Page 4 of Strip Search
J ackie Mitchell
“Do I have to pay you a hundred bucks and buy a two-drink minimum?” I followed him to a room with a stripper pole and a couch.
The space was small and he filled it up.
Try not to make a fool of yourself and drool all over him .
But every hormone I had woke up and screamed, “Hell yeah!” each time his eyes met mine.
“Depends,” he drawled, swinging a circle around the pole with more grace than a man of his bulk should have been able to do. “Do you want me to dance?”
The answer should have been no. I was here for my sister.
But this was Vegas, right? I was also here to have a good time.
And Miles Carvello looked like Good Time was his middle name.
After all, I’d missed Darcy Ross gyrating in his boxers.
I deserved a little eye candy. I was taking too long to answer and Miles’s dark brown eyes got even darker.
If he pulled off his shirt, I was a goner.
Swallowing hard, I tried to take my eyes off his muscles and the outline of tattoos peeking over his tight white T-shirt.
I had a thing for tough guys, what could I say?
Focus, Jackie. Business first. Pleasure hopefully later.
“Do you want to see my ID?” I asked as he took a step closer to me.
He stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re not twenty-one?”
“Thanks for that. I meant to convince you I’m legit so you can give me Lisa’s information.” I fumbled in my purse for my driver’s license and business card.
“Lisa who? Oh, right. Broadway.”
My head was spinning. Why would Lisa leave a career in New York to dance in a second-rate club for dollar bills stuffed into her underwear?
I knew she had medical bills, but she was on a payment plan.
“Do exotic dancers make a lot of money?” I sat down on the couch, sinking into it slightly.
It was surprisingly comfortable. I wanted to kick off my sandals and relax.
The rum and Coke I’d had at the Spearmint Rhino mellowed me out more than I had expected.
“Depends,” Miles drawled.
“On what?”
“How good of a salesperson they are.” Instead of joining me on the couch, Miles pulled up a chair. Turning it backwards, he straddled the seat and folded his arms on top.
That was not the answer I was expecting. He must have sensed my confusion because he elaborated.
“My best dancer was a Harvard MBA.”
“Oh, come on,” I scoffed.
“I find the nice, quiet college girls are the wildest.” His grin was full of sin and his knowing once-over made me wonder if he had been in the crowd watching me go wild on my twenty-first birthday.
I cleared my throat. “Why was she the best stripper? Was she a classically trained dancer?”
Shaking his head, Miles said, “Because she could do math.”
“I hate math.”
“Most people do. But if you do four VIP sessions in an hour, how much do you make?”
“Four hundred dollars.”
“I take half.”
“Half? That’s bullshit.” I only took fifteen percent of my client’s salary. Fifty percent was ridiculous.
He smirked. “My building. My booze. My protection.”
I admired his large arms and broad chest. I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him. “Okay, fine. I’ll give you that.”
“So, you wind up making two hundred dollars an hour. For a six-hour shift, the most you can make is twelve hundred dollars—and that’s only if you book back-to-back sessions, which most girls don’t.”
“What about tips?”
“That’s the name of the game. If they’re not in the VIP room, they can still make money doing twenty-dollar lap dances.”
“Do they do forty-two-hour work weeks?” That would be every day. Seven days straight of dancing was tough.
“If they want. But most of them work four days on and four days off.”
It hurt, but I did the math in my head. Maybe that drink hadn’t been so watered down after all.
“I guess someone who was driven could think she could walk away with twenty-five thousand dollars after a month.” Was that why Lisa decided to stop being a bartender?
By the end of the year, she could have paid off her medical bills.
“That’s a high goal. Like I said, that’s only if you’re booked solid.
No one here has ever been booked solid. The real money comes in tips.
I don’t take a penny of the dancers’ tips.
That’s 100% free and clear. So when they get the customer into the VIP room, they have to give them an experience that they’re not getting on the floor. ”
“What kind of experience?” I asked warily.
“Not what you’re thinking. Out there,” I jerked my thumb behind me. “The clients can’t touch the girls and they move on after one song unless the guy pays for another lap dance. In here, it’s a more intimate one-on-one show.”
I took in a sharp breath.
He held up a hand. “I’m not running a whorehouse. I’m legit. But most guys will tip Jacksons to have a beautiful woman give him one hundred percent of her attention for fifteen minutes. Believe it or not most of the guys just want to talk to a naked woman while she’s dancing. That’s it.”
“No funny stuff?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.
He smirked. “Guys don’t want a girl to make them laugh.”
Rolling my eyes, I said, “I mean what about touchy feelies?” I made groping motions with my hands.
“Legally, you can’t do anything lewd. There’s a line not to cross.”
“What’s the line?”
“A little grinding is okay. Maybe a kiss or a nuzzle. The key is to make the guy feel special. Harvard knew that. She could make a grand in the time it took the other dancers to earn a hundred.”
“What did she do that made her so popular?”
“Anything the client wanted that she was willing to do.”
Crossing my arms in front of me, I said, “I thought you said you weren’t running a whorehouse.”
He lifted his hand in mock surrender. “I get undercover cops in here all the time and I’ve never had a solicitation violation. Besides, there are cathouses a quick taxi ride from here where it’s all legitimate and you get what you pay for.”
“Yeah, you’re a perfect angel.”
“Not even close.”
Damn. I blew out a shaky sigh. I had to stop enjoying talking to him so much. I was on a mission. “I can’t see Lisa letting strange men grope her.”
“It doesn’t have to be groping. It can be sweet talking and pushing drinks. It can be entrancing them with their bodies, teasing as an art form.”
“There’s got to be guys that take it too far,” I said shakily.
“Mav,” Miles barked.
I flinched at his tone and the couch sucked me in deeper.
About ten seconds later, the door got kicked open and a giant man stood there glaring into the room with a telescoping baton in his hand. His gaze skated over me and I almost peed in terror. I saw a slight frown cross his brow as he realized it was just me and Miles in the room.
“You need help subduing this one, boss?” he drawled.
“We’re good, Mav,” Miles said, without turning around to look at him. His dark eyes on mine were amused.
“You sure? Because she looks like she could be trouble.”
“Fuck off.”
“You called me,” Mav grumbled, storming out of the room.
“Close it behind you,” Miles said.
The door slammed.
“He was listening in the whole time?” I asked.
“No. Our system responds to keywords. Calling his name or mine triggers an emergency signal that tells security what room and what dancer needs us.”
“What happens then?”
His smile turned darker. “I earn my fifty percent.”
Well, that explained why Mav came in like a freight train. “I see.”
“I take the safety of my staff very seriously. The dancers are in total control in this room. If a customer tries to assault one of my dancers, they get arrested and banned from my establishment—after I bang them against the wall a few times. If you think Broadway met a dark end, it didn’t happen in this bar. ”
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t.” I told him the story of Lisa’s accident. I left out the part about the pills, but played up how worried my parents were. “She shouldn’t have been dancing at all.”
He smirked. “Vegas turns saints into sinners.”
“Don’t I know it.” I almost choked when he turned interested eyes on me.
“But that’s not what I meant. Yeah, my mom would shit a brick sideways if she knew her precious ballerina was stripping.
But I don’t give a shit. Frankly, I’m surprised she unclenched enough to dance to “top forty.” I did air quotes on the last two words and said them in Lisa’s snottiest tone.
Miles smirked. “She did dance to All that Jazz .”
I made a face. “That wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“What would be?”
I pictured it for a moment and was scandalized that the thought of shedding my clothes and dancing was turning me on.
“Um. There are a lot of sexy Broadway songs.” I needed to focus.
This conversation was getting out of hand.
“But that’s not the point. Lisa could destroy her knee entirely and not be able to walk again.
Standing up for an eight-hour shift as a bartender would’ve been hard enough for her.
I’m wondering if the promise of easy money made her get up on the stage. ”
“It’s not easy money. Only the girls who can skate the line of sex and string the mark along with promises and sweet talk are the moneymakers. It’s not for everyone and there’s a high burnout rate for those who can’t separate the fantasy of the job from the reality of it.”
I tried not to dwell on the sound of the word sex coming out of his mouth. “Was Lisa a moneymaker?”
“Broadway?” He snorted. “No.”
I nodded. “Then it’s possible she tried stripping as a lark and when she didn’t make any money, she moved on to something else.”
Miles nodded. “Happens all the time.”
That made me feel a little better. “That doesn’t leave me any closer to finding her, though. Is there anything you can do to help?”
“Normally, I don’t do this,” he said. “But let me make a few inquiries and if your story checks out, I’ll give you the address she gave me on her employment application.”