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Two: make sure she didn’t get all weepy on Benjy and soften him up. Which was a definite danger.
I stayed outside the front door of the Veils, smoking a cigar in the parking lot, until I heard the DJ’s muffled voice say, “Now let’s give a hand to the goddess of love Venus, who’s here to rock your ‘wild thang’… worship her with your dollar bills, gentlemen!”
I walked through the front door and startled Peanut at the register.
“We got a pair of bolt cutters, right?” I asked.
“Huh?” he asked, glassy-eyed. Probably drunk.
“Bolt cutters, motherfucker, BOLT CUTTERS. Those things you cut goddamn chains with – not to mention fingers and toes? Look like a two-foot pair of pliers?”
“Uh – yeah, I think so…”
“Well go get ‘em and meet me in the green room.”
I walked past him and entered the club.
Venus was up on the stage. If the ‘goddess of love’ really was looking for worshippers, she’d come up with a sorry crop here. Just a couple of out-of-work truckers and dirty old men, all watching from the cheap seats. But, that was your typical crowd at 6PM.
She was doing a halfhearted job up there on the pole. Her face coulda been the picture in the dictionary next to ‘boredom.’
But as soon as she saw me, I swear to God she almost pissed herself from fear.
I glared at her, then walked on past without another look back.
I barged into the green room, where the dancers put on their makeup and get changed. The only two strippers in there whirled around, startled, and then calmed down when they saw it was just me.
“Shit, Lou, you almost made me stab myself in the eye,” one of them said as she went back to applying her mascara.
“Get out,” I said.
They both looked at me like deer in the headlights.
“Do you understand fuckin’ English or not? GET OUT!” I roared as I threw a chair across the room. They both shrieked and beat a hasty retreat.
I went over to the lockers. The girls didn’t trust each other with their shit, which was probably the smartest thing about them, so the Veils provided banged-up gym lockers to store their purses and clothes. There were locks on a number of them – padlocks, dials, the little flip kinds with numbers – but I knew which one was Venus’s. As top dancer in the club, she’d claimed the top center locker. Nobody else ever touched it.
There was a shitty little dial lock through the loop. Probably could’ve used a hammer on it and busted it open, but just then Peanut walked in the with bolt cutters. “I found ‘em, Lou.”
“Give ‘em here and get back out front.”
Once he was gone, I took the cutters to the metal loop on the lock. One hard squeeze of the handles and the blades bit right through the metal: CLICK.
Easier than takin’ off a pinky.
I tossed the lock and looked inside. There was her metal-studded leather purse and her street clothes. I rummaged through the purse and pulled out her phone, which was in a rhinestone-covered case. It was one of those really old ones, the kind with a button on the front that could read your fingerprint. I tried to open the lock screen, but the damn thing had a code. Either that or you could use your fingerprint.
I slipped the phone in my pocket and waited. I let the bolt cutters dangle behind my leg, out of sight.
She finally came in after the end of the second song. She eyed me anxiously – until she saw her open locker. Then she got mad as a hornet in a paper bag.
“What the fuck, Lou?!” she shouted as she ran over and started scrabbling through her purse.
“You lookin’ for your phone?” I asked. “I’m going to keep it safe for you until after our meeting tonight.”
“GIVE IT TO ME!” she yelled, and started beating her tiny fists against my chest.
That’s when I put a hand around her neck and slammed her against the nearest wall.
