Blue Desire (15 page)

I’ve got to stop
thinking like a cop
.
But Brett knew it would never go away entirely.

The
boy—he couldn’t have been more than twenty, and Brett suspected he used a fake
ID to get into the club, because his hand wasn’t stamped with the mark they
used to indicate people who were too young to legally drink—came out of the
bathroom a few minutes later looking glassy-eyed. You didn’t get that look from
sniffing sodium bicarbonate. But he dived into the crowd, and Brett saw him
dancing wildly before he lost sight of him.

Brett
decided he might as well dance himself. Being big wasn’t an advantage in a
crowd like this if you wanted to dance, but the music put him in the mood. He
looked up at Kat, her eyes shining as she watched the crowd get into the
groove.
Tomorrow night, my little kitty,
I’m going to make you moan in pleasure
. He suspected he wasn’t the only man
getting hard from watching Kat play—and maybe a few had eyes for Cindy as
well—but he was the only one who was going to sleep with her. He could wait
until tomorrow night. He’d save it up for her.

The
drug dealer may have left, but everyone else was staying. By the end of the
encore, the place was still full of people hoping Kat and Cindy would come out
again. Only when they were finally convinced there would be no more music did
they start to file out.

The
place was mostly empty, and Cindy and Kat and another woman had gotten their
stuff off the stage when Darren and Lisa walked over to him, their faces
shining with sweat. Darren had his arm around Lisa’s waist. “You want to join
us for some drinks?” asked Darren.

“Sure.
Might as well,” Brett replied. There wasn’t any sense in him hanging around and
getting in Kat and Cindy’s way, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to be the
third wheel with Darren and Lisa for long. Still, it would be good to catch up
with his friends.
“Where to?”

“I
saw a little bar called Vertigo,” said Lisa.

“That’s
not a bar. That’s a strip club,” Brett said.

Lisa
blushed. “Oops.”

“It’s
your area, Brett,” Darren pointed out.

“How about Kelly’s, down Calvert Street?”

“Sounds
good,” said Darren.

The
kid Brett had spotted earlier with the white powder walked past. He didn’t look
high anymore. He just looked green, and he was headed toward the bathroom. You
heard reports of drugs getting laced with all sorts of nasty stuff, even rat
poison. The fact was, rat poison was too expensive, and the goal of sticking
other stuff in people’s drugs was generally to increase the profit margin not
to kill the customer base even faster than they already were. The kid was
having an adverse reaction. “I’ll meet you guys there.
Just a
minute.”

Brett
followed the boy into the bathroom, adjusting his pants to make it look like he
had business there. He got there in time to watch the kid throw up into the
sink. It wasn’t pretty, but maybe it would be a lesson. He didn’t interfere but
watched as the boy cleaned himself up. He even cleaned the surface around the
sink. It looked like he’d be okay. Good enough.

Then
the kid pulled out the baggie and poured a line of white powder on the
porcelain, and Brett couldn’t take the stupidity of it anymore.

“
Y’know
,” he said, “I might be a cop.”

The
kid looked up. He obviously had no idea he was being watched. Of course, he
hadn’t looked around either. Maybe he’d been too busy throwing up.

“Huh?”
A moment later, “Are you?”

Brett
didn’t answer. He’d told plenty of lies to criminals when he’d been a cop. It
was often part of the job. But he wasn’t about to go to impersonate a police
officer. “I suggest you go to the stall right there—keep the door open, so I
can watch you—and empty that little bag right down the toilet. Then toss the
bag in the trash can, and we’ll forget all about this.”

The
kid looked at Brett, at the bag, at Brett again, then at the toilet. Brett knew
he was thinking it was a waste. Brett was thinking it was a waste too but not
of the drugs.

“All
right,” said the kid. He went into the stall. He looked back, no doubt hoping
that Brett wasn’t watching closely enough, but he was disappointed. In the end,
he followed directions.

Brett
got a paper towel, wet it, and cleaned up the white powder from the sink. Then
he flushed the towel too.

“Shit,”
said the kid.

“What’s
your name?”

The
kid hesitated long enough to make up something. “Alex.”

“Can
I see some ID?”

Alex
sighed and fished out his ID. “Okay, okay, so my name’s really Carl.”

“It’s
stupid to lie to a police officer.” Brett wasn’t sure that was always true, but
it implied something he wanted to imply. He looked over the ID. It was a pretty
good fake, but it was still a fake. “Go home, kid. And stop doing stuff that
makes you sick.” He put the ID in his pocket.

The
kid opened his mouth, about to ask for it back, but changed his mind when he
met Brett’s gaze. He turned and ran.

By
the time Brett reached the street, there was no sign of Carl, if that was
really his name. A lot of kids with fake IDs to get into clubs did get their
real names on them. It made them feel grown-up. He might check out the address
later or ask a police friend to. There was a good chance it wasn’t real, but it
might be, and if Carl thought he was being watched, it might help him turn his
life around.

He
headed toward Kelly’s and recognized the couple in front of him. Well, he
recognized one of them, anyway. Cindy. Cindy’s arm was around a small brunette
in a tight
minidress
, and they slowed their stride
briefly to share a kiss as they walked, with the practiced ease of a couple who
had done it a hundred times before.
Couldn’t
bring a date, huh?
There wasn’t any doubt that Cindy and the girl
were
a couple. So why did Katrina say he couldn’t come? And
why wasn’t Katrina with them?

He
followed Cindy and her girlfriend all the way to Kelly’s and saw them get a
table next to Darren and Lisa. Katrina was nowhere to be seen. He doubled back.
Maybe a good man would have let it go, but he still thought like a cop. If
something wasn’t right, he wanted to know why.

He
got back to the Caravan Club in time to see Katrina slip out the front door and
head down the street in the opposite direction from Kelly’s. Keeping his
distance, he followed her. He was aware what he was doing bordered on stalking.
If Katrina was lying to him because she didn’t want to have a relationship with
him or because she had a date with someone else, there wasn’t a thing he could
or would do about it except let her go. He didn’t have to like it, though.

She
turned the corner and surprised him by walking into Vertigo. It wasn’t a place
women normally went—not as customers anyway. Contrary to the fantasies some men
entertained, even women who were into other women didn’t tend to want to hang
out at gentlemen’s clubs. If she was working there, he definitely wanted to
watch, but that seemed unlikely too.

And
okay, to be honest, he might want to watch, but only if he could clear out the
rest of the audience first. When had he gotten so possessive? He never got that
way about women.
Never
.
And it surprised him.

The
smart thing for a tail to do was wait a minute before barging in, in case she
was being held up by the bouncer inside. But he didn’t feel like doing the
smart thing. In fact, he should have called out to her on the street, and would
have had instincts not taken over. Sometimes he regretted ever having been a
cop. He walked in, flashed some ID to the amused large man in a too-tight black
shirt at the door who probably hadn’t been about to card him anyway, and then
pushed open the second door.

It
took a few moments to get his eyes adjusted. A woman with plastic tits wearing
nothing but a thong was on the stage, lit by soft pink lights. The rest of the
room was darker than night, or at least the way night was on a street with
lights. It took him a minute before he could spot Katrina. She was sitting at a
table with a big man. Angus.

Fuck.

His
cop instinct told him to go sit at the table that was near them, the one
farther from the stage and even more shrouded in darkness and sit and listen.
He had another, more primal urge, to go up and tell Angus that woman was taken.
What kind of clown meets a woman in a strip club anyway? He could even slide
right into the seat next to her and say, “Hi, I’m Katrina’s lover.”

Kat
and Angus had been lovers once. There was plenty of information about that on
the Internet. He turned around and walked out.
Her life.
Her choices.
He didn’t care anymore. She’d lied to him
enough times already, and he didn’t want to hear anymore.

He
hoped Darren and Lisa were good company tonight. He missed the old days in a
way, when he could hang out with just his friend. Even Evan was hooked up now.
There was no way he was going to share what happened with Lisa present, and he
knew he would be bottling it up for the rest of the night.

“TWO DRINK MINIMUM,”
said the waitress. She had been a
brunette a couple of weeks ago, assuming her hair grew at the same rate as
Kat’s. She thrust her boobs in Angus’s direction as she talked.

“Huh?”
asked Kat, who had never been in a strip club before and hadn’t ever thought
she’d have a reason to be in one.

“You
have to order at least two drinks. I’ll be back later to get your second.
It’s
how we get by without charging a cover.”

“I’ll
have a Sprite. No free refills?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll
have a
Heinie
,” said Angus, groping the waitress’s ass.
She dodged and minimized the contact and gave a fake laugh as if she’d heard
the joke before.

Angus
waited for her to go before speaking. “You can have your songs back if you give
up your interest in the band.” Angus leaned back and smirked. He was wearing a
polo shirt, which looked incongruous on him. He used to wear band shirts before
he decided he was too cool to advertise anyone else’s band, but the rules of
the club apparently required that “gentlemen” wear collared shirts. Kat would
have been perfectly willing to vouch that Angus wasn’t a gentleman. The dress
code for women, apparently, was much looser.

Kat
snorted. “I’m not interested in the band anyway.” It wasn’t all the way true,
but it was getting more so. The music she did with
Kradle
was good, but she’d moved on. She certainly didn’t want to rejoin after they’d
kicked her out. She had more pride than that.

“Interest.
It’s a legal term,” explained Angus
condescendingly. “It means that you won’t receive any of the profits from the
albums.”

Kat
sighed. She should have figured that was what he meant. She wasn’t stupid. She
had a tendency to assume Angus was. Working with Cindy had been refreshing
because she picked up stuff so much faster than Angus ever had. But Angus was
clever, in some ways. “So, you just want to steal my life’s work pretty much.”

Angus
shrugged. “The checks come from the record company to me anyway. It’s just
clearing up a few legal niceties. You’re not getting the money.”

She
looked at him. He was so smug. His gaze flicked away from hers, causing her to
look over her shoulder to see what he was looking at.
Ah, of course
. The woman onstage was all the way naked now, and
showing off all her secrets.

“She’s
pretty, huh?” Actually, Kat thought she was too thin, and that her breasts were
too obviously
fake
. But she needed to buy herself
time.

“Yeah,
fucking sexy,” said Angus.

She
started to say something catty and held back. However she chose to make a
living, the woman was no part of what was going on between her and Angus. Maybe
she found stripping empowering.
Whatever.
The dancer
didn’t need more of Angus’s attention than she already had. She wasn’t sure any
woman needed an Angus in their life, but if they were going to put up with him,
they needed him to start with respect, not ogling. She had thought she had
Angus’s respect once.
More fool me.

He
was right. She wasn’t getting the money either way as things stood now. She had
a great deal of hope for her future. She and Cindy might not have a name for
their band yet, but they
were
a band,
even if they were only two people. Cindy was more than just a backup musician.
They were getting press, and after the response they’d gotten, clubs all up and
down the East Coast would want to book them. There were no sure things in the
music industry, but she was certain she could make it on the money she could
make with her future, even without the past.

The
waitress brought her soda and his beer and scampered away before Angus could
grope her again.
Smart
woman
.
Kat took one more look at Angus. Right now it felt like it
would be worth it to never have to see his smirking face again.