“Damn it,” she whispered. This had to be investigated — that’s what due diligence was all about. But she couldn’t very well ask the PriceStar execs about it, nor could she ask anyone on the Paisley Shutter team — she wasn’t about to give one of them, especially not Ellis Quantrill, a chance to shred their way out of this kind of fuck-up. If there was a fuck-up. She put the note in her purse and called the only person in Honduras she could trust.
“They’re called cuarterias “ Peter Dutton explained, driving his rented Jetta through the narrow streets. “It means in English. They’re these long tracts of wooden buildings with tile roofs, dirt floors, and connected rooms. Usually six or seven people to a room.”
“Oh my god.”
“It’s rough, but they’re good people. We’ll be okay.”
“Why did the desk clerk warn me that this was a bad place for Americans?”
“Well, there’s the obvious reason. Money. They’re good people, but they’re sometimes desperate too.”
“And the baby thieves myth,” she said.
“Yes, that too. It’s bullshit, pardon my French, but these are poor people with no education.”
“I understand.”
“Can we change the subject?” he asked.
“Please.”
“Last night was...”
“Yeah, I know, Pete. For me too. I’ve never felt like that before.” His face reddened, and that made her smile.
“Here we are,” he said, rolling to a stop. “You ready?”
“Let’s go.”
Before they got five feet, Trisha stopped and pointed at the noisy gas generator right outside the door they were about to enter. “What’s this for?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
Pete Dutton had tried to warn her she might not like what she was about to see, but words were inadequate to the task. Inside, ten girls — the youngest about eight years, the oldest about fourteen — dressed in filthy, frayed frocks, were ankle-tethered with leather straps to sewing machine tables. Most of the girls kept their heads down, unfazed by the man and woman who had come through the door. One girl — bony, with a harelip and the most haunting brown eyes Trisha had ever seen — stared with frank curiosity. This did not go unpunished. A squat man with a cloudy left eye, who stank of alcohol even above the smell of urine, snapped a switch across the harelipped girl’s hands.
Pete locked a hand on Trisha’s forearm. “Don’t do any-thing,” he said. “Let me handle this.”
Dutton called the man over and whispered something to him. Cloudy Eye grunted. But when Pete slipped a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, his mouth split into a gapped brown-toothed grin. He stepped outside.
“We have five minutes,” Pete said.
“Her!” Trisha said, pointing to the harelipped girl.
That evening the sex was more intense, if less satisfying. Trisha had gotten so mind-numbingly drunk that she barely remembered asking Pete to hit her as he rode her from behind. In fact, it was only when she looked in the dressing mirror and noticed the palm-shaped bruises on her flanks that she recalled making her demands. She brushed her fingers across the bruises. The pain had been only a temporary fix. The weather outside had deteriorated, as if to match her mood. The skies were eclipse dark and a biblical rain threatened to drown the city. Trisha would have welcomed the water over her head.
“Something’s come up,” she said to Susan Blum, her assistant in New York. “I’m taking the day to handle some loose ends. I’ll call everyone here. By tomorrow, we should be back on track.”
Even as she spoke, Trisha could not get her head around what the harelipped girl had told her and Pete. Her name was Linda, and she was twelve. She was the eldest of six children, the daughter of a whore who had no idea who the fathers were of any of her children. Recently, her mother had gotten very sick. So about three months ago, the whore had “sold” her eldest child into pseudo-slavery. The girl worked fourteen-hour days and made a few lempira per piece. None of the clothes she sewed had labels, but yes, a man from PriceStar occasionally came to talk to Jorge, the cloudy-eyed overseer who sometimes made the girls fuck him.
“I am a smart girl,” Linda said through Pete. “I may be ugly, but I hear things, I see things.”
But Trisha had no proof. She could not stop a multi-billion-dollar deal based on the word of an abused twelve-year-old Honduran girl. She needed something real, something tangible, something to bring to the firm. Even then, she wasn’t quite sure it would do any good. These sorts of deals have a kind of self-sustaining inertia, especially this late in the process. Trisha had explained to Linda that she needed proof.
“Okay,” said the little girl, “I understand. You come to my house tomorrow night and I will bring your proof. Other girls, too, to tell their stories.”
Trisha had reached into her bag to give money to Linda.
“No! No! Not now!” the girl shouted in English. Then in Spanish to Pete, “Jorge will just take it. Bring it tomorrow night. Bring money for all the girls.”
When she clutched Trisha’s hand and kissed her fingers, Trisha found it hard to take a breath.
The rain had gone from biblical to drizzle. Pete picked her up in front of the hotel at 9:00. Trisha got in the backseat. There was someone in the front with Pete. He was a bull-dog-faced fellow of thirty with red skin, thick arms, and flat affect.
“This is Paolo,” Pete said. “He works for me. He’ll have your back. He speaks perfect English. Right Paolo?”
“Very perfect. The best,” he said in an accentless mono-one.
“What about you? Aren’t you—”
“I wish I could, but I’ve got business of my own to handle. And besides, the two of us in that area at night... We’d attract too much of a crowd. The wrong kind of crowd. You’ll be much safer with Paolo. Trust me. No one is apt to fuck with him. Isn’t that right, Paolo?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
Please, please, Pete, forget your business. I’m scared out of my mind. I’ll do anything if you come with me. I’ll do anything...
“Okay,” she said.
They drove into the mountains that surrounded the city. Trisha was numb, frightened about getting into a situation over which she would have very little control, but remained silent. When Pete turned off the main road and into a neighborhood of cuarterias it was hard for Trisha to know if these were the same slums she had been to the previous day. Places, times, dates... It was all starting to run together into another indistinguishable blur.
“It’s right over there,” Pete said, pointing to a shabby door as he rolled by. “I’m going to leave you and Paolo off at the end of the row. I’ll be back for you in...” he checked his watch, “half an hour, tops.” He reached over the seat and squeezed Trisha’s hand reassuringly. “You’ll be fine. Paolo will see to that. Right, Paolo?”
“I’ll take good care of the lady.”
“Good,” Pete said. “I’ll be right back in this spot in a half hour.”
Paolo and Trisha got out of the Jetta. Pete beckoned Trisha to his rolled-down window. She knew he wanted her to kiss him, which she did with little enthusiasm, the rain pelting her cheeks. He smiled at her when their lips parted. There was, she thought, something disquieting about his expression. Then, as she watched his taillights disappear, Trisha shook it off. It was her own discomfort, she thought, projected onto Pete.