36. Interlude 10
Bad Apple
Bruce Cooper – ten years ago
On the far side of the balcony, across the expanse of dance floor, I can keep an eye on all the VIP tables.
It’s why I put my office up here in the first place, instead of downstairs behind the bar.
Because what is the point of having a VIP area at all, if you aren’t going to watch the elite fuckers, the movie stars and musicians closely and learn their sordid secrets?
Tonight, the table I’m watching belongs to The Preaching Pistols, and I’m not alone.
Lou Braun decided to stop by tonight. We’re old army buddies.
Who happen to share a love of money, drugs, and sex with beautiful women.
He’s also the one who introduced me to Viktor Vetrov, the man whose drugs not only bankrolled this place initially but also keep it flush on nights like tonight. And not with cash.
All around the club tonight, my boys and girls, my beauties, are using their wiles to ensure club guests have their worst temptations satisfied. Nobody is giving into those temptations with quite as much gusto as The Pistols are.
“Tell me you don’t want a piece of that ass.
” Lou thumbs over at Rain Gamble, who is standing on top of their table, her wide hips swaying to the beat while she pours whiskey straight from the bottle down her chin, over her barely covered breasts, all the way down to her ankles.
The girl is drunk. Sexy as fuck, but drunk.
And those boys, her bandmates, they think she’s drunk enough that she doesn’t notice how they watch her.
She might feel how her boyfriend licks at her ankles, yet there’s a sly smile on her face that tells me she knows her other bandmates, the Kelly brothers, are watching too.
She’s a sexy little minx. She’s practically asking for it.
“Oh, believe me, friend, I’d love to take a bite outta that. I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”
“Hmm,” he grunts. Because he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m not the only one being bankrolled by Vetrov and his drug money.
That Russian bastard has big plans where The Preaching Pistols are concerned, so better we think with our brains instead of our dicks here.
Mess up those plans, and we could find ourselves completely and totally fucked.
Lou doesn’t seem to see it that way.
“What if there was a way we could do it without any blowback on us?”
Skepticism has me giving him a twisted stare. “No blowback? As in none whatsoever? As in we just get to have our fun and walk the fuck away?”
He nods once. “Just like we did back when we were a couple of Privates?”
Lou and I served during a major peacekeeping operation in South America. And boy oh boy, did we claim some piece of our own, or should I say pieces. The good old days, back before female Privates started reporting that shit up the chain of command.
“We’d need some bait,” I caution, “or some way to get her away from her merry band of men over there.”
This isn’t me agreeing, per se, but if Lou’s got a plan and it turns out to be a good one, well, I don’t think there’s any harm in us having a bit of fun. Reliving our glory days. So long as Vetrov never finds out.
End Interlude