Power and Empire

7

Magdalena Rojas leaned her head against the window in the backseat of her pimp’s Chrysler 300 sedan and wondered if tonight might possibly be the beginning of a different chapter in her life.

She was a small thing, bony at the knees and elbows, and not quite five feet tall. Parrot wanted his girls to look nice, so he gave her plenty of makeup and a brush when she needed to tame her wayward black hair. Even that was thinner than it had been. Others might not be able to tell, but she could. She’d been beautiful once. Her father had told her so when she was little. Other men in her home country used to say it all the time — and mean it. But the men she went with now hardly even took the time to speak. Some of them were scared of her. Those were the worst. They had to hurt her to be real men.

Magdalena could not understand how a grown man could be so frightened of a thirteen-year-old girl.

She touched the outline of the item in the pocket of her nylon gym shorts and felt a flicker of hope. It had been so long since she’d possessed any hope at all that even a hint of the emotion caused a deep and abiding pain in her chest.

Parrot wasn’t driving. He’d gone ahead in a different vehicle. That was something. His long dreads made him look like the Predator from the movies and he had to be one of the meanest pimps in the known universe — at least that’s what Blanca said, and she was his favorite. And because she was his favorite, he’d chopped the shit out of her when she pissed him off — that’s what he called a whipping, getting chopped.

Didn’t nobody wanna get chopped by Parrot.

Magdalena had nearly fainted when she saw how bad he’d hurt his favorite, especially considering what she now carried hidden in her pocket. But Parrot had decided to let Reggie drive the girls home because he looked more like a college kid than a pimp and the cops wouldn’t hassle him so much. Reggie might have looked like a college kid, but he was almost as mean as Parrot. He was just sneakier about it.

The Chrysler’s leather seats were freezing and Magdalena wanted to ask Reggie to turn up the heat. It was cold outside and Parrot hadn’t told them they’d be going all the way south of Dallas, so she’d worn only her usual gym shorts and tank top. Reggie kept looking at her in the rearview mirror and licking his lips, so she decided to put up with the cold.

She’d hoped to see some stars on the drive back home, but Parrot told Reggie to stay in the city where the lights were bright and there was more traffic so the car would blend in. It was better for all of them, the pimp told Magdalena, because if he or Reggie got arrested, then they’d all get arrested. That’s the way cops did things in the United States. They arrested you and put you in with other whores who might have a sharpened toothbrush with them. He said those whores would stab you in the eye because they thought you looked more beautiful than they did. Parrot was mean, but Magdalena believed him because she’d seen girls who’d been stabbed in jail. They weren’t beautiful anymore, but she thought they probably had been, once.

She gave up on seeing any stars and let her head loll to the side so she could check on Blanca.

Her friend lay in the seat next to her, asleep now but breathing fitfully. She wasn’t much bigger than Magdalena, and one of her johns had gotten rough tonight and dislocated her shoulder. She’d bitten the man and Parrot had chopped her with the buckle end of his belt — probably broken some ribs to go along with her shoulder. That was how he taught them. Sleep in too long — feel the belt. Catch the clap from some guy for doing your job — get a couple shots of antibiotics, then get chopped because Parrot was pissed you let yourself get sick. Magdalena had gotten used to the sound of the last few inches of leather slithering out of the loops on the bastard’s jeans. Sure, the beat-downs left marks, but some men even got turned on by a few bruises. The doctor who gave them their shots sure as shit didn’t care.

And anyway, the doc was in on it, just like Reggie, the guy who looked like a college kid.

Reggie had offered to let Magdalena sit up front with him tonight and even choose the radio station. She’d declined, saying she wanted to rest — but no amount of rest was enough for the work she had to do at the bar tomorrow and the next day… and the day after that.

She looked at the sleeping girl beside her and shook her head. Pobrecita, poor little thing. Blanca had fallen into this life accidentally. She deserved pity. Magdalena was different. She had chosen this life — or, at least, that’s what her mother told her.

Jacó, Costa Rica, sprawled across the lap of the jungle-covered Talamanca Mountains at the mouth of the Gulf of Nicoya, faces the open waters of the Pacific. The picturesque village is famous for three things: incredible surfing, expatriate norteamericanos, and legal prostitution.

For most of his adult life, Miguel Rojas ran a small zip-line business that catered to affluent tourists. It did not make him wealthy, but Miguel could support his family and still have time to walk along the beach with his three daughters, including his favorite, Magdalena — until the cable parted and sent him plunging into the deep jungle gorge below. Miguel had not died immediately. There were many medical expenses, as well as the eventual cost of the funeral. His wife’s job cleaning rooms at the Hotel Cocal & Casino was not enough to cover the crushing weight of it all.

A month after the funeral, Magdalena’s mother sat her down and explained to her that as the eldest of the three Rojas daughters, it fell to Magdalena to “open her kitchen,” so the family could pay its debts and her younger sisters could continue to go to school.

Prostitution was not only legal in Jacó, but culturally sanctioned. Procreation recreation was, in fact, one of the driving forces of the local economy. Internet travel sites extolled the beauty and variety of the surfing and the young women. Cocaine was plentiful, as was rampant theft and street crime, but there was also good food, dancing, copious amounts of liquor, and hundreds of girls who worked the restaurants, clubs, and bars — without scary pimps looking over their shoulders.

These working girls made enough money during the tourist season that they had savings to spend during the lull, buying food, shopping for clothing, eating at local cafés, until the surfers — or men with more sinister motives — returned to the village. A girl who worked hard and didn’t get played into lowering her prices for handsome but hard-luck beach boys could make enough money to support a family and have a few nice things of her own.

At her mother’s prompting, Magdalena opened her kitchen four months before she turned thirteen. She didn’t look any older than she was. In fact, people often thought she was younger than her ten-year-old sister — but the men who hired her seemed to prefer it that way. The age of consent in Jacó was sixteen, but the authorities were more interested in catching speeders and they made it clear that they would leave the girls alone unless they were under twelve.

Magdalena looked like she was ten — and no policeman ever bothered her.

Opening her “kitchen” for business turned out to be grueling work, and she spent the first three weeks in constant tears. But a lot of money was coming in, and her mother told her she’d get used to it in time. That is what women did. They got used to it.

Magdalena entertained many men — but instead of a pimp, she had her mother to contend with. Where other girls went to the hair salon every two weeks and had someone else to do their nails, Magdalena’s mother insisted she paint her own nails and do her own hair. Other girls shared apartments and ate at cafés, but Magdalena took her meals at home and tried to sleep during the day while she listened to her sisters argue over their lessons or the handsome boys who talked to them at school.

Then Dorian had come to Jacó. He was a businessman with a kind smile. Magdalena was hanging out at a place called the Monkey Bar when she saw him. It was a slow night and he was handsome. He wore no wedding ring — she always added fifty dollars to her price if they had a wedding ring. She offered him an hour for a hundred American dollars. He made a counteroffer of five hundred for a three-hour date. She told him he was foolish, so he raised his offer to one thousand dollars a night — and they ended up spending the entire week together. She told her mother about him, but passed along only five hundred dollars to her each morning and kept the other five hundred in her shoe until she got to her room. At the end of the week, Dorian surprised her by asking if she wanted to go to the United States. She was beautiful enough to be a model and he would be willing to buy her some better clothes and be her manager. He said she could make a lot more money in the United States standing in front of a camera than she did in Jacó lying on her back.

Her mother smelled a fortune in the deal and signed a letter to the American immigration authorities allowing Magdalena to accompany their family friend, Dorian, to the United States on a short vacation. She made Magdalena promise to write every week and, of course, send a remittance home to help take care of her little sisters.

All had seemed fine on the airplane. People were still watching. But Dorian put on his wedding ring as soon as they reached Dallas. He hardly spoke to Magdalena at all, instead keeping her prisoner in a hotel at the edge of the city, while he did lines of cocaine and Oxy he bought from some guy in the next room. He took back the money he’d paid her in Jacó and never bought her any nice clothes. The only camera she ever saw was hooked up to the Internet, and he put her in front of that — a lot.

Dorian sold her to another man a week later, for enough money to pay for his entire vacation, including the money she’d given her mother, and then went back home to his wife.

Magdalena Rojas changed hands three times before being sold to Parrot, who already owned Blanca. She knew Parrot reported to someone else and probably gave him a piece of the money his girls brought in. He was mean, all right, but he didn’t seem smart enough to run a business by himself. Whoever that other person was, Magdalena never saw him. She was too busy staying alive.

The girls spent their days trying to sleep, and their nights bouncing between a biker bar and a couple different massage parlors in South Fort Worth.

Magdalena was nowhere near strong enough to give a decent massage, but she went through the motions for the guys that came to get massages — mongers, they called them. They got their fake massages, and then pretended the rest of it was all her idea.

Parrot or Reggie took them to the doctor every other Wednesday, where they got checkups and antibiotics. The doctor was old, with very cold hands, and Magdalena hated him even worse than she hated the stinking bikers or the mongers who came to the massage parlors. The doctor was supposed to be nice and only pretended to be.

Every so often, Parrot would get a call on one of his mobiles, and they would take a road trip in his Chrysler. Magdalena and Blanca had been to the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras and even the State Fair… well, cheap hotels near the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras, and the State Fair. The ceiling of one cheap motel room was much like any other, but at least she got a road trip, and sometimes they got to meet a few other girls.

Tonight, Parrot had set up a private event with a bunch of Asian guys somewhere south of Dallas. The event had gone long, and there was no traffic to speak of on the roads. Reggie was starting to get twitchy and drove slower than the limit. He kept his eyes glued to the road so he didn’t appear to be drunk.

Magdalena hoped he didn’t get them all arrested. She didn’t want to get stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush — especially not tonight.

She didn’t mind Asians, but her last guy of the night was an odd one. She’d been so tired, and incredibly sore by the time she got around to him. He must have noticed, because he said he only wanted to sleep. He’d paid for two hours and just talked to her until he fell asleep, ten minutes into his time. Sometimes guys all but passed out when they finished with her, and she would usually just be still and try to grab a little rest until Parrot banged on the door.

This guy was weird, and she wondered what he’d want her to do when he woke up. He’d talked about all kinds of stuff — the places he’d been, the dangerous stuff he’d seen — like he was a spy or something. Magdalena had been carried away by his fantastical stories. She’d lain there beside him staring at the ceiling until his breathing became more rhythmic and she knew that he was asleep. She began to wonder what it would be like to be a spy, and once the man began to snore, she slipped out of the bed and snooped through his small backpack. The pack contained some wadded clothing, a camera, and a bunch of papers she couldn’t read — messy for a spy. She wrinkled her nose when she saw the loose toothbrush among the dirty clothes, covered in hairs and tiny bits of lint. That was just nasty.

Magdalena had stolen things before, usually small amounts of money that the johns wouldn’t miss. She’d taken a watch once, but she’d been caught and Parrot chopped her bad for that. She’d never taken anything as useless as a thumb drive. She had no access to a computer, no way to know what information the device held. But she reasoned that if this man was indeed a spy, the contents of such a drive would be very valuable — and might keep the police from putting her in jail with the other whores if she got arrested. With her heart in her throat, she shoved the drive into the pocket of her short shorts and climbed back into bed. The odd man stirred, whispered something in her ear, and threw an arm over her shoulder. He woke from his two-hundred-dollar nap an hour later and shooed her out the door, pretending for Parrot that she’d been good at her job. Maybe he was nice, maybe he’d just been too tired to be cruel. Men were strange — and though she was only thirteen, Magdalena was old enough to know that she would never understand them.

She’d told Blanca about her odd spy. She even told her about the thumb drive. The other girl was smart enough but could never focus on important things.

Magdalena felt herself slide forward on the slick seat. Her heart lurched into her throat as the car turned off the main highway. Reggie got out and fooled with a chain a minute before pushing open a big iron gate. He sat behind the wheel again without speaking. The tires rumbled over a metal cattle guard.

Magdalena peered over the back of the seat and out at the headlights as they played across the deserted gravel road. She rocked back and forth, about to jump out of her own skin.

“Why are we stopping here?”

Reggie shrugged. “Parrot told me to drop you off.”

“And Blanca, too, right? You’re coming back?”

“Nope, sweetheart,” Reggie said. “Just you. She’s too banged up for this job.”

Magdalena could see the lights from the big house on the hill now. She’d never been here before, but she’d heard about it from Parrot when he was trying to scare her. If there was a spot worse than the massage parlors and biker bars where she worked, then this was sure as shit that place.

She began to sob. “But for how long?”

Reggie looked in the rearview mirror like he expected the tears. Every girl cried when they brought her here.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m just doin’ what Parrot tells me.”

Blanca was awake now. She too began to sob when she realized where they were.

“Are we…?”

Magdalena shook her head. “Not you,” she said. “Just me.” She took the thumb drive from her pocket and pressed it into her friend’s hand, careful not to let Reggie see what she was doing.

She whispered directly into Blanca’s ear.

“Take this.”

“I can’t,” Blanca said. “What if they find it on me? I’m hurt bad. I can’t get chopped no more. It would kill me.”

“Just take it,” Magdalena pleaded. “Stash it under my cot.”

“You keep it.”

Magdalena gave her friend’s hand a squeeze and nodded at the red-brick house. A dozen black lampposts fringed the circular driveway. The glow of pool lights illuminated the trees on the far side of the big garage. It was fancy, but that didn’t make what happened inside any less horrible.

“They’ll take away all my clothes,” she said. Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “You have to help me.” She curled Blanca’s fingers around the thumb drive and patted the girl’s fist. “This is important. I’m sure of it. Maybe it will even save us.”

Blanca’s mouth hung open as she stared at the huge house. The front door opened and a Hispanic woman in her early thirties walked out to stand under a brick archway in the porchlight. A white tank top barely concealed sagging breasts and a muffin top overflowed the waist of her skinny jeans. She held a twisted leather quirt made from a dried bull penis. The cruel thing even had a name, Ratón, or Mouse. It was as long as her leg, and it had the power to flay skin.

The woman’s name was Lupe and she was the bottom bitch here — what Parrot called the senior girl of any operation, the one who’d been around the longest, survived all the chopping, and somehow kept enough of her teeth to hold on to the boss’s affections. Some men wanted innocence, but those girls never got to be in charge. They were just kids, used until they broke and then thrown away. There were always more kids. It was the girls like Lupe who became the bosses, girls who exuded equal parts danger and sex — just enough to be interesting. Though she was small, Magdalena was constantly on guard against giving off too much danger. Not physically, but because she was smart — and that scared men more than anything.

Lupe leered at the car as they pulled up. She’d been through it all herself. She had to know how hard it was, but instead of understanding, she was vindictive and deceitful, enforcing the boss’s orders and using her position to keep the other girls in line. Fiercely jealous, she was known to apply her rawhide mouse with great effect to the back and legs of girls who didn’t obey her quickly enough — or simply for fun.

Chest heaving, choking on her sobs, Magdalena cringed as Lupe tapped the cruel whip against her leg. The terrible woman would go hard on her, since the boss had apparently asked for her specifically. Bottom bitches were always the cruelest to girls they thought might pose a threat to their status. Magdalena had often thought that if her mother had joined the life, she would have been the bottom bitch.

Blanca finally relented and took the thumb drive, stuffing it into her own pocket before Lupe could see. Sobbing in earnest now, she wrapped her arms around her friend, speaking without caring if Reggie heard her or not.

“What if you do not come back?”

Reggie flung open the door, ready to drag her out if she didn’t leave on her own.

Magdalena closed her eyes and whispered, “Then save yourself.”