Plugged - Eoin Colfer [74]
My transplants are itchy.
Thank God the wages were paid yesterday.
What about me? Ghost Zeb pitches in. Don’t forget about me.
And Zeb is still Irish Mike’s captive. Irish Mike who collects a little tribute every month from Slotz. It seems every time I crawl out of no-man’s-land, the earth tilts and rolls me back in.
I hear Brandi’s steel heels clacking across the casino floor and I decide to face the music before she launches into another tirade. I rise, check my skullcap in a remaining shard of busted mirror and duck under the door frame to meet my public.
It’s a weird feeling to have subordinates smiling at you; didn’t happen a lot in the army. Mostly in the army people muttered gobshite under their breath when I was dishing out orders. But here, all I’m getting is happy faces.
Jason is still riffing on ‘YMCA’.
‘Dan-Mac-Evoy,
Is fucking awesome,
Dan-Mac-Evoy,
Kicked Victor Jones’ goddamn ass!’
He abandons the song’s structure for the last line, but nevertheless his efforts earn him an enthusiastic round of applause.
‘Okay,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Okay. I thank you, Jason. The Village People thank you.’
More laughing. Marco tickles Jason in the ribs, which opens my eyes about a couple of things.
‘For tonight, we do everything as normal. Except the booths; no more hands-on in the booths. Anyone has a problem with that, talk to me later. Also, anyone working off a debt, you don’t owe me a dime, so from now on we all get paid.’
A couple of smiles from those no longer in the hole, but the hands-on girls don’t seem too thrilled.
‘If you get the opportunity to piss off Victor Jones, do not take it.’
‘Too late,’ chortles Jason, accepting multiple high fives. High fives? Christ, these guys are happy.
‘Don’t take it, because I don’t know how legal that poker game was.’
‘Legal?’ says Jason. ‘Vic’s been rolling girls for years back there. How legal was that?’
This is a good point.
‘You know any good lawyers, Danny?’ continues Jason.
Sure he does, says GZ. ’Cept Danny here has a tendency to get lawyers shot dead.
Marco trots across the floor, bearing a large Jameson on a scarred martini tray.
‘Here you are, Dan. You earned it.’
I accept the drink gratefully. The Irish whiskey is smooth going down, but has an aftershock like a jolt from a defibrillator.
‘Back to work everybody, enjoy the new management while it lasts. I need to think for a while.’
Brandi positions herself at my side. ‘That’s right, people. You heard the boss: back to work. We need to negotiate the booth action.’
Looks like I have a second in command.
First thing I do in Vic’s office is to kick Brandi out; the second is to rip down the porn. It’s not that I find naked women offensive; it’s just that I prefer the real thing. Also the pictures remind me of the previous occupant, and all the acts he claimed to have performed with the various club employees. Not images you want popping into your head in the course of a work day. Plus if Vic does manage to legal me out of here, I would like out of sheer vindictiveness to mess up his system as much as I can before he does it.
I don’t know how Vic got anything done. His work surface is a jumble of magazine towers, burger cartons and wadded foil wrappers. There’s a trash can in the corner that looks like it exploded some time in the nineties, and the window blinds are streaked brown and yellow from decades of cigar smoke.
I wipe the boss’s chair off and sit down, and that’s about as far as my plan extends.
Adjust the chair.
It’s a nice touch. I lower the chair six inches so Vic will get an unexpected little shock. Little nuggets like this keep a man going.
So sit down, and then what? Payrolls, overheads, rent, booze orders, cash deposits.
My transplanted follicles are begging for a scratching, something Zeb forbade me to do.
I didn’t employ five students and spend eight hours separating your follicles to have you scratch the little bastards out again. No touching for a month.
Hands flat on the table, I tell myself. Do not touch the new hair. It’s hard