JJ interrupted. “Why not let me decide for myself? I’ve only seen it on the internet and I think it’s fascinating. Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Carnegie Hall, 9/11 Memorial, the best bagels in the world.”
“You’re killing me, man,” sighed Noah. He didn’t want to admit it but he really wanted to see Olivia’s New York debut. “Okay, okay. We’ll go.”
Sam chortled. “How about me? You need me.”
Both JJ and Noah chorused together, “No.”
Noah added, “Besides, you need to stay longer for observation. Not going to take any chances with you.”
“Come on, guys. Please?” begged Sam. “And I won’t get sick.”
Noah picked up a pillow and gently hit Sam over the head with it. “Even if you promised to behave, I saw your report card. Try passing a few classes first.”
Olivia’s phone dinged—a text message arrived. “Will be there tomorrow. Please send details.”
Abby gave Olivia the thumbs up. “I knew he’d come.”
“Great news. Now, excuse me. Got another meeting now.” Queenie got up from the table. “See you tomorrow night.”
“Thanks for everything, Queenie,” said Olivia.
“It’s going to be great for all of us.”
Somewhere in Hong Kong, in an ultra-private room equipped with enough medical gadgetry to rival anything offered at the Mayo Clinic, the still heavily bandaged and recuperating Chin received a five-word text.
Noah’s going to New York.
Chin smiled. He had never intended to kill Noah or any of his posse. That would have been pointless—he would never get the money back that Noah had stolen from him if they were dead. He had tried direct brute force and come up short. If he was ever going to see his money again, he was going to use a side door or a back entrance instead of barging in through the front.
And, with Noah going to New York, that meant he would be away from his home turf. That wasn’t Chin’s territory; it was Queenie’s.
Chapter 11
Queenie entered Café du Music’s office where Benjamin awaited her behind a huge mahogany desk. It hadn’t moved from the center of the room since his great grandfather Abraham brought it in a century ago. A ton of deals had been done there—musicians’ contracts, rental contracts with the tenants above the club, booze deals from Canada during Prohibition. There was also a long, soft, brown leather couch where other kinds of deals were consummated.
“I need another favor,” began Queenie. “I want you to close off the club to outsiders for the showcase.”
“Are you crazy? That’s a New York tradition. I’ll get crucified if I do that.”
“It’ll still be a showcase night but I want to bring in my own people for the audience. They’ll buy a ton of food and drinks,” promised Queenie. “And won’t that be a great promo for you? That you had to shut the club down because there were too many people wanting to get in? That sounds pretty damned good.”
“We get coverage from all the blogs, magazines and newspapers, not to mention the actors, producers, directors and musicians wanting to check out the new hot product. If we don’t let them in, my ass’ll be grass.”
“I think you’d rather make money than trying to suck up to all the freeloaders in the media. They don’t pay cover; they don’t pay for drinks…”
“Yeah, but if I don’t, they’ll plaster their blogs and papers with nasty reviews. Can’t do it, Queenie.”
“I hear you.” With a sudden deft motion, Queenie reached into her purse, pulled out a sharpened crane beak and whisked it by Benjamin’s head, missing his ear by less than half an inch. “It’s easier for me to kill you than for a fat man to break a diet at a cruise ship buffet. Now, you are going to block it off for me, right?”
Benjamin quaked at the near miss. ““Okay, okay. You got it.”
Queenie relaxed. “Good. Now, because you’re playing nice, I’m going to give you an opportunity to become my business partner. I got a shitload of Southeast Asian hard candy arriving in a month. It’s an easy triple bagger.”
“What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch. I need bridge financing. A million and a half. You know I’m good for the money.”
Benjamin’s hands twitched involuntarily—he was interested. Queenie traveled in elite circles. She often came by the club with serious players who rang up huge tabs of five thousand dollars or more. They always paid cash. “Why me? You got lots of others you could tap.”
Queenie tossed her boa, revealing a hint of breast under her sheer top. “Because, Benji, those horn dogs always attach conditions that include my putting up with their BO, bad breath and fat asses. You, on the other hand, couldn’t give a rat’s ass about getting your mitts on mine. You and I are strictly business.”
“I don’t keep that kind of coin around.”
“I’ll take a hundred and fifty now and the rest by the end of the week.”
Benjamin’s hands escalated from twitching to trembling. He got up and walked to the painting of his grandfather on the wall. He removed the painting, revealing a safe. As he dialed the combination lock, he asked, “How did you know I’m gay?”
“Easy. You didn’t even blink when I flashed my tits just now.”
Chapter 12
With one hundred fifty thousand in cash hidden inside her feathered vest, Queenie paid no attention to any of her surroundings as she strode to her next destination six blocks away. Alexei’s one-week extension would be meaningless if any part of her fragile plan failed to execute in the next three days. The part she hated most was that to achieve success, she had to rely on others. Even though she pulled in top-notch talent, too many variables could screw things up.
Fifteen minutes later, Queenie arrived at the one-hundred-twenty-year-old, twelve-story Vector Building in Hell’s Kitchen. The Vector rarely had much traffic coming or going but its visitors and occupants covered a huge demographic. Diversity ruled. Mobsters, music superstars and the mundane, wearing clothes from Goodwill to Gucci. Queenie was as typical as one could be of the Vector’s very select group of customers, clients and tenants.
Even though Queenie was a regular visitor, she still had to pass through the Vector’s security, which was even more onerous than an airport’s. She had to go through a metal detector, her bag went through an X-ray machine, and she was patted down from head to toe. The difference was that, at the Vector, the guards were serious because the threats were all too real, unlike a regular airport where TSA inspectors confiscated jars of jam from grannies because they were over the 100 ml limit or prided themselves for protecting the public from a four-year-old who dared sneak in his hazardous gelatinous gummy bears.
Queenie smiled to herself. Her peckers were more dangerous than a loaded Sig Sauer but because they were completely organic, she’d never been flagged. Accepting that she had no guns, knives, or grenades on her person, a guard accompanied her to the elevator. After letting her inside, he punched in a code.
The elevator zoomed directly to the top floor. When the doors opened, a large red neon sign announcing the existence of Skyscape Recording Studios greeted her.
Queenie loved this place. In its short existence, Skyscape had become one of the most desired spaces anywhere for musicians to record. Its spectacular views, its exceptional equipment, its world-class in-house engineers, and its client relations took service to a whole new level. Nothing was too kinky or too absurd to demand and get.
Who hung out at Skyscape? In addition to Grammy award-winning musicians and rich wannabes who had more money than talent, a dark undercurrent added a certain color to the studio’s ambience. What was it?
The answer was easy. While most of Skyscape’s guests or employees had a connection to the music business, there was an even greater attraction for those who needed special banking services that Citibank or Goldman Sachs were not going to provide. Their presence was tied to a dirty little secret: Skyscape had a background much like many other mysterious tenan
ts in the Vector Building. The studio didn’t need to make money and the owners, anonymous big fish in the crime industry, couldn’t care less about the music industry.
Skyscape had fake clients being charged for hundreds of hours of studio usage when all the while the studio sat empty or was used for an engineer’s or producer’s own projects. At the same time, legit artists were given enticing rates to record there, advancing the studio’s reputation and making its falsified claims of expenses seem more legitimate to any potential auditor that might someday be assigned to the studio file.
Because of this the studio, which had been operational for little more than a year, did a booming business. Skyscape had options to take over the space on the floor below and plans were to step up the renovation to have it ready in six months.
Alexei, one of Skyscape’s owners, brought Queenie there when it first opened, hoping she would put in a good word to her father about business potential. That only provided further proof to Queenie of Alexei’s stupidity. If he was as close to doing business with her father as Alexei thought, the Russian would have known that Chin had no need for Alexei to launder money.
Olivia’s father, Garret Southam, with his mega-law firm, had provided that service.
When Queenie got off the elevator, Kenny Tsang, a muscular Chinese guard, greeted her. Theirs was no ordinary relationship. No love, no commitments, not even a mutual lust. Kenny would just do whatever Queenie wanted. While he was an illegal, he was not a typical indentured slave under snakehead control, working for less-than-minimum wages in a restaurant or sweatshop.
Before he came to New York, Kenny worked for Chin as martial arts muscle. However, the ambitious Kenny had stars in his eyes—he wanted to move to America and get into the music biz. He cut a deal with King and Queenie to get him to New York and Queenie used her contacts to get him started in the music industry. In exchange, he provided enforcement services as required.
When Skyscape opened, she got him a job in the security detail, but he was a fast learner. When Queenie revealed her interest to open a label focusing on Asian artists, bringing singers from China to record at Skyscape, he spent every spare moment he could learning and experimenting. Queenie had heard a couple of his recent demos and felt he was ready for prime time.
Kenny escorted Queenie directly to the gleaming glass-walled office of Hassan, Skyscape’s manager and another of the studio’s owners.
Kenny stood guard outside the door as Queenie plopped herself onto the lush leather chair in front of the Iraqi arms dealer turned studio exec. Having introduced two recording artists whose albums went platinum, this leader of a small but extremely profitable Mexican drug cartel to the former gun broker, Hassan had to give some leeway when he dealt with the arrogant crane maven.
“Have you considered my proposal?” asked Queenie.
Hassan threw up his hands. “Queenie, Queenie, I love you, but you don’t know a damned thing about running a studio.”
“As far as I remember, your sole claim to musical fame was pimping drugs to X Link just before he died.” X Link was a rap artist who, like so many, got caught up in the image of being a gangsta rappa.
Queenie placed $100,000 of Benjamin’s money on the desk. “Down payment. This is your last chance. I will kill you if you don’t sell out to me.”
It hadn’t been thirty seconds but Hassan had had enough. “You insult me with this? Get out and take your peanuts with you. And your threats? The metal detector shows you have no weapons. And, even if you did, you think you can do anything to me?” Hassan prided himself on being able to kill anybody with one hand, a quality lacking in probably every other studio owner in the world.
Queenie’s eyes were on fire. “Deal or no deal?”
I’m done with this bitch. With a lightning fast motion, Hassan reached for the gun in his belt.
But Queenie was faster. She pulled a sharpened crane’s beak from her bag and thrust it hard at Hassan’s chest.
Hassan roared as he launched his famed killer left hand at her head, but years of sharpened reflexes through martial arts training made danger avoidance easy for Queenie.
She leapt up and delivered a kick to Hassan’s head. He turned to the side, avoiding the full brunt of her stiletto boots. He pulled the pecker out of his chest, and lunged at Queenie.
She smirked—this was her territory. Sidestepping, she gripped his hand. With precisely the right angle and pressure, she squeezed and the pecker sliced Hassan’s hand to the bone. She followed with a karate chop and the pecker sliced off several of the studio owner’s fingers.
A snarling elbow from Hassan’s good arm landed on Queenie’s jaw, sending her reeling. He followed with a swift power kick to her mid-section. As she buckled, Hassan raised both arms and brought them down hard, but Queenie dropped and rolled out of the way. She pulled off her feather boa, jumped behind the Iraqi, and quickly wrapped it around his thick neck.
She pulled hard as Hassan flailed wildly. However, Hassan was cleverer than Alexei, the last person Queenie tried to garrote. He fell backward, crushing Queenie against the floor.
Crippled, Queenie cried out and released her hold. Hassan pulled his dangerous hand back and was about to pound Queenie’s nose into the back of her head when a Shaolin star flew and punched into the middle of his forehead.
Hassan stumbled backward. Recovering, Queenie pushed him off her, grabbed her pecker and slashed him across the throat, severing the jugular, carotid artery and trachea. The dying man looked up to see Kenny standing over him. “I knew I should never have trusted a Chinaman.”
Kenny put his boot onto Hassan’s neck, pushed down and snapped it. “Actually, your mistake was to not trust me more. If you had, you wouldn’t be dead, asshole.”
He whistled loudly and five Middle Eastern minions brought in a body bag and cleaning materials.
As the clean-up proceeded, Queenie asked Kenny, “Is anything happening here tonight? I want to invite someone over to impress him.”
“What about Tim? He’s here.”
“That cokehead is working late?”
“He’s under the gun. Recording company’s pushing him. Let’s go.”
Chapter 13
Queenie and Kenny walked into Studio 1’s control room, an ergonomically designed space for people who spent too much time here. Everything was functional, comfortable and useful. Tables at exactly the right height, adjustable incandescent spot lighting, video monitors so accurate and vivid they made you feel like you were on the set of a music video.
A scowling Tim Martin sat at a recording console listening to a playback of a YES BABE tune. Thirty-seven-year-old Tim had made his bones as a music producer of scores of young singers and boy bands. He’d generated over half a billion dollars for the young artists, choosing the songs, crafting their arrangements and producing their albums. He and Queenie had known each other for years. She sometimes introduced artists to him but, for Tim, her more important function was supplying uncontaminated drugs of superior quality.
Last year, he produced YES BABE’s debut album. The band was a nightmare to work with. Egos, drugs, jailbait girls in the studio… Tim never wanted to work with them again. However, the group earned more than fifty million dollars on their worldwide tour and sold a healthy six million copies so, despite his protests, the band’s manager exercised its option to have Tim produce another album. There was no other reason for him being at the studio at this hour.
Seeing his visitors, Tim hit PAUSE on the digital recorder and ranted, “I hate this shit. Hordes of children fall all over the spoiled brats who call themselves musicians, screaming they’ll love them forever. It’s not music; it’s a damned factory and I’m just the guy in charge of the assembly line.”
Having finished his tirade, Tim turned on the charm and asked, “And how is my favorite dope dealer doing tonight?”
Queenie took out her cell and played thirty seconds of Abby and Olivia’s audition. “Abby and Olivia. What do you think?”
Tim answered in a smarmy, singsong voice, “Abby and Olivia.” Shaking his head, he reverted to his normal voice. “First thing they got to do is make a name change. Sounds like a couple of spinsters.”
“Yeah, I know that. But do they have talent?”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Talent is highly overrated but, more important, they’re over the hill. Alicia Keys and Adele were both under twenty when they started making waves. Those girls appeal to the blue rinse Michael Bublé crowd and they are nowhere in his league.”
“Can you fake being interested, Tim? I’ll make it worth your while,” pleaded Queenie as she dropped a little plastic bag of white powder onto the console in front of the music producer.
Tim glanced at his computer. “I make these guys think they’re gods. Of course, I can fake it. But I don’t think I can stomach any more shit.”
“These girls have access to money. Hundreds of millions. Make nice to them and maybe they’ll throw some of it my way.”
“Enough to finance my film?” asked Tim, shaping a line of coke on the mixing console. Tim had begged Queenie for years to help him get out of the music business by investing in his screenplay.
Queenie’s eyes sparkled. “How about two million as seed capital to get you started. You can finagle the rest.”
Tim’s eyes bored dreamily into Queenie’s. “Abby, Olivia, I’m gonna make you stars.”
“Kenny will give you the details.” Queenie got up and made her way to the exit. As she walked, she heard a familiar snorting sound.
Outside the room, Queenie made another call.
“My dear Queenie,” answered a velvet baritone voice. “Don’t you realize this is getting past my bedtime?”
“Sorry, Frank, but I might need someone with your skill set in a couple of days.”
“Oh? Which ones?”
That’s what Queenie liked about Frank Hodges. He was a multi-dimensional talent and, ostensibly, a member of New York’s upper crust. With an MBA from Wharton, he had his own private investment firm, was on the board of the ballet and on the Salvation Army’s National Advisory Board. He had that special gift of instilling trust, even with the briefest of meetings.
The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (plus special bonuses) Page 44
