The Death Box(76)

She decided to re-trace her steps one block over, cutting down a slender side street. At the corner was a drive-in taqueria, its window thick glass with orders passed through a little door. A tall and skinny Hispanic man was at the window, a sequined cowboy hat on his head and sequins on his white cowboy shirt. His trousers were tight and black and he wore white boots. Leala had seen such men when visiting Tegucigalpa …

He was a proxeneta, a pimp.

Leala backed up until hidden by the corner of a building while the pimp received a bag of food and drinks. He complained about something and whoever was behind the window told him to irse in the style that meant get lost, loser. The pimp cursed at the window and spat on it, turning and striding back to the big car. Leala shot a look inside and saw four women, all crushed together in the back seat so the man could own the front.

One of the women was Yolanda.

Leala almost gasped aloud as she watched the man pass out a taco and drink to each of the women. Yolanda shook her head, no, but the man barked something and she took the food.

The car screeched from the curb, heading down the block and stopping at a red light. Leala started to run after it but realized the futility. She saw a taxicab and waved it to a halt. Leala climbed into the back seat, pointing forward, breathless. “Please, sir. You must follow that black car.”

The driver was a heavy man with a mustache like a line drawn over his lip. He spoke in the Caribbean manner.

“The pimpmobile, hon? Why? You get lef’ behind?”

“Please to follow black car.”

“You gotta the dinero, girl?”

Leala threw all her remaining bills at the man and he pulled away, following as the pimp crossed Flagler, went right another several blocks. Leala’s mind registered the street: it would lead her back to her safe place. Get Yolanda, run, wait until Monday and call Johnson.

The neighborhood grew even worse. Bars lined the street. They passed a burned-out shell of a car. Windows were broken or filled with wood. Once-bright paint was faded toward memory. A skinny dog vomited yellow froth as two women laughed from the steps of a dirty building. The women were barely dressed, their faces painted like corpses.

The car holding Yolanda pulled to the curb. Yolanda and a second girl exited, both in tiny skirts and tube tops and high-heeled boots that climbed to skinny knees.

“Stop,” Leala told the driver. “I must get out.”

Leala jumped from the cab and flattened against a brick building. When the black car drove away she ran to her friend.

“Yolanda! I found a woman who might help us. Her name is Victoree—”

Yolanda turned, her eyes wide with fear. “Go away, Leala. You are in great danger.”

“You must come with me,” Leala pleaded.

“They will kill mi madre if I do not do as they say. They are filth and they are making me into filth. Go fast, run.”

“Not without you.” Leala grabbed Yolanda’s arm, but Yolanda yanked it away. Yolanda’s companion looked between the two and slunk off as if the drama was a threat to her life.

“What are you doing?” Leala said. “I came to save you.”

“I am here for ever, Leala,” Yolanda said. “Get away.”

Leala saw motion and turned to see two young men with hollow eyes and ragged, dirty clothes, one black, one white. They stared with open mouths. The white junkie pointed. “IT’S HER!” he screamed. “WE GET THE STUFF!”

The junkies circled like wolves, backing Leala into the vestibule of a vacant storefront. The black one pulled a small knife from his pocket.

“Easy, chicka,” he said. “Stop right there and you don’t get cut, right?”

Leala feinted left and jumped to the right, but the knife was ahead of her. The other junkie pulled a gun from his pants, small and rusty, the grips gone from the handle, now just a frame wrapped with string.

“Keep your mouth shut and don’t move, chicka,” he told her. To the junkie with the knife he said, “Keep her there and I’ll call the number.”

Leala held up her hands in surrender as her eyes searched for escape. But there was none: the vestibule surrounded her on three sides and the junkies held the fourth.

Then, seemingly for no reason, the white junkie spun across the pavement and fell to the ground, landing atop the gun.

“THE FUCK YOU DOIN’ WITH MY BITCH?” a voice yelled.

Leala looked up to see the big-hatted pimp, his car twenty meters away, the door wide. He held a bat like the kind used for the béisbol, but smaller. The junkie with the knife retreated.

The pimp stared at Leala. “You ain’t my …” his mouth moved from surprise to gold-toothed grin. “Are you the one they’re looking for? It’s you, ain’t it? Baby, you gonna make me money an’ all I got to do is make a call.”