There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history, an estimated 27 million in bondage across the globe. Men, women, and children being exploited for manual and sexual labor against their will.
PROLOGUE
Her name was Casita. She was eighteen, looked fourteen, and thought like twenty-two. One of nine children from El Chorillo, a poverty-stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months earlier. He was nine years old and beautiful.
Casita completed high school at the top of her class, spoke fluent English and Spanish with an advanced degree from the streets of El Chorillo. There she was known as jefe Mujer, (boss woman).
In the developed world she would be a CEO, respected by her peers, and feared by her competitors.
Interpol, the world’s largest international police organization, was recruiting undercover agents to infiltrate the dark world of human trafficking. Panama was well known as an international hub for slave traders. They operated with impunity while local officials lined their pockets with boodle from entrepreneurial traders.
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Casita was smart, pretty, street-savvy, and motivated, the perfect candidate for Interpol. They were looking for beautiful young women with her skills and she was looking for Javier, a perfect match.
Casita would be a Drone.
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The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four heavy bolt locks. The windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like fake eyelashes supported by notched adjustment bars.
This factory building was on the near-west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known as The Flats. This place had been a sweatshop garment factory, a warehouse for imported cheeses, and a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio, a training facility, and a dormitory fit for the Ivy League.
Slim’s girls came from nothing, life in the building was an improvement for them. Slim understood this too well, he knew about poverty, cold, and hunger. The Westside of Chicago was his training ground. He would never go back, life in his building was good and he intended to make it better.
He weighed 140 pounds soaking wet, no one knew what held his pants up, he would just say “it’s magic”, the name stuck.
Chapter 1
Magic Slim
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I was born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, my father was a Rastafarian pothead who walked out on us when I was two. My mother, Juanita, worked nights cleaning office buildings, to make ends meet for my three younger sisters and me. She did a little hooking on the side, the latter was more profitable.
She worked Rush Street on weekends, her pimp promoted her as the best trick in the loop, most clients agreed, at least the sober ones.
Juanita could do ten to fifteen tricks a night without complaining; the average time with a client was fifteen to thirty minutes depending on services rendered. Pimp (he never mentioned his name) took care of Juanita, often paying her a performance bonus. There was a competition on the street, pimps would entice the better performers to join their stable for a bigger cut or access to the best corners.
Top girls were often tattooed with the pimp’s initials, branding was a growing trend and Pimp liked to stay ahead of his competition. Juanita refused to let him put his stylized P in red, white, and blue anywhere on her body, somethings were sacred after all and besides, she might opt for free agency one day.
This was a business like any other only in this case you were a renewable resource albeit one with a limited life span. Like a professional athlete when the girls hit forty they either retired or moved into a management role.
I knew that when Juanita got home late it meant business was good and there’d be extra on the table. She didn’t take food stamps or welfare she was a naturalized citizen and felt it was unpatriotic. Juanita was a businesswoman an entrepreneur who paid her taxes, it was the American way.
I was a street kid, living by my wits, not by my brawn which was anemic. My friends looked to me for solutions, not muscle, I was clever and dependable and the neighborhood knew it.
By the time I was fifteen I had saved $1200 in small bills running errands for the South Side cartels. I appreciated the value of a dollar and didn’t spend foolishly. I stashed my money in two tin cans, one fit into the other providing double thickness. I hid it beneath the welfare housing project in Pilsen, the Latino barrio on Chicago’s lower west side where we lived. The rats were my only concern, they were big as cats under there and ate anything not nailed down, one reason I used double cans.
The streets in Pilsen are dangerous for most but not for me; the danger is a sign of competition between the cartels, I thrive on it. The cartels need the services of a neutral currier, one who is dependable and keeps his mouth shut. My reputation moves around Pilson moves by word of mouth, not phones. There's no digital trail in case the feds are listening and curriers are expendable.
I don't argue, I believe negotiation is better than confrontation. Leave something on the table is my motto, my clients leave feeling good about the deal and good about Magic Slim. For me, a smaller cut of a larger pie makes sense, why risk market share by being greedy.
I've turned eighteen and decide to leave home, Juanita pushes a crisp $100 bill into my shirt pocket, gives me a big hug and a kiss, and wishes me well as I board a Greyhound for Cleveland. For Juanita, it's one less mouth to feed. I didn't tell her about the money under the building, I trust no one but myself, the cartels taught me that, my own Mother can be compromised, and would, it's called survival.
Going to Cleveland is a gamble but I figure it's better to be a big fish in a smaller pond. Cleveland is a growing market largely ignored by the cartels. It's in Cleveland that I'll become the most successful pornographic film producer and sex-for-hire distributor in America.
My studio is a key link in a human traffic supply chain stretching from the former Soviet Republics in Eastern Europe to the United States. Trafficking accounts for an estimated $32 billion in annual trade with sex slavery and pornographic film production accounting for the greatest percentage.
Market research drives my business, I eliminate all but the most profitable segments of the market, sexual exploitation of minors, and pornographic film production.
Business is booming.
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