by Madyson Grey
“I don’t know what to say,” Lena said, tears threatening to spill over again.
“Say ‘I love you kids’,” Rafael instructed.
“I love you kids,” Lena parroted obediently.
“And we love you, too,” Rafael said as he leaned around Victoria to pat Lena’s hand.
“I don’t know about you two ladies, but I’m starved,” Rafael said. “It’s past my suppertime.”
Lena looked at her watch and gasped. “I should say it is past suppertime. Oh, my. I don’t have anything planned for this evening. What do you two want?”
“What say we take you out for dinner tonight?” Rafael said. “Sort of a celebratory dinner to celebrate this secret being revealed at last.”
“Great idea, babe,” Victoria said. “Where shall we go?”
“Lena, where have you always wanted to go out to eat, but never did?” Rafael asked.
“Oh, my. I don’t know,” Lena said, her brow furrowed in thought. “Let me think a minute.”
“You decide while I go to the bathroom,” Victoria said.
Rafael went out to the kitchen to get a drink of water while Lena wracked her brain trying to figure out where she’d like to go. A few minutes later the three met again in the family room to see what Lena had decided.
“Well, where shall it be?” Victoria asked.
“Since I can’t think of anything on the spur of the moment, and since it is getting late, let’s just go into Westlake Village to a place I spotted the other day when I was out by myself. It looked like a nice place. I can’t think of the name of it, but I remember where it is. Hopefully it will be a good place.”
“If that’s what you’d like to do, it works for me,” Rafael said. “Let’s get going.”
“Give me a couple of minutes to go get ready,” Lena said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Victoria added.
The two women went off in different directions, each to their own rooms to comb their hair, check their makeup, and the other little things women have to do to get ready to go places. In five minutes they were ready to go.
Rafael drove into town and then followed Lena’s directions to the restaurant she had in mind. It turned out to feature Mediterranean foods, which was new to all three of them. They had fun figuring out what to order and then hoping they would like what they’d ordered.
It was a good meal, and the three of them discussed all the pros and cons of Lena staying or getting her own place. They also talked about what Rafael had in mind for the 205 acres and two houses that he would purchase later that week. Rafael offered one of the houses to Lena. She would be close, but not right in the house with the newlyweds. She would think about it.
Chapter Two
Tuesday morning before Rafael and Victoria set out for their second day’s inspection tour, Rafael called Doug Bush, the real estate agent. After the customary pleasantries, he got right down to business.
“We would like to buy that two hundred and five acres and the two houses,” he said. “When can we meet?”
“Great!” Doug said. “I’m free for the next hour or so. Does that work for you?”
“Sure, I can do that,” Rafael answered. “Do you want me to come to your office?”
“Yes, that would be best,” Doug said.
“I’ll go to the bank first and get a cashier’s check. Was twenty-four five acceptable?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” Doug said.
Forty-five minutes later Rafael and Victoria were seated in Doug Bush’s office signing papers that deeded them the acreage and two homes that adjoined their new home. As soon as Rafael signed his name in all the right places, he slid the papers over to Victoria for her to sign.
“Say, how would you like to list Victoria’s former home?” he asked Doug, as the thought occurred to him. “That’s OK with you, isn’t it, honey?”
“Of course,” Victoria said. “It’s a great idea.”
“Sure, I could take it on,” Doug said. “I’ll need to go take a look at it, take some photos, and so on. When can we do that?”
“Well, our schedule is flexible. When are you free? Probably take a couple hours or so, including drive time,” Rafael said.
Doug consulted his day planner.
“Looks like I won’t have a block of time free until Thursday afternoon around four. Is that good for you?”
“Yeah, we can do that,” Rafael said.
Victoria jotted down the time in her day planner as Doug penciled it in, in his.
“Well, I think we’re done here,” Doug said as he closed his day planner and stood up.
Rafael and Victoria stood, too, and they shook hands with Doug, thanking him for his service.
“We’ll see you Thursday afternoon,” Rafael said as they started to leave.
After leaving the real estate office, Rafael and Victoria drove to the first office building that they planned to inspect that day. The building was one of their largest in LA. At twenty-three stories tall, plus a basement that was divided into a dozen apartments, it housed a variety of professional offices, such as lawyers, optometrists, psychiatrists, stock brokers, marriage counselors, and so on. The ground floor units housed several retail establishments—a beauty salon, a smoke shop, a jewelry store, and a gentlemen’s club.
Rafael parked the Chrysler in the parking lot off the back alley. He asked Victoria for the folder for this building. He wanted to look at it before they went inside, just to familiarize himself with the building. David Thornton had included a floor plan for each building he owned in its folder. It was a very helpful tool.
He held the floor plan so Victoria could see it, too, and they studied it for a few minutes until they felt comfortable navigating around in it. They spent the next hour and a half visiting each business and talking with each business owner. They also met with the building superintendent and discussed maintenance issues.
Last of all, they took the elevator to the basement to check out the apartments. They knocked on each door, introduced themselves to each tenant, and told them if they had any unresolved issues to contact them at the number on the business card.
The last apartment they came to was, according to the floor plan, the largest one. It was shown to have three bedrooms, while most of them had only one or two bedrooms. The man who answered their knock was a large, swarthy man who opened the door just a crack and asked who they were in a rather brusque tone.
Victoria was somewhat intimidated, but not Rafael. He had grown up in a different neighborhood than Victoria had. He introduced himself and Victoria as the building owners in a somewhat more forceful tone than he had been using. It worked on this man who suddenly opened the door a little wider and put a smile on his face.
“I am Antonio Cantu,” he said, extending his hand. “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Rivera. Mrs. Rivera.”
“Pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Cantu,” Rafael said, shaking hands with him. “We are just checking in with each tenant in our building to make sure that everything is all right and that there are no serious problems. The former owner has passed away, and the ownership has passed down to us. Mrs. Rivera here is the daughter of the late owner.”
“My condolences on your loss, Mrs. Rivera,” Mr. Cantu said with just the right degree of sympathy and a brief lowering of his eyes.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“Everything here is just fine, Mr. Rivera,” Mr. Cantu said. “But thank you for coming by.”
“You’re welcome,” Rafael said. “If you have any problems that the building superintendent can’t solve, just give me a call. Here’s my card.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Cantu said. “Goodbye now.”
“Goodbye,” both Rafael and Victoria said together.
They rode the elevator back up to the ground floor. When they got back to the car, Rafael put the key into the ignition, then just sat there.
“What’s the matter, babe?” Victoria asked.
“I don’t know,” Rafael s
aid, wrinkling his brow. “Something just didn’t set right with me at that last apartment. Antonio Cantu. He sure didn’t want us to come inside. He was keeping the door at just the right angle so we couldn’t see something.”
“There was a peculiar odor coming from the room,” Victoria said. “And where I was standing, I could see a mirror on the wall. There was a woman’s reflection in it. An Asian woman.”
“Really? I didn’t see that. I did kinda get a whiff of something odd. I figured it was just his cologne or something.”
Rafael and Victoria looked at each other in puzzlement.
“Make a note of this in the folder,” Rafael told Victoria. “We may pay Mr. Cantu another visit before long. I have a funny feeling about him.”
“Well, it’s not unheard of for a man to have a woman in his apartment,” Victoria said in a practical tone of voice. “And just because she’s Asian and he’s Italian doesn’t mean a thing. Do we know how many people are supposed to be living in that unit?”
“It should say there in the folder. The rental agreement should be in there,” Rafael said.
Victoria thumbed through the stack of papers that the folder contained. Down near the bottom she found what she was looking for and pulled it out from the rest of the stack.
“Here it is,” she said, skimming over the information written there. “Only one person, Antonio Cantu. Funny one man would want a three-bedroom apartment all to himself. He’s paying three hundred dollars more a month rent for that three-bedroom than he would for a one-bedroom.”
“It is odd, but to each his own, I guess,” Rafael said as he turned the key and started the engine. “I may run a background check on him when we get home.”
“Good idea,” Victoria said.
After lunch they decided to go do the shopping mall over in Long Beach. It was a lovely afternoon and they planned to go walk on the beach for a little while after completing the mall inspection.
The mall was an ell-shaped two-story strip mall. They started in the mall office with the manager, introducing themselves to her. Then they visited each store and business. The last one, a unit on the west end of the ground level was an adult bookstore. They both raised their eyebrows when they saw what the business was.
“I wonder if Daddy knew that this place is here,” Victoria said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not real comfortable renting to a business like this.”
“I’m not either, but at this point, since they’re here, we have no grounds to evict them until they give us a reason,” Rafael said. “You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll stay out here,” Victoria said. “No, on second thought, I am going in. It’s my duty and I won’t shirk it just because I’m repulsed by the place.”
“OK, but you can slip out any time you want,” Rafael said, opening the door.
They went inside and asked the clerk at the counter for the manager. The clerk summoned him and Rafael gave him the same spiel he was giving everyone else. Then he told the manager that he was going to tour the premises. The manager looked a little nervous, but had no choice but to let him.
“Are you sure the lady wants to see the whole place?” he asked Rafael.
“The lady can decide that for herself,” Rafael responded.
“The lady will inspect her property,” Victoria said firmly.
They walked through the sales floor, and down a narrow dark hall that had cage-like rooms on either side. They were all curtained, so they couldn’t see inside of them, but they could guess what one might see if the curtains were opened.
“Is this actually legal?” Victoria questioned.
“Is what legal?” the manager hedged.
“Prostitution,” Victoria said.
“No prostitution happens here,” the manager said.
“Then what’s behind these curtains?” she probed.
“Just a woman who does a strip tease. Any customer who makes a minimum purchase in the store of fifty dollars or more, and so wishes, can come back here and observe a strip tease for free. No prostitution whatsoever,” the manager affirmed.
“If you say so,” Victoria said in a doubtful tone of voice.
When they came to the end of the hall, there was a back door that led out into a small parking area and the back alley. There was also a door on either side of the hallway. Victoria wanted to know what was behind those doors.
“This is the entrance to each of the cages,” the manager told her. “The girls enter here, and then walk down a narrow passageway to enter their own cubicle. There is also a small restroom back there for the girls’ use. One on each side.”
“Is anyone in there now?” Rafael wanted to know.
“No, the girls don’t come in to work until five o’clock. Then they work until one in the morning. That’s eight hours with a one-hour lunch break,” the manager explained.
“I guess that’s enough for now,” Rafael said as he turned around in the hallway to go back out the way they had come in.
He was definitely unimpressed with the sordidness of this type of business, but as he had told Victoria earlier, he couldn’t evict the business without good cause. The fact that they didn’t approve of that type of business was not good cause in the eyes of the law.
Back in the car, Victoria made notes in the folder about their visit. Then she asked Rafael, “Did you notice the trap door in the floor at the end of the hallway in there? You know, back there between the cages at the back door?”
“No, I didn’t see that,” Rafael said. “You and the manager were standing ahead of me, and it was kinda dim in there, so I didn’t notice the floor. Why?”
“Just had me curious, that’s all,” Victoria said. “I wonder if anything shows on the floor plan for this mall.”
She rifled through the paperwork on the mall until she came to the floor plan. It wasn’t an official blueprint, but it was an exact to-scale drawing of the complex. Together, they pinpointed the storefront they had just come out of. There were three elevations of drawings: the upper floor, the ground floor, and the under workings of the building.
Underneath the mall building was a space not big enough to be designated a basement, but big enough for a man to get around in to take care of any issues with the plumbing that was exposed down there, the electrical, and other utilities. There were only two ways in and out of the underground maintenance area: one was a stairway that went down out of the mall’s office, and the other was an outside entrance at the west end of the mall. Right beside the adult bookstore.
“Well, I don’t see anything out of order,” Rafael said. “Except that now I’m curious about that trap door. It’s not shown on any of these drawings. But then, those cages aren’t shown, either. This is just the floor plan. Store owners put up walls and take them down at will in malls like this.”
“I guess we’ll not worry about it for now,” Victoria said with a sigh. “I just hate that kind of business and would like to find an excuse to evict them. I like sex as much as anybody does, but a business like this just cheapens it, as far as I’m concerned. I feel sorry for the girls who work in there.”
“It’s a choice they make,” Rafael reminded her. “They could choose another job.”
“Not necessarily,” Victoria said. “I read a magazine article about strippers and hookers a year or so ago. It said that some girls do it because it pays way more than they can make doing anything else, and they are doing it to put themselves through college. It also said that some are forced into the sex trade by their drug dealers, who are also pimps. It is a form of slavery—sex slavery. If they try to escape, their lives are threatened, so they just stay until they can find a way out.”
“Some of the guys used to talk about that in the locker room in high school,” Rafael said, remembering. “But I thought that they were just mouthing off. I couldn’t imagine anyone being a slave in the United States in this day and age. But maybe so.”
Rafael started th
e car, put it in reverse, and slowly began to back out of the parking space.
“Shall we call it a day and go walk on the beach for awhile?” he asked.
“Works for me,” Victoria said, flashing a flirty little smile at him.
They drove down to the beach, found a parking place, and got out. While they were en route, Victoria had exchanged her dressy sandals for a pair of flip-flops to wear in the sand. The place they had chosen to stop at wasn’t too far from an area where large ocean-going vessels docked and loaded or unloaded their wares.
Rafael had slung a pair of binoculars over his shoulder that he kept in the car and was using them to look out to sea, and at the ships and dock areas across the channel from where they were. After he had used them for a minute or two, he handed them to Victoria for her to have a turn.
She looked through the binoculars for a couple of minutes, took them away from her eyes, and then put them back up to take a second look at something across the channel.
“What do you see?” Rafael asked her.
“I’m not sure,” she said in a puzzled tone. “It looks like a bunch of people coming out of one of those big shipping containers over there.”
“Let me see,” Rafael said, reaching for the binoculars.
Victoria handed them to him and pointed in the direction he should look. He looked for a long moment, watching what seemed to be a bunch of people spilling out of a blue shipping container. From this distance he couldn’t be sure, but they looked to be all women. Illegal immigrants? From where? It was hard to tell at this distance, but he thought their clothing might be Asian, or possibly Indian.
“Curious, isn’t it?” Victoria asked.
“Sure is,” Rafael responded, still holding the binoculars to his eyes.
The people all walked away out of range of Rafael’s binoculars, so he took them away from his eyes, and, taking Victoria’s hand, they began to walk as close to the edge as they could get. It was a beautiful afternoon, and they enjoyed a long walk. There were a couple of interesting little shops that Victoria wanted to explore, so Rafael patiently tagged her through them, trying to admire all the little trinkets that she admired. Stuff like that wasn’t nearly as interesting to him as it was to her.