The Traffickers (Badge of Honor 9)

Interior mercury lights then began to come on with a glow.

And there Ana and Rosario saw a smiling El Gato.

El Cheque delivered the girls and hidden goods, then loaded the Durango’s secret compartments with bricklike objects wrapped in black plastic. He got back in the Durango, the overhead lights were killed, the overhead door opened-and he drove off.

El Gato had welcomed Ana and Rosario to what he said was his home. It was an old warehouse that had been converted to a very nice living space, clean and comfortable and spacious. It had a view of a river and city lights and was much nicer than any place he had had them stay before.

He kept up the act that he loved the beautiful girls. But that did not last long.

There were nights-or early mornings-he would come home, often either drunk or high or both, looking for a sexual release. First it had been himself alone; later, he would bring a friend and allow him his choice of girls.

When they complained, El Gato finally said it was time for them to begin earning money to repay their passage. He took Ana and Rosario to the run-down row house on Hancock Street and coldly explained what they would be doing. They protested that it was nothing like what he’d promised. And he beat them.

Thus, they’d been turned over to El Gato’s men who ran the house, and joined the other girls held there. And the next day, the men had taken Ana and Rosario by van to various convenience stores, where they’d been treated like any of the store’s other commodities-first to be sampled by the store managers, then put on display and made available to customers.

Neither Ana nor Rosario had any idea how much they owed or earned. El Gato simply showed them sheets of paper on which he said he kept track. Yet no matter how much they worked, they never seemed to make any progress.

And one day in a spontaneous act that surprised even Rosario, at the Gas amp; Go on Frankford she had fled her bondage, leaving behind that awful life.

And leaving Ana to suffer the consequences.

Se?ora Esteban now sat on the couch with Rosario Flores’s head resting on her lap. She soothingly stroked Rosario’s hair.

“It will be okay,” Se?ora Esteban said softly in Spanish.

“He did the same thing with Jorgina and Alicia and the other girls!” Rosario sobbed.

Then she suddenly sat upright and wailed.

“And if it wasn’t for me,” she cried out, beating her fists on the sides of her head, “Ana would be alive!”

She sobbed.

“I got Ana to leave Guatemala! I got her to believe El Gato! And then I was the one who ran away from him, leaving her to…”

She crossed herself.

“I got Ana killed! It is all my fault!”

Crying, she lowered her head back onto Se?ora Esteban’s lap.

Madre de Dios, El Nariz thought.

He said a silent prayer for her.

I cannot let this monster continue-but what can I do?

Something, anything…

El Nariz put the tequila back on the high shelf above the kitchen sink, then went to his wife. When she looked up to him, he gently kissed her on the forehead.

“I must go,” he said.

She acknowledged that by closing her eyes and nodding.

And he turned and went out the door.

FOUR