She was stepping ahead when her left hand fell into air, the wall no longer there. Leala touched ahead and to the right: walls. The path turned left. Leala followed it another several steps and nearly screamed when something touched her head. It went away, returned. She tentatively reached into the darkness.
A string. She tugged it and a bulb high in the joists came on. Another door of the heavy steel mesh was ahead, but the lock was hanging loose. The door swung open to a lit room. Against one wall were boxes labeled Frijoles Refritos and holding large cans of the dismal refried beans she was fed twice a day. A bin beside the boxes was over-filled with empty cans, tortilla bags and water bottles, the refuse spilling across the floor. Leala imagined the mean-eyed men filling plates with beans and tortillas before taking them to the prisoners.
The room smelled of fresh cigarette smoke. Someone had been here recently.
On the other side of the room was an opening and Leala stared down a tunnel twenty meters in length. At the far end was a series of concrete steps rising four meters, with a small platform at the top. And on the platform …
Yet another door.
Leala’s feet moved lightly through the tunnel. The door atop the stairs would be at street level, she knew. She crept up the steps and tried the handle. The door opened to the huge, windowless room of a brick warehouse. To her left was a small room with an open door, a toilet and sink inside. Several large crates were on the far side of the room, the nearer floor was cement and open save for a big white van, the words on its side saying A-1 Window Treatments. Behind the van a tall door reached to the ceiling.
Leala remembered the vehicle from the day she stepped onto America, when the others rode in the van but Orzibel flattered her into the big black car. She staunched anger at herself and stepped into the room. If there was a truck door, there must be a people door. She stepped forward.
“Voy a abrir la puerta!”
A voice froze her in the center of the floor. There, to her right, a man sat inside a little room with big glass windows. He was on the phone and if he turned but slightly, would see her. Leala stepped back behind the door with her beating heart so high in her throat she feared choking. The man in the windowed room had almost turned her way, but when the big door opened he had looked toward the portal.
She watched a neon green pickup truck pull next to the van, its bed stacked with brown cartons. Two men exited and Leala recognized one of them as the gangster type who brought the plates of miserable food. The men began unloading the cartons onto a two-wheeled cart. The other returned to his little office.
“Andale, Raoul … Hurry!” one man said. “Let’s make the delivery and get done. My pito has a hot date.”
“Your pito has a date with your hand. Why can’t we take the food through the club? Why roll it all this way?”
“The policía might see us pushing beans and tortillas into the club and wonder what they are for. It’s not a supper club. It is only a place for men to find women.”
“Ha! Who would look that close?”
“It is orders from the Amili one. Things have changed since her arrival. Muy cautious, that one.”
“I’ll bet she loses that caution in a bed. I would like to get her to my—”
“Be careful of what you wish. She must surely be the property of Mister Double O.”
“El Diablo! I will push the cart and wish no more.”
Leala retreated down the steps and compressed herself into the recess in the wall, praying the shadows kept her covered as the men wrestled the cart down the steps and rolled by. Fortune lay on Leala’s side, she thought. She had chosen to seek escape on a night when food was being delivered to the laberinto. Otherwise the back entrance would have been locked as tight as the front.
When the men entered the maze beneath the discoteca Leala ran up the steps. The watchman was not in the windowed room and the door to el baño was closed. Leala took a chance the man was relieving himself and ran to the office. As she had hoped, there was a door to the outside. She quietly slipped into hot air that smelled of stale beer and the exhaust of cars.
The night was painted in an electric rainbow, signs beating brightly from every direction. Leala looked for the discoteca, but the warehouse was between them and she was on a side street. On the corner was a building the color of a canary, PALM BREEZE MOTEL, its sign blared, HOURLY-DAILY-WEEKLY. Next to the motel lights proclaimed PAWN SHOP – OPEN ’TIL MIDNITE EVERY NITE. A bar was beside the pawnshop, no windows, just a sign saying PACKY’S HOT SPOT, BEER and LIQUOR. The street seemed paved with trash: newspapers, food wrappers, paper cups, beer cans, cigarette butts. The smell of urine and vomit rose like fog from the gutter.