Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
It had given us zero to go on.
And this wasn’t fun.
This made cruising the streets looking for prostitutes feel like a road trip, complete with a cooler of root beer and a huge bag of Corn Nuts.
The strippers were working it, and some had moves, but I was going to have to take an hour-long shower after we left here, not only considering the company we were keeping as audience members, but that this place was rundown, dated and rank.
Worse, although one of the men I had on my wall was there—a Sergio Duzek, nicked for some petty crimes, including possession of a controlled substance and driving under the influence (twice)—none of the others were, including Cyrus Gibbons.
We’d been there for two drinks and two and a half hours. We went to the bathroom in pairs three times to further check out the joint (and the ladies left a lot to be desired). So, unless they thought we all had overactive bladders, we couldn’t run that ruse again. Not to mention, outside of wondering which of the women on the stage might be next, perhaps the most unfun pastime I’d ever engaged in, this garnered nothing.
Jessie was on the same wavelength as me, I knew, when she called over the music, “Regardless of the mediocre talent of their bartenders, one more drink and go?”
I wasn’t sure about the “one more drink” part of that.
I didn’t get a chance to say that. My attention was taken by Luna, who had her face illuminated by the screen of her burner phone.
I grew alert.
She looked at me across our tiny table, then leaned toward me and said, “Jinx. She wants us back at Sun Valley. Now.”
“Is she okay?” I asked, thinking Jinx might be a very appropriate name for her if she wasn’t.
And this wasn’t good news.
Cap was probably home after his impromptu boys’ night out.
And I just wasn’t in the mood to extort another Rolex.
But Luna shook her head. “She says she’s got something we want.”
We both stared in each other’s eyes and then said at the same time, “Divinity.”
We popped up out of our seats.
“We going now?” Harlow asked, looking between us.
“Yeah. Now,” I answered.
Since we paid for our drinks on the go (we tipped our servers well, and considering our occupations, we always did), we headed out, Luna in the lead, Harlow, Jessie and me taking the rear.
I did not get a good feeling when, on our way out, my eyes fell on Sergio Duzek, his locked with mine, he shot me a smarmy smirk and lifted his fingers above his right brow and out in a mock salute.
Nope.
Not a good feeling at all.
In fact, my skin was crawling.
We got outside and I rushed up to Luna, handing her the key fob.
I’d driven there.
But now, I was shaken.
“You drive,” I said.
“It’s your night.”
“I think Duzek saw me sitting outside in Tweety.”
She stopped dead. So did Jessie and Harlow.
“How do you know that?” she demanded.
“I’ll tell you in the car. Let’s get out of here.”
We hightailed it to the Merc while trying to look like we weren’t hightailing it, and with Jess and Harlow in the back, me in the passenger seat, Luna reversed out of our spot and took off.
“Talk,” she ordered.
“He gave me a salute when we were walking out,” I shared. “Looked right at me and gave me a salute, like he knew me.”
We’d been pretty thorough in our brief with Jessie and Harlow (though we left out my unhinged shenanigans with the wife beater, and my lunatic tomfooleries with the rapist, not to mention my deranged mischiefs with Paul Nicholson).
So Harlow asked, “You think he saw you when you were watching from Tweety?”
“Yeah. If not live and in person, they have cameras on the parking lot. I tried to park out of range, but I can’t be sure I succeeded.”
“So, say he didn’t see you live and in person, which you would notice since you were there watching,” Jessie said. “That means he saw you on one of the cameras. And as far as your intel goes, he doesn’t work there, so how can he see security footage?”
“Maybe it’s like Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boo from the Sopranos,” Harlow suggested.
“What?” Luna asked.
“Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boo, Tony Sopranos’ strip club where he and his boys hang out.”
“You mean Bada Bing,” Jessie corrected.
“Yeah, that,” Harlow said. “In other words, a front.”
I glanced at Luna to see she was glancing at me, and our glances weren’t about how oh-so-very Harlow it was she thought a strip club would be called, Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boo.
Luna looked back at the road.
“Let’s explore possible whys,” Jessie said. “One, we have a serial killer, and I would hope like fuck the cops would cotton on to that.”
I would hope so too.
However, I had considered this option, and I just couldn’t imagine, if there was some connection that would say we had a Ted Bundy on the loose in Phoenix, they wouldn’t be all over it.