Lance laughed and took a drink. “Yeah, me too.”
“They charge that much for the water here?” Cade asked.
He’d never stripped, but his stepmother had after Dad threw her and Lem out. The first rule was to get in good with the bouncers; the second was the customers got pissed and she got hydrated. It was a lot easier to take advantage of a drunk when you were sober.
“I finished my shift,” Lance said. He necked whatever he had in his glass and plucked one of the tumblers from the server’s tray. The woman gave him a disapproving look but didn’t say anything as she unloaded the salsa and the last glass. Lance waited until she was gone before he took another drink. “What do you want? Private shows are no-touching and—”
“We wanted to talk, not watch,” Marlow said. He took a chip from the bowl. Cade took it off him before he could eat it and gave Marlow an exasperated look. SKINNED was not the sort of strip club where the food was part of the draw, and he doubted good hygiene was either. Cade tossed the chip back in the bowl, and Marlow gave him the finger. He ignored that. “About Ned Piper.”
What expression there was on Lance’s face shut down. He took a long drink of the whiskey and then set the glass down with a click, his fingers loose around the rim.
“What about him?”
Cade smiled, the professionally empty one he deployed at board meetings, and laced his fingers together.
“Certain individuals within the SDPD and outside it have encouraged me to take a look at Piper’s conviction,” he said. “They question how fair and measured his sentence was, considering all the good work he did and how many other people were involved.”
Lance pulled a sardonic face; the scars twisted at the expression in odd ways.
“Yeah, he was a saint. Does Piper know about this?”
“How else would we find you?” Marlow asked. “You’re not exactly on his list of known associates.”
“I’m not an associate.”
“Employee?” Cade suggested. “Contractor?”
Lance absently turned the glass in small, tight circles on the table, a wet trail dark against the scarred laminate. After a second, he picked it up and smacked it back down again with a click.
“I’m the fuckin’ help,” he said. “I just do what I’m told, and I guess, finally, he’s got something to tell me. So what is it? What’s he want me to say?”
Marlow’s knee tapped against Cade’s under the table. That didn’t sound like someone who’d been doing Piper’s dirty work. Willing to do it, maybe, but it wasn’t the dynamic that they had tailored their play for.
It wasn’t exactly a problem. Cade could think on his feet, and Marlow’s usual laid-back demeanor was useful for hiding whether he was flustered or not. But it would have been nice, just this once, if Cade got to look like he knew what he was doing.
Although, wasn’t Marlow meant to be the one doing the running now? That had been why Cade had forgiven him, hadn’t it?
The question hung around in Cade’s head as if it expected him to realize how profound it was. He dismissed it impatiently—he liked to be respected, he’d take envy as the next best thing, and that wasn’t new or exclusive to Marlow—and focused on the current problem.
“He told us you could get us what we needed,” Cade said as he worked on the mental edit of their approach.
“What?”
“Evidence,” Marlow said. “His safety net. All the people he could bring down if things don’t go his way.”
Lance rubbed his scarred socket with the knuckle of his thumb. “Hasn’t he wrung that well of favors dry already?”
“This is what happens to a spent favor,” Cade said. “It becomes leverage. It becomes a trading card.”
Lance’s eye flickered from Cade to Marlow, and he bit his lower lip as he shook his head.
“Yeah, fuck off,” he said. “I’m not biting.”
Cade let himself look annoyed. “I didn’t come here to waste my time,” he said. “If you want proof of my bona fides, I can get it—“
“I’m sure you can,” Lance said. He braced his hands on the table to push himself up. “Until Piper tells me otherwise, go fuck yourself.”
Marlow reached over the table and grabbed Lance’s wrist. “Sit down,” he said. “Or I’ll call Vice and have this place raided.”
