by Don Winslow
Esteban hands the last girl down and then starts to climb in.
Dave stops him.
“You're not on the list, pacheco. ”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Turn the boat around and take it back to Mexico,” Dave says. “What do you usually do?”
“I can't go back,” Esteban says.
“Why not?”
Esteban hesitates, then says, “I killed Juan Carlos. He was going to leave them out here.”
“Get in.”
Dave works his way to the aft of the boat.
There's no place for him to sit down, so he stands.
119
Boone pulls into Teddy's driveway and gets out of the car.
The night air is wet, somewhere between mist and gentle rain. The light coming from Teddy's living room window looks soft and warm.
Boone can see them through the window. Teddy's at the bar, fixing a stiff and dirty martini. Tammy paces the room. He tries to give her the drink, but she won't take it, so Teddy sips it himself.
He looks startled when Boone rings the doorbell.
Looks to Tammy, who looks back at him and shrugs.
Boone waits as Teddy opens the door a crack, the chain link left on. Boone shoves the pistol through the crack and says, “Hi. Can I come in?”
120
Yeah, he can.
A gun is its own invitation.
Teddy unhooks the chain lock and opens the door.
Boone goes in and kicks it shut behind him.
Teddy's house is as beautiful as he'd expected. Huge living room with a vaulted ceiling. Expensive custom paint with faux brush techniques. Expensive modern paintings and sculpture, a grand piano.
The center of the room is taken up with a floor-to-ceiling column that's a saltwater aquarium. A startlingly bright panoply of tropical fish circle serenely around the column. Tall green undersea plants stretch up toward the surface and wave like thin fingers in the mild, motor-driven current. At the back of the room, a slider gives a view of a huge spotlighted deck and, beyond that, the open ocean.
“Nice,” Boone says.
“Thanks.”
“Hi, Tammy.”
She glares at him. “What do you want?”
“Just the truth.”
“Trust me, you don't want it.”
“There's a little girl involved,” Boone says. “Now you're going to tell me the truth or, I swear, I'll splatter both of you all over this pretty room.”
Teddy walks back toward the bar. “Would you like a drink?” he asks. “You're going to need one.”
“Just the story, thanks.”
“Suit yourself,” Teddy says, “but I'm sitting down. It's been an exhausting couple of days, as you know.”
He sits down in the large leather easy chair and looks at the fish in his tank. “Tell him, Tammy. It's almost over now anyway.”
Tammy tells her story.
121
Tammy grew up in El Cajon, out in East County.
The usual stereotypical stripper back story: Her dad wasn't around a lot; her mom made an unsteady living as a waitress in a local restaurant and usually stayed for a few beers after her shift was over.
She was a lonely little girl. A latchkey kid who made herself instant macaroni and cheese, which she ate while watching celebrity shows on television and dreaming about becoming one of the actresses on the red carpet. It didn't seem likely then-she was skinny and gangly and had red hair, which the boys made fun of.
They stopped making jokes around the time she turned fourteen. Tammy didn't blossom-she exploded into a sexuality that seemed to happen overnight and was scary and confusing to her. Suddenly, boys wanted her, and she saw the way that grown men looked at her when she'd go to the restaurant to say hello to her mom. She wanted to say to them, I'm fourteen years old; I'm a kid. But she was afraid to speak to or even look back at them.
A good thing. Men would see the intensity in those incredible green eyes and mistake it for something else.
Okay, she learned to use it, she admits it freely. Why not? High school was a nightmare. She was never good at school-there were diagnoses of dyslexia and ADD-so being an actress wasn't going to happen. She couldn't read a script out loud and never got cast in the Drama Club productions. She thought about being a model, but you don't exactly bump into Eileen Ford in El Cajon, and she couldn't afford the money for photographers to create a portfolio. She did a little modeling for a local “sportswear” catalog and made a couple hundred dollars, but that was about it.
Tammy graduated from high school with a C-minus average, and it looked like waiting tables was her future. She did it for a year or so, enduring the crappy tips, the leers, the comments, and the offers, and then one day when she was twenty, she was walking home in the hundred-plus heat along the flat sunbaked sidewalk and decided that she had to do something, anything, to get out of there. So she took her red hair, amazing green eyes, and long legs, got on a bus to Mira Mesa, walked into a strip club, and auditioned.
She thought it would be hard, but it wasn't so hard, taking her clothes off. Okay, so it wasn't the red carpet; it was a platform and a pole. And yes, it was a clichй. But Tammy learned quickly that if she paused in her dance and cast those eyes out over the front row, she would get tips; if she picked out one guy and trained those cat eyes on him, she could easily get him into the Champagne Room, or the VIP Room, or whatever the hell room where the bigger money got made.
A year or so later, she found her way to Silver Dan's.
A couple of weeks after that, Dan Silver found his way to her.
Of course he did.
The owner of a strip club-in this case, a chain of strip clubs-has a sort of droit du seigneur when it comes to the girls. They don't have to date him, and if they do date him, they don't have to sleep with him, but it's a good professional move if they do.
You sleep with the boss, you don't have to blow the night manager to get a good shift. The bartenders pour your drinks without coming on to you or wanting a cut. The other girls find space for you in front of the mirror. The really creepy customers pick up on the vibe and keep their distance.
Tammy had been around long enough to know that, and even if she hadn't, Angela would have told her. Angela was her best friend at Silver Dan's. They hit it off right away-similar background, similar outlook, same tough attitude. It was Angela who told her that if the boss came calling, she'd better open the gates, or life could get impossible for her at the club.
So she dated Dan.
Yeah, but it was more than that, wasn't it, if she really wants to look at the truth of herself. Dan wasn't just a convenient lay or a good dinner- like most pimps, he was a daddy. He was that fucking father figure she'd been missing. Clichй, clichй, stereotype, and clichй but there it was. He treated her like a daughter and a fuck, incest sans the DNA and felony concerns, made her obey him and wear the clothes he picked out, made her call him “Daddy” as he did her from behind and pulled her hair like you'd jerk on the reins of a recalcitrant filly. She hated it and she loved it.
She started sleeping with Mick Penner as rebellion. He was the opposite of a daddy-a boy-child lady-killer who fucked up and fell in love with her. She'd still come when Dan beckoned-and God knows how many other women he was doing on the side-but she'd go bang Mick and play house with him, and Mick treated her gently and with consideration, and she couldn't get too much of that.
She was with Danny the night of the fire. He told her to wait in the car, but she got bored and impatient. She stood outside and smoked a cigarette, but when that was done, she thought, Fuck Danny, and went inside.
What she saw changed her world.
Dirty mattresses on a concrete floor, an old showerhead surrounded by a torn plastic curtain strung on a clothesline, an open toilet in the corner. Random blankets, no sheets, some stained pillows without covers.
The girls were like zombies.
Later, Tammy would learn that these
behaviors were symptomatic of severe and repetitive trauma, but that night Tammy just saw a group of young girls looking at her with dead eyes.
Except one.
One little girl came over, threw her arms around Tammy's legs, pressed her head against her thighs, and held on tight.
That was, of course, Luce.
Tammy didn't know what to do. Didn't know how to handle this girl, didn't know who these children were. She guessed at their ages-the oldest seemed to be a young teenager; the youngest couldn't have been more than eight. The girl clutching her legs was probably eleven or twelve. All the girls had brown skin, black hair, dark eyes. They wore cheap clothes that looked like they'd come from the Salvation Army or an AM VETS store. Most were holding some vestiges of childhood or family-a stuffed dog, a plastic flower, a book.
Luce wore a silver chain with a small cross.
Tammy stroked the girl's hair. It was greasy and dirty, but Tammy didn't mind. She stroked the girl's hair and made soft cooing sounds.
Dan didn't.
Dan blew fucking up.
He came down the hallway, saw Tammy in the room, and yelled, “What the fuck are you doing in here? I told you to wait outside!”
Most of the girls threw themselves facedown on their mattresses and did their best to cover their heads with blankets. Luce held tighter to Tammy and pressed her face harder against her legs.
Tammy didn't back down.
“What the fuck am I doing here!” she yelled back. “What the fuck is this, Dan?”
Dan grabbed her by the arm and started to haul her out, Luce still clinging to Tammy's legs. Dan stopped and grabbed the girl, trying to peel her off, but Tammy shoved and hit out at him and Dan had to let go of Luce to grab Tammy by the wrists.
“You leave her alone!” Tammy yelled. “Or I'll-”
“You'll what?” Danny asked. “You'll fucking what?”
She brought a knee up into Danny's balls.
That was fucking what.
Dan keeled over.
Luce regained her grip on Tammy. One of Dan's bouncers came out of a back room, hoisted Tammy away from the crying girl, hauled her out of the building, and forced her into Dan's car. As he was pushing her out the door, she heard the little girl yelling, “ЎLos campos fresas! ЎLos campos fresas!”
Dan came out a couple of minutes later and got into the driver's seat. Slapped her across the face. “You cunt. ”
“You bastard,” Tammy said. “Who were those girls? What are you doing with them?”
“They're illegals, all right?” Dan said. “I get them jobs as maids.”
“Bull-fucking- shit,” Tammy said. “I know what business you're in, Dan.”
“That's right,” Dan said. “I'm in the sex business, Tammy. I sell sex. You can't handle that?”
“They're children!”
“In Mexico? Half of them would be married by now. They'd be churning out babies already.”
“Keep telling yourself that, you sick motherfucker.”
“They'd be starving back home,” Dan said.
“Yeah, they look like they're doing great here,” Tammy said. “Fuck you, Dan, I'm calling the cops.”
He clamped his hand around her throat, pulled her face close to his, and said, “If you do that, you stupid twat, I'll kill you. And just in case you don't care about your own useless life, think about the kids. Their families owe money to the guys who bring them in. If they don't produce, the snakeheads take it out on their families. Capisce?”
She nodded, but he didn't let her go for a few seconds, just to make a point. To make the point further, he unzipped his fly and forced her head down. “You open your mouth, it's for this. ” When he let her up, she could see, through watery eyes, the bouncer loading the girls into an old van.
A few seconds later, flames blew out the windows.
Dan drove her home.
She didn't go to the cops. She went to the insurance company and told them that she saw him set the fire, that she could put him at the scene. It was a mistake, she'd tell Teddy later. She wanted to get back at Dan Silver, and she wanted them to look harder at the fire. Maybe they'd find something that would put them onto what was really happening there.
She did something else.
She looked for Luce.
Tammy went out to the strawberry fields, los campos fresas, and looked for the girl. Her first few trips, all she saw were the workers in the fields, and then one day, she left the new strip club she was working at and went straight out to the fields, arriving there shortly before dawn.
She saw a bunch of men leave the fields and walk down to the side of the river, where a stand of tall reeds hid the men from view. She drove down the road to the other side, parked her car, and walked in a little ways.
Tammy waited until all the field-workers had gone away and then went in. A Mexican man with a shotgun went to stop her, but Tammy ignored him and he let her pass. She found Luce on a “bed” of stamped-down reeds. Tammy took some hand wipes out of her bag and helped the girl clean herself off.
Speaking broken Spanish and English, she and the girl talked, but mostly she held the girl and stroked her hair. The man with the shotgun told her she'd have to go, that the pimps would come very soon to take the girls back to where they lived.
“Where do they live?” Tammy asked.
“All over the place. The men move them around,” he told her. “They go to different fields all day, or to hidden ‘factories,’ sometimes to the mojado camps at night. But they always bring them to this place, the strawberry fields, at sunrise every day.” The local pedophiles had a cute name for it. They called it “The Dawn Patrol.”
The man with the shotgun told Tammy again that she had to go.
“Tell her I'll be back,” Tammy said. “What's her name?”
The man, Pablo, asked the girl her name.
“Luce.”
“Luce, I'm Tammy. I'll come back to see you, okay?”
Tammy did go back, three or four times a week. Pablo always escorted her in, and even the pimps who brought the girls in the van came to tolerate her when they saw that she wasn't going to go to the police. She took Luce-and all the girls-food, clothing, cold medication, books. She took them condoms. She took them female love and affection.
It wasn't enough.
Tammy confided in Angela. Told her all about Luce and the strawberry fields.
“They need medical care,” Tammy said. “They need a doctor.”
Angela took her to see Teddy. He had done Angela's boobs-she had done him to get the insider discount.
Teddy didn't believe her at first, thought she was a psycho. He felt sorry for her, figured she had been an abused child who had twisted her trauma into delusion. He was going to recommend a good psychiatrist, but Tammy challenged him to go and see for himself.
So Teddy rode up one day with her. He wanted to call the police. Tammy begged him not to, told him why. What she needed, what the girls needed, was a doctor.
“I'm hoping that's you,” she said.
It was.
He went back again and again. At first, Pablo was hesitant, and the van drivers absolutely forbade it. But Teddy overcame their resistance with wads of cash and assurances of silence, and the men weren't total animals.
They had some compassion, and Teddy convinced them that it was in their interest to have the girls checked for venereal disease, that it was just good business.
“The girls are raped multiple time a day, six days a week,” Teddy tells Boone now. “They give them Sundays off. The men pay five to ten dollars to have sex with them. It doesn't sound like this would add up to a lot of money, but multiply it by several locations a day, all over California. Hell, all over the country, more and more. Now you're talking serious money. The variety of potential and actual STDs is staggering. No matter what we do, a third of these girls are going to become HIV-positive. And then there's vaginal trauma… anal tears. Not to mention the day-to-day garden-variety colds, flu,
respiratory infections, hygiene issues. You could set up a clinic there and staff it twenty-four/seven and you'd still be overwhelmed.”
But Teddy did what he could.
He did set up a clinic. He rented a full-time room at the motel and stocked it with antibiotics and other drugs, hiding them in locked cabinets, as otherwise the room would be broken into and the drugs stolen. He went up there two, three, five times a week as his schedule allowed, usually with Tammy.
The pimps tolerated them.
As long as they got the girls in and out, as long as the girls met their schedule, as long as nobody breathed a word, it was okay. Just. There was always the threat that the operation would be shut down, and Teddy, no matter how hard he tried to argue, no matter what kind of cash he threw at them, was never, ever allowed anywhere near the “safe houses” where the girls lived.
“‘Safe houses,’” he says to Boone. “There's a tasty irony. More like petri dishes, fecund hothouses for bacteria. If I could get to them and institute just some basic hygienic procedures, we could eliminate at least half of the chronic diseases they suffer from.”
But it was no good. They could never find out where the girls were housed, and they were afraid to push it. And the girls themselves changed all the time. They were shuffled around, disappearing, sometimes returning, new girls arriving every few weeks.
It made Tammy crazy with fear.
Once, Luce went missing for two weeks and Teddy had to sedate Tammy. When the girl returned, Tammy swore that she couldn't go through that again, that they had to do something.
“She loved the girl,” Teddy says. “Do you have kids?”