Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [434]
Officer Douglas didn’t shorten his stride for me, and he didn’t need to. I was used to walking scenes with Dolph, who made Douglas look petite. I kept up with him even in the high-heeled boots. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Probably just as well.
Some of the police on this side of the river don’t know me on sight. They thought what Douglas had thought, that I worked here, because they catcalled after us, “Hey, Dougie, going to get a piece. No lap dances on company time, Douglas.” And worse. I ignored it all. It was four in the morning, and I hadn’t been to bed yet, I didn’t care. Besides, I’d learned the hard way that the more attention you pay to shit like that, the more you have to shovel. Ignore it, and it usually goes away, because it just isn’t any fun if they don’t get a rise out of you. Besides, they were teasing Douglas more than me. I was just the nameless girl who gave them an excuse.
He ignored it, but his face was blazing by the time we got to the main doors. He actually held the door for me, and I let him. There’d been a point in my life when I would have not let him hold the door. But with his face already burning with embarrassment, I wasn’t going to arm wrestle him for the door. I might have to work with him again, so screw it, he could hold the door. Besides, if I put him on the spot about the door, it would have given his coworkers more to tease him about, and I didn’t want that.
We went through the glass doors into a little entry area that reminded me of the front of a nice resturant, complete with a little desk and a maître d’. Though that probably wasn’t the tall guy’s official title. But hey, he was wearing a white suit jacket with a tie, he did look like a maître d’. When I’d seen him last, he was tall and self-assured and had taken my name and Asher’s and called on a phone to have a “hostess” escort us in. Now he leaned on his counter, head in his hands, looking ill.
There were bathrooms off to the left, and a short hallway that led into the club. From the door you really couldn’t see into the club. It gave them a last chance to keep out the undesirables, or the underagers, before someone saw breasts. The color scheme was muted blues and purples, and if they hadn’t had silhouettes of naked women on the walls, it would have looked like a restaurant, oh, and the poster advertising that Wednesday was amatuer night.
I couldn’t remember the big guy’s name, just couldn’t remember it. But it didn’t matter, because Douglas took me past him without a word. Up the little ramp, and the club spilled out around us. There was a good solid bar area to the left that would have done any club proud, but the rest of the room was all strip club. I mean, what else do you use little round stages for? The room was mostly blues and purples, and maybe other colors. I couldn’t tell for sure, because most of the big room was lit by black light, or other odd lighting, so that the room was lit, but it was still terribly dark. I’d been surprised the first time I was here, it was as if light could be dark, so that though there was no actual shadowed area, the whole room seemed like it was in a shadow.
It was a weekend night, the place was packed, but quiet. They’d had to turn off the music, and the DJ’s endless prattle was mercifully absent. In fact, the room seemed wrong this quiet, as if the noise was part of the decor. There were men, and more women than you’d think in the audience, huddled now all together like mourners at an unexpected funeral. The dancers were all in one corner with a plainclothes detective that I didn’t recognize. A big man in a uniform that matched Officer Douglas’s strode toward us, with a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He still had his hat on, as if his round face would have been incomplete