Chapter Twenty-Two

 

“I’ve been thinking. There must be a way to track down the people at the other end of that Fed Ex package and figure out if they really have any power over Alina’s family.” Blanche announced after eating a tuna salad sandwich at Al’s Formica table. It was heirloom brown with texture built into the plastic.

“These guys aren’t using their real address, Blanche,” Al said.

“That’s the beauty of overnight delivery though, you’ve got to provide a deliverable street address. I wasn’t a secretary for 40 years for nothing.”

“What? We’re just going to drive up to Virginia and say ’S’cuse me Mr. Blackmailer’?” Al was knocking on an invisible door in midair.

“I think we’ll think of something better than that.” Blanche put a red tipped digit to her teeth. “Maybe you could call an old friend in Virginia and see what’s at this address.”

“Maybe. I don’t want to get anyone involved in something dangerous. I’ll think about it.”

“If we knew about the family, we could just call the feds and tell them. There can’t be any legal way to hold on to someone’s little girl.”

“Sure, you know, some old lady in Florida knows about a guy blackmailing people and the guy lives in Virginia and a little kid being held in another country. They’ll buy that.”

“Maybe I don’t need your help. It’s just a little girl’s life and a Mom’s life might be at stake.”

“Well, when you put it that way.”

“I better get going now, anyway.”

“I’ll think about it,” he called after her.

Al was a lot of hot air. Surely the issue was as intense for him as it was for her.

 

 

Maybe hot air could help, she thought riding in the elevator. Blanche knew she didn’t have any flamingo legs to stand on at the moment from an official perspective. She could blow info at the police and blow some at the newspaper, and maybe blow some at Alina. It might not get any more out of this guy in Virginia, but it might help Alina. Hopefully, she wouldn’t rob any more Sip Trip Shops.

It was just lunchtime which seemed like a good time to leave anonymous messages on voice mail. She lit a cigarette and flicked open the newspaper to peruse the staff directory. Travel was no good, too fluffy, but the police blotter might be something. She began to hit her stride after a few messages and tuned up a story for the police hotline.

By the time Jeopardy came on, she had left anonymous tips about a Romanian abduction ring on several newspaper voice mail services, the police tips hot line, and several of the agencies that she’d found on the internet too. If it simply generated an article about the Romanian mob presence in Florida that would be enough to get things going. What things she wasn’t sure, but going. At least, she assumed if there was a Romanian trafficking victim that the Romanian mafia was nearby. A few doubts clogged her mind suddenly. She supposed it could be anyone doing it, now that she thought of it.

The next morning she flipped on the news and had coffee before she went to get her hair done. She shook her peach tinted head, another hit, a Two Tanks Fuel Store was robbed overnight same M.O. sounded like and same small take.

“Alina please stop or I’ll never be able to help you,” she announced to the walls. Blanche had to wonder if it was her, but also wondered if whoever the robber was had a clear idea of the value of the dollar. They were getting pittance for their trouble. It wasn’t even grocery money these days.

The sun beat down brightly on the cars parked outside the Hair-We-Do. Blanche could just see out the window from where she reclined with her head in a sink. Her apricot dye job was draining while her beautician pulled the rollers off of Gladys’ head in the next sink. The ladies around her gossiped about life in their Florida neighborhoods, but Blanche’s mind churned.

“Blanche must be up to one of her shenanigans. She’s so quiet.” A lady with big rollers affixed to her skull spoke too loudly from under a hair heater.

Nearby Gladys said, “There’s nothing to do but get out of the way when Blanche starts in on something. I wonder what it is this time. Someone going to bomb the inter-coastal waterway again?” They laughed.

But Blanche had been written up in the newspapers as a key player averting a disaster in the intracoastal waterway along Florida’s eastern edge. She was proud of being a volunteer for the police department now, and so she ignored the good-natured jibing.

Her beauty tech, a tall woman from Jamaica with a plump frame, named Sammy rinsed and gathered up Blanche’s dripping locks and escorted her to a chair. Sammy started with expert precision drying and piling Blanche’s up-do back in form on top of her head. She put a hand to her expansive hip and tapped an impossibly high yellow platform sandal on the red floor.

“Put that nosiness of yours to a good use, Miss Blanche. We had the convenience store across the parking lot robbed yesterday. You need to solve that.”

“What happened?”

“We didn’t know a thing ’til Mr. Cho, he came out in the parking lot screaming about, oh, 4 o’clock. Then the police and half the world seemed to show up. Lord, Blanche it was a circus. But it scared us girls here to think we could be robbed in the middle of the day like that. Lord, have mercy. You get busy and catch that bad guy, would you?” Sammy winked at Blanche’s reflection in the mirror.

Blanche liked Sammy’s open spirit and the fact that she wasn’t a teeny bopper with one side of her head dyed blue or some odd hair-do. Beauty technicians had a new look since Blanche had started having her bouffant done and so far Sammy hadn’t burned Blanche’s hair off with chemicals.

After Sammy shellacked her hair into a delicate peach cylinder, Blanche moved over to the manicure area to Estefany’s station, a dark haired woman from Colombia.

While she was having her nails painted a dark shade of purple, she realized that though she had more information about Alina than on her last visit to the beauty salon a week ago, she was a long ways from understanding what truly was occurring under her very nose. Robberies on every corner, not to mention inside the condo, and a poor young woman stuck in something unbelievable in these modern times. She thought of the girls in the office she’d worked in before retiring. They whined about boyfriends or roommates or husbands but had a life of luxury when you compared it to Alina’s.

Blanche admired the beauty salon handy work in the mirror on her way out. She always felt like the world itself was more in order when she left the beauty shop.

She popped in on Al on her way home. His apartment smelled like aftershave and laundry soap today.

“Got something for you.”

“What?”

He presented her with a chocolate pastry from the bakery a couple blocks away. Blanche blushed all the way up to her fresh hair-do. Al wasn’t generally the chivalrous sort.

“My favorite! How’d you know? What’s more how’d you get there? That’d be a long walk.” She hoped he wasn’t going to start making grand gestures at their ages. That would be awkward.

“I felt like getting out.” He adjusted his green hat. “I met my daughter there for coffee and she gave me a lift home. Didn’t see any shops robbed on my way.”

“Very funny.”

“It seems like one’s robbed every few minutes. What I did see was this.” He rummaged in a plastic bag and brought forth a section of newspaper folded back to an article titled “Rumors of foreign mob activity in S. FL.”

“Oh. I didn’t get a chance to read my paper before I left for the beauty salon.” Blanche sank into a kitchen chair and breathed in the heavenly smell of a chocolate pastry waiting for her in a box. She read the article eagerly but was disappointed that it was all about rumors. She knew where those came from. She wanted facts. She did learn that the Russian mob was outpacing the old fashioned Italian mafia in Southern Florida as well as the strong continued presence of the home grown southern Dixie Mafia. Sunny Isles Beach had been dubbed Little Moscow. One police liaison, a Michael Kershaw, for the Southern Counties Safety Coalition, said that there was no way to know if new organizations were trying to set up shop in Florida until law enforcement encountered them, but it seemed like a breeding ground with all the various nationalities that came through the state for business, tourism, and illegal activities and immigration. Blanche had never heard of this Michael guy, must not be Boca. She put the paper on the table wondering if the Russians were friendly with Romanians when it came to mafias or was it Russians that controlled Alina? The numbers varied in Blanche’s own research which the article confirmed but something like 20 million people around the globe were in this weird slavery, and Blanche was sure that Southern Florida was not immune to housing these poor folks whether the newspaper admitted that or not.

Al had placed a cup of coffee at her elbow. She picked it up and sipped. She wondered if Alina had seen the article. Probably not. She popped open the pastry box and took an amazing delectable bite of chocolate and airy pastry.

“I been thinking all day since I saw that. I will call my friend up in Virginia and see if he can find out anything on that address we got off the package. This is some serious crap so I’ll be real honest with him so he doesn’t, you know, get in too deep.”

“That’s good, Al. We need all the help we can get. What’d you say he did?”

“He was in security like me.”

Blanche knew in the D.C. area that could mean anything and she’d never gotten a real clear idea of what it was Al had done. He stuck to his security story but didn’t give out details. Another mystery for another day.

“You have to come over tomorrow and see my surprise.”

“What is it?” He seemed miffed. He liked to be in the know.

“Come and find out.”