BY CAROLYN SALAZAR

  It's 11 on a Friday night, and Thayz, wearing a black slinky midriff top and a tight leopard-print miniskirt, struts over to a man sitting alone at the bar and begins
  whispering seductively into his ear. She touches his thighs as he pulls her closer, and she giggles as he tries to touch her breasts.

  For a few dollars, the man was able to buy Thayz's affection. He paid her to laugh at his jokes, to flirt with him, to make him feel wanted -- and needed. But when he slurped the last drop from his bottle of Coors beer, his time was up. So she stood up, swaggered over to the next man sitting alone at the bar.

  Thayz, 35, a single mother of two, says she does not love her job as a ''waitress'' at a Little Havana cafeteria turned nighttime bar. But it's the only way she knows to eke out a living.

  ''When I first started working here, I felt terrible,'' Thayz, a Peruvian, said as salsa music blared from a jukebox at the far back corner of the dimly lit bar. ``But then I started making money, and I started feeling better. I'm a single mother, I need to pay the rent.''

  The Herald is not using Thayz's last name or revealing her employer to protect her identity. She is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of bar girls, many of them
  undocumented immigrants, who work in a thriving, yet largely secret world under attack by the city of Miami.

  Their employers operate as regular Latin cafeterias during the day. But at night they are packed with single men, most of them working-class immigrants, who pay $10 to $15 for a bottle of beer that allows them to chat with or grope the scantily-clad women working there.

  The world of the B-girls, as these bar women are called, has been spotlighted in the past week following the arrest of the man police say is the Shenandoah rapist.
  Reynaldo Elías Rápalo spent many of his evenings at a cafeteria -- and its owner suspects a former employee was one of Rápalo's victims. Police would not confirm that.

  This month, the city began taking on the illegal establishments tucked in seedy corners of Little Havana, Allapattah and Flagami.

  BUSY AREAS

  Police say there are hundreds of illegal cafeterias in Miami, with one nearly every half block in busy thoroughfares like Flagler Street, Southwest Eighth Street and
  Northwest Seventh Avenue. Operating out of dark tinted storefronts with twinkling neon lights, some employ as many as 30 bar girls, but most hire an average of eight.

  Police say these bars are a nuisance because they are a breeding ground for drugs, prostitution and crime -- and they take advantage of desperate, low-income
  immigrants.

  ''This guy probably spent 10 hours working on top of a hot roof, and he probably lives with three other guys in an illegal unit. When do you think was the last time a pretty girl talked to them?'' said Miami police Sgt. Alfredo Alvarez.

  ''Mingling,'' as police call the high-priced flirtation, is also illegal because the women, who police say earn about $50 to $200 day, do not pay taxes on the tips.

  Bar owners say they are doing nothing wrong but are being harassed by police for operating legitimate businesses. They say they should not be punished for a few
  businesses rife with criminal activity, which they say are the exception.

  ''Instead of just letting people drink beer, they come in here and treat us like delinquents, forcing everyone to stand against the wall and interrogating everyone like we are criminals,'' said Miguel Reyes, owner of Los Arcos Floridianos, one of the bars the city has gone after. ``They call it enforcing the law. I call it abuse. We are doing nothing wrong.''

  Bar girls interviewed by The Herald say all they are offering is their friendship to lonely men. The women, whose last names and places of work are being withheld to protect their identities, say their jobs allow them to feed their children and pay their rent.

  ''I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for my children. I want to be able to give them the best they could get,'' said Rosa, 25, who sends more than $400 a month to her three children in Nicaragua.

  Rosa said she tried working at more conventional jobs after arriving last year from Nicaragua alone, broke -- and illegally. Rosa was hired at a car dealership by a man who wanted something in return. After weeks of rejecting his sexual advances, he drove her to a desolate stretch near the Miami River and ditched her on the side of the road.

  Afterward, Rosa tried cleaning homes, but said her bosses would take advantage of her illegal status and pay her $20 a day to tidy up expansive houses. Dejected, she found out about the bars through a friend and decided to give it a try.

  ''At least in the bars if you feel uncomfortable with a guy and you don't want to do anything, all you have to do is stand up and leave,'' she said. ``And there are people all around you so you feel safe.''

  Rosa, who works at a clothing store during the day, admits working at the bar contradicts her religious upbringing -- but she said she has no other alternative.

  ''To work here, you have to push your morals aside for a while, but you never lose them,'' she said. ``I flirt, but I always remember I'm a mother.''

  Maribel, 30, said she asked for a job after walking by a sign in front of a Little Havana cafeteria seeking pretty women. A Mexican who had recently moved to Miami from Dallas, Maribel said her inability to speak English prevented her from landing other jobs.

  Maribel now takes English courses during the day and works at a bar six nights a week. She said she's not like other girls who hang all over the men. She prefers sitting down and chatting.

  ''Some men like to come here and talk,'' Maribel said.

  But Sgt. Alvarez says this world of lust and desperation goes too far -- walking a fine line between regular Miami hangouts and full-blown brothels.

  For example, he said, some bars charge $5 to $10 so the women can fondle the men while the two sit in dark corners of unlit rooms, and others have a closet-sized back room so bar owners can peddle sex for money.

  Anything and everything seems to go on at these bars: Police say they breach liquor license laws, evade taxes, traffic drugs, violate fire safety regulations and promote illegal gambling by setting up casino machines. Some have no occupational license.

  A WEEKEND NIGHT

  It's a Friday night at Los Arcos Floridianos, 601 SW 12th Ave. It's about 10 p.m., still too early for the regular crowd. The bar, with mirrored walls, is filled with hanging plastic plants and is festooned with blinking white Christmas lights.

  Seven skimpily dressed middle-age women gossip behind the food counter. As time goes by, men shuffle in, one by one, taking a seat at a table or at the counter. And one by one, the women approach them, bringing them bottles of beer and sitting down next to them to chat.

  One woman rests her hand on a man's lap. Beside them, a man touches a woman's face, and caresses her right arm as they talk and laugh.

  In the next room, on the dance floor, a couple dance slowly and erotically, the man's hands moving from her derrire to her navel. He tries to slide his hands down the front of her skin-tight skirt, but she sets her limits and pushes away his hand.

  An hour later, the scene is the same, but most of the men have left and new ones have taken their place.

  Reyes, the owner, later acknowledges his waitresses talk to men, but says they do nothing beyond that -- and do not get paid for the chatter.

  ''If these women are talking to clients, they call it prostitution,'' Reyes said. ``They are not prostitutes -- I wouldn't allow that, or drugs. But police come in here constantly like we're doing something wrong.''

  A mile away, after midnight, Tu y Yo Restaurant is hopping. The business, at 2220 NW Seventh St., is so dim it's difficult to see anything a foot away. About 15 overly aggressive women demand that their clients buy them a beer. They do not take no for an answer.

  A woman in the back of an unlit room lies back in her chair, her skirt lifted, as a man glides his hand all the way up her leg. The owner orders them to stop when he sees two strangers perch themselves at a table next to them.

  Manuel De La Rosa, who identified himself as the owner of Tu y Yo, also insists nothing illegal goes on in his bar. He said his women are like any other waitresses at any other bar.

  `BY THE BOOK'

  ''I do everything by the book. I pay my taxes, I follow liquor laws -- I do nothing that can jeopardize my business,'' he said. ``People come here to drink, not to look for problems.''

  The city hopes to wipe out the entire industry in the city. But still, some say, there will be consequences.

  ''I agree this needs to happen,'' said Commissioner Tomás Regalado, who represents sections of Little Havana and Flagami. ``But what about the illegal women who work there? They will have no choice but to go out on the street and become prostitutes.''