Daring Time (14 page)

And what the hell? He didn't even believe in reincarnation, did he?

"Now, now, Alfie. Keep your fists busy pouring drinks. We have a thirsty crowd here tonight, and this boy looks like he'd hold his own, anyway," Jack said as he shrewdly studied Ryan's stature and then swept his gaze across the quickly filling room. A line of patrons still streamed in, making the fifteen or so women that circulated in the crowd highly outnumbered. Another bartender had joined Alfie behind the bar and was pouring whiskey and beer for two women who, given their listless expressions, relative lack of face paint and drab dresses were there to serve drinks instead of entertain the men.

Jack waved a diamond-laden hand in Ryan's direction. "Looks like this young man could use one of those drinks. He's likely just a mite nervous about meeting Mario. Wouldn't we all be? A glass of my finest will put him at his ease."

Alfie looked vaguely surprised at his boss's request but he followed his order quickly enough. Ryan sat down, placing the short-brimmed ivory felt hat on the bar. When Alfie set a glass in front of him he automatically took a swallow, pausing before he took a second, more appreciative sip. Diamond Jack chuckled.

"That's from my private stores. I have it shipped to me from the finest distillery in Tennessee not far from where I grew up."

"Not bad," Ryan conceded.

"I can see you're a man of good taste. Now ... are we ever to know your name, son?"

"Daire," Ryan muttered. He gave Jack a sidelong glance, curious despite his wariness.

Hadn't the frustrated detective whose notes he'd read—Connor J. O'Rourke—written that Diamond Jack Fletcher was the prime suspect in Hope's murder?

And now he'd discovered Diamond Jack and Jim Donahue were the same man. Perhaps he wasn't in the wrong place, after all. Now he just needed to figure out without blowing his cover who the hell Alfie and Jack had mistaken him for.

"Where's Mario?" Ryan asked, hoping it was a safe question.

"He's taking care of some business for me. He'll be along. I've told the girls to carry on with the Slip and Whip for the first show tonight." Jack paused, beady eyes fixing on a tall, thin, disheveled-looking man who staggered into the main room, a woman supporting him on each side.

"Excuse me for a moment," Jack murmured, obviously irritated. Ryan tried to pretend he wasn't listening as Jack approached the half-soused dandy.

"Are you sure you should be down here, Mason?" Jack asked silkily.

"Course I am. I've slept it off and am now good as new, isn't that right, ladies?"

The bold-featured, blonde female on the right of him winked slyly at Mason. "Everything seems to be in perfect working order, wouldn't you say, Betsey?"

The redheaded Betsey giggled and petted the drunk guy along his thin chest and belly sycophantically. "Oh, he's a perfect specimen of manhood, Mel."

Jack leaned against the bar. Although Ryan wasn't fully looking into his face he got the distinct impression he rolled his eyes in disgust. "All right, you two, cut the act. Get up there and put on just as good of a show onstage or I'll set Big Mario on the both of you afterward for not keeping him upstairs to sleep it off like I told you to."

The sly, seductive expressions on both women's faces vanished in an instant. The threat of Big Mario was obviously not taken lightly.

"I thought Nancy and Sadie were doing the Slip and Whip tonight," the blonde woman said a tad bit suspiciously.

Jack pulled back his hand as though he were about to strike her for her insolence. "Who makes the rules here, Mel? Get up on that stage."

"Big Mario keeps the girls here in line?" Ryan mumbled when Alfie paused in front of him after pouring a glass of bourbon.

"Sure. Big Mario keeps
everyone
in line if Diamond Jack tells him to. He does more than just discipline the girls, though." Alfie leaned across the bar and spoke more intimately.

"He breaks in the new ones, if ya get my meanin'. Everyone knows how much Big Mario likes doing that. Ain't exactly gentle with 'em, but maybe that's best considering their new profession an' all." Alfie nodded knowingly toward the stairs Ryan could just make out in the distance through the doorway. "Word is, the girl Diamond Jack's got upstairs for him tonight is special. . . beautiful as a real princess."

Ryan took a sip of whiskey. "I guess that's what Diamond Jack meant when he said Mario was 'doing something for him.'"

Alfie looked confused by his statement. "No, Mario won't be breaking the new girl in until he wins her later tonight."

"Wins
her?" Ryan asked slowly.

"Sure. Diamond Jack awards the winner of the match not only prize money but a virgin.

Shapiro didn't tell you that before they sent ya over?"

Ryan kept his face impassive to hide his repulsion.

"No. Must've slipped Shapiro's mind.
I'm
the man who's taking on Big Mario tonight,"

Ryan said, covertly measuring Alfie's expression to see if he'd gotten that guess correct.

When Alfie just shrugged like what he'd said was obvious, Ryan continued. "So how come you don't think I have a chance of winning the prize money and the lady?"

Alfie's blue eyes popped open wide. He guffawed like Ryan had told him a hilarious joke.

"That's priceless," he muttered as he shook his head, laughing. The other bartender scowled at Alfie for leaving all the work to him. Alfie scurried away momentarily, setting several drinks on a tray. When he returned he took one look at Ryan and started laughing again as if his mirth had never been interrupted. He glanced at Ryan's face and stopped suddenly.

"Wait. . . ya weren't serious, were ya? Uh ... sorry to have to be the one to break it to ya, fella—you'll still get yer pay, fair and square—but nobody ... I mean
nobody
beats Big Mario in any fight, least of all one-on-one in the Sweet Lash's boxing ring." He pointed into the room and Ryan turned. Two men had been busy since he'd last looked and had roped off the center platform with sturdy, utilitarian rope versus the gold braid used on the sideshow areas. It hadn't struck Ryan when he'd originally noticed the center staging area that it was the approximate size of a boxing ring.

He stared incredulously. He was supposed to box some unbeatable foe named Big Mario for a virgin? This situation became more bizarre by the second. In the back of his mind it kept niggling at him, 'however, that if he walked out of there in search of Hope, he left the girl upstairs that Alfie had mentioned with a chance of being brutalized by Big Mario.

The detective O'Rourke had obviously been correct about one thing: Diamond Jack Fletcher was most definitely a white slaver just as the twenty-first-century version of him was.

Ryan realized that the room was now entirely filled. Several gaslights suddenly flamed to life along the rim of one of the smaller stages to the right of the boxing ring. The rowdy crowd began clapping and whooping uproariously when they saw Betsey and Mel strut onto the stage. Several of the men pulled women into their laps and began to caress and grope them familiarly while their eyes were trained on the stage. Betsey and Mel flashed their most seductive smiles, occasionally parting the robes they wore to the tops of their large, powdered breasts.

Suddenly Mel, who was the taller and older of the two women, went behind Betsey, reached around her and began lowering Betsey's robe. The men whooped when Betsey pretended to look scandalized and afraid, shaking her head and trying to clutch the robe around her shoulders, conveniently plumping her breasts in the process. Mel swatted her bottom, however, and Betsey, now chastised with head lowered, stood still while Mel removed the robe. She was naked beneath it with the exception of a too tight, black corset that failed to cover either her voluptuous belly and hips or the majority of her generous breasts. The crowd's cheers swelled as Mel possessively ran her hand over Betsey's breasts, belly and thighs. She turned the younger woman's back to the audience and massaged Betsey's curving buttocks to the men's obvious delight.

Mel now made a show of removing her own robe, glancing seductively over her shoulder and lowering it inch by inch. She also wore only a scanty corset, but her costume was supplemented by a pair of supple brown riding boots.

Both women possessed abundant amounts of round flesh, their looks strikingly different from the twenty-first century's concept of svelte beauty. Ryan liked a woman with curves; he found Hope's elegant carriage, narrow waist, full breasts and generously curving hips and ass to be his idea of female perfection, for instance. Betsey's and Mel's dimpled flesh, on the other hand, struck him as blowsy and unhealthy-looking. Not that the Sweet Lash was likely to offer its residents the healthiest of living and working environments, Ryan thought wryly.

He watched with mild interest as Mel picked up a bottle from the stage and gave the men a suggestive look. The men roared their approval, especially when Mel pointed sternly to the floor and Betsey obediently went down on her hands and knees. Mel proceeded to rub oil into Betsey's skin, making her hips, thighs and ass gleam in the gaslights. Their performance was almost as over-the-top contrived as the men's frantic, chest-beating excitement.

The crowd cheered rock-star loud when the blonde parodied a look of stern dissatisfaction and picked up a small, black whip and the redhead reacted with a similarly dramatic expression of anxious desire to please. Betsey squealed when the blonde woman flicked the whip threateningly on the stage to loud applause and appreciative catcalls.

Much to Ryan's amazement, at this point of the performance several of the men grabbed a female and hastily headed for the exit and the rooms upstairs. Jack glanced up from his conversation with Mason, smiling and nodding his approval as the couples passed. But Ryan sensed from his narrow-eyed gaze that Jack was checking which men had taken their satisfaction early so that if they should want another round later, Jack got his extra pay.

"There's no chance I'll beat Big Mario, is that what you're saying?" Ryan asked when he faced Alfie again. Like him, Alfie seemed relatively impervious to the enactment on the stage, matter-of-factly filling a beer from the tap and pouring a glass of gin at once. "Why is that, exactly?"

"Ye've never seen him, eh?" The bartender seemed a tad pitying.

"No, but I'm guessing he didn't earn his name from the size of his heart," Ryan muttered wryly.

Alfie gave him a blank look. "He's a monster. Jack bought him off the Algerian contingent from the Chicago World's Fair years back. They claimed he was the strongest man on earth, and nothing any of the other participating countries or America had to offer could ever prove the Algerians wrong. He dead-weighted more than any man ever before recorded in history. Mario's so strong he can pull a tree up by its roots and stop a carriage in its tracks."

"What about his boxing skills?"

"What about 'em? Who needs to worry about skills when ya can hammer a guy's head into the floor with yer fist anytime you—"

The last part of Alfie's sentence was cut off when the crowd roared in approval.

Mel's subtle gestures and Betsey's growing excitement made Ryan suspect the two women were familiar lovers. For the first time since they began their theatrics he felt an inkling of arousal. It wasn't so much that he found either of them attractive or that he particularly got off on watching lesbians. It was the glimpse of Mel's dominance and Betsey's submission, the exchange of their energies that had caught his attention more than anything.

During the height of the crowd's excitement over the tawdry spectacle unfolding on the stage, three men had entered the room and immediately approached Diamond Jack and Mason. The five of them retired to a solitary table on a platform directly by the entrance.

A big man with a square jaw stood several feet away, staring in a hawk-like manner out at the crowd. Ryan assumed he was one of Jack's henchmen. One of the waitresses brought the men drinks and also handed Jack several sheets of paper and a pencil.

All of the men except for Mason began conversing soberly. Ryan realized Diamond Jack was conducting high-level business. What better place to carry on in secret than in this boisterous crowd where they were sure to go unheard? Both the table and Jack's chair were perfectly positioned for Jack to see everything going on in the large room. Every time a man left with a woman on his arm he made a note on the paper in front of him and another note when they returned. Ryan observed that when the women returned from their forays upstairs they wore significantly less clothing, often nothing more than a petticoat and revealing corset. A few came down wearing frothy negligees, their breasts almost fully exposed beneath the sashes of their robes.

For the most part Mason ignored the men's talk and sat slumped in his chair, watching the Slip and Whip with a fixed, heavy-lidded stare. Despite the fact that he appeared to be no older than twenty-four or -five, he looked distinctly ill, like his body had been hard used.

At one point Mason sat up to attention at something Jack had said. He questioned the owner of the Sweet Lash. Jack's terse response made Mason tilt his chin in the general direction of the upstairs of the establishment. When Jack nodded, Mason grinned widely.

Mason's leer made Ryan uneasy. He needed to find Hope. What if his showing up at the brothel had been related to Hope, after all? There was a woman upstairs, "beautiful as a princess," who'd been forced into coming here. Detective Connor O'Rourke had suspected Diamond Jack of abducting Hope around this time period.

What if the woman upstairs was Hope?

Ryan jerkily stood from the bar stool. What if Jack or one of his henchmen had already killed her?

He was trying to think of a way that he could get past Jack's all-seeing eyes and poke around upstairs in search of the captive young woman Alfie had mentioned. Knowing what Alfie had told him about Mario's role with the abducted females made Mario's protracted absence alarming.

He paused when he saw Jack stand and put his hand on the henchman who'd been about to descend the stairs. Jack went down the stairs himself. He stalked over to a table where a balding man had pulled a pretty young woman into his lap and jerked down her dress and corset. He happily fondled a small breast while his other hand was busy beneath her skirts, his eyes glued to the Slip and Whip. When Betsey had begun her lewd humping motions up on the stage, the man had started hopping the prostitute's bottom in his lap at the same rate. Jack must've been wise enough to realize the man was looking for two pops for the price of one, having his pleasure here in public and also upstairs later on.