“Okay. So we are flying for maybe an hour and a half, and we land in Ciudad Bolívar.”
Brodie turned to Luis. “You know this place?”
Luis stopped pacing and nodded. “It is a city in the south.”
Carmen continued, “And then we go to the airport building, and there are no people there at night. Then some airport worker comes and gets us, and we get on another plane. Smaller than the first one. And we take off again. Fly for maybe an hour. And we land in this little village.”
“Did you land at an airport? Landing strip?”
“There was a strip of dirt to land. There was some little huts or something, dirt roads. And in the village was all these native people. It was fucking weird.”
“Did you get the name of the village?”
Carmen looked at him. “Why you want to know?”
“I want to find my friend.” Brodie repeated, “Did you get the name of this village?”
“No.”
“If you can give me a good description of the village, I can give you another hundred.”
Carmen thought for a moment. “It was near a small river. And we stayed the night in a guesthouse. The next day I see it better. Like a bunch of huts with straw roofs, in this grassland that was on the edge of the jungle. And I saw this big fucking mountain. Bigger than the hills around Caracas, and this mountain has just a big flat top. Fucking weird. And the side was flat too, like a big rock wall. And one of the native guys who speak Spanish, he sees me looking at it and tells me on the other side of the mountain is Salto Ángel.”
“What’s that?”
“Angel Falls,” said Carmen. “This is a famous sight, the highest waterfall in the whole world. And I realize this village must be a place that visitors come to see the waterfall, because there was a wooden sign that says ‘Bienvenido’ in Spanish and also in English says ‘Welcome.’ ”
Well, this was something. Señor Kyle had taken his favorite hooker to a well-known spot in the south of the country, and now she was back here in Caracas to tell all about it. This was the kind of break that cops pray for—then say it was just great detective work. Which in this case it was.
Brodie asked, “How long did you stay there?”
“Just the morning. Señor Kyle gets me from the hut, we walk to the little river. Then we get on a skinny boat with a motor. Two native guys get in the boat, one got a rifle. Señor Kyle tells me he’s going to blindfold me. I ask him what’s going on, he says not to worry. I am going to be doing what I do in Caracas, just somewhere else. So I’m thinking, I guess I gotta fuck these weird little native guys? Okay.” She laughed. “So he blindfolds me and we go.”
“How long were you on the river?”
She thought about it, shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Hard to say. It felt like a long time. Maybe one hour. But then we stop and he takes off the blindfold. We are deep in the jungle now, just trees everywhere. We get off the boat and walk through the jungle, maybe fifteen minutes, and we get to this place with wood and straw huts under the trees.” She chain-lit another cigarette, stared thoughtfully into space, then continued, “There is more of the natives around, but now I’m seeing a few Venezuelan dudes too. Rough-looking guys. They got guns. Señor Kyle takes me to a big hut with maybe ten beds, tells me to rest. I can see there are other women sleeping in there. I take a nap, but I wake up to shooting noise, I jump out of bed and run out of the hut and I run into some guy, young Venezuelan guy with a big gun. I ask about the shooting, he laughs. He says the boys are training, go back inside. So I go, and I see the other women in the hut now are awake, six others. I talk to them. One is from Caracas, four are from Ciudad Bolívar, and one from a village. They tell me we are in a military training camp, and that the men will come in and pick a girl whenever they want and take her back to their hut. The girls say they supposed to get paid by their pimps when they go