Classy, her customers said.
Hot as fucking hell.
They liked how she smiled, but never said anything, never came out to mix with the customers on the floor, never did any lap dances or specials that they knew of. It made each of them feel that when they slipped a one or a five or a ten or a hundred into her thong, that it was from him alone to her alone, and that was the substance of her fantasy, what she sold there every night, the fantasy that when she danced, she danced for each one of them alone.
And she did.
Alone in her head, consumed with music and the rhythm of her body, Lizzy Caprica moved in a world of her own; a world where each gesture of her limb, each thrust of her hips, was an offering to something unseen, something she offered up to a Spirit or a God that was silent as she was, a Spirit that watched her dance, white in the bright lights on the black stage, surrounded by leering men thrusting money at her.
Sometimes when she danced, she would make brief eye contact, just a heart beat’s worth, if there was a particular customer who acted with more decorum, or had a hint of gentleness about him, or sometimes if it was just someone she didn’t recognize.
Like now.
Into Get Busy, a Jean Paul piece, and a glimpse of a long white face, vulpine, and she knew that word, could spell it, use it in a sentence, narrow slitted eyes and just the briefest glimpse of it sent a chill through her, a chill that cut through her sweat warm body, raised goose bumps on her belly, a warning chill, one she was all too familiar with.
At the break, she waved over Kai Song, the Chinese bouncer, and said, “In the back, the big guy, blond hair combed straight back?”
“I see him, Lizzy. Problem with him?” Kai said, his perfectly round and bald head gleaming with sweat.
“I don’t like him.”
Kai tilted his head, a bowling ball in the gutter. It was unusual for the silent beauty, as he thought of her, to speak at all, and he could not ever recall her saying anything about any of the customers.
“I look at him, Lizzy. I tell you what I think.”
“Thank you, Kai.”
Kai moved through the crowd, parting sweaty men like the rod of Moses parted the Red Sea. He looked fat, was not. He stopped ten feet from the table where the big man whose looked bothered Lizzy sat.
This one could be trouble.
Big. At least six feet two inches, maybe more. Two hundred plus, but no fat on him -- broad shoulders cutting down to a lean waist and hips, big hands like spading shovels resting on either side of a half-drinken bottle of Negro Modelo, a small plate with extra wedges of lime beside it. It was the face that bothered him. Long, pointed at the jaw, pale skin with pale blond hair, a long old scar beside the left eye, cold blue eyes.
The eyes were the problem.
Cold, yes. But more than that.
Empty.
Something stirring deep in the back.
Like Lizzy’s eyes, Kai thought.
But mean.
“How you?” Kai said. “Everything all right?”
The man’s thick blond hair was combed straight back like a skull cap. Long. Greasy with some kind of jel. He took his time answering Kai, no expression on his face.
“I am fine. Thank you.”
Accent. Russian, central European, something Slavic.
“We want everybody happy. No problems.”
“No problems from me, my friend. Is there a problem?”
Kai bristled, just a bit. Nothing that the untrained eye would see passed between the two of them, but the lack of fear and due respect from the Russian sent a message, loud and clear.
“No problems. We like it that way. Have a good time.”
Kai stalked away, but at an angle where he could watch the man in the corner of his eye.
He wanted to keep his eye on that one.
Kai went to the dancer’s door, nodded to his Hispanic counter-part Diaz, a spiderweb tattooed across his face, posted beside the door. Went in, stood behind Lizzy who touched her lips with a gloss brush.
“Stay away from that one, Ms. Lizzy,” Kai said. “Tonight, I walk you to your car, maybe follow you home.”
Lizzy’s blue eyes met Kai’s black-brown eyes in the mirror. “He’s a bad man, isn’t he?”
“Very bad, I think. We watch him.”
“Thank you, Kai.”
Kai whispered into his headset terse instructions; a member of the security staff was to keep an eye on the Russian at Table 22 at all times, rotate in and out. Kai himself went back out, stood with his back against the wall to one side of the dancer’s runway, and stared at the Russian, who met his eyes with indifference, and then turned his attention to the next dancer.
A very bad man, Kai thought. A man who hated women but hid it. A dangerous man in a place like this.
Interlude
There are several varieties of the dark breed of men.
There are some who nurse a hidden rage against women -- maybe something born from their relationships with their mothers, maybe something dark that chose that particular vehicle of flesh to incarnate in -- it comes out in bitterness and resentment sometimes, that women have something that men want, and maybe they hate themselves for being so weak as to want that thing…or maybe it’s because in the face of Every Woman they see That One Woman that did them wrong or harm once upon a time…
You can find that particular dark breed hanging out in porn shops, where they gravitate to the real heavy duty S+M, taking sex tours to Eastern Europe, the new Thailand -- sex clubs and strip clubs, and cruising the streets where prostitutes stroll.
Rough sex leads to violence, rape, and sometimes, murder.
It’s a track as steady and predictable as the arc of a falling star.
Or a fallen angel.
They are dark men, and women in that world learn to sense them, to see past the careful façade the dark men build around them to hide their intention, their desires, their lusts.
It’s a survival skill.
Chapter Six
“So why don’t you just buy them?” I said.
It seemed reasonable to me. Deon wanted some SAWs, Squad Automatic Weapons, nomenclature M-249, a fully automatic light machine gun that spat out 5.56 rounds, lightweight and easy to tote. He had some friends that needed them, for what I didn’t know and didn’t care to ask, not that Deon would tell me anyway.
Need to know and all that.
“Not enough money, oke,” Deon said. He grinned, skinning back his thin lips, animating his skull-like face. “What fun is there in paying? What is that St. Francis said? ‘To beg is best, to steal the next, and to buy is worst of all.’ Isn’t that right, Catholic boy?”
I splashed some Dark Lady on my hand and sprinkled him with it. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I cast out your demons.”
“Need more than Negro Modelo for that, my friend.”
“Seems like what we’re buying is a lot of long term trouble, Deon. The Komarov’s won’t take this kind of shit laying down. We roll heavy on them, the first question they’re going to ask themselves is who has the weight to pull that off? Around here, it’s you -- and only you.”
“I owe some people, Jimmy. Owe them in the way you understand. Not money. The other thing.”
I sighed. The Other Thing.
Blood debt.
Saved a life or took one. Either way, didn’t matter.
I looked over to the bar and held up my bottle. Thieu nodded, pulled a fresh Negro Modelo out and another Harps lager for Deon, carried them over, the bottles bleeding ice and condensation.
“Thank you, my beauty,” Deon said.
Thieu regarded him.
“You don’t think I am beautiful,” she said. “You only want what you will never have.”
“You’re wrong, my beauty,” Deon said. He tipped the bottle at her, a gallant gesture. “Some day you will weaken.”
“Ha,” she said. And went back to the bar.
“Thanks, Thieu,” I
said to her back.
“You welcome, Jimmy.”
“You welcome, Jimmy,” Deon said, grinning. “I love you long time, Jimmy. Oh so good, I love you so much long time, Jimmy.”
“Fuck you.”
“Get in line, oke. Get in line.”
“Back to the Komarovs.”
“How would you do it?”
I squeezed the lime into the neck of the bottle, touched my tongue to the lime, set it down, sipped. Nothing like the Dark Lady with lime.
“We don’t roll like we would. Not heavy. Nobody else. We do it quiet. A stealth job. B and E. Get into the warehouse, take what we need, slip away. We do it right, they won’t know we’ve been in there till they do some inventory.”
“Bloody warehouse has better security than most banks, oke. I thought we’d take them on the back of a deal, pawn it off on the other player.”
“Too risky, Deon. You run shooters against shooters, you end up shooting. That’s all they know. We don’t come the way they expect you to fight. We don’t want a fight, we want the goods and to get away to steal another day. Right? And the fewer faces involved, the less chance of word getting back to the Komarovs. We do it right, they’ll blame their inventory control. They’ve got more shit in their warehouse than the National Guard armory.”
Deon considered this. I watched his face, for the small tells I’d come to know in him. He’d probably already considered this, but he was a contrary son of a bitch, and would pose the exact question to me just to see how I’d work it out. He liked to go in shooting because he loved to shoot. He was a gunfighter, a real one, and there wasn’t much opportunity for a gunfighter on our side of the fence to rock and roll unless he rolled heavy on somebody. That’s why he would take off on his “holidays” and disappear back to South Africa, where you could gunfight on any given day just by walking down the street with a gold necklace on, or in the right neighborhood, with new tennis shoes on.
Or Iraq.
Or Afghanistan.
Or Bosnia.
Or Chechnya.
Or hell, anywhere in Eastern Europe for that matter.
Deon drew fights like rotting meat draws flies.
And of course, he drew me.
So he’d want the gunfight, especially against some heavy weights like the Komarovs.
But then, that’s why he had me. The voice of reason.
“Stealth, Deon. By way of deception. That’s the ticket.”
“So how we going to get into the bloody warehouse, oke? Not to stealthy to drive a truck into the damn place, now will it?”
I considered that for a moment. Bringing in a technical expert to bypass their alarms, stealth us through the infra red perimeter systems and then to breach the access controls into the warehouse itself, that would be another face, someone else that might talk.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Let me mull on it a bit.”
Deon laughed, the Grim Reaper with a beer to his lips. “An idea is a dangerous thing.”
Interlude
Heist movies and books always make me laugh.
There’s this mythology that there are master criminals who spend millions to take millions, who look like Cary Grant or Colin Ferrell or Sean Connery or, God help us, Catherine Zeta-Jones, or my favorite, Rene Russo, that hot wench.
Not.
Art thieves, specialty high rise jewel thieves, yeah a handful.
But most “heists” are just variations on the smash and grab.
You kick it in, stop anybody who tries to stop you, take the shit and run.
Simple.
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Armored car? Same thing. Stop it, crack it, take the shit and run.
Bank? Stop anybody who tries to stop you, crack it, take the shit and run.
Drug rip off? Shoot anybody who moves, take the shit, and run.
See a pattern?
Not much to it. The key is to stay not caught. What gets most guys caught is sheer stupidity and/or a big fucking mouth. Play with smart people, very few of them, who know how to keep their mouths shut, and understand low profile, and you might just spend a whole lifetime ripping off people and walk away with grey hair, a pot belly and a retirement home in Boca Raton.
Or Costa Rica, my personal fave.
I’d spent years in the military doing operational planning. When we went on a mission, we went into isolation for weeks before hand (if we had the time), drew up infinitely detailed plans, broke them down, turned them around, put them back together, endlessly rehearsed them, all the phases of the mission, and then, you know what?
We’d get out in the field and it would all go to shit, and we came back to the same damn thing.
Kick it in, kill anybody who tries to stop us, do what we came to do, and run like hell.
See the pattern?
Chapter Seven
“We need death camps for these rape camp assholes,” Nina Capushek said. She blew into her hand, sniffed her breath, satisfied with the thick sweet smell of multiple breath mints. “But that would be too much infrastructure, come to think of it. Just line them up and shoot them. Like the Chinese. Send their family a bill for the bullet. I’d do it. For free.”
Her supervisor in Sex Crimes was a short, stocky Italian named Fabruzzi, Oozy Fabruzzi on the street because of his thick black hair oozing hair dressing. He was a good cop, street wise, tough, made gold shield in a hurry, but since his promotion had morphed into a glad handing ass kisser with an eye on a captain’s slot.
“How come this kind of shit comes to me from the Chief with your name already on it, Nina? Who the fuck you know over at State Department, tosses you this good shit already? Tell Fabruzzi, 'cause I want some of this too, you know. I want some of the good.”
“You can’t handle the good shit, Oozy. You scare them diplomat boys in their expensive suits and Yale ties. I scare them too, but then they feel bad about it. I make them think it’s about the nose. The nose knows, you know?”
“Get that shit fixed, you’d get more pipe than the plumber’s union.”
“I get what I want when I want it, not that you’d know, Oozy.”
“You should show respect to your lieutenant, Detective.”
“Show some to get some, Oozy. You could always send me away. See what the fuck happens to your stats then.”
“Point taken, Capushek. Big point taken. Go out and kick somebody’s ass. Find me this internationally wanted bad guy. Take somebody with you.”
Nina turned her full attention on him, and was satisfied that even the tough Fabruzzi quailed, though he hid it well, with the weight of her glare. Something about the broken nose did it, added to her mad dog in a way that the guys couldn’t pull off.
“Don’t start with me on that. I need back up, I call for it. That’s the deal. You want to change the deal, I can find someplace else to work. Homicide likes me, so does Street Crime…”
“Okay, okay, just a thought, all right? Jeez, Nina, quit busting my fucking balls already. Go, do your fucking lone gun woman thing.”
Fabruzzi started to walk off, stopped.
“Speaking of gun woman thing, did you get down to the range and qualify? I got a memo…”
“I’ll stop by there before I hit the street.”
“You don’t wanna practice first?”
“You ought to dust that pistol off sometime, Oozy. You never know, you might need to shoot a shift commander or something.”
“Fucking crazy, that’s what you are, Nina. Disgruntled employee, I got a DVD about people like you.”
“Let’s get a pizza and watch it together some time, Oozy. I’ll squeeze Brylcreem in your hair and rub it in, real slow.”
Fabruzzi laughed. “Sick twist. I’d like that. Get the fuck out of here.”
Nina shrugged into her leather jacket, a souvenir from her days with Minneapolis. She liked the heavy leather, and the dark marks where she’d stripped her sergeant’s stripes and the Minneapolis patches off. Black nylon cargo pa
nts, a jersey long sleeve T in a tasteful cranberry, black Kramer horsehide belt cut with the female bias -- Kramer being one of the few gun leather artists who understand how to fit a woman -- and a CTAC speed scabbard and double mag pouches. She drew her Glock 21, press checked the chamber, reholstered it with a snick. The CTAC wasn’t authorized for a duty rig with Lake City, but she didn’t give a fuck. It was a gunfighter’s rig, and all the DT yo-yos who preached about it not being a retention holster and the risk of losing the piece in a struggle didn’t even bother to say shit to her.
Nina didn’t wrestle.
She shot.
Period.
She stomped her foot once, encased in Converse SWAT boots, checked the lump on her left ankle. Glock 30, took the same mags as her 21, in a Kramer ankle holster. Clunky, but she didn’t give a shit. One is none, and two is one. Tucked in between her breasts was a Hideaway knife, and another one was on her belt, just left of the navel, where she could get at it with either hand.
Wrestle?
As if.
She took out her Oakley’s from inside her leather jacket and slipped them on, checked her look in the glass as she went out into the hallway, satisfied, as always, as the street soldiers parted and said, “Hey, Nina, how’s it going?”
It was good to be a street animal.
But now she needed a drink.
In the UC car, a beat up Taurus with a jacked up engine, and a bullet hole in the rear left panel she insisted they leave alone, roar out of the garage past the patrol guys who looked after her with envy.
Down to Marvin Bell’s, a local cop bar that opened up at 6 a.m. and closed at 2 a.m., just like clockwork, everyday of the year including Christmas.
Inside, she slid up on the bar, nodded to the gray lump that passed as bar keep early mornings, said, “Cuervo. Salt and lime.”
The gray lump, named Corso, retired cop who’d spent his whole career in Traffic, said, “Sure thing, Detective. You want some coffee with that?”
“Why would I fuck up good tequila with coffee?”
“It being early and all.”
Johnny Wylde Page 3