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At eight at night, the bartenders and waitresses were getting ready for another night of out of control partying with dancers in cages suspended from the ceiling and a DJ booth housing only the top names in the business. Although Wicked was billed as a strip club, men and woman alike came to see the spectacle and be a part of the best show in town.
Mamba nodded to some of the wait staff and exchanged fist bumps with the bouncers he knew. Samson approached him about heading the security almost a year ago, and now he was working two sometimes four nights a week.
Mamba kept his game face in place as he made his way to the elevator bank in the back of the club while in his head a circus of swirling thoughts and doubts collided. The elevator whisked him to the third-floor offices. Mamba rapped his knuckles against the door of Samson’s office, then entered.
Samson had his back to him looking through the two-way glass wall in his office overlooking the club. “Sometimes I can’t believe Nick and I did this.”
Mamba joined him at the window peering down over the vacuous club that in another few hours would be pulsing and shaking with energy.
Samson motioned to the sitting area off to the side. “So, what’s up?”
Mamba loved Samson’s straight-forward New York ways. No beating around the bush, just fuckin’ out there and in your face.
“What happened to how the hell are you, and all that other bullshit?” Mamba deferred because he hadn’t found the right words to explain his latest fuck up or how he expected Samson to help him.
“Your call sounded desperate especially for you. A guy who can handle drunks two at a time while breaking up a cat fight.”
Mamba laughed at the memory. Two weeks before, all hell broke loose when the bride-to-be caught her almost husband getting way more than a lap dance in one of the private Champagne Rooms. The fight spilled out onto the main floor and Mamba stepped in tossed out the rowdy bachelors, then separated the two feuding females who were far more dangerous than the men. Glasses broke, and hair extensions flew as the bride tore at the stripper’s costume until she was almost buck naked.
“Crazy fuckin’ night.”
“But I’m sure you didn’t come up here to talk about old times. So, spill.”
“I want your opinion about something. No big deal.”
“Right, that’s why you texted me twice at one a.m. and when I didn’t answer you followed it up with a call.”
Mamba looked over his shoulder like someone might be listening. Ridiculous but his paranoia was jacked beyond control. “I made the delivery last night.”
“And?”
“And it went exactly as planned. Easy as shit. Drive a paneled van over to Barstow, deliver the goods, and get gone.”
“Okay, so did they try to stiff you, not give you what they promised.”
“No, it was me who bowed out.”
“Shit, man, quit talking in riddles.”
“When I got to Barstow, this wonky tweaker was waiting for me. Basically, toothless and skinny as shit. He’s all excited about receiving this cargo. I’m thinking the guy’s jazzed from the meth, but then he says he wants to show me what I transported. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s artillery, since that’s the usual product, but I play along with the guy to move shit along. So, he unlocks the van’s doors and I nearly shit.”
“It wasn’t guns?”
“More like pre-teen girls.” Mamba swallowed hard picturing their frightened faces.
“Fuck!”
“Yeah, exactly.” Mamba scrubbed his hand over his face.
“What did you do?”
“My brain spun with ideas of how I could take this skinny ass guy down and free the girls when the next minute two guys bigger than us come out with automatics pointed in my direction.” Mamba dragged his hand over his jaw. “I felt so fuckin’ helpless.”
“Were you strapped?”
“I had my .38 on me, but I wouldn’t have gotten my hand on it before they started blasting. Hardest thing I ever had to do was walk away from that fuck up.”
“That is fucked up. Even back in New York we never dealt with any of that shit.”
