Page 2 of The Wrong Idea (The Kinky Bank Robbers #2)
Chapter Two
We parked in a nondescript downtown parking garage that stood in a cluster of business district high-rises with mostly dark windows.
“Where is this sort-of-a-nightclub?” I asked as we got out. “Nothing around here even looks open.”
“That’s the point,” Thor said. “You’ll see.”
“Sooooo mysterioso!”
We took the parking garage elevator to a gloomy basement area and headed down a dark hall and through a door to yet another hall to yet another door.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed.
“Overkill, I know,” Thor grumbled.
We finally came to a large, gray door. Odin knocked and gave a password to a camera. He’d ditched the hairy mole, thankfully, as well as the track suit. This weird nightclub had a fancy dress code. We’d had to buy a gown for me to wear at the hotel boutique, and Odin and Thor wore suits.
The lock clunked open, and we pushed through and continued. Apparently Guvvey’s, being the illegal criminal nightclub it was, had to be shady about everything.
The three of us headed through a dark tunnel, on and on, and then took an elevator up to the 21st floor. We headed to an unmarked door at the end of the hall, or at least I assumed it was a door; I couldn’t be sure, being that it had no doorknob .
“Are you even kidding me right now?” I asked. “This is like a TV show.”
Odin knocked.
A woman with braids and tattoos opened it up and smiled. “Well, well, well, look who’s here.” She ushered us in to a dark foyer where we were forced to give up our phones.
“You have to give up your phones, but not guns?” I asked.
She flicked her gaze toward Odin.
“She’s okay,” Odin said. “First time.”
She gave me a dark look and let us into a space full of dim, colorful lights and low, pulsating music.
“What?” I protested.
“Give up our guns? You think people like us would dine at a place where we have to give up our guns?” Odin said this like it was the most ridiculous thing ever.
“Yet we gave up our phones. You can’t make a call, but it’s okay to go on a shooting spree?”
“It’s a privacy thing,” Thor said. “And to be fair, you can get in a lot of trouble starting a shooting spree.”
“Though the windows are Plexiglas,” Odin added. Like that would be my concern—that the windows wouldn’t shatter in the case of free-for-all of gunfire.
Inside, the place was all posh and glam and arty in an ultra-mod way, with blue globe lights and red seating.
Apparently the LA criminal element had just as much of a thing for interior design as the LA hotel element did.
People sat around low tables; others gathered at the bar.
And instead of wallpaper, the walls were plastered floor to ceiling with photographic murals of lions and tigers killing antelopes and rabbits and other prey, images straight off the nature channel, except they were strangely colorized—in pastels, of all things.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Odin demanded.
“This art,” I said. “That’s what’s funny.”
Thor scowled. He didn’t think it was funny.
“Come on, it’s funny,” I said. “Baby boys like blue trains on their wallpaper, girls get Barbie princess stuff, and wow, you and your crime-happy friends get mammoth, surreal images of predators sinking their teeth into the necks of their helpless prey? And that’s not funny?”
“I see it as more Darwinistic than funny,” Odin said.
“ Darwinistic .” Thor spat the word. It seemed to bother him, this wallpaper depicting survival of the fittest, a culture of might making right.
It made sense, being that he was a doctor by training.
He would’ve taken that doctor’s oath to do no harm.
In the world of the jungle, Thor would be the one saving the antelope.
And really, I would try to save the antelope, too.
They seemed sweet and a little bit Bambi-ish, even.
“We’re a Darwinistic crowd, baby,” Odin said, just as a muscular, tattoo-covered man approached us, laughing.
“No way,” the man said, slapping hands with Thor and then Odin. “You boys better have taken the tunnels.”
Odin grinned. “We took the tunnels, my friend.”
The man tipped up his head by way of answer and led us across the place.
“What does he mean? Isn’t everyone supposed to take the tunnels?” I asked Thor.
“He’s giving us shit because we have so much heat on us,” Thor answered.
As we moved across the room, I noticed how heads turned as we went.
The people at the bar watched us. Groups at tables watched us.
Even some of the people swaying in the corner to the strange techno music craned their necks around as we passed.
It was a strange feeling, to be notorious among the notorious.
What’s more, everyone was in suits and dresses.
The place was a mix of America’s sexiest, heavily armed men and women along with lots of menacing and strangely photographic people, also heavily armed, with a few Fellini film extras thrown in.
I tried to act all cool, like I belonged, but I was an antelope—I couldn’t get that out of my mind now. Sure, I was an antelope who liked to run up close to the lions and have some big fun, but still. Antelope.
At least Thor was in the antelope camp with me. He would save me if I got bitten.
We were seated at a couch in front of a coffee table that glowed faintly. Everything here was soft with light and color.
A squat woman in a tuxedo walked up with a bottle of scotch. “You fuckers. Still alive. Nice to see you.” Thor turned and struck up a conversation with her.
Personally, I was still riveted by the troubling wallpaper. It came to me that Zeus and Odin had once been lions protecting antelopes, but then ZOX, the agency they had dedicated their lives to, turned on them, betrayed them.
That’s why they were so into robbing banks—it was their way of bringing it to the government agency that wanted them dead because of atrocities they’d witnessed.
They knew too much.
“There she is—over there with the bright white hair.” Odin nodded his head at a sturdy-looking woman at the end of the bar with a dyed platinum buzzcut. “She’s got her fingers into most of the security cameras in Los Angeles. She’s kind of a middleperson, matching buyers and sellers.”
Tabby turned toward us right then, as if she sensed our attention. She grabbed her drink and sauntered over, taking the empty seat. “Tabby,” she said, holding out her hand.
I shook it. “Isis,” I said.
“Got yourself a god name,” she said.
I smiled proudly—I couldn’t help it. “Yup.”
“You can talk in front of her,” Odin said, and I sat up a little bit straighter. I felt so lucky, being part of this amazing gang, if only for a little while. “You have the image?”
“Do I have the image?” Tabby asked, like that was outrageous. “It’s not so simple as that. What I have is a nervous seller. He works for the company that helps run AV at the fairgrounds.”
“How much?” Odin asked.
Tabby shook her head. “Here’s what you need to understand: the guy’s seriously nervous.
The men that grabbed the footage and the image you want to see, they have a lot of juice.
He didn’t even want me to tell you about him, that’s how nervous he is.
He’ll be mad if you approach him. He’ll know it was me who tipped you off, and he might not play ball with me anymore. Which cuts off some of my network.”
“It’s a sacrifice for you to even give us the name of this guy, that’s what you’re trying to say to us,” Odin clarified.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to say to you,” Tabby said. “It’ll hurt my business. I’ll lose this guy, and that’s just for starters.”
“Meaning it’ll cost us,” Thor said.
“Compensation for my loss,” Tabby said. “That would be part of the price of this information.”
My guys exchanged blank glances, all poker-faced, as usual. Was Tabby really going to suffer if she gave us the name?
Or did she just think my guys were prolific bank robbers with cash coming out their ears? Because that would be very accurate.
Or maybe she sensed how desperate we were. She’d be right about that, too.
We had to see that picture.
We had to know the worst.
I had to know.
Odin pulled a card from his pocket, wrote a number on it, and slid it to Tabby.
Tabby examined it, crossed out the number, wrote a new one, and passed it back to Odin.
Their little dance got repeated one more time, and finally they arrived at a figure that seemed wildly high to me.
Thor pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and slapped it on the table, because at Guvvey’s, you didn’t have to hide when you were doing illegal deals.
Tabby slapped her hand over the pile of money, pulled it toward herself with decisive drama, and counted it. She drove a pretty hard bargain, this Tabby person, and I liked that about her. You didn’t get ahead as a woman in the world—and certainly not the criminal world—by being kind and agreeable.
I smiled as she pocketed the money. If and when I had to go back, at least I’d met lots of interesting people. People I barely could’ve imagined before.
At least I would have that.