Page 37 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

I t only took a couple phone calls to find out where Big Dick preferred to swing, so after giving Becks and the team a heads up on my plans, I rolled over to a far less trendy side of town, out Wilkinson Boulevard where the city’s two biggest gun shops vied for attention among the three biggest topless bars.

I parked in the Hyatt Guns parking lot, deserted in the middle of the night, and walked across the street to the Hustler Hollywood gentleman’s club.

I learned a long time ago that if you’re likely to get in a bar fight, it’s best to leave your car in a different business’s lot.

That way when your brawl inevitably spills outside, you’re far less likely to be shoved through your own windshield, adding financial insult to whatever injuries you might sustain.

The Hustler Hollywood Gentleman’s Club bore only a passing resemblance to a club, and none whatsoever to Hollywood, or a place where gentlemen could be found.

There were a couple hustlers working the lot, though, offering two-for-one lap dance coupons that I’m sure were totally legit despite misspelling both “Hustler” and “dance.” Half a dozen Harleys lined up out front, and the bouncer wore a club cut with “Sergeant At Arms” on his left chest, so I kinda figured I was at the right place.

“Twenty bucks,” he said, looking down at me with a cold stare.

“I need to see Big Dick,” I replied.

“You got the wrong club, buddy. Swinging Johnson’s is across town.

” He laughed at his own joke, but stopped laughing when I held up another one of the very popular Ben Franklin portraits.

I was gonna have to get creative on my expense reports to get this shit reimbursed.

Hard to get receipts when you’re bribing people, and the government hates reimbursing without receipts.

Good thing I was sleeping with the boss.

He took my hundred and jerked his head toward the door. “Dick’s booth is in the back corner by the stage. Tell Tiny that I said you’re okay.”

“What’s your name?”

“Why do you care?”

I don’t mind criminals, and I usually don’t even mind the knuckle-dragging leg breakers. But I hate stupid thugs. “Because I can’t just tell Tiny that the stupid ugly guy at the door said I’m okay. I need a name for the stupid ugly guy, don’t I?”

“I’m not stupid, asshole.” At least he didn’t argue with me about the ugly part.

This dude had a face that looked like somebody dragged him down Wilkinson behind their bike, topped with scraggly brown hair that hadn’t seen shampoo since Obama was president.

He was fat, with some of the worst prison tattoos I’d ever seen crawling up his arms, and there were gaps where more might once have been, but they had long since fled for more attractive climes. Like a sewer.

“Okay,” I replied. “I’ll tell Tiny that Not Stupid Asshole at the door said I was okay. Got it.” And I slipped past him while he pondered whether or not I’d insulted him again. So much for not being stupid.

I walked into a wall of sound, with bass pounding in my chest as the dulcet tones of the late, great, Janie Lane screamed about his cherry pie.

I’m not sure why that song is playing every time I set foot in a strip club, but it’s almost like it’s a universal law.

And I fucking hate hair metal. I liked glam rock.

Hell, I got shitfaced with The New York Dolls on the regular back in the day, before David Johansen decided there was more money and better coke in being Buster Poindexter.

God rest all their maligned, abused, drug-addled souls, but those boys knew how to rock.

And party. I lost a month after one of their concerts in Newark and woke up under a bridge in Amsterdam with a hash hangover like you wouldn’t believe.

The bar was typical cheap strip club decor, with colored lights splashing across the walls and the lights kept intentionally dim around the tables, as much for anonymity as privacy.

There was a roped-off section between the stage and a dark doorway with “VIP” over it in pink neon, and a handful of guys seated in a semicircle around one massive dude who I assumed was Big Dick.

The irony of looking for a guy named Big Dick in a topless club was not lost on me, and I figured I needed a little fortification before I started a fight, so I went over to the bar where the prettiest girl in the building, who was also the most dressed, was pulling beers.

“What’ll it be? Pbr is on special—two-dollar tallboys.

” She was maybe twenty-five, with red hair and sleeves of tattoos that were way better than the bouncer’s.

There was a hardness around her eyes that told me she had either a baseball bat or a twelve-gauge under the bar, or maybe both, and she knew how to use them.

“What’s your best Scotch?” I asked.

“Shitty,” she said. “None of the guys who come in here know the difference between Glenlivet and Wild Turkey, so the boss just fills expensive bottles with crap bourbon. We’ve got good tequila, though. The guys in the corner like their agave, so the top shelf tequila’s real.”

“Gimme four shots of Don Julio, then,” I said, sliding another picture of Old Ben across the bar. “Keep the change.”

“Cop, fed, or cartel?” she asked as she poured the shots.

I knocked back two and raised an eyebrow at her. “What gave it away?”

“You haven’t been staring at my tits, so you’re here for something besides sex, you sound like you’ve at least walked past a college once, so you’re more educated than anyone else in the building besides maybe me, and you’re flashing cash in a way that’ll get you killed in here most nights, but you don’t look nervous, so you’re either packing or you’re backed by somebody scarier than Dick and his boys. ”

“Or both,” I said, draining the next two shots. “Fed. And believe it or not, I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t want to arrest anybody.”

“Too bad,” she said. “Been a while since I got to put Ethel to work.”

“Ethel the bat under the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“Is the shotgun named Fred?” I asked.

She smiled, and I liked her. “Yep. Ethel does most of the work. Fred’s usually just loud, but when he needs to throw down, he can.”

“If I go over there and talk to Big Dick, is he going to give me any shit?”

“Depends on how many of those Benjis you’re willing to throw around,” she said.

“Dick’s exactly what his name implies, but he’s a cheap dick.

If you just want information, five hundred oughta get you out without a fight.

If you really want shit to go peaceful, take this bottle with you. ” She slid the Don Julio over to me.

“How much?” I asked.

“Get me a job interview. I was only working here until I finished my degree at UNCC, and that was a few months ago. So I’m looking for a new gig. Preferably one that smells less like body glitter and bad decisions.”

I passed her my business card, which was really Becks’ card with her name scratched out and mine scribbled over it. “Call this number and ask for Deputy Director Flynn.”

“You mean like the Deputy Director Flynn whose card it really is?”

I like her , said the very same Deputy Director Flynn in my mind.

Me too, I replied. She might be a good addition.

Dunno if we want to bring a mundane into our world, Harker.

Yeah, but it worked out alright with you, I said. And you could always get her a gig somewhere else in Homeland. Somewhere she might not have to fight werewolves on the regular.

“Yeah, that Deputy Director Flynn. Tell her Quincy Harker referred you to her. I’ll make sure she’s expecting your call. What’s your degree in?”

“Criminal Justice with a minor in Psych. I want to be an FBI profiler someday.”

“Well, good luck with that,” I said. “But call Flynn. She’s good people.”

“And good luck with Dick,” she replied, then giggled. “That didn’t sound good.”

No, it didn’t, but I was going to need all the help I could get with Dick and the boys he was hanging with, so I carried the bottle of Don Julio over to the rope and looked at the massive biker.

“Big Dick?”

“Who’s asking?” This was a different, equally massive biker, again with the shaved head and goatee thing going on. What ever happened to bikers with long hair? Did I miss a TikTok or something?

“You Tiny?”

“Yeah.” His voice rumbled, like boulders tumbling over one another.

“The guy outside, said his name was Not Stupid Asshole, told me to tell you that I’m alright. And you should let me talk to Big Dick.”

“He lied to you, pal. He’s totally a stupid asshole,” Big Dick said, laughing. “Bring that bottle over here and you can ask me your questions. But I admit to nothing, and I don’t consent to being recorded.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” I said. “I’m not after you, and I fucking hate wearing a wire. The tape always pulls my chest hair off.” Then I stepped over the velvet rope into the lion’s den. He just didn’t know the real predator had just come to visit.

I handed over the bottle of tequila with five hundred-dollar bills wrapped around the neck. “I’m looking for somebody you’ve done work with.”

“How do you know who I work with?” he asked after he made the bills disappear and took a long pull off the bottle.

I pulled out my badge wallet and flashed my DHS credentials.

“It’s my job to know shit like that,” I said.

“Now are we gonna do the bullshit dance where you deny, I threaten, we get in a fight, I beat your ass, and eventually you tell me what I want to know, or are we gonna sit here and drink while you tell me what I want to know?”

Big Dick laughed, and his boys laughed right behind him, good sycophants one and all. “You think you can take all of us? You and what army?”

I didn’t even lean forward in my chair, one of the overstuffed round-back ones covers in faux velvet that are ubiquitous in low-end strip clubs the world over.

“I’m all the army I need, Dicky. I’m the one that shut down the Colosseum a couple nights ago.

So yeah, I think I can take you and all your boys here without breaking a sweat. ”

I heard “Reaper” whispered behind me and let a grin creep across my face. I was finally starting to like that nickname. It opened a lot of doors, as it turns out.

“Okay,” Big Dick said, taking another long drink. I noticed his hand shook a little and could hear the bottle click against his teeth as he tried to fortify himself. “What do you want to know?”

“Where to find Pete and his boss,” I said. “I know you handled the payoffs to Stoller, so you must have a pipeline to the cash. Follow the stink, you get to the shit. And if you follow the money, you get to the shitheads.”

“Why do you want to find Pete and the Irishman?” Dick asked. “You gonna kill ‘em?”

“Probably,” I said. “Unless they surrender. But the Irishman didn’t seem like the surrendering type. Pete, maybe, but that big ginger bastard seemed like he really liked being in charge, and that doesn’t make for somebody who has a lot of quit in them.”

Dick laughed again but cut off his boys with a wave when they started to chuckle. “You guys can fuck off for a bit. Go polish your chrome or something. And Jerky? That’s not a goddamned metaphor. I catch you spanking it in the bathroom again and I’m gonna cut off your thumbs.”

His sycophants trailed off and I laughed. “I remember that shit from Sons of Anarchy .”

“Yeah. That was a good fuckin’ show. Now, Pete and Irish. You really gonna kill ‘em?”

“Like I said, not if they surrender. If they give up, I’ll just throw them into some government prison without a name that doesn’t show up on any maps and let them think about their poor choices for the rest of their lives.”

“What about the big boss? The guy running the whole thing? You gonna put him in jail, too?”

“You know who he is? Where I could find him?” Now I leaned forward in my chair.

“Nah,” Dick said, passing me the bottle. “The boys never let me get that close. Never even hinted at who it might be. But any time I tried to poke around and find out, they looked scared, like he was a real bad motherfucker. Badder than me, and to most folks, that’s saying something.”

He didn’t really look like that much of a badass to me. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a tough guy. But where can I find Tweedledee and Tweedledead?”

“We usually meet here when they need to set up a drop for Stoller. I don’t know where they live, or where they hang out except at the arena. But I got a phone number. Maybe you can hunt ‘em down that way.”

“And you’ll give that to me out of the goodness of your heart?” If I sounded dubious, it’s because I was.

“Nah, I’ll give it to you for another five hundred and a promise to get Angie at the bar a gig. I saw you give her a card. She’s too smart for this shit, and I’m afraid if she hangs out here much longer, she’s either gonna end up on the pipe or on the pole.”

A biker badass with a heart of gold? What is this criminal underworld coming to?

I handed him another five bills and a promise to help Angie get a job that didn’t involve criminals, drugs, or prostitution.

Although I couldn’t really promise any of that if she actually got a job working for the government.