The streets were painstakingly quiet, the choir was definitely singing from the streetlights. I loved living in the city, but I missed the stars. They were rarely visible from street level. Unless the night was the aftermath from the forth of July or a city-wide blackout, you never saw them.. Back home, where the grass stayed green and dirt, instead of gravel, still established some streets, the one thing I could always count on was seeing stars in the night sky.
Downtown reaked of drug enhanced misery and government failure. I was still four blocks away from home with no transportation private nor public thanks to the Bolivian Bomb Parade that erupted between two rival backdoor plastic surgeons working out of motels down the block where I live.
I walked past two men, one black, one hispanic, both wanting to make a deal. Their handoff was horrible, but it didn't matter. Police never came here unless they wanted whatever the black guy and the hispanic were pursuing.
A shadow twitched in the darkness near the street corner.
She seperated herself from the cloaked backdrop and posed like a Peruvian model in Hawaii, but her face cried desperation encouraging death. She could not have been older than fifteen. Her skirt was shorter than a military private's haircut and as loud as the sun in a room full of mirrors.
"Hey, mister. Need some relaxation?"
She was trying too hard. Her pimp had coached her well, but she needed to shorten the line delivery.
"Aren't you a little young to be out here all alone?"
"I'm not alone," she turned back, alluding to a shriveled sad species of a dog. The gray color of the tle fur was either natural or this thing was really fucking old.
Neither sad creature looked like they had eaten a decent meal in weeks. There were bruises and welts parading down her neck, past her shoulders. I checked her bracelet laiden arms for tracks, but there weren't any. Her sunken eyes suggested she was in the midst of a yayo crash. Her coarse, discolored teeth implicated some dabbling with crystal meth.
"Is that your guardian?" I asked about the dying heap of saliva that was her canine protector.
"He's my angel. Right, Angel." Angel lifted his raggedy head, but promptly returned it to resting on top of his paws. "So, how bout it? Can I help you relax?"
"How much?"
"Twenty for a skull fuck. Fifty for soemthing deeper. Eighty if you want Angel and me to give you a show."
I nearly vomited on her generic brand stilletto boots upon which forced something else in mind. "Here's a hundred," I yanked a c-note from the wad in my pocket. "Angel can stay in my kitchen. We'll get you both some food."
Back at my apartment, Fiona and Angel finished off some chicken that I had been saving for tomorrow's lunch. Her stomach was bloated after three pieces..She was cheerfully pale in the light as she was pleasantly shaded in the shadow-strewn cloud on her corner. I noticed more bruises healing along her wirey legs.
"I might need a minute, let the food go down," she said. "Thanks,by the way."
"Not a problem. But, if you really want to thank me you can give me some information."
Fiona's eyes exploded nearly through her skull. "No way - No - No way. I'm not rolling on anybody." She jumped out of the chair and headed for the door. I grabbed her by the arm, gentle enough not to completely frighten her, tight enough for her to realize I meant business.
"All I need is a name. I can handle the rest."
"No," Fiona insisted. "Angel," she called. Angel pushed himself up to four legs. He started to growl. I pulled the silverware drawer open and pulled out my silenced .22, then pointed it at Angel and checked if his soul lived up to his name. .
"ANGEL," she cried. Fiona tried to run to him, but I wasn't letting go. She didn't have enough strength to tear away. She barely had enough to struggle. "You killed my fucking dog, asshole."
"A name," I reiterated.
"Fuck you. What're you gonna do, shoot me next? Then what, huh?"
I looked her square in her eyes. She wasn't scared, she wasn't angry. She was just getting by until someone finally came along to send her up to her newly dead dog. She had given up on life a long long time ago, but business was still business and my rent was overdue.
"Then there's just one more dead hooker, and the world moves on. Or, you can give me a name. You come with me, I make sure what you tell me is legit, then, you go to my friend. She helps out kids like you, kids in your situation."
"Fuck that, I'm not going to no foster home."
"It's not a foster home. It's just a place to help you until you get back on your feet. You won't be told how to live; it's just food, a place to sleep, and a roof over your head, and protection. The real kind of protection."
Fiona thought it through. It seemed to good to be real, I'm sure, and she had probably been lied to all of her life. "It won't be any worse than how you're living now," I assured her. She was about to speak, but I needed to enforce one last thing. "The drugs stop, though; understand? You stop using - completely."
The remainder of her soul clawed its way past the despair that had cemented itself within her for so long.
"Victor," she finally complied.
"Victor what?"
"They call him Big Vic. He's over on 13th street, near the porn shop; that old loft on top of the herberia' store. His mom's like a mexican witch or something, a - a..."
"A bruja'," I finished.
"Yeah. Whatever."
I called some friends from the police department, enquiring about Big Vic. It turned out he was a pimp speacializing in underage prostitutes and dealing narcotics. The address matched Fiona's information. Then, I called Nicole. She came over. I introduced her to Fiona, then she asked why I had to shoot the dog. It would take some time, but eventually, Fiona would warm up to Nicole. Nicole wasn't the type to quit on anyone.
When they left, Fiona thanked me, but she was still drawing a blank, but it was a fortuitous blank. She had no idea what was going on, she could sense that she was finally on her way to being free.
I made one more phone call that night. It was to a local group, some old friends that owed me a favor - a big favor from back in the day. By the time the morning sun bloomed above the clouds, Victor's mother, the mexican witch, was well on her way out of the United States, and Big Vic himself was reduced to an ash skeleton.
Breakfast tasted twice as good that afternoon.
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