Personal Protection (8 page)

The club entrance is a candy pink and white striped pavilion, covering a flight of external stairs and the double doors with their attendant security and doorman, then a second flight of steps
inside. These lead through more doors on to a raised catwalk of plush carpet, with ornamental wrought iron and sandblasted glass panels for a railing, like a 1920s cruise liner. Two bars, one to
either branch of the arms, are adorned with topless bar staff and pretty girls draped in feathers and not much else. The balcony runs the entire length of the club.

Here and there are slim tables, just big enough for a couple of glasses and a bottle – which will cost you an arm and a leg. The walkway sweeps down two curving stairways that debouch on
either side of a stage with a fireman’s pole as its central feature.

More tables, a little bigger, for groups and those not afraid of being seen in such a place, dot the open floor space of the mezzanine together with another bar. Two star-marked doorways
underneath the stairs denote the private rooms where you can pay the girl of your choice to all but masturbate you to a climax, while you can’t lay a finger on her in return.

Two similar doors at the back of the room lead into the amenities. His and hers. The men’s toilet is usually full of punters and the women are only ever the staff.

Other penguin-suited bouncers circulated amongst the clientele and the girls as I escorted Tori into the club proper. A few of them nodded to Tori; me they looked up and down speculatively,
wondering whether I was part of the Blackpool bouncers’ mafia: competition or an ally. I hoped it wasn’t going to degenerate into a pissing contest. The business with Spink had put
enough of a crimp in my relationship with Tori, and I wasn’t anxious to add to my troubles.

Aside from that, we didn’t get many looks. Or rather Tori didn’t. She deliberately dresses down to enter and leave so she can do it without hassle.

I don’t know whether I got more looks from the clientele or the girls. Both of them were curious about a woman in drag. I could tell the men wondered whether I was part of the act, while
the women were wondering what was under the suit and who was getting it. I hadn’t been back here since the first night I’d met Tori, I’d always waited outside to pick her up, so
it was doubtful they’d remember me – I’m not the only woman who comes here to watch – or know I was dating one of their dancers.

I gave her a hand up on to the stage. She blew me a kiss before disappearing through the curtain. I shook my head, twitched my pants to realign the creases and rearrange my underwear, then went
to report to the management.

“Spink says good things about you.”

I said nothing, just waited for the punch line.

“You don’t look big enough to do any real damage.”

“Did Leon tell you how he came to be in the hospital?”

My questioner looked uncomfortable. Good, Spink had told him. Now I wouldn’t be forced to prove myself by breaking someone else’s bones.

“I can do the job. If you think I won’t be impressive enough standing at the doors, fine. It’s bloody cold out there. I’ll be happier circulating seeing nobody does
anything they shouldn’t to the ladies. They might be more inclined to listen to diplomacy from me than some of the neanderthals you employ.”

I knew some of the other staff and didn’t think much of them. They were brawlers. The whole point was not to get into a fight in the first place – something my employer obviously
knew too. Relief fell across his face like a curtain.

“That would be good. I told the others you’d be coming. Most of them seemed to know your name. This is not your usual line of work. I was told you’re a bodyguard.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not working for anybody specific at the moment?”

“I can’t discuss that. Let’s just say there’ll be no conflict of interest. Once someone else fills this position I’ll go back to doing what I do best.”

“I can only pay you the going rate for a bouncer.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

He looked relieved. “I suppose this will be a bit of breather for you, not having to dodge bullets and whatnot.”

I thought about my last two assignments and nodded. “Yes. It will.”

“Erm, yes, well, if you wouldn’t mind, circulate on the balcony level for an hour or so, then make your way down to the mezzanine. If one of the lads taps you and says, ‘Star
1’ they’ll want you in the left hand room. ‘Star 2’ is the right. Someone has to be there when the girls go for a private dance. Some of the gents think they’ll be
able to get their hands on them then and need a bit of presence to persuade them otherwise. Will that be a problem for you?”

“No.”

“You sure? You’re a woman. I mean…”

I squashed my irritation. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I’ve heard that line. It doesn’t pay to get angry. Just project competence and nip it in the bud right
away.

“This is a job. My personal opinions and my politics don’t enter into it. Anything else?”

He looked at me for a moment, then decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. “If somebody yells, ‘Heads up’, that means all hands to the main doors. Sometimes a crowd of
drunken blokes’ll try their luck and we don’t allow that.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“One of the girls calls, ‘Help,’ or the other bouncers, ‘Help here,’ that means they can’t handle the situation. If you’re nearby, you pile in, break up
whatever’s going on.”

“OK. What about the police?”

“We are a legitimate business enterprise. No sex for money goes on in this establishment. From time to time, the law drops by, but they’re plain clothes and they don’t usually
cause any trouble. Their Chief Super is a member. We don’t get raided when he’s in. And he’s in tonight. Front and centre on the mezzanine.”

Interesting. This was the kind of information that might be useful to Dean some day.

“One more thing. A couple of the lads have been approached by the girls to look the other way in the Star rooms so they can have full sex. It’s not to happen! They might try to bribe
you, but stick to your guns. It’s my licence if this place gets a reputation as a knocking shop. If the girls are stupid enough to make arrangements outside of club hours with the punters,
that’s their business. I’m not having them screwing the public on my premises. There is a bonus for anyone who reports it to me.”

“I understand.”

“On your way, then. It’s pay in the hand at the end of the night. Your tax affairs are your own lookout. And if you’re crap, you’re out.”

“I won’t be.”

The night began quietly enough. The bouncers and I sniffed one another like wary dogs staking out territory. Muzak gave way to the first dancer. More clients arrived, occupying balconies and
tables, making a stroll along the catwalk an obstacle course negotiated with care and diplomacy. The feather-clad girls draped themselves around me and I draped them round something, or quite often
someone, else. One of the bar staff got fresh with me, but I thought of Tori and wasn’t tempted. Much. The noise level rose. More clients arrived. Then I broke up my first fight.

I was about to descend to the mezzanine when two guys went for one another. The woman milking both of them leapt clear with a cry of “Help here!” I was closest.

I didn’t see who’d started the affray, but the glitter of what might have been a knife and a broken bottle made me wade in impartially. I grabbed each combatant by the back of the
neck and smacked their heads into the table. Both went limp and stopped struggling. I continued to press their heads to the melamine.

“Are we finished, gentlemen, or do I have to ask you to leave?”

Affirmative grunts came from the faces being ground into their spilled drinks.

“Good.” I relieved them of the weapons they’d been about to make use of, then let them up. Bouncers converged from all sides. The cavalry. Too late.

“Fuck! Wasn’t that a bit much?” the first man on the scene grumbled.

“Yeah, you could have broken their noses and then…

I interrupted the second to hand over the flick knife and smashed bottle the bravos had been about to fight with, and said sweetly, “I don’t know, gentlemen. Why don’t you
decide?”

Halfway down the stairs a third man caught up with me.

“You went up against them barehanded, knowing they had weapons?”

“It was that or a bloodbath on the balcony. Which would your boss have preferred?”

“Didn’t you..? I mean, weren’t you worried that you might have been..?”

He really was very young. I stepped aside to allow a couple to pass me. He joined me against the banister.

“This is what we do. You’d be a fool if acting to stop a situation like that doesn’t scare you shitless. But you practise and you work until you know what to do. Then you do
it. If the thought of being cut makes you freeze you should get out of the job. Now.”

“How do you learn? Will you teach me?”

I hadn’t a clue who he was, but he seemed in earnest. I let him follow me the rest of the way down the stairs, snagged a napkin from a table and requested a pen from one of the bar staff.
I wrote out the address of my gym and gave it to him.

“If you’re serious, go in the morning and tell them I sent you. Tell them what you do for a living and why you want their help. Somebody will take care of you and show you what you
need to know to get started. Other than that all you can do is watch and learn.”

“Thanks!” He was like a dog with two tails. “I really appreciate this!”

I let him bound around enthusiastically for a while then shooed him away so I could get back to work. I wondered if I was ever like that.

I’d arrived in time for Tori’s first number. If you’ve never seen what goes on in a lap dancing club, nothing can prepare you. Most people have watched
Showgirls
(good)
or
Striptease
(not so good), or seen one of the handful of documentaries Channel 4 or Channel 5 have been brave enough to show.
(Divas
comes to mind.) So it won’t shock you when
I tell you that Tori strutted out on to the horseshoe-shaped stage and very artistically took her clothes off to something slutty by The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, and slithered suggestively
up and down the fireman’s pole.

Since this place used to be a strip club, (and yes, there is a difference) there were no seats next to the stage. The girls have been pulled off by over-enthusiastic clients in the past, so the
whole tucking the money into their g-strings bit doesn’t happen on stage any more. Instead, girls not currently dancing wander around with tip buckets. If the clients like what they see, they
tip well; if they don’t, they tip badly or not at all.

It helps that someone had the bright idea of making the tip buckets those artificial vaginas they sell in sex toy catalogues. It’s not in good taste, I grant you, but it is safer than the
way things used to be. Now they can’t get their grubby little mitts on the real thing, punters happily push their fingers into these with a donation, drool over the performer (or the girl
carrying it) imagining where they’d like to be sticking their cash. And quite frequently telling them all about it in fairly graphic terms. If I hadn’t known it was part of the job,
I’d have punched some of these creeps’ lights out. The girls put up with a hell of a lot. I couldn’t do it.

I contrived to be in a position where I could keep an eye on the audience and watch the act at the same time. I don’t know how, over the stage lights, but Tori must have seen me. She
directed every lewd gesture and lascivious move in my direction. When she threw back her head, wet a finger and trailed it down the length of her body, I was just as unable to look away as every
man in the room.

She has a presence on stage that grabs attention and hypnotises everyone. The applause when she finished and gathered up her clothes and an armful of these bulging pseudo-pussies was
tremendous.

“What I wouldn’t give to fuck her brains out!” one ecstatic voyeur moaned.

Never in my life have I taken such great pleasure in whistling jauntily and grinning ear to ear as I walked past someone. I think he got the picture.

Tori had not long left the stage when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Star 2.”

Obligingly I took myself off to the private booth on the right of the stage.

An Asian girl met me there with her inebriated client. He paid a cashier outside, then the door was unlocked and we went in. It was a small plush room. There was a single sturdy recliner under
muted spotlights for the client, a micro stereo, a collection of CDs for the girl to dance to, and in the shadows behind the door, a tall bar stool for me.

I made myself as comfortable as my damp underwear allowed, then watched as the girl cued up the CD in this soundproof booth and commenced gyrating. The music she chose wasn’t a million
miles from what Tori had stripped to. And whenever her back was to the client her eyes were on me. I ran a finger round a suddenly tight collar.

When it was over, the client staggered out past me, while the girl clothed herself in the revealing dress they walk the club floor in when they’re not dancing. I made to leave, but she was
a fast mover. Her hand was on my shoulder. Breathy words tickled my ear. “Did you enjoy that?”

“More than he did, I suspect.”

Her other arm twined around my waist, fingers heading for my crotch. I clamped a hand about her wrist.

“Tori’s a very lucky girl.”

Her tongue traced the outer edge of my ear. I snatched my head away, ashamed to find that I didn’t want to. The mind may be true, but the body just wants what it wants. It doesn’t
care who’s doing the job. Names don’t matter to the libido.

I opened the door and her hands fell from me. The sounds of the outside room washed over me. Her chuckle followed me even over the sound of the booming music as I fled to the bathroom.

The slap rang out like a gunshot in the tiled facility.

“I didn’t do anything!”

Tori wiped off my earlobe and exhibited a lipstick-smeared finger. “Then what’s this?”

Damning is what it was, but I couldn’t say that. She didn’t give me time to say anything. She slammed out of the bathroom leaving me with a smarting cheek, a dripping face, a towel
in my hands and an audience of other interested dancers. This gig was not turning out at all the way I’d planned.