Outside Nashville, the same thing happened as in Dallas: They stopped overnight at a house in an area that was heavily Latino, then swapped vehicles. This time the garage held a late-model Dodge Durango with darkly tinted windows and Pennsylvania plates.
The next day, down to one backpack and the big black duffle-all secreted in various parts of the vehicle-they drove on eastward, passed Knoxville, then picked up Interstate Highway 81. They took it in a northeast direction, following along the western side of the Smoky Mountains.
The girls marveled at how they had gone from the dusty desert of south Texas to this place with verdant green cloud-topped mountains-all within a couple days’ drive.
Just shy of the Pennsylvania border, they got off on U.S. 15 and drove to Gettysburg. El Cheque always recalled the first time he and El Gato had made this same trip-particularly when El Gato out of nowhere suddenly started dramatically reciting the Gettysburg Address.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” Then El Gato laughed and said, “Thank you, North Dallas High, for forcing me to memorize that. Ol’ President Lincoln-I wonder what Honest Abe the Great Emancipator would think of El Gato’s little operation?”
From Gettysburg, they took the Dodge Durango up U.S. 15 the hundred or so miles right into Philadelphia.
It was just after dark when El Cheque pulled to a stop before what looked like an old city warehouse near a river. He killed the headlights. The warehouse had a corrugated overhead door, and after El Cheque sent a text message on his phone, the door began rolling upward with a clunking sound. The warehouse was darkened, and once the Durango had rolled inside, the overhead door clunked shut.
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] Cup O’Joe’s Internet Caf? 4309 Main Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 9:30 A.M.
When Juan Paulo Delgado looked through the windows of the coffeehouse, he saw that the morning rush of business types was gone. The small caf? had a well-worn painted concrete floor and held ten round wooden tables, each with a pair of wooden chairs. There was a stainless-steel lip wide enough to hold a cup-and not much more-that was four feet off the floor and ran the length of the front picture windows. The windows overlooked the chairs on the sidewalk and, a block farther, offered a glimpse of the Schuylkill River. A wide wooden bar, with a dozen wooden stools, ran the length of the right wall to the rear of the caf?. And there, at the back, were four cubicles, each containing a desktop computer and flat-screen monitor that the caf? rented to customers in fifteen-minute increments of Internet online time.
Juan Paulo Delgado strode in through the wood-framed glass front door. A tan backpack was loosely slung over his right shoulder by one of its two straps. He wore sandals, desert camouflage pants with the lower legs off, making them into shorts, and a black T-shirt. The frames of his dark sunglasses wrapped so close to his face that they completely hid his eyes. The tight-fitting T-shirt accentuated his defined muscles and looked to be brand new. On the back across the shoulders, it was emblazoned with bold white type that read GET SLOSHED AT SUDSIE’S, and under that was a cartoon drawing of foam spewing from an oversize beer mug and a clothes-washing machine.
Delgado quickly but carefully scanned the coffeehouse.
A smattering of students and stay-at-home moms, chatting while their babies snoozed in strollers parked nearby, sat sipping lattes and iced coffees. Some clicked away at their laptop computers, using the wireless connection to the Internet. A paunchy middle-aged man wearing dark blue slacks, work boots, and a baby blue shirt embroidered with PETE’S PEST EXTERMINATORS was getting up from the far right of the four rental computers. He grabbed his paper cup of coffee and stepped out the back door, which led to a parking lot.
Two black teenagers, one male and one female, were working behind the counter. The male, who was six feet tall and rail thin to the point of being bony, took orders and ran the cash register while the girl, slightly overweight with a very round face, prepared the drinks.
There was no one in line, and Delgado walked right up to the register. As he did, he slid off his backpack and put it on the counter.
“Hey, brother,” Delgado said to the young man.
He unzipped an outer pocket on the backpack and pulled out a white fiberboard document-mailer envelope. It had FEDEX LETTER printed on it. Its top flap was sealed and there was an obvious bulge, indicating that it contained something other than a flat stack of papers.