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Authors: Andrew Vachss
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in with bad intentions, they turn you into dog food.”
“That’s just—” J.B. began, before he realized he was talking to a dead line.
RUMORS RUN through Chicago like white-water rapids. Anyone could watch them from a cliff, but trying to ride them, that was a job for an expert. The street racers worked on the fringe of the Badlands. No worries about the Law out there, but crossing the semi-trailer that marked one entrance was never done twice … not without permission.
The dope slingers wouldn’t work a place where they’d never see a customer. Even the hookers who worked streets nobody should ever walk down gave it a pass. Some of the always-in-motion gambling houses had their own protection from raids, be it the police or some get-rich-quick boys who thought going in armed would change the game. But they never set up shop in the Badlands, not even for one night.
All Jean-Baptiste could learn was that Red 71 was supposed to be somewhere out there, at the other end of the marked entrance.
“If you don’t know, don’t go.” The old man’s words, still echoing. So this Red 71, whatever the hell it was, he’d leave that for some other time. But the Double-X, that was just another strip club. He’d been there before. Time to stop watching the rapids from a distance and climb into that kayak.
HE WAITED for a Friday night, when the place would be packed. Money flowing, waitresses always in motion, sometimes grinding it harder than the girls working the stage. Everybody was overworked, and the security staff would be no exception. “Take it outside!” was the only warning any patron would get. Once.
J.B. had to wait, but he made good use of the time. He did a pass-by in broad daylight, and was even less impressed than he’d been during his first visit. The building looked like a grayish concrete lump, casually dropped onto an empty prairie. It didn’t have the class of clubs with canopies and liveried doormen, not even the grossly garish neon tubing twisted into the shape of impossibly endowed women at the other end of the scale.
He watched cars go in and out, using a small set of folding binoculars to distinguish patrons from employees. But there was no angle from which he could view where the entering cars were parked.
They wouldn’t want the girls to have to walk through a parking lot. Not to enter, and sure as hell not when they were leaving. And there’s nothing to see around the back of the place
.…
Shrugging away insane ideas like underground tunnels, or a helicopter pad on the roof, he tapped one prominent cheekbonewith a slender forefinger, a subconscious telegraph that he was trying to think a problem all the way through.
Behind the joint. That’s got to be where the girls go. So damn dark back there, I couldn’t really see much, but maybe they park in a far corner
.…
Finally, he shrugged his shoulders in resignation and turned his custom Lexus coupe back toward civilization. Thanks to Ronni—now,
that
was one loyal girl—he wasn’t short of money, and he could keep dressing to suit his role for weeks to come.
Maybe he should just let it go. Chalk it up to … whatever. But the bitch taking his property, that made it personal. And Jean-Baptiste was not a man you could do like that.
“ WHO WANTS him?”
“You tell the man it’s Howard and Harold.”
“Funny, you sound like one man from here. You some kind of multiple personality?”
“Hey! I call the man to do him a solid, and you pull this—”
“Next time you see whoever sold you those calm-down pills, be sure and get your money back,” Buddha said, gently replacing the handset of the pay phone in the basement poolroom of a building identified only by the number “71” graffiti-sprayed in red, with the “1” forming an arrow. An arrow pointing down.
The same red “71” was carelessly sprayed on the sides of various junked cars which surrounded the building. The stone structure was set in the midst of
“That’s just—” J.B. began, before he realized he was talking to a dead line.
RUMORS RUN through Chicago like white-water rapids. Anyone could watch them from a cliff, but trying to ride them, that was a job for an expert. The street racers worked on the fringe of the Badlands. No worries about the Law out there, but crossing the semi-trailer that marked one entrance was never done twice … not without permission.
The dope slingers wouldn’t work a place where they’d never see a customer. Even the hookers who worked streets nobody should ever walk down gave it a pass. Some of the always-in-motion gambling houses had their own protection from raids, be it the police or some get-rich-quick boys who thought going in armed would change the game. But they never set up shop in the Badlands, not even for one night.
All Jean-Baptiste could learn was that Red 71 was supposed to be somewhere out there, at the other end of the marked entrance.
“If you don’t know, don’t go.” The old man’s words, still echoing. So this Red 71, whatever the hell it was, he’d leave that for some other time. But the Double-X, that was just another strip club. He’d been there before. Time to stop watching the rapids from a distance and climb into that kayak.
HE WAITED for a Friday night, when the place would be packed. Money flowing, waitresses always in motion, sometimes grinding it harder than the girls working the stage. Everybody was overworked, and the security staff would be no exception. “Take it outside!” was the only warning any patron would get. Once.
J.B. had to wait, but he made good use of the time. He did a pass-by in broad daylight, and was even less impressed than he’d been during his first visit. The building looked like a grayish concrete lump, casually dropped onto an empty prairie. It didn’t have the class of clubs with canopies and liveried doormen, not even the grossly garish neon tubing twisted into the shape of impossibly endowed women at the other end of the scale.
He watched cars go in and out, using a small set of folding binoculars to distinguish patrons from employees. But there was no angle from which he could view where the entering cars were parked.
They wouldn’t want the girls to have to walk through a parking lot. Not to enter, and sure as hell not when they were leaving. And there’s nothing to see around the back of the place
.…
Shrugging away insane ideas like underground tunnels, or a helicopter pad on the roof, he tapped one prominent cheekbonewith a slender forefinger, a subconscious telegraph that he was trying to think a problem all the way through.
Behind the joint. That’s got to be where the girls go. So damn dark back there, I couldn’t really see much, but maybe they park in a far corner
.…
Finally, he shrugged his shoulders in resignation and turned his custom Lexus coupe back toward civilization. Thanks to Ronni—now,
that
was one loyal girl—he wasn’t short of money, and he could keep dressing to suit his role for weeks to come.
Maybe he should just let it go. Chalk it up to … whatever. But the bitch taking his property, that made it personal. And Jean-Baptiste was not a man you could do like that.
“ WHO WANTS him?”
“You tell the man it’s Howard and Harold.”
“Funny, you sound like one man from here. You some kind of multiple personality?”
“Hey! I call the man to do him a solid, and you pull this—”
“Next time you see whoever sold you those calm-down pills, be sure and get your money back,” Buddha said, gently replacing the handset of the pay phone in the basement poolroom of a building identified only by the number “71” graffiti-sprayed in red, with the “1” forming an arrow. An arrow pointing down.
The same red “71” was carelessly sprayed on the sides of various junked cars which surrounded the building. The stone structure was set in the midst of
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