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He held out his arm for her to take.

“Let’s go grab dinner. You’re eating for two, you know.”

[TWO]

Players Corner Lounge

Front and Master Streets, Philadelphia

Sunday, November 16, 10:01 P.M.

“I can pull over there under the El and wait, Mr. Gurnov,” the driver of the dark blue Audi R8 sedan said, stopping in front of the Fishtown dive bar. A dusting of snow had accumulated on the bar’s dirty redbrick front. Its blacked-out windows, with silver reflective silhouettes of well-endowed naked women holding martinis and poker cards on them, practically rattled with the music system blaring the Jersey rock band Bon Jovi.

“This won’t take long,” Dmitri Gurnov said, meeting the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

Gurnov, tall and wiry, carried himself with a steel-like intensity. The thirty-year-old had pale skin, sunken eyes, and a three-day scruff of beard. He wore a black leather jacket, a black collarless shirt, blue jeans, and polished black leather boots. He could feel the weight of the compact Sig-Sauer 9mm he carried in the right pocket of his coat.

Gurnov glanced up and down the snow-covered street, then opened the right rear door. He stepped onto the sidewalk that was little more than crumbling concrete. He looked across the street, where an overflowing industrial dumpster sat in front of another old bar. The space was being gutted. A new sign on one of the boarded-over windows announced that a wine café was coming soon.

We can’t keep this shithole bar here much longer with that going on.

Especially with the girls working.

The Fishtown section of Philly, bordering the Delaware River, was beginning to feel the benefits of the gentrification of neighboring Northern Liberties. In addition to NoLibs’ many small independent businesses similar to the wine café, nearby were the two busy casinos overlooking the river and, a dice

throw away across the expressway from them, the upscale Schmidt’s Brewery apartments, movie cinemas, and the Hops Haus complex of high-rise condominiums and trendy retail stores and restaurants.

The deterioration of Fishtown had started decades earlier. With the loss of jobs went the loss of community, first the tight-knit families of Italians moving out and then many of the tough working-class Irish who had taken their place following. Some hung on, but the first wave of bohemian outsiders were moving in, buying at affordable prices and pushing the ’hood to rise up, mirroring the success of NoLibs.

With a wealth of new development being planned out on various architects’ blueprints—including, Gurnov knew, ground finally broken on a Diamond Development entertainment complex just blocks away at Jefferson and Mascher—the clock was ticking on the old pockets of Fishtown that remained seedy.

A dive bar like the Players Corner Lounge was but one example of what the changing demographics would eventually push north into the harder hit areas of Kensington and Frankford, sections that long had been—and likely would continue to be—in a really bad way.

—

The moment the car door shut with a thunk, the Audi pulled a quick U-turn.

The dive bar’s dented metal door was set back in what would have been the corner of the old three-story building. As Gurnov started toward it, a SEPTA train on the Frankford-Market El loudly rumbled and screeched overhead. He briefly looked up at the brightly lit railcars, then down at the Audi parking beneath the El and killing its headlights. He grabbed the metal bar that served as the door handle and pulled. The loud thrumming music poured out as if it had been trapped in the small confines of the dusky, dank room.

It took a moment for Gurnov’s eyes to adjust. The lounge was mostly dark except for dimmed lighting behind the wooden bar that was along the left wall and a pair of bright red and blue floodlights harshly illuminating the stripper pole on the small stage to the right. An olive-skinned brunette, with obvious stretch marks on her pudgy belly, was hanging upside down near the ceiling from the chromed pole, pumping her arm to the beat of rock star Jon Bon Jovi belting out It’s! My! Life!

Of the twenty tables filling the floor, only five or six had anyone sitting at them, the patrons all males except for one young female clinging to her hipster date at a back table. Near the stage, Gurnov saw a table of four who looked like they were college kids, probably fraternity brothers. Another stripper, a platinum blonde Latina down to only a T-back thong, was working their table, vigorously rubbing her ample hip against one of the drunken guys as she tried to sell lap dances . . . and more.

None of the customers paid the tall, wiry man any attention as he moved across the room in the direction of a half dozen electronic poker machines.

He came to a dusty gray curtain on the wall at the end of the bar.

“Yo, bro, you call about a girl?” a rough-looking woman Gurnov hadn’t noticed behind the bar called out loudly. “You can’t go back there!”

She was in her thirties, short and dark-haired, wearing tight white shorts and a black low-cut T-top. Tattoos covered both arms and her entire chest. She was pouring vodka into a shot glass that was on the bar. Beside it a cell phone was lit up with an incoming call.

“The hell I can’t,” Gurnov snapped, pulling back the curtain.

She stared at him, tossed back the shot, and, pouring another, said, “Yeah? Fuck it, then. You deal with whatever happens.”

Gurnov uncovered a swinging door with NO ADMITTANCE stenciled on it in large letters. He swung it open inward and entered a short hallway. It was lined with cases of cheap alcohol and mixers stacked along one side and led to another door at the other end.

He found that the second door, stenciled with ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE!, was shut. But when he tried the knob, it was unlocked.