Chapter 18
Bad People
The bouncer looked appropriately menacing for the neighborhood, six foot six, shaved-tight red hair with a touch of curl at the top, sleeve tattoos. A massy torso, firm gut layered over muscle, and ears swollen into pretzels from multiple batterings filled out the stereotype.
His deep-set eyes, black in the dim light of the entry alcove, scanned Evan and didn’t seem to like what they saw. “You gonna give us any trouble?”
“Not if no one deserves any.”
“Not the right answer,” the bouncer said. “The right answer is, ‘No, sir.’” He leaned close, which meant leaning down, the scent of icy-menthol breath mints leaking through his teeth. “Because if any trouble gets started by anybody, it gets finished by me. Capiche?”
He looked as white as clotted cream, rendering the “capiche” inadvertently amusing.
Evan nodded. “Live by Velvet Kitty rules, die by Velvet Kitty rules.”
A seahorse-shaped cast-iron pull handle nuzzled into the venerable wood of the front door. The bouncer snapped his gum, reached for it, and tugged ceremoniously, as if granting Evan access to a sacred chamber.
Smells assailed him as he entered—sugary perfume ineffectively deployed as deodorant, cigarette smoke borne on clothing, aerosolized glycols from the stage-adjacent haze machines.
He stood in the shadows at the periphery to assess the place, note escape routes, identify makeshift weapons.
A confusion of club-neon pinks and reds wireframed the stage and various pathways through the dim interior.
Mounted flat-screens behind the bar ran NBA highlights and infomercials for walk-in bathtubs.
A manager type with slicked-back hair worked over one of the plush booths with a wet vac, a background episode Evan did his best not to linger on.
Pool balls clacked on a coin-fed seven-foot table, longneck bottles lining the rails, a boozy parapet.
A scattering of regulars commanded what seemed to be their usual spots across barstools, haphazard four-tops, and spectator chairs lining the stage.
From the banter he sensed they all knew one another too well, quirks and quotidian failings binding them together in shameful camaraderie.
A smudged whiteboard on an easel declaimed: NOW DANCING: BUBBLES!
Largely ignored by the crepuscular inhabitants, the aforenamed Bubbles chewed gum disconsolately and twerked onstage, her dimpled cheeks fluttering artlessly.
Snaking a leg around the pole, she gave a workmanlike spin, her bleached split ends trawling the laminate floor.
The haze machine issued a flatulent hiss, misting her like a smoked cocktail.
A mindless pop song crackled through shitty speakers: When ya call my name, ’tslike a liddle prayer …
Evan thought: Ambience.
“Where the fuck’s Laeta?” someone at the pool table shouted, waving at the unmanned bar.
The manager powered down the wet vac. “Out back having a smoke. You can grab another bottle and leave cash on the bar but don’t touch the hard stuff.”
The manager scuttled out of the booth, cutting across the front of the stage. The haze dissipated, revealing Bubbles checking her iPhone. Evan pondered where it had been stored seconds earlier.
“We been over this, Rebecca,” the manager snarled as he passed, “stay off your fucking phone onstage.”
“I gotta check for the sitter.”
“Babysitter,” the manager said, gesturing at the sparse onlookers.
“Sexy. Just—be a fucking professional.” He pointed the wet vac at a stocky guy sitting with a friend at a prime table up front.
“I told you, Osman, come eight o’clock, you’re outta the VIP seats.
” He banged through a swinging door into the back, no doubt to decontaminate the wet vac.
Evan followed the aisle lighting to Osman’s table, tugged back an empty chair, and sat. From here, a trail of red spots were visible along one of Bubbles-Rebecca’s legs. Bedbug bites.
Osman wagged his head at Evan, tapped his knuckles on the wooden surface. “Help you?”
“Yes,” Evan said. “Thanks for asking.”
The floor-level VIP table was nestled into an alcove, backed by curved brass rails delineating the mezzanine level.
Osman’s pal sipped at a watery beverage the color of apple juice, maybe a 7 he was likely still unclogging the wet vac.
Comfortably sitting on his chair and racking Osman against the balustrade, Evan waited for the bouncer to arrive. No sneak attack, no sucker punch, just an overly confident sidling up with those Popeye arms crossed.
“Okay, chief. We talked about this, ’member?”
“I remember.”
“There are two ways we can approach this.”
“Hey,” Evan said, “that’s my line.”
Osman sputtered and spun, spine corkscrewed, head crimped between the rails, soles shoved into the floor.
“Do you want to be happy?” the bouncer said. “Or you want to be right?”
“Right,” Evan said. “I want to be right.”
The bouncer leaned forward, cinched a lobster-claw hand around Evan’s shoulder.
Maintaining his grip on the end of the belt, Evan drove the sole of his boot back, hammering the bouncer’s shin, knocking his legs out from under him.
The bouncer’s shoes slipped on the slick laminate, his top-heavy form penduluming down, chest and chin cracking the floor simultaneously.
Evan lifted his chair, spun it around, and set it down with the front rail across the back of the bouncer’s neck, pinning his head to the floor.
He’d miscalculated the height of the chair’s crossbar by an eighth of an inch, so it dimpled the sausage roll of fat at the base of the guy’s skull more aggressively than he’d intended.
Against the bar rails, Osman twisted, his neck grooved with fingernail scrapes.
Evan gave him back a few inches again. “How’s he pay you?”
“… through … VenSend … Show you … Just let me…” His hand fumbled at his trousers.
Evan reached instead and ripped the iPhone out, tearing the pocket. Beneath his chair, the bouncer drew wheezy breath. Resettling his weight on the chair, Evan nudged the phone to life, turned it to capture face ID, and shoved the screen in Osman’s face. “Where?”
Panting, chest quivering, Osman punched at the screen, bringing up VenSend, a Solventry app complete with the omnipresent logo, that inane smiley-face daisy atop a stem. His thumb tapped at the screen until it showed a recent payment of $199 from YngTl69.
“… him…” The word sandpapered through Osman’s constricted throat, making Evan realize he’d unwittingly tightened his grip. “… all I know … swear … I…”
Evan released the belt. Osman toppled forward, banged off the table, and slid to the floor, gasping. Crawling away on elbows and knees, glistening strands of snot dangling from his face, he made meager progress.
Evan rose, lifting the crossbar of his chair from the back of the bouncer’s neck. The crew around the pool table watched him silently, holding their cue sticks before them with the butts resting between their feet.
Evan nodded at them. They nodded back.
Bubbles-Rebecca looked up from her phone.
Evan said, “Ma’am.”
She grinned. “Sir.”
The rear door swung open, the manager launching through. He froze, taking in the tableau.
Evan nodded at Osman. “Wouldn’t relinquish the VIP table.”
The manager cleared his throat but no words came out.
Evan peeled a hundred from his money clip, set it on the edge of the stage before Rebecca. “For the sitter,” he said, in a stage whisper.
She smiled again, twirled a lock of dehydrated hair around a finger.
The song had ended. The other patrons stayed motionless in their spots. Osman breathed wetly as he scraped his way across the floor. Evan stepped over him on his way out.