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Serial

Apr 05
0

Uncaged

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“Maybe I didn’t love you quite exactly as I should have…” Steve’s favorite CD played as the three Porters headed south down Interstate Five. Aggie had her little pink sunglasses on, looking cool, singing along. By the time they reached the border, the Willie CD had played almost nine times and Aggie had taught Poo to meow along with the chorus, “You were always on my mind. You were always on my mind…” Poo was pretty good. It cracked Steve and Rhea up.

Sprawled lazily around a the Port of Ensenada, the low-rise city neither welcomed nor refused anyone. Steve drove familiar streets into the outskirts of the business district and parked in front of Renaldo’s party supply store… pinatas, plastic wreaths, ornaments and a hundred dolls hung from strings across the open front. The three Porters went in. Poo stayed in the car.

Inside, the wonderland was crammed wall to wall, ceiling to floor with stuff. Boxes and boxes, shelves and shelves of stuff. Dozens of birdcages hung from ceiling fans, door knobs, ladders, water pipes, light fixtures and the branches of a big dead tree stuck in a giant pot in the middle of the room. Each birdcage had one or two or three blue parakeets in it. Sometimes a feather would fall from their cages to the floor.

Rhea went straight for the costume jewelry: bangle bracelets crusted with plastic jewels, giant glass rings and brooches and chokers sporting dragonflies and bees. Steve and Renaldo searched the store for every baby Jesus night light they could find. Aggie stood in the middle of it all, saddened by the birds. They were always quiet; not a peep, not a song. Surely unhappy to be caged inside a party store.

One of the cages hung low on a dead tree branch, about eye level with Aggie. The bird was watching her as it plucked one of its feathers and pushed it between the wire bars so it fluttered to the floor. Aggie picked it up. She looked at the bird; it looked back at her, like they were talking. After a while, Aggie unlatched the bird’s cage door. It nodded at her as it slipped out. But it didn’t fly away. It hopped over to its nearest friends, two parakeets in a cage that was hanging from a coat hook. With its beak it unlatched that cage door and the two birds hopped out. They split up and fluttered over to three other cages, one was sitting on the counter where Rhea was trying on a pair of Freida Kahlo earrings. It caught her eye. She turned and saw Aggie, holding the little blue feather. Rhea figured it out in a flash and hurried over to her.

“What are you doing?!”

“Nothing…”

As the birds stealthily continued their prison break and Steve and Renaldo remained preoccupied, Rhea called out to Steve.

“We’re hungry, Dad. OK if we go over to Joe’s?”

“Yeah, OK. I’ll be there as soon as Renaldo packs all this up. Order me something.”

“OK.”

“Watch your sister.”

“OK.”

Rhea took Aggie’s hand and felt something in it; she was still holding the blue feather. She had an orangeade soda in her other hand. Rhea took the feather and tucked it into Aggie’s pocket.

“C’mon. Let’s fly.” she smiled as she pulled Aggie out of there.

Apr 05
0

Asombroso

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Rhea held tight to Aggie’s hand as they made their way through Christmas shoppers to Joe’s café four doors down. The only vacant table in the tiny café was right by the front door. Rhea sat Aggie down at the table and told her to “Stay right here and don’t move. I’m gonna go order us some lunch.”

“OK.”

Spritely Joe Leybas was cooking in a battered old frying pan on a two burner stove in the back of the unadorned room. He looked up as Rhea approached. A smile creased his eyes.

“Rhea! Hola. Back so soon!”

“We ran out of Jesus night lights.” Rhea explained. “They’re our biggest seller.”

Joe tossed a fat hunk of fresh fish into a pan sizzling with garlic and lard.

“Is that Yellowtail?” she asked, breathing it all in.

He nodded and smiled then splashed some tequila on it from a bottle of good Asombroso.

“Oooh, I’ll have that, please. Dad, too, he’ll be here in a minute.” She turned to Aggie, who was already looking bored. “Aggie, what do you want to eat?”

“Cake please.” Aggie chimed.

“I don’t have cake–” Joe started–

“That’s OK. I’ll get her some cupcakes at Boom Boom.” Rhea told him then asked how, exactly, he was making the Yellowtail.

He loved to talk about food. So did Rhea. As he told her how – first – the fish needed to be so fresh you could smell the Pacific, then you marinate it in tequila – Asombroso if you have it – and lime… Rhea got lost in the story.

Sitting all alone by the door, Aggie was getting antsy. A fat man came in. Aggie felt a flutter of shadow cross her face and turned and looked out the gap where the door hadn’t quite closed.

A blue parakeet flew by. My oh my! Then six or seven or eight followed. Aggie ran out, after them.

Apr 06
0

Bye Bye Birdie

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A gray mist filled the December sky, saturating the colors of the busy street at Christmastime… saturating the bright blue of the parakeets flying away.

Aggie wove through the throngs of people in the street. She kept her eyes up, on the one bird in the sky who seemed to linger a bit, letting her keep up. She approached Boom Boom Carnerceria just as Panama Jones came outside. He was holding two churros and a soda. He was a little nervous but a couple puffs had calmed him down. He concentrated on following the directions of Leland Hays who had told him to, “Use a churro or anything sweet.” to get a little girl into the new blue van he had lent Panama. “We’re helping them.” Hays had explained, “Taking poor little Mexican girls– who are by themselves. We put them with a nice family in LA – give them a job for life. They get new dresses, plenty of food and a room of their own. They love that, their very own room…” Plus, there was the van. Panama had slept in that van the night before. It was nice. Safe. Warm. And it was his to use if he sometimes got a little girl and drove her across the border to LA. Plus he got paid. Pretty good deal.

A little girl’s voice made him look up.

“Bye bye Tyrone!” Aggie called up to the parakeet in the sky as she hurried past Boom Boom, right past Panama Jones. He watched her as she turned a corner and disappeared down a side street while chasing after a bird.

Panama followed Aggie around that corner. After about a half a block, he called to her softly, in Spanish. “Ninita– Ninita–!”

She was so fixated on the bird in the sky, she didn’t see him until he touched her arm and held a sweet churro out to her, asking her:

“Quieres un churro?”

She didn’t have time to try and understand – Tyrone flew close by and she ran down the street following him, sharing his joy.

Panama saw that she was focused on the birds. He followed her and he called to her, over and over in Spanish,

“Vamos a coger el chirrido. Podemos coger el chirrido. Podemos coger el birdie más rápido en el coche -” (Let’s catch the birdie. We can catch the birdie faster in the car–)

She didn’t understand a word he was saying but it sounded important so she stopped and turned to him.

“Huh?”

They were only inches from where the blue van was parked. Close enough for him to scoop her up and put her inside. Blink of an eye. He strapped her into a seatbelt and pointed up through the sunroof as Tyrone flew by.

“Ahi esta!” He said as he started the car and pulled away. “Lo atraparemos!” (We’ll catch him!)

Exactly four minutes and twenty-eight seconds after Aggie had first run out of Joe’s, Panama drove her north on a two lane road out of town. Into the desert. Easy Money.

Apr 06
0

Gone

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Joe gave Rhea a taste of the Yellowtail straight out of the pan – man that made her smile. For a sixteen year old SoCal girl, she had eclectic taste in food. Sure she liked Taco Town tacquitos and the potato wedges at the Arco am pm mini-mart but she could also taste the distinct edge of sweetness in the lime Joe used and was curious where it came from.

Impressed, he told her it came from a tree in his mother’s backyard. She lived by the sea and the salty air brought out the lime’s sugars. She had goats, too and their milk was tangy and sweet. He’d thought of trying to use it in some desserts.

“Maybe I’ll try and make a cake for your sister the next time you come down–” he told Rhea.

“You hear that, Aggie?” Rhea turned to her sister. The table by the door was empty. The door was open. Aggie was gone.

Rhea dropped her fork and ran.

Outside there was an urgent flow of people shopping, but no little white girls. Rhea stopped dead and looked in every direction. Then she saw her Dad, walking toward Joe’s with a big box full of Jesus night lights. She ran to him. He saw the panic in her eyes.

“Where’s Aggie?”

Apr 06
0

Over

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Back in Joe’s, the Yellowtail burned. Lard-filled smoke veiled the air as Joe looked everywhere for Aggie, hoping she was somewhere inside. The door was still open a crack and through it came the wails of Steve and Rhea calling Aggie’s name over and over and over until their voices cracked. The fat man turned the stove off. No one found Aggie. It was nearing three o’clock.

Panama drove slow on the partially paved bumpy desert road that led Northeast, toward the border. He didn’t want to rush things, didn’t want to get to the crossing until it was dark; it made him feel less anxious – that and the Medusa weed buzzing his head. But it was the praying that got to him. It knocked him off his high, made him lose his cool.

“Please God.” The little girl said an hour into their journey. Her clear voice startled him. He looked at her. The churro he’d given her was lying in her lap, uneaten. The sunroof was still open. She held her hands up to the sky. “Please.” She prayed, “I want to go back now.”

In Spanish he told her to leave God out of it, that he was there to help her. “No no no. Dejar a Dios a solas.” He told her.”Yo voy a ayudar.”

Finally she let him know what he’d failed to figure out. “Mister I don’t know Spanish.”

Panama looked at her again, seeing her really for the first time. She was blond. She didn’t speak Spanish. Hays had said they were taking poor little Mexican girls–

She put her hands together again and looked up at the sky. “Dear God…” she began but he cut her off, “You don’t have to pray. You don’t have to get God involved, I’m going to help you. I’m going to get you a room of your own.”

“I don’t want my own room. I want to go back.”

He drove on. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He didn’t want to figure it out, didn’t want to know. He opened a window and lit a joint, pulling hard, letting the smoke fill his head. He blew it out the window and sprayed a tin can of air freshener all over him. And he drove on, ignoring Aggie. She rode in silence, for awhile. Then looked out the window and mumbled,

“Too far. You went too far.”

The fuck was she talking about? He sucked harder on the reefer; sprayed a little more freshener; drove a little bit faster.

“Too far. Too far. Too far.” She said softly, precisely and over and over and over until it pierced his brain.

He pulled over, skidded in the sand off the road, turned to her.

She looked him in the eye. “We went too far.”

“Now you listen to me–”

“Now you listen to me.” She interrupted him, “We went too far, now how will my sister find me?”

His mind started racing,”… She has a sister? Is she looking for her? Could she even drive? No, she’d have to be a kid, too. They were poor. No car. Did they have a car? He could leave the little girl here. Someone would find her. Maybe not. Maybe she’d die. Not good. Yes, he should take her over. She’d be happy. And he’d get to keep using the van. And he’d get a few hundred bucks. And… she’d be happy. He thought for a second, “You want to leave her a note?”

“OK.”

He found a pen in the glove box and a receipt. He gave them to her. “Here. Write it on the back.”

“I can’t write good yet.”

He snatched them back. “OK. OK. Dear– ” he looked at her. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Rhea.” She told him. “Rhea Porter.”

“Dear Rhea Porter,” he wrote on the back of the receipt then looked at her again.

“I am here.” she said. He wrote it down. As he opened the door, she told him to also write, “From Aggie.”

He added that to the note then got out of the van, stuck the note under a big rock, got back in the van and drove them on.

Apr 06
0

Tecate

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Four dusty miles from the US border in the beer town of Tecate, Panama pulled over again. He waited thirty-some minutes for night. No one else was on the road. He opened the side door to the van and pushed aside four carved wooden rustic Mexican dining chairs. Behind them was a small wooden sideboard. He opened the cabinet doors and told Aggie to get inside.

“The road’s gonna get bumpy.” He told her. “Inside there, you won’t get sick.”

Aggie got inside. Panama rolled up his jacket to make a pillow for her then gave her another churro.

“Keep really quiet. Maybe even try and go to sleep. I’ll check on you in an hour.”

Aggie took the churro. “Unless Rhea comes before.”

“Yeah.”

He closed the cabinet, sprayed some more air freshener, closed the van doors, got in the front and drove on, into Tecate.

Except for the brewery, Tecate was a small-building, low lying town. Panama drove down streets of tiny houses and markets and beauty salons and car repair shops, criss-crossed with railroad tracks. He followed the signs to the border. As he pulled up to the crossing, he noticed Aggie’s pink sunglasses were lying on the front seat.

There were two guards at the gate. The bigger one, a strawberry blond twenty-five-year old named Donnelly, walked around Panama’s blue van with a sniffer dog, Yodel. Inside, Panama tried to look calm and sober despite the little pink sunglasses he’d stuck on his head, using them to hold back his long hair. He watched Donnelly and Yodel in the rear view. When they looked done, he stuck his head out of the window.

“We bueno, dude?”

Donnelly approached the window, looked at Panama. “Quirky.” He thought to himself. “Young. Tired.”

“The road’s pretty wind-ey ‘til you get to the eight. If you get tired, you should pull over.” he warned Panama. “Guy last week fell asleep two miles in and went off a cliff–”

“I’ll be OK.” Panama told him as he shoved the sunglasses back down on his head – they were small and kept popping up, “In three hours, I’m home–”

He started the van, waved at Donnelly and drove across the border. And into the blackness of the hills.

About an hour after he’d let Panama through the border, the phone in Donnelly’s booth rang.

Apr 07
0

Night Fallen

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By a little after six, the streets had cleared somewhat outside Joe’s. Rhea and Steve had checked every doorway, shadow and face three and four times over; their ragged voices still pleading Aggie’s name. They stopped when they saw two cops walking toward them, from the end of the block. The sky was black behind them and filled with hazy stars veiled behind the heavy seaside mist.

As the cops got closer, the one named Nava started shaking his head “no”. Steve crumpled. Rhea tried to hold him up but she couldn’t.

“Nothing?” she asked Nava as she kneeled down and held onto Steve.

“Not yet. But–”

“What?!” Rhea begged.

“–might be nothing, but… ” he said, trying to help Steve up. His English was perfect; unmistakable as he asked, “Did she have pink sunglasses?”

Apr 07
0

All There Is

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A cold, dark wind had kicked up at the border. Tumbleweed rolled across the two-lane road and stopped up against Steve’s Chrysler as he slammed to a stop in the middle of the road, half a dozen yards from the guard booth. He opened the door but didn’t get out; he was afraid to step on the pavement as though doing so, he would take another step into this nightmare and he just didn’t want to. He hung tight to Aggie’s kitten, Poo as Rhea jumped out and hurried up to Nava, Donnelly and Nava’s partner who were standing by the booth, talking.

“–no drugs. Yodel sniffed the whole van. Nothing–” Donnelly was saying as Rhea ran up to him, yelling,

“Did you see her?! It’s she ok?!”

“No, no–”

“You didn’t see her–?!”

“No–”

“But you saw her sunglasses–?!”

“We don’t know if they’re hers.” Nava tried to calm Rhea down. She kept hammering questions.

“They were pink?”

“Yeah–”

“With little kittens on them? One on each corner?” Rhea asked him.

Donnelly shook his head, “Couldn’t tell. He had them stuck on top of his head–”

“Who did?”

“He was a little older than you, maybe eighteen. Dark hair, brown skin, light eyes? Driving a new blue van?”

Rhea stared at Donnelly; blank.

“Did you see him around anywhere? Maybe on the street? Or at Joe’s?” Nava asked her.

“No… No.” Rhea tried to will a picture of this man but… she’d never seen him. “But he had Aggie’s sunglasses?”

“…I don’t know, Miss. But they were pink. And little.” He looked at Nava as he went on, “I only noticed ’cause they popped up a little and he pushed them back down. They popped up ’cause they were too small. Like…a little kids’ size.”

Rhea stared at Donnelly, waiting for more. But that was it.

“Anything else you remember?” Nava’s partner asked asked Donnelly.

“Maybe…” Donnelly shared, “He looked a little beat, so I told him the road through the hills is pretty hairy and if he was tired, he should pull over somewhere and sleep a little. His ID said San Diego but… he said he was OK and that he’d be home in three hours.”

“Three hours?” Nava asked, calculating the inevitable. “That’s LA.”

The three cops nodded; almost imperceptibly but there was an agreement.

Donnelly nodded. “I’ll call.” He headed toward his booth.

“What’s happening?” Rhea almost didn’t want to know.

“He’s gonna call LAPD.”

As the wind whipped the silence around them, a car hurtled down the hilly road toward the crossing. It nearly slammed into the booth, screeched to a halt and before it stopped completely, Stel jumped out of the passenger side and ran toward them, screaming,

“Where is she?!”

Steve jerked up, losing his grip on Poo. Poo started mewing, trying to mew that old Willie Nelson song as she scampered up the highway, into the hills.

Apr 07
0

A Tremble

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The moment Aggie got taken, Detective Matt Strickland was starting his second cup of coffee after a late lunch at The Pantry – eggs over medium, rye toast, sliced tomatoes. When he set the cup down after a sip, his coffee trembled – rippled like when a small earthquake aftershock rolls through. He looked up. No one else noticed anything. He knew this was internal; an instinct he almost wished he didn’t have – it had happened twice before. He finished the coffee, paid the bill and went back to LAPD Central and waited for the call he knew would come. It did. About seven hours later, a little after nine that night. It was Donnelly, calling about a missing little girl named Aggie Day Porter and a possible abductor who said his destination was a three hour drive from the border at Tecate.

“You call San Diego?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Yeah, but… thought we’d better get you in right away. Kid’s American.”

Shit. It didn’t matter what nationality a kid in danger was to Strickland. But it mattered to others. It mattered in the media. An American was a bigger deal.

“Where’re the parents–” he started. “Here.” San Diego Detective Rudy Canon got on the line, letting Strickland know this was not likely a familial abduction. It was the second time that year he’d talked to Strickland. This was the third kid they’d talked about. The other two were Mexican girls – six and nine. Only the six-year-old had been found… decomposing in a trash bin on a construction site near the fourth street bridge on the east side of downtown LA. No leads. No suspects. No hope.

There was a chance the other girl and now Aggie weren’t in LA but there was a good chance they were. It was becoming a popular destination for trafficking as well as the usual runaways and illegals. And at just over five hundred square miles and nine million people, it was easy to disappear there.

“I’ll need pictures.” He told Canon, “Tonight.”

“House is in Norwalk. I can get them there by one.” Canon promised.

Strickland put out a BOLO: five year old female, blond hair, forty pounds, wearing a green jacket, white tutu and jeans. Possible suspect Mexican-American male, approximately eighteen, driving a late model blue VW van. He opened a case, drank two cups of coffee, ate a vending machine Honey Bun then at midnight, he jumped on the five and headed south.

Apr 07
0

Notepad

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The Porter house was a fifties tract house papered in faded wallpaper and jammed full of thick silence pierced by the steady beat of Steve’s sobs as he sat in a lumpy chair, looking out the front window at the night. Strickland knew he didn’t see the neighbors’ twinkling Christmas lights and he didn’t see the full moon. He doubted he saw anything but the dark. It’s all he had left. He’d told Donnelly, Nava and Canon everything he remembered about that day, then he shut down. Strickland turned to Rhea.

“Anything else you remember?” he asked the panicked, gangly teen trying to disappear into the wall she cowered against. “Any one in Joe’s seem unusual or maybe they were gone when you noticed Aggie gone, too?”

Rhea shook her head and briefly looked him in the eye, “I don’t think so—“

“Jesus!” Stel screamed at her, “Think! You had to see something besides the fucking food–!”

Rhea froze, immobilized by Stel’s rage and her own guilt. The pain in her eyes was heartbreaking to Strickland. That pain was why, at thirty seven, Strickland still didn’t have kids. His ex-wife was sure she could talk him into it or at least fuck him into it. She came close, too but then he made the Exploited Kids Division and he saw what people did to them. He saw the bodies. He saw the damage. And every single time it broke him. He couldn’t imagine if one was his own. He looked at the pictures Stel had given him. In one, Aggie looked right at him, her half smile seemed to say, “I’m lost forever.” He shoved it to the bottom of the stack of five.

“I’ll get these photos back to you soon as we make copies—”

He looked back at Rhea, wanting to talk to her but Stel held on to him.

“You’ll find her.” She said.

He wanted to say, “Don’t get your hopes up.” But he knew, until a body was found, there would always be hope. And that was not a good thing.

“We’ll try our best, Mrs. Porter.”

He handed Rhea a little rainbow notepad note-pad and pen, wrote down his number and told her to write down anything she remembered and to call him, “Anytime.”

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