Fractured, page 7
With a surprised look, Jacques snapped his attention from Stalder to Beeff, but said nothing. What, did the idiot Frenchman expect Beeff to have any remorse over a cadaver? With thirty-two years in the business of prostitution, Beeff didn’t think one woman’s life was worth shit, especially if she wasn’t one of the girls being fucked every night and raking in the cash.
It had only been nine years since he’d hooked up with Hagstedt and really started making money. Sex slaves didn’t make a fucking dime. They were just merchandise that he used until they were worthless to him.
Stalder’s expression hadn’t changed when Beeff failed to show any concern over Cherie’s death. He almost casually waited for Beeff’s next instructions.
Beeff clenched his fists on the cool glass top of his desk. He stared at the two men and felt his wire-rimmed glasses digging into his cheeks as he narrowed his eyes. “I want someone to replace Cherie immediately. You get the goods on every one of the madames you interview,” he said to Stalder. “I want clean histories with a shitload of experience in the business.”
Stalder said, “Of course, Mr. G.”
Jacques kept his pussy mouth shut.
“Stalder, you hired Cherie, and you will be the one to get someone in here.” Beeff leaned back in his chair, his striped button-up shirt tightening across his chest. “Same salary. Experience scheduling whores for the back rooms and teaching them to hump those fucking poles.”
Stalder gave a short nod.
“I want to meet the final candidates this time.” Fury that his club was fucked until they found a new madame made Beeff’s head feel like it was burning at the roots of his short gray hair, as if the top of his head was going to explode. “I had better start seeing fucking madames in here by tomorrow night.”
Beeff wanted to smirk when he saw Stalder’s eyebrows lift a fraction before he schooled his expression again. “Get the fuck out of here,” Beeff said.
Jacques started to leave, too.
“Jacques.” The name shot out of Beeff s mouth like a punch. Jacques came to a halt. Stalder left the door open as he walked through it and into the hall leading to the main floor of the club and the bar. “For tonight, pick one of the more experienced girls, one you know will keep her mouth shut and has half a fucking brain. Have her schedule the whores and put the cash in the box, and don’t move your ass an inch from her side.”
The muscle-bound man practically gave a bow. The pussy. “I will take care of it now and make sure she is trained for tonight, Mr. G.” Jacques sounded like a goddamned robot as he responded.
“Get the fuck out of here.” Beeff took off his glasses and resisted flinging them across the room. “Lock the door.”
The French bastard damned near ran for Beeffs open office door, set the lock, then shut the door behind him with a firm click of the locking mechanism.
Beeff stared at the wall, his eyes still narrowed. He didn’t have time for this shit. Losing a madame two hours before showtime was a fucking inconvenience.
He had five clubs to run in New York City for Hagstedt—or whatever the fuck the bastard’s real name was—and Beeff made sure he hired the right men as handlers and the right madames to teach and schedule the whores.
The Russian or Chinese sluts brought into his clubs fucked ten to fifteen men a night. From five pm to two am, non-stop, as long as enough dicks wanted pussy. Most of the time he had to have his handlers use the designer sex drug Lascivious. It made the girls horny little sluts and ensured they gave a good ride to every dickhead who handed over enough cash.
A knock at the door. “What?” Beeff shouted, annoyance at being disturbed causing him to curl his lips away from his teeth.
The door opened and Andreas, his accountant, stepped through the door and closed it behind him. “I think we have a problem, Mr. G.”
Beeff scowled and narrowed his gaze. “What problem?”
Andreas adjusted his glasses and raised several black-and-white printouts from a surveillance videotape. In the first picture one of the Russian whores stood outside Beeff’s door. In the next still, she was picking the lock. In the third, she was slipping into Beeff’s office.
“What the fuck?” Beeff shouted. “Who is this?”
“Her name is Jenika,” Andreas said.
“Get her away from the other girls and take her upstairs to my special room.” Beeff sucked air through his teeth. “I’ll deal with her.”
He didn’t have time for this shit. What if the whore had found something critical? Beeff mentally cataloged everything in his office. No, it should be safe. His computer files and messages were always in code or encrypted.
Questions started nagging at him. Why would she be sneaking into his office? Was she with some branch of law enforcement or a government agency?”
Shit.
He’d find out, and then he’d murder the bitch himself.
“Go.” Beeff pointed to the door. “I want her fucking ass in there now.”
“Right away, Mr. G,” Andreas said.
Beeff had never let his staff know his name. He paid his handlers and madames a shitload, but he had the goods on every person he hired. He made sure they knew it once they were in.
No one screwed him and lived.
Chapter 8
Ground, rules—kiss my Irish ass
* * *
“Got it.” Perry snapped his cell phone shut and looked at me as he walked in the suite’s door and closed it behind him. “You’re on, Steele.”
The suite in the hotel that we were using as a base was bigger than the stakeout apartment and a hell of a lot nicer. The hotel was only a few streets away from the Elite Gentleman’s Club. While my team was in action, a pair of agents from the New York RED office covered the stakeout across the street from the club.
“Johnny came through.” I let my breath out in a rush and some tension eased from my shoulders as I made sure—for at least the tenth time—that my long platinum-blonde wig was secure. “I wasn’t sure he could pull it off.”
Thank God he had. I wanted this assignment over so that I could get back to Mama. Just thinking about what she was going through made my heart hurt and my gut sick.
Perry nodded. “As soon as word was on the street that the club needed a madame, Johnny leaked enough info to hook them.”
Threads of adrenaline tied themselves low in my belly in anticipation of starting the undercover op.
“Excellent.” Kerrison’s skirt hardly covered her backside while she bent to pick up her small gold purse after having just applied another coat of her “erotic red” lipstick. “Stop staring at my ass, Smithe,” she said without looking over her shoulder.
“How does she do that?” Smithe grinned. “That’s so hot.”
“What time is the interview?” I smoothed the lines of my blue dress, which was sexy but on the conservative side compared with Kerrison’s emerald-green miniskirt and low-cut blouse.
“Three, which is plenty of time before the club starts hopping.” Perry looked at his watch. “You’ve got almost an hour.”
Smithe managed to take his gaze from Kerrison’s ass. “Weiss, Takamoto, and Jensen are in place and ready to make sure any other candidates either don’t make it back to the club or won’t want to.”
“You’re keyed in on how to use the jewelry?” Donovan asked Kerrison when she straightened and slipped the lipstick—which was also a mini camera—into her small purse.
Kerrison raised her arm. The elegant bracelet and stunning rings that Martinez had designed fit her perfectly. She pointed to what looked like a simple clasp on her gold bracelet. “Unfasten the catch and RED will swarm the joint thicker than flies on a horse’s ass.” Her southern humor and stronger accent would’ve made me smile if I weren’t so keyed up.
She wiggled the fingers of her right hand, and the precious stones and gold—all real—sparkled in the suite’s lighting. Especially the diamond-cut emerald. “Press the largest stone of one ring,” she said, “and the focused release of narcotic will bring down even the biggest jackass that tries to lay his hands on me.”
“Just don’t knock yourself out by accident.” I looked at my three rings. “I’ll do my best not to end up on the floor, too.” The genuine diamonds and gold on my right hand sparkled even more than Kerrison’s. I didn’t have a bracelet so that we weren’t dressed the same. Of course, my rings were designed differently than Kerrison’s.
“The ring on my middle finger is my link to RED, right?” I asked Donovan, who nodded. “Martinez said the other two have the same narcotic that Kerrison’s rings have.”
When I met Donovan’s gaze, I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to kiss him.
My need for him was driving me freaking nuts.
I broke eye contact with Donovan and spoke to Perry. “Do Kerrison and I pass the madame-and-sexy-assistant test?”
Perry tilted his head as he examined us. “Kerrison—with that outfit and her thick wavy auburn hair—she’s a go.”
“And me?” I put my hand on my hip. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if my agents were giving me a hard time or were serious.
Perry reached into our supply cabinet of makeup, jewelry, and other female—generally—items. “Let’s try this.” He took out a pair of Chinese chopstick hair ornaments. “This will go great with that Mandarin-collared dress. You can use a sexier look.”
“We’re not trying out for the floor show,” I grumbled, but I let Perry sweep up the long genuine hair of my wig, knot it, and secure it all with the chopsticks. Trust Perry to be able to fix hair. It wasn’t bad having a metrosexual around.
Kerrison glanced at Donovan. “Any luck on coming closer to getting in with this Giger dick as a handler?”
He shook his head, his lips tight. “Still working on it. But I’ll figure out a way to get in there if I have to kill every one of his other handlers to do it.”
I punched Donovan lightly on his upper arm with the fist that didn’t have any narcotic-filled jewelry. “Yeah, like that wouldn’t cause anyone to be suspicious.”
After we’d spent a sufficient amount of time screwing around while waiting for our appointment time, Donovan said, “You two had better get out of here.” I hoped I was the only one who noticed the faint hint of concern as his eyes met mine.
He knew better than to worry about me. I’d kick his ass for it the next time we were alone.
Kerrison and I shrugged on long, dressy coats so we wouldn’t freeze in the unusually chilly November air. We left the suite and took the elevator down from the tenth floor of the hotel. The moment we were rolling, I was Madame Alexis Johansen and Kerrison was Chandra Elliot.
An agent from the New York branch of RED was acting as our driver and was waiting for us at the curb in a black Lincoln Town Car. After Kerrison and I slid onto the leather backseat of the plush vehicle and closed the door, I met the agent’s eyes in the rearview mirror and gave him a slight nod.
The agent acknowledged by checking traffic and pulling in the moment the way was clear. Three minutes later he drew the car up to the Elite Gentleman’s Club. Small white Christmas lights illuminated the awning, which rippled in cheerful waves in the afternoon air.
Our “chauffeur” exited the driver’s seat and I had to remind myself to wait and allow him to open the door for us, rather than climbing out by myself. It was all about appearances.
The agent opened the door closest to the curb so that Kerrison and I could ease out—as ladylike and sexy as possible. Not fun when my damned dress was doing its best to hike its way up my hips to my waist. The four-inch heels were a bitch to stand on gracefully in this position, but the agent did a good job of helping me as he held my hand.
I kept a professional if not arrogant expression on my features. Kerrison looked confident, like a woman who knew that she was sexy, but also that she was in charge of herself and her body.
Good girl.
We walked beneath the red awning, which flapped continuously in the increasingly harsh breeze. The bouncer positioned at the front door was a typical big, beefy guy and he wore a small gold hoop earring in one ear. In the sunlight his skin shone like polished ebony and his bald head gleamed. He was freaking tall. The guy had to be at least six-eight.
I tilted my head to meet the bouncer’s dark eyes. I kept my voice cool, and there wasn’t a trace of my Bostonian accent in my words. Instead, I spoke English with a perfect Swedish accent. “Alexis Johansen and Chandra Elliot. We are here to see Stefan Stalder for an interview.”
The big guy didn’t show any kind of expression that let me know one way or another what our chances were of getting through the doors of that club.
He pressed a button on the wireless earpiece he was wearing. “Two women to see Stalder. A Johansen and an Elliot.” The man spoke in a deep baritone.
“Yes, sir.” He finished the connection by pressing the button on his comm. Still no expression as he held open one of the two large oak doors that had beautiful frosted, beveled glass panes.
Phew. Johnny had come through big-time.
I hadn’t expected the second bouncer and another set of oak doors. This bouncer had hair as silver-blonde as my wig, and it hung over his shoulders.
He held the door open and let us through without saying anything. We entered what looked like a very classy nightclub.
Sure. Classy for a place that had a floor show during business hours and sex in the back rooms with prostituted girls. Disgust put a taste like rotten eggs in my mouth as I thought about the trafficked Russian girls who had to be hidden somewhere in this building until it was time for them to get down to business. Probably in the apartments above.
“Ms. Johansen and Ms. Elliot?” A man with a French accent walked toward Kerrison and me as the second set of double doors closed behind us. He wore a wireless earpiece like the bouncers did.
The man’s appearance didn’t connect with his voice and manner. He was entirely out of place. Hell, I didn’t know what kind of place a guy like that belonged in. With his smooth French accent and elegant manners inherent from a seductive country, you’d think he’d look like an aristocrat. He didn’t.
The man was built like the two bouncers with a bodybuilder’s physique and muscles that threatened the seams of his perfectly tailored Italian-made suit. His silk tie was pink with light black stripes running diagonally across it.
“I am called Jacques,” the enigma of a man said with a slight bow. His scent was light but odd, like dry red wine.
“Alexis Johansen.” I gestured toward Kerrison as I laid on the Swedish accent. “This is my assistant, Chandra Elliot.”
The guy did that French thing, taking first my and then Kerrison’s hand in his and placing a kiss the backs of our right hands.
Gross. I did manage not to wipe mine on my dress. Score one for me.
I kept the professional look on my face and my disgust to myself. I glanced at Kerrison, and her expression was just as composed as I knew mine was.
The Frenchman gave a low bow. “I will take you to Mr. Stalder now.”
“Thank you, Jacques,” I said in a firm, clear tone.
He escorted us past a U-shaped bar where countless bottles of liquor were arranged on glass shelves against a mirror backdrop decorated with frosted scrolls around the edges. Martini, margarita, and wine glasses sparkled from where they hung upside down from a wooden holder.
The mahogany bar top gleamed, no doubt polished with lemon oil because the lemony scent of it was strong. The bar was padded with black leather around its U-shaped section, and black-leather-covered stools were spaced evenly around the bar.
When I saw the levers for the draft beer lined up with Guinness as one of the choices, my mouth watered. I personally could’ve used some of that Guinness on tap right then.
Four mahogany ceiling fans stirred the air, causing the loose strands of my wig to tickle the back of my neck. My hip brushed the back of one mahogany-brown chair as I followed Jacques with Kerrison right behind me. My heels clicked on the floor as my gaze traveled along a darkened stage that had what looked like three crystal dancing poles rather than metal poles.
The inside of the gentleman’s club was large enough that the wall we headed toward seemed at least a mile away. Hey, those four-inch heels pinched my toes—right now everything seemed far away.
Classic, wood-framed, and tastefully erotic Bettie Page prints hung on the forest-green walls, the prints illuminated by individual art lights. The quality of the prints, the size of the club, and the expensive-looking wood tables that gleamed in the low lighting made it clear the place earned some pretty healthy profits. No doubt the trafficked girls and not the beer and price of admission kept this place looking sharp.
At least the men who ran the place didn’t have the gall to try to make it look cheery with holiday decorations on the inside.
After passing through the dozens of tables and high-tops, we reached the opposite end of the club. It wasn’t the basic wall it had given the illusion of being. Instead, part of the wall was a few feet in front of the other part, leaving enough room for an almost hidden door with a gold placard that read Management.
Jacques pushed open the door, let us in, then closed it behind us before escorting us down a hallway. It was carpeted, unlike the club itself, and the brown Berber cushioned our footsteps.
Even the hallway was classy with more framed, illuminated Bettie Page prints—although these pictures were among her kinkier poses. I winced when I saw a depiction of her in leather, wielding a whip. That picture brought back a few too many better-forgotten memories.
The walls were forest green above mahogany molding about halfway down the wall with dark, rich wood paneling below.
Three mahogany wood doors lined the right of the hallway, and a single door was at the end. We passed the first two doors, one of which was open. It was a small private restroom that appeared just as luxurious. Wonder if the toilet seat was real gold.
Jacques rapped on the third door, which was open about six inches.
