Plugged

Okay. Maybe it is as bad as it sounds. Just different bad.

Rolling the girls is one of Victor’s favourite pastimes, and he’s going to keep on doing it until one of the rolled girls goes crazy and spikes his Dom P with rat poison.

This thought brings on a dreamy sigh.

‘Hey, Dan, you dreaming about Oirland again?’

It’s Marco, the little barman, peeking out across the empty bar, smiling but not laughing because I’m a lot bigger than he is.

Then he notices my bruised face and his smile shrinks a few molars. ‘Holy shit, man. What happened to you?’

‘I was dreaming about Oirland,’ I say straight-faced. ‘And this guy interrupted me, so we had a talk. You should see the state he’s in.’ I mime drinking through a straw in the side of my mouth.

Marco wipes a glass like he’s trying to climb inside it. ‘You’re a funny man, Daniel. Hilarious. You know I’ve got a weak heart, right?’

I cut him some slack with a soft smile. ‘I know, Marco. Victor’s in back?’

Marco wipes harder, not happy with giving bad news to big people. ‘Yeah. Doing his favourite thang. He said to send you back if you showed up.’

‘Those exact words?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Give it to me straight.’

‘What he said exactly was “If that Irish monkey-fucker shows up, you send him back here for a bitch slapping.”’

My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline of old. ‘Monkey-fucker?’

Marco almost disappears behind the bar. ‘Not my words.’ Then he gets brave. ‘I would probably have said leprechaunfucker, to tie in with the Irish thing.’

‘Yeah, that’s much better. Do me a favour, Marco. Pour me a large Jameson; I should be out in a minute to drink it.’

‘You got it, Dan,’ says Marco, reaching for the optic. ‘I’m gonna miss you, man.’

‘I’m getting fired, not dying,’ I mutter and head for the back room.

The back room in Slotz is the only original part of the building. Nice little red-brick room with a row of head- height postbox windows. Vic installed a polished wooden bar in the corner that’s way too big for the space, and there’s an old green baize card table with brass corners wedged into the leftover room. This is where the real money is made in Slotz. The back room has been running a high-stakes game since Prohibition. To hear Vic tell it, you’d think that every New York gangster from Schultz to Gotti had lost a bundle in here.

When I push through the door, Vic is swizzling a green cocktail and treating a couple of teenage girls to a social studies lesson.

‘The entire room is living history. This table. This exact table is fifty years old.’

The girls are nodding eagerly hoping for Vic’s approval; I on the other hand have decided not to beg for my job back. I have realised suddenly that without Connie, this dump holds zero appeal for me. So I do not have to listen to Vic’s shit for one more second.

‘Fifty years? Back home we have fast-food joints older than that. We have bloody walls older than this entire country.’

Victor jumps. He was so into his spiel that he didn’t even notice me coming in.

‘What the hell?’ he stammers, for some reason grabbing at his purple bowler hat, like that’s the first thing a raider would go for. I notice that he’s wearing a bandanna under the hat, and another stuffed into his breast pocket. ‘McEvoy! You’re like a case of the clap. You arrive quiet, then flare up.’

Brandi is in the room, hovering at Vic’s shoulder like the spectre of death in heels, so obviously she laughs. Victor’s got one of his cousins there too: AJ, a prize moron. Rumour has it that AJ once twisted a model Statue of Liberty up his arse, then tried to tell the ER doctor he sat on it in Battery Park.

‘You know a lot about the clap, Vic?’

Victor sees my eyes then, and he knows I’m not here to petition.

‘You want to watch what you say to me, McEvoy. I’m connected.’

I am so sick of this man. This is the man who ordered his surveillance discs wiped on the night of Connie’s murder, even though there may have been evidence on one of them.

‘Connected? Give me a break, Vic. Your fat arse is connected to that chair, that’s about it. Your brain isn’t connected to your stupid mouth, that’s for sure.’

AJ is off his chair, baring his teeth, waiting on the word.

I eyeball him good. ‘You better sit down, Lady Liberty, unless you got room for my foot up there alongside that statue.’

Vic waves a pudgy finger. ‘Sit, AJ. This man could kill us all without breaking a sweat.’

‘Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.’

My former boss leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers, a cross between Al Pacino, P. Diddy and Elmer Fudd. ‘So, what can I do for you, doorman? Before I bar you for life?’

Barred for life. Not much of a threat.

‘You can pay me. It’s the end of the month.’

Vic is delighted; he pokes the table with a finger. ‘Yesterday was the end of the month. You didn’t work the full month, McEvoy.’

Typical. ‘Listen, Vic. . Mister Jones. I had an emergency so I missed a day. And okay, I didn’t call. So dock me for the time I missed and pay me the rest.’

It’s not really the money. I have fifty grand plus on my person, but this piece of slime owes me and he is going to pay. One way or the other.

Vic affects a pout. ‘I would love to pay you. Sincerely. But I got all my disposable cash tied up in this game with these lovely ladies.’

One of the lovely ladies simpers, like Vic’s doing them a favour taking her money. The other one knows how much trouble they’re in. She is pale and her fingers grip the table’s edge like it’s the railing of the Titanic.

‘Open the safe, then.’

‘What safe? I don’t have a safe, doorman. Anybody know anything about a safe?’

I pinch my nose and breathe heavily. After everything that’s happened, I am not about to be messed around by a smalltime big-time wannabe like Victor Jones.

‘Look, you can hang around until I finish the game. I do good, then maybe you get paid.’ Vic snaps a finger at Brandi, who takes his glass, making sure to squeak her boobs around the boss’s arm while she’s doing it. ‘Or you can keep dropping in for a few weeks until you catch me with a couple of bucks in my pocket.’

‘More than a couple. A couple of thousand more like.’

Vic shrugs like this makes zero difference. ‘Whatever. Less than fifty grand, I could give a shit.’

Fifty grand. You could buy the lease on this entire club for half that.

He picks a fresh pack of cards from the table and rips off the plastic. ‘Now, if you would kindly get out of my face, I got a game to play.’

Like I said, I’m not much for flashbacks, but for a second the sound of that plastic tearing has me back in a camo tent on the southern Lebanese border with Israel. There’s death at our door and blast tremors rattling the tent poles, and I’m saying, One more hand. Come on, guys, one more hand.

Victor does a few wedge shuffles and my eyes follow the snap of the cards. One of the girls starts to cry, her bony shoulders hitching, her fake boobs bobbing like buoys in the tide.

I like that one. Buoys in the tide. Sounds like an Eagles number.

Vic’s little con is as simple as it is low-down. Any time new girls come in looking to make a little money hostessing, Vic softens them up with tequila and then charms them into a few hands of poker. With Brandi looking over their shoulders and dropping her boss the wink, the girls quickly lose their first month’s wages, and before they know what’s happening they’re toting trays for tips. Modern-day slavery is what it is.

‘You rolling these little girls, Vic? Is this how your mother raised you?’