Bad Things (2 page)

Xavier grinned. “And how would you know if I’ve been in love or not?”

“Because. I would have seen it in your face.”

Fucking hell, she looked sad. It made him crazy, the way people put their heart into wanting things for you, when you didn’t even want them for yourself.

She glanced at her phone. “Shit. I’ve gotta go. Stay if you want, and make yourself something to eat. Got your key with you?”

“
Yeah. Want me to stay with you tonight?”

“
No. I’m okay.”

“
Call if you change your mind. Even if it’s three in the morning.”

“
Okay.”

Hugging her good-bye, a faint echo of the ache he’d felt when he’d gotten the call nine years earlier, three months after she’d been raped, pained his chest. When he’d sat by her hospital bed, hoping she’d regain consciousness after they’d pumped her stomach, waiting to find out if it was still Elena inside that gray, still body, behind that blank face.

But when the door clicked shut behind her, that sad ache was crushed under a growing, shapeless rage, a mutant offspring of the fierce, never-purged hate of the nameless, faceless men who’d hurt Elena. A yearning for vengeance more prodding than any urge he’d ever felt, a need that had been gestating inside him for a decade.

Soothing, driving the ink under sun-darkened skin, changing a man’s body forever with a patient, subtle touch. Jacob had smelled of scented soap. Sandalwood. This guy smelled of sweat: not stale, a good, healthy smell. Dark nipples visible through his wife beater.

But this one was straight, a warning beacon flickering in his eyes when they’d met. All challenge and guardedness, like an adolescent silverback gorilla facing off against the alpha.

Tiny pearls of blood swelled and glistened: dark, opaque jewels in heavy contrast to the lush cerulean of the alien vixen’s body the guy had asked him to copy onto his bicep. Each time Xavier pressed the gauze to his skin, those sparkling gems lost their glimmer, and bloomed like poppies on the weave of white. He always enjoyed the blood. Like touching a part of a person’s being. It was intimate. Like sweat. Like semen.

Sometimes the exchange of ink for blood felt like a beautiful bond, but today it had that coldness slithering around his guts again. Not the blood, but his love of it. Each time he dabbed the gauze against the man’s tan, softly swollen muscle and saw that flowering crimson, Xavier wondered how much his ache for those drops of blood, for the worried whimpers of a submissive lover, were distorted refractions of the brutality of those men the night before. Of the men who’d hurt his sister.

Between clients he dug into Elena’s files. Not much new. The only viable lead was a gentlemen’s club that had recently opened downtown, a possible front for the real operation. Gomorrah.

Que puta pendejo comes up with these fucking names?

All the usual suspects coming and going: three Americans and two Ukrainians. Xavier had been pissed he’d procrastinated going to the other club until it was too late and they’d shut their doors, but now he was glad. He knew them. Dossiers. Photos. But they didn’t know him. So there’d be nothing to raise any hackles if he showed up at Gomorrah some night to check things out.

But he was back to the same problem that had kept him away from Venus. He’d need a wing man, someone straight, in both senses of the word. Xavier had straight friends. But his straight friends looked like they’d go to Jumbo’s Clown Room and stuff a couple singles into a few thongs, not ply cocktail waitresses with twenties for sixty seconds of conversation.

Despite a two-hour workout after he finished up at Second Skin, like usual when he was aggravated, Xavier woke up in the middle of the night. 3:37 a.m. Fifty-fifty chance he’d get back to sleep. For once he was glad, though, because suddenly he knew how to get a peek inside Gomorrah.

What he’d do, if he somehow managed to tap a vein, get under the surface, close to the heart, was still up for grabs. Mostly, he fantasized about being brought into the pack, finding himself alone in some back room with one of the big players whose dossier he’d seen among Elena’s files, and slowly devouring him—maybe literally—over the course of hours or days while his victim begged and cried. But usually, when he’d fed on that fantasy for a while, Xavier reminded himself that the better thing, the thing that would actually damage the organization, and not just wreck the body and soul of one expendable man, the thing that would truly help the women being kidnapped and held prisoner, was to get his hands on some real evidence, and turn it over to Elena.

He did his research. Easy, because at the gym he had three sparring partners who were bouncers, so he got an idea of what a club owner would be looking for. Questions to expect, good answers to those questions, answers to avoid.

Once he’d put in his application, he went to check out the scene at the competitors. Four consecutive nights surrounded by bare tits and cheesy guys who thought they were players because they bought magnums of obnoxiously expensive champagne, smoked reeking cigars and hordes of plastic-titted Barbies flirted with them all night because they were fed on a steady diet of twenty dollar bills. He watched the talent, hoping some incident would send the bouncers into action, but even that aspect of his foray was as dull as the rest of it.

After some research online, he ordered everything he thought might be useful: audio gear, recording devices, transmitters, and a tiny camera he could hide on his clothes.

It was a hefty price tag, but the thought he might not get hired didn’t really cross his mind. If it fluttered briefly into his consciousness, he swatted it away, and it never came back. He’d always been like that. People thought he was cocky, but really he just put all of his focus on the thing he wanted: a job, a man, a pack of kidnapping, raping pieces of shit he was aching to beat to death with his bare hands (but he promised himself over and over that he wouldn’t). Fixated a hundred percent on the thing he wanted, he forgot himself. It wasn’t cockiness, it was self-abnegation.

The afternoon of the interview he dug out the shirt and slacks hanging in his closet, untouched since he’d worn them to his father’s funeral three years ago. The long sleeves covered all his ink and the stiff shoes crushed his toes. Weird, seeing himself in the mirror: a man in a prison uniform, finally caught and sent to do time in a life he’d always carefully avoided.

An aging, thickening ex-jar head named Brian Sanders did the interviewing, which he kicked off by eying Xavier head to toe like a rancher looking over a bull for sale at a county fair, and then from toe to head like a fighter sizing up his opponent. Xavier suppressed a grin. One of the most amusing aspects—and one of the most useful—of being taller and bigger and tougher-looking than almost every guy out there, was that most people assumed he wasn’t very smart.

Brian looked at the resume Xavier had handed him. Either the guy was severely dyslexic, or he was keeping Xavier waiting on purpose because the single page headed by a false name and transposed street address merited about sixty seconds of attention, but Brian stared at it for at least three minutes.

“Eighteen months at Über Alles.”

“
Yes, Sir.” Xavier did his best to match his voice and eyes to the humility of his reply. His occasional fuck buddy Nicolas would lie for him, if Sanders decided to check references.

“
Nine months at Bounce.”

“
Yes, Sir.” His sparring partner Damone had that one covered.

“
And…Catacombs.”

“
Yes, Sir.”

“
This is an entirely different scene.”

“
Which is exactly what I’m looking for, Sir.”

“
And why’s that?”

“
I’d prefer to spend my time in a more mature, sophisticated atmosphere.”

Sanders smiled. He was less ugly when he wasn’t smiling. “So, you’re too sophisticated for those other clubs, eh?”

Pinche pendejo
. Xavier gave Sanders the smile that came on when he found other people funny, but pretended to be laughing at himself. “No, Sir. It’s more that I think I’d benefit from the influence.”

Sanders eyed him skeptically, then ignored Xavier for another three minutes while he stared at his resume again. “Tell me about your martial arts training.”

Since he rarely cared what other people thought of him, Xavier had very little practice with lying. It was easier when he didn’t have to. “I’ve been a student of Wing Chun since I was fourteen.”

“
Wing Chun? What’s that?”

“
A branch of Kung Fu.”

“
You’re probably used to getting a lot of tail. But not here. That’s why we got rid of the last guy. We don’t put up with that kind of drama and distraction.”

“
That won’t be a problem, Sir.”

“
Yeah, sure. That’s what they all say. And then I find them in the dressing room getting their dick sucked.”

“
Well, I won’t be accepting any blow jobs from the ladies here.”

“
Faithful to the little woman, are you?”

Xavier weighed his friends’ advice to hide the fact that he was gay at all costs, against the shadow of threatened envy in Sanders’s gaze. Sanders might hate gays, but he struck Xavier as the type to hate men who threatened his standing as alpha more than anything in the world.

“I don’t fuck women.” Xavier savored the way Sanders’s shock altered his features. Funny how many straight guys were startled to find out he was queer. “So, I won’t be a distraction to the young ladies working here. And they won’t be a distraction to me, Sir.”

The next day he got the call telling him to be at the club at eight.

Hopefully the friend of a friend who’d set him up with the fake identity was telling the truth, and actually knew what he was talking about, and Sanders would have no way of finding out Xavier Rivera was a ghost. At least Xavier knew, if they caught him in his deceit, there was no way to trace him to Elena.

While he filled out his contract and the W2, Xavier studied the office. He had the bugs with him, but Sanders didn’t leave him alone for one fucking second. Better to wait, anyway; maybe this wasn’t the only office. Maybe the bosses met in another room, if they even came to this place at all. If this was Sanders’s office, maybe he made phone calls here—that might make planting one bug worthwhile. But Xavier had his doubts that Sanders was deep enough in the inner circle to be privy to anything important. Still, a safe mounted in the wall caught his attention—maybe something interesting was tucked away in there.

Gomorrah wasn’t your typical titty bar. Yes, it had the standard cast of characters. Brian Sanders, the petty dictator, another guy who was tough and strong, but who’d never be as tough and strong as he thought he was, a measure which still fell way short of how tough and strong he wished he were. So, like most tiny dogs who yip at all the mastiffs and pit bulls that would tear them to shreds if they merited the interest, Brian spent the evenings at the club barking and growling in a sad effort to convince everyone—himself most of all—that he existed.

Then there was the muscle: three bouncers, besides Xavier. Within hours, Xavier knew Eric was the guru (in boxing, in Kung Fu, in bar work, there was always one guy whose mission was to impart his wisdom about everything, from which move was the best defense against a knife ambush from behind, to how to spot trouble in a customer’s eyes an hour before that customer had even thought of having his fourth drink and turning into a total asshole). Jeff was a career bouncer because all his self-esteem came from knowing he could beat up any one of the rich assholes who patronized the bar. The affable giant, Joey, was probably only doing security work because he was frankly too stupid to do much else.

There was the bartender, surprisingly bright-eyed and earnest for someone who worked in that kind of scene, and who looked like he might already be thirty. Oddly bashful, too, for a guy who was so fucking pretty. Tall, lean build. Huge blue eyes thickly fringed with long dark lashes, those eyes twice as striking for their contrast with his black, wavy hair. A shy but wide smile to make your heart warm and your cock hard. He’d be good to get next to over a drink now and then after his shift, because everyone talks to the bartender. Hopefully this one’s discretion wouldn’t be too difficult to undermine.

And, of course, there were the girls. Excepting his recent research excursions, Xavier hadn’t spent much time in strip clubs, but he had the feeling the ladies of Gomorrah were a class above your standard stripper. He guessed they were all between twenty-five and thirty-five. They were friendly, but not aggressively so—not with the muscle, not with the guy behind the bar, and not with the customers. Polite smiles, some friendly banter, zero sign of cattiness or drama. All of which had him curious. Not suspicious, exactly, but definitely curious.

But the club was something else. He’d expected the lawyers, bankers, and Hollywood producers throwing their money around to enjoy a couple hours of sitting there with a hard-on under the table. What was weird, what was completely fucking bizarre, was the service the girls provided.

Three of them were the ’artists,’ Jeff explained as he showed him around the club, introducing Xavier to the staff and explaining in vague terms how the place operated while Xavier observed one of them in action. The artists took turns waiting on their respective tables. First, they took drink orders. This ritual included presenting the gentlemen with an array of coasters, each with photographs of naked girls, and each client took his pick. After the drinks had been served, the cocktail waitress/artist returned with three or four of her colleagues, all completely nude, and the guys at the table would choose one from the batch. The chosen girl became the canvas, upon whose body the artist proceeded to paint a kind of collage, apparently inspired by the furtively whispered or loudly pronounced fantasies of the men. At the end of the two or three hours it took to complete her work, the artist would photograph her living canvas, head to toe, apparently with the promise that the digital images would be forwarded to the interested parties.

Brian intercepted them, scowling at Jeff. “The customers come here to enjoy the spectacle, not to be stared at and talked about like animals in the zoo. You couldn’t give Xavier the tour from the sidelines?”

“Sorry, Brian.” Jeff sounded genuinely contrite, cowed by the boss’s disapproval.

To Xavier, Brian said, “You need to keep an eye on the scene, but the clientele should barely know you’re here.”

“Got it,” Xavier said. “I can do discreet and unobtrusive.”

“
Good.” Brian put a paternal hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Show him the break room and the lockers and everything. Then you two do a shift on the front door, all right?”

When Brian walked away, Jeff sighed and cast a lingering glance at the brunette getting her upraised ass painted at a nearby table. “The door’s the crap shift. If I have to be on my feet all night, I at least want some decent scenery.”

“Thanks, gorgeous.”

Autumn smiled up at Carson from under her false lashes, and slid the tray of drinks off the bar, onto her palm and balanced it at shoulder height as if it weighed nothing, or as if she were stronger than her tiny frame suggested. Carson was never sure if she was flirting, or just being friendly.

Between orders, he went back to watching the new bouncer. Even walking around next to Jeff, the new guy looked like he belonged to another species. Not just because he was unusually tall and incredibly broad (but without Brian’s paunch), but because there was something strange, something animal about the way he looked around. Like a predator stalking prey in the dark, even though Jeff was just giving him the first-night tour.

When those dark, predator’s eyes peered into the alcove of the bar and locked on him for a few seconds, Carson’s whole body launched into red alert, as if he’d turned a bend on a hiking trail and come face to face with a grizzly baring its fangs. And when Brian went up to them, gesturing toward the back, probably telling Jeff what to show his apprentice next, the new guy stood there looking at Brian like—what? Not exactly like his next meal. Maybe more the way a lion looks at a hyena—not prey, but something lower down the food chain.

When Brian walked away, he lumbered back behind the bar, grabbed a pilsner glass and filled it to the lip with water from the tap. “Drink it down.”

The guy had made stranger requests. Carson gulped it down in seven big swallows, like he’d done with milk as a kid, racing the clock for fun. Brian took the glass from him, filled it back up, and handed it back to him. “Again.”

Carson laughed. Why did Brian make him so nervous and weird?
“In half an hour, we’re gonna be slammed and I won’t have time to go to the men’s room. Pretty sure the clientele’s gonna be unimpressed if they catch me pissing in the sink back here when they come to order their G&Ts.”

“
Know what I like about being the boss here?”

Getting paid to be a huge douche?

“Never having to say, ’Pretty please.’ I say do it, and you do it.”

Carson drank the water. He could just picture Brian giving that speech to one of the girls, only it wouldn’t be a glass of water he’d be ordering her to swallow.

“Now, try not to be a total retard. Don’t make it obvious what we’re talking about. But you know the new muscle? The seven foot wetback?”

Jesus.

“Yeah. I know who you mean.”

“
Next time he goes to the john, you go, too. And not before. I don’t care if your eyeballs are turning yellow. You fucking hold it until that guy goes to the john.

“
Um…okay…”

“
You watch him. If he makes a phone call, you listen, and you tell me word for word what he says.”

“
And if he just pees?”

“
Then you watch him pee, and you tell me how accurate his aim is.” Brian’s mouth bent in the creepy, thin-lipped grin Carson had only seen when he was talking to one of the girls. “And if he asks you to hold his dick for him and to shake it dry, after, do it. With a smile.”

Carson laughed.

Brian’s grin disappeared. “I saw him looking you over. That faggot has a serious hard-on for you.”

An ugly thrill tickled down Carson’s spine, and his stomach rolled. “What? You want me to give him a fucking hand-job in the men’s room? I’m not fucking gay.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to let him ride the Hershey highway. Play hard to get. Impersonate your favorite cock tease. Even you must have been left with blue balls at the end of a date at least once. Just keep an eye on our resident queer for me. I need to decide whether he’s just around for exhibition week, or whether we’re going to put him on the team.”

Four days in. Finally a chance to prove a bit of his worth.

Xavier’s attention was yanked into the northeast corner of the club by Charlotte’s voice. You never heard the girls, unless they were talking directly to you. Charlotte was on her back, legs spread, a collage of red, orange and gray half covering her inner thigh. Arched over her, Carly, the artist, whispering something to the client who had his hand planted firmly on the canvas’s crotch. Charlotte was trying to squirm out from under the grasp of the grayish, doughy man’s hand, her voice pitching higher and higher, “That’s against the rules! You can’t touch me! Get your hands off me!” drawing the stares of most of the customers and a few of the girls scattered among the other tables. Unlike Charlotte, Carly was keeping calm, although her expression suggested she might enjoy giving the gray doughboy a Colombian necktie if she’d had a scalpel handy.

Xavier strode to the table and in two small movements had the
pinche pendejo
’s hand off of Charlotte.

“
Sir, as you were informed at the door, touching the ladies is strictly prohibited.”

“
Yeah, yeah. All right.” His breath. His eyes. He was drunk, probably five whiskeys in.

“
I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave, Sir.”

He wasn’t fat. He was just so soft, like his skeleton was made of rubber, embedded in a mass of undifferentiated flesh instead of skin and fat and muscle and sinew. “Look, I said all right. I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

“I’m afraid it’s policy, Sir. I think we’d both prefer it if you stood up and left quietly. But if you won’t, I’ll escort you out.”

“
Hey, fuck you, man. I said I was sorry.”

“
Let’s go, Sir.” Xavier slipped his grip around his arm, just under the pit.

“
Get your fucking hands off me.”

The guy yanked back, slipped free of Xavier’s loose grip, and gave him a sudden shove that probably cost Doughy all his strength, but which barely drove Xavier back two inches. It had been a long time since he’d been so suddenly flooded with such a pleasant surge of adrenaline, but Xavier reined himself in, kept his expression composed, and did everything calmly. Careful not to leave a single bruise, he lifted the guy out of the booth, set him on his feet, and with both his hands caught his arms, this time in a serious grip the guy would not escape, and steered him forward, between the other tables, past the bar, and out the front door. As soon as Xavier had him outside, he let go.