The Trade

“A first-rate, nailbiting hardcover-debut thriller…

Admirably paced and plotted, with the kind of guns-a-popping denouement that begs for transfer to the big screen.”

—Kirkus Reviews on Danger Zone

“With its taut plot, [Palmer’s] African thriller makes a suspenseful follow-up to her previous book,

A Veiled Journey.”

—Publishers Weekly on Lioness

“This romantic thriller…explores the complexities of culture as well as those of the human heart.”

—Publishers Weekly on A Veiled Journey

“…a suspense thriller…[with a] frenetic tempo and myriad plot twists.”

—Publishers Weekly on Danger Zone

Also by SHIRLEY PALMER

DANGER ZONE

LIONESS

A VEILED JOURNEY

The Trade

Shirley Palmer

This book is dedicated to those who suffer from this most heinous of crimes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks go first to editors Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson for their patience and continued support during the past year. Thanks, too, to Ken Atchity at AEI; to Andrea McKeown for her invaluable input; to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Sergeant Ray Verdugo, ret.; and to Hae Jung Cho, former director of the Coalition Against Slavery and Trafficking in Los Angeles.

Finally, this book could not have been written without researcher/editor Mignon McCarthy, who not only contributed the facts upon which the entire structure rests, but gave unstintingly of her time, her literary expertise, her enthusiasm and her words. It gives me much pleasure to acknowledge the work she has done.

All errors, of course, are entirely mine.

This is a work of fiction.

The events described did not happen.

No such club exists in Malibu, nor has there ever been a breath of rumor to indicate otherwise.

To serve the story being told, the author has taken some liberty with the topography of this small, treasured Southern California town.

For this she begs indulgence.

In the perception of the smallest is the secret of clear vision;

In the guarding of the weakest is the secret of all strength.

—Lao Tse

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

AFTERWORD

CHAPTER 1

A storm of wind-tossed embers burst through the smoke, crossed the Pacific Coast Highway, caught the dry grasses along the ocean side of the road. A stand of eucalyptus trees exploded into flame. Suddenly visibility was zero.

Matt Lowell forced himself not to jam his foot on the gas. Without the weight of the two horses, the empty trailer was already rocking dangerously. The wind slamming against it had to be gusting at eighty miles an hour.

At Trancas Canyon Road, the traffic lights were out, the Mobil station and the market both dark. On the other side of the intersection, the whirling blue and red light bars across the top of sheriff’s black and whites became visible through the murk. A police barricade stretched across the highway, blocking all lanes, north and south.

A deputy sheriff waved Matt down, his sharp arm movements directing him left into the Trancas Market parking lot. Matt recognized Bobby Eckhart. They’d been at preschool together, gone through Webster Elementary and Cub Scouts, surfed the coast from Rincon to Baja. Raised some hell.

Matt pulled over to the median and lowered the window. The acrid stink of disaster caught in his throat—chaparral burning on the hillsides, houses, furniture, lives going up in flames.

“Bobby,” he shouted. “I’ve got to get through.”

The deputy looked to see who was shouting, then jogged over to the pickup. “Hey, Matt.” Eckhart looked like hell, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, his usually immaculate tan uniform charred on one sleeve, and streaked with ash. “The PCH is closed, but we’re getting a convoy out over Kanan Dume while it’s still open. We can sure use your trailer. Take it over to the creek area, and start loading some of those animals.”

Matt shot a glance at the parking lot. Another uniformed deputy was trying to bring some order into the chaos of vehicles loaded with a crazy assortment of household goods; anxious adults riding herd on kids holding onto family pets: dogs, cats, bird and hamster cages. A makeshift corral held a small flock of black sheep, a couple of potbellied pigs, some goats. Horse trailers, rocking under the nervous movements of their occupants, lined the edge of the parched creek. In October when the Santa Ana’s roar straight out of the desert, water is a distant memory of spring.

“My horses are down in Ramirez. I’ve got to get them out.”

“Margie Little brought a couple of trailers out of there an hour ago. They’re over at the shelter in Agoura.”

“Did you see my two?”

Eckhart shook his head. “But you can’t get down there, Matt, not now. It’s been evacuated, everyone’s out.” His words ended in a fit of coughing.

Matt put his head out of the window, peered into the blanket of smoke shrouding the highway. “Where the hell are the fire crews?”

“They’re spread pretty thin but more are coming. This brute skipped the PCH at noon today, in some places it’s burned clear down to the ocean, and now some crazy bastard is setting fires along Mulholland in the backcountry.”

Matt’s gut clenched. His house was on the beach, and Barney was locked inside. “What about Malibu Road?”

“Blocked at both ends, but it was evacuated earlier today. Escondido, Latigo Shores, everything. Last I heard it was still okay, but the wind’s getting worse.”

“Bobby, I’ve got to get through. Barney’s locked in the house.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Eckhart looked stricken, he had known the yellow Lab since he was a pup. “Matt, I’m sorry, but the official word is no traffic on the PCH from here to Topanga, only law enforcement and fire crews. But you slip by, I sure can’t follow with lights and sirens.” He thumped the top of the cab with a clenched fist, and started back toward the parking lot. Matt let in the clutch.

The emptiness was eerie. No traffic along Zuma Beach. No surfers crossing, their boards balanced overhead. Twice birds literally fell out of the sky—whether from exhaustion or burns it was impossible to know—and hit the road in front of him.

At Ramirez, he pulled into the turn and jumped out of the pickup in front of the tunnel built under the highway to lead back into the canyon. The intricate metal gates barring entry to the tunnel were closed, and he ran to the keypad that would open them, cursing the day they had been installed. A movie star had dazzled the residents when it had come to a vote at the homeowner’s association. Then she got married, sold her collection of stuff, donated her property to Nature Conservancy and moved to Point Dume. Only the goddamn gates remained.

Matt entered the code. Nothing happened. Cursing, he banged out the number again. The gates jerked, held. He tried again, jamming a finger at the numbers, slamming a foot against the gate as it jerked. A burst of black smoke billowed from the darkness and he ran back to the pickup.

Matt thought quickly. Maybe Margie got the horses out, maybe she didn’t. If she didn’t, she’d open the corral, let them take their chances. A lot of people had had to do that in the 1978 fire, it had moved so fast. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it now. But Barney was at home, locked inside. If he dumped the trailer, he could jam through with the pickup, and be there in ten minutes.

The metal hitch was too hot to touch. Quickly, he reached inside the trailer, grabbed the leather gloves he used for hauling hay. He sent an anxious glance up into the eucalyptus trees. For a long choking moment, he wrestled with the hitch. Then fire swept through the oleanders, jumped to a pair of cedars, ran up the trunks of the eucalyptus. The tossing crowns exploded into flame. A shower of sparks hit the trailer, found the shreds of hay on the floor inside, ignited. Within seconds trailer and pickup were engulfed.

“I’m not going to make it.” Matt heard his own voice, maybe in his head, maybe he was yelling. “God, I’m not going to make it.”

He raced down the road to the Cove restaurant and the beach. Half a mile seemed suddenly impossible. Melting asphalt grabbed at his feet, fifty-foot eucalyptus trees were going up like oil-soaked torches, burning leaves tossed in the wind like missiles spreading fire wherever they touched. Beyond the trees on his right, the Sunset Pines trailer park was a sea of flames, metal screamed as heat buckled the double-wides, the force of the wind lifting blazing roofs, sending them spinning like giant fiery kites.

At the edge of the water the restaurant was still untouched, the old wooden pier still standing. Not a soul was around. The Cove had been abandoned.

Matt smashed a window in the kitchen door, thrust a hand through to the lock and let himself in. Normally booming with activity at this hour, the interior was utterly still, empty. He grabbed some bottled water from a refrigerator, left by the side door directly onto the beach. The sky was darker, an ominous dirty orange reflecting the fire and the low, late afternoon sun. It had to be close to sunset, but it was hard to tell.

Ash and smoke eddied in the wind, lifting the sand into a murky, eye-stinging soup. The edge of the bluff was in flames, the multimillion-dollar houses fronting the ocean probably already engulfed. Fire ate at the cascading purple ice plant, smoldering clumps dropped into the water lapping at the base of the cliff. The swells on the sea were a dark hammered bronze, the tops of the waves blown apart by the offshore wind.

Without slowing his pace, Matt struggled out of his jacket, stooping to drag it through the water. Debris tumbled in the surf, the bodies of singed birds, fish floating belly up in the unnaturally warmed water. He covered his head with the wet jacket, kept as far as he could from the base of the cliff and the brush falling in great blazing arcs blown by the wind.

The sea dragged at every step. He prayed he wouldn’t stumble into a hole—he’d surfed this coast all his life, and with a booming tide like this racing in, he knew the rip could tear a grown man’s legs from under him, drag him out to sea.

The beach widened, the bluff on his left was lower now, breaking down into sandstone gullies and he was able to get his bearing. The stairs to what used to be the Edwards place were charred and rocking with every gusts, but still standing. He could hear his breath laboring, and his lungs felt seared. Even this close to the water, the Santa Ana winds drew every scrap of moisture out of the air. In the oven-hot wind howling under a dirty sky, he felt as if he could be the last man left alive on a devastated earth.

He took a swig of the bottled water, warm now from the heat. Ahead, a large seabird, a dead pelican probably, tangled in a fisherman’s discarded line—it happened all the time—lay close to the edge of the surf. Matt fixed his eyes on it as a measure of his progress along the beach. As he got closer, he realized it wasn’t a pelican. Maybe a doll with a scrap of copper-colored fabric wrapped around it. He glanced down as he passed, took several more strides. Uncertain, he turned back.

An advancing wave broke around his ankles and tugged at the small pale form. It moved, then responding to the pull of the water, started to roll. Matt reached down instinctively to stop its slide to the sea. Suddenly he found the smoke-filled air even more difficult to draw into his lungs and in spite of the heat, the blood pumping through his veins felt icy. He picked up the tiny form, held it against his body, and put his fingers against its throat.

He felt the thready flutter of a pulse.

CHAPTER 2

Matt stripped away the wet silky covering, struggled out of his polo shirt and wrapped the newborn infant, a girl, in the soft cotton. Her eyes were closed, her hands curled into tiny fists. Downy strands of gold hair feathered damply against her head.

He scanned the beach but the blowing sand and smoke and falling ash cut visibility down to a few yards. Rabbits and a couple of raccoons huddled against the low bluff close to a flock of gulls. He could see nothing that could possibly be a human form.

Who would leave a baby like this?

He held the almost weightless bundle against his chest with some idea of warming her with his own body heat, put on his wet jacket to protect them both against falling debris, and started back along the beach toward the stairs up to the Edwards house. If they were still standing, maybe there would be firefighters trying to save it.

He scanned the beach as he ran. Trash thrown up by a polluted ocean was caught in the giant kelp above the high tide mark—nylon fishing line, plastic holders for six packs, bits of Styrofoam coolers. No sign of the mother, no patch of blood, nothing to show that a woman had just given birth. He stumbled across a beam of charred wood and saw the beach was littered with planks.

The stairs. Since he had passed them only minutes ago, the ferocious wind had blown the damaged stairs apart.

He swept his eyes across the low bluff, looking for another way up, handholds, anything, but even if he could find a way, the top of the cliff was blazing. He hesitated—the empty restaurant was closer than his own place, he could go back. But he’d lived in Malibu all his life, seen flames leap two hundred feet in seconds, consume a house in minutes. And the tide was roaring in. He had to get home.

Flooded with relief, Matt jogged across the dry sand, toward his own beach stairs. The small gray clapboard house was intact. The large houses on either side were dark, not surprising. His neighbors used them only on weekends, and that rarely.

For the last hour he’d been running nonstop, across soft sand, in and out of the ocean, holding the baby close as he clambered over the bare rocky reefs that would normally be covered by resting seals as the tide receded. On a night like this, though, they’d stay out at sea.

The sky was a cauldron, the fire dangerously close. He could feel blasts of heat from the thirty-foot flames now whirling south on the ridge above the Pacific Coast Highway as it followed the curve of the coastline toward the enormous expanse of lawn fronting Pepperdine University. That lawn still pissed a lot of people off, they were still arguing about the amount of water used to keep it green, the contaminated runoff draining into the Santa Monica Bay, but in a wildfire it could be a godsend, a break where fire crews could make a stand.

If the wind turned west again as it easily could, a maelstrom like this created its own wind patterns, flames would be across the highway in minutes, take the houses above his on the land side of Malibu Road, jump to the beach side and burn clear down to the water. From what he’d seen, so far the flames had reached oceanside houses in a staggered pattern, driven by the changing wind. His place was vulnerable, clapboard with an old shake roof, it would go in seconds.

He pushed open the door into his smoky kitchen, staggering as eighty pounds of terrified dog hurled himself at his legs.

“It’s okay, Barns. It’s okay, boy.” Matt held off the Lab with one hand and picked up the phone. No dial tone. The line was dead. He shook it in frustration. Of course it was dead—the phone lines were down. This wasn’t the first fire he’d been through in his thirty-six years, he should have remembered that. At least he had his mobile.

The baby close against his chest, he searched his jacket. Then again. Patted the pockets in his pants. The phone was gone. He’d dropped it somewhere on the beach.

He laid the child down on the soft couch in the living room, touched her pale cheek. She was cool. Colder than she had been when he picked her up. Matt felt for the pulse in the baby’s throat, as he’d done on the beach. He couldn’t find it. He flexed his fingers, felt on the other side. No pulse. Maybe he was doing it wrong. He rubbed his fingers on the couch to sensitize them, tried again. Nothing. Heart hammering, he knelt, held the tiny nose, blew gently into the infant’s mouth. Once, twice. Again. But he knew it was useless. There was no breath, no heartbeat. The baby was dead. Sometime in the last hour, as they made their way down the beach, she had died in his arms. He had not even known when life left her. Surely, he should have felt something.

He sat back on his heels. She was so delicate, so fragile, she made barely a dent in the cushion. Long lashes fanned her cheeks. He didn’t even know what color her eyes were. What sort of woman would abandon her defenseless newborn on an empty beach?

Minutes passed. Barney pushed his nose at Matt’s hand, then started to howl as if he knew, a mournful sound that gave a voice to the tangle of feeling swelling in Matt’s chest.

Matt put a hand on Barney’s head, and took a long, deep painful breath. The smoke inside the house was thicker now, the heat increasing. Barney nudged at him insistently. Matt knew he had to get some water on the roof, and soon. He looked at her one last time, then covered her face with his shirt and got to his feet.

“Come on, boy.” He snapped on Barney’s leash in case they had to make a run for it, took the Lab with him into his bedroom. Black particles of ash hung in the air and coated every surface; shadows danced madly in the dirty amber glow that was the only light, but it was enough for him to see what he needed to see. He stripped, got into dry jeans and shirt, socks and heavy boots, then retrieved a black carry-on bag from the closet and looked around for the things that were important enough to save.

He picked up the photograph by his bed, an eight-by-ten of Ginn and himself, Barney at their feet, taken last summer, and put it into the bag. The only other things of value were a framed picture of his mother and an album of old photographs of them together when he was a kid. His memory of her had dimmed over the years, only the pictures kept it alive. He took a second to wrap them in a T-shirt before putting them in the bag, threw in a handful of underwear, socks, some jeans on top. He took some of his books from the shelves in the living room, his laptop. He already had Barney ready to run. That was it. Except for the house itself, there was nothing else here he cared about.

He tied a bandanna around his nose and mouth, then grabbed all the towels in the linen cupboard, dropped the bag by the kitchen door where he could get it easily if they had to get down to the water. He slammed the door closed behind him to keep Barney confined in the house, ran along the side of the house toward the little shed of a detached garage facing the road. He could hear the rumble of fire trucks, power horns and sirens on the Coast Highway above Malibu Road. Help was on the way at last and the fire crews would make a stand wherever they could as long as they had water pressure. At least he and Barney could always get down to the ocean, so they wouldn’t be trapped. If it came to it, he’d let the house, his mother’s house, burn.

Without electricity the garage door was immovable. He climbed behind the wheel of the Range Rover parked inside, shoved the gear into Reverse, hit the gas and rammed the heavy vehicle at the overhead door. The old structure shook but the warped wood splintered at the first attempt and he was through. He got out, grabbed three of Bobby Eckhart’s surfboards, shoved them into the back, added a couple of his own. The ladder he kept for repairs had fallen off the wall with the impact. He picked it up, threw it onto the patio, then backed the Range Rover up to the street, away from the structure. Only a block away, a couple of houses were burning.

He unwound the hose on the patio, turned the spigot, let out a grunt of relief when water spurted, then shoved the nozzle into an empty trash barrel and filled it, dumped in the towels. He soaked his bandanna and retied it over his nose and mouth, dragged the hose with him up the ladder to the roof.

If the water pressure stayed strong, if the wind didn’t turn, if he could beat out sparks with the towels before they got a hold under the wooden shakes—a hell of a lot of ifs—he had a chance of saving the house. His mother’s house.

Matt looked at his watch, saw that it was after midnight. The arc of the night sky from east to west was still red with fire, but something was different. The wind had changed direction and was blowing onshore. He wouldn’t call it moisture exactly, but for the first time in hours he felt as if he could take a full breath without cooking his lungs.

He went out to the street again. Everything in the front of the house was gone, the fence, the bushes, a couple of trees, and the bougainvillea that his mother had planted for privacy thirty years ago. At least the house had survived, scorched but still there. Many landside houses above his, and several along his stretch of beach, were smoking ruins. Fire crews hadn’t even made it down here until now, when it was all over and the firestorm had moved on.

A sheriff’s patrol car cruised by and Matt stepped into the road to wave it down. The black and white slowed. The deputy sheriff looked him over.

“Who are you? This area is evacuated, authorized personnel only.”

Matt had been hoping for Bob Eckhart. He didn’t recognize the man speaking to him.

Matt said, “I live here. You got a minute? I’ve got something here you should see.”

“You got identification?”

“Sure.” Matt reached for the wallet he’d transferred from his wet jeans, flipped it open to his driver’s license.

The deputy reached for it. “What happened to your arm?”

Matt held it up, surprised to see a gash and streaks of dried blood. “I don’t know, I guess I must’ve cut it when I broke a window at the Cove to get some water.”

“I see.” The deputy handed back the license. “Well, I’ll have to get back to you, just as soon as I’ve checked out the end of the road. Things are still pretty hectic.” Fire equipment moved along the road, wetting down hotspots, checking roofs. The black and white started to roll.

Matt paced with the car. “No, wait a minute. Listen, you’ve got to come inside. Sounds crazy I know, but I’ve got a dead baby here.”

The car stopped. The deputy stared at him for a long moment, then pulled off the road. He retrieved a flashlight, played it over Matt’s face, along the still-smoking stumps of the bougainvillea, across the newly exposed house and patio. Barney, muzzle pressed against the bedroom window no longer shielded from the street by shrubbery, barked a warning. The deputy picked up his radio transmitter. “This is 103. I’ve got a report of a 927D at…” He looked at Matt. “What’s the address here?”