The visible bra and five-inch platform booties added the ‘slut’ to the Katharine Hepburn. Or Annie Hall, apparently.
“Whichever, it’s definitely slut.”
“Thank you, I think?” she replied to Carly.
“Oh, it was meant as a compliment.” Carly slapped her ass and let her go.
Billy greeted the rest of The Ladyslippers: Megan on drums, Britt on bass, and Chuck on lead guitar. Chuck was new to the band, part of that ugly reorganization, when Carly and their previous guitarist had broken up badly. He didn’t seem to mind playing in a band called The Ladyslippers, one which had a sizeable lesbian following. She hugged Megan and Britt, whom she knew pretty well, and shook Chuck’s hand. They’d only met a couple of times yet, and she didn’t dole out hugs to just anybody.
After that moment of connection, it was time to be at work. “Okay, eat up, drink up. Don’t distract the staff.” She turned to Derek. “Is Felix in yet?”
Her head bartender shared her punctuality issues, and in these weeks that West Egg had been open, Billy had had to fill in for him at the top of his shift several times. But he was a genius with cocktails.
Derek shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“I saw his car parked up at the Café, so he’s probably on his way,” Nicole said. Felix’s mom ran the Cove Café, a little sandwich shop at the other end of the boardwalk. He often stopped in to chat with her before work, and often lost track of time when he did. Billy prepared herself to run the bar for a bit.
“Okay. I’m going out front. Fifteen minutes, people. So finish up and let’s get to work.”
~oOo~
Felix was only about fifteen minutes late. By then, the club was already close to capacity, and Billy was busy behind the bar. The rest of the night’s staff had made their way onto the clock—another server, two more bouncers, and a bar back. Billy liked to stagger shifts a bit to keep things from bogging down, and to have some flexibility in the schedule for the staff. Before the end of the night, there’d be another bartender and a bigger bus crew to close.
Joe had taken over at the door, and Derek and Rio stalked through the house, being large and glowery but not overly inhospitable.
On live music nights, the band didn’t start their first set until seven. Normally, Billy had a DJ on shift to cover the rest of the time, but tonight he’d was coming from an audition in New York and wasn’t going to be in until the first set break. So Billy started the night covering for Felix at the bar and for Haydn at the sound board.
Bartending she could do. Not with Felix’s flash, but competently. She didn’t really DJ, or have much of an idea how to do it, but she had a few good emergency playlists set up, and she just queued it up and let it play. The clientele seemed to dig it fine; it was early, and they hadn’t had enough to drink yet to be at full howl. They were mostly focused on eating and drinking. Billy noticed that the crab puffs were getting a lot of action. Amir would be pleased.
When Carly and the rest of the band stalked out from the kitchen, Billy was really fucking glad to hit the switches that shifted the lights to the stage. From her place behind the board, she watched them set up, heard the notes that said they were ready, and leaned to the mic.
“Hello, people of the Cove! I hope you’re having a cool time on this hot summer night.” A wave of whoops and applause rose above the clamor of a large room full of people existing together. “Tonight, back by popular demand, help me welcome The Ladyslippers!”
Chuck and Britt hit a chord together, and Megan did a little flourish.
“Thank you!” Carly growled into the mic. “We love it here at West Egg! Let’s get this party started!” Over an enthusiastic cheer, the band started up with a cover of Mary J. Blige’s ‘You Remind Me,” and Billy escaped the sound and light board. When Haydn got here, he could do the fancy light business.
People started dancing right away, and Billy smiled. That was a good sign. It was summer in the Cove, and people were in the mood to party. The holographic wristbands they gave out at the door for the 21-and-over crowd threw sparky rainbows in the dance floor lights. She loved that touch.
For the most part, the people who frequented West Egg were a good group. Groups, actually. Billy spent her nights watching the floor or wandering through it, and she’d done some anthropological surveying while she was at it.
First there were the two groups they explicitly sorted out: under-legal and legal. Billy had had cause to regret opening the club to the eighteen-to-twenties. About a week earlier, she’d actually had to call the Pagano Brothers in to make good on their insurance promises, because a group of shithead SK8R BOIZ had gotten kicked from the club and come back during the quiet of the next day to break windows and spray paint walls.
After hearing about the Paganos at work, she wasn’t really worried about a repeat performance.
Even so, the under-legals were definitely the problem children in the club. It was hard to keep the booze out of their sticky little fingers, for one thing, and they were, in general, wilder. But there were a lot of them, and they would be legal someday, so she was hoping they’d grow into long-term patrons and make the pain in the ass worth it.
The legals were, in general, twenty-to-thirty-somethings. The clientele skewed a bit young, by design. They were typical of most bars, in terms of their behavior. Overall.
Then there were the geographical groups, two of them: townies and summer people. The summer people were overwhelmingly wealthy, though there were also the middle-class weekenders in the mix. And then there were the townies, people who lived and worked in the Cove year-round, and likely had been raised there. For the most part, they were a working-class group. Most of the local wealth was Pagano money.
In just a few weeks, Billy had gotten to the point that she could sort her patrons into their respective groups as she passed them on a turn through the club. They all had their idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, their positives and negatives.
Regardless, their money spent exactly the same way.
Billy was rounding to the back of the club, pausing at the conversation nooks along the side to check in with the patrons there, those who wanted more quiet and some privacy. Later in the evening, some people would no doubt interpret ‘privacy’ a bit differently, but for now, people here were talking. Enjoying the company of old friends or getting to know new ones.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket; she excused herself from the patrons she’d been talking to and pulled it out. Derek.
“We got Paganos in the house, boss. Two of them.”
Shit. The Paganos were their own group, and instantly recognizable. They came in occasionally, in one pair or two, and took up a table. They dressed like businessmen, for the most part, but often with a bit of extra shine and bling about them—or sometimes casually, with a lot more shine and bling. They didn’t pay for food or drink, and they racked up serious tabs. That was supposed to be part of their ‘insurance’—being present and intimidating—but when she’d said thanks but no thanks, she had her own security, they’d simply ignored her.
It had really galled her to have to ask for their help last week, but she hadn’t wanted to get the cops involved and start a reputation for a troublesome address. But if calling the Paganos came back to haunt her somehow ...
“Okay, I’m on it.” She headed toward the door.
She saw them as soon as she cleared the dance floor. Carly was belting out some Lauryn Hill, and the floor was packed. She’d had to do a little dancing herself to get across the floor, writhing around the couples and groups.
And then she was face to face with two Pagano men. One she recognized, with an internal groan. The other she didn’t. He was clearly younger, maybe young enough not to be able to order a drink. Not that that would stop a Pagano man.
The man she recognized stared at her coolly. Tony Choco-something. Chocolate? Something like that. He was a mobster, so a name like that was certainly possible, but she didn’t think his was a nickname-y kind of nam
e.
Whatever. ‘Tony’ was good enough. If she had cause to really know him, that would probably be bad news.
He’d be good looking if he ever tried out an expression other than murder. He was on the tall side, probably around six feet, and fairly broad-shouldered. Enough muscle in his arms that it showed in his suit occasionally, depending on his stance. Thick, dark hair, a little bit long, but cut well. Blue eyes, she thought, though it was hard to tell in the club lights, and under the shadow of that homicidal brow.
He’d come in probably a half-dozen times, about once a week, to scowl at her patrons, and he’d answered her call last week. She hadn’t seen what he’d done to the kids who’d torn things up, but she’d heard. When that story made the rounds, Billy doubted there’d be more trouble from those kids in the Cove. For her or anybody else.
Now, faced with his frown, she smiled. “Hi, guys. If you’d like a table, we can free one up for you.” She knew better than to act suspicious or confrontational with these guys.
Neither Tony nor his fresh-faced associate answered her, but Tony looked to his partner and nodded, and the kid—a little chubby, looking uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit—hurried off through the club.
Billy watched him go for a second, curious, and turned back to Tony.
Still frowning, he leaned close, intimately close. With his mouth at her ear—he used the same shampoo she did—he asked, “You dealing here?”
She’d heard him, but even so, she didn’t want to understand him. Angelo Corti had given her a very specific lecture about the Pagano Brothers policy on drugs in ‘their’ town. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Drugs, baby. You dealing? Or anybody on the staff?”
She ignored the contempt in his use of the word ‘baby’—literally a diminutive, meant to make her feel small. “No. Absolutely not.”
And that was true. She had given a similar lecture to her staff, striking several times on the dangers of pissing off the Pagano Brothers.
But the thing was, West Egg was a nightclub. People came to party. They brought party favors. There was no way she could police the club thoroughly enough to prevent the usual substances from being used and exchanged here.
And the other thing: the two professional industries most involved in running a club like this—entertainment, specifically music, and hospitality—were both notorious for drugs. Most especially uppers, extra most especially coke. It was high energy, high stress work, with late, long, shitty hours. People in this business took things that made them feel like they could deal with the go-go-go pace, things that made them feel like they were on the ball—that customers, work, and life itself could be managed.
Billy was well aware that many, probably most, possibly all, of her employees partook in a few different kinds of pick-me-ups, and she didn’t judge. She herself had been there and done that, and her nose had bled all over the t-shirt. Now, she limited herself to alcohol and tried to keep that down to a dull buzz.
She knew they were using on site. Not egregiously, but as needed. They didn’t flaunt it, they made sure she didn’t see it, but they were doing it. They were probably sharing, too.
But not selling. Nobody was really dealing. Billy really fucking hoped.
And wondered where the kid in the bad suit had gone.
~ 5 ~
Tony leaned back and studied the chick who owned and ran this club, checking for dishonesty in her look. Growing up in his house, trying to prepare for his father’s temper, he’d become a master at reading people. It was what made him a good enforcer. Well, that and a willingness to get dirty, and some ingenuity in getting that way.
This chick was pissed, and she was trying not to show how nervous he made her, but he didn’t think she was lying.
Billy Jones was her name. The Billy was short for something, no doubt, but she looked like a chick who’d go by a dude’s name. Standing in skyscraper heels, she was close to his height, and wore a black suit like a guy’s but fit snugly. A filmy white shirt with lots of buttons open, showing a lacy black bra that put her tits right out in front. Short blonde hair, slicked back to look like she’d just stepped out of the shower. He couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but they were surrounded by long, thick black lashes—fake, no doubt—and sparkly silver shadow.
She looked like one of those lipstick lesbians or whatever they were called—a dyke who knew she was hot and wanted to make sure all the guys she’d reject knew what they were missing. Tony had seen her several times, here at the club and once or twice during the day. Casual or working, she always dressed like a hot chick in a guy’s clothes.
“You sure you want to be so sure?” he asked her. The Dominicans had been seen selling around the boardwalk, and Alonzo had given up some names of wholesale buyers. One of them worked right here.
Now, maybe this buyer didn’t sell at West Egg, but Tony would put a heavy bet that she did. He could look around this glitzy club, filled with beautiful people out to party hearty, and know a lot of product was moving somewhere. People didn’t party straight, and a few funky cocktails weren’t going to get the job done right.
Look at all those people, dancing sexy. That was a whole lot of inhibitions falling away. They were using here, so somebody was selling.
And nobody sold in the Cove. Not for long.
“I’m not selling. None of my staff would. I know you people’s rules. They know them.”
“’You people’? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
She blinked, and he almost smiled. It was so goddamn easy to intimidate people like this, who’d never had a hard time in their fucking lives. Tony had been called a bully most of his life; he’d spent as much time school in detention or suspension or just sitting in the office waiting for a lecture as he had in a classroom. Now, as a Pagano enforcer, bully was basically his job description.
People used that word like an insult. But as far as he was concerned, life was made up of two kinds of people: sharks and chum. Either one was a choice. He’d been the latter, until he’d figured that out. Now he was a shark. He had no patience or pity for anybody who’d choose to be chum.
“I didn’t mean—I meant the Pagano Brothers. I know the rules, and so do my staff.” Suddenly, she reclaimed her spine, and the way that showed was almost literal. She straightened up tall and locked her shoulders. “And you fucking know I know. So why come in here and put on this show?”
He saw Bluto trundling back from the bathrooms, trying to get through the crowd, so he didn’t answer yet. Bluto was only an associate, and had only just been pulled up from the runners. He wasn’t a bad guy, and Tony had heard some stories suggesting he’d make a good enforcer eventually, but he hadn’t yet figured out how to be a Pagano man. For one thing, a Pagano man didn’t weave through a crowd. The crowd got out of his way.
Bluto came up and pulled a baggie from under his suit jacket. He handed it to Tony. “It’s like you said.”
Tony opened the baggie and pulled a white wipe from it. He unfolded it and laid it over his hand, so Billy could see as well. “You know what that blue means, Billy?”
She stared at the wipe for a second, examining the blue dye that had risen on the drug-reactive surface, then hit him with a pair of angry eyes—they were blue, maybe. “How do I know where that came from?”
Bluto answered. “The counter in the men’s room.”
She shot those flashing eyes at Bluto. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
Tony reached out and grabbed her chin, pulling her attention back to him. “Yeah, baby. You are.”
She didn’t like him touching her, and she showed it. “Don’t call me baby.”
He grinned; he liked pissing her off, and he liked that she let him see it. “Well, Billy, that blue is coke. Cocaine, to make sure you understand. A lot of it. In your club. In the Cove. That’s a problem.”
She was shook, he could see it, but her voice was steady, and she looked him dead in the eye. He admired that. Being in
timidated was one thing, that was hard to control. The thing was not to give into it. That was where real strength lay, and Billy Jones was showing some right now. Maybe she wasn’t chum after all.
She pulled her head from his grip, and Tony let her.
“I can’t control what people bring in for their own use. You’re crazy if you think that’s possible. All I can do is make sure we’re not part of it.”
“Understood. But you are.”
“I’m telling you—”
“No, I’m telling you I want to see Nicole Howard. She’s working tonight, right?”
She blinked again, but her eyes didn’t drop. Now, here was the interesting moment. What would she do? Give up her waitress? Defend her? Lie to him? Stall somehow?
The band stopped playing, and the shock of quiet drew their attention and quelled their conversation for a moment.
The singer, a tall, rangy black woman with a whole lot of wild natural hair, started talking, and Billy put her hand on Tony’s arm—to draw him off to the side, he assumed. Her hand was pretty, the nails done with glittery dark polish.
“Where’s Billy?” the singer called. “Billy Jones. Baby, where you at?”
Billy let go of him and turned to the stage. She made the ‘cut it out’ gesture, drawing her hand across her throat, but the singer either didn’t see her or didn’t care.
“You all know Billy Jones, right? Your hostess with the mostest here at West Egg? Well, we’re old friends, Billy and me, and I know somethin’ about her you don’t know. Don’t I, baby?”
Now Billy’s hand was going so fast Tony thought she might actually do herself some harm, but the singer paid no heed.
“Our mutual friend’s got some pipes, my friends! Billy, baby, come on up here. Show these good people what you can do.”
The crowd was into this, cheering her on. Those near her started pawing at her, trying to lead her to the stage. Tony had rarely seen someone so uncomfortable who wasn’t tied up and getting worked. Amused, and in no big rush, he edged in behind her and put his mouth to her ear.
Accidental Evils Page 5