Chapter 10

Amy was trying to scream but no sound exited her quivering lips. It was so dark in this part of the cave. The stench of rotting bodies and the sound of broken shapeless hulks crying out to an unhearing God in a hated tongue of the devil assaulted her brain with waves of revulsion. She was sweating now and twisting in odd gyrations to get away from the terrible thing she knew was getting closer but couldn't see. She could smell her own fear knowing that the end was near. She embraced it and shut her eyes tighter waiting for the final blow.

"Wake up, Miss Amy, wake up please. If you don't get up we are both going to be late and it won't look good on our performance paper"

It was so typical of Diego to be thinking of something so silly as a performance review when all she could think of was getting her two children back with her where they belonged. The vision of the cave and the horror of her time in hell vanished as soon as she saw the face of the small clock with the sporadically working alarm.

"Jesus, Diego, why did you let me sleep so long?"

She ran into the closet to get dressed and Diego made the sandwiches and even fed Blackie who accepted it with an air of utter disdain for the alternate care-giver. She gave Diego a look of contempt watching him ogling her tightly-packed bottom sliding into the driver's seat.

"Get your dirty mind back on business, Diego; we got work to do today. Make sure those guys out in the parking lot are not getting into any trouble with the usual crap you guys do when management is not around. The big bosses are in today from Chicago and they will be checking out the entire operation to make sure their investment is shitting out all the golden eggs possible."

He laughed because he liked the way she always cut to the nitty gritty and didn't beat around the bush like almost every female he had ever met. He knew his mama liked this strange white girl who was his wife and he never even tried for a moment to explain they were only pretending to be married. In fact, at this point, he couldn't see if it made any difference because they were both doing things every other married couple did. He smiled because suddenly he realized it was a lot better than really being married because they could experiment with new things and neither of them felt any obligation to hide their true feelings from each other knowing that it was only a temporary arrangement. He was making more money now than he had ever made riding the horses. It was so strange that rich people would tip him so much money just to safeguard their automobiles and bring them back to them at the right time and in the right place. Maybe it was to impress their companions who were obviously not their wives.

The inspection tour went extremely well.

Amy's boss told her after they left that everyone on her staff would receive an extra week's pay as a bonus and she would now receive one half of one percent of the casino profit. She almost laughed because it didn't sound like a very good deal to her. Then, she realized the casino was grossing millions each week and the profit margin was somewhere between eight and ten percent. Even at the very low end, she would be getting an extra $5,000 each week and that was definitely not chicken feed.

He also told her that he had told them he was "banging" her so they wouldn't get any ideas about trying her pussy on for size themselves. She also knew it was good cover for him because of his well-hidden interest for the male dancers in the entertainment department. It was a win-win for both of them.

She had a long face-to-face with her investigator in Sacramento over the laptop cam system and her plan to get her children back was progressing nicely.

Her stupid former spouse was in the beginning stages of crack addiction after receiving notice that the house was being foreclosed and his business was bankrupt. She had nothing to do with instigating either scenario. It was just something that seemed to follow his total lack of concern for the spending of money and his weakness for finding young girls to spend money on. His new wife "Candy" was getting it on with two other boyfriends. One was a black guy who had nasty connections with the drug trade swamping the once pristine city. His name was Rodney and he also ran a string of whore-houses that kicked back to the same Chicago bosses who had recently visited. His "girls" showered places like Reno, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas with their brightly colored little "business cards" leaving no doubt as to the services they were offering. Law enforcement did little to curtail their activities because it served a purpose of keeping such activities off the "streets" and away from the family tourist trade.

Candy's other boyfriend was actually a girlfriend who was the wife of an influential lobbyist at the State Legislature. She was known to have several "girlfriends" in the red-light district with shady backgrounds. One of the ways she kept them on a leash was to serve as a supplier of their narcotic needs in return for their services. Even though it wasn't necessary, she thought it amusing to put Candy in the same box and enjoyed watching her perform for a promised "fix". It really looked like Candy was screwed two ways from Sunday no matter which way she turned. It was no surprise that the previous weekend, she had disappeared from Amy's former house and the police were not certain if it was Rodney who knew the reason or if it was the well-connected depraved lobbyist's wife. Either way, they marked it as a missing person and closed the case in a matter of a couple of weeks because they had a lot more important things to do like negotiating for an increase in pension benefits.

Her former husband Douglas was not too upset about her disappearance because he had plenty of problems of his own. He took all of her clothes and other possessions and sold them to a second-hand shop in downtown Sacramento for a pittance. It was enough to finance a last drug induced blast at a motel room that was the scene of his departure from a life that never seemed to satisfy him.

Both of the children were taken into custody of the Child Protective Services because the only living relative of either parent was unwilling to take responsibility. That was Joshua, Candy's father who had been managing the restaurant and helped run it into bankruptcy. He decided to take a trip down to San Francisco and take a shot at selling insurance for a large well-known company that paid a hefty commission to new salesmen. His spiel and aging good looks made him a favorite with the widows and divorced females who vastly outnumbered available heterosexual males in the jaded city.