The MBR guy took the aspirin and barely managed a gracias.
Brodie said, “Viva la Revolución.”
Taylor took Brodie by the arm and steered him back toward the stairs. She said, “That could have gone either way, and you don’t make it easy with your smart mouth.”
“I say stupid things when I’m nervous.”
“You make me nervous.” She added, “Thank God you don’t know Spanish and they don’t know much English.”
“Right. Well, we just got banned from the July Twenty-Fourth neighborhood.”
They began descending the staircase. Taylor asked, “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find another way in.”
Taylor didn’t respond.
They descended the stairs, leaving Shithole B and reentering Shithole A.
They found Luis standing next to his car and looking nervous. He eyed them as they walked toward him. “It’s okay?”
“It’s okay,” said Brodie. He told Luis, “We need another way into July Twenty-Fourth.”
They climbed back into the car, with Brodie riding shotgun, and pulled onto the road. They continued up the hill, and after a few minutes approached a T intersection where a narrow, winding road off to their right snaked farther up the hill.
Luis informed them, “We are in July Twenty-Fourth now.”
Brodie looked up the hillside road. Even in a place like this, the whorehouses would probably be set back from the main drag. He said to Luis, “Turn here.”
Luis made a right and they drove up the narrow, unpaved road, which was lined with houses made of clay blocks and corrugated tin roofs that stacked up the hillside. Between every few houses there was another stairway or alley that led deeper into the maze. Everything looked precarious, and Brodie wondered how these denuded hills survived heavy tropical rains and the accompanying mudslides. As he was wondering, he saw a swath of dried mud and brick that had once been houses.
Taylor said, “My God… Luis, do you think anyone was killed?”
Luis shrugged. “Perhaps.” He added, “They know when to leave the houses.”
“Right,” said Brodie. You leave when the house starts to change addresses. Meanwhile, they were reconning for a whorehouse while trying to avoid MBR-200.
Luis’ air-conditioning didn’t work, so they had the windows down, and they heard loud voices ahead, then saw a young woman step out into the dirt road while angrily yelling back at wherever she came from between drags on a cigarette. She was dark-skinned and pretty, with bright-red lipstick, platform shoes, a miniskirt, and a tight-fitting tank top that showed off the goods. She did not seem to notice them as she turned in the same direction they were headed and walked up the hillside.
Brodie said to Luis, “Follow that hooker.”
Luis’ car crept up the hill behind the woman. After a few minutes she turned, and they followed her onto a road that was lined with beat-up parked cars and featured a small gated-up bodega.
The woman stopped at the door of a gray, two-story concrete-block building and spoke to someone on an intercom, then entered. A painted sign above the door read EL CLUB DE LOS MALDITOS.
Luis translated, “The Club of the Damned.”
This was obviously a brothel, though it didn’t fit Simpson’s description of a one-story building. But assuming that all whorehouses knew their competition, this would be a good place to start. Brodie said to Luis, “Pull over.”
Luis complied, and Brodie said to him, “Let’s see if they’re open for business.” He said to Taylor, “Stay with the car and cover us.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Women don’t belong in whorehouses unless they’re working.”
“I am working.”
“Then get behind the wheel and be ready to get us out of here.” He added, “That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Luis grabbed his gun and they all got out of the car. Taylor slid behind the wheel.
Brodie unholstered his Glock and slipped it in his waistband under his jacket, then motioned Luis to follow him.
Luis, who had by now come to realize that he’d scored the worst job in Caracas, dutifully followed Brodie toward the bordello of the damned.
Brodie did a quick case of the building as they approached. It was about forty feet square, and there were no windows on the second floor, which Brodie assumed was where the girls did their tricks. Toward the back of the building was a concrete enclosure, and Brodie recognized the sound of an electric generator. The bordello’s clients might not mind screwing in the dark, but they wanted their cerveza cold and the hellhole air-conditioned.
There was one steel-barred window on the side of the building, and Brodie looked into the dim interior, where he could