There was no sign, except for a blue and red neon martini glass, slightly tilted, swizzle stick protruding. That was it. No name, no hours, no welcoming slogan. But the two goons slipped through the door beneath the martini glass, and a snippet of thumping techno bass reached his ears.
Brant remembered Saigon, and more than one establishment where word of mouth and a bit of neon was the only advertising.
He entered behind two other men who'd walked up the sidewalk and quickly surveyed the crowded narrow room. The bar area and the bar itself were nondescript, the speakers loud and incomprehensible. A riser off to the side served as a stage, where a slightly flabby stripper gyrated around a scratched pole. Barely half the customers in the room seemed interested. There was a doorway at the rear that drew his eye. A tall goon-type stood beside it like a sentry. The back room — Goran's inner sanctum? Looking through a temporary tunnel created as the crowd parted, he watched the bartender take a hundred from a male customer and nod in the direction of the door, getting a nod back from the sentry. So one needed a cash passport to travel from front to rear. Maybe a visual recognition? He couldn't chance it, not now.
"Getcha?" the bartender barked out over the techno beat.
Brant waved him off. "Looking for a friend," he mouthed. "Not here." He made a point of looking around, then shrugged and backed out onto the street as another male duo entered. There was no good way to determine if this was Goran's headquarters without calling attention to himself. He wanted to zip back to the motel and maybe catch Irina and whoever she was meeting.
Too many cards to play, and not enough time. He needed a team, but he was running out of time.
He drove the route back to the motel in less than half the time it had taken to follow the sedan to the club. It occurred to him that they could be holding Kit at the motel, but nothing could be that simple. This Goran had surrounded himself with ex-military goons and hired guns, so it stood to reason that he had a place set aside for his business dealings. But was he too smart to risk exposure at one of his clubs? Or did the rear door guard indicate otherwise?
Brant pulled into the motel lot and located a spot where he could point the car toward the street for a quick escape. Then he made his way to the open stairs and climbed to the second floor, stepping lightly on the pebbled concrete, tracing Irina's path. He stopped in front of the fourth door and hesitated.
The rubberized shade in the picture window was pulled shut but the bottom didn't quite meet up where it bunched. He knelt, glanced around to make sure he was alone, and peered into the room through the narrow gap.
Irina, topless, was on her knees in front of a naked male who stood above her with his hands in her hair. Their voices were muffled. She didn't seem to be talking much. Clearly, she was an expert.
Brant crouched a bit further down and tried to angle his head for a better view.
He swore.
He still couldn't see the man. No matter what, this development complicated things in every direction. Was Irina hooking on the side for Goran? Was she hooking for herself, or someone else? And, more to the point, had she dragged Kit into hooking with her?
Brant considered kicking in the door and confronting Irina while she was engaged in her hobby. No, better to follow her afterwards, in case she headed for wherever Kit was either being held or hiding. He shook his head. There was no way he could be convinced that Kit had started hooking, surely not of her own free will.
He retreated to the top of the far staircase, where he could stand in the shadow of the concrete supports, assuming Irina would retrace her steps and use the other stairs. He checked his watch and waited.
When Irina left twenty minutes later, she pulled the door shut behind her and followed his predicted route.
Brant peered over the concrete railing. She ducked into a late model Mustang already parked three slots away from his. Had her male friend driven the car there? Had she left it there earlier? He itched to burst into that room, but then he'd lose Irina. Instead, he descended the stairs rapidly and kept to the shadows until he was across from his car. Irina's Mustang was just leaving the lot, and a minute later he followed, heading north again. It seemed he was retracing his steps from earlier. He bet Irina was heading for the same club.
Brant swore again. He wanted to know who the man in the motel room had been, but he couldn't chance losing Irina when she might lead him to Kit.
His Colgrave cell went off and he flipped it open after peering at the screen. "Colgrave, great to hear from you again." He heard her snicker. "What can I do for you?"
"Maybe I can do something for you," she said. "Like, tell you that I did some searching for our friend. Besides making Zim extremely unhappy, I also managed to learn a few things about your boy Goran."
"Like?"
"Like he barely exists. As if his slate was wiped clean by somebody with a bucket of soap. Actually, his file reminded me of yours."
"Really?"
"Brant, who are you?"
"It's not that important. Who is Goran? That's important."
She sighed. "I hate secretive men."
"Admit it, you adore us."
Her laugh tickled his ear. "Sometimes, Brant, sometimes."
He changed lanes and stuck close to the Mustang, although now he was sure he knew where it was headed. Irina turned off the freeway where the Mercedes had, earlier.
"Did you get anything?" he asked, following at a safe distance.
"You have sources yourself. You may want to use them, because I tried pretty much all the databases any cop could recite by heart, and he comes across as only slightly worse than Tom Sawyer. If you get what I mean."
"Whitewash?"
"Oh yeah. I'd say serious whitewash."
"I'll take that under advisement."
"What are you planning?" Her voice turned serious. "No violence, I hope. Zim would love to take you down, and I get a sense he'd rather shoot to kill than go for a taxpayer-funded trial."
"I'm only interested in getting my niece back, Colgrave. Nothing else. But these monsters have dragged her into some sort of hell, and I just have to find it. I don't know yet whether they've killed her, started her on smack, made her start hooking, or all three. But somebody's going to pay."
"What about your brother?"
"Yeah, what about him? He's not squeaking out of this. I just have to figure out where he fits in." He saw the Mustang pull over near the anonymous club. "Listen, Colgrave, I've got to get off the phone now. I'll keep you posted, okay?"
"Brant-"
He cut her off by pushing the End button and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. Irina was just sitting in her car. He drove past and pulled up a half-block ahead, keeping an eye on her in his mirrors. He turned off the cell so Colgrave couldn't call back and give him away.
Irina was reapplying her make-up.
Was this another trick? Or a meeting with Goran?
When she left her car and headed for the martini glass sign, he waited until she had stepped inside and followed.
He could feel the Serb's presence.
KIT
Kit and Anne Marie awoke roughly when Marissa was returned to her bunk, crying and limping. Her left foot was roughly bandaged, and blood had soaked through and dribbled down the floor from the doorway. Daffy manacled her as she fought weakly, her hands waving about uselessly.
Kit found her voice in a flash of uncontrollable rage. She had been much too silent. "What the hell did you do to her, you fucking ape?"
She thought he'd just ignore her. Instead, he fussed roughly with the chain on Marissa's wrist, then stood slowly, his back to Kit. She was about to ask again, maybe referring to his whore of a mother, when he whirled, reaching her before she could prepare. His wide open hand struck her in the cheek soundly, snapping her head sideways into the wall.
"Never question me or call me an ape again," he said in his accented voice, snarling under the silly mask. The cartoon features made him more terrifying, somehow. "If you want to keep your
fingers, you will not anger us. And you will hope to not strike the fancy of someone who enjoys having his property mutilated as a sign of ownership." He pointed to Marissa. She whimpered softly. "That one performed so well, our best customer wished her branded for his collection, eh? And the customer is always right, isn't that what you Americans say? I do not need to tell you more, I am sure. Now stay back and await your turn in the Studio. It will be after food, and it will be best for you to come along quietly. As you can see, damaged goods are still quite market-worthy."
He laughed and stalked out.
Kit's cheek — her entire jaw, actually — throbbed and ached. But what stung most was the knowledge that her conclusions had been correct.
Market-worthy.
Customers.
Jesus, we're just meat in a butcher shop.
Except meat is blessedly dead when picked out by customers. They were still alive, and they would suffer terrible indignities on the way to... to where? A southern plantation? A whorehouse somewhere? A harem in the Middle East? An East European street corner?
Kit tried to block out the terror she felt building up inside her. She concentrated, trying to remember some of her sociology survey course. There had been a short section on drug and slave traffic out of Eastern Europe, but as she remembered it, most of the traffic flowed out of Eastern Europe, not to it. No, she probably wouldn't be headed there, but who knew what kind of sick fuck 'collected' girls and mutilated them to show or prove his ownership?
Like fucking cattle.
And what if another customer followed the same practice, but preferred other mutilations? Her finger, her nipple, her ear?
Her clitoris.
Jesus, she'd read about some less developed societies mutilating a woman's clitoris to mark the advent of womanhood, but what about doing it to mark ownership?
In this new world that Kit was suddenly contemplating, anything could be true.
Marissa cried herself out, ignoring both girls' inquiries. They left her alone, as much as they could in the cell that had become their whole universe.
Then Kit concentrated hard on her uncle, hoping her need could connect with him. Somehow. Maybe fuel his visions. She tried to talk to him in her mind, to lead him to her. But where was she?
After a while, both Anne Marie and Kit apologized to each other and used the toilet, shame their only friend.
And then they waited.
NINETEEN
The door opened inward as he reached for the handle and he stood aside while a small, noisy crowd filed out past him. Two attractive tall women and three generic men, all wearing leather and trailing the smell of booze, sweat and cologne. When he squeezed inside he looked for a recent parting of the crowd that milled around the long bar. Vaguely familiar hard rock blared from hidden speakers. On the stage riser, a listless red-haired pole dancer swirled over the heads of patrons, some of whom cared enough to watch.
He thought he spotted Irina's bobbing head, but the crowd closed around her. The room had clogged with revelers in the last half hour, enough to confuse sight lines. Alcohol fueled their lust, which seemed to spark from hand to finger to face. Most of them concentrated on each other and ignored the stripper.
The club was a crime from the inside. Not the front room, the nondescript tittie bar meant for tourists and posers, but the back room — which Brant reached after the bartender took a hundred and pointed him through a second door. Goran had to be greasing somebody high up in the police.
The second bar was a typical neon and chrome affair, circa 1983, ugly – industrial, covered with layers of grit. The men who leaned on or swayed into it didn't seem to care. The bartender was topless, her back and one arm covered with tattoos depicting erect male genitalia of all shapes and sizes. The stud through her nose almost ruined her classic beauty, but no one was looking at her nose. She thrust out her breasts at customers with the authority of an expensive implant job, and that was presumably where the clientele made eye contact.
Brant surveyed the cavern-like space. A high, open ceiling festooned with hanging pipes also hid a catwalk that spanned the place. Below, two thugs stood planted on either side of the door he had passed through. Their eyes drilled into him. He wandered to the bar, where he ordered a bottled import from the phallic woman.
While he waited, his eyes roved.
It was a Saigon flashback.
The piercingly loud thumping techno beat drowned out conversation and drove the gyrations of three nude women in low cages suspended from the black ceiling.
Old-fashioned, he thought. Until he realized the women were stationary, their buttocks leaning on one side of each barred enclosure. He squinted in the strobe and flashing lighting. The women gyrated while impaling themselves on and off oily rubber dildos mounted to the bars of their cages. Their eyes were glazed. Lust, self-hatred, drugs, maybe all of the above. Take your pick. Customers' groping hands and fingers slid through the bars, adding a whole other dimension.
Here, anything goes.
Along the rear wall, a long narrow stage was mounted on chrome supports. Several more performers lay on their backs and allowed customers lined up before them to touch and more while they spread their legs into fleshy V-shapes. The shadows and strobe hid the details. Dead-eyed thugs watched the audience, hands in pockets, bored but attentive.
Brant swallowed beer. It burned like acid all the way down.
Cops had to be on the client list to let a place like this operate, and payoffs had to be huge. Maybe city councilmen were clients. And maybe there was blackmail.
"Like anything you see?"
He half-turned. It was the phallic woman from behind the bar, but her voice sounded old and smoke-ravaged. He smiled widely, fake delight.
"I like it all," he said with a snicker she had to see rather than hear.
She licked her lips. "My bar is $20 a drink. The cages are $100 if you wanna touch. Upstairs are lap dances that'll melt your molars."
"How much just to look?"
"Knock yourself out. Looking's free, for first-timers. You make a career out of it, they might slap a charge on ya."
He nodded and lifted the bottle. Now he noticed that money changed hands at each location, and customers stood around the cages and manipulated the rubber genitalia and whatever they wanted. The women seemed oblivious.
Maybe that was best.
Brant was not at all interested in learning more about Goran the Serb. He knew all he wanted to know. He needed to get Kit away from this brute.
"Any chance the boss is in?"
She blinked too much and spoke too rapidly. "You got an appointment, you should know if he is."
He dropped it, satisfied. "Where can I just drink in peace?"
She was backing away, down the bar, eyeing the many customers who waited, money waving. "Booths on the far side. No charge, but you gotta get your own drinks. I ain't a waitress."
"Sure enough."
When she returned, he ordered another beer and overpaid her. Her eyes flashed as she slipped the twenty into her pocket.
He passed the rear stage with plenty of room to spare. The music pounded repetitively into his head like railroad spikes. He tried to blink it away. A crystal and aluminum divider separated this quieter, brighter area from the bar action.
Brant stood stock still, scanning.
He was in luck, but what were the odds? Facing out of a round corner booth had to be none other than Goran himself. He had the arrogant look of a feudal warlord surveying his holdings, a sly smile on his thin lips. Then there was the way patrons gave his booth a wide berth and averted their eyes. If that wasn't enough, the two oversized bodyguards standing loose-limbed on either side of the booth called attention to themselves and their boss as if he were an old Mafia kingpin. Plus, one of them had been in the sedan Brant had followed.
Irina was nowhere to be seen.
Brant slipped into his own booth further down the row. He sidled a long glance at the Serb.
Hea
vily-muscled, draped in a silk suit clearly custom-made for his bulk, he resembled a blond Sylvester Stallone with a perpetual frown etched into his cruel slit of a mouth. A mane of long greasy hair swept back over his shoulders and flared out over his collar. When his thin lips parted, yellowing fangs peeked out. His pig-eyes were half-closed and fluttering.
Brant wondered about the eyes. He stared longer than was wise, then spotted the two heads bobbing just below table height over the silk-draped groin. The Serb's head swiveled, squinting to see who was watching him. To make sure he was establishing his ownership and his privilege.
Dealers should never sample their own goods. Brant smirked, drank from his bottle and watched impassively.
The razor-thin lips parted and directed words to one of the musclemen, who gazed around languidly. Brant felt the oily glance slide past him like liquid swine fat. He ignored the shiver down his spine and the pain in his head and chugged from his bottle. When he turned away from his long pull of tepid beer, a shadow blocked his light.
"What you looking at?"
Brant almost didn't catch the words spoken softly over the driving rhythm of the forgettable electronic music. He stared, blank-eyed.
"I said, what you looking at?"
"Who wants to know?" Brant held the bottle loosely, ready to swing it like a sap. The shadow belonged to the goon from the sedan. His lantern-jaw was unforgettable, the skin scarred and mottled.
"He want to know."
Brant ignored the muscleman's pointing hand. He shrugged.
The Serb made a gesture, which his henchman translated. "He want to see you. Right now." His voice was gravel rubbing together.
If there was violence here, he might never find Kit. On the other hand, perhaps there was information to be gained. He discounted subtlety, seeing that his quarry did the same. There wasn't a subtle bone in Goran's body, so there was no reason to pretend.
He slid out of the booth and carried the bottle with him, Lantern-Jaw's bulk close behind.
"Welcome to my club," the Serb said with no sincerity. His gruff, accented voice sliced through the background like a rusty straight-edge. "Why do you spy on me?
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