Chapter 3
Spade
They called it the bone room, though there were no bones, not anymore.
Officially, according to the club bylaws, the room was called church.
A long table, pitted and scored by decades of ashtrays and wayward pocketknives, and an overhead bulb, which did nothing for the color of anyone’s skin.
Cigarette smoke had worked its way so deep into the walls that even after a month-long ban, it still curled under the door, faint but permanent.
Selene was already at the head of the table when Aces and I came in.
She always stood when someone entered church, especially when presidents from the other chapters visited.
She said it was her way of showing respect to others.
At least until they gave her a reason not to.
There was a folded piece of printer paper in front of her, creased and refolded to the point where it looked more like a betting slip than a briefing.
Aces sat to my left, the same as always. We didn’t talk on the way in. Selene waited until the door swung closed and the click of the deadbolt echoed around the walls.
“We’ve got something new out of California,” she said, and flicked her eyes at me, then back to Aces. “Not one of the old dogs. Queens of Chaos, out of Modesto. You heard of them?”
Aces shook her head. I had. Word on the street was they’d pulled a literal patch-over by scalping the last president and nailing the skin to their clubhouse wall. Selene didn’t mention that, but she knew I knew.
“They’re in North Vegas now,” Selene went on, tapping the folded paper. “Set up shop on one of the commercial strips. You won’t find them on any ride-out videos. They’re running quiet, at least for now.”
Aces’s forearms tensed under her cut. “Running what?”
Selene smiled without showing teeth. “Illegal sperm bank. Off-book. Not even pretending to play it legal. No permits, no registry, no oversight. Just rows of chairs, pumps, and the promise of cash for a cup.”
It was a move so weird I almost laughed, but Selene’s voice didn’t allow for that kind of reaction.
“Who’s their target?” I asked.
Selene watched me a second longer than normal. “Desperation market. Men with records, or no paperwork, or nowhere else to go. They’re tapping into the bottom half of the city’s gene pool. Word is they’re paying cash. Up front, fast.”
Aces grunted. “Why the fuck do we care? Let the Queens siphon off every sperm donor in Clark County. Doesn’t touch our trade.”
Selene lifted the folded paper and slid it across the table. “Because they’re moving product through a front that’s been in our club’s name since before I patched in. The address is here. I want to know what’s behind the door before I decide how to respond.”
I picked up the paper. The address was scrawled in Selene’s hand, blocky and impossible to misread. I memorized it and slid it back.
“Recon only?” I asked.
Selene’s lips twitched—maybe a smirk, maybe just a tic. “Eyes only. I don’t want a confrontation, not yet. If there’s heat, you ghost it and come home. If they clock you, don’t lead them back to us.”
“Any bodies in play?” Aces asked, already framing the job as a problem to be solved.
Selene shook her head. “Nobody’s been hurt. Nothing flagged on any of our usual channels. It’s probably a hustle, but I want confirmation.”
Aces nodded, shoulders rolling loose. “Fine. When?”
“Tonight,” Selene said. “After closing. Take your time. I want all the details.”
I met her gaze. She held it, steady as a leveled pool cue.
“Understood,” I said.
She waited, just a beat, like she wanted to ask me something else, but didn’t.
“Dismissed,” Selene said, and flicked her eyes to the door.
Aces pushed back first, the legs of her chair making the only sound in the room. I followed her out, the address burned into my head, the weight of Selene’s attention heavier than the Glock I kept tucked behind my belt.
The bone room door shut behind us, sealing in the orders and the old smoke, and we walked the corridor together in silence.
“Can you believe this shit?” Aces said. “Fucking sperm bank. Guys can’t get their cocks sucked on the street, so they pay to have a fucking robot suck them off.”
I shrugged and gave her a little chuckle. “Men don’t care who or what is giving them a blowjob as long as there’s a happy ending.”
Aces nodded. “I get it. Two nights ago, I had some meathead hit on me in the casino. Tall guy. Fucking lean and cut like an athlete. I think he played pro ball. But he had a face only a mother could love.” She lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
“Thirty minutes after talking in the bar, his face was buried between my legs. Two minutes after that, I covered the guy’s face with a nice, long squirt. Asshole got pissed and left.”
“I was like, so fucking what. I got mine. Haven’t heard from him since.”
I shook my head, trying to remember the last time a man went down on me. Way too fucking long.
***
Two hours later, the city flipped inside out.
All the shine of the strip collapsed to a cold glow, and the real Vegas surfaced, a wet scab of empty lots and dead signage.
We left the bikes on a cross street two blocks away, just past a busted-out bus stop where a three-legged dog nosed through a sandwich wrapper.
Aces set the tempo—deliberate, quiet, not looking for confrontation but ready to burn it down if we had to. We walked shoulder to shoulder, boots loud on broken sidewalk, and neither of us spoke until the main drag spat us into the hollow shell of the north end.
The address Selene gave us was in a row of defunct insurance offices, payday loans, and one sad-ass coin laundry whose glass was so fogged you’d think the dryers ran on body heat.
The target building was a one-story box, windows blacked out with paint.
The only sign was a faded, half-ripped vinyl banner promising “Quick Cash, No Hassle.”
The back lot was more crater than asphalt. The rear door had a camera, an infrared bulb blinking steady, pointed dead-on at the only loading zone. That ruled out the easy way.
“This is gonna be a pain in the ass,” Aces said, eyeing the camera.
“Could be worse. At least the guys inside are having a good time.”
Aces snorted. “You think they tip?”
“Cash up front, remember? That’s the whole pitch.”
“Right.” She looked at the blacked-out windows. “You think the machines have, like, settings? Speeds?”
“Probably a loyalty program. Tenth visit, you get a free upgrade.”
Aces bit down on a laugh. “Punch card.”
“Collect all ten holes.”
She pressed her fist to her mouth. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go.”
“You think any of the machines are spitters?” I asked, not done laughing.
“All swallowing is my guess.”
I scanned the perimeter. To the left, a narrow service corridor ran between our building and the next—maybe three feet across, half-blocked by a tipped dumpster and a grease trap leaking old fryer oil into the gutter. I jerked my chin at Aces and went first.
The smell in that alley was sour and complex, like sweat and cheap bleach and something deeper, maybe blood.
Halfway down, I found a ground-level window.
The rubber seal was old and pulling away from the frame, the kind of flaw that never survives more than a week in the summer but would go years untouched in a strip mall.
Aces fished a flat bar from her inside pocket, the kind meant for car doors but multipurpose in our world. She jimmied the edge, and I braced, feet planted. The glass gave with a little whine and an elastic pop, and the bottom edge peeled up enough to get fingers under.
“Nice,” I whispered.
Aces held the window just open, not enough to trip the alarm, just enough to see.
The inside was a fever-dream of white fluorescent banks in the ceiling, and linoleum that glowed blue in the chemical light.
Rows of chairs, not office chairs but these custom recliners, with padded armrests and built-in head pillows.
And every chair was occupied by a man, naked, exposed, legs spread and feet propped in molded plastic stirrups.
The men were all ages and all body types.
Some stared straight ahead at wall-mounted screens, flickering porn loops in hi-def, their faces slack as coma patients.
Others had their eyes closed, hands gripping the armrests so tight you could see the white of their knuckles from our vantage.
There were machines mounted next to every recliner—tubing, vacuum hoses, a black box like a homebrew CPAP with a digital timer running upward.
Each man had his cock fitted into a clear plastic chamber, and the machines pulsed, slow and insistent, milking them with a low pneumatic hum.
It sounded, I thought, like a dozen hospital ventilators running at different speeds.
None of the men were restrained. None of them looked scared. Just hollowed out, emptied.
Two women in blue scrubs moved between the rows.
One was young, maybe twenty, tattoos of stars across her knuckles.
The other was older, with arms like a welder’s and close-cropped hair.
They made a loop every ten minutes: swap out the collection tubes at the base of the milking pumps, cap them, and log something on a clipboard.
Every few rounds, the older one checked a screen at the end of the aisle, tapped at it, and went back to work.
Aces let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. “Fucking hell.”
“Nothing like efficiency,” I said.
We watched. For nearly an hour, there was no change. The men filled their tubes, were unhooked, given a towel, and left through the front hall, but not before handing over a wad of cash. More came in. All the workers did was swap parts and log the take.
“No credit cards or checks,” Aces whispered, smiling.
But then, near the window, the scrubs stopped and started talking. I signaled Aces to hold position.
The young one was shifting from foot to foot, agitated. “He’s only at thirty percent,” she said, voice pitched up. “It’s not moving. Been like that an hour.”