Chasing Thunder (16 page)

“Am I being detained?” she asked again.

“I should, you know. I should just throw your ass in the tank and let you cool your jets for a few days. Maybe you’d take some time to consider how dangerous things are right now. This isn’t some game, Molly. People are dying.”

M.J. stood. “It’s always been dangerous, Dick. I learned that lesson when I was sixteen years old.” There was a deadly pause before she added, “Or was it four?”

“So what are you saying? You won’t be happy until you’re in a grave right next to them?”

She walked toward the door. If he hadn’t detained her by now, he wasn’t going to. This was just the game they played. “And what difference would that make to you, Dick?” she asked before she walked out of his office.

Landers caught up with her in five steps. She was quickly dismissive. “Please. I’ve had my fill of the LAPD today, thanks.”

He grabbed her arm. She could tell by the look in his eyes something was wrong. “He’s gone, M.J.”

“Who?”

“That kid. Our witness.” She groaned as she leaned against the wall. It had happened just the way she feared. “We thought maybe he got skittish and bolted. Then, with the fire, we thought maybe he returned to the motel and just ran out of luck.”

She shook her head and answered his unspoken question. “I don’t think he was there.” Normally she wouldn’t give any information to a cop, but Landers was as close to human as any cop she had met, and she trusted him more than most.

“Here’s hoping one of us finds him before anyone else does.” She nodded.

She hitched a ride with Landers back to the motel, where she prowled for a little bit, but it was obvious the police had already picked the place clean. She returned to the hotel to sit with Rose, who was still sleeping off her pill.

M.J. wasn’t exactly sure why she thought to look into the clay pot. Maybe she, like Rose, wanted to rewind the clock. She wanted to go back in time to when the place stood tall and proud, a sanctuary for all those who were lost or passing through.

The contents inside had shifted during its transport. M.J. smiled as she pulled out matchbook after matchbook. There were more business cards than matchbooks, but most of them had sifted toward the bottom. Only one sat toward the top, tucked into a matchbook, seemingly on purpose.

Her brow furrowed as she pulled it out for closer inspection. The matchbook was from a “gentleman’s club” called Slick. M.J. immediately recognized the name. A couple of girls she had helped relocate had admitted to working there. It was one of the hottest stripper joints in Hollywood. But some of the more elite clientele were rough, with regular fights breaking out among patrons who couldn’t keep their hands off the dancers. They were wealthy and entitled. It was a toxic combination. According to the last girl who had worked there, the owner had to resort to hiring reputed gang members to run security. It was a bad scene all around.

The business card sticking out of the matchbook was for a storage company. She had to pull it free, which led her to believe it had been jammed in tight to ensure the two pieces stayed together.

But why?

She turned the card over and discovered that there was a unit number scrawled on the back, along with a passcode for the secured entry. She glanced at the matchbook. There was one match missing.

She pocketed both and slipped from the hotel room.

She found the storage place with ease and was able to enter the premises without a problem by keying in the passcode at the gate. The unit in question was a large one toward the back of the gated property, and the padlock in the door wasn’t secured. It was hanging open, as if the owner wanted to invite someone to look inside.

She glanced around but saw no sign of life anywhere. She reached into her saddlebag for her leather gloves and put them on. Cautiously she removed the lock and slid the red garage door open.

She stifled a scream when she saw her tweaker hanging from his own belt from the rafters, dangling above an overturned chair. He was naked and sported various welts across his genitals and legs, making it appear like a rough trick gone wrong. His hands hung limp at his side, and as she approached she could smell the gasoline on him.

Whoever did this to him had been thorough in making it appear that he was the one responsible for the fire, so the police could neatly close the case. The only one who would know any different was the one who happened upon the carefully hidden calling card, guiding him or her where to look.

And that was her.

Suddenly she knew that was no accident. She called Landers and gave him the information about the storage unit, keeping the tie-in with Slick to herself. It was time that she checked out Slick and its owner, Dominic Isbecky, for herself.

She sped toward Hollywood.

10. KING OF HOLLYWOOD

T
he pulsating beat of house music thundered through the two-story building on Sunset. It was an upscale establishment catering to a very specific clientele. The décor was tasteful and the dancers were all pristine. Their clients were willing to pay extra for a more discreet, elegant experience. Even celebrities darkened Slick’s doors, and there were signed black-and-white photos on the walls to prove it.

There was a T-shaped stage in the main showroom, and gilded go-go cages dangled from every corner. Black lights and strobe lights lit up plush, deep purple furniture and black mirrored walls. Smaller VIP rooms adjacent to the main showroom featured pole dancers on elevated stages. Private booths with shimmery silver curtains allowed those willing to shell out the cash a place to get a lap dance on velvet settees, next to silver buckets of premium champagne. The impressive bar near the stage and dance floor had every liquor imaginable stacked on backlit shelves that reached all the way up the wall to the ceiling.

M.J. was puzzled as she inspected the joint. Her rescues had made it sound like it was a gritty shithole with an abusive clientele. From what she could see, the black, purple, and chrome décor alluded to power, royalty, and masculinity. It was elegant, even with the half-naked women writhing around steel poles.

She walked over to the bar and took a seat. The male bartender, who wore a collarless tuxedo, approached with a smile and placed a coaster in front of her. “What can I get for you?”

She took out her wallet and thumbed through her money. She handed him a ten. “This is for a bottle of water.” Then she handed him a fifty. “This is for anything you can tell me about Dominic Isbecky.”

“You a cop?”

“Only if you’re a priest,” she quipped.

He smirked and licked his lips as he glanced her over. “Nah, baby. I’m no priest.”

She slid the money across the bar. “Then let’s talk about your boss.”

Dominic Isbecky controlled every aspect of his kingdom from his modern office on the second floor of Slick. His antique ebony chair, with its ornate design and dark red velvet upholstery, felt like a throne on the marble flooring. In contrast to the house music downstairs, classical music was piped through the sophisticated office. Fine art adorned the black walls, and an ornate stone chess table stood next to a window overlooking the Sunset Strip. The pieces, medieval in design, sat on the marble top with its gold filigree inlay, an unfinished game in play.

Behind his desk was a large painting with a depiction of Satan from
Paradise Lost
. Bronze busts and stone statues of demons and angels battling were placed around the room, completing the aesthetic.

Dominic raised his head when he heard the knock. “Enter,” he said, as he continued signing off on the paperwork on his desk. His doorman, who wore a tailored black suit with a black collarless silk shirt, poked his head through the door. “She’s here.”

He smiled. He loved it when things fell smoothly into place. “Thank you, Frederick.” The doorman nodded and departed. Dominic buttoned his own charcoal-gray suit as he stood. He headed down the long hallway, which led to a grand carpeted staircase that went down to the lower level.

He passed many doors as he advanced. Behind those doors were his real moneymakers. Unlike the downstairs area, where the girls were carefully vetted to be of legal age and clean of drugs or disease, the upper floor housed younger girls who traded life on the streets for a ten-by-ten room with a double bed, a TV with carefully selected programming, and a little fridge stocked with bottled water. There was little else, even clothes. Each girl was presented with a wardrobe of costumes to wear in the sanctity of the private rooms. None of it was decent enough to wear outside their rooms, and that was quite by design.

Those rooms had the same black walls as the rest of the building, with mirrors on the ceiling and closets filled with various toys and swings and bondage equipment, all tailored to fit the young occupant of each room. A customer who was given access to the Upper Rooms could pick whatever experience he wanted, and was given a key to the room’s closet. The girl was forced to comply or else would face Dominic’s wrath, which included a week-long stint in the Magic Room in his Hollywood home. After being deprived of food and sleep for days at a time, they tended to be a lot more accommodating.

Each room had a specific color, which was reflected in the art, on the beds, and in the lighting, and he handpicked each girl to fit the scheme. He was preoccupied with perfection. There was a brooding goth girl in the Black Room, an eager whore in the Red Room. Wholesome girl-next-door types occupied the Green Room, while more submissive girls were featured in the Blue Room. The White Room was for girls of color, and the Purple Room featured the King’s Experience: two or three of his best, most accommodating and adventurous girls and a round king-size bed covered in dark purple silk and velvet. His selected his choicest meat to fetch the highest dollar.

The sounds of sex filled the hallway, from passionate grunts to terrified screams. All was permissible in the Upper Rooms. For the right price, anyway.

He had a special affection for wealthy fetishists. Thanks to their generous contributions, he could pay off certain authorities and fend off any raids. It didn’t hurt that several of his customers held very high-powered positions within the city government. A cop or two here, a city council member there, congressmen, federal agents, and a long list of attorneys on his client list proved the old adage true: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

In the last ten years he had opened other nightclubs in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and even Amsterdam and Bangkok, but Hollywood would always be his crowning achievement. It was where he had clawed his way from the streets to become king of all he surveyed.

And it was good to be king.

He was feared every bit as much as he was respected. He hobnobbed with celebrities, dined with presidents, and dated some of the finest women in the world. Most of this success was possible because he kept his legitimate businesses squeaky clean and above reproach. But he was also charming, powerful, and compelling. He was elegant, handsome, and suave. He may have been a spider luring victims to his web, but he was a spider most people wanted to get close to.

It made him all the more powerful. At forty-eight, he was at the height of his successful reign. There was no limit to what he could do.

He wore a confident smile as he sauntered down the stairs. Those sharklike dark eyes spotted the redhead immediately. She sat at the bar, enjoying her drink. Her back was to him, so she wasn’t aware of his stealthy approach. Or at least that was how it appeared. After the way she had finished off his boy in that alley, he knew better than to underestimate her. He parted the crowd that was writhing on the dance floor as he walked toward her, coming to a stop right behind the stool where she was perched.

“Mr. Isbecky,” she greeted without turning around. It made him smile. She was going to be fun to break.

“Miss Bennett. We meet at last.”

She spun the stool around to face him. She wore a black cotton and lace camisole that revealed the tip of a climbing rose vine sleeve that crawled up her arm and around across her chest. He barely contained his contempt, seeing how she’d sullied her body with such a thing. It made her uglier to him, as did the casual jeans and the dirty biker boots, and that infernal American flag she had tied around her wrist. “Perhaps next time you visit my club, you can dress more appropriately for the occasion.”