35

Henry Bosant had two qualities that made him the right man for the wrong kind of job. He was a man with a criminal record, and he was a boatman who had a knowledge of the river.

Henry told me that it had started simply enough, with a call from a small shipping outfit he had never heard of. Something with a Russian-sounding name. Their boats would depart from the New Orleans area, pass by Port Sulphur, and eventually reach the end of the Mississippi where it met the Gulf. When the boats reached Port Sulphur, they wanted him to act as a “tender,” motoring food, supplies, and fuel to their boat while it was in the middle of the river, about once a month. Always at night and in the dark. The money was pretty darn good. Two thousand a pop, plus supplies. It didn’t make a lot of sense, Bosant said. He asked why they didn’t simply dock at one of the ports along the way so he could shuttle supplies to them there much easier. Their explanation, Bosant said, was “to save time.” Of course, there was another explanation, one that came too late.

“The first time,” he said, “it went off real smooth. I’d anchored my tender boat just off Dead Point, right here, and waited for a signal.”

Then his voice dropped. “But the second time, that was about all I could take, ’cuz of what happen’d. I motored out to their ship, hung on to the net ladder, while them sailors, they’d scamper down the ladder and fetch the food and the big containers of fuel for their onboard generator. And then I hear it. Sounded like a young girl screamin’. I looked up and I saw her.”

“Who did you see?”

“Young’un. About ten or eleven. Hangin’ over the railing. Like she was gonna jump. But she was acting all strange. Like she was doped up. Drugs maybe.”

“What happened?”

“One of them sailors slapped her good, and then I hear a couple of other young girls screamin’. All of a sudden, it got quiet.”

The picture Henry Bosant was painting was so troubling and so evil that I understood his desire to rid himself of the guilt. The vilest kind of human trafficking.

Bosant said he tried to get out of his monthly rendezvous after that, making excuses why he couldn’t continue the deal. But his contact told him that wouldn’t be allowed. Bad things would happen, he was told, if he failed to cooperate. Then, in a twisted turn of events, his contact said he needed Bosant to access an Internet site. He was given a code and a password which would be good for only one day, and then it would be changed, but he was to sign in and “take the required online lesson.” He was warned that if he failed to log in to the site, they would know it.

Henry Bosant did what he was told. “I hadn’t been able to sleep a single night since then,” he said. “Not till I got right with Jesus.”

It was, he told me, a private Internet site with a Russian name, made up of three words, but he couldn’t recall the specifics, though he thought the word video was in there somewhere.

Once he downloaded the file, he was to click the Play arrow. That was when, sitting alone, he watched in horror as on the screen a young girl was repeatedly raped and beaten by men wearing masks. “I don’t know how she could be alive after all of that,” he said in a low moaning voice. “Dear God, please forgive me for tendering supplies to their boats. Taking their money . . .”

It was clear, the video “lesson” the Russian shippers wanted him to learn. That if they were willing to inflict that kind of hellish brutality on an innocent girl, how much more they would be willing to do to him if he turned on them. Even more diabolical, once he downloaded and watched the video, he would be guilty of a crime himself and therefore afraid to go to the authorities. Double indemnity to keep him quiet.

In Bosant’s eyes, red and watery as he told the story, I saw a man in grief who was still learning that the price paid for his redemption came without loopholes. But one thing he would have clearly understood: the depth of evil that had conspired to ravage the human race. Henry Bosant knew it well because he had been rescued out of it.

I patted Henry on the shoulder. “Grace and forgiveness,” I said, “swim down deeper than the hell you were swimming in. They rescue drowning people like you. And like me.”

I expected it to end there. His epiphany of confession. Finally saying the words to a stranger. Expressing his repentance and remorse, and that would be the end of it.

But I was wrong.

“There’s more,” he said. “Another ship is comin’. Two nights from tonight. It’ll be filled with young girls again.”

“Past Port Sulphur? Through Port Eads?” I asked. “And into the Gulf?”

He said that’s exactly what would happen.

There it was, the passageway for kidnapped kids: taken from the greater New Orleans area, down the Mississippi, past Port Sulphur, and out to international waters.

Then off to how many other countries? How many dirty dungeons? How many more videos, tortures, and deaths?

I asked, “They still expect you to arrive with supplies?”

“Sure they do. But I ain’t comin’. Only, I’ve been worryin’ about my landline phone makin’ odd sounds. Maybe it’s bugged.”

I couldn’t give him legal advice. That privilege had been stripped from me years before. But I could ask him a question. “Have you considered talking to the authorities?”

“Yes. But I know they could prosecute me. Then I think to myself —Henry, you’re saved by the blood of the Savior. What can they really do to you?”

I had no desire to see Henry behind bars. Besides, burning inside me like a furnace was something else: the passion to stop these evildoers in their tracks. They might even be the same beasts who had snatched Peggy Tanner. And so many others.

I looked back at the Mustang and saw Heather with her arms crossed on the dashboard, waiting with an exasperated expression. I was glad she hadn’t heard all the details. Yes, she was a woman, not a little girl, and I would have to tell her in my own way. But the thought of that —describing to her the true depth of evil out there in the world —it’d be like sharing a curse.

In fact, it was a curse. Welcome to the world. Still, a curse that could be lifted, the stain removed forever. As far as the east is from the west. I knew how deep my redemption was. Now it was time to find out how deep my faith was.

I had an idea. I told Henry Bosant that I wanted to talk to Deputy Ben St. Martin, that I trusted him, and that I wouldn’t use Henry’s name but would alert the deputy to the facts as Bosant had shared them with me. We needed to interdict the next ship that would be waiting out there on the Mississippi, expecting another tender boat delivery from Henry Bosant.