“Jeanne told me she and her fiancé had been told a major hotel chain in the United States was looking for servicepeople to do the work the Americans were no longer willing to do. The man who met them at the patisserie in Pétionville bought them banana cakes and presse cafe and told them the hotel company had health insurance, training for advancement, and a weekly wage that surpassed what they could scrounge in a year in Haiti. They would also provide the transit to New York. Since Jeanne and Fabian had both lost family in the 2010 quake, they decided to take a chance and go.
“Everything changed once they boarded the ship, where their possessions were confiscated and they were locked in the holds below. They were trapped aboard for weeks as it went port to port. Jeanne said they knew where they’d been by the other people who came down into the holds with them. Dominicans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Jamaicans, Hondurans, Mexicans. Even a group of prostitutes the captain won in a card game in the Caymans.”
“Was this a cruise ship?” asked Rook.”
“A cargo vessel.”
Nikki said, “I’m going to guess who owned it.”
“If you guessed Keith Gilbert, you would guess right,” Opal said. Nikki reflected on the visceral reaction Onishi had voiced last visit when she flashed his picture in the array. “The stories I got from other people enslaved by this ring — and it is slavery, let’s call it what it is — were all transported on ships owned by Gilbert Maritime.”
“I want to see these interviews,” said Heat. “Starting with Jeanne’s. And get transcripts, if you have them. If you don’t, we can transcribe them.”
Rook asked, “Did you also interview Beauvais?”
“No, I didn’t.” Then she held up her hands in a staving gesture. “Whoa, whoa, let’s all hold on here. I’m cooperating, right? Like I’m not ducking your shit anymore, OK?”
“And?”
“And this material is mine. This is what I was afraid of when you came around before. I’ve spent a year making a film. I’ve got more interviews I want to do, more writing, and tons more editing. If I let this raw footage out and it starts circulating before I’m ready, I can pretty much kiss off my funding and distribution.”
Heat felt pressure. Half a day — or less — before the interim precinct commander arrived and took her off the case. Desperate, but trying not to show it, she pushed buttons. “I guess I was wrong. From your résumé, I kind of had you figured as someone who wanted to help fight oppression and injustice.”
It was a valiant effort, but Opal tapped out another cigarette, played with it, unlit, in her hand while she mulled, then said, “If the film releases properly, it’ll do just that. Besides, I don’t think you can make me.” She turned to Rook, fishing for support. “Don’t I get some protection as a journalist?”
He shrugged. “Might be debatable whether your indie project gets First Amendment protection. But I do have some perspective to share.”
“Yeah?”
“Ever hear of Mary Ellen Mark?” Opal shook no. “We’re going back thirty, thirty-five years here. Mary Ellen Mark was, and still is, a respected photojournalist who managed to gain access to Mother Teresa’s mission in the Calcutta slums. She’s going along, doing her job, snapping pictures of Mother Teresa and her volunteers working their asses off cleaning the lepers, mopping up after the sick, comforting dying kids, physically picking up and carrying the malnourished men and women she’d find collapsed in the gutters or sleeping in sewage. Mary Ellen got some great photos, too. Know what Mother Teresa said to her? She came up to her very calmly and said, ‘You should put down your camera and do some work.’”
While Opal thought that over, Rook tapped her shoulder and added, “And if that’s not good enough, imagine the media buzz and word of mouth Smuggled Souls will get if your film is instrumental in taking down a corrupt power broker and a human trafficking ring.”
Opal Onishi cocked an eyebrow and smiled.
Jeanne Capois was alive. At least on film. And in that digital form, the twenty-something Haitian immigrant had achieved a sort of immortality. She exuded a goodness and quiet grace that filled the screen and the entirety of Detective Raley’s media kingdom back uptown. Her Creole notes flowed musically around her even after she had spoken her words. The warm French flavor stood in sharp contrast to the disturbing testimony she was offering.
The backdrop was a bookcase — very Ken Burns-style — with her eyeline a few degrees off the camera lens as she spoke to her unseen interviewer, Opal Onishi. The young woman did not smile — this was all too intense for that — but Jeanne Capois looked like a person who commonly smiled, and made others join in just for seeing hers.
Nobody in the small room spoke. Not Raley, not Rook, not Detective Heat, who took notes and jotted time codes off the digits scrolling in a corner of the monitor so that Rales could assemble a highlight reel of the most damning allegations.
When the interview ended and the screen went dark, all three sat in silence, hearing only the cooling fans of the equipment and Rook muttering a small “Fuck.”
Nikki swept aside a tear before the lights came up then tore the relevant sheets off her pad for Raley to edit by. Heat smelled that she was inches from the truth. She stood and said, “Let’s go get this guy.”
Detectives Rhymer and Feller had returned to the bull pen when Heat and Rook came back from their screening. They were particularly animated and it took some work for Nikki to adjust to their manic chatter after what she had just experienced. “Did I score something new, or did I not?” asked Feller.
“You did,” said Rhymer. “Actually both. I was there. But it was mostly him.”
“Maybe one of you could do me a favor before they try to pull the plug on this case anytime now, and just give me a report.”
“I’ll take this,” said Feller, flattening a palm on his chest. “My quadrant — the one you assigned me from the Murder Board for drilling down — included the interview we conducted with Fidel “FiFi” Figueroa. Lots to sift through there, but, skeevy as he is, the man gave us some good intel.”
“Is this you getting to the point?” heckled Ochoa from his desk.
“Remember, Detective Heat, how he used a term to describe Fabian Beauvais?”
“Astucia,” said Heat.
“Plus-ten for you. It occurred to me that you can’t go around exhibiting balls like that, bluffing your way into office buildings with a sandwich cooler to steal documents without setting off a few alarms here and there.”
“It’s an odds game,” offered Rhymer.
“Exactly. So I thought, let me take two elements.” Randall held one hand to the sky and said, “Fabian Beauvais and his astucia right here.…” And then held his other hand up. “And bad shit involving Keith Gilbert here.” He brought the hands together and interlocked his fingers. “So I got on the blower to the Real Time Crime Center and asked the detective on duty to run a computer search for incidents and complaints at the Gilbert Maritime tower on Madison, Midtown. Took a while to get back to me with the hurricane and all, but after we wrapped at Braun’s commando post in the Bronx, I get the call. A trespass complaint weeks ago. No arrest, but officers responded, so it was in the database.”
Nikki said, “I’m interested now.”
“Just wait. We paid a visit. The building’s closed like everything else today, but security’s working. I get the security chief to look at the mug shot of Fabian Beauvais. Guess what he says.”
“‘The sandwich guy,’” said Rook.
Feller made a slow rotation to him and said. “My punch line. I tell the whole friggin’ story and you steal the punch line.”