Chapter 31
Kennedy
A shiver of fear rolls down my spine. I peer over my shoulder and make out a couple of cars on the one-way street. There are a few teens hanging out on the front porch of one of the homes across the street from where I’m walking.
I’m in a relatively quiet lower-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Williamsport. I left my car at work and caught a cab to this side of town. I took the cab to pay in cash without leaving an electronic trail.
I also left my personal phone at the office. I only have my burner phone with me.
As I continue to walk to the spot where Nicole told me to meet her, nothing obvious appears to be out of the ordinary.
Yet, it feels like there’s an invisible shadow that I can’t shake.
I glance over my shoulder again, and when I turn back, I almost crash into a guy walking in the opposite direction.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
He nods and keeps walking.
When my phone buzzes, it makes me jump.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Are you there yet? I’m about five minutes away,” Nicole says.
“I’ll be there soon. I just need to take a detour.”
I choose to dip into a corner store for a few minutes. After hanging up with Nicole, I buy a pack of gum and a bottle of water before exiting the store.
Instead of heading toward my meeting point with Nicole and her boyfriend, I turn in the opposite direction and make a right at the next block.
Since my burner phone doesn’t have GPS capability, I mentally track each turn I take to make sure I know how to lead back to my original destination.
Once the feeling of being watched subsides, I check over my shoulder again. No familiar cars or passersby remain behind me. With relief, I start for the correct meeting point.
It takes me an additional ten minutes by foot to arrive, but knowing I’m not being followed is worth it. By the time I get to the parking lot of the convenience store, which is directly across the street from a two-story motel, Nicole and her boyfriend, Michael, are there.
“Kennedy.” She waves me over.
“Did you just get here?” I ask.
“A few minutes.”
“Do you think anyone followed you?” I ask, looking between them both.
Michael snorts. “Who the fuck would follow us?” His words aren’t laced with anger but more of a dismissal tone. As if my question is beyond ridiculous.
I look him over. He’s at least ten years older than Nicole, who’s twenty-two. His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than here.
“Kennedy, this is my boyfriend, Michael. Who I told you about,” Nicole introduces.
He murmurs, “Yeah, nice to meet you.”
“Pleasure is all mine.” I nod at him. A quick look between her and this guy tells me she’s too good for him. There’s a sweet quality about Nicole that he doesn’t deserve.
“It’s getting dark, so they should be here soon,” Nicole says. “Right?” She looks over at Michael.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Ignoring him, I focus on her. “Let’s go over this again. You said that employees of Blackmon’s drop the teens here off at that motel every night?”
She nods. “And they pick up the next group of teens to work whatever night shifts they’ve been hired at.”
“That includes McGruder’s restaurants?” I ask.
She nods. “But not all of them. The McGruder’s I used to work at now is open twenty-four hours. So teens get dropped off to clean overnight. But it’s not just restaurants.” She glances over at Michael. “Tell her.”
He eyes me up and down, then shrugs. “Yeah, some office buildings and shit like that.”
I mentally record all of this information. Not everything makes sense, but I can sort through it once I get back to the office.
“Tell her more. What you told me,” Nicole encourages.
He huffs out a breath. “They have a deal with the motel to keep the little shits overnight.”
“The what?” I demand, staring at him.
He dismisses me with a look. “The kids. Whatever. You won’t be able to see shit from this parking lot though.”
He gestures toward the motel.
“They do it in the back. Did you think they were stupid enough to do the switch out here in the open?” He scoffs, shaking his head. As if I were the dumb one.
This guy is testing my patience.
“Nicole told me she was a teen when she was forced into this labor … exchange,” I call it for lack of a better term. “How did you come to be a part of it?”
He shrugs and looks away. “I wasn’t.”
I look toward Nicole, and she frowns. “He was never forced to do the work like us. But he worked for McGruder’s …” She trails off. “Go ahead. Tell her,” she urges, tapping his elbow with her own.
He pushes out an irritated breath. “I saw what was happening, and at the time, I needed money, so I asked if I could help. They wanted a driver. So for the three years, I did a lot of the night or early morning pickups.”
“So you’ve facilitated forced child labor?”
He blinks a couple of times. “No. What?” He shakes his head. “I was just the driver.”
“Driving kids, some as young as twelve, to work overnight, twelve-hour shifts. Which is illegal, by the way.”
He shakes his head and then looks over at Nicole. He gets in her face. “Who the fuck is this chick?”
He points at me while still in her face. “What the fuck is she doing talking to me like that?”
His anger is with me, but he directs it toward her.
I get in between them, forcing him to look at me. “If you have a question for me, ask me.
“I’m asking questions to get a better picture of exactly what is going on here. I asked what your role in all of this was. If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
He steps back, his top lip curling. I get the feeling he isn’t used to having a woman stand up to him. I glance back at Nicole. Her eyes are wide, and I don’t miss the fear in them.
Biting her bottom lip, she shifts from one foot to the other. I make a mental note of this as well.
“Here they come,” Michael says after a few tense moments of silence.
I look over to see a van pulling into the far end of the parking lot.
“A New Beginning Church,” I read the side of the van when it turns into the parking lot. “Son of a bitch,” I mumble. They’re using actual church vans to traffic children for forced labor.
The van pulls around the back of the motel, causing me to lose sight.
I begin running across the street. I have to see this up close.
Nicole is behind me, with Michael following. Behind the motel, there’s an empty parking lot. It’s fenced in by a low brick wall that extends up into a thicket of trees and shrubbery.
This hotel is the demarcation between the outskirts of a working-class neighborhood that’s been on the economic decline for some time now and an upper-middle-class neighborhood.
I peek around the side of the motel to get a clear sight of what’s happening.
Nicole and Michael are behind me.
“Let’s go. We don’t have all fucking night!” the guy behind the steering wheel yells at those getting out of the van.
I watch the fifteen or so people who were in the large van pile out. Their movements are sluggish and languid. They appear exhausted. The light from the back of the building allows me to see their faces. They’re kids.
Most look to be between the ages of thirteen and sixteen.
I pull out my burner phone, which does have a camera, and snap pictures of the scene that plays out in front of me.
Another guy gets out of the passenger side. “Hey, Billy,” he calls.
A red-haired boy looks up, stopping just before he enters the back entrance.
I lower my phone, not feeling good about what’s about to happen. The guy raises a fist and punches Billy.
The boy, who looks to be about thirteen or fourteen, crumples to the ground.
“What the—” I start in their direction before thinking better of it. But someone stops me.
I turn, ready to rip free from whoever is holding me. I stop when I see it’s Nicole. Her eyes are wide with fright. She silently shakes her head, begging me not to intervene.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Michael says through gritted teeth. His voice is low, barely audible. “Shit,” he curses and pulls away from the wall, moving out of sight of those in the back.
I do the same, too, and crouch against the building next to Nicole. She was right to stop me. I know she was.
I just have a hard time seeing anyone, especially someone smaller than the other person, being attacked, beaten up, or harmed in any way. I always have.
“Are you trying to get us caught?” Michael rants. “Do you know what they do to those kids?” he whisper-yells. “I ain’t about to let that happen to me. I’ll meet you in the car,” he says to Nicole before running off in the direction we just came.
She watches him but doesn’t call after him. I assume it’s because she doesn’t want to get caught.
Nicole remains beside me, but she looks terrified.
She visibly swallows, her eyes glazing over. I reach out and squeeze her hand. I don’t have words because no words can offer comfort after witnessing just a piece of what she, Erika, and so many others must’ve endured.
I hope my touch provides the comfort that I can’t say.
“I-I just want them to stop,” she says.
“We’ll get them,” I promise. “I’m going to try to get a few more pictures, and then we can leave.”
Her eyes remain watery, but her resolve is strong when she nods.
My hands shake as I take photo after photo. The shakiness is a result of anger.
I’m pissed off at what I’m seeing these bastards do to these children. The driver and his helper in the passenger seat. They yell and berate the teens who exit the van. While no other incidents like that with young Billy happen, there remains a fair amount of pushing and shoving to rush the kids into the hotel.
Another group of teens fills the van. They look just as exhausted as the kids who were dropped off.
It’s not only the driver and passenger seat guys who are involved. More than one of the motel’s employees oversees this exchange. They also take turns yelling at the kids but tell them to hurry up and be quiet so as not to disturb the other guests.
Once the exchange is over and all of the kids are in the van, passenger seat guy goes over to one of the employees and pulls out a wad of money. I continue taking pictures, providing a witness to what I assume is payment for whatever this is.
I can also assume that none of the children receive any type of compensation for their forced labor. Not anything equivalent to what they deserve. Even if they did, this is still illegal, given state laws for child labor.
“Shit,” I curse as the van starts up and the driver pulls off in our direction. “Behind the trash cans,” I tell Nicole.
We crouch behind the large plastic bins to remain out of sight as the van rounds the side of the motel toward the parking lot’s exit.
As I stoop behind the bins, a memory from years ago flashes across my mind. It’s of a different alleyway in Seoul, South Korea.
The boy I tried to help who was getting beat up. The one who ran away. I often thought about him over the years.
What was his story?
Where did he end up?
It’s been a while since I’ve thought about him. And I don’t know what prompts the memory to resurface now. I can only imagine that it’s because I’m faced with another situation in a dank alleyway, and I feel powerless to help.
Shaking the memory off, I refocus on the present right as the church van passes.
I feel nausea bubble up in my stomach, and it has nothing to do with the stench of the trash cans.
Once the van is out of sight, I ask Nicole, “You said you went to that church?”
She nods. “Yeah, when my mom kicked me out, I told a friend I had nowhere to go. They told me the church offered kids like me a place to stay for a while. In exchange, we just had to do some work.”
She shrugs. “That’s how I ended up out here.”
I squeeze the phone in my hand as my anger levels rise.
“Are you hungry?” I ask her as we make our way across the street to the convenience store’s parking lot. It’s close to ten o’clock.
She nods.
“How about we grab something to eat? You can tell me more about how you ended up here.”
She peers up at Michael, who’s sitting in the passenger seat. “What about him?”
I barely manage to keep the scowl off of my face.
“He’s probably pissed off that I left him waiting for so long.”
I stop from telling her that he’s a big boy and should be fine waiting in a car for ten minutes.
“What the hell took you so long?” he barks, getting out of the car as soon as we get within a few feet. “I’ve been waiting all night. You got what you needed. Let’s fucking go.”
“You need to lower your voice when speaking to me,” I tell him.
He directs his attention from Nicole to me, which is what I wanted. This punk doesn’t scare me, but she’s afraid of him.
“It’s your fucking fault we’re out here in the first goddamn place. Just give me my money so we can go.”
“What?” I ask while he holds out his hand expectedly.
“My money. Payment for me helping you.”
I look from him to Nicole.
“He would only help if I told him you’d pay,” she says apologetically. “I lied,” Nicole then tells him. “I’m sorry, but this was important, and you wouldn’t tell me where the motel was unless I told you she would pay.”
Nicole turns to me. “They change motels every few months. I didn’t know where they were keeping the kids without him.”
She turns back to Michael. “She needed to see this, and you’re the only one who knew where the hotel was.”
“Bullshit!” Michael says. At the same time, he yanks Nicole’s arm so hard that she stumbles and falls onto the trunk of her car.
“What the fuck?” I yell.
“Listen, bi—” The rest of the asshole’s words are stolen when I throat punch him.
I grab and twist his arm behind his back, and with my free hand, I grab the back of his shirt and slam his face against the trunk.
“What the hell were you just saying?” I ask while yanking on his arm.
He squeals like the bitch he is. “Let me up!”
“Finish what you were about to say,” I say through gritted teeth. “Bitch? Was that it?”
He doesn’t say anything as he breathes hard, his face reddening.
“Nicole, tell her to get off of me,” he squeals.
She remains silent.
“Do you want me to let him up?” I ask her.
She hesitates.
“Bitch, oof!” he yells when I grab a handful of his hair and slam his head against the trunk again.
“You like using that word.” I shake my head. “She has a name.”
“Nicole, tell her to let me up.”
“Shut up!” I pull on his arm again.
“P-Please,” she finally speaks. “I just wanna leave.” She switches her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes shifting to the front of the motel back to me and her boyfriend.
I let him up but shove him so hard that he falls on his ass against the pavement. When he tries to get up, I plant my foot in the middle of his chest.
“You wanted payment?”
I pull out a twenty from my pocket and throw it at him. “This is for a taxi to wherever you wanna go. You’re welcome.”
With my foot still on his chest, I turn to Nicole. “How about we get something to eat, and you can tell me more about this?” I jut my head toward the motel.
Her nervous gaze moves between the piece of trash on the ground and me. She nods. “Okay.”
“Get in the car,” I tell her.
I wait until she’s behind the driver’s seat to put my attention back on him. “Stay down there until we leave. If you get up before that car exits the parking lot, I’ll return and lay you out again. This time, your blood will be spilled on the pavement.”
Slowly, I lift my foot from his chest. The asshole must have some sort of self-preservation instinct because he doesn’t move. If looks could kill, my head might be rolling on the ground next to his body, but glaring is all he does.
I get into the passenger seat and direct Nicole to take us to a pizzeria near my office.
On the way, she opens up about meeting Michael when he was one of the drivers in Blackmon’s operation.
“He was nice at first,” she said with a sad smile. “He would sneak me extra food on the nights he worked the closing shift at the restaurant.” She shrugs. “He started doing drugs more and more, and they fired him because one night he got into an accident while driving the van.”
She glances over at me and then back at the road.
“He’d just done a drop off, so none of the kids were inside, but the police started asking why that church’s van was in Williamsport. Things like that, so they fired him because he was a liability.”
“And he’s been living off of you ever since, huh?” I surmise.
She doesn’t answer, but she pushes out a shaky breath. She swipes a few unshed tears and keeps her focus on the road.
I do my best to suppress the anger bubbling up inside of me. She’s so young and had such a hard life. An image of Erika Dalton comes back to mind.
I don’t doubt that Erika’s life took a similar journey, especially if she ended up in the clutches of Blackmon and his network’s forced labor.
“You don’t have to stay with him,” I tell her. “You never have to stay with someone like that.”
She shakes her head. “He knows where I live. He’ll—”
“I can help you move,” I say without thinking. I probably just put my foot in my mouth. The Regal has a strict policy against paying sources. But I have a lot more connections and resources than Nicole does.
Perhaps I can get her hooked up with a rent assistance program.
“Thank you for your help,” I tell her genuinely.
“I didn’t know Erika.” Her voice is soft and slightly withdrawn. “She worked at the same restaurant, but we never spoke to one another. When I turned eighteen, I ran away from the motel one night, but I begged to continue to work for the McGruder’s because I couldn’t get another job.”
She peers over at me with guilt and tears in her eyes. “I should’ve said something sooner. Maybe if I had, Erika would still be alive.”
I shake my head and squeeze her arm. “What happened to Erika isn’t your fault. You’re as much a victim as she was. We’re going to get those cowards for what they did to you, to Erika, and all those other kids.”
Nicole swallows and nods, turning back to the road.