Rigged (2 page)

Marty was out cold by the time his body slumped to the floor. He woke up a few moments later to Porkpie standing over him, asking if he was okay. By the trail of blood, Marty figured those chicken-shit Wheelers must have ducked out the back.

“You okay?” Porkpie asked, down on his haunches a look of genuine concern in his hazel eyes, not looking so ambivalent anymore.

“Wh-what happened?” Marty asked, every syllable creeping out of his mouth like they were lost and couldn’t find the way.

“Took a little tumble there,” Charlie said, wearing a polite smile. “Took a nasty bump on the bar. Must’ve knocked yourself out for a second there.” Charlie did what he could to help heft the big man back to wobbly feet, but Marty could feel that it took effort, not a whole lot of muscle to Charlie Kelly. “Reminds me of when I was eight or so. I was ice-skating with a friend; just a little guy, but he was quicker than shit. Anyway, I got this bright idea in my head that we should race around the rink, first one to do three laps would be the winner. Well, to this day, I only remember the first lap. Woke up in the warming house and heard that the attendant had to carry me in. They said I was crying, but I don’t remember that. My dad and sister were still out there skating. People didn’t get so worried about concussions back then, I guess.”

Charlie spoke in a matter-of-fact way that was easy to get lost in. He said every word so casually, as if in passing, that Marty actually lost track of what had happened. He simply forgot the events leading directly to his unfortunate tumble. Betty wasn’t around and must have missed it all, or else someone would have had a sawed-off up his nose. Before Marty knew it, Charlie was helping him find a mop to clean up the blood from Petey’s nose. “Please call me Charlie,” he said. By that time, Marty had already thanked Charlie for his help, and Charlie had tipped the brim of his hat, like a cowboy, before he finished the last of his whiskey and walked to the back door.

Before he got to the door, Charlie turned back to Marty, who was mopping up the last of the Wheeler DNA, pulled out a picture of a young brunette, and asked, “Hey, Marty, have you seen this girl around by chance?”

Marty stopped mopping and looked at the picture real thoughtfully, taking his time, then shook his head and answered, “Sorry, Charlie, no. I’ve never seen her before.”

Charlie thanked him again and walked out the back door.

Marty thought it strange that the man had chosen to head out the back door, since that was probably where the Wheelers were waiting for him. After Charlie was through the door, Marty made his way back there and peeked out, just to make sure the cops or an ambulance wouldn’t need to be called for the new guy in town. The Wheelers were too stupid to back down from a fight, even when they weren’t half in the bag, and they weren’t the type to take a lickin’ with a smile. Anyone who knew them knew they’d just convince each other that revenge was the best way to go, something about family honor, as if they even knew what honor really meant.

Jimmy, true to his reputation, was on the warpath, and he thought it was a good idea to get the lever-action .22 from under the seat of his truck. He used it for shooting squirrels or street signs, but a stranger in a porkpie hat who’d hit him in the throat would be a good target, too, at least for a scare.

The trouble was, even that plan didn’t work so well—at least not for Jimmy. Charlie just kept up that same sort of wander, right into the path of the gun, all the while making it look like his attention was on the little cigarillo he’d pulled from a small brown case and placed in his lips, unlit. In an instant, Charlie grabbed the stock of the gun that was damn near in his chest and popped it up, smacking Jimmy in the nose to give him a matching injury to his brothers. Jimmy, dumbfounded, hit the ground with a handful of blood. Charlie took a look at the gun in his hands. He racked the lever a few times, and a single .22 shell bounced off the pavement. He gave the Wheeler boys a what-were-you-thinking kind of look before he dug in his pocket and pulled out a knife. Petey took a step back, and Jimmy scooted back on his butt, both of them still leaking crimson from their nose. Porkpie Charlie didn’t have bad intentions though; he simply took the knife to the gun—not the brothers—and unscrewed the bolt, popping the lever clear.

He dropped the dismembered corpse of the useless weapon on the ground and held up the lever. “I’m keeping this,” he said, and then went on his way.

The Wheeler boys just stared at each other, each working out in their own slow way how they might explain their shattered noses and swollen eyes to people.

Meanwhile, Charlie rolled down his sleeves and lit his cigarillo with a small plastic lighter, blowing a puff of smoke that hung in the cold night air as he wandered down the street toward the building with a search light that arched into the sky. The same place Marty had been hoping to go to before all the commotion started.

The DJ played some Top 40s song that Charlie didn’t know off the top of his head, not that his attention was so much on the music as on the girl seated next to him at the high-top table, scantily clad in an ensemble that must have had her feeling a bit drafty—everywhere. Even so, she didn’t act the least bit cold.

Her eyes moved from Charlie’s eyes up to his hat. “Nice hat. You in a band or something?” She had glitter on her cheeks and smeared across the top of her chest to give glisten to her ample cleavage. Occasionally, the reflection off a disco ball over the main stage glinted on her skin, causing her to sparkle just a bit.

The lights were low, almost off, and the accent lights around the room were a pinkish red. Charlie had heard once that strip clubs did that intentionally to hide the imperfections on their girls’ skin. There was a faint makeup line around the girl’s chin, kind of like a mask, but she really didn’t look to have all that bad of a complexion. He saw a pimple or two as well, but that came as no surprise, she clearly hadn’t left her teen years behind that long ago; she couldn’t have been much older than twenty-two, if that. Her soft green eyes were hidden behind too much eye shadow and mascara. She had delicate features, but those were all hidden away behind a veil of someone else’s expectations.

“I played a little trumpet in fourth grade,” Charlie said, “but the teacher said I couldn’t do a good purse, so I switched to trombone and played that a little while. I learned to play just by looking at the sheet. I couldn’t tell an A from an E, so I left the reading music to the better players.” Charlie looked up and around, like he could see the music in the air. “I’m not really much for this Top 40s stuff. I just heard that song ‘Janine’. I quite liked that years ago, but I’m sure it was before your time.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard it,” the girl said.

“It’s good. The first time I heard it, I was down in Brazil doing some consulting work. I was at this little bar filled with locals, all of whom were a whole lot darker than me. I got more than a few stares, but my eyes were stuck on this one girl. She was pretty, though not as pretty as you.”

The stripper smiled politely.

“Still, she had this way of moving when that song came on. I’ve got no idea why that song was on a Brazilian jukebox, but still. She stood in the middle of the floor and swayed her hips from side to side as if the music had wrapped around her. It was just…beautiful. They aren’t much for whiskey down there, but they like rum, and there’s this fancy-sounding drink called
caipirinhas,
I think. Damn tasty, strong too. I think I passed out that night staring at her dance.”

The girl laughed, but it was forced—the kind of chuckle a salesman would make in an effort to seem human when all they cared about were the dollar signs.

“You talk funny,” she said.

“Sorry,” Charlie said. “It’s the only way I know how.”

“Do you want a dance?” she asked.

Charlie looked around. “Where? I don’t see a dance floor, other than the stage.”

The girl laughed again. “Uh…not that kind of dance.” She smiled again, so much so that Charlie noticed how much he switched between a smile and blank stare. “I’ll do tables for twenty and a private booth for forty. We’ve also got a VIP room for bed dances, if you’d like to be more comfortable.”

“Oh. Not right now,” Charlie said. “I’m just enjoying the company at the moment.” He resisted looking down at her cleavage, but it was an uphill battle. “So…where are you from?” he asked.

Her brow furrowed for a second, like Charlie was a waste of time, then something about the girl lightened for a moment, and she seemed a little less like a stripper and more like someone a guy might meet in a bar—a real girl he’d want to buy a drink for. “Well, if you can believe it, I’m not too far from here originally.” Her words came out tentatively over the sound of the throbbing bass hits. “I even played the lead in the high school musical, and I wanted to get outta this bum-fuck town and try Hollywood.”

“Ya don’t say.”

“I know, right,” she said and scooted a little closer on her stool, more comfortable sharing her life outside the red lights and glitter. “When I finally got out there, the place was just crawling with sleaze-bags who wanted to get me on a casting couch and make girls work for their roles, all the while telling them how big of a star they were gonna be. Not that it ever happened to me, but it sure did happen to a friend of mine. Anyway, I realized I could make a lot more money working at clubs. It’d be more of a sure thing. So, long story short, I moved out to Vegas for about six months, until I heard about the auditions for exotic dancers back here. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, who woulda thought I’d be able to make more money working the stage back here in North Dakota than in Sin City, right? All those oil workers are dragging in all that dough, and they’ve got nothing to spend it on in this nothing-happening town. So, I came up for the tryouts, and here I am.”

“Here you are,” Charlie said.

A round of applause filled the room as the DJ announced over the sound system, “Let’s give a big hand for Destiny on the main stage…”

A few hoots and hollers and inappropriate remarks and cat calls ensued, and the aforementioned Destiny picked up her scattered parcels of clothing, as well as the singles that filled the brass rail around the phallic bulge of a main stage. All around the stage lined seats, Charlie had heard it called Sniffers Row or The Erection Section, neither was much to his taste, but when in Rome. Most of the guys had at least one empty bottle next to them and were working through another. Some faces were still showed flecks of dried dirt and mud, peeling like a snake shedding its skin to show a new form underneath. A lot of the guys in the club worked twelve hour shifts and went straight to the closest bottle, not a whole lot of layers to contend with. It was a simple pattern, but hard life.

“Next up…my girl, Coco…”

A waitress in a sequined halter top came by to ask if either Charlie or the girl, whose made-up name Charlie couldn’t remember, wanted anything to drink.

Charlie asked for a Coke, as he had no inclination to pay obscene strip club prices for whiskey. Even the Coke cost him nine dollars.

“How about you, Dee Dee?” the waitress asked.

Dee Dee batted her eyes and acted as if she was flirting with the waitress, then answered, “No thanks. I’m fine.”

Charlie was pleasantly surprised that she didn’t even ask him to buy her a drink, but it made him smile even more than her name and its cup-size implications.

“You’re different than the usual guys who come in here,” Dee Dee said after the waitress walked away.

“Really?” Charlie asked. “How so?”

Dee Dee smiled sweetly and batted her eyes at Charlie flirtatiously, it was a practiced move, simple, but Charlie liked the attempt. “I dunno. You’re definitely not like the rig workers. They’re always flashing their cash around, making promises they don’t intend to keep, and talking a big game. You just…like to listen.”

“Of course,” Charlie said. “How else would I get to know people?”

“And you want to get to know me?” Dee Dee asked with a wry little smile.

“Actually, I’d like to buy you a drink, but only if we go somewhere else. No offense, but it’d be better someplace quiet, just the two of us, where we could talk. Just talk.”

Dee Dee’s eyebrow twitched, and she looked down at the tabletop. “I’m flattered, but we’re not supposed to date customers.”

“All I did was buy a Coke,” Charlie said with a smile.  “If it’d make you feel better, I could cancel my order, and then I wouldn’t technically be a customer, would I?”

Dee Dee smiled again. “I guess not.”

“Then again, I don’t want to sound rude or like I’m just laying a line. I’m sure guys try to lay a line on you all the time,” he said with a smile, tipping his porkpie at her.

“Is that what you’re doing? Laying a line?” Dee Dee asked.

Charlie looked at her for a while, right in the eyes, without so much as a blink and told her a firm no. He liked her, and he had no problem telling her so. Because of that, he wanted to sit down like two normal people and have a drink.

“Normal?” The word didn’t seem to resonate with Dee Dee at first, but then something changed in her face, all at once. Her voice shifted from what sounded like a come-on to more of a lilt, some semblance of affection or at least a little interest. Charlie could feel her bare foot rub the inside of his calf. “You wanna give me your phone number?” she asked.

“I would, but I don’t have a phone,” Charlie said.

“You don’t own a phone?”

“I rather talk to people in person.”

For the first time in the conversation, Dee Dee looked confused. “How do you make plans?”

“I figure that I just show up where I say I’ll be when I saw I’ll be there. That usually works just fine.”

“What’s did you say your name is?” Dee Dee asked over the blaring music. Her hand had found a less-than-subtle way of tracing up and down the length of his forearm.

“Charlie,” he said, tipping his hat again. “Charlie Kelly.” Which it wasn’t, but he liked to say so on account of it sounding Irish, which he wasn’t, but he enjoyed the whiskey and the accent.