February 2002

All was going great, Hell, even with my luck; it might have stayed great. But one man would lead to it getting all screwed up: Vincent Santangelo, my boss.

Vin and most of the regular crew would always head to the local strip joint every night, but I always declined. Why bother with hoochies up on a stage when I had my own personal mocha fantasy at home. This didn’t sit well with Vin, who claimed I was weakening group morale by not joining in. Finally, after a month of him growing more and more bitter about the situation, Vin flat out ordered me to attend. I didn’t want to risk my job, so I agreed, if only for that night.

The strip club was pretty much like every two-bit dive you can imagine: dark, dank, and with a clientele that you didn’t want to meet outside the establishment. Vin, myself, and the other six members of our crew loaded up a table just off the raised walkway where a blonde that looked eerily like my late mother shook her self onstage.

“See,” Vin said. “The night’s just starting with Patti up there. Wait to Goldie gets up onstage.”

I agreed, though already by this point I’d rather have been out with Iniri.

I sat through about forty-five minutes of endless tits and asses, most of them on women well past their prime. I tried twice to excuse myself, but Vin cut me off both times. He swore that Goldie would change my mind about leaving.

“She’s the hottest new girl to hit this club in years,” he said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how sad I thought it was to have frequented a strip club long enough to be able to time the girl’s stays.

At last it came time for Goldie to take the stage. As she came to the stage, three things occurred to me at once. First, I realized Vin was right about her. She was definitely hot. Her features leaned toward Asian, but her green eyes hinted at some Irish blood as well. She wore nothing but a sequined halter and matching underwear, thigh high fishnets, stiletto heels, and nothing else. She moved her toned physique around onstage beneath her scant clothing. She smiled at the crowd beneath blatantly blonde hair, before the music started in and she started moving around the stage.

The second and third occurrences came almost simultaneously and both came from the friendly little voices in the back of my head. One voice in my head screamed “chink bitch” so loud that I winced. The second voice simply said “Renet” before I found myself bounding out of my seat and towards the stage. Goldie, or Renet, or whatever her name was, pulled her halter over head and swung it as I jumped on to the stage in one easy leap.

I regained full control of my body just as I landed in front of her. I pulled my trenchcoat off and through it over her bare chest, anyway, as she began to struggle. She didn’t know me from Adam and most likely though I was attacking her. She crumpled to the runway, trying to break free of me as I continued to push her to the backstage area. The sudden scream of the voices in my head shocked me. I stumbled forward on top of her.

Just as I landed, the mirrored glass wall above us exploded. I tried my best to cover her struggling body as the glass rained down over us.

I escaped with only a few scrapes from the shards, having miraculously avoided being cleaved in half by the larger fragments. Renet’s eyes were wide below me and she stopped her struggling.

“They were shooting!” She looked up in to my eyes. “They were shooting at me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You... you saved my life.” I pulled myself up and her with me.

“I haven’t saved you yet,” I said. “Get moving backstage. Now.”

I risked a glance over my shoulder, but saw only the ensuing chaos. The gunman or men were no where to be seen among the crowd. I followed Renet as she rushed to the back.

We didn’t get more than five feet past the curtain before we ran head on in to another dancer. She was Asian, full-blooded, and wore only a skimpy school girl get-up. Concern showed on her face.

“Renet,” she said. “What’s going on?”

I interrupted before Renet had a chance to speak. “Just get your stuff, so we can get out of here. Now.”

Renet rushed past the other girl and in to the dressing room. “Come on, Eriko,” she said. “We’ve got to leave!”

Eriko started to pick up her own things. I encouraged them to hurry. And we were all out on to the street in little over a minute. We rushed through the freezing cold weather, me in only my work clothes, Renet in my trenchcoat and her knickers, and Eriko buttoning up a heavy coat as we ran to her car.

“Where do we go?” I sighed at the question. I didn’t have a good answer for it.

“Your apartment may not be safe,” I said. “Whoever took the shot at you could try again there.” I paused. “You can stay at my apartment, if there’s no objection.” I hoped that didn’t sound like a horrible pick-up line.

Renet glance over at Eriko. “Look,” she said. “Thanks for saving my life and all, but I don’t know you. Hell, you could be in with the shooter.”

“You’re going to just have to trust me,” I said. “Think of it as one last favor I owe Frank.”

“F-Frank?”

“Yeah. I know you two were an item, y’know, before.” I had to keep playing this fast and loose, not letting on more than I actually knew from frank’s spectre floating around in the back of my head.

“Yeah,” Renet said. “Before.” Renet looked down. I suspected she was fighting back tears.

Eriko looked to her friend. “What do you want to do, girl?”

Renet glanced at me before turning back to Eriko. “I don’t think we have a lot of choices, but to go with him.”

I tried my best to stay calm, but two thoughts kept creeping up to make it difficult. First, how in the hell was I going to get to the bottom of this mess. And, second, how the hell would I explain it to Iniri?

*****

As we pulled in to the parking lot beneath my new apartment complex, I could tell neither girl was impressed. Considering how pathetic the apartment actually was, I couldn’t blame them.

“I know it’s not much,” I said. “But it should be somewhere you can lay low until we figure out our next move.”

Eriko scowled, but Renet thanked me as I led them up the stairs. (The elevator was still broken and had been since the day after I moved in.) Twelve flights later, they crashed in to my apartment bed, exhausted from the walk. Frank continued to cry out for Renet in the back of my head.

“All right, girls,” I said. “You’re going to have to level with me for me to help you.” I turned and looked straight at Renet. “Why would someone want you dead?”

She looked down to her knees as she sat on the edge of the bed. I heard her sniffle. “It’s because of Frank.”

I waited quietly for her to continue the story on her own.

“We... we were in love. Frank ran his own accounting firm out of Tower 1. In his off time, he would work as a guest speaker at Manhattan University. That’s how we hooked up. I didn’t know exactly why, but I found myself drawn to him. It wasn’t just the money, I still don’t know what it was. At first it was just sex, but it was becoming so much more.”

“Not enough for him to leave his wife,” Eriko said. Renet started to sob again.

“He was going to, though,” Renet said. “Frank’s business wasn’t completely on the up-and-up. He handled the finances for a mob boss named Michael Santangelo.”

“Santangelo?” New York had a large Italian population, but knowing my luck, I just picked a fight with my crew boss’s family.

“Yeah, he isn’t big time or anything, but he raked in some decent cash over the years. Frank handled all his income, and kept a pretty penny of it for the trouble of turning the money legit. Frank kept skinning a little extra of the take off though as well. He planned on leaving the country in the next few years, and after we met, he decided to move up his plans and take me with him. Once Frank made it up to a solid ten mil, we would leave.”

“But I’m guessing that never happened.”

She nodded. “And now Santangelo has figured it out, and they think I know where the money is at.” She shook her head. “If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be working at that dive of a strip club to pay off my last semester of college.”

It fit, mostly. I found myself with only one nagging problem with the whole setup: why would Michael Santangelo want Renet dead if she was the only who could get his money? I kept quiet; I saw no reason to worry the girls any more than they already were.

“For now, you can both stay here,” I said. “I’m going to figure a way out of this mess for all of us.”

Renet forced a smile. “Thanks. I don’t know what would have happened without you there.”

Eriko’s face lit up at Renet’s first sign of happiness, maybe the first one in quite a while. “Thank you,” she said. “Me and Renet can’t thank you enough, Mister—“

“Patton. Freedom Patton.”

Renet and Eriko both snickered while I looked annoyed. Eriko saw the look on my face. “Seriously?”

“It’s on my birth certificate.”

Renet stood up. “Well, Freedom, it’s nice to meet you.” I held out my hand, thinking she meant to shake, but she came forward and hugged me. My coat slipped loose as she did, and felt her bare breasts press against my shirt.

I let out a short gasp in surprise, which brought more giggles from Renet and Eriko. “I think he likes it, Renet,” Eriko said. A moment later, she was beside her friend, her own coat on the floor, and her body pressed closely to me.

I’d like to say I was a good boyfriend, but let me be real here. I had two extremely hot, scantily clad Asian girls rubbing all over me. They pulled my clothes off, and than their own. We fell in to the bad in a tangled mess, as the hottest night of my life commenced.