Big Easy Escapade (21 page)

Wendy smacked her hands together. “Oh yeah,
we need a little break, and that’s just the band to give it.”

Lucy checked the website on her phone. “They
start in an hour. Let’s ask the bartender to call us a cab.”

They paid the tab and started to walk out the
door. The silver-haired man turned on his stool and yelled out as
they left, “You girls are lucky Al’s on your side. You gotta watch
your step in this town.”

T
he cab
pulled to a stop in front of Venezia’s. The girls piled in and told
the driver Tipitina’s Uptown. He nodded and took off. A short while
later, they were at a banana-yellow bar at Napoleon and
Tchoupitoulas.

Jonathon opened the cab door for Lucy and
kissed her while the other girls got out. He came up for air and
said, “So glad you could make it. Follow me.” He walked up to the
bouncer at the front door, shook his hand and gave him a bro-hug.
They bullshitted for a minute, then the bouncer waved them all
in.

The club was packed with people dancing to
the music of legendary Professor Longhair, even though the stage
was dark. The girls followed Jonathon to the bar where he shook
hands with the bartender. A few minutes later, the bartender set a
draft beer and four pink concoctions on the bar and gave Jonathon a
nod.

“What is this?” Lucy asked as Jonathon passed
each of them a pink thing.

“It’s free, drink it!”

Lucy shrugged and held up her high-ball
glass. “To hookups!”

The girls cheersed her back, then Vivian
checked her phone. Jason had texted that he didn’t feel like
getting out, no other news from the cops. Her pink drink was okay,
a little too watermelony. Next round she was getting a beer, even
if she had to pay for it.

Lucy seemed to be enjoying hers. She had her
drink in one hand and Jonathon’s bicep in the other.

Jonathon pushed through the crowd, the girls
following, as he made his way closer to the stage. He stopped about
three rows of people back and started making out with Lucy.

Kate leaned over to Vivian. “I’m not sure I
approve of this.”

“Oh, loosen up. The poor girl has been
sexless for how long? She can make out in New Orleans.”

“Ehhh,” Kate said.

“Look, I’ve been telling her to do something
about it. Either to get a divorce or make it work. She’s been
trying the latter, and dammit, it’s not working. I’m not going to
stop her from kissing some guy on vacation.”

“You’re right. I’m not going to judge.” Kate
sucked down her entire pink drink and handed it to Vivian. “I need
another.”

With Lucy and Jonathon occupied, Vivian only
took a drink order from Wendy, who wanted a Shiner Bock. Drinks
procured, Vivian made her way back to the girls and Jonathon and
handed them out. As she did, the lights in the club dimmed and a
green and blue spotlight shone on the stage. Trombone Shorty walked
out with a trumpet in his right hand and a trombone in his
left.

The crowd went crazy, shouting and
clapping.

He stepped up to the mic. “Where y’at?” he
shouted. The crowd cheered even louder to the standard New Orleans
greeting. The rest of his five-piece band got into position and
started into his tune, “Suburbia.”

Vivian got past the fact he was wearing a
wife-beater, especially since he was super ripped. A few lines into
the first song, she looked over at Wendy. “Damn, he’s good.”

“Told ya!” she said and kept dancing.

The band played several of its own songs and
a few tributes and the crowd sang along. It got more and more
packed down front, but the girls held their ground.

The musicians took a break and Vivian checked
her phone again. A text from Jason read:

Those guys are petty thieves. Knew nothing
about Daisy.

Vivian felt badly for him. He was having a
tough time. She showed the text to the girls to catch them up. Lucy
looked sad for a split second, then went back to dancing with
Jonathon.

Wendy made a bar run and brought Vivian a new
beer. They cheersed with Kate and the band came back on, joined
this time by Kermit Ruffins. Kermit and Trombone Shorty played
their trumpets to a couple of Kermit’s originals and Shorty’s
“Neph,” then more crowd favorites. During “The Craziest Things,”
Vivian happened to glance toward the bar. The undercover cop from
Harry’s hotel and The Dungeon moved behind another patron. She
scanned the club looking for him, but he seemed to have
disappeared.

She nudged Kate and Wendy and thumbed toward
the bar. “I just saw the bellman from Harry’s hotel. Remember,
blond buzz cut?”

“Where’d he go?” Kate asked, straining her
neck to look around.

Wendy kept dancing to the music. “I remember
him, he was cute.”

Vivian shrugged. “I don’t see him anymore.”
She pulled out her phone and texted Antonio, asking if NOPD had
something going undercover at Tipitina’s.

A few minutes later, he texted back two
words: No. Why?

Kate grabbed Vivian’s arm. “I just saw him
walk out the door. That’s who I saw in the cemetery.”

“We saw a lot of cops today, Kate. I’m not
surprised.”

Her eyes
were wide. “No, I saw him
before
we found the body. He was watching us when we were
at the mirrored tomb.”

Vivian texted that to Antonio.

He responded:

LEAVE. Don’t know him. Don’t trust him.

Vivian looked at the time on her phone,
11:30. They needed to leave soon anyway to get to Rick’s. She
nudged Lucy, who was bumping and grinding with her 19-year-old, and
pointed to the door. Lucy got the hint, grabbed Jonathon’s belt
loop, and they all made their way to the door. Trombone Shorty
played the last notes of “Big,” and the crowd showed no signs of
leaving as the band walked off the stage.

Cabs lined Napoleon Avenue, and Wendy waved
to the closest one.

“Where y’all going?” Jonathon asked as Vivian
opened the front door to a black and white cab.

“Titty bar,” Lucy said and shimmied her
ta-tas. “Wanna come?”

“Hell to the yeah!” Jonathon said, jumping
into the cab next to Kate and Wendy. “Which one?”

Lucy climbed onto his lap and yelled out,
“Take us to Rick’s!”

***

By 9 p.m. Daisy was hungry again and her fear
had turned to anger. She couldn’t concentrate on anything on the
TV, but the news report at 10 compounded her anger and brought back
the fear. The body of one of the missing dancers had been found in
a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1. Murder was suspected.

The door to her room opened and the pink
martini, roofie asshole pushed a tray in.

I hope the other “Desert Glitter” guy
isn’t behind him.
She tried
to run past roofie asshole but Sonu was behind him and caught her.
She struggled to get free but the guy from earlier grabbed her in a
bear hold, easily overpowering her. There was no escape. He dumped
her on the bed and left the room.

Sonu signaled for the cart-pushing roofie
asshole to leave, then looked at Daisy. “You must understand, you
belong to me now. You are never again to publicly display nudity,
and you will dress appropriately tomorrow, or there will be
consequences.”

Daisy jumped off the bed, fists flying at his
face. “Let me go, you fucking dick!”

He was incredibly strong for his trim size
and easily gripped her wrists and held them together. He raised his
voice and shoved her onto the bed. “You will not conduct yourself
in such a manner. Do not ever attempt to strike me, nor should you
use such language. Do not make me hurt you to teach you a
lesson.”

She lashed out at him again, managing to
scratch his arm before he slapped her. The force propelled her back
on the bed, and the entire right side of her face stung. She knew
he could easily overpower her, but she wasn’t ready to give up. She
leapt off the bed again and aimed a kick at his groin. His reflexes
were quick and he grabbed her leg, laying her flat on her back. He
pinned her arms over her head and held her legs down with his
knees.

He lowered his face to just inches from hers
and said, “One more attempt like this and you will remain drugged
until we are ready to leave. Do you understand?”

Daisy thrashed underneath him and yelled.

He tightened his grip on her wrists, and his
knees pressed harder into her thighs. He kept her like that until
she stopped and her outburst had turned to sobs. He moved off of
her and sat on the side of the bed. She rolled away from him and
curled into a ball.

He listened to her cry for a few moments,
then reached over and yanked on the shoulder of her shirt, ripping
it. “Get out of these disgusting, Western clothes. If you do not
take them off, I will.”

Daisy flinched and cried even harder.

He stalked out of the room.

I
t’s a
good thing you have me along,” Jonathon said as they rode in the
cab to Rick’s Cabaret on Bourbon. “You have to have a male escort
to get in.”

“I’m surprised any of those joints on Bourbon
require you to have a man with you,” Kate said.

“The nicer ones do, and I’m your man.”

Lucy settled further into his lap. “And
you’re man enough to escort all of us. I like that.”

Vivian, Wendy and Kate cracked up laughing as
Jonathon pulled Lucy in tight.

Vivian pulled up the local ABC affiliate and
found a new story about Daisy and the other two girls. She held her
phone so everyone could see and turned up the volume.

A lot of what was reported, the girls already
knew. The story cut to a reporter standing in front of the arches
to St. Louis Cemetery #1. Spotlights lit the area behind her,
casting an eerie glow and shadows on the screen. “The police are
still at work, searching for evidence of who could have committed
this crime and desecrated these historic grounds. Though the victim
has not been identified to us, sources tell us it is one of the
three missing dancers who have disappeared during the past
month.”

Pictures of all three victims flashed across
the screen. “Police are requesting the help of the public and have
established a tip line.” The phone number was displayed, and the
reporter continued talking. “I had the opportunity to speak to
Jason Pitts, the fiancé of Daisy Easley, to discuss what he and
others are doing to help bring Daisy home.”

The story cut to the interview with Jason,
microphone in his face. He said, “I’ve had an unbelievable response
to my pleas for help. People have come from across the country to
cover the city with flyers, ask questions and just do anything they
can to help. I know we’re going to find her safe.”

Vivian put her phone into her pocket just as
the cab pulled to a stop. Rick’s red neon sign cast a glow, making
everyone who walked by look sunburned. “We need a game plan,” she
said as everybody got out. She asked Jonathon, “How do we get Lala
Lollipop to talk to us about Daisy?”

“This is the Daisy from the newscast?” he
asked.

The girls gave him a quick rundown of the
kidnapping and the Lollipop connection.

He smiled. “Leave it to me. I can get any
woman to talk.”

“Oh yeah?” Lucy said.

“Twenty bucks says I can get this chick to
come to your hotel.”

Lucy slapped him on the arm. “She’s a
stripper, not a prostitute.”

“Wanna bet?”

Vivian laughed and told him their hotel and
room number. “I want to see this process in action. Do you need
some cash? How much does this kind of transaction cost?”

“Depends. I’ll have to feel her out,
literally. I’ll buy a lap dance, and the handsier she lets me get,
the more likely she’ll go to the hotel. I’ll know pretty quick how
much for the whole shebang.” He laughed at himself.

“I’m only supporting this for the cause,”
Lucy said, tracing her fingernail down his chest to his navel, “but
I’m going to be watching you.”

Kate looked at the too-tanned woman in a
neon-green G-string bikini and 6-inch acrylic platform heels that
flashed like a strobe light, standing out front of the club. “I’m
good with staying out here. I’ve about had enough of naked
ladies.”

“I’ll stay with Kate,” Wendy said. “Buddy
system.”

Vivian linked arms with Jonathon. “I got my
boy buddy right here. Let’s go!”

Lucy linked arms on the other side and they
walked to the door. Too-tanned welcomed them in, giggling and
jiggling as Lucy paid the cover charge.

The three found a table in the middle of the
club, not too close. A girl in hot pants and a highlighter-yellow
bikini top asked what they’d like to drink. Twenty-four dollars and
three beers later, they were tortured by Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk
Badonkadonk” and a girl in chaps, leather bikini top, cowgirl hat
and high-heeled western boots.

Vivian groaned. “And yet another reason why I
can’t stand country music.”

Lucy started singing really loud and Jonathon
joined in. Vivian put her head in her hands, then looked up to see
Jonathon grinding on Lucy and both of them waving pretend lassos.
She put her head back into her hands and turned to the side to slip
in sips of beer.

Finally, Lala Lollipop was announced. Her
starting music was the same as at the French House, Shirley
Temple’s “Good Ship Lollipop” gone wild. She strutted on stage in a
super-tight navy sailor dress with a white-trimmed collar and red
belt. The candy-cane heels fed into red platforms with cupcakes
painted on the sides resembling boobs.

“How is she going to get out of that dress?”
Vivian leaned over and asked Lucy and Jonathon.

“She’ll manage,” Jonathon said, never taking
his eyes off the stage.

When the music changed to Nickleback’s “Burn
It to the Ground,” Lala threw her belt aside and ripped off her
dress, which apparently was Velcroed in the back. She took to the
pole and tricked, turned and twisted beyond what Vivian thought the
human body could do. She ended the routine in the splits, and the
crowd clapped for an encore. She did the next routine to Bow Wow
Wow’s “I Want Candy.”