Page 52 of Handful

Smoke put his hands up an inch and sat back. Nobody else said anything.

Glitch stood and started his usual slow circuit of the room. Gun running was clean another full quarter; he said it flat and the table tapped it through. Louisville clean. Portland online. Then he slid a stack of pages down the table.

“The Dollhouse. Route 9.” He let it land. “Handful floated buying this place a few months back as a joke. Turned out to be the least stupid thing he’s ever said in this room. Indira and I have been quietly looking at it ever since.”

“Looking at it,” Colt said. “That what we’re calling it now.”

“Bet Glitch’s been looking at it three nights a week,” Baxter said. “Real hands-on research.”

“Does Wren know you’ve been doing fieldwork?” Colt added, grinning. “Bringing notes home?”

Glitch let them run it out, unbothered, and when they’d finished he said, mild as anything, “Wren knows more about strip clubs than anyone at this table.”

The room stopped.

“The hell’s that mean,” Colt said.

“My woman paid her way through college on a pole. Graduated with a degree and no debt, which is more than the rest of you can say about your twenties.”

It took the table a second.

“Wren? Little blonde, jumps if you say boo Wren?”

“She apologized to me last week because I walked into her —”

“I watched her spend ten minutes working up to asking Lilac if she could use the last of the coffee creamer —”

“Taking her clothes off.” Colt looked shocked. “On a stage. In front of men.”

“Took her clothes off for money.” Baxter said it slowly, like he was translating from a foreign language. “That Wren.”

Glitch let it run out.

“It’s work,” he said. “Plenty of women do it. Men too. Nothing to be ashamed of. She needed money, she had the nerve for it, she did it.” He looked around the table. “The woman you know — that’s my Wren.” He paused. “The one who got on a stage in front of strangers wearing a mask and took her clothes off — that’s also her. Same woman. You just never got to meet that one, and you never will. She retired. My eyes only.”

“Moving on,” Indira said from the foot of the table, in the voice that closes subjects — and the table moved on, though Colt sat there shaking his head for a good while after.

Glitch turned to the next page like none of it had happened. “As Handful told us, the owner’s retiring. Wants out clean and quick, priced it to move. Liquor license current, adult-entertainment license current, no liens, six years with no violations on file. It’s a cash business in a cash-light corner of the books, and with Tilden gone cold we’ve got a gap it fills on its own.” He looked at Dutch. “On the numbers, I’d buy it tomorrow.”

“The numbers aren’t the problem,” Indira said.

That was her cue. She didn’t make a speech of it. “Dutch has spent years making this club something the town stops crossing the street to avoid. Venom buys a strip club, some of that’s in play again. That’s a real cost and it’s not on Glitch’s spreadsheet.” She closed the laptop. “But the money’s good. So here’s the whole of my position. It gets run right, or it gets sold.”

She didn’t say what right meant. She let it sit there, undefined, like a dare.

“Vote,” Dutch said.

It went around the table. Tap. Tap. Tap. Unanimous. Dutch hit the gavel.

“Then we own a strip club,” he said.

“We own a problem I’m going to watch like a hawk,” Indira said. She held up two fingers, pointed them at her own eyes, then slowly turned and pointed them at every man at the table in turn. One by one. Nobody was skipped. Scary as fuck.

“It needs a new name,” Baxter said. “The Dollhouse — that’s bad optics.”

I’d had names since the day I floated this place in church six months ago. Riders’ Rally House. Handful’s Honeys. Denim Dolls. Bunnies in Stilettos. I’d come up with those in about thirty seconds and Indira had shut me down before I finished the sentence.

“Venom Virtues,” Glitch offered, not bothering to look up from his laptop.