CHAPTER NINE
BEING FIFTEEN YEARS OLD BUT NOT YET FIVE FEET tall came with one advantage: John was able to sit cross-legged in a wardrobe box in a walk-in closet of the Presidential Suite of Bombay Booty. He was reasonably comfortable. In case the task stretched on and he grew hungry, he had a peanut butter sandwich. To keep his hands free, he had strapped to his forehead a flashlight like a miner’s lamp. He wore great big earphones to monitor the sound levels. On his lap, he balanced his computer. His monitor was split into two screens—one for each of the hidden cameras with microphones that he had planted. Later, when he was assembling his documentary about AfricTown, he could splice images together. But for the time being, he had the laptop on pause and was waiting to hit the record button.
John had planted one camera over a painting above the bed and the other on a sculpture on the opposite wall. It was risky. But John had a documentary to make.
He heard footsteps, so he started recording. Two young women came into view. They stood near the foot of the king bed. They were girls, really; John guessed they were only seventeen or so, but they were made up and dressed to look older. One had light brown skin just a few shades darker than John’s.
The light brown girl wore a tan blouse cinched at the waist by a green belt with a big buckle. Why girls wore belts on their shirts was beyond John. She was about five foot five. The other girl was as black as night. She was a few inches taller and wore a short dress that revealed the lower ridge of her butt when she bent over and smacked the bed.
John’s teacher, Manzell Reginald, would flip out if he saw any sex in the documentary. John would clean it up while editing. But he had to be here. He had to do this. He had heard about the sorts of mucky-mucks who came to AfricTown under the cover of night. Now he had to find out for himself, film it and show it to the world.
“The man I got tonight,” the short one said. “Lula says he’s a big shot. Likes his girls deferential.”
The tall one laughed. “The fuck that means?”
“Means do what he says.”
“Who are you, the Scrabble Queen?”
“I like to read,” the short one said.
“I seen you with that cellphone, playing Scrabble, Scrabble, Scrabble every chance you get. Girl, you addicted.”
“We’re in AfricTown, honey,” the short one said. “Girls getting deported left, right and centre. I can think of worse problems than Scrabble.”
“Scrabble is for eighty-year-old white ladies in nursing homes.”
“Scrabble’s just a game, Darlene.”
John scribbled in his notebook, Tall, darker girl—Darlene.
“You keep on with that game,” Darlene said. “I’m here to make some money.”
“Me too,” the short one said.
“The money is great,” Darlene said, “but you know it won’t last. You see a single girl here over twenty-four? You gotta have a plan, girl.”
“Tomorrow, I’d like to buy a T-bone steak and a red dress. That’s my plan.”
Darlene laughed. “I’m saving up. One day, I’m gonna take accounting at the Clarkson Community College. Fifteen thousand dollars for a three-year course. All the time people say, ‘I like to work with people.’ To hell with that. Who needs people? People do things to you. Give me numbers and paper, any day.” Darlene turned to look at herself in the mirror. “Lula says girls who eat too much turn big-assed after twenty-one.”
“You’re a year away from twenty-one and a long way from big-assed,” the short one said. “I say you’re perfect.”
“You’re a doll, Yvette.”
John wrote in his book: Short, light-skinned girl—Yvette.
“Hey, kid,” Darlene said. “Ask me a number. Anything. Go on. Do it.”
“Thirteen times eight.”
“Shee-it. That’s easy. If I roll thirteen men eight times, that’s 104 times I’m getting paid. And in case you wondering, 104 times two hundred dollars is 20,800 big ones. Count it that way, Yvette.”
John admired the tall girl. He liked her attitude. He found it hard to believe that she was stuck in a brothel, worrying about whether her ass was too big. He wished he had a sister. Or a brother. Someone who was older, wiser and in his corner.
John had read that if you were mixed but wanted to be black, you had to fight extra hard to establish your identity. You had to out-black the blacks. This documentary was his way of staking a claim.
“Lula says I have to do something extra tonight,” Yvette said.
“What?”
“Take his ID and find some papers that make him look bad.”
“Don’t do it, girl.”
“Why not? She’s paying me an extra two hundred dollars. Says I’m a good reader, so I’ll know if I see something good.”
“It’s not right, the way she makes the illegal girls do bad shit.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Darlene? I’m from here. I am not from Zantoroland.”
Darlene lowered her voice. “Everybody says they’re born here, girl. They arrest me, I’ll say that too.”
“It’s true. You don’t believe me?”
“Don’t matter what I believe. I’m not your problem. If you got handcuffs on, you know what the question is: ‘Where’s your national citizenship card?’”
“Just because I don’t have one doesn’t mean I wasn’t born here. And Lula’s going to help me get a card.”
“Good luck with that,” Darlene said.
“All I got to do is pay her, and she’ll get me a card in no time at all. In fact, I’ve been taking half-pay for two months. Lula has me on a savings plan. She keeps the other half and says that when I’ve saved twenty thousand, she’s gonna fix me up with a citizenship card and a passport.”
It might have been the same for John, with a father from Zantoroland who disappeared before he was born. But he never had to worry about being arrested and deported. Because his mother was white. Freedom Statonian, born and raised. And his father, apparently, had become a naturalized citizen. So John had his citizenship. He felt guilty about that, having something so many others needed.
AfricTown told you all you needed to know about Freedom State. An island continent that was nearly two thousand kilometres north to south and more than half that distance east to west, Freedom State had grown rich by developing tobacco and rice plantations and exporting wood coveted by European furniture makers in the nineteenth century. It boasted one of the world’s oldest and most stable parliamentary democracies, and its citizens—if you excluded the residents of AfricTown—were among the wealthiest in the world.
The country had deported all the black people it could after the abolition of slavery, but try as it might, it could not prevent the descendants of its slaves from returning boat by boat, year after year. They were fleeing troubles in Zantoroland and seeking work and prosperity. But Freedom State would not admit, acknowledge or legalize them, so they clustered in AfricTown.
AfricTown, Oh, AfricTown. His country’s moral blight. His home.
Darlene cut into John’s thoughts. “Savings plan, huh? I’m your numbers girl, and you know what I say to that?”
“What?” Yvette said.
“Fuckin’ robbery.”
Yvette checked her lipstick in the mirror. “I want that card. Should have got one when I was born. But I’ll have it eventually.”
“Whatever,” Darlene said. “It’s your business. But be careful with the big shot.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Yvette. “I’ve done this before, you know.”
“Not this, girl. You ain’t done no spying. Keep your eyes open. And if he asks, don’t say a word about seventeen. You’re twenty-one. Got that? Twenty-one!”
John scribbled in his notebook: Yvette, 17. He checked his laptop. Plenty of battery power. The cameras were working fine. He tried to breathe as quietly as possible.
“Get out of here!” Yvette nudged Darlene toward the door. “You got your own work to do!”
&nb
sp; Darlene gave Yvette a hug and left. Yvette disappeared from camera range. John could see the king-sized bed, the reproduction of a Monet painting above the pillows—a thousand dabs of paint made to look like water sparkling under a bridge. On each of the bedside tables, a lamp rose out of the back of an ebony-carved elephant. The bedroom looked nothing like the rest of AfricTown. In fact, John realized, it had been made to look like anywhere but AfricTown.
John heard Yvette walk into the bathroom and felt uncomfortable listening to her pee. Out of respect, and to save his batteries, he paused the recording. He heard her wash her hands. Brush her teeth. Gargle. And then she sang. John switched the sound back on. This was good B-roll. She was singing a country song: “Constitution.” Everyone was singing it lately. It had crossed right over into mainstream radio and was polluting the national airwaves.
We got a Constitution for two, baby, our own book of rules.
Subsection Two, Part Three
Says don’t you never go runnin’ from me.
How could a seventeen-year-old girl working nights in the Bombay Booty in AfricTown go for country, of all things? “Constitution”?
There were two brisk knocks on the door.
Yvette came back into camera range. John hit record and widened the angle. With his fingers on the computer pad, he could manipulate the cameras to follow the action. The door opened, and a man stepped in. He towered over Yvette. Late fifties. Lean build. Brown eyes, brown hair. He wore a beige turtleneck and black slacks, and he carried a briefcase.
Nobody would believe him, unless he showed the video: John was looking at the prime minister of Freedom State. Graeme Wellington, no doubt about it. John read the papers. He knew the score. And now, he knew he was in over his head. A documentary about AfricTown, yes. But how could he have been so stupid? People were killed for the things they knew. Or sometimes they just went missing. Whatever was about to happen here, John didn’t want to see it.
The prime minister stared at Yvette’s body. “Not bad,” he said.
“Come in,” Yvette said. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He removed a wallet from his pants pocket, slid it into his blazer pocket and hung the blazer on a coat stand.
“Show me a little more,” he said.
She unfastened a button of her blouse. “You like what you see?”
“One more,” he added, motioning to her buttons. “Take your bra off, but leave your shirt on.”
She turned away from him, and with the other camera, John caught her unfastening her bra and ditching it on the pillow. John had not come for the show. He did not want Yvette to remove her clothes, and he did not want to see her get close to the prime minister. Yvette was built like a woman, but she was only a girl. She could be a senior student in his school. They could be walking down the halls together, talking about their teachers.
“My name’s Yvette,” she said. “What shall I call you?”
The prime minister snatched her arm. John saw Yvette wince, and inside the box, he winced too. The prime minister was alone in a room with a seventeen-year-old girl, and he could do whatever he pleased.
“Nobody will know about this. Right?”
“Nobody will know,” Yvette said. “I’m a professional.”
John noticed Yvette steadying her lower lip. She had not liked being grabbed like that. If a man that big had violence on his mind, how long would it take him to break Yvette’s neck or strangle her? If he discovered John hiding in the room, he could do it to him too. He wouldn’t leave any witnesses. John tried to settle his nerves by focusing on the computer and zooming in a little closer on Wellington’s hand on Yvette’s arm.
“That’s a good girl.” The prime minister released her.
Yvette said, “How about if I undress you?”
“No. Sit on the bed. There, on the edge. Keep your blouse open. Like that. Hang on. I need to do something.”
He put his briefcase flat on the bed, opened it and pulled out a file. He flipped through some papers and pulled his Planet cellphone out of his pocket. Those things were cool. You could call anywhere on the planet. No dead zones. He typed out a quick email with his thumbs, sent a message and appeared to be scrolling. Then Wellington put the file back and closed the briefcase. His cellphone rang, and he studied it.
“I have to take this. Wait here. Unbutton the rest of that,” he said, staring at her blouse, “but leave it on.” He left the room.
Yvette did not unbutton her blouse. Instead, she leapt up and, to John’s horror, rifled through the PM’s blazer. She opened his wallet but ignored the cash and credit cards. She found the national citizenship card that every citizen of Freedom State was required to have on their person when in public. There was a fine for not carrying it. Yvette looked at the card, and her jaw dropped. “Holy shit,” she muttered. John zoomed in and caught it on camera, too: Graeme Arnold Wellington. She kept the card but left the rest intact and put the wallet back in his blazer pocket.
Then she walked over and opened the closet door where John was hiding. It was weird seeing her back on his computer monitor as she looked at the very box in which he sat, hidden. He heard a click as she placed the national citizenship card on the shelf overhead. Then she closed the closet, walked to the door to the hall and put her ear against it. She pressed the button in the knob to lock the door, returned to the bed and opened his briefcase. John’s camera followed. She opened the manila file, and John zoomed in. Yvette looked at a handwritten message on an otherwise blank piece of paper. John zoomed in, but could only catch a few bits of the note.
Bossman
. . . firmed up the deal with GM . . . we . . . do this on your orders. Off books, $ only. We can keep intercepting bathtubs, return to Z. We pay $2,000 p/k . . . We pay Z—through GM—$10,000 p/k for . . . up to 20 dissidents/year . . .
Please approve ASAP,
Whoa-Boy
P.S. Lula has three for you. Asking 10x the usual fee. Petty cash issues. Talk her down?
John shook his head in confusion. Who was Whoa-Boy? What did it all mean?
Yvette closed the file and returned it to the briefcase. She went to the closet. John could hear her hand patting the shelf overheard, and now she was opening the top flap of John’s cardboard box. Maybe to hide the prime minister’s ID. John tried to shift but too late. Her hand grazed the top of his head. She opened the box and let out a little cry.
“What the—?” The doorknob turned and caught against the lock. “Who’re you?” Yvette hissed.
“John Falconer,” he said.
“Stay there or you’re dead.”
Yvette closed the closet, and John felt the humiliating wetness of urine in his pants. He tried to control his breathing. Could anyone hear his heart pounding? Surely not. The door handle rattled. Then there was a hard knock, and Yvette ran to open the door.
“What the hell is going on?” Wellington said. “The damn door was locked.”
“Sorry. It sticks sometimes. That’s all.”
“Did I hear a voice?”
“Phone call.”
“I thought cellphones weren’t allowed up here.”
“Please don’t tell Lula,” Yvette said. “I’ll make it up to you. I can please you in ways you can only imagine,” she said.
She was so tiny. It sickened John to imagine that girl under the weight of the prime minister.
“Where is your phone?” he asked.
“In the bathroom,” she said.
“Leave it there,” he said. “I don’t stand for interruptions.”
“You were interested in my blouse,” she said. “See how soft it is?” She came closer to him; she had to reach way up to let her fingers slide up and down his shoulders.
Wellington slipped his hand inside her shirt. The way they were standing, John could not see the prime minister touching her, and he was relieved about that. It was bad enough to see the way his hand was moving and know what he was touching.
Yvette reached for Wellington
’s zipper. “Oh, you’re a powerful man,” she murmured.
Wellington guided Yvette back toward the bed. Then he bent over to lift his briefcase out of the way. But the briefcase fell open.
“Why is my briefcase open? I closed the latch before I left the room.”
On the manila file, the prime minister’s name was displayed prominently.
“Were you going through my things?” he said.
“No.”
Wellington bent down to gather up the scattered papers. “You nosy whore. You went through my goddamn files.” He stood and grabbed her arm. She let out a little cry. “Hurts, doesn’t it? What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar. I think you did see something. I think you read my memo.”
“No. No, sir. I—”
Wellington struck Yvette, and her head snapped back. She stumbled away, then steadied herself and pressed her hand against her mouth.
John wished he didn’t have to watch. But he had no choice.
The prime minister reached for her again and eased her gently against him. Yvette put her head against his chest. Then he grabbed her hair in his huge fist and tilted her head so she was staring up into his eyes.
“You went through my things. That’s a violation of privacy.” He brought his free hand to her throat.
Yvette lifted her hands to Wellington’s and tried to release his grip. John wanted to leap out of the box, to save her. But instead he crouched lower. Help her, he thought. Somebody has to help her. Yvette kicked against the bed frame. The moment Wellington’s hands came off her throat, she screamed.
The door opened, and Lula DiStefano burst in.
“No one hurts my girls.”
Wellington let go of Yvette, and she fell to her knees, gasping for air. “This bitch went through my things.”
Lula looked at the girl. “Yvette, did you touch this man’s belongings?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why?” he said.
“I was curious.”
“You’re not paid to be curious,” Lula said. “I’ll deal with you later.” Then she turned back to the prime minister and said, “I have to ask you to leave. You’ll be refunded. I am sorry for the inconvenience.”