The line crackled with static.
“Jax?” she said, worried that she’d lost the connection.
“I’m still here,” he said, his rough voice a distant ghost.
“Promise me.”
“I promise. I’ll send her home even if I have to bring her there myself.”
Jax hung up without saying good-bye. Maureen kept the phone to her ear for a few seconds, listening to the static and the ghost of a past she’d cherished and a future she’d never had.
8
The Sons rode into Birdland’s parking lot two by two, Joyce and Chibs in front, Jax and Opie in back. Harley engines roared the news of their arrival, and a handful of people in the lot glanced up and watched as they rolled by. Jax ignored them, just as he’d ignored their surroundings on the ride over. The day had seemed like an eternity, but now night had fallen and it was time for answers.
They parked their bikes in the corner of the lot, far from the exit but near a stretch of dirt that led out to the curb. If they needed to make a quick departure, they wouldn’t worry about pavement. One by one, they killed the engines and removed their helmets.
They started toward the entrance to Birdland, admiring the neon sign depicting a woman with wings. She had them covering her breasts one moment, and the next they were unfurled, revealing small hearts over her nipples. Classy joint, Jax thought, but he appreciated the oddness of it. Jazz music played from speakers outside the door as they approached.
Opie sidled up beside Jax. “You sure you don’t want me to ask the questions?”
Jax glanced at his dour expression, the concern in his eyes. “I’ve got it.”
“I’ve seen that look on you before, Jax,” Opie said quietly. “I’m just thinking you may not get answers if everyone you ask thinks you’re a heartbeat away from caving in their skulls.”
Jax shot him a look that silenced him. “Cover my back, Op.”
Opie nodded. He didn’t seem satisfied, but he wouldn’t push it any further.
Joyce led the way, opening the door and moving into a darkness broken by flashing colored lights. Jax and the others followed, taking in every detail, watching for exits and for trouble. The foyer had a bathroom door, an old pay phone, and a curtained-off section that could’ve been anything—a party room, a coat check, stairs leading to an attic. A single doorman sat on a stool beside a podium, a black bodybuilder with a shaved head and a thin goatee. A strong guy, but not a fighter. Jax could see it in the way he held himself, even the way he stood and fronted them as they approached. He was a man used to intimidating with his size. Maybe he’d been in his share of scuffles in this place, a fistfight now and again, but he wasn’t a boxer, a soldier, or a street fighter, and so Jax wasn’t worried about him until he saw the bulge of the gun sticking from his belt, underneath his shirt, and he reassessed. The gun was a threat, even if the doorman might not be.
“This is a nice place,” the doorman said. “Boss doesn’t like trouble.”
Chibs held out his hands, palms open. “No trouble here, brother.”
The doorman sized them up. “Twenty-dollar cover, right?” Joyce asked, handing over a pair of folded tens.
The doorman hesitated, studying Joyce in apparent disapproval, then took the bills. As the others passed him, he took their money without another word, but as they moved through an arched doorway flanked by two huge bouncers, Jax knew they’d been marked. The doorman would tell the bouncers to keep an eye on them. One of the bouncers, a vampire-pale white guy, looked like he worked out at the same gym as the doorman, but the other bouncer had cold eyes and stood with his back to the wall in a stance that said he was ready to hurt someone. Jarhead, Jax thought.
The music outside had been jazz, but inside it was whatever the girls onstage felt like dancing to. Right now, two girls were twirling topless around the same pole to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” while a third marched up and down a smaller stage in the back. They all had glitter sparkling on their breasts, like they’d grown up doing little art projects at the kitchen table and this was all that remained of their girlhood imagination. The room was an L shape, and off to the left, on the leg of the L, was an area with four pool tables. There’d be rooms in the back for private dances. Waitresses in next to nothing wandered the floor selling alcohol Jell-O shots, and bartenders worked at inhuman speed behind the counters, slinging eight-dollar beers and twelve-buck whiskeys.
Then there were the birds.
Behind the bars, above the stages, even in the corners of the pool area, there were huge cages either hanging from the ceiling or standing on poles like those the strippers used. Inside the cages were parakeets, parrots, macaws… even a goddamn toucan, and in the lulls in music, Jax could hear the birds calling to each other.
Planning an escape, he thought, amused and horrified at the same time.
“Guy who owns this place must be a loon,” he said, moving up beside Joyce.
Joyce shrugged as if to say, of course he is. “On Sundays, he’ll only play jazz in here. The girls who want to keep him happy… they’ve learned how to dance to that stuff. You’d be surprised how many people show up for it, too. They do brunch.”
“It’s shit, though, right?” Opie said, raising his voice to be heard over the grind of AC/DC. “I’ve never eaten anything in a strip club that didn’t taste like ass.”
“Might be best we don’t talk about what you’ve eaten in strip clubs,” Chibs said aloud.
Opie gave a sheepish grin, and Jax laughed. Joyce seemed curious, but it was a story for another day. Jax glanced back toward the bouncers, saw their eyes tracking him and the others, and clapped Chibs on the back.
“End of the bar. Shit goes down, the jarhead’s yours.”
Chibs knew better than to look at the bouncers. He nodded and moved off immediately toward a waitress picking up drinks from the end of the bar. She had dark skin and bright red hair and was wearing a half-shirt and a skirt so short it displayed her pink panties in all their glory. Chibs said something to her, and she grinned. Jax had seen the soulless smile that hookers and strippers put on for the men who were paying their bills, and this wasn’t that. Something about Chibs just charmed them. Part of it was the accent, but Jax thought the scars did something to them as well—suggested the beginnings of a story that they finished in their own heads. Lost girls liked broken men. Jax had a taste for women like that, but today he kept his mind on the job at hand.
The bartender came over to make sure Chibs wasn’t troubling the waitress, glancing at the bouncers, but the girl touched Chibs on the arm and must have passed along his drink order, because when he turned toward the bar to set up camp there, nobody tried to move him along.
Jax didn’t know how many people Birdland drew on its busiest nights, but tonight’s crowd was substantial. Clusters of young guys in business suits were side by side with truckers and contractors and housepainters, not to mention the occasional freak. The freaks were the easiest to spot because they sat alone, usually at the rounded corners of the stage, and they doled out single dollar bills and nursed watered-down beers for hours. Jax had seen a particular brand of strip-club freak more than once, guys who would lean in when the girls came near, inhaling deeply, trying to catch a whiff of pussy that would carry them through their daydreams for months.
Joyce led them past the pool-table area and into the thick of the crowd around the stage. A waitress in a see-through plastic top brushed close against Jax, her smile like a mannequin’s, but he only scanned the faces ahead. Opie stuck close behind him, but Jax wasn’t expecting trouble unless they started it themselves.