“What have you gotta worry about? If I don’t like it, that’s my funeral.”
Carlos sipped his coffee and stared across the cafe with blank eyes. Then he said abruptly. “There’s a big demand on the West Coast for cheap Chinese labor. When I say cheap, I mean cheap. The authorities look on Chinks as undesirables, so they won’t let them in. Now that’s a cock-eyed way of doin’ things. The demand’s there, but the guys who want them can’t get them. Well, that’s my racket. I get ’em in.”
Fenner nodded. “You mean you smuggle them in?”
“It’s easy. On this coast there are hundreds of places I can get them in. The coast guards don’t give me no trouble. Sometimes I’m unlucky, but I get along.”
Fenner scratched his head. “There ain’t any dough in this line, is there?”
Carlos showed his teeth. “You ain’t quite got the angle,” he said. “Look at it this way. First, the Chinks are crazy to get in here. I’ve got a guy in Havana who contacts them. They pay him to smuggle them across the Gulf. These Chinks are so hot to get in that they’ll pay as much as five hundred to a thousand dollars. We take a load of twelve Chinks at a time. Once those guys have got on one of my boats and have coughed up the dough, they become my property. I see them to the West Coast, and a good Chink will fetch again as much as five hundred bucks.”
Fenner frowned. “You mean the Chinks pay to get in, then you sell them once they’re in?”
Carlos nodded. “That’s it,” he said. “A two-way pay-off. It’s quite a game. I’ve shipped fifty Chinks over this week. Taking everything into consideration, I’ll pick up around thirty grand for that bit of work.”
This quite startled Fenner. He said: “But why in hell don’t these Chinks squawk? What happens to them?”
“How can they squawk? They got no right to be here. They can’t go to the cops. It’d mean jail and bein’ deported again. We send them up the coast and they get their food and that’s all. You can find ’em workin’ everywhere. In wash places, restaurants, laundries, everywhere.”