by Adam Connell
“You are good,” Faraday said about 600 seconds later.
“What you mean is, not as weak as you’d figured.”
“Might even have survived a direct attack,” Faraday said. “Questions for me? It’s my outfit, I’ve set the culture.”
“This testing happen a lot?”
“Not much,” Faraday said. “More questions?”
“This sounds to me,” Calder said, “like a very uncultured culture. I’ve talked to Lundin, I’ve talked to Briggs, and I’ve talked to you. Any other questions I had would only reinforce what I’ve skimmed.”
“I don’t spend this much time with some of the people who do work for me,” Faraday said, standing up, pushing his chair out with the backs of his knees. “Now go buy one of my ladies a nonalcoholic drink.”
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FORTY-TWO
Thursday, Matins: 1st Nocturne
“I will not go out,” Emmie said. “How can you expect me to go out?”
“Tamm and Dez,” Kinkaid said, “they took the stage right after.”
“You weren’t there!” she screamed.
Kinkaid said, softly, “They took to the stage and they put on a show. They improvised, I heard. Calmed down the customers.”
“You heard,” Emmie said.
“You’ve had two days to get over this.” Kink was late for a meeting but couldn’t go until Faraday — who had just been summoned — arrived.
“Get over this, he tells me,” Emmie said. “A man jumped onstage — ”
“He didn’t get that far,” Kinkaid said.
“You weren’t there. Where were you? He could’ve stabbed me in the heart.”
She was sitting at her mirror, the largest in the dressing room, wearing her robe. Clutching the robe closed as if it were holding her intestines from spilling out. Her bottles and tubes of makeup hadn’t been touched. She was blinking hard, squeezing her eyelids.
Pearly banged on the door for the fourth time. “Hey, we wanna get in. Me and Tress. We wanna change and go home.”
“You’ll wait,” Kinkaid yelled.
“I don’t have much beyond what’s under this robe,” Emmie said.
“I know what you do for a living,” Kinkaid said, jokingly. He thought she was finally in a state to take this humorously.
“Yes, thank you Kink, this is what I do. And besides what I have under this robe, what do I have?”
Faraday came in, followed by Pearly, Tress, and Tamm.
Faraday stood behind his wife. “We’ve talked about this.”
“He could have cut my face. Scars there, they’d ruin the fantasy. The fantasy I’m perfect and scars would bury it eight feet under.”
“Six,” Kinkaid said.
Faraday threw him a glare.
Pearly and Tress left their faces painted and were hurriedly changing into their street clothes.
Tamm was done flirting for drinks and sat at her mirror, the smallest in the room, to prep for her routine. She removed her top for something with more string and less coverage. Faraday didn’t even notice her naked breasts, he’d seen them so many times. She used some rouge on her cheeks and more to define her cleavage. Shiny pink lipstick to catch the light.
“You’re not afraid,” Faraday said to Tamm. “Tell my wife you’re not afraid. To go out there. To dance.”
Pearly and Tress waved good-bye and left. Tamm watched them go and wanted to go with them. “I don’t wanna get up there. I didn’t want to the other night but you were so angry.”
Faraday said, “Sweet Jesus, Emmie. Good Lord, grow up.”
“Guy had a fucking knife,” Tamm said as she tied on her top so it would come loose at a tug.
“He’s not coming back,” Kink said.
“Iommi got him fast, no harm done,” Faraday said. “He won’t be back cause Briggs made sure.”
“Any of them out there could be the same,” Emmie said.
“The only thing in their pockets are hard-ons, believe me,” Kink said.
“I don’t like people running at me,” Emmie said.
Tamm had her bottom off and was looking through her hanger stand for something with a high hip.
“I want to quit,” the Winged Lady said.
Faraday held his breath, let it out slowly through his nose. It whistled. “This again, the quitting.”
“Now it’s dangerous,” Emmie said. “Now it’s so I can’t go up there without worrying.”
“I told you it’s safe,” Faraday said. “So that’s not why. What is it?”
“It makes me tired. Sweating under those lights. I go home and I smell, I’m all soaked and I stink.”
“You barely dance up there,” Faraday said.
Tamm got into her bikini bottom and fingered the sides around her crotch so no hair was showing. “It’s my job and I need it so that’s why I’m going out,” she said.
“Exactly right,” Faraday said, “a job. This is a career for you ladies. No different than a bank teller. See her,” he said to Emmie, “how Tamm’s handling this? What she’s got? She’s got will and drive.”
“What a career makes, will and drive,” Kink said.
“I barely dance up there?” Emmie said. “So what? That’s my style. We can’t all move the same way. I work hard at being stoic and my following, they like it. Makes me that much more unreachable. More, how should I — More unreal.”
“Listen to that music,” Faraday said. “That’s Dez up there, that’s her will and drive. That’s what pays her rent.”
“I don’t have to pay rent.”
Tamm, bored by the loggerheads, sat back down and concentrated on the rest of her makeup. Kinkaid left; nobody noticed.
“We’ll dim the lights,” Faraday said. He sat in Tress’ empty chair. “You won’t sweat as much.”
“So they won’t see me?” Emmie said. “This face, this body?” She leaned back. “I watch everything I eat because onstage there’s no hiding it. You’d like to eat every meal with a food scale?”
Faraday laughed and took her hand. “You don’t have a food scale. This from the woman whose favorite delicacy is grilled cheese. You have the metabolism of a ten-year-old boy.”
“It could be true. For the others it is, some of them.”
“Your time for this isn’t up yet, is all.”
“It’s forever!” she yelled.
“Calm the hell down.”
“Forever looking good, being looked at.” She was staring at a drop of nail polish dried to the floor. “Making sure I’m sexy enough. That I feel sexy up there, or they’ll know. You can’t fake sexy like you can’t fake smart.”
“It’s your job, honey, and you excel at it. You don’t fake sexy because you don’t have to.”
“I know what they’re picturing.” She looked at her mirror. “Their dirty thoughts,” she said. “They’re watching me but what they’re seeing instead is me in their bed, doing revolting — I don’t want to pleasure them, not even in their imaginations. Having sex with me in their heads.”
Faraday got up and paced behind her, out of her field of vision.
There was a knock on the door; Faraday cursed at it loudly.
Emmie allowed her robe to slip open. She was about to reach for some foundation but stopped herself. “All right, that’s fine, I can’t quit then fire the other dancers.”
Faraday pointed at Tamm, then the door.
“What, I’m fired?”
“No, get out there now, center stage.”
“Center stage is mine this time of night,” Emmie said.
“You won’t miss it,” Faraday said.
“I’m not ready yet,” Tamm said. “I need to light a cig, I gotta glitter m — ”
“Now, center stage.”
Tamm left. Annoyed at first but gaining poise and posture as she went through the door.
“That is my stage,” Emmie said.
“Fire everyone,” Faraday said.
“Well it’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to me.
I’d hate to be them, in my shadow all the time. Has to be humiliating being compared to me and, really, who could compare? Who’s going home in the thoughts of your customers out there? Not” — she waved her arms at the empty stations — “these other girls.”
“You just said you hated being co-opted like that.”
“If it’s gonna happen, it should be all mine,” Emmie said. “Let your other ballerinas go somewhere they’ll be noticed.”
“Because it’s not fair to you, either,” Faraday said, “is it.”
“They come to see me. They hold their breaths when I’m onstage. These other girls, it lessens my impact. People think I’m part of a bigger act. I am the fucking act, ’Day!”
Faraday saw she was crying. Her eyeliner and mascara running. Racing.
“You can go on last, have center stage,” Faraday said.
“Which you gave away.”
“I’ll cut the Nicotine Queen short. How am I supposed to win this argument?”
“And the newest one, Nadezhda,” Emmie said. “She’s too young. What, seventeen?”
“She’s not that new. And twenty-three.”
“That’s a lie, in her twenties,” Emmie said. “These new ones, they’re too young. You’re pandering to perverts.”
Faraday could see where this was going. Where it had arrived, actually. Now he’d have to soothe his wife artificially, something he avoided; she was his wife, he owed her that much privacy. He pried some quiet words through her mind anyway.
“Go on after the Nicotine Queen. Please.”
“This club is mine. Tell me the club is mine, they’re all out there to see me.”
“I don’t have to tell you that.” He ripped a baby wipe from its dispenser and handed it to her. She took it but wouldn’t use it.
“If you don’t tell me it’s mine I won’t think it’s true. You have to say it to be true.”
“This club, it’s yours,” Faraday said. “I’ll rename it. The Winged Lady. Every man, every woman outside right now is here to see you.”
“Me,” Emmie said. “Especially the women.” She was smiling.
Faraday took a moment to dull Tuesday’s attack and Emmie’s idea to fire the other dancers from her mind. There was an uncharacteristic resistance. Nothing Stone-like, but a skill that wasn’t her own. He was too flustered by her histrionics to make note of it.
Dowd, the bouncer who wasn’t a Stone — who was in fact a hack — came into the room without knocking again. “Sir, two guys in the alley wanna see you.”
“Send Lundin.”
“They said just you. Something about a new job. They have half the money in cash. Showed me. It’s a big briefcase, practically a valise.”
“Go get Lundin in here to sit with her,” Faraday said.
“No,” Emmie said. “I want Lundin below the stage. I want Briggs. I want him” — she pointed at Dowd — “and I want Iommi. Under the center stage kneeling like they’re playing football.”
“You’ll have to get over this,” Faraday said. “An army up there’s not gonna get you past this. And it’ll distance you from the audience.”
“No, it’ll make me seem more precious. Then tomorrow we do it without Briggs, the day after without Lundin.”
Faraday hadn’t the energy for more tampering. Out of spite he said, “We’ll do the same thing for lap dances because it’s about time you earned that department some revenue.”
“I will never touch those people.”
“Dowd,” Faraday said, “get everyone in front of the middle stage. Have the Nicotine Queen off in two minutes. My wife doesn’t go up the second after, the millisecond, you break down this door and carry her up there. Stay up there with her you have to.”
“The guys in the alley,” Dowd said.
“Fine, I’ll go.”
Faraday went through the door back of the dressing room marked OUT in slanted gold stickers. Prior to Tattletail, the club had been a magician’s playhouse. The door branched into five tunnels under the three raised stages, trapdoors above the tunnels, all five tunnels meeting in a delta at the alley’s massive metal door. Because the city required the club’s trash from the Dumpster in the alley, it was this route Dowd took every other day with their garbage.
Faraday stepped into the alley and was struck in the stomach with a two-by-four. He hadn’t seen it but felt the shape it left on his skin, and there was the odor of rough wood. Another, by a separate swinger, struck him on the side of the head below his ear. Assailants swinging with follow-through.
Faraday doubled over and took a fast knee to his mouth. He fell backwards and walked himself upright using his palms against the brick wall. He tried the alley door but it had closed. For security, it locked from the inside.
Two men were advancing on him. They wore woolen masks rolled down to their chins. Faraday was too dazed to see that both sets of eyes and chins were identical and the men were precisely the same height.
“The fuck do you want?” Faraday said, spitting blood as he talked.
He aimed a punch at the nearest one, missed, and took another swing from the wood to his stomach — this time off center, crunching his ribs.
A punch to his face, three teeth loosened and one swallowed. Faraday gagged. A solid wood beam to his tailbone that sent an electric jolt up his back, followed by one of his attackers giggling. Their next target was the small of Faraday’s back; once, and then again.
Faraday went down on all fours but he didn’t plead and he didn’t cry out. Anyone on all fours begs a kick to the torso, and that’s what he got. He could almost guess their shoe size, and knew they were wearing boots, not sneakers. Doc Martens, steel-toed.
Faraday tried to stand; there were tears but he wasn’t crying. One man held his limp right arm as the other whacked him in the exposed armpit as hard as he could, as many times as he could until the beam snapped.
The men jogged away and tossed the split wood into a mesh trash can on the next corner.
Kinkaid was in an adjacent alley with the nine coworkers Lundin never sees.
“Told you,” he whispered, “he has lost it. The old Faraday would’ve put those splinters down their throats, the old Faraday.”
The other men, having just seen their boss savaged, either nodded or shook their heads.
FORTY-THREE
FRIDAY, Terce
Calder was in the driver’s seat of a rented Mazda3. Zero to sixty in seven minutes. Rook had the backseat to himself. They’d used Calder’s fake license. Paid cash; not a credit card between them.
“I appreciate you coming along,” Calder said.
“You appreciate everything I do, you’d better,” Rook said. “If I could drive a car I’d be at the wheel, you’d appreciate that, too. I’m in back here like a child.”
“Well,” Calder said, “I’m grateful, I wanted to say it again.”
“And I’ll say it again,” Rook said, leaning forwards so his face was between the front seats. His breath smelled of burned coffee. “This is a very interesting day, I’ll finish it with you. The entire job, we’ll see it through together.”
“I’ll fork you all my percentage.”
“And I’ll say it again,” Rook said, leaning back, but didn’t finish his sentence.
“Plus the lap dance,” Calder said.
“Yeah, any traction? Your lady friend put in a good word?”
“I’ll ask.”
Calder opened the windows and quietly gulped some fresh polluted air. They were parked on a cross street to the BoD, within sight of Adelard’s office. Majella was right, they were stalkers.
“Time is it?” Rook said.
“Don’t you wear a watch?”
“Chafes my wrist.”
“Ten-fifty. We had to get here so early?”
“It’s a Friday, people take off, ’specially in summer. Fancy man like our aide, he’s got friends in the Hamptons.”
“We’re not going to the Hamptons,” Calder said.
&
nbsp; “Out to the Hamptons. You don’t go to the Hamptons, you go out there. He’ll hit home first, that’s where I want him. Sick of that office. I’m sick of looking at it. You watch the door.”
“He takes the subway home? Like a true New Yorker?”
“You’re throwing that back at me?” Rook said with a laugh. “Cheeky. Can’t follow him he’s in a car by subway, and we can’t follow him in the subway we’ve got a car. It’s a gamble. This nugget, this new key, your Majella, it’ll work?”
“Might not,” Calder said. “It was an idea. We’ll see if it grows crop.”
“Grows crop?” Rook said. “What’s that, an ism you picked up in Wyoming? It could take weeks to get him cornered how we need him. We’ve got days.”
Calder was going to respond but he hated sitting in the front seat talking to someone in the back. Like when you’re chewing food, a mouthful you’re having trouble with and someone at the table asks you something. It’s irritating and kind of stressful.
Half an hour later, Calder said, “You didn’t read anything off him, anything we could use?”
“I was too agitated. I have to pee. I’m using the coffee cup.”
“Close the lid, I don’t wanna smell it.”
“Welcome to stakeouts,” Rook said. Calder was more a camel in this regard, could hold it in all day. “Damn prostate,” Rook said. Took him about eight minutes to fill the cup, then he opened the door and emptied it down a storm drain while they waited. In silence. Eventually Calder flipped through the radio and settled on the old standby, 101.1, WCBS FM.
Rook fell asleep.
At ten after twelve Majella left the office, got in a town car heading north. Calder had no idea where they were going, both cars including his, but he closed the windows and tailed the town car into Manhattan. The car let Majella off in front of The St. Regis, East 55th Street. Majella strode inside, looking both ways to make sure no one he recognized was around.
Calder had to circle the block a few times before finding a parking space opposite the hotel. It was confusing, circling around, all the one-way streets that plague Manhattan. When he found an available spot, a van delivering pies was in the process of maneuvering into it. Calder put a vague fear in the man’s head and the driver sped off, worried about something, he didn’t know what.