Liberty...And Justice for All (13 page)

“Catherine and I are both armed,” I said.

“Please don’t shoot each other,” he said, and smiled at me.

“
C
orey wasn’t
happy that he was stuck with BB,” Catherine said, sliding into the back of the car next to me. “I don’t really blame him.”

“She’s not being cooperative,” I said. “She told me that the people she was working with were going to kill her. After they killed us.” I turned my head and looked out the window. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with her, after this. If we release her, she’s going to be a target. They’re going to think she told us something.”

“Well, we’re not running a witness protection program,” Catherine said. “So we’re probably just going to have to toss her back out there.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said.

“We could follow her,” Catherine said. “She might lead us to more information. And then we’d be there if someone tries to hurt her.”

“We need more guys down here,” I said. “There’s too much going on.” I grabbed my phone and called John. He picked up after one ring. I could hear him breathing hard, the treadmill whirling beneath him. “I think we need to get Kevin and some of the other guys down here,” I told him. “Catherine had a good idea about surveillance, but we don’t have the manpower.”

“Okay,” John said, and his voice was a little surprised and a little pleased. “It sort of scares me that you two are plotting like this, but I like it. It’s good. Thank you.”

I knew the thanks were more about Catherine than anything else.

“Love you,” I said, before I hung up. I didn’t steal a glance at Catherine to see if she winced; we seemed to have made some small progress and I didn’t want to dispel the illusion of it.

The winking sign for The Treasure Chest came into view, mesmerizing me. It was exactly the way I remembered it: the low, one-story building, the ramshackle parking lot, the cheesy sign. In the light of day, it was all slightly less than glorious.

“This ain’t no Fierce,” Catherine said.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said. I would have lasted about two minutes dancing at Fierce. The cages, the “secret” part of the club—I was not built for such sophisticated sexiness. I could barely handle my schoolgirl outfit and the ten dollar drinks from The Treasure Chest. Marcus opened the door and I thanked him. Then I just stood in the parking lot for a moment and smiled, looking at it.

“I hated it when I worked here. I was petrified,” I told Catherine. “But now, after getting some distance, it seems pretty tame. I didn’t realize until I left that these people were my friends. I was always too nervous—all the time, before I met your dad—to relax and have any fun down here. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“You are one weird twenty-something ex-stripper,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I hate to admit it, but you and John are perfect for each other. You’re both nuts.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, patting her on the back and leading her into the club. As soon as I opened the door, the smell of stale beer and fried food washed over me, as well as some other, underlying sour smell, that I remembered immediately from my time here. The club was looking a little worn, particularly in contrast with Fierce. The horseshoe-shaped stage looked scraped under the lights; the bar was empty and one lone girl was dancing to a sad pop song. She was no one I recognized.

“Not exactly doing a great business, huh?” Catherine said, looking around.

“It’s always quiet this time of day,” I said, a bit defensively. I looked around and saw Chelsea, the bartender, lining up glasses and intermittently texting.

“Hey, Chelsea,” I said, going over to her and smiling.

She looked up at me and gave me a dirty look. “Anybody gonna try and shoot me ‘cause you’re here?”

I smiled at her weakly. The last time I’d been in the club, there had been a major shootout…which was sort of our fault. The good news was, John and his men had finally taken down Darius. The bad news was, there was a lot of shooting and screaming at the club. It had been a little scary.

“No Chelsea, no shooting today—I promise.” She looked relieved. “How’ve you been, anyway?”

“Okay,” she said. “Things have been a little dead here. A bunch of new places opened. And it’s like, everything’s
fancy
now. Everybody’s wearing thousand dollar-dresses. It’s all, like, a Beyonce video. So The Treasure Chest is not cool right now.”

“Has it ever been this slow before?”

“Oh sure,” she said, inspecting a pint glass against the light. “It goes in a cycle. We’ll be back in style soon. I hope. Are you looking for Cruz? ‘Cause he’s traveling.”

“No, we need to talk to some of the girls. Whoever’s around. And Alex, if he’s here.”

“Is everything okay?” She asked. “Because the last time you were here? Everything was
so
not okay.”

“You guys are perfectly safe from me. For once. We’re actually here on something that involves another one of the clubs. They’re having issues with, uh…outside vendors.”

Chelsea nodded. “There’s a lot of that going around,” she said. “That’s why business is down here, I think. Cruz won’t play with those dealers. Not after everything that’s happened.” She laughed. “I think he just wants to keep things on an even keel, for once.”

“I hear that,” I said. “So, is Alex around?”

“In the back,” she said. “He’ll be thrilled to see you.”

Alex was in his old office, his over-gelled hair glinting crustily under the fluorescent lights. I stepped into his open door and he jumped about a foot when he saw me.

“Jesus, Liberty!” He said. “Are you here to have another shootout? Every time I see you, it’s like Armageddon around here.” He peered behind me, nervously.

I smiled at him. “It’s nice to see you too, Alex. And no, John’s not here. This is Catherine, his daughter.”

Catherine looked over my shoulder and scrunched up her face at him. “Dude, is that a
spray
tan?”

He flashed a big, fake-white toothed smile at her. “Sure is.”

“I haven’t seen one of those since high school. I didn’t know they did them anymore.” She sashayed into his office and sat on his desk. “Can I touch it?” she asked.

He kept smiling. “Oh, yeah. Yeah you can.” Catherine leaned over him and I watched in horror as he stared blatantly at her breasts. Catherine didn’t appear to notice. She inspected him closely, then she took a finger and scraped the length of his face with her nail.

“Ow! What the
fuck
!” Alex yelled.

Catherine was looking underneath her nail. “That’s disgusting,” she said, and laughed. I could see a thin white line on Alex’s face, where she had razed the tan right off of him.

Alex looked up at me, furious. “What the hell do you want, anyway?” He asked.

“Aw Alex, I remember when I was your favorite girl,” I said. “I guess you’ve moved on.”

“Good for you,” Catherine told him. She swung her high-heeled foot up and down in front of him and smiled prettily. “My stepmother’s sort of a pain in the ass.”

“You think?” Alex said, and he was no longer bothering to look at her chest.

I crossed my arms over mine, an old habit I would probably never break. Not in Alex’s presence, anyway. “I need to ask you a few questions. To help someone who’s been hurt. We’ve been hired—John’s been hired—by the owner of another club. He’s had drug runners in there, and now that he doesn’t want to play ball anymore, they took his girlfriend. They’re threatening to kill her.”

Alex no longer looked furious or flirtatious. He looked like something I’d never seen from him before—serious. “The Freeman cartel doesn’t fuck around.”

“You know them? What have you heard?” I asked.

“Not to fuck with them. And not to let them deal drugs in the club. Once those guys get in, they aren’t ever getting out. Or you aren’t. One or the other.

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “I can’t believe they’re starting that shit in Vegas,” he said. “Kidnapping. We should just ship all their asses back across the border. Let them kidnap people over there.”

Catherine and I both just coughed at that.

“So, why are you here? I appreciate the visit, and all…”

“I wanted to know if you or any of the girls had heard anything.”

“All I know is that a girl from one of the clubs is missing—Fierce. And I’m not surprised to hear that the Freemans are involved.”

“Have they approached you here?” I asked.

“Not me directly,” he said, and shrugged. “They talked to Cruz a while back. But Cruz has had enough of dealers and organized crime. But I know they were pushing hard to get in a lot of places. Cruz knows better.”

He leaned forward. “I can’t believe you’re coming back to town for stuff like this, Liberty. I thought you’d be sitting in your mansion or out by your infinity pool by now, reading a book. What’s with you, huh? Can’t seem to stay away?”

“I like to stay busy,” I said and shrugged.

“Tracy’s out back. You can go talk to her, but don’t bring any trouble back here. We’ve had enough, thank you very much.”

We stood up to go. “Nice to meet you, Alex,” Catherine said. “You might want to try a scraper for that tan. It’s
bad
.”

“A pleasure,” Alex said, and rolled his eyes. He grabbed my hand. “It is always good to see you, Liberty. You be careful. These guys make Darius look like a candy striper.”

That gave me a pit in my stomach, but I smiled and thanked him. We headed down the hallway to the dressing room, where I could hear Tracy talking loudly. She sounded annoyed. “I told you to stay away from them.” I could see her talking into her cell phone as I opened the door. “Jimmy, I told you—that shit’s gonna kill you. I don’t feel like coming home and finding you dead on the couch.” She listened for a second. “Yeah, Jimmy. I know.” She hung up and turned to me, her pretty eyes red-rimmed. “Liberty,” she said, completely taken aback. “What the fuck?”

Before I could get offended she came up and gave me a huge hug. “I heard you married that billionaire,” she said, sniffling into my hair. “Good for you.” She hugged me and rocked back and forth.

I pulled back and looked at her. “Is Jimmy giving you a hard time again?”

“Oh honey. You don’t even want to know.” She grabbed a Kleenex and blew her nose loudly, then immediately re-applied foundation around her nose. “There’s some new shit in town. All the junkies are going nuts. Between him and his friends, we’ve been to the ER five times since summer. He’s had three buddies die.”

“What’re they doing?” I asked.

“Nothing you’ve heard of, princess,” she said, and smiled at me sadly. “Some shit they’re shooting.”

“Do you know who they’re getting from?”

“They’re getting it from the same street dealers they’ve always gotten it from,” she said. “But the top people have changed.”

“Do you know anything about them?” I asked.

“Only that people better pay their bills. The people who don’t pay their bills disappear.” She shook her wavy frosted hair out and turned to me. “But I don’t want to bore you with this shizzle! How are you doin’, hon? How’s that hot man of yours?”

“Good,” I said, and smiled a big, dopey grin. Tracy knew I was a virgin when I’d worked there; she’d known how lonely I was, too. “This is Catherine, John’s daughter.” I elbowed Catherine in the side:
be nice
.

“Nice to meet you,” Catherine said. “Sorry to hear about the drugs. That stuff’s toxic.”

Tracy nodded at her approvingly and then smiled at us both. “Look at you two,” she said, beaming. “All grown up and legitimate. I’m going to make you meet my daughter so she can see what a normal woman looks like.” She laughed. “She’s thirteen. She thinks I’m the worst mother, like, ever. Might be my junkie-ass boyfriend that gives her that impression.”

That made my heart hurt. Tracy was a little crazy, but she was kind. Jimmy was an asshole, but Tracy had been taking care of him for years. “She’s wrong,” I said.

Tracy shrugged. “She’s thirteen. Being wrong is, like, a
thing
with thirteen-year old girls. She’ll grow out of it.”

I thought about Catherine with a mentally-raised eyebrow. Was
she
ever going to grow out of it?

At that moment, she turned to glare at me, like she could hear my thoughts.

Not so much,
I thought.
Not so much.

“We’re actually here on business,” I said. “Have you heard about the woman who disappeared from Fierce?”

“Of course. Everyone’s been talking about it. I knew her—know her—her name’s Mia. She has a baby. It’s so sad.”

“Do you know anything else about her?”

Tracy was back at the mirror, applying what looked like her fifth coat of mascara. “She was a doper, for a while, anyway. But she’s really young. I think she liked to party, is all, but she was using some bad shit. Then all of a sudden, she’s pregnant. She cleaned up real nice after that. I used to see her out sometimes on Sundays. She and her boyfriend—he’s the club owner, right?”

“Tony. Yes,” I said. “He hired John to come out here to try to find her and bring her back.”

“I don’t think she’s coming back,” Tracy said, watching my face from the mirror. “It’s real sad and all, too. ‘Cause she just had that baby. But the people that have her don’t usually send people back.”

“So…you know who they are.”

“Not personally, thank God.” Tracy crossed herself. “But they’re the same people that are sending Jimmy and his friends to the hospital. They moved in about year ago and basically took over—they tried to, anyway. Looks to me like they’re doing all right, so far.”

“Do you have any advice for me?” I asked, feeling deflated.

“They like young, pretty girls to push their product for them in the clubs. So my advice to you two? Go back home. Where it’s safe. And tell your hot man to go with you.” She swatted her cheeks with a big, pouffy brush, spreading glittery blush onto them. “Just go. Another group’ll come around soon enough and challenge them. Hopefully they can all just shoot each other out in the desert and we can get back to normal around here.

“But Mia? Honey, that girl’s not coming back. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Can’t ever underestimate how much that can suck.” She gave me a quick hug and sashayed towards the door, various parts of her jiggling. “Liberty—you go back to being at the right place at the right time. It’s working out good for you, so far. You were always too good for this place. So go home. Be safe. Don’t do anything crazy.” She raised her eyebrow at me and blew me a kiss.