Outstripped

by Avery, T. C.

There were some spare outfits they could use or they could perform in what they were wearing. They’d been second-guessing all their options anyway and had come prepared. Coincidentally, Jody had enough suitable outfits for them both.

  Barry ‘nudged and winked’ with the doorman at “Vamps” when they got there, before the ‘beast with no neck’ opened the big glass and brass door for them all to enter.

  “Don’t nightclubs look weird when the lights are on?” said Jody. She had expected loud pumping music and people, and stage lights and everything else, but this was quiet, still, strange and empty, except for a few people in front of the main stage who looked relaxed but bored.

  Barry and Bill led the way over and the girls followed. He introduced them and they were taken by one of the women to a changing room.

  There were three other girls in there. One particularly young and nervous looking blonde with tattoos, leaning on the locker doors, and two more, slightly older women sitting at the dressing tables, chatting. They looked around and gave Rachael and Jody the once over before continuing with their conversation. None of them looked exactly ravishing, athletic, or ‘centre-fold-like’ and Jody began to feel like the two of them could be ‘ahead of the game’.

  The woman who had shown them in told them to get ready or changed or whatever, and they would all be called out shortly.

  “Do we go out one at a time?” asked Rachael, digging for some group support. The lady replied, advising them she wasn’t sure and the boss would tell them what he wanted. “Just sit tight till we call you,” she said and then left.

  Somewhat uncomfortably, they removed their coats and began to sort out their make-up. The older women began to snigger between themselves.

  “First time, is it love?” she said to Jody in a very snide manner.

  “Yes, how can you tell?” Jody asked in all seriousness.

  “Your outfits. What were you thinking?”

  Taking offence, and choosing to ignore ‘the bitches’ as best she could, Jody turned around to concentrate on her own finishing touches. Before too long they were given the shout to come out on the stage together. “Looks like we’re having a parade,” whispered Rachael, holding Jody back so the two of them could walk out last.

  The place was now dark other than for some bright stage lights. The five of them walked in a line and stopped at the front of the stage, to face their assessors.

  The man in the middle broke the silence, “You could have made an effort, Dawn. And you.” he pointed to the second of the two M.I.L.F.S. “I forget your name.”

  “This isn’t the fucking “Lipstick Lounge” you know,” he added, “This place is a little more up market. Primo, got it?”

  They shuffled with the slightest of embarrassment and Jody inwardly punched the air in triumph. She surmised that the ‘old girls’ were ‘circuit girls’, which is why the boss seemed to know them, and then her thoughts were interrupted as he turned his derogatory attentions to her. “Barry did a fucking good sales job on me, to get you two kids here. You look like something out of an “Ann Summers” catalogue. I hope I’m not gonna be disappointed.

  He then pointed at the tattooed blonde. “Are you sure you’re cut out for this love?”

  “Yes,” she replied, sheepishly, contradicting her outward appearance. “I need the money.”

  “OK, let’s get on with it. Turn around. Slowly,” he shouted, gesticulating in accompaniment to his orders. “Stop. Bend over. Hold it. Up. Turn. Hands on hips. Push your tits together.”

  He discussed a few finer points with the others beside him and the lady on his left made some notes.

  “Right you can all fuck off and I want Blondie back first. As soon as you hear the music, I want you on stage. You can dance, use the pole, get your ‘kit’ off, whatever you want. Just carry on till I tell you to stop. We’ve got room for three, so you might just wanna make it good.”

  Back in the dressing room, Jody and Rachael were busy discussing the rather blunt and unceremonious nature of it all. They had no idea what happened, but the blonde girl came rushing in wearing just a g-string and high heels, clutching the rest of her gear, mumbling obscenities, somewhere between sobbing and anger.

  “Next!” Came the bellowed instructions from the main clubroom.

  The “Circuit Girls”, in turn, both came back ‘chuffed’ to bits with their performances. Stark naked and displaying an array of tiny tattoos and piercings in some interesting places. They were very comfortable in their own skins.

  “Best of luck.” Jody said, as Rachael disappeared, to the sound of some ‘techno-disco-thumping’. Four excruciating minutes later she came back, clutching her clothes with a look of bewilderment on her face. Jody looked at her questioningly and, “Don’t know,” was all Rachael said, before adding, “I haven’t got a clue. I thought it was good, but they just sat there, so, I just don’t know.”

  The random ‘techno-disco-thumping’ began again and Jody stood up, sharply. She looked in the mirror, patted her hair and blew a kiss to Rachael.

  Jody sauntered on to the stage.

  Back in the dressing room she’d put her coat back on and now, as she, seductively, placed one red stiletto, in turn, in front of the other she began her audition by undoing the lightly knotted belt. She then opened the coat, dropped it off her shoulders behind and caught the collar with one hand. She trailed it behind her as she continued her slow, calculating swagger to centre-stage.

  She paused in front of her allegedly discerning audience, feet apart, one hand on hip, the other holding her coat over her shoulder.

  The boss crossed his arms. He then crossed his straightened legs in front of him, pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. Jody’s white PVC nurse’s uniform was as bright as a lighthouse in those stage lights. They thought they’d seen her earlier, but they hadn’t seen her at all. They could see her now. She now had command of her stage.

  Jody had made long, long plans for this moment and there was simply no way she was going to waste her big opportunity. It was shit or bust. All her homework and her practice, her eagerness and her scheming, all came down to whether she could deliver the goods, for real, on the day.

  Taking an unbelievable gamble, she threw the coat in his face, and began to move to the music. Refraining from dancing, as such, she instead chose to writhe to the rhythm. Her feet never moved.

  She pouted and smouldered and belied her years and inexperience with an air of confidence these guys had been waiting for all their professional days.

  Jody hadn’t taken a scrap of clothing off yet, but she had them captivated, mesmerized, drooling and waiting, impatiently, for the next thrilling installment.

  Tantalizingly she undid the press-studs on the front of her nurse’s tunic. When they were all undone, she paused, waited, waited some more, then flung open the garment to the beat. She stood there, with a dirty, dirrrty smile on her face, her long slim legs apart, red high heels towering, white coat of authority held wide and beckoning, and a high cut, see through, red teddy screaming “Fuck me! Fuck me, here and now!”

  The boss put his hands up. “That’s all. Seen enough. Off you go,” and with that Jody put her hands on her hips pinning the tunic back brazenly for and at them all. She grinned a small triumphant grin, nodded her head almost indiscernibly then swung round and contentedly marched off.

  Chapter 6

  1 plus 4 equals a lot more than 5

  During the trial, Luke had asked Graham to hire a private investigator to dig up as much information on his co-conspirators as possible. Although technically he knew them all, or rather, he had known them all (many years before) he’d neither seen nor been in touch with any of them for years.

  All four of them were at ‘Mary Magdalene Grammar School’ in the sixth form when he had ‘known’ them, (including in the biblical sense). Clearly he didn’t attend a girl’s grammar, he wasn’t even at school at the time, but he somehow ended up hanging around with them, and well, one thing led to another. “
A really good time was had by all,” he recalled.

  What he still couldn’t get his head around, though, was how all the evidence put forward in the trial suggested, no, demonstrated them having social, sexual and business dealings together as though they were all still friends.

  “How the hell was that possible? And the kid, surely you need to have sex with someone for that to happen? She wasn’t a ‘bad shag’, but not even Monica Lewinski could have saved ‘man-juice’ for that long. It must have been around 1999 or 2000 the last time we did it. There’s just no way it could possibly still work. It must be someone else’s. The DNA’s gotta be wrong. It can’t be mine.”

  Luke got to thinking about Suzanne. According to the prosecution she was in Amsterdam sometime in December 2001 at the same time he was. They stayed at different hotels and, according to them, must have got together for sex at some time. She denied it in court, as did Luke, but somehow she couldn’t remember whether or exactly who she did have sex with on that occasion, though the hotel staff were adamant she’d hosted a number of male and female visitors.

  “Even if I’d known she was in town I wouldn’t have contacted her. She’d moved on. I’d moved on. What would’ve been the point?”

  “Anyway she was getting broody, what with her new boyfriend, or rather fiancé. God knows what she saw in him. Twat! Surely the Baby’s his. And she would've been a risk. No sex without bloody condoms an' all that. No thanks."

  Luke went over the seemingly insurmountable yet impossible evidence in his head again. He started by trying to work out where the photos had come from.

  During the trial he recalled how the police had found a large framed photo of him and the four girls all together on their graduation night. The school had decided to throw a dance that year since they didn't have Prom Nights and the girls had invited him along as their guest. He faintly remembered posing for a ‘Charlie’s Angels’ style photo with them all. Anyway, they were a bit pissed after 'loading up' before the 'Big Gig' and sneaking more booze in with them for top-ups. The Gestapo Nuns were on the prowl all night but somehow they still got away with it.

  He never did get to see a copy of the picture (until the trial) and yet each of the girls had a large framed one in their houses aptly engraved with the words “Wicked Alliance In Formal Attire”.

  "According to the prosecutor, just because the typed message on the back of the frames alluded to them being from me, that means they had to be from me. Bollocks! Anyone could have sent them, and stuffed all that crap inside."

  Luke's problem, regardless of how hard he protested with himself, and everyone else on the planet for that matter, was that all four of the photo frames had his fingerprints on them. The photos, though copies, did have his 'reproduced' signature on them, and there was further evidence of "incredible magnitude", as the judge put it, inside each one.

  Suzanne's picture frame had an unopened envelope in it dated 18th December 2001. It was posted in Amsterdam and just happened to be ‘branded’ stationery from Suzanne’s hotel. Inside was a pair of her particularly scanty pink knickers, which, together with a few pubes, had been positively DNA tested as hers. Also inside the very same envelope was Luke's flight itinerary sheet with some hurried and almost illegible hand written notes on the reverse. They read "Thanks S” and, “You forgot these."

  Luke still refuted ever going to her hotel or meeting her, or writing to her, or having sex with her. "Where did all this shit come from?" he thought, "Never mind the baby for a minute. It's not possible to do all this when you’re pissed. I would have remembered something."

  “And then what’s the deal with Carmel? I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what she’s been doing since University or where she’s been. How the hell would I be getting her to launder money when she’s on the other side of the bloody world?”

  Carmel, as it came out in court, had finished at University with her accounting qualifications, and, since ‘Daddy knew people, who knew people’ she managed to land a pretty neat job as a trainee Ship’s Purser for one of the bigger cruise lines. Most candidates for the job need a few years Front Desk experience first, rather than the pathetic amount of ‘Job Placement’ time that Carmel had managed to notch up during her studies. Never the less she got the job.

  Over the years she progressed well and finally got her promotion to full blown Purser. According to the prosecution, Carmel must have been liaising with Charlie on a regular basis.

  Now, Charlie (another one of the girls) had secured a position as an Airline Stewardess, subsequent to doing a few years travelling and holiday repping. The wilder, more free-spirited member of the quartet, was meant to have been transporting ‘dirty’ currency to Carmel, who would then use her privileged position as ‘Ship’s Foreign Exchange Officer’ to convert these notes into U.S. dollars. The now ‘clean’ and high denomination ‘Greenbacks’ would then be deposited into a shared international account, at any old ‘Banana Republic’ bank, whenever either of them could arrange it.

  International personnel, it seemed, definitely had their hidden talents in the ‘under-the-counter world’.

  Luke remembered the girls’ faces as each of their framed photos was brought in as evidence. There were emotional “gurning” performances (face pulling) from all of them, full of shock, surprise, horror and complete incredulity.

  Carmel’s Photo frame concealed an unopened envelope with a CD/DVD inside. A message typed onto the disc sleeve read, “Thought you should have this before it gets into the wrong hands.” The disc contained a catalogue of video evidence showing a great number of Carmel’s sexual encounters aboard ship.

  Unfortunately for Luke the envelope had a partial impression of his handwriting and signature on it and the disc would seem to have been burnt on one of his company’s computers, since identifiable ‘encryption’ and ‘read me’ files had been inadvertently copied along with the videos.

  Charlie’s version of the now infamous photo frames contained a ‘wad’ of Dutch Guilders from many years ago. And, according to the prosecution, Guilders went out of circulation on December 31st 2001 in favour of the newly introduced Euro. It was impossible to hand them in for exchange after 27th January 2002.

  One of the notes had been ripped and Sellotape'd back together. The Sellotape had Luke's fingerprints on it. The conclusion arrived at by the prosecution suggested that Luke passed the notes on to Charlie in Amsterdam in Dec 2001, for ‘shipment’, and she had either forgotten about them or had held them too long, waiting for the right opportunity to meet up with Carmel, until eventually they were no longer legal tender.

  Charlie was coincidentally staying at the same hotel as Suzanne at that time, or rather the other way round, since Suzanne used to travel on the cheap with Charlie whenever there was room on the plane. This particular ‘wad’ was neatly stashed in another of the hotel’s envelopes, just compounding the evidence and confirming for all, the date, time and location of transaction.

  There was one more photo frame that Luke was still struggling to comprehend. Maddy’s.

  Inside her beveled box of incrimination was the tiniest evidential shred of all. A key. Not just any key. This was a padlock key to a lock-up. Luke’s Lock-up.

  Of course it wasn’t the key itself that bore so much significance to his overall weighting of innocence or guilt. It was the sheer mass and depth of material found inside.

  There were bank statements going way back showing all the transactions for an account that Maddy supposedly set up for his operation years before.

  There were two mobile phones with private numbers taken out in their respective names together with accompanying monthly bills and call logs detailing his and Maddy’s texts and calls to each other.

  There was a truckload of sex toys that had apparently been bought with some of the proceeds of their illicit laundering activities, which, not only helped to legitimize and further cleanse the money, but also, thanks to Charlie’s very embarrassing arrest, allegedly and greatly assisted th
e trafficking itself.

  Then, there was the veritable ‘hoard’ of additional evidence, together with some extremely personal and graphic photos of their many and varied, sometimes-bizarre sexual encounters, which just capped off the discovery for the authorities. The trial lawyers suggested these had been taken on the mobile phones and printed privately for posterity and kinky reminders.

  “Just how do you counter all that? It’s all a fucking lie.” Luke tightened his fists in anger to accompany his un-answerable thoughts.

  He calmed himself down and got a grip of things again, eventually, then got round to thinking about the ‘Toys’.

  “Yes”, he had decided to expand on the rubber products field of his father’s business, and “yes”, he had decided to get into sex toys, or marital aids as the more prudish of the populous knew them. “There’s a huge market for sex aids, sex toys, dildos, vibrators, butt plugs and beads and so on. It made good financial sense,” he re-affirmed himself.

  “It’s all main stream stuff now. They’re even on the high streets. One company alone was selling literally thousands of these every week just through party planning. Now if that isn’t worth a punt then what is?”

  “According to the fucking Prosecution the ‘Spanish’ or ‘American’, or whatever he is, ‘Charmer’ sold me all this extra stock, or rather, sold this fictitious company, I’ve never heard of, all this extra stock. And it’s supposed to be custom made. I’ve never heard of ‘Wishful And Intimate Female Aids.’ I never set the company up and I haven’t made or spent any money with it.”

  Luke had started dealing with ‘Vincente Moreno’ years before and had been buying sex toys from him in reasonable numbers for wholesale distribution. Most of his customers were sex shops and a few party-plan operators. It paid well and was a fairly low risk investment since the stock was non-returnable except if faulty. Even then, most customers didn’t want to go through the process, for fear of embarrassment. It worked out to be a pretty smart venture overall and his father didn’t mind him moving with the times and diversifying a little.