The Trafficked

6

Angeles, Philippines

Fields Avenue, Friendship Road, Blow Row-on the surface, Angeles, a ramshackle town a few kilometres north of San Fernando and an hour’s drive north of Manila, had just a few filthy streets with mediocre restaurants and garish bars to offer the tourist. There was not a great deal to do-there was a nearby volcano to climb but no nice beaches. There was little reason to come to Angeles except for sex. The town was created for that purpose.

Angeles was born to service the needs of the men at the nearby American naval base at Clark. When the Americans were pushed out by the do-gooders, the priests and the nationalists who no longer wanted the Americans’ help or their military bases, the whores and the whorists were left with nowhere to go. The Colonel and a few others stepped in to save those communities, and from ‘disaster’ they created ‘opportunity’-a new Angeles was born, a Disneyland just for sex-a city of fallen angels. Now it was a major destination for every whorist and paedophile in the western world.

The Colonel sat with three other men on one of the four tables outside the Bordello on Fields Avenue. He paused, beer bottle pressed against his mouth, and watched Jed, a big black guy, swagger towards him, walking the walk, talking the talk, bling hanging from around his neck in layers of gold chain and a diamond crucifix. On his arm was a tiny Filipina named Peanut. Jed glanced the Colonel’s way, nodded his head respectfully, grinned at the other men and then swaggered on past into the Bordello.

The Bordello was like all the other bars and hotels down the avenue-a facade. From across the road, face on, it looked like a mock-up of a western saloon, but from the side it looked like a cardboard cut-out supported by a scaffold and attached to a windowless concrete block. It was situated three-quarters up Fields Avenue, before the road widened, branched out and the hotels began. They weren’t proper hotels. There were no five-star accommodations on Fields Avenue. Most hotels offered their rooms at an hourly rate.

The Colonel had called a meeting for eight o’clock in the Tequila Station. He had plenty of time till then. He drank his beer and surveyed his kingdom. In the thirty years he had lived in the Philippines, Angeles was where he’d always been. Firstly as a Chief Petty Officer stationed at the nearby American naval base at Clark, and latterly as the self-styled saviour of the city of fallen angels.

Brandon sat directly to the Colonel’s right, British, shaved head, ex-Marine, his voice thick with a Portsmouth dialect, akin to a gravelly cockney. He had tattoos of Chinese script on both his arms and an eagle stretched across his upper back. He was not a man to move hastily. He had learned to sit back and observe. It had kept him alive in the Marines; it would continue to keep him alive, as long as he never forgot it. Brandon had been with the Colonel for eighteen months now. His job was to control the women, make sure that the young ones stayed scared and compliant and that the others felt the back of his hand. Brandon had not found it easy in the beginning. Hitting women was not in Brandon’s nature, but he had got used to detaching his brain from the work. That’s all it was-work. They were merchandise. The Colonel liked him, he knew that. One day he wanted to take over from him. Of course, there were obstacles to that, and that’s why Brandon had to be good at waiting and watching.

Next to him was Reese, an Australian who was stuck in the seventies-a string of love beads around his neck and flowery board shorts on his skinny legs. His surfer’s curls that were once his pride and joy were now straw, and his once beautiful face was now thin and deeply lined. He sat cross-legged, swinging his suspended leg nervously and fiddling with his cigarette packet.

The fourth man called himself the Teacher.

A few westerners sat in the Bordello at the bar enjoying a late-afternoon beer. It was their lull time. The evening unfolded in a regular pattern. The needs of the whorists were always the same-eat, sleep and fuck-but they formed their own patterns according to their age. From lunchtime onwards the younger ones emerged in packs, tired and hung over. They needed food and a good few beers and to socialise with each other. They got rid of one date, sobered up and recharged themselves ready for another evening of heat and sweat and DNA exchange. The older whorists were loners, even if they had come along with another male they didn’t feel it necessary to stay with them all day and all evening. They sat at bars on their own, picked up a girl early. They were after a companion to have dinner with and spend the night snoring next to. They preferred the calm surroundings and the melancholy country music of the Bordello. They needed to pace themselves.

A barmaid named Comfort kept the energy circulating in the bar with a big smile and a substantial push-up bra. Her laugh ricocheted around the walls as she bantered happily with the three men who had nothing else to do but sit and watch her.

Comfort looked up as Jed and Peanut came in and she moved down to the end of the bar where the signing-in book was. She leaned over the book, pen ready.

Jed didn’t acknowledge the other men in the bar. He walked in as if he were on stage. He talked loud, laughed louder. He was showing the older men that he was a young stud.

‘You got a room for an hour, baby?’

He rested his elbow on the counter and leaned over to get close to Comfort and look further down her cleavage. He grinned smugly; his gold teeth flashed in the gloom of the bar. She grinned back. Peanut stood waiting patiently for it all to be over. She was an un educated girl from the countryside, and spoke very little English. She was unattractive: dark-skinned and rough-featured. Her scrawny legs dropped down from beneath a micro denim skirt like two sticks of gnawed liquorice. But Peanut was a hit with men who liked their women to look like undernourished girls. Jed towered over her at six foot four to her four foot nine.

Comfort flicked her hair back from her face and turned her large round eyes, as clear as amber marbles, towards Jed, ignoring Peanut altogether.

‘You go-in’ to need two hour, Big Boy.’

He raised an eyebrow and let out a laugh that boomed out across the bar. ‘Damn! Is that right? How come? You plannin’ on joinin’ us?’ He ran his hand down her forearm. ‘You want a repeat performance?’ He stroked the round of her breast as it rested on the signing-in book. ‘You missed me that much you want some more of the big man?’

Comfort looked up at Jed and bit her bottom lip playfully.

‘You spoil me. Give me ree-al good time larse time.’ She reached out and ran her fingers lightly down his chest to his crotch. She felt the muscles in his abdomen tense. ‘I’m go-in to have to give it to you for free, Big Man. You leave door unlock. I come up an’ party wid you. Okay?’

He grinned inanely. ‘Oh yeah, baby! Me and Peanut here are gonna be waitin’ for you.’

He flashed his teeth and clicked his tongue, placed his hand on Peanut’s tiny bottom and steered her towards the stairs at the far end of the bar. A door there led to the two floors of short-stay rooms. Above them slept the women who serviced those rooms. He turned back and winked at Comfort. She winked back, waited till he was out of sight then turned to look at the Colonel. He was watching her through the window. He tapped his watch at her. She nodded.