Mojo (21 page)

“Here’s to a winning night for the O-Town Elites,” he said, and we all clinked our glasses. They both took healthy drinks, but I barely wet my tongue. It wasn’t bad, though, so I downed a little more.

“You like?” Brett asked.

“Excellent,” I said.

So we rode and chatted with the hip-hop pounding from the speakers. For a while we got on the subject of crappy teachers at our schools. It’s funny—kids from any kind of background all have their teacher war stories. Except Nash and Brett tended to sound more like they were talking about the incompetent hired help than some enemy commander. Me, I didn’t lock into interrogation mode. Not yet.

The first place we stopped was even further from being
limo-worthy than my neighborhood. I mean, this place could’ve been on the cover of
Better Crack Homes and Gardens
. Our driver pumped the horn a couple times, and a minute later there was a tap on the roof of the car. The window glided down next to Nash, and in looks this enormous face that more than a little bit resembled the face on my T-shirt.

“Nash, my man, you riding slick tonight.”

“You know it, D-Stack,” Nash said.

“When you gonna invite me to cruise with you and the lady?”

“Right now, if you want.”

D-Stack laughed. “I would, but me and my lady’s got our own party happening tonight.” He nodded toward the porch, where his big-boned girlfriend lounged on the steps, flicking her awesome hair extensions away from her cigarette smoke.

“Another time, then,” Nash said. “You have anything for me?”

“You know I do.” D-Stack lifted up his shirttail, revealing two items tucked in his waistband, a small brown paper bag and a shiny, pearl-handled pistol. Luckily, he only pulled out the bag.

Nash traded it for a little package of his own, which I assumed contained a wad of bills.

D-Stack grinned warmly. “Always nice doing business with you, man.”

“You too,” Nash said, and the window glided silently up.

As we pulled away, I’m like, “What the hell?”

“Just a little pre-party purchase,” Nash said.

“Let me guess—something to help make the night more fluid?”

“Something like that.”

“But did you have to come here?”

“Hey.” Nash knocked back his champagne. “If you’re going to run with Gangland, you have to live the part.”

From there the stops didn’t get any classier. Next we hit the Vietnamese pool hall, but this time not to play. Nash went in alone and was back in five minutes. After that we pulled into the parking lot of the Virgo Club, which I judged from the neon dancing girls on the sign was obviously a strip joint, and not an upscale one either.

“Are you kidding?” I said as Nash opened the door. “We can’t get in there.”

“You’re right,” Nash said. “You can’t. But I can. You should know by now I can get in anywhere.”

And it was true—he walked right in the front door. I asked Brett how he was able to work it, and she explained he’d visited the Virgo earlier in the week with his big brother and a hearty helping of cash to look over some prospects.

I’m like, “Prospects?”

She tossed me a flirty smile. “Just some of our after-ten-o’clock entertainment.”

“Let me guess. He’s hiring the ugliest stripper he can find.”

“You’re catching on,” she said.

I’m like, “Really? You mean I’m right?”

She just laughed.

When Nash stepped out of the dark entrance into the neon glow outside, I swore he had a child with him, but then I realized that his stripper of choice was actually a little person—as in dwarf. The bowlegged walk gave her away.

As they settled into the limo with us, he made introductions, giving fake names to Brett and me—I was Nitro and Brett was Belladonna—which was only fair since the stripper gave her name as Tangerine, no doubt a stage name.

“Wow,” Tangerine said as she stuffed her bag onto the floorboard. “Cool wheels, T-Bone.” I guessed
T-Bone
was Nash’s pseudonym.

It’s hard to tell with a little person, but I figured she was somewhere in her middle twenties. She wore a shoulder-length pink wig and a pink tracksuit—for now. When Nash offered her some champagne, her big blue eyes sparkled, and she threw off a wide smile, revealing braces on her teeth. That almost made me revise my estimate of her age, but I decided she probably hadn’t been able to afford braces until hooking up with the Virgo Club.

But no way was this girl ugly. Actually, she was cute in an Anna Paquin sort of way. You know—the girl who plays Sookie on
True Blood
? This irked me. Not that she was cute but that Nash only chose her for ugly-stripper night at Gangland because she was a little person. I thought he was cooler than that.

She polished off her champagne in a couple of gulps. “This is the life,” she said, holding her glass out for a refill. “You know what would go great with this? A fried-bologna sandwich.”

At that, Brett laughed, and with a squinty stare, Tangerine’s like, “What? Have you ever had one?”

Brett admitted she hadn’t, and Tangerine goes, “Well, don’t laugh, then. Fried-bologna sandwiches are delicious.”

“I bet they are,” Nash said as the limo rolled out of the parking lot. There were no more pre-party visits to make now. It was back to the expressway—next stop, Gangland.

This time we didn’t enter the same way as before. I suspected this was because Nash didn’t want anyone to catch an early glimpse of his pick in the ugly-stripper contest. Instead, we went in through what was originally the front door of the warehouse and directly to an office that was outfitted with all sorts of dark, polished furniture, probably castoffs from one of Rowan’s dad’s swanky offices.

This place also had framed posters of gangsters on the walls along with a glass case exhibiting what might have been an authentic old-fashioned tommy-gun-style machine gun. Or maybe it was just a squirt gun that looked real—I didn’t ask. Nash sat behind the big desk and broke out the sack he’d scored from D-Stack. Inside was a very large plastic bag of weed. He poked his nose inside and goes, “Mmmm—that’s the stuff.”

Surveying the room, Tangerine’s like, “You guys have more money than you know what to do with, don’t you?”

And Brett goes, “That’s not true. We know what to do with it.”

Nash loaded a pipe with weed and offered it to me. I declined—I already felt queasy from my one glass of champagne—but Tangerine took a hit, inhaling so deeply her face turned a darker shade of pink than her wig.

“You got anything around here to eat?” she said after exhaling a plume of smoke.

“We’ll get you something to eat later,” Nash told her. “Here, have some more champagne.” He handed the nearly empty bottle to her. Then he and Brett traded hits off the pipe.

After they were all good and loaded, Nash said he had a little business to transact, and he and Brett headed for the door. “You two stay here for right now,” he said. Then he walked back to me. “Here, I want you to hold on to something for me.” He pulled out his wallet and handed me a hundred-dollar bill.

I’m like, “What’s this for?”

And he goes, “I might need your help with something.”

“Like what?” I asked, staring at the money. I’d never held a hundred dollars all in one bill before.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be right back,” he said, and he and Brett left.

Tangerine wrestled her way up into a chair, which was no easy feat considering the champagne bottle tucked under one of her arms. She took a swig and goes, “So what are you in for?” Like we were in jail or something.

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, what did they hire you to do tonight?”

“They didn’t hire me. We’re friends. We’re just hanging out.”

“Right,”
she said. “Then what did he give you the money for?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at the bill again. “Probably part of some game they have going on tonight.”

“Yeah, rich uppity-ups and their games.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one. “What’s your real name? I know it’s not Nitro.”

I told her, and she’s like, “My real name’s Melody. You
know how I knew you weren’t rich like the other two? Because in the limo they were just kind of melting into the seats, just as comfortable as could be, but you looked like you were sitting on a block of ice. It was obvious you’d never been in a limo before.”

“Have you?”

“Once.” She blew out a cloud of smoke. “But don’t get me started on that. Uppity-ups are crazy. That’s all I’m going to say. They’re warped. I’ll work with them if I have to, but I’d rather hang out with the girls at the V anytime. I liked you right off, though.”

The
V
, I guessed, was the Virgo Club.

“Thanks,” I said. “I liked you too.”

“You just need to quit trying so hard to get them others to like you, that’s all. You know my friend Tanya had her baby tooken away? Well, she did. Little Serenity Ann. The Human Services people got her. Now there’s this old uppity-up couple wants her. They think they can just pluck her away like she’s a berry growing on a bush.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “Is Tanya one of the strippers you work with?”

Her face puckered at that. “We’re not strippers,” she said. “We’re exotic dancers. It’s an art form, you know.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m sure it is.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t like games. I like things straightforward. Like tonight—I told that T-Bone character how much I’d charge and how long I’d stay and what I’d do. I dance, and that’s that. Nothing more. Rick up at the V knows where I am. All the girls know where I am. There better not be any funny business. Uppity-ups like games, though. That’s all they know.”

“But I guess sometimes you have to figure out how to play the game,” I suggested.

“I ain’t into those games,” she said. “Give me the girls at the V.”

At that point, Nash showed back up and asked us to come with him. We ended up in the same dark corridor I’d investigated my first time at Gangland, and he told Melody to wait in the dressing room. She wasn’t too happy about having to wait there instead of the plush office, but Nash assured her it wouldn’t be for long. To me he goes, “Come on, Dylan, let’s roll. The real show is almost ready to start.”

The warehouse was full of the same crowd as last time, but now the musical act was, of all things, a guy with an acoustic guitar, a guy on accordion, and a girl on trombone. Playing emo. Actually, they could really play, but who wants to listen to that combination?

“Did you line up this act?” I asked Nash.

“Not a chance. They have too much talent.”

Brett was hanging toward the back of the room with Aisling and Holt and a couple others I didn’t know. We joined them, and I figured this was as good a time as any to bring up Trix and her dad.

“So,” I said, “I noticed there hasn’t been anything in the news about Trix Westwood’s dad getting arrested or even being a person of interest.”

Brett’s like, “Wow, Dylan, do you always have to talk about that?”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I figured you’d want to talk about it. Ashton was your friend.”

“All the more reason for us to just want to get away from it sometimes,” Aisling said.

“Yeah, Dylan,” Nash said. “Loosen up. We can talk about that stuff later. Anyway, you know how the police work—they have to have a mountain of evidence before they can arrest someone like Mr. Westwood.”

I’m like,
That’s fine for you to say, but your best friend isn’t hanging around with a potential serial killer
. I didn’t say it out loud, though. Pressing things wasn’t likely to do any good with these people.

Ten o’clock came, and the band kept playing. That was strange. I figured at ten something big would happen—maybe Lady Gaga would burst onto the stage, or the floor would roll back and underneath there’d be a swimming pool filled with champagne. Instead, the only difference was that a crowd began to gather around a table on the west side of the room. I asked Nash what was up, and he told me to come with him and he’d show me.

On the fringe of the crowd, I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but I caught a glimpse of Tres sitting behind the table with his laptop open in front of him. Someone handed him some cash, and he stowed it in a metal box next to the laptop.

“You have that hundred I gave you?” Nash asked me.

I patted my pants pocket. “Right here.”

“Excellent. This is your chance to parlay a little extra cash for yourself. Sound good?”

“Uh, sure. I can always use some extra cash. But how?”

“Simple. You use the hundred I slipped you to make a bet, and if you win, you roll that over on the next bet. After that, you give me back my hundred and you leave here with a nice little wad.”

“Yeah, but what am I betting on?”

“What are you betting on? You’re betting on the midget, of course.”

“You mean Melody?”

“Who?”

“Tangerine—her real name’s Melody.”

“Whatever. She’s a sure thing. I mean, I haven’t seen the other dancer, but how could she possibly beat a midget?”

“Little person,” I said. “They don’t like to be called midgets.”

He laughed. “All right. Have it your way
—little person
. So are you betting?”

“Sure,” I said. “What do I have to lose?”

“That’s the spirit.”

He pushed his way through the crowd, dragging me with him, and when we reached the table, Tres looked up at me and goes, “Ah, look who it is—the guy who’s afraid of squirt guns.” It probably took him all day to make that one up. “Do you have a bet?” he asked.

“Of course he does,” Nash said. “A hundred on Tangerine.”

I forked over the bill, and he stashed it in the metal box and made an entry in the computer. “How about you, Nash?” he asked, and Nash is like, “You know what my bet is—same as usual.”

After that we nabbed a spot near the stage, and it wasn’t much later that the band knocked off, only to be replaced by Rowan in a lemon-yellow blazer. He cranked up one of his long smarmy spiels—even using the term
feminine pulchritude
at one point—before finally cueing the music and announcing, “Let’s hear a loud round of applause for the lovely, the talented Tangerine!”