tone.”

            “Am I going to die?”
Tina asked.

            “You’re getting quick
treatment. And I can tell you’re pretty tough,” the doctor said. “We’ll get an
I.V. set up to get fluids in you, and I think you’re going to start feeling a
lot better. Then you won’t be so worried. When you feel this bad, it’s natural
to be scared.”

            By the time Tina had a
private room, she had already slept some more, her fever had let up, and she
had a visitor waiting for her.

            Mrs. Hightower gave her
a hug and then sat back down in the side chair.

            “I hear you want to
talk to me. Are you sure this is a good time?” she asked, looking at both Tina
and her father.

            “This is fine,” Tina
said with a smile. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. Now I think I’m
getting better.”

            Mrs. Hightower looked
at Tina’s father.

            “You want me to stay?”

            “I think so,” he said.

            “Then I think I’ll need
some time alone with Tina.”

            Tina’s father seemed
reluctant to leave them.

            “Really. There will be
some details that will become classified. The fewer ears right now, the better.
It’s for your own good.”

            After her father left
the room, Tina thanked Mrs. Hightower for coming.

            “I want Gopher arrested
and put away,” Tina said emotionally. “And Ramon. He’s horrible.”

            “Before we start, I
need for you to be comfortable. I don’t want you getting too excited right now.
We can just start with a few key details today. As you know, we want to get
Miss Shoe out of Mexico. Is there anything you can tell me to help with that?”

            “Yes, but there are
also other young girls there. You need to get them out too!”

            “Do you know their real
names?”

“No.”

“Then that will
take a little longer. We’ll need identities. Let’s get to that in a minute, if
you’re up to it. Tell me about Ramon.”

“He’s the one that
has Miss Shoe. Oh, unless he sold her. He’s horrible, nasty. So mean!”

“Why would he sell
her?”

“He likes pretty
young girls. Older women don’t stay there long.”

“Where do they
go?”

“No one talks
about it.”

“Give me an idea of
Ramon’s daily schedule: when he eats, where he sleeps, who he talks to,
anything about him you know. Does he go by another name?”

Tina did her best
to fill in details.

“He didn’t sleep
there, but he locked us in at 2 a.m. every night, and if we had to use the
bathroom before he opened the next day, we had to use a pot in the room.”

“A pot?”

“There was only
one bathroom for the rooms out back. We had a pot, like a bucket, and a wash
basin in the room.”

“How many were in
a room?”

“There were four
in my room. We had mats on the floor. The rooms for customers were nice, really
pretty, like in a fancy hotel. Those rooms were upstairs, not in back where we
were.”

“How many times
were you in those upstairs rooms?” Mrs. Hightower asked.

Tina’s hands shook
and she started to cry. Mrs. Hightower had overstepped. Tina wasn’t ready to
talk about those details. Mrs. Hightower backed off.

“Well, then, tell
me more about Ramon,” she said.

“He did daily
inspections. He wanted us to look real pretty. Thursday was gift day, so we had
something new if he was happy with us. He would act nice to some girls,
especially the princess, but he bullied girls if they got sick or made a
customer mad. If a girl made him mad, she wouldn’t get anything on gift day. When
he was really mad, we could hear him through the walls. He had this awful belt
on his office wall. Sometimes, he’d stay over and take a girl upstairs for the
night.”

Mrs. Hightower
took notes and sent messages via her phone, asking for points of clarification
only a few times.

Then Mrs.
Hightower asked questions about Ramon’s specific actions toward Tina, how he
ran his business including selling videos of her, the use of drugs with her, unusual
actions such as the forced tattoos she had, and any repeat customers. Tina
answered most of the questions, but did not know the names of all the drugs she
was forced to take. There was meth at first. She was also forced to drink
alcohol before he videotaped her. She didn’t remember much of that.

“Now, Tina, if you
still feel like talking, tell me something else. We know you contacted Gopher
on Facebook.”

“I thought I was
dying. I wanted him to know that I was going to tell everything before I died!”

“Understandably. I’m
not a doctor, but I think you’ll pull through this. Do you still want to tell
all?”

“Yes.”

“I’m proud of you!
When you contacted the young man, you used your ‘Maria’ account. We didn’t
think you would do that but, as it turns out, that’s good. We can work with
this. But, of course, it would have been safer not to contact him at all. If
we’re going to find Gopher, who likely still lives and operates in Texas, we will
need your full cooperation.”

“OK.”

“Are you aware of
anyone else, especially Americans, he sold to Ramon?”

“Another girl,
they called her Cinnamon, knew Gopher. We didn’t know he was selling us,
though. I don’t know her real name, but she was from Texas, too.”

“Was she
American?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know her
real age?”

“Maybe a year
older than me. She was the princess.”

“Oh?”

“Special
treatment.”

“Ramon liked her.
She did favors for Ramon. Got special gifts. I don’t blame her. I couldn’t do
it. I despised that man.”

“If we bring in a
computer, can you keep up correspondence with Gopher? We want you to let him
think you’re still in Texas. We’ll guide you in what to say. After a few
messages back and forth, the FBI will take over your ‘Maria’ account and you
are, after that, never ever to contact him again, not as Maria, not as Tina.
Can you promise that?”

“Yes,” Tina said, feeling
like a little kid with her lisp. “I promise.”

“Alright,” Mrs.
Hightower said, “You’re very brave, Tina. The information you have provided
will be useful. We’ll make it happen. I’ll see if we have an agent that might
pass for you! I don’t know. You’re pretty small.”

“Back then, I
weighed almost twenty pounds more!” Tina said.

“That will help.
We’ll still probably add another twenty pounds with undercover, especially if
we add a bullet-proof vest.”

“You would do
that?”

“It’s pretty much
protocol, the way we do things.”

Mrs. Hightower
kissed Tina on the forehead. When she walked out, she added, “I’ll see you
again soon. In the meantime, you work on getting better! You have your whole
life ahead of you!”

Tina, knowing she
would be part of something important, finally relaxed.

Louise wanted to
wait inside the drugstore. Her eyes held fear and unasked questions. She
finally let Lowell get off the phone.

“So, if you
thought something was odd, why didn’t you rub your earlobe?” Abbi asked.

“I guess I just
forgot.”

Abbi decided to
give her the answers. Louise was obviously scared. She’d been a good sport, and
there was no time to waste.

Louise kept her
head down and looked out the window sideways at the man so that he wouldn’t see
her face. Likewise, the man positioned himself so that he had a peripheral view
of the girls if they walked out the door.

            Dingy brown shoes,
baggy pants. People can change clothes. His well-fed muscular build, however,
was not successfully disguised by the shabby clothing. His hair looked shaggy
and off-center, like a wig hastily placed. Faces are harder to change, although
he sported a different nose, pretty real-looking, and had the shadow of a
beard. His eyes, no masking them, but he pulled a hat down over them.

“What does he
want?” Louise asked.

“Let’s just go out
and ask him,” Abbi said.

“Are you crazy?”

“Crazy as a loon.
Come on! It’ll be OK,” Abbi said. “Or wait inside.”

She winked at a
clerk and then jerked the door open to yell at him.

            “Hey, YOU! You’re
following us. You want some of this?” Abbi held up her fists.

Two store clerks
noticed and backed up, but the other one, the one that Abbi winked at, laughed
and assured the others it would be alright.

The man kept
digging in the trash, still looking sideways toward the door as if he didn’t
hear.

            He was actually
texting: I TOLD U I’D B SEEING U. AND YES. I DO.

Then suddenly
Lowell faced her directly with a smile before returning to the trash can. His
smile!

GO TO HDQTRS.
DON’T BLOW MY COVER, he texted.

Abbi stuck her
head inside the drugstore and motioned for Louise to see the text.

“Lowell’s here,”
Abbi said to Louise. “He arrived quickly as promised!”

“Where?”

HI, WEEZIE! Lowell
said in a text. I’LL B CLOSE.

Lowell tried without
success to hide his devilish grin, as he cautiously looked around and then put
his hat down.

Louise texted back:
NOT FUNNY!

Lowell texted: SORRY,
WEEZY.

He looked straight
at Abbi and revealed his flawless white teeth. Why did he have to look so good?
Who thought up this disguise?

After that Lowell
avoided eye contact. He continually watched his surroundings as he texted. Louise
handed him a dollar. Abbi gave him change.

“Thanks, God bless
you,” Lowell said.

Abbi and Louise
hurried away. Abbi tried not to look back.

“That was just
weird,” Louise said. “I could punch him in the face right now for what he put
me through. And you knew!”