She took the tag from Norton.
“He’s got three of his crew heading out now,” Eve told Roarke, then rolled her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
It smelled of human waste and rot and worse. In the echoing dark, shadows slunk away from the penlight Eve held in her left hand. A few huddled against the wall, too stoned to slink anywhere, eyes glassy with whatever they’d ingested or popped.
She skirted around them, then rammed an elbow into the throat of one who leaped forward. As he dropped, she pivoted in time to see Roarke use nearly the same maneuver—though his elbow struck nose cartilage.
“He had a friend,” Roarke said easily, and smiled.
Yeah, she thought again, he enjoys.
“Sometimes they pair up close to the entrances, hoping for a quick score.”
She took the left tunnel. In the distance music thumped, and a few lights glimmered. In the faint glint of them a male, pants around his ankles, hairy ass pumping, pinned a female to the wall. His raspy grunts punctuated each frantic thrust.
Rather than appearing appalled or aroused, the woman merely looked bored. But when her gaze skimmed over Eve and Roarke, she bared what was left of her teeth in something approximating a smile.
“Soon’s done here, give ya a double for half.”
“There’s an offer you don’t get every day,” Roarke murmured as they moved on.
“And the STD comes free.” Eve stepped over a fresh splat of vomit, took the next tunnel.
More lights here as the underground clubs popped up, with some retail scattered. Bondage World boasted live models hyping their products.
A woman with enormous man-made breasts exposed by the cutouts in her fake leather skinsuit moaned impressively as a second woman with a vibrating strap-on demonstrated the proper way to attach the looping chains of nipple clamps to wall hooks.
A couple of bruisers with full-body tats discouraged any potential customers from attempting to take an active part in the demo.
They passed Bang-O-Rama, a bar where volunteers paid for the privilege of being gangbanged onstage. At the moment, a group of women hooted and cheered on somebody named Coco who had the stage—and writhed as sex workers penetrated every orifice in her body.
She wore nothing but a tiara proclaiming her as the Bride to Be.
“A whole new meaning to girls’ night out,” Roarke commented.
Farther down the tunnel someone screamed in a way that didn’t translate into pleasure on any level. Just as the laughter that followed didn’t sound of humor.
Ignoring both, Eve aimed for Wet Dreams.
Smaller than most of the others, it amounted to a hole in the wall with bad lighting, smoky air, recorded music. Eve assumed the lighting was an attempt to disguise the fact that the staff consisted of junkies going through the motions to earn enough for the next fix.
Then again, from her scan, a good portion of the clientele ran the same. Some of the glazed looks might have come from ingesting the Zoner smoke hazing the room.
A couple of women on the platform—too small to rate the term stage—pawed each other mechanically while a third attempted a clumsy routine on a pole.
Behind the bar a single male wearing nipple rings, possibly purchased at Bondage World, poured liquid the color of sludge into stingy glasses. The guy on a stool downed one while getting a lap dance from a sex worker so bony Eve could count his ribs.
If he’d seen his eighteenth birthday, she’d eat her badge.
A woman in a red skinsuit approached. Pasty flesh sagged out of the open lacing running down both sides while another pair of man-made tits rose improbably high from the snug bodice.
She wore a coal-black wig with a sweep down the left side that didn’t quite hide the puckering burn scars on her cheek.
“Looking for a table or a private room?” She had a voice like the smoke—thick and mildly drugged out.
“Neither. Dinnie Duff.”
“If you’re looking for personal service, I got better.”
Eve pulled out her badge. “Dinnie Duff.”
The woman hissed. “Just put that thing away. Business is bad enough around here. She ain’t working tonight. She ain’t come in for a couple, three nights.”
“Is this your place?”
“Shit no. I run what there is of it.”
“Name.”
“Taffy Pull. I had it changed legal when I was working the stage.”
“Okay, Taffy, Which is it, a couple or three since Duff’s been in?”
“Well, shit.” When the woman scratched her head, the wig shifted. “Monday night’s slow. Hell, most nights is slow, but we do decent on the weekend. I coulda used her over the weekend, but she didn’t show. So I guess she ain’t been in since last . . . maybe Thursday night she was in and working. Maybe the night before. I figured she musta made enough to hold her over or she got herself busted.”
“She told a couple people she was working here tonight.”
“Well, she ain’t. Look it’s no skin off mine if you bust her ass. She works, she gets paid.” The shoulder shrug didn’t move the breasts by a fraction. “She don’t work, somebody else gets paid. It’s all the same to me.”
“How long has she worked here?”
“Jesus, I guess about three years. On and off. And plenty of off. You find her, you tell her she’s off for good. I can’t have cops coming around here. Ain’t good for business.”
Eve caught sight of the three Bangers heading down the tunnel, led by Bolt. “If I find out you’re bullshitting me, I’ll shut this place down.”
The woman gave another shrug. “Got no reason to bullshit over some junkie whore too lazy to work. And this place—no big loss, right? You shut it down, there’s always another place.”
Eve left it at that.
Bolt stopped, eyed her up and down. “Bad shit happens to cops underground.”
“Worse shit happens to people who start something with a cop who has a stunner aimed at them.”
“One cop,” Roarke added. “Two stunners.”
This time when he looked down, she had the stunner in her hand, as did Roarke. Bolt smirked at them, but kept walking.
“That one has a very poor attitude,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah, I guess he flunked out of Manners 101. Too bad he’s only about five-seven and doesn’t fit the description of big from the wit’s statement.”
“Well, he appears to make up for his lack of stature by being a flaming fuckhole. But back to our charming hostess. I don’t believe she knows her former employee’s whereabouts.”
“No, neither do I. ‘Flaming fuckhole,’” she repeated. “I’ve got to remember that one.”
She ignored the cheers as another member of the wedding party stumbled up to the stage in Bang-O-Rama. Then the Bondage World demo of the Electric O, which made her think of a batt-operated cattle prod. And the howls of humanity in a chosen hell as they worked their way back through, and up to the street.
“Well now, after this fascinating evening, I could do with a good, long shower.”
“Sick bastards. What kind of sick bastard wants somebody to slap a shock stick across his balls?”
“Don’t look at me.” Roarke opened the car door for her. “So if neither the Banger chief or the curiously named Taffy Pull aren’t bullshitting, that only leaves a couple of possibilities.”
“Yeah, she’s pulled a rabbit, or she’s dead.”
Roarke walked around, slid behind the wheel. “She might have managed to score. She could’ve been paid for betraying Pickering. She got high and flopped elsewhere.”
“Not impossible,” she conceded. “Maybe Slice has it right, and it was a hit by one of the rival gangs. They recruited her, she helped with the hit, and now she’s flopping with them. But . . .”
“Why would a rival gang order a hit on a former Banger?”
“Why would anybody? It makes him more important than he seems.” And that was the puzzle. “I need to know more about the players.”
She pulled out her PPC, started runs.
“She actually did change her name legally. Rita Razowitz to Taffy Pull. Worked the sex clubs—a couple of high end ones back in the day. A few bumps along the way, but nothing major. About twelve years ago she got into it with one of the other SWs over some dude. The rival set her hair on fire.”
“That’s love for you,” Roarke said.
“It explains the wig, the scars. Spiraled down—taste for opiates of any description, busted for illegals, for unlicensed solicitation. Blah-blah. She’s been running that place for about four years.
“Can’t think the dude was worth it,” Eve considered. “No marriages, no cohabs, no offspring, and no criminal in the last four that shows.”
“The sad life and times of Rita Razowitz.”
People make their choices, Eve thought. Who knows why?
“She’s not going to lie to cover for a junkie who works on and off. Slice is, legally, Marcus Jones, Junior. Looks like Senior, street name Rock, was not only a Banger, but a captain. Didn’t cohab with the mother, did some time. Got himself beaten half to death about ten years ago.”
“A job risk for a gangster.”
“That took Jones Senior out. I’m reading severe head trauma, brain damage. He’s in a medical facility for same. The mother spent Jones Junior’s childhood in and out of lockup, so he was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother.”
Roarke glanced over. “So he had something in common with Lyle Pickering.”
“Yeah. Huh. He owns the building, the flop. Or a percentage of it—and the same with Wet Dreams, and a couple other enterprises. Like the tat parlor in the building, a strip joint. Owns them with a Samuel Cohen and an Eldena Vinn.
“Any bells from those two?” she asked.
“Sorry, no. But that’s very interesting.”
“Yeah, it’s got my attention. I’ll look at his partners. Jones has brains, skill, or luck. Maybe all. He’s been pulled in for questioning plenty, but nothing’s stuck to him since he did six months when he was eighteen.”