Читать книгу The Death Box - J. Kerley A. - Страница 8

The semi-truck rumbled down the sandy lane in the South Florida coastal backcountry, a battered red tractor pulling the kind of gray intermodal container loaded on ships, traversing oceans before being offloaded to a truck or train to continue its journey. Tens of thousands of the nondescript containers traveled the world daily and it had been calculated that at any given moment over three per cent of the world’s GDP lay within the containers of Maersk, the world’s largest intermodal shipper.

But those were official loads. This particular shipment was a ghost, its true contents never recorded in any official documents. With the complicity of bribed clerks and customs agents, this simple gray box had boarded a ship in Honduras, sailed to the Port of Miami and been offloaded to the red tractor, with only the kind of glancing notice that came from eyes averted at the precise moment the container ghosted past.

“Looks quiet to me, Joleo.”

The passenger in the cab porched his hand over a scarred and sunburned brow, his dull green eyes scanning a stand of trees in the distance. Between the treeline and the truck was a corroded Quonset hut, a hundred feet of corrugated aluminum resembling a dirty gray tube half sunk in the sand. The passenger’s name was Calvert Hatton, but he went by Ivy, tattooed strands of the poison variety of the weed entwining his arms from wrist to shoulder.

“Our part’s almost over,” the driver said, pulling to a halt. He was tall and ropey and his name was Joe Leo Hurst, but over the years it had condensed to Joleo. “Go move ’em to the hut, Ivy.”

Ivy jumped from the cab and walked to the rear with bolt cutters in work-gloved hands as Joleo climbed atop the hood to scan the area.

“I still hate opening that damn door,” Ivy grumbled. “After that shipment last year …”

“We’ve done a bunch more since then. You remember one shipment that went bad?”

“I get nightmares,” Ivy whined.

Ivy wore a blue uniform shirt that strained over a grits-and-gravy belly and his thinning hair was greased back over his ears. He reached the bolt cutter’s jaws to the shining lock on the container and snapped the shackle. He climbed the tailgate to undo the latch on the doors, jumping down as they creaked open.

“The goddamn stench,” Ivy complained, pinching his nostrils as he peered into the module. “OK, monkeys, welcome to the Estados Unitas or whatever. Come on, get off your asses and move.”

A rail-thin Hispanic man in tattered clothes lowered himself from the container on shaky legs. He was followed by twenty-two more human beings in various stages of disarray, mostly young, mostly women. They blinked in the hard sunlight, fear written deep in every face.

“They all OK?” Joleo asked, now beside the cab and smoking.

“All up and moving.”

The Hispanics stood in a small circle at the rear of the truck, rubbing arms and legs, returning circulation to limbs that had moved little in a week. Ivy was lighting a cigarette when his head turned to the incoming road.

“Cars!” he yelled. “Orzibel’s coming.”

Joleo squinted in the direction of the vehicles and saw a black Escalade in the distance, behind it a brown panel van.

“Relax, Ivy. He’s just gonna grab some of the load.”

“That fucker scares me. He gets crazy with that knife.”

“Right, you get nightmares.”

Joleo was trying to joke, but his eyes were on the Escalade and his mouth wasn’t smiling, watching the car and van drive round the final bend and bear down on them. The black-windowed Escalade stopped hard at the rear of the truck, the van on its bumper. The Hispanics, senses attuned to danger, backed away, the circle re-forming beside the truck.

The driver’s side door opened on the Escalade and a man exited, as large as a professional wrestler and packed into a blue velvet running suit bulging with rock-muscled arms and thighs. He seemed without a neck, a round head jammed atop a velvet-upholstered barrel. The head was bald and glistened in the sun and its features were oddly small and compact, as if its maker’s hand had grasped a normal face and gathered everything to the center. And perhaps the same maker had tapped the eyes with his fingers, drawing out all life and leaving small black dots as cold as the eyes of dice. The dead eyes studied Ivy and Joleo as if seeing them for the first time.

“Yo, Chaku,” Joleo said. “S’up, man?”

If the driver heard, he didn’t seem to notice. The package of muscle nodded at the passenger side of the Escalade and another man exited the vehicle, or rather flowed from within, like a cobra uncurling from a basket.

His toes touched the sand first, sliver-bright tips of hand-tooled cowboy boots made of alligator hide. He wore dark sunglasses and walked slowly. His black silk suit seemed tailored to every motion in the slender frame. His snow-white shirt was ruffled and strung with a bolo tie, a cloisonné yin-yang of black enamel flowing into white.

The man was in his early thirties with a long face centered by an aquiline nose and a mouth crafted for broad smiles. His hair was black, short on the sides and pomaded into prickly spikes at the crown, a casual, straight-from-the-shower look only a good stylist could imitate.

A brown hand with long and delicate fingers plucked the sunglasses from the face to display eyes so blue they seemed lit from behind. The eyes looked across the parched landscape admiringly, as if the man had conceived the plans for the intersection of earth and sky and was inspecting the results. After several moments, he walked to the Hispanics, a smile rising to his lips.

“Hola, friends,” the man said, clapping the exquisite hands, the smile outshining the sun. “Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Bienvenido a gran riqueza.”

Welcome to the United States. Welcome to your fortunes.

Eyes rose to the man. Heads craned on weary necks.

“I represent your benefactor,” the man said in Spanish. “We are happy you made the journey. If you work hard you can make vast amounts of beautiful American dollars.”

His words sparked a nodding of heads and the beginnings of smiles. This was why they had left their homes and villages. The man gestured to the Quonset hut. “Most of you will go to the building and wait. Soon you will continue to Tampa, Pensacola, Orlando, Jacksonville. Some will be returning with me to Miami. Wherever you go, money awaits. All you have to do is honor your contract, and …” the hands spread in munificence, “the divine cash will shower into your palms.”

The smiles were full now, the heads a chorus of bobs. Someone yelled “Viva el Jefé.”

Long live the Chief.

The smiling man entered the group, basking in smiles and Vivas and hands patting his back as though a saint walked among them. He studied each face in turn, paying particular interest to the dark-haired women. One kept shooting glances through bashful, doe-like eyes. He took her small hand, holding it tight as she instinctively tried to pull it away.

“What is it, little beauty?” he said, patting the hand. “Why were you staring so?”

A blush crept to her neck. “I first thought … when you stepped from the beautiful car … we were in the Hollywood.”

“What makes you say that, little one?”

The blush swept her face as her eyes dropped to the ground. “You are so handsome,” she whispered. “Surely you are in the cinema.”

“You are far too kind. What is your name?”

“Leala … Leala Rosales.”

“I need four women and one man for Miami, Leala Rosales. Would you like me to show you the most beautiful city in the world, my city?”

“I … I … don’t know if …”

“You have stepped into a new world, Leala. Now you must trust yourself to jump.”

“I will … Yes, I will go with you, señor. Can my friend Yolanda come as well?” She pointed to a nearby girl.

“Perhaps the next time, Leala. There is only so much room in the car.”

“It looks very big.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. Hurry to the car, Leala. I will meet you there in a moment.”

The girl ran to the Escalade. The man’s white teeth flashed. “Did you want a fresh boy, Chaku?” he said in English. “Come look at the selection.”

The first sign of life in the driver’s eyes. He tapped the skinny shoulder of a male youth no older than fourteen, and pointed to the van. The boy understood nothing but that he was to move toward the vehicle, so he moved.

The handsome man walked among the Hispanics, directing three more women to the van, pointing the others toward the Quonset hut. The driver and passenger jumped from the van, two bandana-headed Hispanics with tattoos on arms and necks. They hurried the four selections into the rear of the vehicle. As the new occupants climbed inside, the driver opened a side door and retrieved two magnetic signs saying A-1 WINDOW TREATMENTS and applied them to the sides of the van.

The handsome man turned to the hulking driver. “Let me talk to these gentlemen in private, Chaku.” The comment was followed by a small and cryptic flick of the blue eyes. The driver retreated to the Escalade as the man gestured Ivy and Joleo to the side of the trailer. In the distance the Hispanics walked toward the gray hut. They were smiling and laughing.

The handsome man’s eyes flicked between the men. “Did it go smoothly?”

“Yes, sir,” Joleo said. “Like always.”

“Are you receiving your compensation correctly?” He turned his eyes to Ivy.

“Yes, sir,” Ivy said, trying to keep his gaze from falling to his shoes. “A day after every delivery. Th-thank you, Mr Orzibel.”

Orlando Orzibel flashed his supernova smile. “Good work deserves no less. And good work means quiet work, right?”

Both heads bobbed. Orzibel nodded in satisfaction and turned away. He stopped and turned back. The smile had disappeared. “So how is it I heard of lips speaking my name in a filthy little bar last month? A rathole called Three Aces?”

Ivy seemed to waver on his knees. His mouth fell open to show darkened teeth. “I … I … it was a mistake, Mr Orzibel. It’ll never happen again. And all I said, was—”

An arm from nowhere wrapped around Ivy’s neck, lifting him off the ground. The huge driver had somehow left the Escalade and crept across the crunchy sand and beneath the trailer without making a sound.

“And your lips not only used my name,” Orzibel said, “they implied my business.”

“A mistake …” Ivy gasped, pulling at the arm around his neck as his face reddened. “It’ll never hap … gain. Please—”

Orzibel nodded and the hulk named Chaku opened his arms and Ivy fell to the ground. Orzibel lowered to a squat. A knife had appeared in his hand, a dark-bladed commando knife with few purposes but destruction.

“Please, Mr Orzibel …” Ivy begged, tears falling down his cheeks. “Remember how I helped you with the cement last year … made your problem go away? How I worked all night for you …”

The knife whispered through the air and Ivy’s lower lip dropped in the dirt below his face. His eyes were disbelieving as his fingers touched the open teeth, coming away shining with blood.

Orzibel picked up the lip with the point of the knife and held it before Ivy’s horrified eyes. “Eat it,” he hissed. “Eat it or die.”

“No, pleagggh …” Ivy wailed.

“Eat,” Orzibel commanded. “Eat the lip that spoke my name.”

“I ca-ca-cand,” Ivy bubbled, blood spattering with his words.

“You have three seconds,” Orzibel said. “One …”

Ivy’s shaking hands plucked the flesh from the knife, tried to bring it to his mouth, dropped it in the sand. “I c-c-cand,” he moaned, his words mushy through blood and the mucus pouring from his nose.

“Two.”

Ivy retrieved his lip and brought it to his open teeth. He began to bite gingerly at the strip of meat, but a torrent of vomit exploded from his throat and washed the lip from his fingers.

“Three!” The knife whispered again and Ivy grabbed at his throat, his forearms glistening with the blood pouring from his slit neck. After scant seconds his eyes rolled back and he fell backward. Orzibel bent over the twitching body and wiped the knife on its shirt.

“You have the plastic in the trunk, Chaku?”

“Always.”

“When he drains, wrap him tight and put him in the trunk. Tonight we’ll drop him down the hole in the world. Be sure to purchase ample concrete.”