Power and Empire

Magdalena peered over the back of the seat and out at the headlights as they played across the deserted gravel road. She rocked back and forth, about to jump out of her own skin.

“Why are we stopping here?”

Reggie shrugged. “Parrot told me to drop you off.”

“And Blanca, too, right? You’re coming back?”

“Nope, sweetheart,” Reggie said. “Just you. She’s too banged up for this job.”

Magdalena could see the lights from the big house on the hill now. She’d never been here before, but she’d heard about it from Parrot when he was trying to scare her. If there was a spot worse than the massage parlors and biker bars where she worked, then this was sure as shit that place.

She began to sob. “But for how long?”

Reggie looked in the rearview mirror like he expected the tears. Every girl cried when they brought her here.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m just doin’ what Parrot tells me.”

Blanca was awake now. She too began to sob when she realized where they were.

“Are we…?”

Magdalena shook her head. “Not you,” she said. “Just me.” She took the thumb drive from her pocket and pressed it into her friend’s hand, careful not to let Reggie see what she was doing.

She whispered directly into Blanca’s ear.

“Take this.”

“I can’t,” Blanca said. “What if they find it on me? I’m hurt bad. I can’t get chopped no more. It would kill me.”

“Just take it,” Magdalena pleaded. “Stash it under my cot.”

“You keep it.”

Magdalena gave her friend’s hand a squeeze and nodded at the red-brick house. A dozen black lampposts fringed the circular driveway. The glow of pool lights illuminated the trees on the far side of the big garage. It was fancy, but that didn’t make what happened inside any less horrible.

“They’ll take away all my clothes,” she said. Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “You have to help me.” She curled Blanca’s fingers around the thumb drive and patted the girl’s fist. “This is important. I’m sure of it. Maybe it will even save us.”

Blanca’s mouth hung open as she stared at the huge house. The front door opened and a Hispanic woman in her early thirties walked out to stand under a brick archway in the porchlight. A white tank top barely concealed sagging breasts and a muffin top overflowed the waist of her skinny jeans. She held a twisted leather quirt made from a dried bull penis. The cruel thing even had a name, Ratón, or Mouse. It was as long as her leg, and it had the power to flay skin.

The woman’s name was Lupe and she was the bottom bitch here — what Parrot called the senior girl of any operation, the one who’d been around the longest, survived all the chopping, and somehow kept enough of her teeth to hold on to the boss’s affections. Some men wanted innocence, but those girls never got to be in charge. They were just kids, used until they broke and then thrown away. There were always more kids. It was the girls like Lupe who became the bosses, girls who exuded equal parts danger and sex — just enough to be interesting. Though she was small, Magdalena was constantly on guard against giving off too much danger. Not physically, but because she was smart — and that scared men more than anything.

Lupe leered at the car as they pulled up. She’d been through it all herself. She had to know how hard it was, but instead of understanding, she was vindictive and deceitful, enforcing the boss’s orders and using her position to keep the other girls in line. Fiercely jealous, she was known to apply her rawhide mouse with great effect to the back and legs of girls who didn’t obey her quickly enough — or simply for fun.

Chest heaving, choking on her sobs, Magdalena cringed as Lupe tapped the cruel whip against her leg. The terrible woman would go hard on her, since the boss had apparently asked for her specifically. Bottom bitches were always the cruelest to girls they thought might pose a threat to their status. Magdalena had often thought that if her mother had joined the life, she would have been the bottom bitch.

Blanca finally relented and took the thumb drive, stuffing it into her own pocket before Lupe could see. Sobbing in earnest now, she wrapped her arms around her friend, speaking without caring if Reggie heard her or not.

“What if you do not come back?”

Reggie flung open the door, ready to drag her out if she didn’t leave on her own.

Magdalena closed her eyes and whispered, “Then save yourself.”

8

Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Roy Calderon had already ended his shift and made it home once today. He’d just snuggled down against his wife’s pregnant belly at their small three-bedroom house in Mansfield when dispatch called his cell about an overturned cattle trailer at the 287/67 junction. The accident investigation and subsequent report had taken the better part of three hours.