I hesitate before loosening my hold, letting her slip from my grasp. I start to say something about how she’s getting off lucky tonight when a car whips around the nearby corner, coming to a stop.
I turn, spotting my BMW, before my attention goes back to the woman. I barely catch a glimpse of her face, a flicker of a smile on her lips, before she’s gone again, running. She turns the corner of an alley, disappearing.
That was easy. Too easy.
She seemed almost amused by it.
My gaze turns to the wallet in my hand. I flip it open, finding the billfold empty. No money.
Son of a bitch.
After all that, she still robbed me.
Nobody does that.
Nobody.
I walk over to the alley and glance down it, but it’s empty. I’m not surprised. She’s long gone, having slipped into a building or climbed a fire escape or ran out the other side.
Shaking my head, I shove the wallet in my pocket, where it belongs, and make the trek to my car. I pause when I cross the street, collecting the pair of red high heels discarded in the slush, left behind in her haste to get away with my money.
“Boss?” Seven calls out, stepping out of the car. “Everything okay?”
Is everything okay? Hell no.
I turn to him as I approach. “Got a job for you, Seven.”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to find someone.”
“Who?”
“A woman,” I say. “About five and a half feet tall. Brown hair. Brown eyes.”
“That describes half the women in New York.”
“Yeah, well, the one I’m looking for is twenty-one or so,” I say. “She’s good-looking, kind of curvy for being so petite... got a red ‘S’ tattooed on her wrist...”
He stares at me, like he expects more information. “What else?”
I shrug, glancing at the high heels, flipping them over to look at the red soles. “She wears a size thirty-nine shoe.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” he says, blinking a few times as he looks at the ground. “Only a couple million people in the city.”
“That’s the spirit,” I say, slapping him on the back. “Now let’s get the hell out of here so my nutsack can start thawing.”
I climb in the passenger seat of the car, the heat blasting me, bringing feeling back into my fingertips. It takes Seven a moment to join me. He climbs in quietly, putting on his seatbelt.
He starts to drive. I can tell something’s on his mind. He fidgets, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, as his eyes flicker all around. I try to ignore it. I try. I do. But I wasn’t kidding when I said I was out of patience, and I don’t like my shadow being distracted.
“Say what you’re thinking,” I tell him, “before I take the wheel and shove you out of my car.”
He instantly stills. “I’m just curious, you know, why you’re looking for this broad.”
“She robbed me.”
His head turns my way so fast that he accidentally swerves into another lane. “She robbed you? How?”
“It doesn’t matter how she did it. All that matters is that she pulled it off. So I need you to find her, so I can do something about it. You got me?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “Just one more question.”
“What?”
“Are you going to kill her for that?”
I shrug. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter Three
A thousand dollars.
I count it out—ten crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills—as I slip in the back entrance of Mystic, passing through the metal door someone propped open with a broken cinderblock (yeah, because that’s safe...). Thumping bass rattles the dark, winding hallway, music coming at me from every direction as I pass by a dozen rooms, a few with the doors closed. Every room has a different vibe, a different song playing, and it all kind of converges out here in the middle. Lights flash, a multitude of colors, so intense as they meld with the music that it’s almost like you can feel them running through your system.
From the corner of my eye, I can see shadows moving, but I don’t purposely look in any of the rooms, giving them privacy. It’s a matter of respect. Nobody really likes being back here, so the least I can do is let them keep whatever shred of dignity they manage to dig up.
I make my way to the front, to the wide-open club space, the music from the hallway drowned out by whatever vulgar rap song is playing.
Something about popping pussies.
I don’t know. Don’t look at me.
I didn’t pick it.
The crowd is thin at this hour (or really, most hours...) and the women are weary, counting down the seconds until four o’clock strikes so they can put their clothes back on and vacate the premises. Go home to their lives, where they’re mothers, and wives, and sisters, where they run errands and take classes until it’s time to come back to this hellhole.
It’s exhausting, you know, entertaining and satisfying. People turn their noses up at the business, judging, like snobby little fuck-sticks, but it’s a decent job, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. It’s honest work... not like, well, pickpocketing.
Whatever.
I head through the place, not stopping to acknowledge anyone. They all tower over me, the women wearing six-inch heels to keep eye-level with the men, while I’m currently barefoot.
Barefoot.
In a strip club.
Yeah, I haven’t seen my dignity in a long time.
The office is in the corner, near the front entrance, tucked in beneath the DJ booth. I approach the closed door, hesitating, before tapping on it.
The door opens a crack, and I slip in right away, hearing it close behind me, locks securing. It makes my skin crawl. Locks are the sound of imprisonment.
Two young guys sit along the side of the room, attention fixed to a wall full of surveillance monitors. I avert my eyes, not wanting to see. It’s easier to pretend nobody is watching those things. They say it’s for our safety, that they watch us to keep us from harm, but I’d wager the thousand bucks I’m holding that if someone started mutilating any of those women, those two dickwads would just sit here and jerk off.
“I’m surprised to see you,” a voice says behind me. “Figured you had other plans this weekend, since you said you weren’t coming in.”
“I did,” I say, turning to face him. George Amello. He’s in his late fifties, a clean-shaven Italian man with a wide smile and thinning hair. “I made some money.”
“You made money,” he says, sitting down behind his desk, his dark eyes on me. “How?”
“Does it matter?”
He laughs, a big, boisterous kind of laugh that makes people uncomfortable. “No, I guess it doesn’t. How much you got for me?”
I step around the side of his desk, over to where he is, and pull myself onto it, sitting on the corner, facing him. My dress rides up, the tops of my lacy thigh-highs visible. I hand him the stack of cash, and he takes it, his gaze lingering on my thighs for a moment before he starts counting.
When he finishes, he opens a desk drawer and tosses the cash into it. He says nothing, just takes it. Not long ago, he used to offer promises, words of encouragement, but these days his brand of help is more like extortion, like I’m paying for his silence.
Well, I kind of am, but that’s beside the point here...
His hand finds its way to my knee before running up my thigh, slipping beneath the bottom hem of my dress, his calloused fingertips caressing my skin. He’s handsy, sometimes copping a feel—inspecting the goods, he calls it—but he never tries to take it any further. Some might say he’s a decent human being for it. I say he’s just embarrassingly impotent.
No amount of little blue pills will get that gearshift out of park, if you know what I’m saying.
So I tolerate it... for now... until the day comes when I don’t need this place o
r his help anymore.
There’s another knock on the door, and George gets up with a sigh, pulling his hand away as he struts to the door, unlocking it and yanking it open.
“Boss,” a quiet male voice says as someone walks in. I look that way, tensing when I see a vaguely familiar guy. Young, with a buzzed head and soft hazel-colored eyes. He was at the bar tonight, the one a few blocks away.
He’d been with that guy, the one with the scar on his face and a lot of money in his wallet, the one drinking cheap rum straight from the bottle.
Oh shit.
I turn away, my back to the guy as he sits behind me, on the other side of the desk, hoping like hell he didn’t notice me tonight. George retakes his seat, his hand right back on my thigh, tracing the lace with his fingertips.
“So?” George says. “How did it go with Scar?”
Scar? Seriously? How cliché can someone be?
The guy clears his throat. “He says he has nothing to do with what’s been happening.”
“Horse shit,” George says. “It’s gotta be him. Who else would have the balls to steal from me?”
Everyone, I think, keeping that to myself, pretending I’m not listening so George won’t kick me out. Hell, I’d steal from him if I didn’t count on his generosity to stay afloat. It wouldn’t exactly be hard. He doesn’t even lock the drawer he tosses his cash into.
“I don’t know,” the guy says, “but he was insistent, even got mad at the insinuation that he was a thief.”
“He is a thief!” George says, raising his voice, his hand stilling on my knee. “He extorts half this fucking city!”
“But he says he didn’t steal from you,” the guy says. “I still presented your offer, though, that you’d be willing to cut him in if he’d knock it off, and he told me, well... he told me to bring you his counter offer, instead.”
“Which is, what? Fifteen percent? Twenty? I’m not going over twenty-five, there’s no way.”
“He doesn’t want your money.”
“What does he want?”
“An apology, I’m guessing.”
“What? Is that what he said?”
“Well, no.” The guy pauses. “He said for you to suck his cock, but I’m pretty sure an apology was the sentiment he was going for.”
My lips twitch as I force back a smile. Oh god, don’t laugh. I seem to be the only one in the room that finds it funny. George’s nostrils flare as he grips my knee, squeezing it.
“He said that?” George asks, his voice a low growl. “For me to suck his cock?”
“Yes,” the guy says. “Said he won’t kill you if you do a good enough job.”
Oh, wow, this just keeps on getting better. I bite my cheek, hard, trying to keep a straight face, but I’m finding that hard at the moment. George’s cheeks glow bright red, his eyes bugging out of their sockets, like those words have him so messed up he’s about to blow a gasket.
George, he isn’t exactly the scariest guy on the planet, but he certainly intimidates a lot of people, with his in-your-face attitude and his fiery temper. Oh, and he’s also got one hell of an inflated ego, like he’s invincible, which I guess compensates for the whole flaccid penis deal. I don’t know. Who do I look like, Dr. Phil?
The point is, George struggles to keep his cool, which is showing at the moment, as his grip on my leg starts to hurt, like he’s about to rip off my kneecap.
“The son of a bitch thinks he can threaten me?” George spats. “He thinks I’m afraid of him, that I’m going to apologize to him? He thinks this is all a joke? That I’m a joke?”
The guy doesn’t answer. Maybe it’s rhetorical, I don’t know. But it’s damn sure got me curious—does he? I know nothing about him, except he carries a lot of cash and he caught onto my game pretty fast.
“I’ll kill him,” George continues, standing up, finally letting go of my leg so he can pace around the small office. “Suck his cock? I’ll cut it off! I’ll cut it off and shove it down his throat, make him choke on it for talking like that! The nerve!”
The guy is still quiet. I turn my head, chancing a peek at him, and see he’s staring at me. Shit. I don’t know who he is. I stay far away from that side of George’s business for good reason. One of his little thug henchmen, I’m guessing.
“Go back to him,” George says. “You go back to that motherfucker, and you give him a message.”
“What kind of message?” the guy asks, finally looking away.
“The kind that comes with a bullet, Ricardo. That kind.”
Ricardo—as his name seems to be—lets out the quietest sigh before saying, “I hear you.”
“Go on.” George waves toward the door as he throws himself back down in his chair. “Get the hell out of here.”
Ricardo leaves without another word, closing the door behind him. I sit here, not moving, waiting for George to calm down. Move too fast and I might spook him; linger too long and he might think I’m eavesdropping.
Well, I mean, I kind of am, but raising his suspicion isn’t my intention. I’m trying to lay low these days, just squeak by under the radar.
George runs his hands down his face in frustration, grumbling under his breath, before his eyes settle on me. “Is there something you need?”
“Nope,” I say, offering him a smile, one he doesn’t return. “Just taking care of business. I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“You do that,” he says.
Shoving off the desk, I tug my dress down, covering myself up before walking out. The music is still going strong, the bass vibrating the floor as I head through the club, navigating the dark hallway to the back door.
A cloud of smoke greets me as I step outside, the kind that makes my eyes burn and my nose twitch. Ricardo lurks there, right outside the door, frantically puffing on a cigarette, lips wrapped around the end of it like a porn star sucking dick. He turns when he hears me, tensing, alarmed, and lets out a stream of smoke my direction.
I wave it away, grimacing. Gross.
“Sorry,” he mutters, puffing on the thing a few more times, back-to-back, before throwing it down and stomping it out, twisting his boot-clad foot on it so feverishly that he tears it to shreds.
Sorry isn’t a word I hear often, especially not from any of the men I encounter in life. I kind of feel bad for the guy. Something’s got him frazzled, and really, who am I to judge someone’s vices?
“It’s okay,” I say. “Rough night?”
“You could say that,” he says, eyeing me warily. “You one of Amello’s girls?”
“You could say that,” I tell him, repeating his words.
He nods. “How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much do you go for? How much to take you in one of those back rooms right now and turn you out for an hour?”
The sympathy I felt just a second ago? Gone. “I’m not one of those girls.”
He laughs dryly. “Come on, name your price.”
“Not happening,” I repeat. “So if you’re looking for pussy, look somewhere else, buddy.”
I go to walk around him, but he grabs my wrist to stop me. I snatch my arm away, scowling, and turn to him, stepping right up to him. “Don’t touch me.”
“Sorry,” he says again, this apology not at all genuine, a small smile tugging his lips, like I amuse him. Like me being upset that he touched me is in some way funny. I want to smack that look off his face, but it wouldn’t make a difference.
Wouldn’t change what I know he’s thinking.
Would probably get my ass locked up on an assault and battery charge tonight, really, which would lead to a whole host of other problems for me.
Big problems.
Can’t risk it.
I take a few steps away when I hear him chuckling under his breath, mumbling, “Pussy probably isn’t even that good, lady.”
“Nice one, Slick Rick,” I call back at him as I keep walking. “Your bitterness isn’t showing at all there.”
&n
bsp; “Fuck you,” he says.
“Yeah, you wish, asshole.”
I hear the music in Mystic cut off, the DJ’s incoherent mumbling replacing it. Closing time. Four o’clock. Shoving my icy hands in my pockets, I walk away, my feet painfully tingling, in that place right before numbness where everything just stings.
It’s only a few blocks back to my apartment building, on the same street as the cheap bar, Whistle Binkie. My footsteps are hurried as I watch over my shoulder, making sure I’m not being followed. My shoes are gone when I reach the corner, no longer were I kicked them off. Figures.
What the hell have I gotten myself into this time?
Chapter Four
“There’s no place like home.”
The little girl swung her feet as she whispered those words, tapping her bare heels together, but it wasn’t working. Maybe she needed a pair of Ruby Slippers, like Dorothy. The house was big like a palace, so it might’ve been Oz, even though the road hadn’t been yellow bricks leading to it. No, they had been normal streets, with so many cars, and so many people, none of them Munchkins singing songs, not even a pretty pink witch in a bubble.
Just a bunch of flying monkeys.
They belonged to the Tin Man. He didn’t have the monkeys in the story, but he did in real life. Her mother called them that sometimes, which confused the little girl, since they didn’t have wings. But whatever they were, she didn’t like them. They were all loud, and they laughed like everything was so funny, but it was the kind of laughing that sounded mean. They said ugly words and called people bad names, and they didn’t like girls, although they claimed they did. They kissed them on the mouth, like the Tin Man had kissed her mother, but then they pushed them around like they meant nothing.
The little girl didn’t like it there, in that big palace, sitting on the stool at the bar in the kitchen, her legs so short they just dangled.
“There’s no place like home,” she whispered again, barely hearing herself over the loud chatter, knocking her feet together.
Still not working.
“What are you doing, kitten?”