Milena, or the Most Beautiful Femur in the World

by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

  “How did you end up here? A fake boyfriend swindled you and put you to work?”

  “I wish. At least then, I would have had a short honeymoon. No, I wanted to work in a family restaurant in Berlin, checkered tablecloths and all that, and instead I ended up servicing men between the sheets in Marbella. Flat on my ass. Literally.”

  “Kidnapped?”

  “At sixteen,” she said without a hint of self-pity. “And you? How’d you get to where you are? Scamming your rich girlfriend?”

  “I look like that much of a dirtbag?”

  “No, but you stare at everyone else like you don’t belong to their circle. Like a person who’s never been here before and is afraid to end up back in the gutter he crawled out of.”

  “You’re a tough cookie,” he said, cackling. “But you’re not on the wrong trail. I didn’t come out of the gutter, but almost. I left home in Granada when I was sixteen, like you. First, I tried selling used cars in Seville, but without much success. I did better conning tourists and breaking old ladies’ hearts. With the money, I paid for my studies at the university. Everything else, as they say, is history.”

  The man spoke without looking at her, in brief stretches interrupted by silences. He didn’t mention his stints in the financial markets in London, Paris, and New York, where he became an expert in the shadowy movements of capital across the globe. When he emerged from his reverie, seeming to notice his companion again all at once, Agustín asked why she had been listening so closely to the guys inside earlier.

  She told him the cast of characters for her lifeboat story, and at his insistence, described the roles each would play in her imaginary shipwreck. When she finished, Agustín was staring at her.

  “Did you ever meet those guys before?”

  “No.”

  “You deduced all that from what they’ve said and done since you arrived at the party?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Impressive,” he said, “I’ve been dealing with them for years and I wouldn’t change a word from what you’ve just said. Except maybe my part. I’m not so sure I’d want to stay on the boat. I’d rather get away and try my luck in the water with the sharks.”

  “I think you’re the biggest shark of all. You’d swallow them up before they even knew what hit them.”

  He laughed again.

  “You make up other stories like this?” he said.

  “Only when certain clients inspire them. So two or three times a week,” she responded.

  Milena told him what her stories were about and promised to read him some of them if they met again. He looked for her a week later and continued to do so once or twice a month, until the tragedy that their meetings unleashed separated them forever.

  ‌21

  Claudia and Milena

  Wednesday, November 12, 3:00 p.m.

  During the day, Rina’s singular apartment looked different. The dead light of the lamps, the red velvets, and the lush décor lost their luster as the light poured in from the broad window in the living room.

  Milena loved it, it was so different from all the places she’d been before. When she said so, Rina assumed she was talking less about the decoration than the friendly feeling that had grown among the three of them as they tried, with mixed results, to make breakfast. Rina imagined how depressing it must have been in the brothels where Milena had spent the past few years. She told herself that as soon as this was over and Milena was really free, she would introduce her to another type of people.

  “One day you’ll meet Amelia, you’ll like her. You might have already seen her in the paper or on the news, she’s the leader of the PRD. But don’t think she’s like other politicians. I’ve started working for her, you know?”

  Milena tried to remember some female politician, but couldn’t. She never cared much for the news, and even less since she’d arrived in Mexico. She only paid attention when they said something about the south of Spain or the crisis in Ukraine, because she’d been placed with some of the Ukrainian girls in Marbella. On TV, they had talked about Croatia during the World Cup, but otherwise it was never mentioned.

  “I’m sure I’ll meet her soon,” Milena said without much interest, and flipped the blackened omelet in the frying pan.

  “She’s the reason I’m here,” Rina said.

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you. Why are you and Luis helping me? Why are you taking risks for me? I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, but you don’t look like journalists or police. Are you from some charity?”

  “Of course not,” Rina answered, though she found the idea funny. “The truth is, we’re victims like you.”

  They threw the omelets in the trash, deciding to try scrambled eggs instead, and Rina told her about her parents and brother dying at the hands of narcotraffickers, the violence Luis had suffered trying to help Vidal, and what Tomás and Amelia had done to save them. It was hard for Milena to follow the twists and turns of the story, and it still didn’t explain why she was with those two young people now. She figured it must somehow come back to Claudia, Rosendo Franco’s daughter.

  “So, Tomás works at Claudia’s newspaper. Amelia is Tomás’s girlfriend and you work for Amelia. Is that right?”

  “It sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But don’t make more of it than it is. Just think that we’re trying to do justice.”

  “And Luis?”

  “Oh, Luis is a sweetie-pie, just look at him,” Rina said, wiping the whipped eggs from their misbegotten omelet on his face.

  Milena decided to go along with the Mexican girl’s lighthearted tone. She’d only gotten half an answer to her questions, but it didn’t matter. It had been a long time since she’d been able to enjoy the kind of easy, fun environment she had there with the two young people.

  “Well, he may be a sweetie-pie, but he cooks for shit. Take his bacon out of the frying pan.”

  When Claudia arrived a few hours later, they laughed through the story of their disastrous attempt to cook a Spanish tortilla, which had taken up most of the morning. For different reasons, each of them was a novice in the kitchen, and the mishmash of egg and potato sitting smug and inedible on the kitchen counter showed it. The wretched state of the kitchen made it clear than cleaning wasn’t one of their strong points, either.

  But Spotify made up for their culinary frustrations. Luis and Rina spent hours on it, trying to fill in the gaps in the foreigner’s knowledge of Spanish music. Milena especially liked Lila Downs and Aterciopelados, whose lyrics were as different as possible from those of the old boleros Rosendo Franco had introduced her to or the pop and ranchera that she heard at the whorehouse. She knew nothing about classical music or jazz, but thousands of hours surrounded by women from all over the world had left her with a vast, if chaotic, musical repertoire.

  Milena searched for the music from the Balkans she had liked in her youth, shared her favorite rock songs from Spain and a few tracks of Flamenco, and translated a couple of slow and brooding fados she’d learned from a Portuguese coworker. By the time Claudia showed up, they were belting out “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

  Milena’s transformation was shocking, or so it seemed to Claudia, who had only seen her once, the night before. Maybe it had something to do with the light Luis and Rina seemed to give off, their calm, abundant passion, or the way Rina treated the Croatian, as if she was an old school friend or a favorite cousin she hadn’t seen for ages. It was true, there was something sisterly in the way Rina brought the girl coffee even though she hadn’t asked for it, or the way the Croatian now wore her hair the way the Mexican girl had the night before.

  Impatience began eating away at Claudia. She felt pressed to get on with the conversation that had been interrupted, to finally get the issue of the black book out in the open, and to find out if her family’s name was in danger, as her father had feared. But she sensed that behind the distance and the coldness Milena projected, there was a nervous little doe that would flee at any sudden moveme
nt.

  They ate the pasta and salad Claudia had brought with her from Trattoria Giacovanni and tried to imitate the Croatian’s Italian pronunciation as she said the names of the dishes, gesturing like a mafioso. Claudia realized that for years Milena had been nothing but a piece of merchandise, and unfortunately that also included the time she shared with Rosendo Franco. She had lived the past few hours like any twenty-something, not wanting to do more than laugh and decompress after a stressful day. Claudia almost regretted cutting that short, but she was in a rush to know the rest of the prostitute’s story. Luis and Rina seemed to understand and left, this time with the excuse of an appointment with the orthopedist treating the boy’s wound, one they had missed the day before.

  When the two women were alone, they cleaned the kitchen to the Cuban sounds of Albita, which Milena seemed to appreciate. Then they took their coffees into the living room and the Croatian girl picked up the thread of her tale.

  ‌22

  Tomás, Claudia, Jaime, and Amelia

  Wednesday, November 12, 4:32 p.m.

  The call came through on Tomás’s cell phone minutes before the Page One meeting began. Emiliano’s name popped up on the screen, and Tomás guessed the opinion editor was calling to explain his absence from the meeting.

  “Tomás, this is Emilio, I’ve been kidnapped by some guys who want to negotiate with you,” the journalist said in a rush.

  “What? Who?” Tomás asked. And after a pause, followed by what sounded like struggling, he heard another voice.

  “It’s not a kidnapping. I told your friend before, this is a negotiation between gentlemen,” said a man with a foreign accent that Tomás couldn’t place. He told himself he should record the conversation, but he had never familiarized himself with the app for it he had installed on his phone some time back.

  “So what do you want to negotiate about?”

  “You have something that belongs to us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let our deputy director go or I’ll have to get in touch with the attorney general,” Tomás said in the most menacing tone he could muster.

  “The girl’s not worth nothing to you. Give her back and there won’t be no problems,” the man responded. From his accent and his grammar, he sounded to Tomás like a Spanish gypsy trying to pass for Mexican.

  “You’ll find out soon that in this country, kidnapping carries a hell of a penalty. If you don’t let Emiliano go now, they’ll come after you with all they’ve got.”

  “Easy, easy, there’s no need to talk about kidnappings and punishments. We’re just talking like the businessmen we are. And we’ll go on talking with Señor Reyna as long as we need to until we manage to convince you. But don’t worry, we like having him here, we’re having coffee and cake, waiting to come to an agreement. Strictly business, eh?” he said, adding the last words in English.

  “Don’t be a dumbass, Bonso,” Tomás blurted. “If Elimiano isn’t back here in an hour, you’ll have hell to pay. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Hearing his own name made the man on the other end take a long pause before bellowing: “And you have until midnight to turn Milena in, you piece-of-shit reporter.” His voice was hard and bitter, with none of the malicious, singsong cadence he had used moments before. Then he hung up.

  The journalist asked himself if he really should have pissed the mafioso off. Maybe he should have stretched the conversation out to try and locate the call’s origin. But there wasn’t an FBI team in the offices monitoring the phones the way they did in the movies. That made him remember Jaime. It would be smart to consult with him before calling in the police. But he would call Claudia first.

  She couldn’t reach her phone in time, and only picked up after the third try.

  “What’s up?” she hissed, unable to conceal her irritation.

  “Claudia, there’s an emergency. Sorry, but you have to come immediately.”

  “Is it important, Tomás? I’m in the middle of a conversation. If it’s an emergency at the newspaper, you take care of it, you know what you’re doing better than I do, and I’ll get back to you in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “It’s not just an emergency at the newspaper. It probably has to do with what you’re in the middle of. Understand?”

  “Yes and no. Everything is calm here.”

  “Here it’s not. We’re looking at a literal life-or-death decision.”

  “Don’t scare me, Tomás. I’m on my way.”

  Claudia hung up, and the fear in her eyes when she looked at Milena, who had been following her phone call closely, told the girl the emergency was somehow related to her.

  “I’m sorry, dear, something’s up at the newspaper. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but please, don’t leave the house. This is my number, call me if something comes up or you need help. Don’t hesitate,” Claudia said, passing over her card.

  “Did something happen?” she asked, looking the woman in the eyes.

  “Nothing you need to worry about. Take this time to rest. Luis and Rina will be back making noise in no time,” Claudia said. She said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek and called her escorts to bring the car around to the front of the duplex.

  As soon as she was alone, Milena looked for a bag to pack her few belongings and the clothing Rina had offered her. More than a concrete escape plan, she wanted to shake off the edginess Claudia’s sudden exit had caused. Just like so many other times when she’d felt this way, she decided to open a notebook and try and write the ending of one of her half-finished stories entitled “Them,” but she couldn’t concentrate. After a while, she put Nancy Sinatra back on and started dancing.

  In the meantime, Claudia’s escort raced through the two miles between her and the newspaper.

  “We cannot hand over Milena,” she said categorically when Tomás told her about Bonso’s threat.

  “We can’t let them kill Emiliano,” Tomás responded in the same tone. “He has a wife from Chile,” he added, without knowing what difference the woman’s nationality made, maybe just because it was the only information he had to humanize a family he otherwise knew nothing about.

  “We need to call the police, the secretary of the interior, whoever’s necessary. We have to find him.”

  “Once we get the authorities involved, shit’s going to go off the rails,” the journalist objected. “I already got hold of Jaime, he’s headed this way. I say we talk to him before making a decision. I also invited Amelia; she knows a lot about these trafficking networks and the chief of police is her friend. In case we need to make an unofficial consultation, I mean.”

  Forty minutes later, the Blues and Claudia were sitting at the meeting table in the offices of El Mundo. Tomás repeated the details of the phone conversation with Bonso as faithfully as he could. The deeper he got into the story, the more obvious Jaime’s impatience became. Finally, he exploded.

  “That call let that son of a bitch know for sure that you have Milena, and you may have given away her location,” he said, taking his cell phone from the pocket of his blazer.

  “Absolutely not,” Tomás protested. “I never agreed that we had her and I certainly didn’t say where she was.”

  “When you called him by his name, Bonso knew you heard it from Milena. How else would you know his identity? And when you called Claudia right afterward, he could have traced her location. At the very least, he knows where she was a half-hour ago, even if that doesn’t necessarily mean the two of them were together. But if I was in Bonso’s shoes, that’s where I’d start looking.”

  Jaime called one of his contacts and ordered them to send a unit out to protect a woman at risk of being kidnapped. He asked Claudia for Rina’s street and apartment number, and passed the information on. Then he lowered his head and said something barely audible. Tomás heard the words “agent” and “the place.”

  When the conversation was over, Jaime grabbed Tomás’s phone and fiddled with it until he managed to activate the app that rec
orded his conversations. Then he showed the journalist how to use it if the kidnappers called back. He looked through the recent calls and saw that the number was Emiliano Reyna’s, as the journalist had already told them. They could trace where the call had come from, but undoubtedly they’d find the kidnappers had fled and the phone had been turned off.

  “If you’ll allow me to venture an opinion, I suggest we set up an informal consultation with authorities we can trust,” Amelia said, making air quotes with her fingers. “Two people are in danger and it’s not the time for us to start playing God. A respected journalist like that, someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight, and a girl who’s already been a victim of these gangsters for years.”

  “What authorities we can trust are you referring to?” Jaime asked.

  “The chief of police here in the capital isn’t a bad guy. We could find out if he has information about the gang. It would be worthwhile to know if Bonso’s the head or if there’s someone else above him. The federal government has a unit dedicated to human trafficking, and this is the type of group they specialize in. I met the guy who’s in charge of it once.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, but we’d have to do it without revealing anything about Milena,” Tomás said.

  “Look,” Jaime said. “The risks Bonso is taking are ridiculous. Nobody puts their neck out like this for a whore who’s gone AWOL.”

  Claudia and Amelia shared a disapproving glance, both taken aback by the term he’d employed. Unmoved, Jaime continued.

  “There’s something we don’t know about Milena and her relationship with her minders. Something we might not like. Regardless, it doesn’t make sense to get the authorities involved, it might even turn out bad for the girl.”

  “Maybe,” Amelia intervened, “but the time Bonso gave Tomás to respond doesn’t leave us with much room to speculate. We have to decide right now what strategy we can take to negotiate with this guy. It’s stupid to imagine that playing amateur detective is going to get Emiliano out of this in the next six hours. We need to figure out who can influence this animal or who calls the shots for the gang.”