But now he worried that he’d given too much leeway to his brother, who’d assembled a motley group he feared wasn’t attractive enough to pass muster with Krause and his girlfriend. Some of the girls were pretty enough, but generally they resembled diamonds in the rough instead of the perfect polished solitaires that Krause and Juliana seemed to expect. He knew that these girls came from poor families without much chance to wrest their way up from poverty. If they’d been born luckier, they wouldn’t have had to risk being stowaways to a new country. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the unfortunate fate of the tenth girl, which nearly had scuttled the whole deal. And now he’d have to work fast to get the Albanians ready for the spotlight.
Zogu parked his pickup, started unloading the groceries and knocked on one of the motel doors. Leka, the self-styled leader of the group, answered and his heart sank when he saw her again. Leka was strong and strapping, but she’d never be a beauty. She’d dyed her hair blonde, but it was a brassy gold that didn’t mesh well with her thick black unibrow and muddy complexion. She had a square face and a decent figure, except for thighs that jiggled when she walked.
Still, he liked her because she was smart and sassy, and he sensed that the eight other girls would follow her lead. He would work through her to get them to accept the makeovers he planned before presenting them to Krause.
“Zogu,” Leka shouted, enveloping him in a bear hug. “You brought American food for us?”
“I brought things that you can cook in the little kitchens,” he said, matching her rapid-fire Albanian. “Can you go to the other rooms and get all the girls so we can have a meeting?”
She bounded out and two of the other women, who introduced themselves as Ardita and Edona, took over, settling him into a worn easy chair, massaging his back and bringing him a motel glass filled with Albanian vodka they’d apparently smuggled in airplane-style bottles. He hoped they didn’t have much of that strong liquor left. The room stank of cigarette smoke, clothes were piled carelessly in a corner and raucous laughter rang through the closed door of the bathroom. He wondered just what they were doing in there.
Leka returned with the five Albanians he’d assigned to two adjacent rooms. Again, their appearance filled him with dismay. Though it was early afternoon, no one was dressed for prime time. Two wore jeans with printed tops that looked like pajamas, and the others wore beat-up workout clothes with torn tights. Several looked like they’d just gotten up, and one bleary-eyed girl looked like she’d been up all night drinking. All nine sprawled on the lumpy double beds with the shabby gold bedspreads, or sat on the floor with their backs to the wall. They chattered about him and the groceries he’d brought, though Zogu had signaled for quiet.
Finally, Leka stood up with him and whistled through a gap in her front teeth. They turned silent right away. Leka spoke quickly and persuasively, explaining that Zogu would help them get ready for their new jobs and lives in America.
“We’ll be able to afford new clothes, nice apartments and as much food and vodka as we want,” she said.
The girls applauded enthusiastically and Zogu felt better. He promised to bring them groceries every other day and told them that his wife and her friends would start visiting them daily to begin cutting, dyeing and styling their hair and help them with their clothes. Brunettes must dye their hair blonde, he emphasized, because the owner of the club where they’d work – if they were lucky – desired blondes above all.
“All blondes? That seems strange,” Ardita, a petite brunette, said. “Doesn’t he know that many Albanian girls have dark hair?”
“No, he doesn’t know much about Albania,” Zogu admitted. “He thinks Albanian girls look like the tall, blonde Russians on TV in the vodka commercials.”
“Will he like us?” she said, suddenly worried.
Zogu felt pity for the girls. Who knew what they hoped? Who knew what sort of families they’d left behind? He thought they were either brave or desperate – probably both – to undertake a dangerous trip, hide out in three crowded motel rooms and still be optimistic as they confronted an uncertain future.
“We will make sure that you all look beautiful when he meets you,” he smiled, hoping he sounded more convincing than he felt.
They shouted with pleasure when Zogu said each girl would get one new outfit Genta would help pick out. He asked them if they had questions – a mistake, he realized right away.
“What happened to Arlinda?” Edona asked. The image of the dead girl came into his mind. She’d been pretty, but not smart or cautious. She’d paid for her carelessness.
He shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he should tell them the truth. But he decided that he couldn’t chance it.
“We must never speak of your time hiding aboard the ship,” Zogu said, raising his voice dramatically. “It would bring terrible trouble from the American police. They could send us all to Texas prisons, where we’d probably die.”
“Can’t you tell us where she is?” Ardita said.
“She’s gone, but that’s all I can tell you. Arlinda didn’t follow the rules and because she didn’t obey, she got into trouble.”
They digested this soberly, their earlier rowdiness gone.
Leka came to his rescue again, stepping forward, clapping him on the shoulder and looking intently at each girl. She had an uncanny way of commanding their attention.
“Zogu is not to blame for that girl’s foolish mistake,” she said. “Trust him and his wife and they will help us with our jobs and perhaps with finding good husbands.”
The Albanians erupted into raucous laughter and Zogu felt the stirrings of alarm. Who’d told them he’d find them husbands? Was that really part of his responsibility? Then he reflected on the single men he knew and decided not to worry. They might indeed be interested in meeting at least some of these girls.
“Tell us about the American clubs,” Edona said when the cheering died down.
“Some are very beautiful places, with big mirrors, fine liquors and elegant stages for you to dance on and show off your beauty,” Zogu said. That was stretching it, for they’d probably go to the older, redneck clubs. He decided he’d better draw the question-and-answer period to an end.
“You must try to become your most beautiful self by the time we take you there,” he said. “Rest up, watch the American TV and swim in the pool. But stay in the motel rooms. Remember that you don’t have documents yet. The fat policemen would kick you with their sharp cowboy boots and throw you in their jail.”
The Albanians looked properly chastened, but Zogu worried that they could turn mutinous after he left.
“For how long?” Leka asked, looking crestfallen.
“Just a week or two.”
CHAPTER 17
Nate Hardin nursed a Dos Equis at his table in Ninfa’s on Navigation, his favorite café in a funky industrial neighborhood east of downtown. He liked being early for social engagements, enjoying the ambience of a busy place and thinking about the evening ahead. It was Saturday night and he and his best friend, fellow Times reporter Travis Dunbar, were meeting for a quick Tex-Mex dinner, as they often did. But tonight was special. Travis was bringing his poker-playing girlfriend and Nate was eager to meet the woman his friend had been keeping under wraps.
He loved Ninfa’s with its famed Ninfaritas (impossibly strong margaritas), its cilantro-laced green salsa and sizzling meats. He’d seen pictures of the chubby-cheeked Mama Ninfa Laurenzo, who’d founded the restaurant a half-century ago, as an outgrowth of her struggling tortilla factory. The cafe had become the founding outlet in a popular chain of Mexican restaurants in the 1980s before the enterprise changed hands. But the original Ninfa’s near the Ship Channel remained and its clientele still gathered for Tacos a
l Carbon. He enjoyed a few moments of high-level people watching, especially the romantic intrigues at the crowded bar, as he waited for Travis and the mystery woman.
He sopped up the last warm chips from a basket into the peppy green sauce and signaled the waiter for a fresh basket. He could eat his weight in chips, but was a dedicated enough runner that it didn’t show on his lanky frame. He checked messages on his iPhone and finally spotted Travis heading toward the table hand-in-hand with his woman.
He was a little surprised. Lila Jo Lemmons looked at least ten years older than Travis, even with reddish-magenta hair curling toward her shoulders. She wore a black skirt with a green jacket, a bejeweled sunburst necklace and red cowboy boots. She and Travis were both short and squat, but Nate thought they looked good together. Her brown eyes were warm in a face that, like most Texas women of a certain age, was heavily made up. Nate stood up and extended his hand. Lila Jo gripped it with a surprising strength.
“Hey, Nate. Glad to finally meet you,” she said in a slow, pleasant drawl that sounded to Nate like East Texas, possibly Tyler or Nacogdoches. The young Hispanic waiter brought more beers and they munched on chips and salsa.
Soon Nate was laughing at Lila Jo’s salty real estate stories about a Houston barge owner who paid cash-in-hand for a drug lord’s abandoned mansion, but was shocked by the variety of sex toys he’d found in the master bedroom’s closet.
“Honey, I could fix you up with a nice two-bed not far from downtown if you have $7,000 for a down payment,” she told Nate.
“I don’t know, Lila Jo,” he said. “Not sure I’m ready to tie myself to Houston yet. How about you, Trav?”
He was sorry he brought it up as Travis squirmed uncomfortably.
“I’m a bit financially challenged at the moment, I’m afraid. Got to start winning at poker again.”
“Baby, your luck will change,” Lila Jo said, putting her hand over Travis’s chubby mitt.
Conversation slowed as they focused on the steaming plates. Nate polished off a plate of green chicken enchiladas, mopping up the last of the sauce with a flour tortilla as he listened to Travis rant about the downfall of the newspaper industry and the dark fate of the Houston Times.
He and Travis had been inseparable since Annie Price hired Nate a year ago, luring him to Houston from a paid internship in the newsroom of the Corpus Christi Post. He’d been thrilled to leave Corpus, which had a scenic waterfront with beautiful homes for the wealthy but offered few opportunities for young people, especially cub journalists. He’d worried about what he’d do when the newsroom stint ended, but luckily didn’t have to face the ignominy of returning to Waco to live with his parents. Annie had seen some of his stories on the Associated Press wire and had actually called him for an interview. Nate at twenty-five was the youngest reporter on the Times staff and the last person hired before the freeze imposed by the newspaper’s struggling owner.
Nate’s attention wandered as Travis bemoaned the paper’s inability to seduce Houston’s privileged army of white-collar workers into subscribing to the Times. Some of the city’s well-heeled downtown workers read the paper, but the younger they were, the greater the odds against their subscribing. Circulation of the paper continued to sink like a rock, especially among workers in their twenties and thirties. The Times did a lot of newsroom brainstorming about improving the website to make it irresistible to young people, but clearly the middle-aged editors leading the effort hadn’t come up with the magic formula. Those older print fossils didn’t understand websites and likely just wished they’d go away, Travis said.
Nate, bored with the subject, agreed that falling readership showed a regrettable lack of civic curiosity among the city’s young workers, but what were the reporters going to do? Force people to buy the paper instead of trolling free entertainment sites on iPhones as they sipped their morning lattes? At least some would check out the headlines online.
Lila Jo, who’d eaten a plateful of steak fajitas with big dollops of guacamole, paused to speak.
“Sweetie, the daily paper’s all but dead. Your folks need to figure out how to make the website a lot more fun. What do you think, Nate?”
“I’m afraid I have to agree,” he said. “When I was at Baylor just a few years back, I was shocked at how few people read the college paper.”
“Well, that’s Baylor for you. They just read the Bible,” Travis cracked, referring to the university’s Baptist origins.
Nate looked at his iPhone and saw it was close to 10 p.m. The Saturday-night crowd crackled with alcohol and rising hormones, and the vibe was happy, but Nate was ready to move on. He’d been hanging out at the Texas Girls clubs a few nights a week, trying to figure out what made Kyle Krause and his strip club business tick. He was gathering intelligence on Krause for the profile he planned to write. Soaking up the ambience of the clubs had been an education and he’d made plenty of valuable contacts. In the last few weeks, he’d talked to strippers, bar employees and club patrons, but Krause was still eluding him.
His attention drifted back to Travis, who’d moved into the familiar territory of dissecting newsroom machinations. Both reporters knew that their colleague Maggie Mahaffey had resigned and that the loss of a reporter meant that Annie would take on some reporting duties.
“What’s Annie saying about that?” Nate asked, knowing that Travis had more of a relationship with their boss – strictly professional, of course – than he did.
“She wants me to take over Maggie’s reporting on the German-Texas movement. She may team up with me,” Travis said with an air of importance.
“Now that will be a hardship. I know you can hardly stand the thought of working closely with her,” Nate said. Travis’s worshipful attitude toward Annie was a running joke.
“I’m dying to meet Annie,” Lila Jo said. “She sounds like my kind of gal. Speaking of women, look at those two blondes at the bar – they’re staring at you, Nate. You should go over and say howdy.”
“Uh, thanks, Lila Jo, but I’m not interested.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth and patted Nate on the shoulder.
“Sorry, honey. I forgot. How about that cute waiter? Bet he could use a friend.”
“Appreciate it, but I’m headed over to another of the Texas Girls clubs. Going to check out the one on the Gulf Freeway.”
“Are you still stalking Kyle Krause?” Travis said.
“Kind of. Just haven’t been to that location yet.”
“Hey, I know Krause,” Lila Jo said. “Sold him a condo. Is he in any kind of trouble?”
“He’s into everything – strip clubs, gambling and maybe even prostitution,” Nate said. “He’ll be a big story for us before long.”
He felt gratified at the shocked look on Lila Jo’s face. Part of the delight of being a reporter was finding out things other people didn’t know and dribbling out the juicy bits.
“Well, get a life,” Travis said. “You’re off-duty tonight, remember?”
“Trav, you know a good reporter is never off-duty,” Nate said, only half-joking.
“You’ll get over that in a few years, dude.”
CHAPTER 18
Nate parked his dirty blue Toyota pickup in a crumbling and poorly lit parking area behind the Texas Girls Club. There wasn’t room in the front because it was prime time for the bar crowd. The Korean nail salon had closed hours ago and the Vietnamese café was winding up its business, but Texas Girls and two other bars in the dingy-looking strip center off the freeway were hopping. He saw one tipsy young couple and three middle-aged men headed drunkenly toward the door of the strip club. He knew that this Texas Girls location was Krause’s first, and rumored to be his favorite, so he hoped to spot him ther
e on the biggest night of the week. He didn’t see Krause’s Porsche, but he knew the owner drove several different vehicles and also used a chauffeur. He’d heard that a decent local rock band, Hands on Deck, might play at the club tonight and he was looking forward to hearing it.
He thought about Lila Jo and Travis. He’d liked her East Texas friendliness and was relieved that she accepted his sexual orientation. You never could tell about native Texans. Some were perfectly okay with gay men and women, but there were still plenty in the Lone Star State who would view him as God’s abominable mistake.
He wondered briefly if he should’ve spent the rest of Saturday night relaxing with friends instead of trying to track down the strip club king. Travis kidded him about being too serious about his work and he guessed Travis had a point. But Nate regarded his twenties as a time to work hard and lay the groundwork for a good career, rather than getting drunk every night. He’d gone to Baylor as an Eagle Scout and semi-devout Baptist, but had come out as a gay man midway through college. He rarely went to church any more, but some of his core Christian values had stuck. He’d never say it to his more cynical friends, but he felt he’d been put on earth to do something worthwhile. He’d settled on journalism as his way to make a difference. He couldn’t help but being repelled by all of the nubile flesh he was seeing in the strip clubs. He thought women who stripped in the clubs probably made decent money, but felt sorry that they had to endure crude advances, crass owners and a seamy industry.
He walked into the front foyer, handed a ten-dollar bill to the curvy woman with the punked pink hair at the counter and slid through the black curtains to the main bar and stage area. He took a seat near the front, where a gawky blonde with crooked yellow teeth and a sparkly silver halter was writhing to the end of the band’s cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back.” The five-member band, playing at the far left of the stage, was energetic and good enough to play in a better venue than a strip club.
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