Virgil sat at the desk in the back office of his strip club. He was in the middle of holding court with two of his men seated in front of him when his phone rang. Annoyed at having his story interrupted, he picked up the receiver to take the call from James Sullivan.
“Yeah, Jim, I got no idea what you’re talking about. Nothing happening here, just a couple of drunks fighting in the parking lot earlier, but when isn’t there a fight in the parking lot?”
He paused and listened before again interrupting James.
“Yeah, okay, Cape May. Shit, like I got nothing but time on my fucking hands. I’m busy here. I’ll see what I can do.” Virgil hung up the phone and lit a cigar. He offered the box of Cubans to the two tough looking characters sitting in front of him. One took a cigar, the other refused.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t smoke cigars, V,” the lackey responded.
“Want me go to the store and get you some Virginia Slims?” Virgil held out his hand holding a $10 bill towards the other man. “Paulie, go down to the corner store and get this numb-nuts some Slims.”
Paulie, the other cigar smoker, guffawed. “You don’t refuse what Big V offers you.”
“Hey, if you don’t want to smoke ’em now, you can put them in your purse for later,” Virgil chided the lackey, “right next to your tampons.”
V leaned back, blowing smoke in the air with a smile, knowing that the object of his insults was unable to provide a retort without brutal consequences. A buzz came from the intercom on his desk.
Virgil leaned over and pushed the blue button to talk. “What is it?”
The high pitched voice of Augie, the thick-necked bouncer who ate a side of steroids with each meal of the day came across the intercom. “You’re not gonna fucking believe who is standing at the front door, V. It’s that scumbag cop.”
V rolled his eyes. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Aug.”
“That fuckin Irish mick detective. The one you know. MacGyver or something.”
Virgil shook his head at the stupidity of his minions. “It’s McGreevy, you asshole.”
Virgil and Sean McGreevy had taken separate paths in life, but remained tied together through mutual relationships. They were always cordial to each other, even though neither had much respect for each other’s chosen profession.
Sean had been a regular at the strip club, almost living there, until he went sober two years earlier. Since then, he had become an insufferable AA asshole. But his presence and his appearance this evening signaled to V that he must have fallen off the wagon again.
They always came back.
“Whoever,” Augie continued from the intercom. “He’s standin’ at the back door. Just standin’ there.”
Paulie and numb-nuts looked at V and shrugged their shoulders as Virgil leaned into the intercom blowing out a puff of smoke. “Yeah, what’s he want, a hug?”
The two lackeys chuckled.
“He looks like shit, like a friggen junkie, standing there at the door.”
“Well, either let him in or shoot him,” Virgil said in annoyance. “What the fuck you want me to tell you?”
The two seated goombas smiled and exchanged looks as Virgil leaned back in his chair, which creaked and groaned under his weight, and continued to regale his staff with his latest story.
“So, where was I? Oh yeah, so Angela goes through my phone and finds my texts to Roxanne, and she’s calling me every name in the book; a dick, a prick, a cock. So I says to her, ‘where you getting all these names from? What are you, a thesaurus of penis?’”
More on-cue laughter from the two lackeys, louder and more bombastic, which coaxed V to continue.
“Then the lamps start flying and—”
BANG!
The joking and laughing was stopped dead by the sharp sound of a gun firing.
Virgil adjusted his tie, joking, but with some concern in his voice. “I guess Augie chose option B.”
Nervous laughter from the lackeys.
More gunshots from the other room.
“Jesus Christ, did he really shoot that cop?” Virgil said while grabbing the intercom. “Augie, what the hell is going—”
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG! A series of rapid fire gunshots echoed through the wall over the pounding of the DJ music. It sounded as if an all-out gunfight was underway.
V looked at video monitor displaying the camera focused on the club entrance and saw a bunch of sick looking people rushing in the front door. He looked out the window of his office into the lounge area, and saw absolute chaos. Bouncers, bartenders, customers and strippers were either attacking each other or being attacked. Chairs and bottles were flying through the air. A half-naked stripper straddling a customer mid lap-dance was sprayed with blood from a bouncer’s severed arm, and within seconds, she was digging her teeth into her customer’s shoulder while the lap dance recipient screamed out in shock and pain. One pole dancer had shimmied up to the top of the pole and was hanging on, pressing her body against the ceiling as two ragged looking men leapt into the air attempting to grab her.
With his two companions flanking him, Virgil opened the office door leading into the club in time to see two other strippers, covered in blood, flesh hanging from teeth, rushing towards them. Virgil pushed his two unlucky henchmen forward into the path of the charging women. The sickly, scantily clad dancers leapt onto the men and took them down like stripper cheetahs attacking two gazelles dressed in bad suits. V slammed the door but could still hear their screams.
Virgil used his considerable body size to barricade the door while he scanned the room for escape. His eyes fell on the police raid escape hatch under his desk. He ran over, flipped back the carpet, and descended down through the trap door in the floor where he accessed a crawlspace that took him under the club and exited into the parking lot. Running to his car, he looked towards the front of the club and saw that the cop had acted like a sort of pied piper of lunatics and they were flooding into the club. He jumped into his car and sped off, watching people in the adjacent liquor store also fighting off a wave of disheveled psychos. This wasn’t about his club. No, whatever this was was happening on a wide scale.