Read Online Mob Rules by Cameron Haley - Free Book Online

his strip club, the Men’s Room.
    Rashan was the smartest person I’d ever known. Maybe the guy was Sumerian, but his English was perfect. No accent, huge vocabulary—he always sounded more like an Ivy League professor than a gangster.
    Despite all that, he missed some of the nuances of the language that are second nature to a native speaker. When Rashan had chosen a name for the strip club where his office was located, I’d pointed out that, technically, the men’s room was where you put your urinals. I’d suggested the Men’s Club, the Men’s Place…Pussy Galore would have been an improvement.
    Rashan wouldn’t budge. He liked the name, and that was the end of the discussion. Most of the clientele probably didn’t notice anyway. For whatever reason, though, the boss’s linguistic blind spot seemed to be at its blindest when it came tonaming conventions. I was just glad the outfit didn’t have a name, like a street gang. It would have been embarrassing.
    I parked my car in the front row of the lot—I had my own space, so I didn’t have to use the parking spell. Despite the name, the Men’s Room was a nice place. Tasteful, at least by the standards of the pole-dancing industry. The club was closed but a girl was dancing onstage, probably for the boss’s benefit. I made my way to the back stairway and ascended to Rashan’s second-floor office. It had the traditional glass wall looking out over the bar, and I found my boss sitting at a table and watching the main stage with gray, almost colorless eyes.
    â€œShe is one of my favorites,” he said, nodding to the dusky-skinned young beauty of pleasantly indeterminate race. “Look at that ass.”
    I looked. It was a nice enough ass. “Jesus, boss, you’re old enough to be her long-dead ancestor.”
    Rashan laughed and motioned for me to sit down. “You know,” he said, “my people understood the importance of naked dancing girls. It is a sign of this country’s bankrupt culture that you’ve made it into something sleazy.”
    â€œI have nothing against naked dancing girls. Or boys.” My attention drifted to the stage again. “I think it’s the brass poles and disco lights that make it seem sleazy. And maybe the bills tucked in their G-strings. The patrons are a little questionable, the music the girls pick doesn’t help and perhaps—”
    â€œDominica, tell me what you’ve learned about Jamal,” Rashan interrupted. Rashan always used my real name. I didn’t care for it much.
    If you can mentally take a deep breath, I sucked in a cerebral lungful. “It was a hit.”
    â€œGo on,” Rashan said.
    â€œYou know about the skinning and crucifixion already. Jamal had been squeezed. The strange thing was, there were no traces of the ritual on him or at the scene. It was like the hitter scrubbed the place when he was done.”
    Rashan frowned. “If Jamal was squeezed, it must have been a sorcerer. That suggests another outfit.”
    I nodded.
    â€œTell me what you know about the ritual.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m saying, boss, the place was clean.”
    â€œAnd yet, you were able to learn something.”
    It’s hard to play coy with a Sumerian sorcerer. “Yeah,” I said, “the hitter used an artifact in the ritual. It left a mark that wasn’t cleaned up. I was able to get a taste of the juice and find out a little about it.” I told him about the soul jar and what I’d learned about it from my divination spell.
    Rashan steepled his fingers and tapped them against his black, neatly trimmed goatee. “Veronique Saint-Germaine. I remember her. She was the strongest sorcerer in the Old South. There were more famous voodoo queens in New Orleans during that period, but only because Saint-Germaine didn’t work the tourists from New York, Boston and Paris.”
    â€œBased