a low, dank, dark apartment. Threadbare blankets hung over the windows, sunlight streaming in through cracks along the edges. A drooping couch faced away from the doorway, and a coffee table stood just beyond, covered in empty beer bottles, full ashtrays, empty baggies that had once held drugs. Three girls were draped on the couch, slumped sideways against each other, one resting on the armrest, another drooling onto the first girl’s shoulder, and the third across both their laps. All three were mostly naked, clad in nothing but panties. They were skinny, ribs showing, arms and legs like sticks, hair lank and greasy and unwashed. They didn’t look up as the door opened, but when they saw Stone’s escort, they righted themselves quickly, blinking, eyes going wide and fearful. They cringed as the man rounded the couch.
Stone made himself stay still and not react. The man latched his fist around one girl’s wrist, yanking her upright. She stumbled, bleary-eyed, clearly strung out into dazed incoherency. She stood awkwardly, weight on one leg, the other bent slightly and turned inward, arms hanging at her sides. Her eyes were green, bright moss- green, her hair black. Her filthy, scarred, needle-tracked skin had once been porcelain.
She had once been beautiful.
Now, as the man shoved her toward Stone, she blinked once, slowly, realizing this was a cue. She glanced up at Stone, forced an empty smile onto her slack, dry lips, and shoved her panties down around her thighs, stepped out of them. She pushed herself against him, fumbling for his belt.
The pimp, or whatever he was, stood with his back to the window, watching, a leering grin on his face.
“What, are you gonna just gonna fuckin’ stand there and watch?” Stone growled.
“Ha, no. You want, I charge extra for dat. Tree hundred dollar, you do what you want with all dese girls. Couch, fine. Room ova dere, fine.” He pointed at a slightly ajar door at the end of a short, narrow hallway. There was one other door, leading to a bathroom, and a tiny galley kitchen.
“What about you?” Stone asked.
“Smoke, out da door. Not far.” He stepped between Stone and the girl, who was waiting apathetically, eyes crossing as she fought to stay conscious. He pinched her nipple hard enough that she whined and stumbled away, but didn’t try to stop him. “Only rule, no cutting, no burning, no makin’ dem bleed. Yeah?”
Stone nodded, and made himself look at the girls as if he wanted them. Inside, his gut was churning, clenching, revolting. This girl couldn’t be more than twenty, but she looked old and used, uncaring and empty, as if this was a scene she’d experienced too many times to count. There was no hope in her eyes, no life.
The pimp held out his hand, and Stone fished the American money from his pocket, peeled three bills away, and shoved the rest back into his pants. When the pimp took the money and smoothed a bill out, holding it up to the light, Stone struck. He lashed out with his hand, jabbing the ‘Y’ between his thumb and index finger against the man’s throat.
The pimp gasped, surprised, choking, dropping the money and clutching his throat. Stone lunged, driving his knee upward into the pimp’s groin. The girl stumbled backward, fell against the couch and sat down hard. Stone knocked the pimp to the floor and, kneeling astride him, pulled his pistol and pressed the barrel against the man’s exposed throat, knee in his sternum.
“I’m looking for a girl,” Stone growled.
“I—got you girl,” he gasped. “Tree girls. No charge, do what you want. No charge.”
Stone slammed the butt of the pistol against the Filipino man’s forehead, gashing it open and loosing rivulets of blood. “No, see, I’m looking for a particular girl. New. American. Not on the market yet. I think you took her. I want her back.”
“No new girls. I don’t—please, I don’t know!” He writhed, trying to get at his own gun.
Stone put the barrel between his eyes and pulled the hammer back. “Liar.”
“Okay, okay! I know! I don’t take her. I gonna buy her, but I don’t take. I know where she is. Please, I show you.”
“Tell me.”
“Ha, you neber pind it alone. You kill me, you neber pind your girlpriend.”
Stone gritted his teeth, knowing the pimp was right. There were no addresses, no streets, no way to navigate unless you’d been there already. He reached under the Filipino man and extracted the pistol, tucked it into his own waistband. He hauled the man to his feet, keeping the 9mm trained on him. How was he going to manage this? If he took his eyes off the pimp for even a split second, he’d be gone, but he couldn’t very well navigate Manila with a handgun out in broad daylight. There wasn’t any good solution to the problem, but the longer he stood here trying to think through it, the worse off Wren would be. Stone gathered the dropped bills, shoved them back into his pocket, and gestured with the barrel of his pistol.
“Go,” he grunted. “Show me. And don’t think I won’t shoot you if you try to run.”
“You pind da girl, den what? Dey won’ let you go wit’ her.”
“Let me worry about that. Just take me to her.”
“Okay, dead man.”
Stone followed him out of the apartment, down the stairs and onto the street, back onto the bus, returning the way they’d come. Stone kept close to his guide, his pistol tucked into the front of his jeans, wedged uncomfortably and not entirely safely, but within easy reach.
As the built-up, modern downtown faded into tumbledown shanties and the wasteland of poverty, Stone felt his gnawing unease ratchet into outright fear. His guide was constantly turning his head around to grin at him, shaking his head and laughing at if at some private joke.
The joke, Stone knew, was on him. He was walking alone into the lion’s den, basically unarmed. A couple of 9mm pistols weren’t going to do much good against a criminal organization that had all of Manila quaking.
Off the bus and into the maze of sheds and crates and garbage and stench and human suffering, left and right and left and right until Stone was thoroughly lost. People hung their heads out of windows and watched, stared, listless and uninterested, as Stone and the other man passed through, squeezing between buildings, avoiding packs of snarling dogs fighting over scraps, burning heaps of trash, open doorways echoing with the sounds of sex, acrid clouds of drug fumes. Shouting voices, arguments, fights. The sound of a hand smacking flesh and a small voice crying. Rot, the miasma of death and sickness. Puddles of muddy water underfoot, raw sewage. Clothes hanging from wires overhead like multi-colored flags all in a row.
And then, the faces began to vanish. Windows were closed. No one watched. The scent of fear was palpable. Even his guide had slowed and was scanning the rooftops, the narrow alleys, the street behind them.
Eventually, he stopped. “No closer. They see me, you,
Stone eyed the door in question, a small crimson slab of wood, the paint peeling and marked with Filipino graffiti. Or, rather, what was supposed to be graffiti, but was more likely an identifying marker of some kind.
“How many are in there?” Stone asked.
The man shrugged. “Girls? Or men wit guns?”
“Both.”
“Many, and many. Maybe…tirty girls. Men? More dan dat, men. Maybe? I only know Cervantes, but I see odders, many many.”
“Who’s Cervantes?”
Another shrug. “Cervantes is…Cervantes. Bad, bad. I scare ob him. Ebry-one scare ob him.” A pause, and then: “You really gonna go in dere? One girl, she not wort’ it, I tink.”
“This one is.”
“You crazy. Crazy, and dead.” He spat in the dirt. “I go now, or you kill me.”
“What are you gonna do if I let you go?” Stone asked, turning to watch the man to see if he would lie.
“Run. Go home fast. Get big drunk.”
Stone saw truth in his eyes, and waved his hand. The pimp scurried off into the late evening gloom, not looking back. Guilt washed over Stone. He hadn’t done anything to help the girls in the apartment. Maybe he could go back. But first, he’d be lucky to do anything to help the one girl he came to rescue.
He pushed all thoughts from his mind and turned his attention to examining the doorway and the windows around it. He saw no sign of anyone watching, but that didn’t mean anything. He leaned against the wall, mud sucking at his boot, sweat dotting his forehead, unease rumbling in his gut.
