VOODOO LODGE
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f you blink, you’ll miss the place, even though there’s a fair-sized sign out front adorned with tiki carvings and torches that get set ablaze after the sun goes down. Not to be confused with the Voodoo Lounge at the Rio hotel, the Voodoo Lodge is miles from the Strip and caters to a very eclectic clientele. It doesn’t get much billing, but it’s always packed because the club puts on some hot girlie shows and serves potent beverages. The rumors about that place abound, particularly the one about how the original owner died there while sipping a devil’s triangle. Old sots say his ghost still haunts the swank joint. That aside, you can’t swing a dead cat in there without hitting a bombshell or a tiki carving.
I walked into a lobby so dark that I thought I might trip on my way to the girl at the reservations podium. She looked like every other gal working there—a Polynesian print skirt and a bikini top covering her goods about as much as a pair of Band-Aids. She was ultra-curvy, had the right equipment and a disarming smile. I gave her my name before she could ask for it, and she checked it against the club’s registry.
“How many in your party?” she asked, looking up.
“Just me.”
“This way, please.” She grabbed a menu and took me through a labyrinth of bamboo tables. The place was humming, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the sound of steel guitars playing Bali Hai floating through the lounge. There was an iguana in a jumbo terrarium to my right, but the big action was on stage. The girl put me at a table close to it, gave me the menu.
“Thanks.” I sank into a bamboo chair I didn’t have a lot of faith in.
“What would you like to drink?”
Without looking at the menu, I said, “A scorpion.”
“Coming right up.” Her hips hustled off to the sounds of whistles and lewd shouts not meant for her, although she certainly deserved that kind of attention. Looking at the stage again, I quickly discovered what the noise was about.
The hula girl had on a grass skirt and a coconut bra, her head crowned with a band of tropical flowers. She wiggled nicely and smiled as her bare feet danced over dollar bills that were thrown on stage by dirty old men and their younger understudies. Her name is Ginger Tate, the Polynesian Princess. Her real surname is something that starts with a K, is difficult to pronounce, and probably means piston hips in Hawaiian. Her chestnut hair was long, her eyes smoky flirty, and she did nothing less than make love to the air as she stepped, twirled, and shook. Just watching her had me needing a cigarette. I started one about the time the waitress came back with my drink.
She put a tall glass with a long straw and a paper umbrella on my table and said, “Nine dollars, please.”
I peeled a Ben Franklin out of my wallet and gave it to her. “No change, hon.”
She just about choked, her pretty eyes quickly becoming the size of basketballs. I decided to find out the fun way how much bigger they could get.
I said, “I’d like to see Octavio.”
That one spun her around a few times and dropped her jaw even more. Octavio is a silent partner there—and a big secret. The only people who knew about him were guys pulling grafts. Very few of them had the balls to ask for a private audience with the reclusive Venezuelan, so the fact that I did proved that I was in the know and a little braver than most of her patrons.
“Wait here,” she said tightly.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” I tasted my drink, smoked, and stared at the dancer.
Ginger Tate finished her set, bowed gracefully, and stopped to collect the greenback confetti at her feet before giving the stage to a Pacific Island band that drew yawns as soon as they started up. I sipped casually at a drink powerful enough to substitute for jet fuel and butted out my cigarette. Ginger went to the front of the lounge to powder her nose before signing autographs and posing for photos with the boys for ten bucks a pop. After midnight she’ll let you snap a shot with the coconuts off—for double her standard fee.
“He’ll see you now.” The waitress was back at my table, looking a lot less rattled this time around. “Come with me.”
I tucked in behind her as she took me down a narrow hallway that stopped before a wooden door you’d see on the front of any tackle shop. The sign on it read Kapu. The girl gave the door a push, let me inside an office, closed the slab of wood shut behind me.
Octavio was seated at a desk with barnacle-like knots on its wooden legs, his black hair slicked back neatly in true Slim Whitman form. His dark eyes were set behind a nose with a sharp point to it, his expression overall bland as he regarded me.
“Please have a seat,” he said cordially. On his desk was a plastic pelican and a stack of papers thicker than a Vegas mobster phone book.
“Thank you.” I sank into a chair that made the other one with the stitched-together seat seem like a padded recliner.
“Cigarette?” Octavio presented me with a decorative wooden box. “They’re Turkish. Just flown in.” He tried on a smile. “I import only the best.”
“Thanks.” I picked out a butt, plugged it between my lips, snapped my Zippo. The tobacco tasted like old oak leaves rolled up in thin paper, so I didn’t get how he was so happy about having a carton brought in.
“Case told me you were coming.” Octavio lit himself a gasper and leaned back in his seat. “Sorry about the girl. It’s her first night. She’s still learning the ropes.”
“No worries.” I drew on the filter. “Workin’ her way through school, is she?”
Octavio dismissed that one with a quick shrug and said, “I have everything you need.”
I nodded. “An assault rifle with a single mag should get it. I can’t imagine needing—”
“When did you become so naïve, Bryce?” Octavio let out a slow, muffled laugh. “I know who you’re up against.” He leaned across his desk and stared at me, a brittle smile on his face. “I know Gene Spillman—too well. He always travels with an entourage. If you pick him off and leave his crew untouched, you might as well put your mug on every carton of milk in Clark County because his boys will come after you—and they’ll make you disappear.” He thumped the butt over a ceramic ashtray that was turquoise and in the shape of a maple leaf. “You need a big toy that’ll take ‘em all out.”
I smoked as we looked at each other business lunch style. “You’re just trying to squeeze an extra drop from the lemon.” I laughed to myself. Octavio is a regular P.T. Barnum. He still has a gig going because WEB made his trafficking charges disappear and left him in the game so we’d have an open connection to the sewer. “Don’t do that, Octavio. One sour note out of you and you go right back to the clink.” I drew on the cigarette and pondered the irony of using a government-sanctioned thug to take out one that Washington wanted dead.
“So Rod’s getting cheap again,” Octavio said irritably. “How long is he in charge?”
“Too damn long.” I tapped the cigarette out in his ashtray. “Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? I’ve only been issued enough sugar to buy a rifle, and I’m not about to plop down my personal credit card to cover one of your Sunday afternoon specials.” I stood. “If Spillman comes to town with his cronies in tow, I can take every one of them out with something as simple as a bolt-action.”
Octavio looked mildly embarrassed. “I was only suggesting—”
“Enough people are making suggestions already, so leave it alone,” I cut in, going for the door. “You have about ten seconds to change my mind about goin’ to the pawn shop next door for my gear. As it stands, I have two grand to spend in your store, minus what I slipped one of your girls to buy a ticket in here. You call it.”
Octavio stood quickly. “Tell me where to find you. I’ll have something sent over right away—something within your price range that will not disappoint you.”
“The Sahara.” I broke open my billfold, went to his desk again and stacked cash on it. “As usual, I trust you’ll be discreet.”
“Of course.” He picked up the money and counted it.
I reached into my jacket pocket. “When can I expect delivery?”
“Within the hour,” he promised eagerly.
“Perfect.” I tossed a twenty on his desk. “Thanks, mate.”
“What’s this for?” Octavio snickered, picking up the bill. “A tip?”
“The lizard out front,” I deadpanned. “Buy him a steak with a side of zucchini and some rice. He’s lookin’ skinny.”
THE GRIFTER’S GIRL
There was no denying her beauty, but I tried not to think about how she was just sexy as hell because I was pulling a job. Her hair was long, black, and straight; her eyes were neon jade, her skin alabaster. Her lips were full, glossed-up red. She knew how pretty she was. Julie knew a lot—like exactly what was going on and why, yet she asked too many questions.
“What are you going to do now, have your way with me?”
“No—and only because time isn’t on my side.” I closed the door and locked it, broke open a fresh pack of cigarettes. The air conditioner strained to cool the dumpy hotel room. It was one of those asphalt-melting days in Las Vegas that makes your skin leak and causes you to forget that in December, you wear a T-shirt while everyone else in America is cursing the snow they shovel. Now the east coast was laughing at us Vegans. I was laughing at someone, too—Julie’s husband; he was frantically searching for her, and all the while she and I were holed up in a little hotel room. I had her all to myself, him wondering.
“So what now?”
“You talk too much.” I hung a Pall Mall in the corner of my mouth, snapped my Zippo. “Cigarette?”
“I quit a year and a half ago.” Julie combed her hair over her ears with her fingers, gazed at me as she tried to get comfortable on the mattress. She’d lost her heels, was sitting with her legs folded back under her mini skirt. Nice legs, hers, with full, taut thighs. I stared at them, envied the fishnets she had on.
“Maybe you should start again.” I walked up to the foot of the bed and held the pack out to her. “Having a cigarette might keep you from talking so much.”
“Or slugging you.” She selected a butt and waited for me to light it.
“Better make it good, if you do.” I lit her cigarette. She pulled on it, let smoke waft through her nostrils. “But I know you really don’t want to.”
“You’re something else.” She took a drag on the filter, blew out a ribbon of smoke. “Really, so what now?”
“I already went over that.” I smoked, loosened my tie. “By now, your husband knows I’m holding you hostage. All that’s left for me to do is pick up the phone and find out how badly he wants you back.”
“He’ll want me back,” she said brightly.
“A looker like you, yeah,” I admitted. “But how badly he’ll want you is what I’m dying to know.” I winced when I sniffed the air. The room smelled like the inside of an old vacuum cleaner bag, and that was being nice.
“What’s my ransom?”
“A million,” I said coolly.
“A million,” Julie huffed, cupping the cigarette and looking a little pouty. “That’s insulting!”
“Maybe.” I sat down on the mattress with her. My dress shirt was sticking to me, my shoulder holster like an adhesive bandage. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Gawd….” Talk about robbing the cradle. But it’s usually like that with high-end grifters. They always marry the young ones, keep them as sex toys for a while, and move on to greener pastures when the girl hits the ripe old age of thirty. Such was the case with Paul Barros. Julie was his third wife, and she was close to being kicked to the curb. That was why I snatched her up when I did; she was still important to Barros. There were other reasons, too.
Paul Barros had promised to hook me up with a player wanting to buy a list of names of U.S. intelligence operatives in the European circuit. The agents were all women working the hooker racket in the former Eastern Bloc. The player wanted to know who they were so he could cover his tracks; two of the girls sharpened his pencil a few times in Warsaw, and his wife had found out about it through the magic of Facebook. But the whole story was a gag. The bloke wasn’t married, I later learned. He wanted to sell the names. But he stiffed me for the buy because Barros blew my cover. Why, I didn’t know, but you only get one shot at screwing me. Take the gloves off and I’ll do likewise—and I’ll take your most prized possession and hold her hostage and dangle that carrot before your nose for as long as it takes to get what I want.
“You told him you only wanted a million for me?”
I nodded.
“Why are you shooting so low?” She smoked the cigarette like it was a new experience, nibbling the filter and inhaling shallowly. “He’s got the money. He has ten times that, and I’m sure there’s more I don’t know about.” She exhaled, knocked ash. “Damn prenups.”
“Asking for only a million makes sure I get him to play ball,” I said. “If I say I want five, he’ll tell me to go ahead and kill you.”
“But don’t you think I’m worth more than that?”
I smoked.
“How much do you think I’m worth?” Julie wetted her lips sensually, and that just about cut me in half.
“I’m not gonna say. I don’t want you getting a big head.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “And what if Paul doesn’t bite?”
“He’ll bite.”
“Suppose he doesn’t?”
I hadn’t considered that possibility. “Then I guess I’ll just kill you.”
“You’re one arrogant son of a—”
“And you’re very observant.” I picked up a tobacco-colored briefcase, put it on the bed and opened it. “What made you marry the clown to begin with?”
“That’s my business, mister!”
“Uh-huh.” I took a notepad from the attaché case, flipped pages.
“Aren’t you going to call him?”
“Eventually,” I said. “I’m in charge, so this train runs on my schedule.”
“When? When are you going to call him?”
“That’s my business.” I closed the case and meandered over to the landline, brought the receiver to my ear.
Julie sat erect and threw a puzzled look my way. “You’d really kill me?”
ARMED AND GORGEOUS
Things are seldom as they seem.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Expect the unexpected.
There was a cliché festival going on in my head as I drove my Chrysler along I-15 trying to get across the border to Mexico. I drove, my hat angled on my head, a cigarette between my lips, sweating. I knew this day would come, knew it like I know nobody leaves this world alive; I just didn’t know that everything would strike so swiftly and I’d be forced to leave the country at a moment’s notice with a girl in my car and a shitload of evidence in the trunk.
The windows were down, stereo cranked. I was armed, and she was gorgeous.
It was the thing that happens to the other guy, never you, that had me on the lam—and what a ride it had been. I glanced at the rearview mirror and had to laugh at myself. Why hadn’t this happened to me sooner? But you don’t question things in my line of work because that requires slowing down long enough to get a little philosophical, and slowing down is usually the last thing a guy like me does before an undertaker goes to work on him. And that was the problem—someone wanted me dead.
“You jus’ ‘bout there,” the girl said, her accent thick. “’Bout ten or so more—”
“I know where it is.” My size eleven shoe was a bag of bricks on the gas, my heart pounding. I flicked the butt out the window and skipped to the next track on the CD I had playing. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
“It okay, baby.” She turned the visor mirror around and used it to primp her hair. Why she was sprucing up was beyond me because we weren’t going to a place that required impressing anyone, except the officer at the border. We’d sail past him, too—provided he didn’t want to search the car. If he did, I was going to be in the soup because guns are illegal in Mexico, and the sawed-off shotgun I had in the back wouldn’t exactly speak well for me. And then there was what I had in the trunk. Finding either of those things would wind me up in a Mexican prison cell, which is a fine place to hang out if you’re into dysentery or never being heard from again. There wasn’t time for me to do an emergency dump, so I had to keep going, relying on old-fashioned luck to get me through. If I managed that, I might be able to start putting my life back together again.
“Cigarette me,” I said.
“Okay.” She put two butts between her lips, clicked a lighter to start them. “Here you go,” she said, handing me one.
“Thanks.” I pulled on it. “Keep feeding me those things like they’re Chiclets, okay?”
“Sure.” She leaned back in her seat. “So this all really ‘bout—”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “Don’t make me keep regurgitating the story.” I shut off the stereo, got heavier on the gas. “He went after me because he wanted revenge. We’re lucky to be alive. All we can do is try to make a clean—”
“Bryce!”
I looked ahead and saw a bumper. I hit the brakes and swerved, which did nothing but burn up the guy in the right lane. He laid on the horn and switched lanes, showing me his middle finger. Then it got ugly.
Behind me now was a black and white, and it was closing in fast. Checking the rearview mirror, I saw the face of a not-too-happy highway patrolman. He got right on my tail and hit the blue lights.
“Bloody hell, we’ve got company!” I fumed. Trying to outrun him was out of the question because he was driving one of those interceptors that can go faster than the space shuttle. “I’m gonna have to pull over.” I braked, eased right.
“You no have to worry,” she said. “You policeman, too. You jus’ tell him an’ he let you go.”
“He won’t believe me.” I pulled further right and slid to a stop. “Especially if he finds what’s in the trunk.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice trailing off. “I forget ‘bout dat.” A sigh. “We screwed.” She sniffed the night air as if it had fragrance.
It’s not over ‘til it’s over.
It all works out in the end.
The clichés were back in full force.
“Let me do the talking, okay?” I watched the cop set the emergency brake, get out of the cruiser, and start marching up to my car. By his gait alone, I could tell he was one of those old school types, someone who still uses a phone book to get a man to confess.
“Okay,” she said. “I no say nothin’.”
“Got anything in your backpack I need to worry about?” I asked her. “Knives? Guns?”
“No.” She shook her head stiffly. “Only some weed.”
“Oh, for—”
“It only a lil’ grass.”
“A little?” Now I was really about to lose it. “Why didn’t you tell me you had it earlier?”
“’Cause I no think you want none!”
“How much of it do you have?”
“Only ‘bout half pound.”
“Ke-roist….”
“I can hide it in—”
“Don’t even go for it,” I snapped. “We’re already in a world of hurt. Just let me handle this.”
“But I—”
“Zip it!” I watched as the trooper strode up to the side door, his hand on his gun, and all I could do was think about how I’d wound where I was.
Drugs.
Money.
Revenge.
The combination of the three was what had me beating it across the border to Mexico—that and the fact that there was probably a warrant out for my arrest. My mind flashed back to how it all started.
