What did I ever do to deserve this shit?
…she slammed her right shoulder against the pole, snapping the ball back into the joint with a satisfying pop. The pain was sharp, and intense, but it cleared her head.
So I ran off with a little money from my drug-dealing husband. Big fucking deal. It’s not that much. It sure as hell isn’t worth sending an army of horny psychopaths after me.
She shook her right arm and flexed her fingers. Her arm was sore, and her fingers tingled, but everything was in working order. She marched on.
So if it isn’t the money…what is this really all about?
She had nothing to go on.
Then she remembered that strange, round object she’d taken from the dead asshole’s pocket at the diner but hadn’t looked at…
Lauren reached into a pocket and drew out the object. A clear ball of plexiglass with the heft of a paperweight. Mounted inside was a black card with the silhouette of a naked woman, a printed address on South Doty, and five words embossed in gold:
LIFETIME PASS
PLATINUM GENTLEMAN’S CLUB
The Man must have been a helluva tipper, Lauren thought. She’d shimmied her ass through enough lap dances to know the type. You polish the guy’s knob like you’re waxing the hood of a new Caddy, he pulls out a couple C-notes and thinks he can slip it into you when the bouncer isn’t watching. Fuck him and the truck he rode in on.
She started jogging back to the Impala and the duffel bag.
Jimmy’s money.
Or the black woman’s.
Or The Man’s.
But now, mine.
It was less than a mile away, but the endless night was beginning to take its toll. Her shoulder throbbed, and sweat poured down her neck and over her breasts. Thankfully, the street was deserted, and the car alarms had gone silent. Her lungs aching, tasting bile, Lauren reached the Impala. In the forlorn light of a street lamp, she saw a pool of blood on the pavement near the driver’s door. But no body.
Oh shit. Where the hell was Felipe?
The driver’s door was open. On the front seat, shards of glass, two empty cans of Goose Island beer, and a grease-stained pizza box.
But no duffel bag of money.
Double shit.
She heard the purr of an engine and wheeled around, ready to shoot. Or run. Or both. A stretch limo — virgin white — pulled up to the Impala. On its rear door, the silhouette of a naked woman and the words, “Platinum Gentleman’s Club.”
The windows were tinted as dark as that dead waitress’ soul. She couldn’t tell if anyone was in the back, until the rear window rolled down.
A man’s voice — as familiar as her own — said, “Get in, Lauren.”
Triple shit.
“I don’t have the money,” she said.
“It’s not about the money. It’s personal.”
“So what is it you want, Jimmy?”
He stepped out and motioned her into the limo, holding the door for her, pretending to be a gentleman instead of the asshole he was. Lauren ducked her head, slid across the long seat to the opposite door, leaned back and stared into Felipe’s dead face, his body propped up on the seat across from her, the duffle bag snug against his side.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“End of the line for you, kiddo.”
Ten minutes later, they were inside the Platinum Gentleman’s Club, a skinny white chick on stage, swinging around the pole, her tits as sad and tired as her face, one man in the seats, alone in the dark. The man raised his hand, the music stopped and the chick took a seat next to him.
“I got her and the money, Carl, just like I told you I would.”
Jimmy handed Carl the duffle bag, shoved Lauren onto the stage and stepped away, the three of them forming a triangle.
“So here’s the thing, Lauren,” Carl said. “In this business, you never know who you can trust. People will fuck you for sport and kill you just to let you know they meant it. And, from what I hear, you’re pretty damn good at both.”
“A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”
“I’m counting on that.”
The white chick picked up a 9 mm. Sig on the chair next to her, walked to the stage and handed it to Lauren.
“One round, that’s all you got,” Carl said. “Now, unless I’ve completely misjudged Jimmy, he’s pointing his gun at my head right about now. That right, Jimmy?”
“Figure I can’t miss from this distance.”
“So what’s it gonna be, Lauren? One shot. Who do you want to take your chances with? Jimmy or me?”
Lauren wrapped her fingers around 9mm. If Lauren had a friend in the room, it was definitely the gun. Too bad there was little time to be properly acquainted.
Mirrors covering the floor, wall and ceiling of the stage multiplied Lauren and her two marks, her estranged husband and the massive mound of flesh that was supposedly named Carl.
“For all you know, there’s no bullet in that gun,” Jimmy said, as Lauren lifted the 9mm.
“But you have more than one round, right, Jimmy? She goes for me and you get me and then her. You trust him? The asshole who’s wiped your Winfield dreams away?”
These fuckers are just playing with me, Lauren thought. They were getting off on this. The ultimate strip show. It was one thing to pay a girl money to take off her clothes, but to force her to play head games on stage without any cash, that was just plain unacceptable.
“Didn’t know that you answered to anybody,” Lauren said, pointing the gun at her husband. Her shoulder was now aching full force and her arm pulsated. “Didn’t know your boss was Jabba the Hut.”
Both men laughed, but Lauren was anything but amused, thinking about what Carl had said. Nobody knew about her connection to Winfield, Kansas, not even Jimmy, and nobody could have known, would even have wanted to know. Except for maybe someone with access to official papers. Government papers. So that’s why she was being toyed with and kept alive.
“Jimmy, you fool,” Lauren said, pulling the trigger.
The hammer clicked on the empty chamber, as she'd known it would. Both men roared again. "She went for it," Carl said. "Her own fucking husband. Who'd have believed it?"
"Thanks, doll," Jimmy grinned at her. "You just won me fifty bucks."
"Collect it in Hell," Lauren said, and tossed the gun toward him. Reflex made him grab for it as she pulled the Glock out of her waistband, tucked around the back where her jacket had kept it covered. She was a lousy shot and she knew it, but out of the four she blasted off in Jimmy's direction, one of them found a mark while he was still fumbling.
Jimmy was on the floor and making noises like a drain as she walked to the edge of the stage and stepped down before Carl. The white chick had shrieked and run and Carl was still struggling up out of his seat as Lauren drove him back into it with a single round, close range.
He clutched at his chest and cursed her.
She said. "That's no way to speak to a grieving widow," and shot him again. She saw no sign of the duffel bag.
She found it with the skinny dancer in a back office. More mirrors. The woman was under the desk and the phone was off the hook, the emergency dispatcher still on the line. Lauren cradled the receiver and pulled the stripper out of hiding.
"Nice try," she said, retrieving her property. "But your act needs work. Trust me. I've been there. Same club, same logo, different city." On the desk lay a bunch of keys with a BMW fob. She scooped them up and left the dancer sobbing.
For the second time that night, she drove back toward the crime scene.
The trail that she'd left — diner, car wreck, titty bar — would point the cops in a southbound direction. So she headed north, observed the speed limit, and put on her most innocent face.
Two motorcycle cops were now in attendance at the multiple wreck caused by Felipe's Impala, and they'd laid down flares to create a perimeter. One cop was waving cars through with a lightstick while the other checked distances with a laser tool.