by Virna DePaul
Chapter 24
The day after the media junket, Barrett had barely gotten a few hours’ sleep before she was back at the club again. Setting up the work shifts for all the dancers—most of whom were headstrong to a fault and foulmouthed to boot—took Barrett and Sam until the evening. Throughout the day, she thought of Nick and how he’d confessed to struggling against his protectiveness of her. Knowing he was still protective of her felt safe. Knowing he cared enough to give her the free rein she needed made her feel loved. However, other than a quick text exchange between them that morning—one that had included a wry statement that he was still feeling his “punishment” from the night before—she didn’t hear from him.
She hadn’t had a second to snoop around the club again. Lunch had been delivered for her and Sam, along with a take-out vat of coffee and gooey cupcakes to sweeten up the girls. Hadn’t worked.
The last in line had arrived fashionably late and decided to negotiate her fee. She’d been a headliner at a major Atlanta club and knew what she was worth.
Barrett watched Jewell walk away, sashaying down the corridor in impossibly tight leggings and a shredded T-shirt that said Electrick Beetch on the front and back, an enormous designer handbag over her shoulder.
She turned to Sam. “Hope she doesn’t tell the others she’s getting paid more.”
“Girl, please. You and I both know that’s the first thing Jewell’s going to do.” Sam checked the chunky faux-diamond timepiece on her wrist. “It’s five minutes to catfight by my watch.”
Barrett cleared away the lipstick-smeared cups of take-out coffee, shoveling them all into a wastebasket and folding up the chairs.
“I never knew running a club was this much work,” she said impatiently.
“Hope those media people got what they came for,” Sam said. “Club Red is going to be the biggest place I ever worked in. But let me tell you, some things never change. The dancers are the most trouble. This new bunch better hustle the hell out of the customers once we open. We got goals to reach. Vlad is gonna track every penny we take in.”
“Who spends the most?” Barrett asked.
“The Triple M’s, honey.”
Barrett raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Sam spelled it out. “Middle-aged, married, and money to burn. I feel sorry for the wives. Most’a these bitches are out for what they can get.”
An argument was kicking up down the hall. Sam grinned. “Right on time. What did I tell you?”
Barrett groaned. She really, really wanted to leave. “Should we interfere?”
“Not unless you want your beautiful white hair pulled right out of your head and a few scratches on your face to go with it.”
Barrett rolled her eyes. “Nope.”
Sam took a compact out of her bag and fixed her makeup. “Vladimir won’t approve fat paychecks for the new hires just ’cause Jewell’s got a big mouth on her. The others will just have to shake it harder if they want to earn more.” She flipped a phenomenally long ponytail over her shoulder. “That’s what I used to do. Paid for my hair extensions back then.”
“And now?”
“Yolanda does ’em for free,” Sam said. “Hey, leave all that trash for the cleaning crew. Can we get out of here? I have a date. How about you?”
She thought of Nick. Thought of punishing him again, this time for making her crave him without even trying to. She quickly shook her head. “No.”
“Hmm. For a second there your eyes got misty.”
“Allergies. The club ventilation system couldn’t handle the atmosphere last night.”
“Really? I didn’t notice that. And I was on stage and you were out front.” Sam tossed the compact and lipstick back into her bag and swung it over her arm. “See you tomorrow if you don’t want to go just yet. But get some sleep if you’re sleeping alone. You look tired.”
“Yeah, I am. But it’s interesting work.” She was stalling just a little. Barrett preferred to leave by herself.
“Glad you think so. As far as I’m concerned, the thrill is long gone. Done this shit for too many years. Heard it all, seen even more.” Sam turned the knob and cautiously eased the door open again, peering up and down the corridor. The argument was getting louder.
“All clear,” she said to Barrett. “But I strongly suggest you leave now.”
Instantly persuaded, she gathered up her things.
“Okay. I really don’t want to be trapped in here with a bunch of pissed-off strippers.”
Barrett trotted out with Sam, laughing. They turned a corner just before a different door banged open and the clicking sound of high heels reached them.
They ran down the stairs as quietly as they could and went through the first-floor fire exit without setting off the alarm. Barrett walked Sam to the parking lot and said good night, turning just as Sam reached her car several spaces away.
Sam popped the trunk, throwing things around as she looked for something, muttering to herself. “Fucking heels are killin’ me. Now where’s those damn sneakers?”
“Hey, Sam.” The female voice was almost too low to hear. It was the thin girl. Barrett looked in her direction. The girl was under a tree at the outer perimeter of the Club Red property.
“Xecala, baby. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, Sam. I wanted to talk to Barrett about something.”
Sam frowned. “Barrett, huh?” She looked at Barrett, her eyes assessing. “Xecala’s my friend. Like the daughter I’ll never have,” she said. “I don’t want her getting into trouble.”
Warning and implied threat noted, Barrett thought.
“I’m no threat to her,” Barrett said. “I don’t even know why she wants to talk to me.”
Sam nodded then said, “All the same … don’t make me sorry I’ve trusted you, Barrett.” With that, Sam got behind the wheel, roaring away with a manicured wave out the window.
Xecala shuffled over the grass to Barrett.
She seemed almost spectral. Her pale skin glowed faintly in the evening shadows and, once she’d gotten close enough, Barrett saw the violet shadows under her eyes.
“Sorry I bailed on you last night,” the girl said timidly. Her voice was weary.
“I came out and looked for you. Thanks for coming back.” She heard someone else coming before she saw the person. “Hang on a sec.”
It was another bouncer. “Hi, Lewis.”
He was a rangy guy, older than the one from last night, but still built. He could have been a middleweight boxer once, with a long reach that hadn’t been long enough to keep his nose from being broken a few times.
Lewis looked over her shoulder at the girl, who shrank back. “Xecala. You know you can’t come around here. We have our orders.”
“Miss Barrett wanted to see me.”
Miss Barrett. The term sounded so polite and so southern that Barrett almost smiled. But the name certainly wasn’t southern. There was no telling where the sad girl came from.
“Mr. Ouspensky told our guys to keep an eye out for you, Xe. I don’t want no trouble. My boss will give me hell.”
“What’s the matter?” Barrett took a take-charge tone. “She’s not lying. I really did ask to see her.”
Might as well be honest. Lewis would probably scribble some kind of report for his boss, who might or might not send it to Vladimir. The bouncer didn’t look like the super-conscientious type. Just mean in a petty way.
Lewis kept an eye on the girl, who didn’t seem particularly afraid of him, and drew Barrett aside.
“She’s a junkie.”
That explained the scrawny body under the loose clothes.
“Been in and out of rehab, but nothing ever worked. Tried to kill herself a couple of times, couldn’t manage that, either. She’s a bad influence,” Lewis finished up. “Mr. Ouspensky doesn’t want her near the other girls. Especially the new ones. Like I said, we got our orders.”
“I understand. But she’s not inside the club. And we’re just going to talk f
or a few minutes. I—ah—I know her sister. Her family wants her to come back. Look, here’s something for you.” She held up a fifty. “Your boss doesn’t even have to know.”
Lewis didn’t exactly hesitate. “I’m coming out again in five minutes. Talk fast.” He pocketed the bill and left them alone.
“Did you take that top piece of paper?” Barrett whispered urgently. The girl nodded. “Why?”
Xecala wavered. “I wanted to look at it more.”
“I gave you the drawings I did of you. That one wasn’t yours to take.”
“I know. But …”
“Xe, you have to tell me.”
The girl turned away, racked by a cough. Barrett was shocked by the way her shoulder blades protruded through the fabric of her dress. Xecala was wiping sweat from her face with her sleeve when she straightened and faced Barrett again.
“I kinda thought it might be—this girl I saw coming into the club.”
“You mean Jane?” Barrett breathed the question.
“Is that her name? Yeah. It was her. They brought her in at night.”
“When? Where is she now?” Barrett stared at the girl. She was heartbreakingly young to look so haggard. But she wasn’t the one Barrett had to help. “Do you want money or something? I have to know.”
“I need a fix, that’s all. Need it bad.”
Barrett swore under her breath. Handing out cash was one thing. Heroin was another. “I don’t have anything like that.”
The girl stepped back. “Not asking you for it. I hid some.” She turned and looked over her shoulder.
“In the tree?” Barrett was almost angry. The girl was drifting in more ways than one. She didn’t have time for this.
“No. By that bench.” She nodded toward a bench with a high back not too far from the building’s outer wall. “I sit behind it. Sometimes I sleep under it. I’m homeless.”
Guilt slammed into Barrett. She was asking a lot of someone who had nothing to give.
“I don’t care anymore.” Xe coughed again. She walked to the bench and Barrett followed. She didn’t want to watch. But she didn’t want to lose the girl before she found out where Jane was.
Without saying a word, Xe found the drug paraphernalia she’d stashed and got to work. Her hands trembled when she cooked up a nickel bag and slipped off her shirt to tie off, tapping her skin, looking for a blood vessel that hadn’t collapsed.
Lewis had told the truth. Xecala’s arms were scarred with ugly tracks. Barrett felt sick. There was no way to help this girl.
Xe positioned the needle and looked up at her. Her voice had an odd clarity. “I saw Jane, like I told you. They took her from a truck into the club through a hidden entrance.” She shook her head. “They didn’t hide it too good. No one saw me when I followed.”
“Through the same entrance?”
“No. I went in through a side door, a different one, when the guards weren’t looking. I figured out the keypad code before that.”
Xe paused, getting her breath. Barrett waited.
“One of Vlad’s guys … he took me down there … wanted privacy. He thought I was too stoned to see. But that’s just what I wanted him to believe.”
Deftly, she pierced the skin of her inner elbow with the needle tip, going into a threadlike vein. Then she stopped. Xecala rocked a little, smiling in a weird way, as if she were anticipating the rush to come.
“Want the code?”
“No. I can go in through the front. But—”
Xe held a thumb over the plunger of the syringe.
“Stop that. Please,” Barrett begged her.
The girl shook her head. “Maybe you saw the three doors on the inside that don’t open out.”
She knew what she was talking about. Barrett had to find out more. “I saw one. I heard about the others. Do they all go to the same place?”
“Dunno. But I got those codes, too.” She gave a low laugh. “I know you have a pencil and paper.”
Barrett grabbed both from her bag, writing frantically as Xecala told her the codes: 447574373, 85234647, 5355748. If the microsensors Nick had hidden by the doors were found before the keypads were used, they had something to go on. She prayed the numbers weren’t changed every day.
“Which one would get me to Jane?”
Xecala shrugged, frowning when the needle tip moved. A bluish spot of blood pooled under her skin. “Maybe all three. I heard someone say to take her to the little room.”
Barrett didn’t bother to ask why Xecala hadn’t helped. The girl would have been overpowered instantly. As a witness, her life was worth nothing.
“I couldn’t do nothing. Then I sorta forgot about her. And then there she was. Like a ghost on the page that you drew.”
“Do you have any idea where the little room is?”
“Underneath the pit. I heard that, too. I guess that’s where they take the kidnapped girls in this club.”
A horrifying understanding came to Barrett. “Were you one, Xecala?”
“Almost,” she said, her voice ragged. “At the other place, before it burned down. I didn’t make the cut. For some reason, Vladimir just let me go. I figured he forgot about me. But I still don’t know why the others didn’t kill me.”
“You doing a damn good job of that all by yourself.” Barrett whirled around. “Sam?”
“I dropped my house keys when I got in the car.” The other woman bit out the words. They didn’t sound like a lie. “Came back to get ’em and saw you here with Xe.”
Sam hadn’t made the slightest sound when she approached the bench. She could have flown there on silent wings, for all Barrett knew. She had no time to wonder why. Xecala moaned when the needle went in.
You couldn’t just jerk it out. Barrett thought she’d heard that or read that somewhere. The syringe was empty, the plunger down. Xecala’s veins glowed blue from whatever it was she’d injected. “Oh, God. What is that?”
Sam crouched by Xecala, helping the girl rest against the bench for support. Sam’s voice dropped to a whisper. “A strung-out bitch at the other club got her hooked. Wasn’t long before she started to wander between this world and the next. That shit she uses is different. Real strong. Can’t buy it on the street.” Xecala moaned, the color draining from her face.
“Jesus, she looks like she’s going to die! Sam, we can’t just—”
“Let her be.” With considerable strength, Sam forced Barrett to move back, then kneeled by the girl. “Let her go easy. That’s all we can do.”
“No—how—”
“Sam …” Xecala’s voice. So faint the word could be her last.
Sam stroked the girl’s tangled hair.
“Just wanted you to know …” Xe murmured. “Wanted to … do one right thing before …”
“Shh.” Sam tried to soothe her. “You did, baby girl. You did right.”
A supernatural glow emanated from Xecala’s eyes. Then they closed. Her lips turned blue but she smiled. To herself. She saw only the hallucinations in her mind.
Barrett was speechless. She could see them, too, as if the girl’s skull was made of glass. Visible under her translucent skin, the lethal drug coursed through her veins, spreading in a delicate tracery of death.
Xecala took her last breath.
They both stared at the girl for several minutes before Sam turned to Barrett. “No one can know she’s dead. Especially not Vlad. Help me get her in my car.”
They put Xecala in the backseat of Sam’s car before she drove them away, pulling into an isolated parking garage about five blocks from Club Red. Leaving the girl where she was, Sam got out of the car and Barrett followed. “You’ll have to walk back to the club. I’ll stay with her. Take care of her.”
“Why can’t Vlad know she’s dead?” Barrett asked yet again.
This time, Sam answered her.
“I’ve worked with Vlad a long time. He trusts me more than most, partially because he knows I love Xecala. He likes the people I know, the favor
s I can bring him, and by promising to leave Xecala alone, he knew I’d give them to him. If he knows she’s dead, he’ll know he no longer has his hooks in me. Not in the same way. He won’t trust me the way he’s trusted me. And that won’t be good for me. Or you.”
Exhausted, Barrett leaned against the outside of the car. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at Xecala. “How much did you hear of what I said to Xecala?”
“Enough to figure out that you’re hunting for someone hidden here. Probably one of Vladimir’s auction girls.”
“So you know about them?” Barrett wanted to scream, to accuse, but if Sam knew anything at all about Jane, going ballistic wouldn’t get her more information.
“That’s right.”
Barrett cast her a sideways look. Sam’s beautiful face was stony. Maybe she had been auctioned, too. The more Barrett found out, the uglier it got. But she couldn’t hold back the next question. “Have you seen the little room? The one under the club?”
Sam frowned slightly and shook her head. “No. Don’t know nothing about that. There is a fight pit, wasn’t on the grand tour for the media. Vlad’s got something in the works there, but I couldn’t say exactly what. Xe was s’posed to go on the block at the other club. But she didn’t make the cut, not after she started using again. Vlad was going to kill her, but I bargained with him for her life. What little life she had left. Someone smuggled in nickel bags for her but she never got enough. Sold herself for more. Then she started using the other stuff.”
Barrett felt sickened all over again. What if the same thing happened to Jane? She could have been injected with a lower dose of the strange drug to keep her under control.
“She started wasting away, got to where we could practically see through her.”
“How come the bouncers let her hang around Club Red?”
“She kept ’em supplied at the other club. A couple of them use, too. I ain’t gonna name no names. And so do some of the girls. Smack for sex.”
Barrett closed her eyes. Said nothing.