“Don’t bullshit me, Mama,” Amili said quietly. “Maybe you heard how I got started.”
Cho’s eyes narrowed. “What do I care?”
“You’re working them twelve hours a day, sixteen when a big convention’s in the city. You’re taking all of their income and most of their tips and don’t deny it. I figure you’re clearing two hundred an hour, not a day. The two hundred a day is what you report to the IRS. How am I doing?”
“You know nothing, missy. You think you some big deal because you fuck your way up the stairs. So what … me too.”
Amili stared evenly at Cho. “We’ll replace the product by tonight. No money back because it’s all part of the business. We share risk.”
“Girl cries, it wrecks the dream,” Cho screeched. “Johns never come back. Your lousy girl cost me permanent business and money.”
“Spare me, Mama,” Orzibel said. “You make more money than the Saigon McDonald’s.”
Cho shrugged. “OK then, I get girls somewhere else.”
Amili shook her head. “Not an option, Mama. We supply your girls. You wanted an exclusive contract and you got it.”
Cho’s eyes tightened into slits. “Fuck contract. Girls are everywhere.”
“Mama—”
“Talk is finished.” She walked to the door, Chaku in the way. Cho said, “Move it, stinking buffalo man.”
Morales looked to Orzibel, who nodded and Morales stepped aside. As she passed, Mama Cho pulled a twenty from her purse and jammed it into Chaku’s shirt pocket.
“Buy some hair for your ugly head,” she said, a cruel smile on her lips. “Fag boys should be pretty.”
Orzibel followed Amili to her office to check the terms of Cho’s contract: eighteen girls a year, monthly payments, three months left to run.
“What will we do with Cho, Orlando?” Amili said. “If she breaks the contract, others will doubt our resolve.”
“We? You won’t do anything, Amili, I will handle it. I handle all the dirty work very effectively, no? Perhaps it is why you did not snitch about my, uh, time with little Leala.” He stepped closer and put his hand on Amili’s hip. “And maybe you find me … interesting.”
Amili put her hand over his and moved it away. “As I have said too many times, Orlando, we work together. Finding you interesting or otherwise is not a choice.”
Orzibel studied Amili. “How often does the Jefé come to you, Amili? Enough to quench your fires?”
Amili sighed. “Is there a reason you are entering my private life, Orlando? Tonight, with the problems of Cho?”
Orzibel shrugged and gave up. “Cho will be handled. The problem is Leala … something in her nature. She weeps, she sniffles. Then, from nowhere, she fights back. Even after training Leala struck out at Madame Cho.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“We’re not making fighting dogs, Amili, we’re creating animals trained to do tricks. If they have the strength to bite, they have the strength to bolt, which puts us all in danger.”
Amili thought a moment. “Have Miguel Tolandoro give Leala’s mother three hundred dollars and tell her Leala has sent it. We’ll set up a call to Leala. Mama praises little Leala for her hard work, whatever. Maybe some head-patting will put the girl on the path.”
“Your ways are too complicated for me, Amili. I say we have Mama call as Miguel is breaking her fingers.”
“Who has been in Leala’s shoes, Orlando?”
Orzibel’s eyes flashed with anger. “While you were wearing those shoes, Amili Zelaya, who was running this business?”
“I am not diminishing your experience, Orlando. But I think Leala needs to hear her mama enjoys the money. Leila can then justify her work to herself.”
Orzibel stared. “Justify?”
“It makes it easier when there is a justification,” Amili said. “Only then can you believe in tomorrow.”
Orlando Orzibel left the office, pulling the door at his back and muttering the word justificación. He was tiring of I know this because I’ve been there bullshit. It was he who had done everything, including being imprisoned at the age of twenty-four for cutting a man’s throat.
Orzibel had been running a street-corner prostitution ring in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Miami, his victim a rival who had stolen three of Orzibel’s best money-makers. The man had lived, but Orzibel had taken a lesson from the experience.
Cut deeper.
In the span of fourteen months in the Okeechobee Correctional Institute Orzibel had killed two men and slashed pieces from others. The first one died after only one week, a hulking mayaté cakero who mistook Orzibel’s handsome features and shining teeth for weakness. Growing up in gangs in Liberty City, Orzibel knew a dozen others in the institution, one passing him a shank, a steel bed slat with one end filed to wicked sharpness, the other wrapped with electrician’s tape.