“That’s terrible,” I said. “Is Tanya one of the strippers you work with?”
Her face puckered at that. “We’re not strippers,” she said. “We’re exotic dancers. It’s an art form, you know.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m sure it is.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I don’t like games. I like things straightforward. Like tonight—I told that T-Bone character how much I’d charge and how long I’d stay and what I’d do. I dance, and that’s that. Nothing more. Rick up at the V knows where I am. All the girls know where I am. There better not be any funny business. Uppity-ups like games, though. That’s all they know.”
“But I guess sometimes you have to figure out how to play the game,” I suggested.
“I ain’t into those games,” she said. “Give me the girls at the V.”
At that point, Nash showed back up and asked us to come with him. We ended up in the same dark corridor I’d investigated my first time at Gangland, and he told Melody to wait in the dressing room. She wasn’t too happy about having to wait there instead of the plush office, but Nash assured her it wouldn’t be for long. To me he goes, “Come on, Dylan, let’s roll. The real show is almost ready to start.”
The warehouse was full of the same crowd as last time, but now the musical act was, of all things, a guy with an acoustic guitar, a guy on accordion, and a girl on trombone. Playing emo. Actually, they could really play, but who wants to listen to that combination?
“Did you line up this act?” I asked Nash.
“Not a chance. They have too much talent.”
Brett was hanging toward the back of the room with Aisling and Holt and a couple others I didn’t know. We joined them, and I figured this was as good a time as any to bring up Trix and her dad.
“So,” I said, “I noticed there hasn’t been anything in the news about Trix Westwood’s dad getting arrested or even being a person of interest.”
Brett’s like, “Wow, Dylan, do you always have to talk about that?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I figured you’d want to talk about it. Ashton was your friend.”
“All the more reason for us to just want to get away from it sometimes,” Aisling said.
“Yeah, Dylan,” Nash said. “Loosen up. We can talk about that stuff later. Anyway, you know how the police work—they have to have a mountain of evidence before they can arrest someone like Mr. Westwood.”
I’m like, That’s fine for you to say, but your best friend isn’t hanging around with a potential serial killer. I didn’t say it out loud, though. Pressing things wasn’t likely to do any good with these people.
Ten o’clock came, and the band kept playing. That was strange. I figured at ten something big would happen—maybe Lady Gaga would burst onto the stage, or the floor would roll back and underneath there’d be a swimming pool filled with champagne. Instead, the only difference was that a crowd began to gather around a table on the west side of the room. I asked Nash what was up, and he told me to come with him and he’d show me.
On the fringe of the crowd, I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but I caught a glimpse of Tres sitting behind the table with his laptop open in front of him. Someone handed him some cash, and he stowed it in a metal box next to the laptop.
“You have that hundred I gave you?” Nash asked me.
I patted my pants pocket. “Right here.”
“Excellent. This is your chance to parlay a little extra cash for yourself. Sound good?”
“Uh, sure. I can always use some extra cash. But how?”
“Simple. You use the hundred I slipped you to make a bet, and if you win, you roll that over on the next bet. After that, you give me back my hundred and you leave here with a nice little wad.”
“Yeah, but what am I betting on?”
“What are you betting on? You’re betting on the midget, of course.”
“You mean Melody?”
“Who?”
“Tangerine—her real name’s Melody.”
“Whatever. She’s a sure thing. I mean, I haven’t seen the other dancer, but how could she possibly beat a midget?”
“Little person,” I said. “They don’t like to be called midgets.”
He laughed. “All right. Have it your way—little person. So are you betting?”
“Sure,” I said. “What do I have to lose?”
“That’s the spirit.”
He pushed his way through the crowd, dragging me with him, and when we reached the table, Tres looked up at me and goes, “Ah, look who it is—the guy who’s afraid of squirt guns.” It probably took him all day to make that one up. “Do you have a bet?” he asked.
“Of course he does,” Nash said. “A hundred on Tangerine.”
I forked over the bill, and he stashed it in the metal box and made an entry in the computer. “How about you, Nash?” he asked, and Nash is like, “You know what my bet is—same as usual.”
After that we nabbed a spot near the stage, and it wasn’t much later that the band knocked off, only to be replaced by Rowan in a lemon-yellow blazer. He cranked up one of his long smarmy spiels—even using the term feminine pulchritude at one point—before finally cueing the music and announcing, “Let’s hear a loud round of applause for the lovely, the talented Tangerine!”
One of those interchangeable dance anthems blasted from the speakers, and soon after, Melody strutted out in a hot-pink bikini. The crowd erupted in laughter, but that didn’t faze her. She had a bit of a problem with the steps leading to the stage, but after that she really put on a show. The girl wasn’t lying when she said she was an artist—she could really dance.