Dying Gasp by Leighton Gage Page B

said. They could talk until they were blue in the face. It wouldn’t change a thing. And they talk. They talked all through the long afternoon.
    And they did talk. They talked all through the long afternoon. They badgered, they cajoled, and one even threatened her.
    But it didn’t do them a damned bit of good. How could it? She wasn’t like them. They were poor, she was rich. They were frightened of The Goat, she wasn’t—well, not as much as they were, obviously. They were nobodies, she was somebody. She was Marta Malan, of the Pernambuco Malans, granddaughter to one of the most influential men in the republic. She’d always had fine clothes, lived in a big house, had enough food to eat, had people to wait on her.
    But a lifetime of privilege hadn’t made her weak. If The Goat thought that, he had another think coming. She’d resist even if he starved her, beat her, kept her locked up. She’d show him she was made of better, stronger stuff than the lower-class riffraff he was accustomed to dealing with, girls who’d never even heard of the perfumes she wore, didn’t know the proper forks to use at a formal dinner, and wouldn’t be able to name a single brand of designer jeans.
    She, Marta Malan, had not been born to work in a brothel.
    Finally, just before dark, that filthy pig with the broken nose, Osvaldo, came to fetch her. After the pressures of the afternoon, she was almost relieved at the thought of going back to her cell. But she remained resolved never to give in. She told Osvaldo that, just as he was slamming the door.
    She could hear him laughing as he strolled away.

    W HEN HER door opened on the following morning, it wasn’t Osvaldo, it was Rosélia. She came in and closed the door behind her.
    “We need to talk,” she said.
    “About what?” Marta didn’t try to keep the insolence out of her voice.
    Rosélia took a seat on the bed. She wasn’t carrying her club, but there was something threatening about her all the same.
    “About your attitude,” she said. “We’re fed up with it. It has to stop. You’re setting a poor example for the other girls. You’re giving them ideas.”
    “Really?” Marta felt a glow of satisfaction.
    “Last night, after you spent the afternoon shooting your mouth off, Jociane told a customer she wasn’t going to let him have her. There was never a single problem with her, but, now, all of a sudden, she’s telling us what she will and won’t do. She said he stank, and he was too old. We can’t have that, querida. How can we run a business if we let the girls decide who can have them and who can’t?”
    “I don’t care about your business,” Marta said, raising her voice, hoping that at least one of the other girls would hear that she wasn’t afraid to talk back. “It has nothing to do with me. It’s your problem, not mine.”
    Rosélia didn’t get red in the face, or show any other sign of losing her temper.
    “No, querida , ” she said. “It isn’t just my problem. Now it’s your problem too.”
    She stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. The Goat was waiting on the other side.
    And in his hand there was a length of rubber hose.

    “ I THINK we should get together and talk,” Father Vitorio said.
    Arnaldo moved his cell phone to his other ear, shoved aside his breakfast and leaned back in his chair.
    “Why the change of heart, Padre?”
    “The Church, Agente , has informal links in virtually every field of endeavor. I took the trouble to make a few inquiries.”
    “You checked up on me?”
    “I did.”
    “Hell, Padre , I could have made it easy for you. All you had to do was—”
    “Do you want to meet, or not?”
    “When and where?”
    “It wouldn’t be wise for us to be seen together. I suggest this evening at my home, sometime after dark, say nine o’clock? I live above the classroom. Knock on the front door. I’ll come down and let you in.”
    T HE PRIEST’S apartment consisted of a single room. A shower and a toilet