Currents of Sin

by Arleen Alleman

  “Please don’t come here,” he told me. “I just want you to call Brooks and see if he has time to help me. You don’t need to get involved in our problems again, Darcy. Please just call Brooks for me and do your thing there in Florida.”

  Brooks Larkin is my ex-husband, who is now married to my best friend, Sid. That’s quite another story. He’s a wealthy well-connected Vegas businessman—the CEO of American Travel Corporation. He helped Don find Pamela when she was staying in downtown Vegas, sometimes on the streets and at other times in a motel with homeless kids. The word on the street was that the teens lived under the protection of an apparent pimp wannabe.

  I picked up a silver-colored midsize car, but I was so distracted I couldn’t even name the model once I climbed inside. Turning up the air and setting my phone to receive and send text messages by voice, I headed north on Las Vegas Boulevard. The freeway would have taken me to my destination faster, but I wanted to see the Strip—always a fascinating sight.

  Not too far north on Las Vegas Boulevard, I glanced to the left as I passed a familiar landmark—Athens Olympia Hotel and Casino. I didn’t know I wanted to see it, but once I passed by, I realized this was probably the real reason I chose the heavily trafficked route to downtown.

  Athens represented beginnings and endings. It was the source of the currents of violence, revenge, friendship, and love that direct the lives of my family and friends to this day. It is the place where all our troubles began nearly five years ago, and conversely, it is the only reason we are together today. I guess it was understandable that the place held a sinister fascination.

  Near downtown, I turned onto Fremont Street and drove about seven blocks southeast. It didn’t take long to find the Green Door Motel located just around the corner on Maryland Parkway. I couldn’t believe Pamela ever lived in such a hovel with a bunch of homeless kids.

  The motel looked closed. It was partially boarded over with plywood, probably to cover broken windows, and it looked as if it should be condemned. The white stucco walls and green doors on the entrances to the ten or so small rooms hadn’t been painted in decades. Flaking paint revealed bare cement blocks and wood that was parched white from the unrelenting dry heat.

  Trash littered the small parking lot in front of the little strip of units sitting perpendicular to the street. There were no trees or shrubs to soften the stark depressing façade. There was only plaster, wood, and asphalt slowly disintegrating in the beat down of a hellish sun.

  While I watched from my car parked across the street from the motel, an obviously inebriated teenager meandered along the sidewalk. He wore a filthy once-white T-shirt with faded ripped jeans. I noticed that in addition to being drunk, he had an odd gait. His feet were hidden under pants legs so long he was walking on the inside of them. I watched him stumble across a low slanted curb into the lot, nearly executing an awkward face plant. After fumbling in his pockets for a while, he pulled out a key and approached one of the green doors.

  This was worse than my expectation based on Don’s description of the place. I dipped my head and looked out the passenger window at the row of run-down businesses directly across from the motel. An old yellow brick building with a faded and torn red awning over the door housed a liquor store and bar. Through the grime coating the front window, I could barely make out a sign written with black marker. It informed the public that every customer’s ID would be checked. I suspected the message was more for the benefit of passing police than the patrons.

  Next door to the bar was a church or mission of some sort. A wooden sign over the door with the hand-painted words Welcome Parishioners looked as if it might have been there since the dawn of Christianity. The two front windows were nearly opaque, making it impossible to see inside. I supposed that like the bar next door, they were coated with years of dirt and nicotine.

  The establishment looked deserted except for a bright pink neon cross hanging askew across the window with one of its arms burned out. I wondered who the parishioners could be of such an uninviting place of worship, if that’s what it was. Then I noticed another smaller sign in the corner of the window. “AA meeting tonight,” it announced. Unkindly, I wondered if meeting participants conveniently wandered over from the bar next door.

  Peering up Fremont Street toward the downtown hotels and casinos, I couldn’t see much of the famed tourist mecca except for heavier traffic just a few blocks away—but a world apart—from this sketchy neighborhood. A feeling of foreboding came and went quickly as I shook off my doubts about this dubious venture. I pulled away from the curb and drove up Fremont to Seventh, where I turned right and pulled into the El Cortez Hotel parking garage.

  3

  In yet another world apart from downtown Vegas, a beautiful young woman with dark hair and eyes blinked into blackness, then rolled onto one side as far as her tether would allow. She didn’t know what awakened her, only that she’d suddenly jerked to awareness. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she tried to shake off the remnants of sleep … and something else.

  The hotel room, she now remembered, was not like the one she used to live in with its filth and disgusting smell. This one was clean and elegant. During the day, she recalled, it could be described as bright and cheery. That is where its appeal ended.

  Still a bit groggy, she tried to sit up. “Aagh! Ow!” A sharp pain radiated down her arm into her shoulder, abruptly forcing her fully awake. Her eyes darted up and to the side. She inspected the swollen wrist encircled by a handcuff held high above her head. The other cuff hung from a decorative horizontal wrought iron pole running along the top of the headboard.

  Slowly and painfully, she scooted up into a sitting position. With her arm bent at the elbow, the searing pain lessened, but the entire side of her body still throbbed. How did I sleep like this? Movement across the room caused her to suck in a breath. Fearfully, she pushed her back against the pillow because there was nowhere else to go.

  The man. Oh yes, the man, she remembered vividly. Unfortunately, this acute awareness was no longer her normal state. Rather, a semidrugged existence was her new normal. He was some sort of keeper or handler, and he rarely let her out of his sight except when she was working.

  He approached the bed and loomed over her. His odor emanated in disgusting wafts of perspiration, liquor, and smoke. She gagged and turned her head away, but he grabbed her jaw and yanked it back toward him.

  She screamed as searing pain shot down her face, neck, and shoulder. She was not fully recovered from the beating he gave her when she first arrived. His fist connected several times with her jaw, and she spent several agonizing days suffering while cuffed to the bed. Then just as she believed she was losing her mind, he freed her and let her walk around the room for the first time.

  Now he offered her a glass of water and a pharmaceutical. “Take this, pretty bitch.” He shoved the pill toward her lips.

  She avoided his eyes and tried not to think about the ugliness and violence that dominated her daily routine. Her first instinct had been to resist, but fighting back only earned her the injury to her jaw. It took five days before she could eat solid food, and she still worried about the possibility of permanent damage.

  Willing herself to look up at him, she again noted the scar, which, along with a cruel twist, permanently disfigured his mouth. Small dark eyes above a thick nose squinted down at her, daring her to refuse the pills.

  She didn’t know the name of the drug, only that it removed most of her resistance and helped her cope with these horrendous circumstances—captivity. Yes, that is what this is, she thought, even though he let her roam about the room freely during the early-morning hours. Later, he fastened her to the bed, where she tried to sleep until late afternoon. In the evening, he put her to work until about 3:00 a.m., when the cycle began again. While awake, she was rarely left alone except for a few precious minutes spent in the bathroom.

  With a sigh, s
he took the pill from his hand and swallowed it with several gulps of water.

  “Now get the hell up and get ready for work.” He crossed to the heavily draped window and pulled back the curtain. Low-slung watery sunlight streamed into the room. She closed her eyes against the sudden blinding light and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. He returned to her, extracted a key from his pocket, and freed her wrist.

  The window obviously faced west, and she figured it must be around five o’clock. If the normal routine held, after she showered and made herself presentable, she would be given a room service meal. Soon thereafter, as the sun was setting, the first of a string of customers would come to the room.

  How long had she been here? She was losing track. Passage of time held no meaning, especially with so many hours spent in a drugged state. Her days consisted of a series of sometimes violent sexual encounters, then sitting around with nothing to do until she was chained to the bed. Nonetheless, she reckoned it was less than two weeks since she’d been thrown into the room in a stupor.

  How stupid she’d been to come here more or less voluntarily, convinced she’d live a luxurious lifestyle with the man she thought was her protector and ticket to a better life. She readily complied when two of his associates picked her up downtown, gave her pills, and eventually carried her to this room—a virtual prison cell.

  Nothing was left in the room to identify the establishment, but she knew it was a room on a relatively high floor of a Las Vegas Strip hotel. In the mornings, while sipping coffee, she sometimes stood for an hour watching the traffic and people milling about below.

  This part of the city was unfamiliar to her. In fact, it might as well be a different planet compared with the only part of Vegas she knew. She’d never paid attention to the names or locations of Strip hotels other than the older and more common ones much farther north. She only knew that her location was on the far southern end of the Strip. She promised herself she would remember the dazzling palaces she could see from the window, and eventually, she would identify her prison.

  The phone on the nightstand did not work, and the men who drove her to the hotel took away her cell phone—her only possession. She assumed it would be of no use anyway because by now the account was probably terminated.

  During the first few days while recovering from the beating, she stopped fighting and acquiesced to her handler’s demands. Dependent on him for all her needs, she’d settled into an existence of emotional and physical pain and debilitating fear.

  She was aware that there were always men milling about in the hallway. At random times, her handler left the room to talk with them or to run short errands, always returning within fifteen minutes. From snippets of conversations she overheard, she knew there were other girls being held in nearby rooms. The walls did not strain out all sound, and she heard women’s and men’s voices sometimes raised in anger. She recognized other disturbing sounds as well.

  From this, she pieced together a basic explanation. These men were running a secret prostitution ring, but the teenage girls were unwilling participants—little more than slaves. She assumed the other girls were homeless kids too, and she’d given herself a headache trying to think of a way to communicate with them.

  Following her handler’s orders, she stood in the bathroom staring into the mirror. She was grateful to have a closed door behind her even though the lock had been disabled. She recognized the familiar fog already wrapping tendrils around her thoughts, making it impossible to concentrate. I have to find a way out of here.

  Shaking her head to gain clarity, she stepped into the shower. Hot water sluiced over her bruised body, providing some relief except for the ever-present pain radiating down her shoulder, arm, and wrist. Gritting her teeth, she held that side of her body under the stream until she couldn’t bear it any longer. Soon, much of the pain simply subsided in the wake of the powerful narcotic.

  After showering, she stood in front of the vanity wearing a plush white terrycloth robe supplied by housekeeping and worked on her hair and face. She was forgetting why she’d been so despairing and afraid only a few minutes before. Although she knew at one level that the drug was overtaking her faculties, on another, she felt that everything would be all right now.

  She turned her thoughts to dinner and wondered what room service meal would arrive tonight. With eyelash curler and mascara in hand, she smiled at the thought of the champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries that were always placed in the room while she worked. It isn’t so bad, she told herself. After all, most of the johns complimented her on her beauty and expertise, and many had what she considered to be normal desires. It was okay with them. She shuddered recalling those with far-from-normal demands.

  Loud insistent pounding on the bathroom door brought her to attention. The handler’s voice growled, “Get your ass in gear and get the hell out here. You still have to eat, and the first one is waiting to come up.”

  Quickly brushing a stray tear from her cheek, with shaking hands, she reached for the hair dryer. “I’m almost ready. I just need another minute.”

  “Get out here now, or I’ll drag you out.”

  Looking into her own frightened eyes, she felt the rage well up from the pit of her abdomen spreading through her chest cavity and into her throat. The drug was working, but not quite quickly enough to save her.

  Without thinking, she turned and yanked open the door to find him leaning on the doorframe.

  “I said I’m almost ready!” Her shrill voice ricocheted off the bathroom walls.

  He stepped back, but his arm shot out so quickly she could not raise her arms in time to protect herself. He slapped her face, knocking her head back and sending her flying against the edge of the vanity. A spike of hot pain shot from her lower back into her legs as she slid to the floor, sobbing. Yanking her up by the arm, he dragged her out of the bathroom, threw her down on the bed, and attached the cuffs.

  “Don’t you get it?” he hissed. “There’s no squaring up. You know what that means? It means there’s no way to escape, so what’s the point of the mouth?” Leaning down to within inches of her, he shouted, sending spittle flying into her face.

  “If you don’t work, you don’t live. And tonight, you won’t work.”

  4

  As soon as I entered the El Cortez coffee shop, I saw Don in a booth facing the door. He’s tough to miss. As gorgeous as ever with a strong jaw, straight nose, and expressive mouth, his bulging pecs and biceps strained against a mauve polo shirt. Long blond waves skimmed his shoulders, completing the sexy effect. Jumping out of his seat, he held out his arms.

  I fell into his embrace, knowing that other patrons were staring at us. I knew what they thought they were seeing: a thirtysomething couple who look as if they could be twins—tall, blond, blue-eyed, and in shape. We often get a fascinated reaction from people who probably assume we are either siblings or lovers. Nothing about Don’s outward appearance telegraphs his sexual preference.

  We sat across from each other, and I ordered coffee and a tuna sandwich from a friendly waitress whose eyes never left Don. Glancing to the side, I met the gaze of the man seated at the next table. His engorged belly prevented him from getting close enough to his plate to eat properly, and the front of his shiny gray bowling shirt was festooned with dribbled food. I quickly looked away but could feel his continued attention on me.

  Don was smiling up at the waitress without any genuine feeling behind it. She finally walked away, and he turned sad eyes in my direction. His mouth scrunched to the side with apparent disapproval.

  “Don, I’m so sorry about all this.” I rushed on, talking over him as he tried to interrupt. “I know you told me not to come, but how could I not? I love you guys and Penelope, and anyway, I’m lucky to have the time to help.”

  He sighed and leaned back, letting his long legs fall out to the side. I hoped the distracted waitress didn�
�t trip over his feet.

  “Okay, Darcy. I accept that, but it’s hard and damned embarrassing to think about how much time you’ve already spent on our problems, to say nothing of your injury. For God’s sake, you almost died trying to help us.”

  I waved the comment away. “Old news, Don. I’m fine now. By the way, I’m going to stay out at Sid and Brooks’s house, and he told me he’s more than happy to help you find Pamela again.”

  He seemed to relax a bit. “That’s great. I’m out of my element in this city, but he seems to have a lot of contacts, and he knows his way around this place.”

  His distasteful expression and emphasis on the last two words told me how much he did not want to be in Vegas.

  “Don, I have some other news before you give me the details about what’s happening with Pamela. Tom is coming out to help as well.”

  His eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. “Oh no, I can’t believe we’re disrupting Tom’s life as well. Charlie will be very upset when he hears this … but of course it is very generous of him.”

  “I think he has quite a bit of vacation time coming and doesn’t have any plans. I really felt he was happy to fly out. He cares about you guys too, you know.”

  “I’m a little overwhelmed. I’ve been here alone trying to find her for three days. The police can’t help mainly because of her age and the fact that they consider her to be a chronic runaway. She doesn’t appear to be staying at the motel where we found her before, but no one down there wants to talk to me.”

  The waitress placed a coffee in front of me and beamed at Don. It occurred to me then that he might well have eaten every meal at this restaurant for three days, and she feels as if she knows him. I took a sip and was surprised to find that the brew was actually good—strong and rich, just as I like it. I watched him sip water and push the remnants of an omelet around his plate.