Chapter 14
It was ten o'clock in the morning of the next day, Melissa and Diego were sitting at the table, misty-eyed, slowly drugging themselves with another longing. According to Melissa's happy report when she served early breakfast, the drug hadn't affected Diego in any way she could tell.
Henri was a different story, though. Ellen and Melissa had pulled his inert form over to his bed, and Ellen herself administered the hypodermic in the heavy flesh of his upper arm. Henri slept peacefully, oblivious to the disintegration of the Palacia Granada.
Once started, the rebellion gathered impetus like an angry hurricane. First, Ellen closed the house down the night before and called the girls together for a meeting. One by one, she went over the procedures Henri must have used in forging their bank account records. Connie in particular didn't want to believe this, and angrily waved the stamped receipts Henri had prepared for her. And just as persistently, Ellen brought out the rubber stamp and inked pad. She made out one herself, just to demonstrate, like she'd seen them do in the bank at Valley Center, and gradually Connie understood.
"But where is all this money Henri said he was saving for us?" she cried.
Ellen bit her lip for patience. "He wasn't saving a cent for us," she said evenly. She pointed to her own book, the one Henri had been in the process of preparing. "He's gotten these materials somewhere and made out these fake books. When the bank opens in the morning, all of you take your books and go down there. You'll see. They'll laugh at you! Whores with thousands of dollars in the bank? They'll choke when they see how you've been duped."
Celine was taking it the hardest. "The filthy, bastardly sonofabitch!" she berated hatefully. "I should go up and bite his balls off!"
"That'd be too good for him," Ellen said. She had the key to the room for sake-keeping, and Henri's carefully hoarded money all counted, a little over ninety thousand dollars and mostly in hundreds. It wasn't close to what he must have taken in, but there had to be expenses. And Henri might have spent more than the others realized, but in any event, it was enough for a start.
"Why don't all of you go out to a movie?" she suggested, looking around proudly at the group she would soon command. "Tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about a wonderful plan I have for all of us, how we're all going to fly back to the United States, have a glorious holiday at Miami Beach, and make our plans for one of the best futures any call-girl could imagine." Her eyes glowed with enthusiasm. "We're going to be rich, all of us!" she promised in ringing tones. "It so happens I know where Henri left a little of the money he promised, enough to get us all started in the first cooperative rackets in the business. We'll grow! We'll get bigger every year and branch out, like the Playboy Clubs. We can all retire by the time we're thirty. You've all heard how much money there is in prostitution. We'll not only earn it ourselves, we'll keep it ourselves. One for all and all for one!" she concluded waving her clenched fist aloft.
Becky danced up and down enthusiastically. "Miami Beach!" she squealed. "They have nice places to shop there! And good movies! I haven't seen a good movie since Henri got to me in that New Orleans hotel!"
Alicia, Celine, Marianne, they were all buying it. They'd seen Henri, helpless and snoring like a pig, with a defiant Ellen holding the key and showing the, how they must have looked, how utterly helpless he'd made them. There was a natural backlash, and now they hated him, especially after their financial disappointments. Now, with promise of a better tomorrow from Ellen, one they could reasonably believe they were ready to follow, because as Henri Duboisson maintained, it was the nature of a whore to need guidance. And in that future, Ellen saw herself as the leader they needed.
So at ten o'clock the next morning, they had all returned from the bank, frustrated and bitter, in the common bonds of poverty. Their combined assets amounted to less than a hundred dollars.
First, Ellen gave them three hundred dollar each, and their spirits began to bubble. They looked at Ellen with a newfound respect. From chaos, she had wrested mild prosperity. Becky asked, "What do we do with it?"
"Go shopping," Ellen replied immediately. "Get something to wear so that when we land in Miami this evening we'll look like the decent, respectable group we are, instead of a bunch of tramp whores."
"We're leaving this afternoon?" Celine asked in a more friendly voice than she'd ever used before.
Ellen nodded in a business-like way. "I want everyone packed and standing here ready to go at twelve-fifteen sharp. Our plane leaves at one from Maiquetia. I got the confirmation a half hour ago. Diego will drive us down in the Chrysler."
Smiling, Ellen said, "You don't have to go shopping, Melissa. I've got some things you can wear. And you and Diego have a real good time, because from now on you're working for me." Ellen shook her head like a dedicated school teacher. "No more free stuff, Melissa. From now on, you're at least a twenty dollar whore. We'll see what the market's like when we get to Miami."
Proudly, she watched the others run after Celine, who was waving the Chrysler keys like a delighted schoolgirl. In some ways, she thought, they were so irresponsible. She'd have to keep her eye on them day and night, do their thinking for them, manage for them, see they kept themselves clean and well-dressed.
And she sighed with some regret as she watched Melissa and Diego go off in the direction of his room. As they climbed the stairway a slow step at a time, Diego put his hand up Melissa's ass and got a finger in her cunt and they walked that way up to the landing. In a way, it was over for Ellen too. In her new role as manager of a trained stable of girls, she'd have to very careful about her private life. She'd have to be an example for the others at all times.
She was thinking it was quite a burden for a twenty-two year old girl, but a pleasant one, as she went upstairs to give Henri Duboisson another shot.