“You mean a temp, like from an agency? Like, legit? I know what that is.”
“Okay, so a raitero nominally—you understand ‘nominally’?” Waldo nodded. “Muthafucker nominally works with the temp agencies, on the books. IRS be askin’, just a workin’ stiff, drivin’ a van, freelance-like. But really bitch does everything—goes in the hood, tells ’em where to line up, picks who gets to work, all that shit. Then he scrapes off mucha every fuckin’ paycheck as he can.”
“How?”
“However. Exploitin’ our own. Cabrón.”
Cursing in Spanish wasn’t something Waldo had seen before from the dealer, nor was this suggestion of an ethical code. Waldo said, “And the drugs?”
Don Q rebuked him without a word and scoped the room again. The squabble had broken down: the man was gone, the woman still with them, now studying an African folk sculpture. Don Q turned back to the rosemary painting and lowered his voice even further. “Perfect with his other business—got the van for cover, and he meets a lot of pecople, know what I’m sayin’? But it ain’t just dealin’. This girl of yours—she ugly?”
“No. Why?”
“Better if she was, man. One more source a’ income for this piece a’ shit—he gets some girl in that lineup looks lost—runaway or whatnot, maybe over the border, cut off from her family—he hooks her up with this pimp called Tesoro. Next thing you know, like it or not . . .” He shrugged, what can you do?, and said, “Why you lookin’ at Amador?”
“Missing girl had a fight with her cousin. I think she called Amador right after.”
The dealer looked at him: it was a bad answer.
Waldo said, “What can you tell me about the pimp?”
“Sure you wanna know?” Waldo nodded. “My man say he’s one of them five-one dudes, tries to make up for it by roidin’ up like a tank. Ponytail, bad skin. Hang in front of a Burger King in Santa Ana, ’cross from a club called Headlights. All the girls workin’ that block, they’re his.”
“I’ll check it out.”
“Hope you don’t have no luck there, man. He’s an adult dose, this cabrón. Marks his girls, cuts ’em right here.” He indicated a spot on his own hand, the webbing between his index and middle fingers.
“Why?”
“Hurts like a muthafucker—ever get a paper cut there? Keep ’em scared and shit. Somebody oughta one-eight-seven this hijo de puta, he give you half a reason. But that ain’t gonna be you, Waldo. You ain’t that tough.” Waldo registered the gratuitous shot. “I’m just sayin’.” Waldo nodded thanks and started out. “Wait,” said Don Q. “One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“My kid’s school bullshit—week from Monday. I’ve driven down here twice now—don’t even think ’bout fuckin’ me on that.”
* * *
• • •
They placed the gentlemen’s club called Headlights on North Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana and found the nearby Burger King. It anchored a strip mall; Waldo scoped the parking lot as they cruised past, couldn’t see anyone who matched Don Q’s description of Tesoro. Lorena drove another three blocks and pulled over to let him out. “Should I park, or circle?”
“Around here? Circle. I’ll text you.”
He walked back to the strip mall. A couple of banger types in dark T-shirts, too tall to be Tesoro, leaned on a Chevy, telegraphing enough trouble that civilians between their cars and the BK didn’t dawdle. Waldo crossed the lot and went inside.
No Tesoro in here, either. It was well past dinnertime but the place was doing business. There were two couples in their twenties, an obstreperous gaggle of teenage girls, a trio of boys peacocking for them and an old woman in a corner with the glazed look of a transient, though after last night in Laguna, Waldo wasn’t making presumptions about anybody else.
The girl at the cash register eyed Waldo warily and said with careful politeness, “Welcome to Burger King, can I take your order?”
Waldo knew that to stay inconspicuous he needed to buy something; even the probably homeless woman was nursing a small coffee. He looked up at the busy menu panels and took a deep breath. Nothing here would be acceptable, not even the risibly named “garden salad.” The challenge evoked one of the more contentious issues of the past month. Lorena had singled out his vow to avoid food that had ever been packaged as his most unreasonable and had been chipping away at it without letup. Strictly speaking, his self-formulated prohibition was against eating anything packaged, not against buying anything packaged; if it would help camouflage his surveillance tonight, couldn’t he sit with the untouched food in front of him and watch the action outside?
Or maybe that was a distinction without a difference. Only days earlier he’d read about a report from the Silent Spring Institute that found that an alarming percentage of fast-food wrappers contained man-made polyfluoroalkyls, advantageous for things like stain and stick resistance, but not so advantageous for things like cancer resistance. And once these PFASs started leaking out of a landfill, they wouldn’t give a damn whether Waldo had actually eaten the sandwich or not.
A thirtyish guy, probably some sort of manager, was watching him now too. Waldo thought about Stevie Rose and the trouble she might be in down here, threw conscience and immunity suppression to the wind and asked for a MorningStar Veggie Burger. He took another look at the old woman in the corner and, resolving to offer the food to her when he was finished not eating it, added a small onion rings. He used to like them better than fries, back when that was relevant.
While he waited for the counter girl to put together his order he went to the window and scoped the parking lot again. The bangers had been joined by a pint-size bruiser with a ponytail: Tesoro, no doubt.
The girl said, “Veggie burger?” and Waldo collected his tray. He carried it over to the corner and put it down in front of the old woman. Homeless for sure, now that he got a closer look: the coffee cup was empty, her hair was matted, and the feculence of her clothing cut right through the smell of the greasy meal.
“What’s that?” She was missing a bunch of teeth, too.
“Veggie burger. And onion rings. For you.” She stared at it like she was waiting for it to explain itself.
Waldo left her and went out to the parking lot. A skinny young woman was talking to Tesoro in Spanish now, in platforms and a spangly halter and half a skirt. She handed him some bills. Tesoro said something and his two goons laughed, but the woman didn’t. He tipped his head and she obediently tromped back out to the boulevard.
Waldo followed her, glancing back at the homeless woman in the window. She was staring at him. When they made eye contact she gave him the finger.
Tesoro’s girl had thirty yards on Waldo and he sped up to close the gap. Half a block before the strip club, she turned to let him approach. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey. How much?”
“For what?”
Closer, he could see past the makeup: she wasn’t skinny, she was a kid. He’d never worked Vice, hadn’t been around this enough not to be struck dumb by how young she looked.
She said, “You a cop?”
“No.”
“What you want? You gotta say.” She’d learned enough English to set up an entrapment defense, at least.
“Sex.”
“Hundred.”
“Okay.”
“Wonderland Motel, past the club.” She half gestured with her thumb. “But walk five minutes that way, then come back and meet me in room six.” Her English was better than he was expecting. “Make sure nobody’s following you.” She turned and walked off.
Waldo started back toward the Burger King as directed, then turned around. Nobody followed him, except Tesoro and his bangers with their eyes.
* * *
• • •
The Wonderland was a trio of two-story stuccos around a quarter-full parking lot. Roo
m 6 was up the stairs to one of the buildings, at the end of a catwalk. He knocked and the girl let him in. The room was illuminated, sort of, by an under-watted standing lamp with a torn and dingy shade. Thin fabric curtains didn’t really cover the window. He closed the door while she sat on the badly made bed, the only furniture in the room, and fished a condom from her tiny purse. “What’s your name?”
“Alice.” Right, he thought, like every tech support guy you got on the phone from Bangalore was named Steve. Alice. Alice at the Wonderland. He wondered if it was somebody’s sick joke.
He said, “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” He wouldn’t have believed her if she said fifteen. “The money first, okay?”
He took the bills from his pocket. He sat next to her and she started to lift her halter. “Wait,” he said, grabbing her hand to stop her. He saw the mark and turned her hand over in his. The scar, a deeper color than he’d have expected, ran across the webbing and into a second scar across the ball, forming, from Waldo’s angle, a clear letter T.
She took her hand back. “You want to do it or what?”
He pulled the photo of Stevie out of his shirt pocket. “Have you seen this girl?”
She pulled back. “You a cop? You said you’re not a cop.”
“Private eye.”
“Shit!” She stood up.
“I’m not going to get you in trouble. I promise. Could you sit down, please? I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
She didn’t sit but didn’t leave either. “You’re supposed to give me a hundred dollars.”
He counted out a hundred for her, and then gave her an extra twenty. “Those scars on your hand—is that supposed to be a T for Tesoro?”
He was making her nervous. “Can’t we just do it?”
Waldo shook his head. “I only want to talk. When did he cut you?”
“He didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“My stepfather.” She held his eye, daring him not to believe her.
“Could you look at this picture again? This girl is missing, and she might know Tesoro.” He held it toward her for a closer look. “Please. Help me. This girl’s parents are very worried.”
The simple play backfired; she got colder and said, “Lucky her.”
“You know Marwin Amador?” Alice didn’t answer. He gave her another twenty. “Is that how you met Tesoro?” She offered a tiny, diffident nod. “Can you tell me about that? Did Amador drive you to work? To some job?”
Painstakingly, he pulled the basics of the story out of her. She’d arrived in Orange County knowing no one; a woman at a KFC told her she could line up behind the Dollar Tree and maybe get picked for work at a factory. At the end of the first day, Amador asked her if she wanted a cheeseburger and introduced her to Tesoro at the Burger King.
“What was that like?”
“He was real nice. My shoe was broke, like the buckle, so he bought me some new ones?” She did the Stevie Rose question-mark thing. “And this necklace?” She showed Waldo the thin silver chain with a heart of fake diamonds hanging from it. Alice said, “Why you askin’ all this? It don’t matter.”
“I’m trying to find out what happened to this girl.” He gave her another twenty and waited for her to say more.
“I started staying at his apartment, being kinda his girlfriend. I was, like, the special one at the beginning, you know? He’s still nice to me sometimes.”
“How long till he made you start working?”
“I dunno, like, a week maybe till he was bringing people over? Then, like, another week till I was on the track.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Last summer.”
He showed her the picture again and offered her another twenty.
She said, “There’s a couple white girls but I never saw one looked like that.”
“Do you know all Tesoro’s girls?”
She shook her head. “He got, like, two other tracks, I think.”
“Do you know where they are?” She shook her head. “But this girl—she could be working one of them, and you wouldn’t know her.” She nodded. “When did he do that to your hand?”
She hesitated but this time told the truth. “The night before I went out on the track. He said it meant I was part of the family.” She looked toward the door. “I can’t be talking about it no more, okay?”
He couldn’t just leave her to go back to work. “Listen—do you want to get out of here?”
“Let’s wait like another couple minutes, so they think we really did it.”
“I mean, out of here totally.”
She took a step backward. “I’m safe here. Don’t mess with me.”
“Safe? How is this safe?”
“Nobody fucks with me, ’cause a’ Tesoro. I don’t have to get in cars or nothin’. I met girls it’s way worse. Let’s go now. I’ll leave first, okay?”
She reached for the door but Waldo sprung from the bed and stopped it with his hand. Now she looked full-on scared. He said, “Where’s your real family?”
“I don’t wanna talk about that shit.” When he didn’t move his hand she said, “San Mateo. Can I go?”
“One more question.” It wasn’t important but it had been nagging at him. “Most girls go to Hollywood—why’d you come here, if you didn’t know anybody? Orange County.” She shifted her weight and stared at his hand on the door. But he wouldn’t move it.
She finally said, “Disneyland. When I was a girl, I always wanted to go. Tesoro say he gonna take me someday.” She almost smiled, thinking about it. Waldo dropped his hand from the door and she bolted out of the room.
He sat on the bed and looked at Stevie Rose in her school photo: fresh-faced, healthy, optimistic. There were probably pictures like that of Alice too, somewhere. When I was a girl.
Could Stevie be in anything like this kind of trouble, this quickly? In most ways she didn’t fit the usual profile of the vulnerable girls who ended up getting trafficked. But he knew things sometimes went to violence and force a lot more quickly than they had for Alice; he’d heard stories from the Vice guys. Could pissed-off Stevie have walked out on her cousin to go see what else Amador had in his bungalow, and before she knew it found herself in way over her head?
Could Tesoro have her in some apartment somewhere?
Or was Waldo just wasting his time chasing one wispy branch off one thin lead, compelled by the horror of the possibility?
Then again, that one thin lead, Stevie’s final call to Amador, was all they had.
He texted Lorena to meet him across the street from Headlights, left the room, traversed the catwalk and trotted down the stairs. Turning at the first landing, he saw Tesoro waiting for him at the bottom, leaning against a Pepsi machine and blocking Waldo’s egress to the parking lot. He stopped halfway down the lower flight, regretting, for the first time on this visit to L.A., that he’d left his Beretta back in his cabin.
Tesoro said something to him in Spanish. Waldo’s incapacity to master the language at any practical level was a shortcoming that had frustrated and shamed him throughout his years in the department. He’d tried a night class, he’d tried Rosetta Stone, and he could handle, say, a written vocabulary quiz about animals or occupations or months of the year. But on the street his attempts to speak would trigger looks of frustration or, worse, pity, and his interlocutor’s words—like Tesoro’s now—sounded to him like gibberish on speed.
Tesoro finished talking, read Waldo’s incomprehension, and said, “Sastre—comprende?”
Waldo had no idea what had preceded, but these last two words were at least familiar, if confusing: with “comprende,” Tesoro was asking him if he understood the preceding word—and Waldo did! Unfortunately that word, sastre, meant tailor, and had no apparent relation to this context. So Waldo mimed a needle an
d thread and repeated, “Sastre?” as a question, to show that he was at least partially keeping up.
He must have gotten even that wrong, though, because Tesoro let loose a quietly menacing tirade, it, too, faster than Waldo could handle.
Waldo reached into his pocket. Tesoro, reacting, went for something in his own. Waldo froze, held up his other hand to show that he would move slowly and unthreateningly, and did.
He withdrew his iPhone, featured it for Tesoro, then called up Google Translate.
He typed in tailor. When sastre came up, he moved toward the pimp so he could read it. Tesoro gave him a quizzical scowl and reached for the device. Waldo pulled it out of reach; he wasn’t about to let his phone out of his hands. He typed in Do you have a phone? and showed the Spanish translation to Tesoro, who scowled again.
Waldo took a second look and realized that he had typed in Do you have a phony?
He made the correction and showed that to Tesoro, who nodded and took his own phone from his pocket. He tipped his chin to say, show me. Waldo stood next to him and demonstrated how to get to Translate.
The pimp typed in some Spanish and displayed the English to Waldo: this is not the neighborhood for you.
Tesoro typed in a second sentence in Spanish, which came out: find your next neat in another barrip. Then Tesoro nodded at him with a curled lip, to make sure Waldo knew that he meant it.
Waldo, puzzled, looked at Tesoro, who typed in a third bit to complete the warning: or you will have a disaster. Waldo picked up the cognate and looked at the last Spanish word on the input line: disastre. Okay, so not sastre.
Waldo typed I am looking for this girl into his phone and showed the pimp the result. He handed him the picture of Stevie.
Tesoro typed into his phone and presented the English to Waldo: I’ve seen her.
Waldo looked to him hopefully.
Tesoro shook his head no.
Waldo was confused. He shook his own head no, but with a questioning look.
Below the Line Page 13
