by BETH KERY
"Where's Mario?" Ryan asked, hoping it was a safe question.
"He's taking care of some business for me. He'll be along. I've told the girls to carry on with the Slip and Whip for the first show tonight." Jack paused, beady eyes fixing on a tall, thin, disheveled-looking man who staggered into the main room, a woman supporting him on each side.
"Excuse me for a moment," Jack murmured, obviously irritated. Ryan tried to pretend he wasn't listening as Jack approached the half-soused dandy.
"Are you sure you should be down here, Mason?" Jack asked silkily.
"Course I am. I've slept it off and am now good as new, isn't that right, ladies?"
The bold-featured, blonde female on the right of him winked slyly at Mason. "Everything seems to be in perfect working order, wouldn't you say, Betsey?"
The redheaded Betsey giggled and petted the drunk guy along his thin chest and belly sycophantically. "Oh, he's a perfect specimen of manhood, Mel."
Jack leaned against the bar. Although Ryan wasn't fully looking into his face he got the distinct impression he rolled his eyes in disgust. "All right, you two, cut the act. Get up there and put on just as good of a show onstage or I'll set Big Mario on the both of you afterward for not keeping him upstairs to sleep it off like I told you to."
The sly, seductive expressions on both women's faces vanished in an instant. The threat of Big Mario was obviously not taken lightly.
"I thought Nancy and Sadie were doing the Slip and Whip tonight," the blonde woman said a tad bit suspiciously.
Jack pulled back his hand as though he were about to strike her for her insolence. "Who makes the rules here, Mel? Get up on that stage."
"Big Mario keeps the girls here in line?" Ryan mumbled when Alfie paused in front of him after pouring a glass of bourbon.
"Sure. Big Mario keeps everyone in line if Diamond Jack tells him to. He does more than just discipline the girls, though." Alfie leaned across the bar and spoke more intimately.
"He breaks in the new ones, if ya get my meanin'. Everyone knows how much Big Mario likes doing that. Ain't exactly gentle with 'em, but maybe that's best considering their new profession an' all." Alfie nodded knowingly toward the stairs Ryan could just make out in the distance through the doorway. "Word is, the girl Diamond Jack's got upstairs for him tonight is special. . . beautiful as a real princess."
Ryan took a sip of whiskey. "I guess that's what Diamond Jack meant when he said Mario was 'doing something for him.'"
Alfie looked confused by his statement. "No, Mario won't be breaking the new girl in until he wins her later tonight."
"Wins her?" Ryan asked slowly.
"Sure. Diamond Jack awards the winner of the match not only prize money but a virgin.
Shapiro didn't tell you that before they sent ya over?"
Ryan kept his face impassive to hide his repulsion.
"No. Must've slipped Shapiro's mind. I'm the man who's taking on Big Mario tonight,"
Ryan said, covertly measuring Alfie's expression to see if he'd gotten that guess correct.
When Alfie just shrugged like what he'd said was obvious, Ryan continued. "So how come you don't think I have a chance of winning the prize money and the lady?"
Alfie's blue eyes popped open wide. He guffawed like Ryan had told him a hilarious joke.
"That's priceless," he muttered as he shook his head, laughing. The other bartender scowled at Alfie for leaving all the work to him. Alfie scurried away momentarily, setting several drinks on a tray. When he returned he took one look at Ryan and started laughing again as if his mirth had never been interrupted. He glanced at Ryan's face and stopped suddenly.
"Wait. . . ya weren't serious, were ya? Uh ... sorry to have to be the one to break it to ya, fella—you'll still get yer pay, fair and square—but nobody ... I mean nobody beats Big Mario in any fight, least of all one-on-one in the Sweet Lash's boxing ring." He pointed into the room and Ryan turned. Two men had been busy since he'd last looked and had roped off the center platform with sturdy, utilitarian rope versus the gold braid used on the sideshow areas. It hadn't struck Ryan when he'd originally noticed the center staging area that it was the approximate size of a boxing ring.
He stared incredulously. He was supposed to box some unbeatable foe named Big Mario for a virgin? This situation became more bizarre by the second. In the back of his mind it kept niggling at him, 'however, that if he walked out of there in search of Hope, he left the girl upstairs that Alfie had mentioned with a chance of being brutalized by Big Mario.
The detective O'Rourke had obviously been correct about one thing: Diamond Jack Fletcher was most definitely a white slaver just as the twenty-first-century version of him was.
Ryan realized that the room was now entirely filled. Several gaslights suddenly flamed to life along the rim of one of the smaller stages to the right of the boxing ring. The rowdy crowd began clapping and whooping uproariously when they saw Betsey and Mel strut onto the stage. Several of the men pulled women into their laps and began to caress and grope them familiarly while their eyes were trained on the stage. Betsey and Mel flashed their most seductive smiles, occasionally parting the robes they wore to the tops of their large, powdered breasts.
Suddenly Mel, who was the taller and older of the two women, went behind Betsey, reached around her and began lowering Betsey's robe. The men whooped when Betsey pretended to look scandalized and afraid, shaking her head and trying to clutch the robe around her shoulders, conveniently plumping her breasts in the process. Mel swatted her bottom, however, and Betsey, now chastised with head lowered, stood still while Mel removed the robe. She was naked beneath it with the exception of a too tight, black corset that failed to cover either her voluptuous belly and hips or the majority of her generous breasts. The crowd's cheers swelled as Mel possessively ran her hand over Betsey's breasts, belly and thighs. She turned the younger woman's back to the audience and massaged Betsey's curving buttocks to the men's obvious delight.
Mel now made a show of removing her own robe, glancing seductively over her shoulder and lowering it inch by inch. She also wore only a scanty corset, but her costume was supplemented by a pair of supple brown riding boots.
Both women possessed abundant amounts of round flesh, their looks strikingly different from the twenty-first century's concept of svelte beauty. Ryan liked a woman with curves; he found Hope's elegant carriage, narrow waist, full breasts and generously curving hips and ass to be his idea of female perfection, for instance. Betsey's and Mel's dimpled flesh, on the other hand, struck him as blowsy and unhealthy-looking. Not that the Sweet Lash was likely to offer its residents the healthiest of living and working environments, Ryan thought wryly.
He watched with mild interest as Mel picked up a bottle from the stage and gave the men a suggestive look. The men roared their approval, especially when Mel pointed sternly to the floor and Betsey obediently went down on her hands and knees. Mel proceeded to rub oil into Betsey's skin, making her hips, thighs and ass gleam in the gaslights. Their performance was almost as over-the-top contrived as the men's frantic, chest-beating excitement.
The crowd cheered rock-star loud when the blonde parodied a look of stern dissatisfaction and picked up a small, black whip and the redhead reacted with a similarly dramatic expression of anxious desire to please. Betsey squealed when the blonde woman flicked the whip threateningly on the stage to loud applause and appreciative catcalls.
Much to Ryan's amazement, at this point of the performance several of the men grabbed a female and hastily headed for the exit and the rooms upstairs. Jack glanced up from his conversation with Mason, smiling and nodding his approval as the couples passed. But Ryan sensed from his narrow-eyed gaze that Jack was checking which men had taken their satisfaction early so that if they should want another round later, Jack got his extra pay.
"There's no chance I'll beat Big Mario, is that what you're saying?" Ryan asked when he faced Alfie again. Like him, Alfie seemed relatively impervious to the
enactment on the stage, matter-of-factly filling a beer from the tap and pouring a glass of gin at once. "Why is that, exactly?"
"Ye've never seen him, eh?" The bartender seemed a tad pitying.
"No, but I'm guessing he didn't earn his name from the size of his heart," Ryan muttered wryly.
Alfie gave him a blank look. "He's a monster. Jack bought him off the Algerian contingent from the Chicago World's Fair years back. They claimed he was the strongest man on earth, and nothing any of the other participating countries or America had to offer could ever prove the Algerians wrong. He dead-weighted more than any man ever before recorded in history. Mario's so strong he can pull a tree up by its roots and stop a carriage in its tracks."
"What about his boxing skills?"
"What about 'em? Who needs to worry about skills when ya can hammer a guy's head into the floor with yer fist anytime you—"
The last part of Alfie's sentence was cut off when the crowd roared in approval.
Mel's subtle gestures and Betsey's growing excitement made Ryan suspect the two women were familiar lovers. For the first time since they began their theatrics he felt an inkling of arousal. It wasn't so much that he found either of them attractive or that he particularly got off on watching lesbians. It was the glimpse of Mel's dominance and Betsey's submission, the exchange of their energies that had caught his attention more than anything.
During the height of the crowd's excitement over the tawdry spectacle unfolding on the stage, three men had entered the room and immediately approached Diamond Jack and Mason. The five of them retired to a solitary table on a platform directly by the entrance.
A big man with a square jaw stood several feet away, staring in a hawk-like manner out at the crowd. Ryan assumed he was one of Jack's henchmen. One of the waitresses brought the men drinks and also handed Jack several sheets of paper and a pencil.
All of the men except for Mason began conversing soberly. Ryan realized Diamond Jack was conducting high-level business. What better place to carry on in secret than in this boisterous crowd where they were sure to go unheard? Both the table and Jack's chair were perfectly positioned for Jack to see everything going on in the large room. Every time a man left with a woman on his arm he made a note on the paper in front of him and another note when they returned. Ryan observed that when the women returned from their forays upstairs they wore significantly less clothing, often nothing more than a petticoat and revealing corset. A few came down wearing frothy negligees, their breasts almost fully exposed beneath the sashes of their robes.
For the most part Mason ignored the men's talk and sat slumped in his chair, watching the Slip and Whip with a fixed, heavy-lidded stare. Despite the fact that he appeared to be no older than twenty-four or -five, he looked distinctly ill, like his body had been hard used.
At one point Mason sat up to attention at something Jack had said. He questioned the owner of the Sweet Lash. Jack's terse response made Mason tilt his chin in the general direction of the upstairs of the establishment. When Jack nodded, Mason grinned widely.
Mason's leer made Ryan uneasy. He needed to find Hope. What if his showing up at the brothel had been related to Hope, after all? There was a woman upstairs, "beautiful as a princess," who'd been forced into coming here. Detective Connor O'Rourke had suspected Diamond Jack of abducting Hope around this time period.
What if the woman upstairs was Hope?
Ryan jerkily stood from the bar stool. What if Jack or one of his henchmen had already killed her?
He was trying to think of a way that he could get past Jack's all-seeing eyes and poke around upstairs in search of the captive young woman Alfie had mentioned. Knowing what Alfie had told him about Mario's role with the abducted females made Mario's protracted absence alarming.
He paused when he saw Jack stand and put his hand on the henchman who'd been about to descend the stairs. Jack went down the stairs himself. He stalked over to a table where a balding man had pulled a pretty young woman into his lap and jerked down her dress and corset. He happily fondled a small breast while his other hand was busy beneath her skirts, his eyes glued to the Slip and Whip. When Betsey had begun her lewd humping motions up on the stage, the man had started hopping the prostitute's bottom in his lap at the same rate. Jack must've been wise enough to realize the man was looking for two pops for the price of one, having his pleasure here in public and also upstairs later on.
At first Ryan was thankful for the distraction. He unobtrusively started to move toward the exit and the wooden staircase in the far distance but Alfie almost immediately spoke to him.
"You're not gonna want to miss this, fella," Alfie murmured. Ryan turned to see both Alfie and the other bartender stopped dead in their tracks, eyes trained on Jack's intimidating figure as it progressed across the crowded room. Both men were directly behind Ryan, preventing a surreptitious getaway.
Like the bartenders, he watched as Jack approached the table, yanked the young woman up and shoved her out of the way roughly before he pounded the man's face with a beefy fist. The guy didn't know what hit him. He'd still been grinning lasciviously when he spilled over his chair backward.
"Get outa here. If you try and come back, they'll find you facedown in the alley," Jack snarled when the balding man sat up with a stunned look on his face.
"Big Mario usually keeps house down here," Alfie told Ryan by way of explanation.
"Jack's gotta watch over things while he's gone."
Ryan cleared his throat. "Look, I need to get some fresh air, you know?"
Alfie shook his head quickly. "Ye ain't going nowhere, friend. Marlo' will be here any minute." He nodded his head to the stage, where the whipping had now ceased. Mel knelt behind her lover, her face buried between a moaning Betsey's thighs. "The Slip and Whip's near finished. Ye're up next, fella."
Ryan sat back down on the stool while he narrowly studied the room. It was so dim he couldn't tell if there were any back entrances or not.
Betsey's moans became louder as she neared what appeared to be a genuine climax.
"Whip the bitch!" a muscular, stocky man who was clearly drunk yelled from a center table. Mel and Betsey had given their pound of flesh to the demanding men, however, and now appeared to be completely involved in each other. There were men in the audience who clearly appreciated the sensual display of Mel pleasuring Betsey with her mouth and tongue, but a few others echoed the man's desire for more brutality.
Ryan glanced over at Jack, curious as to how he would handle the belligerent man as he grew louder, eventually stood and moved toward the stage. Jack had returned to his seat, and although he glanced over when the man bawled again for more whipping, his attention clearly remained on business. Jack had his priorities, it would seem, and establishing that men couldn't come into the Sweet Lash and hope to cheat him of a dollar was one of them.
The safety of the women apparently was not.
Something about the jerk's fixed, ugly expression sent off a warning bell in his head. At first Ryan didn't understand what the guy was doing as he fumbled at his waist, but then Ryan saw him pull off his belt with a snap.
The man leapt onto the stage, the leather belt doubled in his hand, and began to viciously strike both Betsey and Mel. Betsey cried out in stark pain, her flesh having already been abused by the whip. Several people called out in anger, but a few others cheered on the stocky man.
Mel bared her teeth in fury and gripped the belt, stilling the attacker's actions. She kicked at the man's shins with her riding boots. He cursed and grabbed her shoulders, shoving her down forcefully. Mel's head smacked into the floor of the platform. The man with the belt raised his hand over his head, poised to beat the stunned woman.
Ryan caught the attacker's wrist and jerked his other hand behind his back at the same time. He pressed the man's body into him, taking his weight with relative ease and tilting the struggling man off balance, diminishing the power of his short, muscular legs. Ryan pushed the man's wrist up his s
pine until his fist pressed against his skull.
The man screamed in pain as bone threatened to pop out of a socket or break at any second given the amount of pressure applied to it.
Ryan let up slightly and spoke into the trembling man's ear. "If you don't get off this stage and walk out of the Sweet Lash right now, I'm gonna break your shoulder. Do you understand?"
The man grunted in profound pain.
"I need an answer. Yes or no?"
This time the guy grated out a "yeah." Ryan turned him around and prodded him off the stage. No sooner had he released him, however, when the man whipped around, fist clenched, and aimed at Ryan's gut. Ryan palmed his fist, stopping it instantly, and served him a brisk left hook to the jaw. The man whipped around like a ballerina doing a pirouette. He caught the velvet rope on his face-first fall from the stage, landing heavily on the dingy floor.
Ryan hopped down next to him but apparently the man'd had enough. He scuttled up onto his knees, gripping his jaw as he staggered away, the golden rope catching on his legs and making him trip and fall facedown on the grimy floor. The crowd laughed uproariously and applauded Ryan.
Ryan saw his chance to escape the room and forced the guy to his feet, prodding him toward the exit. The jerk went willingly enough this time, but suddenly the henchman with the square jaw was there to take over, shoving the stocky man ahead of him and charging threateningly behind, herding him out of the brothel.
Ryan cursed softly under his breath when he saw Diamond Jack heading toward him. He glanced back and noticed that Mel was gently settling Betsey's robe on her shoulders, careful of the abrasions on the young woman's back. She regarded Ryan with a mixed expression of gratitude and open curiosity. A strange sense of familiarity went through him when he met her brown-eyed stare. She nodded once in wary thanks. She looked much older up close and Ryan realized she was probably twice Betsey's age.
Ryan gave an answering nod and turned around to await Diamond Jack. He honestly didn't know how the crime boss would react to him jumping up on the stage to protect the prostitutes, and Jack's set, cold visage gave nothing away. Some of the members of the seedy crowd had enjoyed the violent spectacle of the man beating the women, after all.