Urban Renewal

by Andrew Vachss

  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, JANUARY 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Vachss

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Cross™ and all prominent characters featured herein are trademarks of Andrew Vachss.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vachss, Andrew H.

  Urban renewal : a Cross novel / Andrew Vachss.

  p. cm.

  1. Gangsters—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3572.A33U73 2014

  813′.54—dc23

  2013020579

  Vintage Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8041-6881-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-6882-3

  Cover design: Evan Gaffney Design

  Cover photograph © Andrew Vachss

  www.weeklylizard.com

  v3.1

  for Grizzly …

  I wish I had known sooner

  I wish I could have done something

  By the time I did, already too late, I know

  But I can still hear you, brother

  Breathing out that gasoline mist

  That always awaits my flamethrower

  For structures that should have been condemned

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  First Page

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  “THAT’S IT?” the radically contoured, raven-haired young woman said. Her once-sweet face twisted into a bitter grimace. “That’s where I’m supposed to work? That’s the place where you said I’d be so—”

  “Safe? Guaranteed, honey. Twenty-four-karat, with a platinum cherry on top,” a similarly structured blonde who looked too young to have a driver’s license answered reassuringly. Her pampered hands rested possessively on the steering wheel of her azure-toned Mercedes two-seater, a hardtop-convertible she proudly referred to as “off paper, totally.”

  I earned this, ran through her thoughts. It’s mine, not some loan-shark “finance company’s.”

  “It looks … scary. Like someone dropped it into the middle of a junkyard.”

  “We work indoors,” the blonde sighed dramatically, not disguising her weariness of the brunette’s nonstop fretting. “This isn’t your first ride, girl. You know there’s not going to be no free-peek windows, so what’s it matter what’s outside?”

  “But …”

  “Ssssh, now. If you don’t like it, what would you be giving up?”

  “If I don’t bring home—”

  “You’re not going home, remember?”

  “But all my things—”

  “They’ll still be there, don’t worry.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “That’s one thing I don’t know. You just sit still for another minute or two and I’ll show you a couple dozen you don’t.”

  “THIS HAS to be a joke,” the brunette whined as the little Mercedes wove its way past the gutted remains of vehicles ranging from motorcycles to semi-trailers.

  “Ssssh,” the blonde said again. “Girl, you have got to learn a little patience.”

  “Maybe that’s my problem. Sometimes, I think I’m too damn patient,” her passenger said, eyeing the motley collection of free-range dogs hunting the rats who were constantly in motion among the twisted piles of rusting metal.

  The blonde wheeled her car past a fenced-in area marked “Valet Parking.” The brunette got only a vague glance at neat rows of parked cars before the blonde abruptly turned left and rolled her little prize to the back of what looked like a long rectangular concrete bunker. Only a discrete band of blood-red neon spelling out “XX” broke the dullness of its appearance.

  The back area was almost as wide as the main building, but no more than twenty feet deep. There were numerous individual slots, each marked with a letter above its door. The blonde tapped a key on her iPhone. Brand-new—no more bootlegs for this little girl! she thought, as she did every time she used it.

  When an indecipherable grunting noise answered, she said, “Arabella. And a friend.”

  Slot J opened. Arabella drove in confidently, left her keys in the ignition, and climbed out as the door slid down behind her.

  “Will you come on?” she snapped over her shoulder.

  The brunette followed as the blonde stood in front of a mirrored door. An audible “click” sounded. The blonde strode inside, tugging her friend’s hand, as if they were BFFs about to enter a club one of them wasn’t so sure about.

  An extremely large man stood behind the door, his upper body covered in Maori tattoos. His eyes were forced into slits from the compression of his eyebrows. It was a full ten seconds before he nodded.

  “What was that?” the brunette asked.

  “That’s just K-2.”

  “Like ‘Kato’?”

  “No, like Kay-Two. Get it?”

  “No. But …”

  “But what? You think your ‘man’ is going to just walk past him?”

  “Not without an elephant gun.”

  “Hold that thought,” the blonde said, smiling.

  “THOSE ARE the dressing rooms,” the blonde said, “but we won’t be going on for another hour or so. I thought you’d want to look the place over first.”

  “Uh … okay.”

  The blonde opened another door. “This is backstage. If you’re going on, you walk up those stairs. If you’re not, you just … Well, follow me.”

  The two women seated themselves at a small round table set against the wall, to the right of the stage.

  “Mae can sure work that pole,” the blonde said. “It’s real brass, by the way. Used to be in a firehouse, the way I heard it.”

  “Everything’s very … nice.”

  “Oh, it’s the best. That’s not some cheesy carpeted-over linoleum your feet are resting on, honey—that’s deep-pile. Plush. Look around. Look anywhere you want—you’ll see nothing but the best. Check out over there, way over to the other side. That section’s for the paying customers … and I don’t mean the ones who want to get close to the girls; the ones who want the girls to get close to them, right? And trust me, there’s not a cheapskate in the lot.”

  “But we work for tips only, right? No—?”

  “You don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” the blonde assured her. “When I told you everything in here was the best, I was talking about the girls, too. Sure, there’s a VIP Room and all that, but you can just work your shift, and anything they throw on the stage or stuff in your garter or whatever, that’s what you earn.”

  “VIP Room? Does that mean I—?”

  “Nooooh,” the blonde answered, stretching out the word like a bratty teenager. “That ‘Valet Parking’ is just a shuck to make the marks feel like big shots—there’s no other parking lot. But the VIP Room, that’s … well, it costs whatever it costs, see?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Ah … look, honey, it’s not that complicated. Some girls cost more than others, some girls will do some things other girls won’t … and some girls won’t work that room at all.”

  “How does the house make its money, then? All the watered champagne in the world wouldn’t pay for this setup.”

  “You rent your spot. Three
girls are always onstage: one on the pole, two up front. Costs you a hundred bucks for twenty-five minutes. Some trios do better rotating, some not. Doesn’t matter—you take turns working whatever spots you decide, and you split up the tips at the end. Or you could even go it alone, but that’s three hundred for the twenty-five minutes, so you’d better really work it, you make that choice. And, not for nothing, that champagne isn’t watered.”

  “That’s some ‘rent’ they charge here. Six hundred an hour.”

  “Which would be almost fifteen grand every day—they never close. But you can buy eight slots at a time—that’s why it’s twenty-five minutes, so you can take five for yourself if you’re going right back on again.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do it. They’ve got more girls who want to work here than they can take. But if you work, say, six slots, you should pull in well over a grand a night, net. After the rent, see?”

  “Without ever leaving the stage? No lap dances, none of that VIP Room stuff?”

  “Yep.”

  “But the girls who do…”

  “Oh, sure. There’s girls taking an easy ten G’s a week out of here.”

  “Do you ever—?”

  “Honey, what I do is up to me. Just like it is for you. And what you don’t do, either. What I don’t do is talk about what I do, you with me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Now, glance—and I mean glance, no more—to your right. There’s a man sitting in that far corner. That’s his private spot.”

  “He doesn’t look like much.”

  “He owns the place.”

  “Oh. Is he here all the time?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Then who stops people from—?”

  “Look at the door, baby. You can look there as long as you want.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. You see one bad guy at the door. That’s Bruno. And he is a certified killer, sure. Now look behind the bar. That’s Gringo.”

  “Gringo? But he’s—”

  “You think a Mexican named ‘Gringo’ is weird, wait ’til you meet Princess.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s not here now, but Rhino is. Look all the way down at the end of the bar. See him?”

  “I see … Nobody’s that size.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. At first. But he’s no thug. In fact, he’s a real gentleman. There’s something wrong with his voice, so it comes out like a squeak. But he’s the only one that can do anything with Princess if something jumps off.”

  “Jumps off here?”

  “Now you’re beginning to get the idea,” the blonde said, making a gesture of some kind toward the man seated behind a triangular table in the far corner, a man whom she knew only as “Cross.”

  “COME ON,” the blonde told her friend. “He says it’s okay.”

  The two girls sat, each on one side of the triangle table which had been fitted into the corner slot. The tabletop appeared to be a three-inch-thick slab of some kind of dull-gray plastic. Anyone who approached the table uninvited would quickly be treated to a head-on view of that slab—it was hinged to pop forward from the corner at the touch of a floor button. And would turn even a heavy-caliber round into a harmless splat!

  “This is Taylor,” the blonde said. “I already ran down the deal to her.”

  “And …?”

  “And I’ll take it,” Taylor said, quickly. There was something about the nondescript man. Something that warned her not to equivocate.

  She dropped her eyes to the ashtray where Cross was grinding out a cigarette he’d lit when Arabella first pointed him out. Her eyes were drawn to the bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his right hand; she quickly looked away.

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t mean like I was doing you a favor or anything. I just—”

  “She’s got a boyfriend who talks with his hands,” the blonde cut her off.

  “And you want that to stop?” Cross asked without inflection.

  “Yes! He—”

  “I’m not a social worker. You want him not to bother you here, that’s covered by your rent. You want him not to bother you ever again, that’s something you have to pay extra for.”

  “You mean …?”

  “Cash. In advance.”

  “But he takes all my—”

  “We don’t do labor bonds.”

  “Huh?”

  “They don’t take IOUs,” the blonde explained. “I already told you, didn’t I? You can stay with me until you build up enough to get another place. If you start here tonight, you won’t be going back. And, from the money you’ll be making …”

  “But everything in that apartment is mine. I mean … I worked for it.”

  “Up to you,” the blonde said.

  “Could I … could I pay you to go and get my stuff?”

  “No” was all Cross said.

  “What am I supposed to do?” the brunette said, on the verge of tears.

  “I’m on in ten,” the blonde said. “You decide what you want to do, catch me on my break.”

  THE BRUNETTE looked at Cross from under heavily veiled eyelashes. That didn’t work any better than the trembling lips, the tears, and her unvoiced offer of … whatever.

  He might as well be a piece of furniture, she thought. Arabella already told me that—but she’s so damn dramatic about everything, I guess I don’t pay much attention when she talks.

  “You want to work here—fetching your ‘things,’ that’s on the house, too,” Cross said, lighting another cigarette. “Call your boyfriend, tell him where you’ll be working tonight.”

  “What good is that going to—?”

  “Has he got more than one girl?”

  “J.B. isn’t a pimp,” she said indignantly.

  “Sure, he is. I was just asking about the size of his stable.”

  “I Am Not A Whore,” the brunette said, each word a separate statement.

  “You got a kid?”

  “No.”

  “A dog?”

  “No. Why are you asking me?”

  “If you had either one, he could put you right back in line by threatening to hurt them.”

  “He threatens to hurt me,” she snapped. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “He ever do more than threaten?”

  “Yes. He once took my—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cross said, stubbing out his cigarette.

  Three drags and he’s done? Taylor thought. “Why doesn’t it matter?” she said aloud.

  Cross looked at her. “If you hadn’t got all huffy when I said ‘pimp,’ you’d be asking to work the VIP Room.”

  “And how do you know I won’t ask to do that?”

  Cross said nothing. Arabella was a good worker, quick to catch on. But she was always picking up strays. Touching the corner of her right eye had already told him all this new one wanted to do was dance.

  He nodded his head, as if some agreement had been reached. “If he was a street-certified pimp, he’d know better than to come around this place. But he’s some kind of ‘boyfriend,’ right? The kind who doesn’t work. What’d you do, meet him in a club?”

  “I … Yes, that’s right. I mean, not a club like this one. A nightclub.”

  “Good-looking guy? Smooth, silky? Nice way of talking?”

  “That’s right,” she said, already on the defensive from … she wasn’t sure exactly what.

  “Didn’t take long before he moved in with you.”

  “Well, we were going to be together anyway, so—”

  “So it just kept going in the same direction, rolling downhill. He was waiting on some deal to come through. Or he wanted to cut a demo. Or … whatever. No matter how he put it, he told you he was in some kind of bind, right? That’s when you started dancing.”

  “So?”

  “You first meet him, he pays for your drinks. Now you pay all his bills.”

 
“I never thought—”

  “You think you’re the first girl to bet on the wrong horse? So what? It’s only money—he didn’t take anything you can’t replace. How does he work it? Pick you up every night, make sure he gets his cash?”

  “No. I mean, not every night. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. It depends.…”

  “Then he won’t know any better.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to. Just give me a picture of him. You probably have one on your phone.”

  The brunette tried to work up a resentful look, but it wouldn’t come. Finally, she reached in her clutch bag and took out a portrait-quality laminated color photo of a slim man in a beige sport coat that looked to be made out of some kind of velvety material, a black silk shirt with pearl buttons underneath. His face looked as if he’d never had to shave, with perfect skin accented by sharp cheekbones. Despite a Cajun complexion, his eyes were blue and his hair had a faint reddish tinge. The diamond studs in his earlobes flashed brilliantly, even in the photo.

  “This is Jean-Baptiste,” she said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice. “What happens now?”

  “Depends on him.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Cross lit another cigarette, blew a harsh jet toward the invisible ceiling. “It’s not important. But this is, so listen close before you say anything. If he shows up here tonight, you’ll be able to go back to your place. But I wouldn’t do that, I was you. I’d make sure I worked until tomorrow. And then go spend the next night with a friend. Just get this straight: if he doesn’t show, you can’t go back.”

  “I can’t leave Teffie.”

  “Your …”

  “Cat,” she answered Cross’s question. “He was a rescue.”

  “So not declawed?”

  “No!” the brunette said proudly. “He’s, you know, spayed and everything, but he still goes out whenever he wants. There’s a little slot in the window, and—”

  The brunette stopped mid-sentence, as a pair of hands dropped lightly on her shoulders.

  “Relax,” a man’s voice said. “I just need to talk to the boss.”

  “You mean alone?” the brunette said, without turning around.

  “Always.”