Free Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

boredom, and opened the passenger door for her.
    “Everything okay?” he asked.
    She nodded and said, “Mr. Markov says I shall begin my work on Tuesday.”
    “Dancing?”
    She nodded.
    “Lap dancing?”
    “I shall do anything to get the propinas . . . I mean, the tips.”
    “Have you ever lap-danced?”
    “No, but I shall learn.”
    “This sucks.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Nothing. Let’s get the hell outta Hollywood.”
    They didn’t speak until they were cruising south on the Harbor Freeway, and then Dinko said, “Isn’t there some other kind of work you can do here in L.A.? You got any skills?”
    “I do not know that word,” she said.
    “Talents? You got any talents?”
    “I dance,” she said.
    “You’re no dancer,” he said, feeling unaccountably angry. “You can’t dance worth a damn. I saw you, remember?”
    “I am sorry.” She stared straight ahead. “I shall learn better.”
    “For chrissake!” he said, his anger growing.
    “Please,” she said, now looking frightened and confused. “I do not wish you to have anger. I am sorry.”
    “You’re too young!”
    “I do not understand.”
    “You’re nineteen years old. You shouldn’t be working in a place like that, hustling drinks. First of all, it’s against the law.”
    “You promise not to tell my age,” she said, and when he looked over at her, the oncoming headlights revealed tears in her amber eyes.
    “Goddamnit, don’t get weepy on me,” he said. “I won’t tell nobody, but nineteen? You’re a child!”
    “I am no child,” she said.
    “Tell me something,” Dinko said. “Did Hector buy you out of a contract with that bar owner in Wilmington?”
    “How you mean?”
    “Did you sign a paper promising to work at that bar for a period of time?”
    “No,” she said, puzzled. “I do not sign nothing.”
    “How did Hector find you?”
    “He come and see me one day and then he bring a man on other day when I am dancing. A man I think is from China, but Hector say he is really from Korea.”
    “Which one was the boss?”
    “For sure, the big man from Korea. He say he look for girls to work in Hollywood. He tells me how much they pay me to work at Club Samara.”
    “Was the Korean dressed in a suit with a white shirt and necktie?”
    “Very much businessman,” she said. “How you know that?”
    “Shit!” Dinko said. The guy standing beside the SL. Hector wouldn’t tell the truth if you took his mother hostage.
    They were silent again except for Dinko’s exasperated sighs, and then she said suddenly, “And you, Dinko? How old?”
    “Thirty-one.”
    “I am maybe older than you,” she said. “In many ways.”
    “You’ll get old real fast,” he said, “working in that place.”
    “I work at more terrible one in Guanajuato,” she said.
    His anger and frustration mounted again, and he asked impulsively, “Were you a hooker down there?”
    She clearly did not understand the word, and she looked at him until he said, “A whore? A puta ? Did you peddle your ass in that miserable country? Is that what you did? Is that what you wanna do in Hollywood? Work for freaks and thugs in a sleaze joint and sell your body and get diseases?”
    After a very long silence she said quietly, “I must make money how I can. I am for sure not virgin, Dinko.”
    Still boiling over, Dinko said, “Nobody is these days, the Virgin Mary included. Our fucking archbishop paid out more than six hundred million to cover his pervert priests. Those good padres busted a bunch of virgin cherries, I can tell you.”
    She started to speak, then gave up trying to work out the meaning of the angry and ugly words he’d just uttered. Whatever he’d said, she didn’t want to understand it.
    Dinko went on: “I don’t care what you had to do in a place where the cartels slaughter people by the thousands and cut off their heads, but now that you’re safe in this country, you shouldn’t be taking that slimy job in Hollywood!”
    Lita Medina looked