Chapter 10
Ellen, when she awoke, had no recollection of time having lapsed. She knew it was daylight, and remembered that she'd gone to bed with a man named Felix Wolver in a hotel room at Key Biscayne. She felt under the sheet and determined she was still naked, and that her head ached and she was terribly thirsty and had to go to the bathroom. It was while the room swam into focus that she decided something was terribly wrong.
It was old, this room, like one of a hundred spare bedrooms in a palace put there to accommodate visitors who didn't require elaborate rooms, yet were important enough to sleep in the palace. There was a huge, gilt-framed mirror on the wall, oval-shaped. The dresser was something antiquely valuable, like the four-poster bed she slept in. A huge, white pitcher and washbowl on a commode looked tight out of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Civil War scene, except the room was wrong. Ornate, it was, with molded-plaster decorations all around the ceiling run, painted red and gold and dark green. The ceiling was pale yellow, the walls a rich jade green. The carpeting was a once-lush oriental style, and the total decor gave Ellen an uncomfortable feeling she was in an Eastern potentate's harem. Carefully, dizzily, she got out of bed and stood swaying while she got her balance.
Out the window, she looked out on a strange scene. The grass was a lurid, tropical mat. Bougainvillea and what she thought was a kind of fuchsia painted the terrace walls with brilliant purples and reds. The wall was high, twelve feet or more. And a little pond with a bridge across it. She saw the unmistakable gleam of goldfish, as she turned away with a new sickness, that she was in a strange, different world from Florida. Wanting to cry but not daring to, she staggered to where a bathroom should have been and found it. While she pissed in a gushing, relieving stream, Ellen tried to remember ... and couldn't.
Next, she drank water. Cautiously at first, then two tumblers full in rapid succession, and felt immediately better. In the bedroom, she looked around for clothes and found a robe she didn't recognize on a hanger. It was green and quilted. Green room, green robe. Curiously, Ellen looked at the label Vazquez, it read. Underneath, Sao Paulo. She put it on. Barefooted, she crept to the door, tried the knob that, incredibly, turned in her hand. Ellen stepped out into a red-carpeted corridor very similar in garish decor to her room. A very fancy place, she decided, and probably in South America. She wished the robe had a belt or buttons. It didn't.
She tried the first door she came to, and turned a very ornate brass knob cast in form of a roaring-lion's head. It also turned. Wide-eyed, hoping she was in condition to accept anything there. Ellen looked in, then breathed a huge sigh of relief when she saw a wealth of brunette hair fanned out on a pillow, surrounding a very pretty face. Ellen closed the door behind her and tip-toed to the bed and stood looking down. Unnoticed, her robe gaped open.
Last night's makeup was still there, or the remains of it. Eye-liner, lipstick. Smeared, but there. Up close, the face looked tired and prematurely old. "Please wake up!" Ellen whispered timorously.
When the girl failed to stir, Ellen touched her shoulder, and brown eyes opened, startled at first, then took on a softer look when she saw who her visitor was. "Hi!" she yawned. "I see you finally woke up." She blinked several times, and looked very frankly at Ellen's nudity. "We didn't see you too good when Henri brought you in, but we knew he wouldn't bring in a tramp. We've got a good reputation here," she said, and with what Ellen though was pride.
Ellen sat on the edge of the bed. "Where am I?" she asked in a rough whisper wanting to know, yet hoping she wouldn't hear what she fully expected to.
"You're in South America, Honey. Caracas, Venezuela, to be exact. And this is a whorehouse."
Ellen swallowed hard, nodded, tried to find her voice, but she could only whisper. "It was the only thing possible, I guess. The way it's decorated and all."
The brunette nodded, yawning again. "It's called Palacia Granada. Used to be some rich guy's house, over twenty rooms in it."
"Who brought me here?" Ellen asked bravely.
The brunette sat up in bed, and the sheet dropped to her waist. She was naked also, with round, tight breasts and little pearls of dusky-pink flesh for nipples. Familiarly, she put her hand on Ellen's knee. "Look, Honey, I know you're all hooked up and shaky from the ride down here, and the dope Duboisson kept in you. I didn't remember a thing either, until I woke up here in this very room, asking myself why I wasn't back in Galveston with that good-lookin first-mate I went to bed with. So I walked down the hall to the next room, like you did. Only it was night instead of morning, and the first thing I saw was this Spanish guy's ass bouncing up and down on a blonde. This is my very first sight, a bare ass and a pair of balls, so I shut the door fast and run back to my room and grab the sheet off the bed, because I got no clothes either, not even that peek-a-boo thing you found. The next room I goin to there's just the girl, and she gives me the sad news. When I finally learn it all, the girls all got here the same way. Henri brought them, doped. Like he brought me, and you."
Ellen pulled her robe shut across her breasts, gradually accepting things as they were. "You whored before you got to be here?" she asked.
Smiling sardonically, the brunette nodded. "Just special calls, though. I didn't work in a house."
"I didn't either," Ellen told her. "In fact, I was on my own and doing good until I got this crazy idea I wanted to go visit Florida with a guy. It all started there."
"Is that where you met Henri?" the girl asked interestedly.
Blanky, Ellen said, "The guy I was with las' time I remembered anything was named Felix Wolver."
"A jewish-looking guy? Handsome? Nice hair and makes love like an angel?"
Eagerly, Ellen nodded. "He's the one."
The girl gave her the house-master's correct name, and how to spell it. "He's French, he says," she added. "He never talk anything about American and Spanish, though.
"Henri Duboisson," Ellen repeated, then shook her head. "I really was a dope." She went ahead and told the brunette what had happened, describing the events leading up to her last drink after she and Duboisson finished making love.
The brunette listened interestedly. "The same thing happen to me, just about. Only Henri had this merchant-marine outfit on. He was a first-mate off a luxury liner, he said, and he gave me five-hundred bucks cash to go to this hotel with him. You can guess the rest. He got his money back after I passed out on that drink he fed me, but he sure knew how to make a gal happy, that guy. By the way, my name is Connie Margheim. I'm part Bulgarian according to what my Mom said, only I don't think the guy ever married her. She took the name because it sounded better than hers. It was Potter."
"How many other girls are there?" sighed Ellen, hoping no one would walk in on them.
Connie told her four, and repeated their names, "There's Becky, Alicia, Celine and Marianne." She frowned at her watch. "It's still early, or I'd take you around and meet them. We work until three most nights, and sleep until noon. The cook always makes breakfast before we go to bed. Would you like some coffee?"
While Ellen's balance and composure had been returning, so had her appetite. She decided she was ravenous, and wondered if she'd had a thing to eat during the time she was drugged. "What day is this?" she asked suddenly. Connie was out of bed, tall, slender, and shapely. "Thursday. Why?"
"And you say I got here last night? Wednesday night?"
Connie nodded. "About ten o'clock, I think."
"Then we flew direct from Miami, because Henri doped me Tuesday night. That gave him twenty-four hours to get us down here. I wonder how he got me past customs and everybody," she marveled.
Connie was slipping into her robe. Like the one Ellen had on, it had no buttons, zipper, or belt. When Ellen asked why, Connie told her. "You either hold it together with your hands, or let it flop open. Henri actually prefers we go naked and be that way when the guys come in, but I feel so embarrassed my skin crawls. But if they want to see what we've got, we have to open up and show them. They always look at all of us too," she said distastefully.
"What's our percentage?" Ellen asked as they went out the door, down the corridor and into what appeared to be a large reception room. The floor was white marble and onyx, and cool to Ellen's feet.
"Half," replied Connie. "Henri handle's all the money, banks ours for us. We get a hundred a week for clothes and mike-up and hair-dos, and some mad money. I have over seven thousand dollars in my account," she reported proudly. "I've only been here about three months. It's almost as good as I was doing in Galveston."
"Are you going back someday?" Ellen asked, as they crossed over to a large and silent kitchen with lots of copper utensils hung around. The floors were also marble. Or granite. Ellen couldn't tell which. As she stood in one place while Connie spooned coffee into the pot, the places she stood on wanned gradually.
"After a year," Connie replied positively. "I think I'll go back home, invest my money, and either get married or start me another exclusive trade. You sort of get tired of these foreigners after so long a time. Some of them are pretty old too, especially the richer ones."
"Will Henri let you do this?"
"He promised he would. We'll know pretty soon. Alicia Ronlander has been her almost a year, and she's got over twenty-five thousand saved."
"You mean, that's what Henri says?"
Connie, slightly insulted, turned abruptly. "No! She really has! Each of us have separate pass-books, all at the same bank, and Henri shows them to us every time he makes a new deposit. He's fair about it. He even shows us the deposit slips. I have all of mine back in my dressers drawer.
"I'd like to look at them sometime," Ellen said idly. "Are there rolls or anything? I'm starved."
Connie opened a refrigerator, took out an old-fashioned round bottle half full of milk, then went to a pantry off the kitchen and came back with a flat covered with a tea towel. "Melissa baked these last night, so they're still pretty fresh."
"She's the cook?" guessed Ellen.
Connie nodded. "A native girl. She claims she's Spanish, but she's at least three-fourths Negro, and built like you know what. She's dying to start working with us girls, but Henri won't let her. He says he's going to keep the Palacia exclusively white. South American discrimination," she laughed. "Only what he doesn't know is Melissa sometimes slips in with one of us and works for rips. She's awfully exciting naked, to the men, especially when they really get fired up, then they finish off with her. Melissa really likes it. I don't understand why she doesn't get her a place of her own. I suppose she wants to be here with us, though," opined the brunette.
Ellen had helped herself to a roll and was eating ravenously. It was delicious. She decided not to wait on the coffee, and got herself a glass of milk. She shipped cautiously, found out it was fresh, then drank greedily. "What do you girls do for lacks, when you're not working?", she asked curiously.
"Oh, we shop. They have thousands of little hole-in-the-wall places that sell gee-gaws, and some of the native stuff is really exciting, especially the needle-work. You can buy blouses here for two dollars American you couldn't touch in Houston or Dallas for twelve or fifteen dollars. When we get back to my room, I'll show you some. You can buy hand-made dresses too, only I don't. I go to a dressmaker, get measured, and pick out my style. And besides clothes, there's the soccer games on Sunday. They have some movies. Now and then Henri lets us go to a matinee. We never go at night, of course. And we always stay together. If three or four of us leave together, we keep together. Henri says it's good advertising. This is the only all-white house in town with American girls," she said boastfully.
While she listened, Ellen ate and gradually appeased her hunger. "About what I expected," she sighed. "I wonder if he'll start me out right away?"
"I didn't see anything wrong with the part of you that men use," was Connie's frank comment. "My guess is he'll have Diego take you to the beauty-shop this afternoon and put you in tonight's line-up."
On a tall stool, eating with one hand and drinking milk with the other, Ellen's robe had fallen so that only her shoulders were covered. She looked at her long, shapely legs, flexed one straight, turned it back and forth. "No bruises," she mused aloud. "I suppose tonight's as good as any. Where's Henri?"
Connie shrugged. "In the city somewhere. He never sleeps late, regardless of the time he goes to bed. I think he goes out to drum up new business all the time."
"How many customers do you get a night?"
"Anywhere from three to ten, depends on the night. On holidays we really work! These Spaniards go wild on holidays. You'll average four to five guys a night. They'll like that blonde hair and really give you a big play," Connie admitted grudgingly.
"What do they pay?"
"Thirty dollars American," said Connie. "Henri says he has to keep prices high, or the bums will come in. And he looks them all over. Henri does. If they look dirty or anything, he has Diego show them the door. You won't have to worry about taking on any tramps, not with Henri in charge."
By now, Ellen had decided Henri was somewhat of a hero to the rest of the girls, regardless of the fact he'd kidnapped them all. She found a napkin, carefully wiped her hands and face. "Golly, but I feel better. Almost human again. Could we go by Henri's room and see if he might be there? I need to talk to him. After all, I'm a kind of prisoner until we come to agreement."
Connie shoved the coffee back off the stove and got up. "We can go by, but I doubt if he's there. He'll be back about noon. Henri says people should take care of all their business affairs by noon, when their mind is the sharpest." She led the way across the big reception room to an extravagantly designed, semi-spiral stairway with ornate filigree below the carved mahogany handrail. It was carpeted and climbed gradually, turning to the right and to a pretentiously-furnished landin', like a hotel mezzanine. Corridors went in two directions, and Connie took the one to the left, downs a long corridor to the last room, where she knocked softly on the door.
When no one answered, she reported, "He's gone."
Ellen stepped to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. Without seeming to, she glanced at the escutcheon and saw the old-fashioned type of keyhole she expected to find. "Okay," she said, "I'll see him when he gets back for lunch. I think I'll go back to my room and sleep some more, now my dizziness is gone and I'm not hungry."
Colline joined the yawn and stretched. "Me too. I wasn't quite done when you woke me up."
Ellen smiled in a friendly way as the brunette whore went inside her room and continued on down the first-floor corridor as if she intended going to her own room. When Colline's door closed, she did a quick about-face and raced silently into the big room, up the stairway, and one after the other, tried the keys she'd seen hanging on a ring in the kitchen, and slipped them between her thighs when Colline's wasn't looking. When they got warm, the discomfort disappeared. The third one she tried turned the lock, and Ellen Carver stepped into what was considered to be her new employer's room.
She wasted little time looking around once she spotted the vivid oil painting of a costumed bullfighter executing a graceful Valencia. It had a gilded frame, like almost everything else in mirrors and pictures. And on the left side was a noticeably dark smudge, where a man's hand would often touch if he were to move the painting. Hinged on the opposite side, it swung out from the wall and revealed Henri Duboisson's wall safe. Hardly daring to breath, Ellen moved the combination knob left to fifty, and felt the miraculous click. Evidently, Henri either trusted his girls implicitly, or he had a contemptuous disregard for their ability to open one of the most primitive-wall-safes in the business. Ellen had read once where they came from the manufacturer with a preset combination of left to fifty, and that hardly anyone ever changed them. She opened the small, steel door, holding her breath.
It was all neatly packaged, all American money, and nearly too much to estimate. She didn't touch it, but instead picked up what had to be Duboisson's unconscious leaning to the conventionalism of subterfuge, because his also was a little black book. With trembling hands, Ellen opened it.
The first entry was dated October fifteenth, 1963. There were two names. Opal and Hilde. Together, they must have taken in a hundred and forty dollars, according to the figure entered on the right. What she had was Duboisson's record of income from his first day as a pimp, probably in the Palacia Granada. Hurriedly, she thumbed through the rest of it, only to satisfy herself that besides the other things he was. Henri Duboisson was also a miser who didn't believe in banks. Through the years he'd become increasingly more a victim of habit, sternly positive no one would challenge his word or his privacy in the house. Ellen put the black book carefully back in place, then thumbed hurriedly through the little buff-bound deposit accounts that Henry pretended belonged to the girls. With what she saw, Ellen was positive he didn't bank at all, and that he kept the local officials paid off in cash. No records of any kind, except the black book. She closed the safe, turned the knob back to the position she found it, and wiped the metal clean with the corner of the robe. The picture went back in place, as did the keys. The house was still silent when she let herself back into her room, vastly relieved and with her plan already beginning to form. She closed her eyes but didn't sleep.