by Eden Butler
“How do you know all this?” he asked, resting his arm behind me on the sofa.
Fuck, he really didn’t know anything. I’m sure Ryan had done his digging but he hadn’t dug deep enough. I could teach him some things, but he’d never let me. The Boy Scout wouldn’t like my methods. I shook my head, trying to withhold my caustic laughter when he gawked at me like that—his eyes rounded and that eager tension tightening the muscles in his face.
“Why do you think I came to Cavanagh in the first place?”
“To get away from the trial.”
Huh. He’d figured that out. I guess that bastard didn’t need my helping digging for the truth after all. I tried to remain cool, to not let Ryan see my shock, but he grinned, smug and superior, like he knew he’d shaken me. “So you found out about that?”
“Of course I did, Alex. I needed to know everything about you and Ironside if I was going to watch your back. I did some intel. I know why he protected you.”
I hated him knowing that. I hated that he hadn’t bothered to ask me, but okay, I hadn’t exactly been completely honest with him. Still, it bothered me that Ryan could so easily tap into my past with a push of a button. “Yeah, well, so did I. Once I hit eighteen, I started doing my own digging. I wanted to know about Stevie’s case. I wanted to know why Isiah ran and what he knew. But Wanda had me so convinced it didn’t matter.”
“What changed your mind?”
I’d lived in a room that was little more than a closet that I shared with another girl in Wanda’s small Craftsman. We shared a worn mattress she’d gotten from Goodwill. My legs were longer than the mattress and I had to take my blanket with me every day when I went out trying to score some cash so I’d have something to cover up with at night. Nothing was permanent. Nothing was safe.
At eighteen, we got our clothes handed back to us in a black garbage bag and an invitation to stick around and work for Wanda or jet and figure out life on own. I’d been tired of that closet and of Wanda’s greedy hand always stretched out for what she thought we owed her.
There’d been no decision for me to make really.
I could smell the remnants of steak in the room and heard the soft patter of rain outside on Ryan’s balcony and the night called; the night and my addiction. Ryan watched me as I left the sofa, digging in my bag for a smoke and shoving open the balcony door as I stepped under the small awning. He followed.
“I was packing my shit,” I started, inhaling the smoke until I felt it burning my lungs. “I had to get the hell out of Wanda’s house.” I heard Ryan behind me as I watched the street. S. Peter’s was busy, lots of cars breaking and stopping, coasting to find a free parking spot. There weren’t any. “I came across a letter Isiah’s aunt had sent me. I was almost thirteen when he died. I’d never really understood what had happened, but reading that letter reminded me of us as kids in Atlanta.”
I flicked ashes over the railing, glancing once at Ryan as he leaned against the French doors. “All the bullshit things we wanted to do with ourselves once Stevie and I left the system. Isiah, he never laughed at us. He didn’t tell Stevie that law school was impossible for a girl with no money or family to help her. He didn’t tell me I was a stupid kid for wanting to do whatever the hell I wanted to do at twelve.” Ryan’s frown wasn’t hard and he didn’t bristle or thunder off when I talked about Isiah like he’d been a person, not a simple thug trying to gank Fiona Ryan’s stuff. Down the street a car wailed on its horn and I glanced at its headlights, watching it speed further and further down the street. “Isiah was a good person, Ryan. So was my sister. And they both ended up dead. I had to know why.”
Ryan’s breath moved my hair from my shoulder when he sighed as though he forced himself to release his anger, some sturdy belief he’d held all these years that threatened everything he thought he knew. The heat from his body was close, so close in fact that I knew he’d stretched his arm above my head behind me without glancing back to see him do it. “So you headed to my hometown when things got heavy here.”
“That was later. I was older. When I first left Wanda’s I tracked down people, but then… well, life happens and last year I heard Isiah’s aunt was sick. She’d always sent Christmas cards, but I didn’t get one that year and I looked her up. Found out from her niece that she was dying. When the D.A. got on me about testifying, I booked it for Cavanagh. I didn’t know what else to do.” The rain stopped and I pushed off from under the awning, taking another drag of my cigarette as I rested against the railing, facing Ryan. “Mrs. Ferguson had sent me letters over the years, telling me she’d pray for me, how much she believed that Isiah was in God’s hands. She was the only person that knew me but didn’t know about me and I thought she had answers. Answers I needed.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” I said, flicking my thumb against the butt of my smoke. “Nothing about Stevie’s death anyway. She mentioned the baby, how sad it was that I lost both of them and she reminded me what Isiah had been like, that he was a good person.” I glanced at Ryan, closing my eyes against the small glare he tried to keep off his face. “Don’t look at me like that, you didn’t know him.”
He stepped onto the balcony, came right in front of me as I let my cigarette burn out at my side. “Neither did you, Alex.” His features were hard, but something in his eyes flickered. Maybe it was indecision, doubt, I had no damn idea, but Ryan’s reaction was instinctive, done without real thought and he moved back, swallowing so that I could see his Adam’s apple move. He was still convinced that it was Isiah that had killed his mother, but maybe that doubt meant he knew there was more to the story.
“Mrs. Ferguson didn’t tell me anything except that she knew Isiah was haunted.” I threw my cigarette out over the railing and curled my arms around my middle. “She thought a demon was following him. She thought that something was hurting him, keeping him up at night. Whatever he knew hurt him. It cut him so deep that his aunt was convinced he could never intentionally hurt anyone else. She…she said it was the same thing she told you when you interviewed her.”
He wasn’t surprised that I knew and held no real emotion on his face when I finished speaking. Ryan only moved his head, stepping back into the apartment with one glance over his shoulder as though he wanted me to follow him back inside. “You knew about that? Before you broke into my house?” He nodded to the sofa, a silent request, and I sat down.
“It’s why I broke into your house. I got the impression you were looking for answers too. I only went to that open house to dig around a little, find out what you knew, but it was over by the time I got there and I saw you crashed out on the couch.” A slip of my gaze to his face and I looked back down, almost sorry that I’d taken advantage of him. “I was already there, so I broke in.”
“And decided to take my shit.”
I shrugged, guessing he should have figured me out at least a little by now. “Ryan, that place was primed for a grab. All those antiques, all that money laying around and you snoring on your back drunk. I’m not saying it was right and I’m not exactly proud I took something that meant so much to you, but, well, shit, I needed the cash.” He grunted, something I’d noticed he did when he was trying to reign in his temper. “Besides, I thought you were covering Simmons’ ass. I had no idea you’d quit. Mrs. Ferguson assumed you were still a cop and so did I.”
“And you didn’t stick around long enough to confirm that,” he said, stretching against the sofa to rest his feet onto the coffee table.
“One of the only friends I’ve ever had was killed right in your precious hometown. In New Orleans, I knew what I was facing.” The fluffy sofa pillow was plush, feathered and I pulled it onto my lap, needing something to do with my hands as Ryan looked at me. God that man could say a lot with one fucking glare. “Besides, you came at me all loud and screaming. Scared the shit out of me. I decided I’d rather take my chances with Wanda and the NOLA cops.” I slunk down on the sofa, putting my feet next to Ryan’s
on the table, but only managed to rest the tip of my toes against its surface. “At least here I knew where I could go if I needed protection. With you in that sketchy ass town of yours the only thing I knew was that Simmons ran the department and that he, at the very least, knew something about my sister’s death.” I shrugged. “It’s likely he killed Isiah himself.”
“You don’t know that.” The stiff cushions under us shifted when Ryan sat up and turned toward me, another annoying grunt vibrating his throat. “You can’t know that.”
“No,” I said slowly. “I got no proof, Ryan, but I have a hunch and it’s been my experience that those hunches are rarely wrong.” When he continued to frown I rolled my eyes, feeling the annoyance bubble in my stomach. “Don’t tell me you think Simmons is innocent.”
“I know he’s not, but I have no idea what he’s done, other than fuck up some evidence and try to get me stop asking about his dead wife.”
I had no idea about the wife or why Ryan was interested in her. “What’s his wife got to do with this?”
“Supposedly she killed herself by driving her car off a cliff. But they never found a body. I don’t think she’s dead.” Ryan nodded when my eyes grew wide, seeming to understand my surprise. But he played it off, waving his hand like the information was nothing to get twisted around about. “I think she’s hiding from Simmons.”
“Don’t blame her.”
“I thought I found her a few months back, but it was a set up. I ended up on my ass when some guy I guess was watching her back thought Simmons had sent me to find her.”
“He kick your ass?” I smiled when Ryan shook his head, not answering me. “That’s why you want the jewelry box, right? You think it will draw out Simmons’ wife?”
He looked at me warily, resting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe. It’s the only thing I’ve got to go on. It’s why I wanted to follow you to your friend’s. I need in that auction.”
The image of him sitting among Misty’s Summerland clientele was almost laughable. Neil Ryan, Mr. Boy Scout with his charcoal pants and button up gray shirt with a wrinkle over the line of his shoulder where his gun holster had been. It was ridiculous. Misty wouldn’t let him through the door. Still, I got that Ryan wanted to handle things. He was the sort to want to take lead and so I didn’t tell him no, though my gut screamed at me that I should. “I can respect that and I’ll let you tag along.”
“Oh you will?” he said, like I should have known he wasn’t asking for permission.
“Yeah.” I waved my hand over his body. “But you gotta change your clothes.”
Ryan looked down, pulling on his untucked button up before he glanced back at me as though he had no clue what fashion crime he’d committed. “What the hell’s wrong with my clothes?”
“No way can you go into Misty’s looking like that. They’ll make you in a second.”
“Make me for what?”
“A cop, Ryan,” I said through a sigh as I left the sofa.
He followed me down the hallway as I moved toward his bedroom, already in his closet before he caught up to me. “But I’m not a cop.”
I dug through the stacks of shirts, all button ups, all dark. I glared at him just on sheer principle. This guy, I swear. My shit was all second hand, thrift store toss asides, but hell at least I had a style—today it was what I’d stuffed in my bag, glorious dark Levis, a Sex Pistols vintage tee and my prize possession, real leather combat boots that laced all the way up my calves. Ryan’s closet though, looked like something out of the cop/Boy Scout hand book. Bland, gray and boring. “Maybe not,” I told him, “But you damn sure look like one.”
Strip clubs weren’t my style. God knew I had my fill pulling Sammy’s drunk ass out of them over the years. Those were places for boys trying to scratch an itch they just couldn’t reach. Those were the places of fantasy—the illusion of lust and attention that can only be bought with a stack of bills and the promise of more coming.
Alex, though, surprised me. I thought I knew who she was, what she did, but she still didn’t strike me as a woman cool with Bourbon Street dancers gyrating in a window with their pussies and nipples hidden by a strip of mesh fabric. I didn’t think she’d associate with girls who did that either. But I still led her through the growing crowd of tourists, weaving around fanny-pack and Saints-t-shirts-wearing visitors with eyes shifting and wide as they watched the wild and decadent sights of Bourbon.
“You sure your friend won’t be dancing?” I asked Alex as we entered the center strip on Bourbon and the crowd grew heavier.
She stopped at my side in the middle of the sidewalk, looking annoyed and unhappy as she frowned and the crowd split around us. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Over Alex’s head I could see the dark brick of her friend’s club and I glanced at it, moving my head toward that large line and the posters of barely-dressed women dotting along the building entrance. “Your friend. Won’t she be too busy with her little routine to talk to us?” I looked at my phone, catching the time and could feel Alex’s stare bubbling right at me. “What?” I asked when she stayed quiet.
“You think Misty is a dancer?”
“You said it was her club.”
“That’s right,” she said, telling me she thought I was an idiot with one head shake. “It’s her club. She doesn’t dance in it. She owns it.”
The irritation had left Alex, had relaxed her tight features and I got the feeling she was trying not to laugh at me. “What now?” I asked, letting my shoulders fall.
“You’ve never been here?”
“No. That a problem?” Then she laughed out right and I told myself she was just fucking with me, teasing me because I let her get away with it. “You’ve seen one titty bar, you’ve seen them all.”
That’s when the laughter completely hushed and Alex stared, looking amazed, surprised that I was, apparently, such a dumbass. “God, you really are clueless.”
“Am I?” I asked, feeling that sharp prickle of irritation that Alex had quickly learned to stir in me begin to rumble into a bite of tension in my gut. “It’s a strip place, Alex, just like any other.”
“Yeah, Ryan, you’re right.” She seemed to like folding her arms, keeping herself closed off, especially when she was irked and just then, that’s what Alex did—folded her arms and stepped back, twice, maybe three times before that slow smile inched over her mouth. “Summerland’s is a titty bar just like New Orleans is a decent place to grab a beer.”
She didn’t let me lead so I was forced to follow her as she nodded to the doorman and he waved us both inside. The lobby had dark cherry floors and a long desk just in front of two floor-to-ceiling wooden doors. I’d expected a typical strip club—cheap pasties and frat boys tossing money onto a dirty stage with skinny, desperate woman clamoring after each bill. Summerland’s was nothing like that. Even at sunset, the place was crowded. But there was no throng of curious tourists waiting to get into a sticky, smoke-filled club filled by thong wearing dancers with dollar bills tucked into their G-strings.
The classy gold and red sign over the entrance door spelled “Summerland’s Burlesque Review” and was lit up with ropes of glittering lights and swirling slopes of iridescent colors around each letter. It felt like something out of a 30’s speakeasy, a damn shrine to New Orleans of old, where the whole district had been called the red light, and Storyville brothels were stops important gentlemen and grubby dock workers alike made to blow their cash and their loads without fear of retribution.
This place put even the classiest of those old clubs to damn shame. The hostess opened the door and as I followed Alex down a small stack of steps, I swore I thought I’d walked back into time. The whole place breathed fire from the lush, red draping and velvet fabric that covered the walls, to the soft black leather couches, semi circled around a walkway and large center stage. I followed behind Alex and instantly recognized the scent of sweet whiskey and the spicy fragrant of pipe smoke.
The smar
tass must have liked my reaction and how I couldn’t keep my gaze off all the stimulation pulsing in the room. Alex laughed at me as I watched two beautiful woman above us, dressed like corseted fairies—green and red, wings and all—as they looped from the ceiling, attached to some thin swing twined with creamy silk.
“Some titty bar, right?” she asked me, pulling on my arm as my eyes refused to stop moving around the large room.
“Yeah, definitely not a titty bar,” I told her, letting her move me past the round tables and crowds of laughing, relaxed people sitting behind them. I felt underdressed, too casual in my dark jeans and thin leather jacket that Alex said made me look less like a cop. The Summerland crowd was all ties and jackets, fine cocktail dresses and red, tempting lips, but I brushed off my discomfort, not giving one shit what any of these people thought of me. Besides, I was too caught up by the crowd, the women prancing around attached to feathered fans, wearing garters and corsets and fishnet stockings that glittered against their skin in the muted lights from above.
I swept my gaze to those tables with candles and crystal covered in linen tablecloths and pushed up against a set of black semicircular couches with sloped arms, tapered chestnut legs, tufted back cushions. And in the center of the room, like a damn opulent showpiece to all that fancy elegance was a round wooden stage with spotlights beaming down around the dark wood floors and a row of show lights cushioned in more of that velvet fabric.
“Unreal, right?” Alex said, a small hint of amusement in her voice and what looked like the first real smile she’d ever let me see.
“Unreal.”
“Come on. Misty knows we’re here,” she said, pointing toward the large wooden framed black-lit window that looked down on the crowd. I couldn’t see a damn thing inside it, but suspected that two-way was how Alex’s friend kept tabs on her employees and the people who kept her in the cash she had to be pulling in with this place.
