I handed the last box to Mr. Unfriendly, then hopped out of the truck. Zeke led the way back into the building. Mr. Silent followed me, closing the door on the cool night.

“Summers it’s too hot,” he muttered. “It’s too damn hot for him to unload a truck.” Then Mr. Silent was silent again.

We went into Zeke’s office. I took the chair that Joey had sat in before, leaving the henchmen to fend for themselves. Mr. Silent opted again for the floor, while Mr. Unfriendly stood in the doorway, obviously trying to work his way up the career ladder.

“You want to sign this?” I asked Zeke, taking an invoice out of my jacket.

“Let me look at it.” He took the invoice from me. Look is all he did, he couldn’t have read it before he signed it. “Safe sex instruction guides, what’ll you guys think of next,” he chuckled as he handed the invoice back to me. Then he said, “Joey usually signs on the bottom line.” He handed me a pen.

How nice of you to mention that to me, Joey, I thought as I took the pen.

“Since I’m acting in his stead, why don’t I just sign his name and initial it?” I suggested. It was somewhat irrational, but I didn’t want to put my name on any of this.

“Sure,” Zeke agreed with a shrug.

I wrote Joey’s name in, then scribbled my initials as illegibly as possible. I gave the carbon to Zeke and kept the top copy for myself. He opened up a file cabinet and shoved the invoice into a file folder. At least it appeared that Joey was right about Zeke being sloppy and putting everything into one file.

“I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta get out of here,” he said as he stood up.

“Mind if I hang around and get a beer?”

“Naw, not at all. Monday’s half-price night.”

I smiled at his generosity. “Can I leave the truck where it is?”

“You want one of the boys to take it?”

“It’s no problem.” It’s my ride home.

“Just don’t leave it here too long.”

“A beer or two and I’m gone,” I promised Zeke.

“Okay, boys,” Zeke said as he led the way out of his office. “We call it a night.” To me he asked, “You goin’ out the back door?”

“Yeah, probably better not to be seen on the street.”

“Just be sure you throw the bolt when you leave.” Zeke turned and locked his office.

Damn. It didn’t look like the world’s greatest lock, but busting down Zeke’s door wasn’t the subtle approach I had in mind.

We walked a few feet down the hall. Zeke stopped in front of a dusty barracuda—mounted, not live. He put his office key into the barracuda’s mouth. Obviously, Zeke wasn’t expecting an inside job.

“I should probably count the boxes again,” I said as I stopped outside the storeroom.

“You want one of the girls to get you a beer?” Zeke, ever the gracious host, offered.

“That’d be great.” It might give me a chance to ask some questions without the bartender or whoever keeping track of how long they lingered with me.

“Which one do you like?” Zeke’s lips had a salacious twitch to them.

“To get a beer? It doesn’t matter.”

“You want one of them?” Zeke had to push it, to play his little game. “I’ve got some good girls here, they’ll do anything I tell them.”

“Out of my price range,” I said shortly, to end this conversation.

“On the house. Which one you want?”

Mr. Unfriendly and Mr. Silent had both paused in their exit to watch this little drama. I looked at Zeke, his pudgy face glistening and decided it was time to stop being polite. Too often men attack women because they think we won’t fight back. Zeke had no control over me and I could afford to expend some rage at him.

“You do it with them?” I inquired.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s a perk of the job.” His twitching lips widened into a lascivious grin.

“You really mean you use whores for sex? That mechanical, fake orgasm stuff turns you on?” I stared at him. “I’ve got several girlfriends. They love it when—I guess you can’t do that with your bad back. I guess that’s a good reason to see a hooker, if you can’t do the real stuff.”

Zeke turned a color that an interior decorator friend of mine called aubergine. He spun on his heel, muttered, “Fuckin’ dyke,” and headed for the door. He turned back for a moment and sputtered, “You tell Joey to call me. I got something to say to him.” He turned back, again muttered, “Fuckin’ dyke,” and slammed out the door.

Mr. Unfriendly, mindful of his career climb, followed his boss. Mr. Silent chuckled, then let out an “Asshole,” clearly intended for Zeke and ambled out of the building.

I went in the storeroom, just in case Zeke decided to return for another round. I really did count the boxes. This time there were fifty boxes of “safe sex instructions.” A growing business. I put on a pair of gloves and picked a sacrificial box to open. I forced myself to do a quick glance through the magazine. Cissy’s picture wasn’t there. I didn’t recognize any of the other girls. It gave me a small, false sense of relief. Not knowing just meant I didn’t know the exact damage that had been done. The same anxious, begging eyes stared at me from those photos.

I tore part of the box flap off. Then I got a magazine and tore part of it to correspond with the torn box. Okay, Zeke, you and Joey just think this is a game to earn money. Let’s play for some real stakes, not “just” the lives of little girls.

No one was in the hallway. I quickly stuck my hand into the barracuda’s mouth (what a metaphor) and grabbed the key to Zeke’s office. After opening his door, I went back in the storage room and got the damaged box. I carried the whole thing into Zeke’s office. By moving and shifting a few junk piles, I found a place for the box, then covered it back up with the junk. Zeke would never notice it, but the police would be sure to find it.

I opened his file cabinet. I rifled through all his files, before taking the one Joey had instructed me to get. I stapled the torn porno magazine and box piece to the invoice he had signed tonight. That was all I put back into the file folder. Nothing else looked interesting and the cigarette stench in this office was giving me a headache.

I slipped back out of the door. Camille was standing in the hallway.

“Where’s Zeke?” she asked warily.

“He’s gone,” I said calmly. It wouldn’t do to act as if I didn’t have a right to be here.

“For good or just the day?”

“Just the day, I’m afraid.”

“He know you’re in his office?”

“No,” I admitted. I wouldn’t make Zeke’s mistake of underestimating Camille. If I lied, all she’d need to do is mention it to Zeke tomorrow and I’d be caught out.

“You a dick?” she asked.

I couldn’t help myself from looking down at my crotch before answering, “No.”

“I know you don’t have one. What’s your game?”

“I’m private,” I admitted.

“What’s in those boxes?” she asked, with a nod of her head at the storeroom.

“You don’t want to know.”

“There’s a lot of things I ‘don’t want to know’ around here.”

“Like what?”

“Like why should I tell you?”

“If I were you I’d be sick over the weekend.”

She slowly nodded, then asked, “If you’re private, how do you know?”

“I have my sources.”

She nodded again, then said, “Come on back this way. Standing in the hall’s not a good place to be talking.”

I quickly locked Zeke’s door and put the key back in its hiding place, then followed Camille to the end of the hallway and up rickety backstairs.

“Here we are, hooker heaven,” she said, ushering me into a small room. There were a few pieces of second- and third-hand furniture, an old couch, a wooden packing crate for a coffee table. A radio in one corner was tuned to a jazz station. And, incongruously, hung up on one wall were several pictures drawn by children.

Camille caught me staring at them. “I got two kids. Welfare didn’t put nothing but beans and rice on the table and I could never get shoes to fit them. That wasn’t a life.”

“This is?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Camille gave me a get-rid-of-your-middle-class assumptions look and said, “To get by, yeah. I know I’ve got only a few more years ’til my looks are going to need a real dark room. Or I end up on Tulane Avenue. So I’m careful with my money, I don’t party when I leave here. I go home, get my kids ready for school. I got my GED last year, and now I’m taking a college course, business. And in a year or two, Betsy and me are going to start a dressmaking business. Welfare wouldn’t put me on that road, wouldn’t even give me a map. They just give you so much, so you never have enough.”

“Why this dump?”

“It’s not so bad. Zeke’s too stupid to really rip us off. Plus the johns got to come in the bar first. They decide to play rough or not pay, they got to go back out the bar. They only get far enough to regret it. So what are you doing here, Miss Private Eye?”

“Seeking answers. Who makes what’s in those boxes.”

Camille nodded, then asked, “It got to do with kids?”

“Why do you ask?” I kept my voice as neutral as I could.

“What’s an eight-year-old, blue-eyed, blond-haired white girl doing at a place like this? Now, I got two kids, so I show their pictures and Audrey shows her kids, and Hugo shows his, so I know all the kids that might have any business here. That kid didn’t belong.”

“How long ago was that?”

“’Bout a week.”

Another woman slipped in through the door. She looked at me, then at Camille.

“This is Betsy,” Camille introduced us. “You got a name?”

“Micky,” I replied. “Hello, Betsy.”

Betsy nodded at me.

“Me, Betsy, Audrey, and Gloria fixed up this little room. No one comes here but us,” Camille informed me.

“Hurricanes,” I said.

“Hell, yes,” Camille responded. “Might as well use a hurricane for a hooker name.”

Audrey, Betsy, Camille, and Gloria were all names of hurricanes. New Orleans, a city built on a swamp, is prime fodder for a storm. Betsy, in the early sixties, had done serious damage. Camille, several years later, had veered east, slamming into the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the continental United States, with winds of over two hundred miles an hour.

She added, “Some have caught on, but none as quick as you.”

“Zeke still hasn’t figured it out,” Betsy put in.

“Tell Micky about last Wednesday night,” Camille instructed Betsy.

That the request came from Camille was enough for Betsy. She began, “There were three little girls here. They were tarted up in frilly dresses and patent leather shoes. You know, not kid clothes, but adult clothes for kids. They had makeup on, red lips, and eye shadow. Zeke yelled at me to get out of the hall. Later he first told me I didn’t see them, then that they were a bunch of lost school kids and not to worry about it.”

“Right,” snorted Camille. “In a whorehouse at three in the morning.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“One of the other girls claims some dude offered her big bucks to do a shoot with young girls. But she’s on too many things to trust what she says. Is that why you’re here? Those kids?” Camille asked.

“That’s why I’m here.”

She and Betsy looked at each other, then Camille said, “What we do is one thing, but messing with kids is sick. If we can, we’ll help you.”

“Can you call me if any more children show up here?”

“Can’t promise, but can try,” Camille agreed.

“We can’t exactly say, ‘Yo, bro, take it out, I got to make a phone call,’” Betsy said. “If Gloria’s here, she’s got a portable phone. If not, we have to use the one in the hall.”

“You gotta bust us on Saturday night?” Camille asked. “We might get more if you waited.”

“It’s not me. Or the cops. Whoever’s running this thing has gotten tired of Zeke. They’re setting him up and dropping him hard.”

Camille shook her head, “Like a snake shedding its skin.”