The Girls Club (19 page)

But you’d sell me out if I didn’t look after you now?

“Sarah. I’ve had half a dozen boxing lessons and I go to the gym. If they wanted to cut you to ribbons and hang
you
from the Hollywood sign there’d be fuck all I could do about it”

Miss Steiger pushed her empty beer bottle away fitfully.

“Well. You have two choices. Hide me out and keep me out of the way till this blows over”

“Or?”

Like you need to ask?

“Or I give them you. My ass is safe. Yours is in the sling”

“Real good way to love your friends Sarah. When did you learn that on the Chain?”

How neatly we have been stitched up.

“I don’t want to, you gotta believe it, but I can’t get hung over this, everything’s going so well!”

“You have a funny estimate for the ‘wellbeing’ status of things”

“So you’ll let me hide out for a while? Keep an eye on things for me?”

“What choice do I have?”

A smile spread across the blonde lawyers face.

“There’s always a choice. You’ve just got to make the right one”

“Right then. It’s your dime as the saying goes. Mines a bourbon and beer chaser”

They proceeded to get drunk.  Karen hoped this would mean Sarah would pretty much pass out when she got her home.  She certainly didn’t feel like going the extra mile and fulfilling whatever seedy desires she may have for her erstwhile protector.

The bartender was swabbing the decks when they were turned out.  Sarah was flushed and hardly spoke.  Seems she wasn’t a heavy drinker as a rule.  Karen was amazed at her own ability to maintain some level of thought, she’d drunk enough to lay herself out, but felt very much in control.

Wonder what Rosh is up to?

And she was glad again she’d left her mobile on the side because at that precise moment she would have called her and made the already bad situation worse.

“Come Miss Steiger. Tonight’s a school night and we should have been in bed hours ago”

She took her arm and led her round the corner.  Something whacked the top of her head and down she went.  Out before she hit the side walk.

When she came to minutes later she was alone.  No sign of Miss Steiger anywhere.

Some protector you turned out to be.

There was blood on her forehead.  Took a pretty hard hit by the feel of the bump rising.  She bet Sarah had been subdued much more easily.

“Fuck shit” for the second time that night it was the only phrase that fit. 

She was a bit flummoxed as to what to do.  Whoever had snatched her was long gone.  Did she call the cops?  Did she call Kelsey Carmicheal maybe?  Did she call Sky and see if she had Miss Huntingwhosits number?

Fuck it all.  How ‘bout we just clear the hell out before anything more fucked up happens.

But she’d made a promise.  To Rosh. 
Do no harm.

She had an excuse to call her now.  She made her way back to her apartment.

For a few panicked moments she couldn’t remember where she’d left the mobile. 

Mutilation!

Not a happy thought.

No. But wasn’t mutilation akin to what had happened to Rosh?

She looked at the clock.  It was after 1.  What if Rosh was asleep?  There were no texts and no voicemails. 

By waking Rosh up it might only panic her further, knowing that Miss Steiger, the author of the destruction of her thighs was laying down with the dogs tonight.  Might only serve to make her fear more reprisals.  She hadn’t told Rosh about taking the shots of the files.  It would have made her feel even more like she was showing Rochelle just how stupid she could be, like the partner she’d already lost.

Go to bed.

It wasn’t out of the question though for whoever had Sarah ‘Sainted Twat’ Steiger to come here to get her later.  Especially if Miss Steiger started to sing like the fabled canary.

“Fuck shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite” she thumped her fists down on her bed in tandem. 

Love your friends? This has been the most fucked up experience since day one.  You’ve managed to bed a bevy of beautiful women, have at least one fall in love with you, beat up a woman who was dead hours later, watch a starlet get her snatch eaten out and now this.  Your boss.  The one woman who perhaps knows the only thing about you that might get you in a whoooooooooole heap of trouble gets lifted in the street after coming to you for help.  Should we mention that Rochelle, dear sweet Rochelle already thinks you’re bent on self destruction and she doesn’t even know the half of it.

She was tired of her brain throwing out all this shit and if there had been a switch to staunch the flow she’d have pressed it.

Her phone tinkled its idiot chime and goosebumps raised all over her body.

Unknown number.

“Hello?” her voice sounded full of confidence.  Good to know there was some fight still dug down deep in there.

“Hi hun, listen. We have a bit of a problem. Your boss needs you to bring her something”

She smoothed down the hair on the nape of her neck.

“Really?” light.  Non-committal.

“Yeah. In her office she had a small safe behind the crummy fake Van Gogh she has hung there. She needs you to open it, and bring the contents to her here”

“Sure” sweat rolled down between her breasts.

“Can I talk to her a sec?”

Laughter greeted this.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

Fucking pack it in! Are you goading this unnamed assailant? 

“She’s indisposed sweetie. But when you get to the office in, say, 40 minutes, I’m going to call you back with the combination for the safe”

“Just tell me now and I’ll write it down”

“Oh tut-tut. That would never do. I’ll ring you back in 40 minutes when you’re there”

“Whoa hang on…”

The line was dead.

How did she know this person had Sarah?  Well.  She hadn’t been in LA all that long and the people who had her mobile number she could count on both hands.  It would make a certain kind of sense that they had got it from Sarah’s mobile.  It would also explain why she was left to eat side walk whilst her boss had been carted away.  It would also then serve as damn near suicidal to put herself into the hands of these people after she had done as they asked.

“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!” she butted the worktop in the kitchen.  40 minutes wasn’t long.  She’d be driving fuzzy headed too. 

Her phone chimed again.

Rosh.

God dammit don’t you tell her any of it, not one bit!

“Oh, I am glad you called. I felt pretty shitty about earlier.” Karen sounded as chirpy as she could manage.

“Yeah. Me too. You couldn’t sleep either?”
“No” she closed her door very quietly she didn’t want Rosh to hear her going out.

“I can’t believe how mad I got. That was our first real fight then.”

“That’s how you know you’re a real couple, when you’ve had your first barney” she pushed for the lift then walked back down the other end of the corridor so Rosh wouldn’t hear the boop when it arrived.

“What’s a barney?”

Karen smiled.

“It’s British for row, argument, bust up, having a barney, like ‘Barney Rubble’, trouble? Rhyming slang”

“Thought you weren’t a cockney?”

The lift arrived and the square of light appeared on the hall carpet, she got in and pressed the button for the car park level.

“Oh I’m not. Don’t you worry about that.”

Going to have to get her off the phone, it’s a little harder to cover up the noise a car makes.

“How ‘bout you come over. I don’t want to sleep alone”

Karen felt a pull in her chest.

I wish it was that easy.

“Yeah. I’ll just have a tidy up and come over. I’m a bit grotty. I won’t be long”

“I love you”

She stopped just outside of her car door and put her hand on her chest, something way down deep clicked.

“I love you more”

Then she was gone. 

All we’ve got to do is get something we don’t know about for someone we don’t know about either with a code we also don’t know and maybe then, we’ll start knowing a few things.  Like is the boss still alive?  And really, why do you use rhyming slang, you’re not a frickin’ cockney?

A resilient smile rose upon her features.  The power of Rosh’s words gave her an edge.  She had a lot to lose now.  That meant playing the game - yet again.

She wasn’t a native of LA either but she had already assimilated some jargon.  Just a sponge alright.

She sped out of the car park into the still night.  It struck her that a lot of the really important stuff happened at night.  It had certainly been the case for her.

Because the office block had a 24 hour man on the desk he was able to let her sign in downstairs.  He asked what her business was at this un-Godly hour, she told him with a smile that her boss was putting together a summation but had forgotten a very important affidavit.

The guard nodded his head like he understood everything she’d just said.  In truth she’d made it up, but she had a gift of being able to go with the flow and think on her feet.

When the elevator door opened with its
boing,
it was incredibly loud in the dark of the office.  Hardly a superstitious woman she could well believe that there were things that crawled the shadows and this was
their
hour and she was trespassing.

Checking her mobile phone for the time she say she’d been just about 40 minutes.  She went round the dark corridor, flicking lights on as she went, not wanting to walk the corridors in the dark.  Sarah’s office was locked.

We are going to anger the unseen caller for sure with this.

She looked round for anything that might serve to bust the lock.  Nothing sprung out at her.

The mobile, hateful insipid creature it was, rang.

Unknown caller.

“Hello”

  “OK, this is the combination you’ll need,”

“Whoa Tonto! I haven’t even got in the friggin’ office yet. The doors locked mate. Maybe you could ask the boss if she keeps a spare key anywhere?”

“There isn’t time for that. Break it”

Karen sighed.

There were choices.  You just had to make the right ones.

“Hang on” she put the mobile down on floor and went round to the canteen. 

Something big?

She was sure they had a drawer in here where they kept tools and stuff.  An odd time she herself had been asked to hang a picture or tighten a nut on someone’s chair.  Her mind had gone blank.  There was a metal cooking pot on the stove.  That would have to do.

Back at the heavy wooden double doors she hefted the pot and wound up a good long swing to hopefully loosen the handle with the lock in it.  The first blow and she heard wood splinter, the second blow and splinters became visible, the third blow with the metal pot and the handle hung in the frame.  Karen dropped the pot and wiggled the handle about until it came out in her hands.  She picked the mobile up and opened the door.

“Ok, I’m in” she pushed the tasteful light switch and looked at the print the un-named caller had referred to.

“The painting should just slide across”

Karen pushed it on the left side, nothing, pushed the right side and it moved on a track.

A wall safe was indeed hidden there.

“Right”

“OK, it’s 13 left, 45 right, 87 left, 99 left, 13 left, 78 right” buzzing noises as she whirled the dial through the numbers being given to her.

The door opened and Karen almost wretched.

“Ahhh. It
is
in there then! I want you to find a bag, not a see through one obviously, and put everything in”

The voice on the mobile was coming from a million years away, the tinny voice surely couldn’t be asking her to do this knowing what was in here?

Think, think, think.  How many more reasons could anyone possibly need to kill you?  Add to the espionage, smuggling human body parts.

Never had she felt so ill.  Just looking at it made her stomach roll again.  A human left hand.  And she was sure it had once been attached to Demi.  The other grudge Prestons had with Tarkingtons and Sarah Steiger.

“Arrg” she looked round the office for something, anything to put the stuff in.

There was a box file.  She took out the files that were in it and put them on the desk.

She picked the mobile up and pinned it between her head and her shoulder.

“Do you want, er, everything?”

“Yes” she couldn’t place the voice at all.  Still.  It didn’t sound like a voice she’d
never
heard before.

As well as the hand taped up in plastic there were two stacks of $50 bills.  A gold bar that was exceedingly heavy, ‘the golden client list’ which had been put together onto one document, Karen felt a little guilty about that one.  A couple of folders with paperwork in them and an oddly named sheet headed, ‘Future top ten’.  Karen knew how Lot’s wife had felt, her eyes were going to betray her, she was going to read.