The Trafficked

14

The Colonel walked down the street, surveying his kingdom. For most people it was difficult to negotiate the cracked and uneven pavement, but the Colonel knew every inch of it and never needed to look down to know what was there. The Shabu did that to him. The methamphetamine speeded up his reactions, made him super alert and gave him a feeling of elation and euphoria. It also heightened his perception of the world, peeling away the layers of reality like skins from an onion. He could take in and analyse every movement on the periphery of his vision. He floated along the street, watching everything and knowing all around him from the cockroach hiding behind the pipes in his bathroom, to the bartender stealing money from his till.

An old beggar woman, ghostly and barely more than a skeleton, stepped out of the Viagra sellers doorway where she lived, one arm outstretched and her hand open. She was swaying with the effort of keeping herself upright. She did not see that it was the Colonel until it was too late. For a minute he poised, hand raised to hit her as he had so many times, push her back into the alleyway to rot amongst the starving kittens and rat-bitten puppies, but, as she gasped, waiting for the blow, he didn’t do it because he saw that today she wanted it. She was hoping today would be her last. He stayed his hand, lowered his arm and dipped into his pocket. He threw some coins on the ground beside her. If the Colonel wanted her alive, alive she must stay. He was God on Fields Avenue.

He stepped over the pile of dog excrement and passed the schoolgirls touting outside The Honey Pot. Two girls were being measured for their GRO outfits. The girls rolled their eyes towards the mosquito drivers and giggled suggestively at the tailor, who was taking their measurements from waist to crotch.

The Colonel stopped outside the shop. The tailor bowed respectfully, the mosquito riders pretended to clean their bikes and the girls smiled sweetly.

‘Evening, sir,’ they chorused. He didn’t answer.

He walked on into the Tequila Station. He looked around. He was reassured all was as it should be-no unwelcome surprises, not for him anyway. Sophia looked up as he approached the table and smiled, but it wasn’t at the Colonel, she had learned not to look at him at all. He scared her with his red eyes and angry face. She was smiling because her favourite song had come back on the jukebox and now she could happily take no notice of the men whatsoever.

‘La La La. Love Love Love. Kiss Kiss Kiss Me.’

The Colonel always sat in the same place. He had the biggest vantage point. He sat facing his men, back to the wall, with a view to the bar and the street beyond. Nothing happened that he did not see. He looked around his assembled men and smiled.

He splayed his fingers out and rested the palms of his large hands on the table. They trembled without him realising. Almost as if he were a psychic about to go into a trance, his breathing was laboured. He sucked the air noisily in through his mouth and blew it dramatically out. Ever since he was a child he had been aware of his breathing. He had been a tall and gangly child and soon outgrew the cupboards where he hid from his daddy on a Saturday night when he heard him coming back from the bars-all fuelled up and no one to stop him hurting his son. Then, as the child squeezed into the small spaces, his knees pressed up against his chest, listening in the darkness for heavy footsteps, his breaths were quick and short and shallow. There was never enough room in the cupboards for him to breathe properly. So now, whenever he felt under stress, he filled his lungs right up; felt them expand as he opened out his rib cage, straightened his back, sat up erect: tall, strong and proud. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never fill them right up. They were always a bit squashed, a bit stuck together. The more he thought about it, the more obsessed he became and so the noisier was his breathing. Terry knew it. He’d seen the Colonel this way many times. At the moment, with all the stress and excitement, the Colonel was fully wound up and on the edge of exhaustion. He was continually hyperventilating. The Shabu wouldn’t let him rest. The more hyper he was, the more Shabu he snorted.

‘I have gathered you here because I have news on the shape of things to come: changes that will affect us all here in Angeles, in our world. In the kingdom that I created. Christ!’ He banged his palms on the table. Sophia tutted as her crayons rolled off onto the floor. She scrambled under the table to pick them up. ‘I shaped this place. From a scruffy little nothing that provided comfort to servicemen on the Clark military base, I turned it into a world-famous sex resort.’ He looked at the men around the table. They stared back. Nobody was going to disagree with the Colonel, especially when he was in psycho mode. His face was rubbery and feverish. His eyes were the colour of a raspberry split. He licked his dry lips continually. He was as jittery as a fly.

‘For some time I have been telling you about a man who will change things around here; a man who is going to help us turn this place into a five-star paradise. Blanco is coming. Today he sent us a show of faith.’

There was a general look of confusion and concern around the table. The Colonel’s surprises were seldom nice.

‘He has proved to me that he is committed to us. Now, this man wants you all to join him. This is our chance to go global. We can take our empire to the four corners of the world and make millions, or we can stay here in our small kingdom and count our pennies. He offers you the hand of friendship.’

‘He can stick his hand up his own arse,’ said Laurence, and looked at the others for support. Reese sniggered whilst Brandon sat stony-faced, watching and waiting. Laurence grinned and gave a deep chuckle. Terry glared at Reese. Reese, feeling suitably chastised for sniggering, went back to flicking his cigarette packet.

‘We ain’t givin’ up nuttin’,’ said Laurence. ‘We got a good thing goin’ here, don’t we?’

The Colonel swivelled his head round towards Laurence and smiled his ‘nearly smile’.

‘Pro-tec-tion,’ he over-enunciated. ‘Should this world of ours need defending we will have a mighty army at our disposal. We have the government, for Christ’s sake-you can’t get much bigger than that.’

Laurence gave a snort of derision. Brandon stared at him. Terry couldn’t believe that the big guy wasn’t going to shut up. Reese stopped his twirling. Even he knew that the Colonel wanted an audience and wasn’t asking for feedback.

‘We don’t need no fuckin’ protection. Who’s gonna fuck wid us here?’ Laurence tried to redeem himself. ‘In our own fuckin’ country? We own Angeles.’

Terry looked at the Colonel, who merely stared at Laurence and waited for him to dig himself a bigger hole.

‘Excuse me, boss, I mean you own Angeles, and we work for you,’ he said, backtracking as fast as he could.

The Colonel always prized himself on being a good judge of character. He trusted these men in so far as he knew their limits and knew their price. Reese was stupid but predictable. Brandon was a thug. Terry was clever. But Laurence was sneaky. He had become a little pre mature in his ambitions. Laurence was not to be trusted-the worst of all sins.

Terry spoke up. ‘Get smart here. This is no minor league. Blanco heads a syndicate so powerful that it will wipe all others off the board and we’ll be part of it. Not just a part-we are key to its success, right, Colonel? We have been offered the chance of running the whole of Angeles, Olongapo, Cebu and Puerto Galera just the way we want. We will take out all opposition; wipe it off the board. We will set up new trafficking routes, build hotels and bars up and down the islands. The whole of the Philippines will be controlled by one syndicate and…’

‘AND…’ The Colonel turned back to Laurence with not even a nearly smile on his face. His eyes were piercing. ‘If you are not for Blanco, you are against him and us.’

‘Colonel, I didn’t mean…’

The Colonel silenced him with his raised hand.

‘I know what you meant. I know everything. When you came here you were a bum with nothing but pussy and beer on your mind. I gave you all that you wanted. You sit here in your fancy clothes that I paid for and you question my authority?’

The Colonel was spraying the table with spit. Sophia had stopped her crayoning to watch the patterns it made as it landed on the table.

Laurence shrugged and shook his head. He looked hastily around the table and realised he was on his own.

‘I don’t question it, boss. Just want to be sure, that’s all. I like things the way they are.’

‘Do you? You’re happy with what you have, are you, Laurence, not thinking of branching out on your own?’

Panic flitted across Laurence’s face.

‘No way, boss.’

‘Sure,’ said Terry. ‘We have a good life here. But there’s always more. We stick together and we can achieve it. Is that right, Colonel?’

The Colonel relaxed. He could always rely on Terry. Terry was a shrewd businessman like himself. Terry was the brains in Angeles. The Colonel looked at each man in turn.

‘Now it’s our turn to prove ourselves to Blanco. We can’t afford to make mistakes. We are supposed to be professionals, not fucking amateurs. We were given a job. All we had to do was get the women to the UK and liaise with the Chinese, then we would get our money.’ He turned his head slowly towards Brandon and Laurence. ‘What happened in London was a major error. It looked bad…very bad…We looked like fucking arseholes.’

Brandon stared back at the Colonel. Laurence looked around the table nervously. Sophia picked up Princess Pony and held it up to her face and stared at Laurence through the pony’s pink mane. Sweat was overflowing from Laurence’s frown lines and trickling down the side of his face. Sophia was watching a big droplet form at the end of his nose and she was counting the seconds it took to drop.

‘What did happen in London, Laurence?’

Laurence flashed a look at Brandon. Brandon kept his eyes glued on the Colonel. Sophia giggled as the sweat drip landed on the table.

‘We was caught out, is all. They caught us unawares.’

‘How “unawares” exactly?’

‘One of the women needed teachin’ a lesson-causin’ trouble. I was busy, didn’t see them comin’.’

‘And where were you, Brandon, when this punishment was being handed out?’

‘I was called to a meeting with the Chinese, sir.’

Terry and Reese looked at one another. Everyone around the table knew the truth. It had been Laurence’s cock-up, his fault. He had been left in charge of maintaining a watch over the women. He had been too busy sampling the merchandise.

Laurence’s phone vibrated on the table. Laurence picked it up and read a text message.

‘I have to use the john.’

‘Anything the matter?’ asked the Colonel.

‘Nothin,’ answered Laurence. ‘Be back in five.’

He got up and walked across to the flight of stairs that led down to the toilets and the lower floor. The Colonel had the ‘nearly smile’ glued to his face as he turned his head first to the right, then the left.

‘And where is Jed?’ He drummed his fingers on the table.

Laurence walked past the seating area and the dance floor. A few couples were getting ready to party, a few others were just getting drunk. He read the text again. Meet me in the john. I need to speak to you.

Something about the text bothered him. A text wasn’t just a text. You could tell who it was from by the way they phrased it. Did they use predictive? Did they abbreviate? The Filipinos were the fastest texters in the world, but Laurence’s friend wasn’t. He made mistakes. This text was perfect. Too perfect.

Laurence walked into the toilet area-the urinals, the two toilets with their half doors that never hid a big guy like him. Empty. Nothing unusual, just the foot bath was missing, that was all. They were clean people, these Filipinos, always washing their feet.

The Colonel looked at each man in turn.

‘Any ideas where Jed is?’

Brandon looked uncomfortable. He didn’t like surprises-‘be prepared’ was his motto. He kept his eyes on the Colonel. Reese looked at Terry. Terry glared back and shook his head as if to say don’t even thinkabout opening your mouth.

‘We are getting sloppy. Some people are making mistakes.’ The Colonel’s eyes rolled backwards, his fingers floated above the table. ‘The time of reckoning is upon us…’

Sophia placed Princess Pony back on the table and silently mimicked the Colonel.

Laurence pushed the back door. It was stuck. There was something against it-a weight blocking it. He shoved it, a small sharp push. It moved. Four small shoves then it was open. Gun in hand, he looked out to the alleyway beyond. Nothing. Then he looked at his feet. There was the missing foot bath. He stood for a few seconds as his eyes made sense of what he saw. Jed’s head was in it, the top of his skull blown away. His eyes were shut, his mouth hung open and his balls were inside it.

Laurence tasted the bile as it surged into his mouth. Adrenalin flooded his system; his legs began to give way. He turned. The Teacher was waiting right behind him. He held the gun against Laurence’s heart, smiled and fired.

The Colonel sat upright. Sophia opened her mouth, held her breath, watched the Colonel and waited, ready to say it.

‘The time of deliverance is at hand…’ They spoke in unison.