The Traffickers Read online

  Well, now that all the excitement’s over, Harris thought, reaching for the door handle, professional curiosity overwhelms me.

  [TWO]

  The Philly Inn 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 1:15 A.M.

  Forty minutes earlier, Becca Benjamin, despite having to wait in her silver Mercedes-Benz G550 at the back of a lousy Northeast Philly motel, had just reminded herself that she could not believe how much her luck had changed.

  Becca—a trendy twenty-five-year-old brunette with olive skin who was five-foot-seven and just under 140 pounds, having recently started winning her battles to keep the bathroom scale from tipping 150—not only had reconnected with her prep school boyfriend two months earlier but they had found that they still enjoyed what first had brought them together: partying, mostly booze-fueled but with the occasional recreational drug.

  They had first dated nine years ago when in the Upper School at Episcopal Academy. She had been a voluptuous sixteen-year-old in IV Form (tenth grade) and J. Warren Olde, known as “Skipper,” then eighteen and in VI Form (senior year), had begun flirting with her in the back row of an International Politics class. He was taking it for the second time, having yet to meet even the lowest threshold of the academic standards for passing the required course.

  Skipper had a slender athletic build—he was a star player on the academy’s championship lacrosse team, a midfielder who seemed to float effortlessly from one end of the 110-yard field to the other—and stood five-ten. His sandy hair was cut to his collar, with long bangs that he regularly swept out of his eyes. He was genuinely gregarious, quick with a laugh. And Becca, herself outgoing, had been immediately taken by his attentions.

  Their relationship had lasted, though, only until the end of the school year. It had been a wild ride—literally—as an inebriated Skipper, driving Becca home after a graduation party, had misjudged a Dam View Road curve—actually wound up going down an estate’s driveway at a high rate of speed—and put his little Audi in Springton Reservoir. Becca wound up with a broken collarbone and a trip to the Riddle Memorial Hospital emergency room in Media.

  The Benjamins and Oldes—both families of significant means and, accordingly, connections with which they arranged to get the incident forgotten in the legal system, if not in their own tony community—were not amused. His parents declared Becca a wild child, albeit one in a woman’s body, while her parents deemed the older boy a bad influence, unfit for their impressionable sweet sixteen-year-old—and thus absolutely off-limits.

  Neither Becca nor Skipper was thrilled about the forced separation. But then, while Skipper’s angry old man was still dealing with the lawyers and having the sports car fished from the reservoir, Skipper’s mother had sent him off early to the small private university he’d been set to attend in Texas—her alma mater in her hometown of Dallas. And so neither teenager had been prepared to fight the inevitable. They’d agreed to stay in touch, but even that turned out to be short-lived. They simply lost contact.

  Then, two months ago, at a Fourth of July party on the Jersey shore thrown by a mutual friend from their prep school days, they’d run into each other. Becca had first noticed Skipper—who’d been standing beside the beer keg cooler on the beach—mostly because he wore, in addition to flowery Hawaiian-style surfer shorts and aviator-style sunglasses, a frayed straw cowboy hat and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a running red horse and block lettering that read S.M.U. MUSTANGS LACROSSE.

  They had found that their outsized personalities were still in sync—with their appetites somewhat matured—and they damned near immediately picked up where they’d left off years before.

  The party was back on.

  Now Becca sat in the front passenger seat of the boxy Mercedes SUV; she’d had Skipper drive because she’d been shaking too much from the drugs. She hated that downside, which included her being stressed, as she was now. But she told herself there was no question that the upside’s euphoria was worth it, not to mention the added benefit of a killed appetite that helped her finally lose—and keep off—those damned ten-plus pounds.

  Despite the night, she stared through dark bug-eyed sunglasses at the motel door to Room 52. Then she punched the map light switch in order to read her wristwatch. The white-platinum diamond-bezel Audemars Piguet had cost her parents more than most of the battered work trucks and cars parked near the Mercedes were worth, never mind the six-figure sticker of the SUV itself. Her arm twitched a little, but she could tell by the position of the watch’s hands—there were no numbers, just four dots of diamonds, twinkling in the map light, to represent the 3, 6, 9, and 12 on the face—that it now was just after one-fifteen.

  Her hands and feet were cold—another side effect from the drug—so she sat with her feet tucked under her thighs, her arms crossed, with her hands resting and warming in her armpits. She wore cream-colored linen shorts and a tan silk blouse that was cut low in the front, revealing her ample bosom, which now was rising and falling more rapidly than normal.

  He’s been in there fifteen minutes.

  He said it’d take only one: “In and out, baby.”

  What’s taking so long?

  Is he okay?

  Should I go in?

  Hell no, I shouldn’t go in—who knows who’s in there?—and I sure as hell don’t want to go in that fleabag room.

  But what if he’s not okay?

  What if—

  Her cellular phone, resting on her lap, simultaneously vibrated briefly and made a ping sound, announcing the receipt of a text message.

  “Damn!” she said, startled. It caused her to uncross her arms and kick out her feet.

  She quickly glanced at the phone’s screen, thinking the text might be from Skipper. She saw—barely, as her sleep-deprived eyes had trouble focusing on the backlit small print—that it was from her girlfriend Casey, who was asking WHERE R U??

  Becca threw the phone onto the leather-covered console between the front seats and sighed loudly.

  She looked back at the motel door, wondering if she should shoot Skipper a text message. Maybe something along the lines of WTF???

  Yeah, Skipper—What The Fuck?

  The only movement she saw was from the motel room curtain, which was pulled closed over the open window and gently swaying, as if being blown by a breeze.

  She crossed her arms and tucked her feet back under her and closed her eyes. After a while, she glanced at her watch again.

  One-thirty!

  That’s it. I’m going in there.

  She had just clicked off the map light and reached for and found the button that would release her seat belt when the door of Room 52 swung open. Out came Skipper Olde, holding a white handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

  Olde wore a baggy navy blue T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals, and his aviator sunglasses hung from the front of the collar of his T-shirt. At twenty-seven, he still had his athletic slender build and his sandy hair collar-length, but no bangs, as he was thinning noticeably on top.

  He pulled the motel door shut, then stuffed the handkerchief in his pants pocket. He glanced at the Mercedes, and Becca saw him flash his usual happy-go-lucky grin at her.

  He quickly walked to the driver’s door of the SUV and got in.

  She then hit the button that simultaneously locked all the doors.

  “What happened?” Becca said softly. “I was worried. I was just about to come after you.”

  “Sorry, baby. They were having a little trouble in there.” He reached into his T-shirt pocket and pulled out a white plastic bag, heat-sealed at each end, that was about the size of a single-serving sugar packet. “I should’ve brought this out to you first, then helped them.”

  She pulled the bug-eyed sunglasses from her face and slipped them up on the top of her head.

  Skipper Olde placed the white bag beside her cellular phone on the leather-covered console. She looked at it, then at Skipper, then nervously glanced out the darkened side windows, then the rea
r ones, to see if anyone was watching them.

  “Go on,” he said, smiling. “It’s yours.”

  She smiled back weakly, then leaned over in her seat and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said, picking up the packet, then biting off a corner and removing the cut stub of a plastic drinking straw from it. She looked at Skipper. “What about you?”

  He looked a little embarrassed, then nodded toward the motel room.

  “I had a bump when I first went in. And there’s more cooking. That’s what they were having trouble with.”

  He nodded at the pouch she held and said encouragingly, “Go on, baby. It’ll take your edge off.”

  She smiled slyly and said, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  Becca Benjamin—who at age fourteen had been the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s top Girl Scout cookie salesgirl, which she later listed under ACCOMPLISHMENTS on her University of Pennsylvania application to the Wharton School’s master of business administration program—straightened herself upright in her seat. With the effortlessness of one who’d had some practice, she cupped the white packet with her hand so that it could not be seen, then took the straw stub and slipped an end in the hole she’d bitten, then placed the other end halfway up her right nostril. She pinched her left nostril closed and snorted.

  “Shit, that burns!” she said after a moment, vigorously rubbing the outside of her right nostril after removing the straw.

  But Skipper saw that she was smiling.

  He also saw that all of the off-white powder had not been fully ingested. Some, mixed with mucus, was trickling toward her upper lip. With a fingertip, he wiped it from there, then licked it off his finger and grinned at her. She shook her head in mock disgust.

  His cellular phone rang, and when he looked at its screen, he said, “Damn!” then answered it by saying, “Sorry. Running late. Give me ten minutes. It’s still in the office safe.” He listened for a moment, added, “No, no, I want you to have it before Becca and I leave town,” then hung up without another word. He put the phone on the center console.

  “I need to go inside and put together some more,” Olde said as he opened the driver’s door. He looked back in at her, said, “I’ll be right back, baby. Promise.”

  She held up her left index finger and said, “Wait a sec.”

  She then snorted through the straw again, working it around the packet as she did so. Then she held out both to him. “Don’t need this empty bag in my car.”

  Wordlessly, he took it and the straw, then got out and closed the door.

  Becca hit the master locking button for the doors as she watched him go into the room. The motel lights hurt her dilated eyes, and she pulled the sunglasses from her hair and slid them back over her eyes.

  Skipper’s cellular phone started ringing again. She grabbed it, then held down the button on top labeled “0/1,” turning it off. Then she reached for the switch on the door that manipulated her seat’s position, reclined the seat back almost flat, and lay back while enjoying the sudden pleasant flood of warmth that the methamphetamine triggered by tricking her brain into creating the chemical dopamine in overdrive.

  [THREE]

  The Philly Inn 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 1:40 A.M.

  Skipper Olde unlocked and entered the motel room, which had the cat piss stench of ammonia and stank of other caustic odors. He put the handkerchief back to his face and quickly stepped around a heavy cardboard box that had been moved by the door. Then, tripping over the coil of clear surgical tubing next to it, he let loose with a long, creative string of expletives.

  That caused the two Hispanic males in their twenties at the stove of the kitchenette in the back of the room to laugh from behind the blue bandannas tied over their noses and mouths.

  And that in turn caused Skipper to bark, “Fuck you two and the cocksucking donkey you rode in on!”

  Then he laughed, too.

  The pair grunted and shook their heads, then turned their attention back to the stove.

  Olde—stepping past the box fan with its switch set to HIGH to help the window unit circulate the air, and causing the tan curtain to sway—looked around in an attempt to find an obvious path to follow to the kitchenette. It wasn’t that the motel room was small. The problem was that the room was packed, to the ceiling in places, with boxes and barrels and assorted materials. It was what could be described as a haphazard-warehouse-slash-makeshift-assembly-line.

  The Philly Inn’s management advertised the facility as modern. But in fact it had been built more than fifty years earlier and was an older two-floor design—“low-rise,” its advertisements called it, playing on the nicer image that tended to come to mind with the term “high-rise.” It was of masonry construction, each of the 120 rooms basically an off-white rectangular box with a burgundy-painted steel door opening to the outside, a plate-glass window (with tan curtain) overlooking the parking lot, and, under the window, an air-conditioning unit.

  In its heyday, the Philly Inn had served as short-term, affordable lodging for traveling salesmen who used it as their base on U.S. Highway 13—which was what Frankford was also designated—and for families who took their vacations in Philadelphia, enjoying the historic sites and museums in the city, and the entertainment of the various themed amusement parks nearby.

  Each large room—all identical and advertised as “a De-Luxe Double Guest Room”—had a thirty-two-inch TV on the four-drawer dresser, a round Formica-topped table with four wooden chairs, two full-size beds separated by a bedside table with lamp and telephone (though the phones mostly went untouched, as an additional cash deposit up front was required to make local and long-distance calls). The mosaic-tiled bathroom held a water closet and a tub-shower combination. And taking up all of the far back wall was an ample kitchenette with a three-burner electric stove and oven, a single sink, a full-size refrigerator, and a small countertop microwave oven secured to the wall with a steel strap so that it might not accidentally wind up leaving with a guest at checkout.

  Depending on one’s perspective, the Philly Inn wasn’t exactly seedy. Skipper Olde himself had spent the night there more than a few times, though it had been mostly out of necessity, as he’d been far from sober enough to drive. But it damn sure was sliding toward sleazy. It had long ago lost the steady business of the salesmen and families on holiday to the shiny new chain hotels nearer Philadelphia’s Northeast Airport, mere miles to the north, and on Interstate 95.

  Now the Philly Inn had an entirely different demographic of guests, ones who tended to stay more long-term. The motel had become temporary housing for those who needed some really cheap—but livable—place to stay during the period, say, after having sold their row house and not yet able to move into the next one, or while waiting for family members or friends who were receiving medical treatment at the many nearby hospitals, such as Nazareth, Friends, Temple University, even the Shriners for Children.

  The Philly Inn’s posted rack rate was still the same seventy-five dollars a night that it had been for at least the last decade. It was, however, not unheard of for management to agree to a negotiated rate of as little as twenty-five bucks a night, even less for those staying thirty days or longer and paying—usually with cash—each week in advance.

  There still were quite a few couples or families staying as guests for days or even as long as a week. But there were many more long-termers. These latter ones were mostly transient laborers, men working in construction—you could tell them by all their pickups in the parking lot late at night—and other seasonal work, such as mowing the countless lawns of suburban offices and homes, and harvesting the fruits and vegetables of the farms nearby and the ones across the river in New Jersey.

  The motel management was as conscientious as it could be about keeping some separation between the workers and the families, assigning rooms to each in their own part of the motel and leaving vacant rooms between as a buffer.


  But as far as the owner of the property was concerned, none of that really mattered. The reality was that the Philly Inn’s days were numbered. Its demise was inevitable, and about the only real reason the damn place had not been boarded up—or torn down completely—was that it could be made to show a profit. Enough to cover the bills, from its utilities to the assorted taxes levied upon it, which was not the same thing as saying that the motel did in fact earn a profit.

  Its owner—Skipper Properties LLC, of which one J. Warren Olde, Jr., served as managing principal—had bought the place in a deal that included two other aged motels and a string of laundromats.

  Skipper Properties LLC already had plans drawn up to build fashionable condominiums on the ten acres of land presently occupied by the Philly Inn. Being a self-proclaimed civic-minded company, Skipper Properties LLC was trying to jump-start a gentrification of the area. It was arguably mere coincidence that the company had also quietly bought up nearby parcels, including practically stealing a strip shopping center, to flip later at a huge profit.

  Skipper Properties LLC announced that this so-called jump start would take place just as soon as His Honor the Mayor of Philadelphia convinced the goddamned lamebrain city council to come to its senses and grant said civic-minded Skipper Properties LLC the “fair and just” tax abatement and other incentives that had been requested so as to make such a project viable—which was to say profitable—and build a more beautiful city.

  There were secondary reasons that Skipper Olde was in no hurry to tear down the place—ones he certainly was not in the habit of sharing freely. Chief among these was that the inn was a mostly cash business now, and books were easily cooked when a lot of cash was involved. Also, most of the laborers living at the inn and at the two other aged motels the LLC had bought earned that cash by laboring for companies that were more or less indirectly controlled by Skipper Olde. Though, again, with Skipper not sharing such information freely, particularly with his silent partner-investor, and keeping those connections at arm’s length, few knew many, if any, of those details.