From there the stops didn’t get any classier. Next we hit the Vietnamese pool hall, but this time not to play. Nash went in alone and was back in five minutes. After that we pulled into the parking lot of the Virgo Club, which I judged from the neon dancing girls on the sign was obviously a strip joint, and not an upscale one either.
“Are you kidding?” I said as Nash opened the door. “We can’t get in there.”
“You’re right,” Nash said. “You can’t. But I can. You should know by now I can get in anywhere.”
And it was true—he walked right in the front door. I asked Brett how he was able to work it, and she explained he’d visited the Virgo earlier in the week with his big brother and a hearty helping of cash to look over some prospects.
I’m like, “Prospects?”
She tossed me a flirty smile. “Just some of our after-ten-o’clock entertainment.”
“Let me guess. He’s hiring the ugliest stripper he can find.”
“You’re catching on,” she said.
I’m like, “Really? You mean I’m right?”
She just laughed.
When Nash stepped out of the dark entrance into the neon glow outside, I swore he had a child with him, but then I realized that his stripper of choice was actually a little person—as in dwarf. The bowlegged walk gave her away.
As they settled into the limo with us, he made introductions, giving fake names to Brett and me—I was Nitro and Brett was Belladonna—which was only fair since the stripper gave her name as Tangerine, no doubt a stage name.
“Wow,” Tangerine said as she stuffed her bag onto the floorboard. “Cool wheels, T-Bone.” I guessed T-Bone was Nash’s pseudonym.
It’s hard to tell with a little person, but I figured she was somewhere in her middle twenties. She wore a shoulder-length pink wig and a pink tracksuit—for now. When Nash offered her some champagne, her big blue eyes sparkled, and she threw off a wide smile, revealing braces on her teeth. That almost made me revise my estimate of her age, but I decided she probably hadn’t been able to afford braces until hooking up with the Virgo Club.
But no way was this girl ugly. Actually, she was cute in an Anna Paquin sort of way. You know—the girl who plays Sookie on True Blood? This irked me. Not that she was cute but that Nash only chose her for ugly-stripper night at Gangland because she was a little person. I thought he was cooler than that.
She polished off her champagne in a couple of gulps. “This is the life,” she said, holding her glass out for a refill. “You know what would go great with this? A fried-bologna sandwich.”
At that, Brett laughed, and with a squinty stare, Tangerine’s like, “What? Have you ever had one?”
Brett admitted she hadn’t, and Tangerine goes, “Well, don’t laugh, then. Fried-bologna sandwiches are delicious.”
“I bet they are,” Nash said as the limo rolled out of the parking lot. There were no more pre-party visits to make now. It was back to the expressway—next stop, Gangland.
CHAPTER 34
This time we didn’t enter the same way as before. I suspected this was because Nash didn’t want anyone to catch an early glimpse of his pick in the ugly-stripper contest. Instead, we went in through what was originally the front door of the warehouse and directly to an office that was outfitted with all sorts of dark, polished furniture, probably castoffs from one of Rowan’s dad’s swanky offices.
This place also had framed posters of gangsters on the walls along with a glass case exhibiting what might have been an authentic old-fashioned tommy-gun-style machine gun. Or maybe it was just a squirt gun that looked real—I didn’t ask. Nash sat behind the big desk and broke out the sack he’d scored from D-Stack. Inside was a very large plastic bag of weed. He poked his nose inside and goes, “Mmmm—that’s the stuff.”
Surveying the room, Tangerine’s like, “You guys have more money than you know what to do with, don’t you?”
And Brett goes, “That’s not true. We know what to do with it.”
Nash loaded a pipe with weed and offered it to me. I declined—I already felt queasy from my one glass of champagne—but Tangerine took a hit, inhaling so deeply her face turned a darker shade of pink than her wig.
“You got anything around here to eat?” she said after exhaling a plume of smoke.
“We’ll get you something to eat later,” Nash told her. “Here, have some more champagne.” He handed the nearly empty bottle to her. Then he and Brett traded hits off the pipe.
After they were all good and loaded, Nash said he had a little business to transact, and he and Brett headed for the door. “You two stay here for right now,” he said. Then he walked back to me. “Here, I want you to hold on to something for me.” He pulled out his wallet and handed me a hundred-dollar bill.
I’m like, “What’s this for?”
And he goes, “I might need your help with something.”
“Like what?” I asked, staring at the money. I’d never held a hundred dollars all in one bill before.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be right back,” he said, and he and Brett left.
Tangerine wrestled her way up into a chair, which was no easy feat considering the champagne bottle tucked under one of her arms. She took a swig and goes, “So what are you in for?” Like we were in jail or something.
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, what did they hire you to do tonight?”
“They didn’t hire me. We’re friends. We’re just hanging out.”
“Right,” she said. “Then what did he give you the money for?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at the bill again. “Probably part of some game they have going on tonight.”
“Yeah, rich uppity-ups and their games.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one. “What’s your real name? I know it’s not Nitro.”
I told her, and she’s like, “My real name’s Melody. You know how I knew you weren’t rich like the other two? Because in the limo they were just kind of melting into the seats, just as comfortable as could be, but you looked like you were sitting on a block of ice. It was obvious you’d never been in a limo before.”
“Have you?”
“Once.” She blew out a cloud of smoke. “But don’t get me started on that. Uppity-ups are crazy. That’s all I’m going to say. They’re warped. I’ll work with them if I have to, but I’d rather hang out with the girls at the V anytime. I liked you right off, though.”
The V, I guessed, was the Virgo Club.
“Thanks,” I said. “I liked you too.”
“You just need to quit trying so hard to get them others to like you, that’s all. You know my friend Tanya had her baby tooken away? Well, she did. Little Serenity Ann. The Human Services people got her. Now there’s this old uppity-up couple wants her. They think they can just pluck her away like she’s a berry growing on a bush.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “Is Tanya one of the strippers you work with?”
Her face puckered at that. “We’re not strippers,” she said. “We’re exotic dancers. It’s an art form, you know.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m sure it is.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t like games. I like things straightforward. Like tonight—I told that T-Bone character how much I’d charge and how long I’d stay and what I’d do. I dance, and that’s that. Nothing more. Rick up at the V knows where I am. All the girls know where I am. There better not be any funny business. Uppity-ups like games, though. That’s all they know.”
“But I guess sometimes you have to figure out how to play the game,” I suggested.
“I ain’t into those games,” she said. “Give me the girls at the V.”
At that point, Nash showed back up and asked us to come with him. We ended up in the same dark corridor I’d investigated my first time at Gangland, and he told Melody to wait in the dressing room. She wasn’t too happy about having to wait there instead of the plush office, but Nash assured her it wouldn??
?t be for long. To me he goes, “Come on, Dylan, let’s roll. The real show is almost ready to start.”
The warehouse was full of the same crowd as last time, but now the musical act was, of all things, a guy with an acoustic guitar, a guy on accordion, and a girl on trombone. Playing emo. Actually, they could really play, but who wants to listen to that combination?
“Did you line up this act?” I asked Nash.
“Not a chance. They have too much talent.”
Brett was hanging toward the back of the room with Aisling and Holt and a couple others I didn’t know. We joined them, and I figured this was as good a time as any to bring up Trix and her dad.
“So,” I said, “I noticed there hasn’t been anything in the news about Trix Westwood’s dad getting arrested or even being a person of interest.”
Brett’s like, “Wow, Dylan, do you always have to talk about that?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I figured you’d want to talk about it. Ashton was your friend.”
“All the more reason for us to just want to get away from it sometimes,” Aisling said.
“Yeah, Dylan,” Nash said. “Loosen up. We can talk about that stuff later. Anyway, you know how the police work—they have to have a mountain of evidence before they can arrest someone like Mr. Westwood.”
I’m like, That’s fine for you to say, but your best friend isn’t hanging around with a potential serial killer. I didn’t say it out loud, though. Pressing things wasn’t likely to do any good with these people.
Ten o’clock came, and the band kept playing. That was strange. I figured at ten something big would happen—maybe Lady Gaga would burst onto the stage, or the floor would roll back and underneath there’d be a swimming pool filled with champagne. Instead, the only difference was that a crowd began to gather around a table on the west side of the room. I asked Nash what was up, and he told me to come with him and he’d show me.
On the fringe of the crowd, I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but I caught a glimpse of Tres sitting behind the table with his laptop open in front of him. Someone handed him some cash, and he stowed it in a metal box next to the laptop.
“You have that hundred I gave you?” Nash asked me.
I patted my pants pocket. “Right here.”
“Excellent. This is your chance to parlay a little extra cash for yourself. Sound good?”
“Uh, sure. I can always use some extra cash. But how?”
“Simple. You use the hundred I slipped you to make a bet, and if you win, you roll that over on the next bet. After that, you give me back my hundred and you leave here with a nice little wad.”
“Yeah, but what am I betting on?”
“What are you betting on? You’re betting on the midget, of course.”
“You mean Melody?”
“Who?”
“Tangerine—her real name’s Melody.”
“Whatever. She’s a sure thing. I mean, I haven’t seen the other dancer, but how could she possibly beat a midget?”
“Little person,” I said. “They don’t like to be called midgets.”
He laughed. “All right. Have it your way—little person. So are you betting?”
“Sure,” I said. “What do I have to lose?”
“That’s the spirit.”
He pushed his way through the crowd, dragging me with him, and when we reached the table, Tres looked up at me and goes, “Ah, look who it is—the guy who’s afraid of squirt guns.” It probably took him all day to make that one up. “Do you have a bet?” he asked.
“Of course he does,” Nash said. “A hundred on Tangerine.”
I forked over the bill, and he stashed it in the metal box and made an entry in the computer. “How about you, Nash?” he asked, and Nash is like, “You know what my bet is—same as usual.”
After that we nabbed a spot near the stage, and it wasn’t much later that the band knocked off, only to be replaced by Rowan in a lemon-yellow blazer. He cranked up one of his long smarmy spiels—even using the term feminine pulchritude at one point—before finally cueing the music and announcing, “Let’s hear a loud round of applause for the lovely, the talented Tangerine!”
One of those interchangeable dance anthems blasted from the speakers, and soon after, Melody strutted out in a hot-pink bikini. The crowd erupted in laughter, but that didn’t faze her. She had a bit of a problem with the steps leading to the stage, but after that she really put on a show. The girl wasn’t lying when she said she was an artist—she could really dance.
A lot of people kept laughing, but she still didn’t give a crap. She didn’t even look at the crowd—she stared over them. Then she march-danced to the edge of the stage and looked me straight in the eyes—I was the only one she ever looked at directly—and I gave her the thumbs-up. She smiled back, a cunning little smile that said, You see the kind of people I’m dealing with here, don’t you. Then she whirled around and marched back to the middle of the stage.
As the song soared toward its big overblown ending, she dropped to her knees and whipped her head like wild. I half expected the pink wig to fly off, but luckily it never did. As the last notes crashed down, she popped up to her feet, threw back her head, and jammed a fist into the air. The crowd hooted and laughed, but that didn’t matter. She knew she was good, and that’s all she cared about.
After she left the stage, Rowan came back out, and I had to hand it to him—he didn’t make any wisecracks about her. In fact, he seemed authentically impressed. “Now, that was something,” he said into the mike. “I don’t even think you asses can appreciate what you just saw. Nash, you screwed up your pick for this contest—she’s way too good.”
“Don’t be bitter, Rowan,” Nash called. “Just because your day is over doesn’t mean it is for the rest of us.”
“Ouch,” Rowan said, holding one hand over his heart like Nash had just shot him. “It’s funny how your friends will treat you at the first sign of a little trouble.” He seemed different from usual. Maybe his dad’s financial problems had knocked a little humility into him. But then the master-of-ceremonies smile came back, and he rattled off another long introduction, this time ending with, “Let’s hear it for the sexy, the stylish, one-of-a-kind Miss Chastity!”
The thump of another dance song cranked, and out pranced this extremely bony and pale redhead with heavy eye shadow, a blue-and-red bikini, and—wait for it—a very obvious baby bump. There was no doubt about it—this girl was way pregnant. She looked like a drinking straw with a cherry caught in the middle.
Her reanimated-skeleton dancing style was nowhere in the same league with Melody’s, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy packing that belly around. The crowd didn’t laugh at her the way they did Melody, though. They booed. Especially when she sort of creakily scrunched to the floor to do a spin on her back. I thought for a second she’d never be able to get back up. At the end, she grabbed at her lower back in pain and gasped for breath so hard you would’ve thought she was ready to have the baby right then. There was definitely no sense of triumph.
The crowd was still booing when Rowan took the stage. “Calm down, calm down,” he said. “Just remember, this time I didn’t have anything to do with either of these acts, so don’t kill me over it.”
Miss Chastity remained onstage, still trying to catch her breath, and Melody came back for the final vote. I hated this part. I just hoped the girls didn’t know the vote was for worst dancer instead of best. Rowan singled out Miss Chastity first, and the crowd howled their opinions. Next came Melody, and the howls cranked to a whole new level. Sure, I bet on her and everything, but I still hated to see her win a contest like this. It didn’t faze her, though. She just stared over the crowd like she could see the girls of the V in the distance giving her all their support.
Nash slapped me on the back. “See there, Dylan. You’re already raking in the cash. Now let’s go roll that over on the next wager.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, but I couldn’t help loo
king back to see Melody struggling down the stairs and then making her way to the hall. Whatever I made on this bet, I thought, I ought to give half of it to her.
CHAPTER 35
I didn’t even know what the next bet was about, so I just put my money on Nash’s pick and waited to see what new weirdness came up. The lights brightened a little, and Rowan leaped off the stage and waved his hands to move the crowd away. Everyone knew exactly what to do—they huddled back into a large ring and started chanting, “Rumble, rumble, rumble!”
“That’s right,” Rowan said into the mike. “It’s that time. We’re gonna rock. We’re gonna roll. We’re gonna throw down a showdown. May the mighty survive and the weak slink back into the slime. Right here and right now we’re gonna go for the glory. Don’t you cry, little babies. It is time for the—fifteen-minute ruuuuuuummmmmmmble!”
The crowd cheered, and I leaned toward Nash and asked him what a fifteen-minute rumble was, but he just goes, “You’ll see.”
Rowan waved his hands to quiet the audience. “Okay, okay. All bets are closed. Let’s do it to it.” He glanced at a card he held in his hand. “First, from east Oklahoma City, the bad, banging brawler Markelle Thomas!”
Out of the darkened corridor jogged this wiry little African American dude with his hair knitted into cornrows and lightweight orange boxing gloves on his hands. When he got to the center of our human ring, he raised his hands and hopped around the way you see boxers do in the real ring, soaking in the cheers and the jeers. I was never a fan of watching fights. Who wants to pay to see someone get hurt? It seemed even more stupid to want to be one of the fighters. I figured, for Markelle, it was all about the money.
“Is this the guy I bet on?” I asked Nash, and he’s like, “No way. You bet on the next guy.”
“And our second fighter of the night,” announced Rowan, “is that fiendish phenom, the Lilliputian powerhouse who has never lost a rumble at Gangland, the incredible Huy ‘The Mangler’ Pham!”