“Stop it! Don’t!” She swept the pictures off the coffee table and turned away from them, covering her face. Nikki didn’t know what sickened her more: seeing the photos again or using Opal’s vulnerability to get what she needed from her. It didn’t matter. Heat had a job to do.
“Whatever Jeanne Capois shared with you so you could make your movie got her killed. And you know that. Make it right. Will you help me get these guys?”
Opal Onishi didn’t answer yes or no, but simply began in a very distant voice to narrate, as if doing a voice-over in one of her docs. “Jeanne Capois was special because she was just like all the others. A girl who grew up in poverty but raised with hope. Like a lot of the Haitians I have interviewed over the past year, hope is not just aspiration, but takes form in tenacity. It is how you survive, it is how you keep going in the face of life’s unrelenting assault. Political corruption, violence, hunger, disease, squalor — even an earthquake does not stop them from seeking a better way.” The ash fell from her cigarette and she absently ground it into the rug with her slipper, then turned to them.
“Jeanne told me she and her fiancé had been told a major hotel chain in the United States was looking for servicepeople to do the work the Americans were no longer willing to do. The man who met them at the patisserie in Pétionville bought them banana cakes and
“Everything changed once they boarded the ship, where their possessions were confiscated and they were locked in the holds below. They were trapped aboard for weeks as it went port to port. Jeanne said they knew where they’d been by the other people who came down into the holds with them. Dominicans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Jamaicans, Hondurans, Mexicans. Even a group of prostitutes the captain won in a card game in the Caymans.”
“Was this a cruise ship?” asked Rook.”
“A cargo vessel.”
Nikki said, “I’m going to guess who owned it.”
“If you guessed Keith Gilbert, you would guess right,” Opal said. Nikki reflected on the visceral reaction Onishi had voiced last visit when she flashed his picture in the array. “The stories I got from other people enslaved by this ring — and it is slavery, let’s call it what it is — were all transported on ships owned by Gilbert Maritime.”
“I want to see these interviews,” said Heat. “Starting with Jeanne’s. And get transcripts, if you have them. If you don’t, we can transcribe them.”
Rook asked, “Did you also interview Beauvais?”
“No, I didn’t.” Then she held up her hands in a staving gesture. “Whoa, whoa, let’s all hold on here. I’m cooperating, right? Like I’m not ducking your shit anymore, OK?”
“And?”
“And this material is mine. This is what I was afraid of when you came around before. I’ve spent a year making a film. I’ve got more interviews I want to do, more writing, and tons more editing. If I let this raw footage out and it starts circulating before I’m ready, I can pretty much kiss off my funding and distribution.”
Heat felt pressure. Half a day — or less — before the interim precinct commander arrived and took her off the case. Desperate, but trying not to show it, she pushed buttons. “I guess I was wrong. From your résumé, I kind of had you figured as someone who wanted to help fight oppression and injustice.”
It was a valiant effort, but Opal tapped out another cigarette, played with it, unlit, in her hand while she mulled, then said, “If the film releases properly, it’ll do just that. Besides, I don’t think you can make me.” She turned to Rook, fishing for support. “Don’t I get some protection as a journalist?”
He shrugged. “Might be debatable whether your indie project gets First Amendment protection. But I do have some perspective to share.”
“Yeah?”
“Ever hear of Mary Ellen Mark?” Opal shook no. “We’re going back thirty, thirty-five years here. Mary Ellen Mark was, and still is, a respected photojournalist who managed to gain access to Mother Teresa’s mission in the Calcutta slums. She’s going along, doing her job, snapping pictures of Mother Teresa and her volunteers working their asses off cleaning the lepers, mopping up after the sick, comforting dying kids, physically picking up and carrying the malnourished men and women she’d find collapsed in the gutters or sleeping in sewage. Mary Ellen got some great photos, too. Know what Mother Teresa said to her? She came up to her very calmly and said, ‘You should put down your camera and do some work.’”