TRAFFICKED: A Mex Anderson Novel

by Peg Brantley

  Everything that’s happened to me is my fault. Maddy tried to tell me different and I didn’t listen. What did she know? I was so sure I’d found my Romeo.

  My thoughts circle around these words, making my stomach hurt.

  The door flies open.

  “I’ve set you up with three appointments,” Ian announces. “In between those, hit your track. Pull your weight. Your appointments aren’t enough and you know how unhappy I get when we don’t have enough.”

  “Are the appointments all for here?”

  “Yep. Your first up is in thirty minutes.” He looks at me. “Get ready. Except for being twelve, you look like shit.” Ian walks out of the room, not bothering to close the door. It swings closed but doesn’t latch. Anyone could walk in and kill me.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  Something inside of me cuts away. Cuts off.

  Cuts.

  I nod even though Ian is no longer there. “I’ll be ready.”

  What that means, I’m not exactly sure. I only know that going along with Ian saves me from getting punched. Or worse.

  Thirty-five minutes later there’s a knock at my door.

  I’m wearing the pink outfit Ian told me to wear tonight. I guess it makes me look young and fresh. Two things I’ll never feel again.

  When I open the door I’m prepared for anything. In a few days I’ve already seen a lot. I know a bad reaction can mean trouble for me later on so I focus on my face.

  Smile, Livvy. Smile.

  Standing in front of me is a man old enough to be my dad. Maybe even my grandpa. His face looks sad, but as I look at his eyes, I see his meanness. This will not be a quick and easy appointment. I’ll need to stay sharp and pay attention to avoid getting hurt. Badly hurt.

  I open the door wider. My smile stays on my face.

  “Welcome to your amazing experience,” I say as I’ve been coached. “My name is Desiree, and I’m here to fulfill not only your needs, but your fantasies as well.”

  The man moves into the room.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  The man glares at me then puts his fist through the wall.

  Rather than respond, I close my eyes and bow my head. I’ve learned that this is my go-to position when confronted with this amount of anger. I can hear him unbuckle his belt.

  I don’t automatically undress. I wait. I keep my eyelids closed and my face down. It’s my safest move.

  This guy is one of those johns who likes to tell me when I can do everything. Sort of like Ian.

  I might only be twelve, but I’m not stupid. I’ve learned a thing or two.

  “Undress,” he says gruffly. “But slowly.”

  * * *

  After I clean up I drag my butt out of the room. I pray for energy. I pray I can make enough money to keep Ian happy.

  I pray for something else to think about. Like figuring out how to get out of here.

  “Good,” Ian says as I exit the lobby. “I’ve got another appointment for you. Midnight.”

  A horrible taste shoots into my mouth. I work to swallow it back down. It burns. “Is it okay if I stop after that one?”

  “Why not? As long as you’ve made your quota. I’ll expect you to look better tomorrow. And remember, I’m watching you.”

  I walk out to the street.

  “Don’t you have something to say to me?” Ian asks.

  I swallow more of that bad tasting stuff that comes up my throat.

  “Speak up girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You owe me.”

  Don’t I always?

  The next few hours move by with same old, same old similarity. The other girls catch my mood. No one talks to me.

  How can it be same old, same old this fast? What happens in a month? A year?

  Maybe I’ll save those pills, pocket them or something, and swallow them all at once when I can’t take it anymore.

  I’m suddenly relieved, even as a tear slides down my cheek. I’ve finally figured out my way to get out of here even though I don’t want to think about it.

  It’s almost time for my last appointment. I’ll be able to go to sleep afterward, so I’m ready. Anxious even, to get this over with.

  There’s a light knock on my door. I panic and look at the clock. No, it’s not midnight. I’ve still got five minutes.

  The dim light in the hallway frames a small shape. A girl.

  She looks quickly in both directions then steps into my room and closes the door.

  Isabella. The girl from Guatemala.

  “Por favor. Please.” She’d used her one English word and continued in rapid Spanish. I understood enough simply looking at Isabella to see her panic. Her terror. She was asking, no, begging me to hide her.

  I put my arm around her. “Si, si.” I look around the tiny room. If someone’s looking for Isabella, they’ll look in the obvious places. The bathroom, the closet. She’ll have to go under the bed. I motion toward the tight space and she shoots me a look of gratitude.

  For a moment I feel like a hero until understanding filters through. If Ian finds out there’s no telling what he might do. We are totally breaking the rules.

  Isabella slides under the bed at the same time there’s a loud pounding at my door. Whoever’s there obviously doesn’t know he can just walk in. I open the door and a man bursts into the room.

  “Is she here?”

  I take it as a positive sign he didn’t ask where she is. We might make it through this.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The little spic bitch.” He lunges into the bathroom, angrily slamming the door against the wall.

  “You’re scaring me,” I say. And it’s true. This man is in a rage.

  “I could give a fuck. Is the little cunt here?” He tears the closet door off its hinges and throws it to the ground.

  “She’s not here, can’t you see?”

  A figure fills the doorway. “Do you seriously think I’ll be okay with you taking any of my time?” His voice is smooth and soft but threatening.

  The angry man whirls and takes a swing at the man behind him. Suddenly he’s face down on the floor with his arms pinned to his back.

  “Unless you want to leave here with something broken, I suggest you promise me right now that you’re going to get up and walk out of here like the gentleman you were never raised to be. If you don’t nod in the next three seconds, you’ll hear, and feel, something snap.”

  The man can’t nod enough.

  “Good. I’m going to let you up, but I’ll keep hold of you. I don’t trust you to know how a gentleman would act.”

  Another nod.

  Within seconds the crazy man is on his feet and out the door. When the door closes I’m suddenly terrified. What is this man going to do next? The phone Ian gave me is across the room. If I push a button, Ian will be here. At least that’s what he told me. He also told me that if I push the button and I’m not almost dead, I’ll wish I was.

  Adams County social workers and an FBI victim specialist interviewed the girl at the Innocence Lost Task Force Office, where she told them she had met Castillo over Facebook and that her father had told her to call Castillo “uncle.”… She also told the workers Castillo had sent her father, who lives in Mexico, money on several occasions and helped pay for her bus ticket from Las Cruces, New Mexico to the Denver area.

  —Records: Father sold girl, 15, to Thornton man for sex: girl now pregnant, by Ryan Luby and Blair Miller, for KMGH Channel 7, October 19, 2016

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  “Quickly, Livvy. Put this on.” Mex tossed Olivia a dark hoody.

  “Who are you? How do you know my name?” The young girl freezes. “Does Ian know you’re here? I should call Ian.”

  “I’m here to take you home. Do you want to go home?”

  Livvy nods, but doesn’t move.

  “The car we’re using is about a block away from here. I used another car to drive into this parking lo
t in case I was being watched, so don’t worry. We’ll leave out the back but we need to leave now.”

  Still Livvy doesn’t move.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  Mex spun around the room, checked the closet and yanked open the bathroom door. Empty. “What do you mean? Where?”

  Livvy looked toward the bed, then shook her head like she was trying to disguise her tell.

  Mex dropped to his knees and lifted the soiled bed skirt. Two frightened brown eyes met his gray ones. Latina, he thought. “Es bueno,” Mex said softly. “It’s okay. I’m here to help,” he continued in Spanish. “Come out.”

  Hesitantly, the young girl emerged from under the bed but she didn’t move to stand.

  “Get up,” Mex stood and offered his hand.

  “We need to take Isabella too,” Livvy says. “I can’t go without taking her. She’ll die if she doesn’t come with us.”

  Isabella tried to brush the dust and dirt and who knew what else from her clothing, but succeeded mostly in rubbing it in even more.

  “Do you have a hoody for her too?”

  Mex looked at the two young girls in front of him. “Isabella is an unexpected surprise, but I think I know how we can do this.”

  A minute later Mex popped his head out of the room and scanned the hallway in both directions. He nodded, held out his hand, and a second figure appeared next to him. They moved quickly down the hallway to the back entrance of the hotel.

  The sign on the door said it’s locked at ten o’clock, but Mex had checked at eleven-thirty and it was open. They shouldn’t sound any alarm as they moved through it. At least that’s what he hoped.

  He looked down at Livvy. “Be ready to run if an alarm sounds. If there’s no alarm, we’re going to just walk casually to my car. Do you understand?”

  Mex felt her squeeze his hand.

  He pushed the bar to open the door and held his breath.

  Nothing. It didn’t mean that an alarm didn’t sound somewhere else, but he’d begun to feel better about it.

  Holding Livvy’s hand, he angled across the parking lot in a beeline for the street. If we can get off the motel property, he thought, we might have a chance.

  The parking lot was filled with potholes. Litter tossed around them as dry desert gusts of wind swirled. The lighting at this end of the hotel was nonexistent. Dark shadows poured over their own shadows providing protection.

  “Hey there!” someone shouted. “Wait!”

  Mex had a split-second to decide. Should he tell Livvy to run? The wrong decision could mean the end of her chance to see her family again. The wrong decision could kill her.

  He held Livvy’s hand tightly in his own and turned. “Yes?”

  “Your daughter dropped this.” The man held out a tube. Mex indicated that Livvy take it.

  The man looked suspiciously at the obviously dissimilar adult and child.

  “Thanks,” Mex said.

  “Hey, I know what my kid would do if she lost her lip gloss.”

  “Step-kid,” Mex said. “You saved me, buddy. Thanks again.”

  Mex turned and they continued toward the street. He’d come that close to blowing everything for the sake of a tube of pale pink lip gloss.

  Once they’d exited the motel property and had walked a few yards on the sidewalk, Mex let go of Livvy’s hand and opened his coat. Isabella dropped her feet to the ground.

  “We’re not safe yet,” he said in Spanish and then English for Livvy. “Hurry.”

  The trio hustled up the block and Mex pulled a fob out of his pocket. The unlocking noise sounded loud in the post-midnight quiet of the block.

  When the girls were in the back seat, Mex climbed in front and started the engine. “Livvy, get your seatbelts on and stay down as low as possible. If anyone’s watching, it’s only a man driving home from a late night.”

  He found his cell and thumbed the phone. He waited. “I’ve got them. We’re on our way to the airport.”

  “Them?” Cade asked.

  Mex had forgotten Isabella wasn’t part of his mission.

  “Them who?” Cade asked again.

  “We have what you might call a stowaway. Can you call the airline and make a third reservation?”

  “Okay. What’s her name?”

  “Isabella.”

  “Isabella what?”

  Mex caught his breath. He didn’t know her last name. He arched his head to ask her, then changed his mind. “Isabella Anderson.”

  “What?” That one word coming from his lover conveyed many more questions underneath.

  “Let’s go with that name for now. Like what, they’re gonna ask for ID?”

  “The first time I was trafficked, I was five years old. I was handcuffed to a truck stop bathroom, and I was raped and sodomized for six hours, and given cocaine and alcohol,” said Elam…. “The way he kept my silence was he told me that if I said a word, he would kill my mother,” Elam remembers.

  —11 Call for Action Investigation: Human Trafficking in Southern Colorado, by Danielle Kreutter

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  LIVVY

  I’m home. I’m really home. My mom and dad practically shove people aside at the airport to get to me. I know they hugged me before, but they never hugged me like they’re hugging me now. They never hugged me hard, laughed and cried at the same time. They never hugged me and couldn’t get their breath.

  Sarah and Ethan stand awkwardly to the side until I wave my hand toward them. Suddenly we’re this big lump of arms and heads and backs and people, all of our body parts are flopped together and perfect. All of us are crying.

  I wouldn’t care if time froze.

  Perfectly loved at this moment, they don’t know how horrible I am. Perfectly loved, they don’t know what I’ve done. They love me so much they can’t get their breath.

  They won’t love me when they know. When they know, they’ll gasp and let me go.

  A woman comes up to us, wraps her arms around our huddle, and then steps back.

  “My name is Cade LeBlanc,” she says. “You don’t know me, Livvy, but I know a lot about you. Your family trusts me, and I’m hoping you can too.”

  “Do you know Mex?”

  “I do.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s resting right now.”

  “And Isabella? Where’s she?”

  “She’s being looked after. She’s safe, thanks to you.”

  “Me and Mex.”

  Cade smiles. “Yeah. Thanks to you and Mex.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Right now we’re going to take you to the hospital to make sure you’re okay. You won’t be alone, I promise.”

  Cade reaches out and hugs me again. “You’re so brave.” She squeezes my arm. “Would it be okay with you to talk to someone from the Aurora Police Department? Her name is Elizabeth Rider and she’s nice. Plus, I have a friend who’s been through what you’ve been through. If it’s okay with you, I’d like you to talk to both of them. And of course your mom and dad can be there too.”

  “Someone who’s been through what I’ve been through?”

  “Yep. Her name is Rachel.”

  “Will you stay?”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “Do you know my friend Maddy?”

  “I’ve met Maddy.”

  “When can I see her?”

  “Let’s get to the hospital first, then talk to the police. Later, if you’re not too tired, we’ll bring Maddy to you. I’m sure she’s excited to see you again.”

  “She was right, you know.”

  “Right? About what?”

  “About Ian.”

  “Let’s take this a step at a time, shall we? And sweetheart, we all make mistakes. We’ve all trusted the wrong person.

  “But I trusted the wrong person in a big way.”

  “Yeah, you did. But you’re not the first person to do that. You’re not alone. Not t
hen, and definitely not now.”

  I wonder if I should trust her, but she knows Mex. And I wouldn’t be here without him.

  “Okay. I’ll talk to the police. But can it only be my mom who stays? I’m not ready for my dad.”

  Cade looks at my dad. He looks sad but he nods.

  “Sure, if that’s what you want,” Cade says.

  My dad comes up and holds me close. “Whenever you’re ready for me, Livvy, I’m here.”

  I can only nod.

  Backpage claims to combat human trafficking, saying that it screens posts for illegal activities. But a subcommittee investigation says Backpage actually aids sex traffickers by helping to shield them from detection.

  For instance, the Senate investigators found Backpage screens posts before they appear online, and the site removes key words from ads that could tip off law enforcement officials to illegal activity.

  —Supreme Court refuses to block Backpage subpoenas in sex trafficking investigation, by Jackie Wattles, for CNN, September 2016

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  JAYLA

  Daddy says we’re moving on in a couple of days unless business picks up. There’s a big convention in Salt Lake next week.

  I smile inwardly at the irony of hoping for more sexual encounters with strange men so I can stay in Denver. So I can breathe familiar air, see familiar buildings and mountains and… well, never mind.

  My last appointment was one of those guys who plays all macho until the moment. Then it’s over, he’s embarrassed, you say nice things to him to stroke his ego and bring him back because he’s the john all girls want, and then he’s gone. You’ve either got time for yourself or time to hit your track again if you haven’t made quota.

  Well, I’ve got more than enough money to keep Daddy happy and my appointment is over early, so I slip out of the room. Ginger is asleep on a chair in the lobby, undoubtedly thinking she can catch a few zees while I finish my last trick. It would be so easy to walk out the door and keep on walking. In a strange city, I wouldn’t know where to go. In Denver? I have options.