“Where are you going?” Samford caught me the next day during lunch when I was halfway out of the studio.
I bit back a bruising insult and forced a smile. “Headed out for some lunch. I’ll be back by the time the shoot starts back up.”
He rocked back on his heels, sending his hips thrusting forward. “What if I need you? Why can’t you just use the craft service tent like everyone else?”
“You won’t need me in the hour that I’ll be gone.”
“Fine. Just be back here on time.” He turned around but I still heard him mumbling. “Goddamn writers. Always fucking up my life.”
I barely resisted flipping him the bird and rushed out to my car before anyone else could stop me. I wanted to get to Cerrito’s in daylight and the only time I could make it was lunch. It was pretty far away and I figured I’d probably spend a while in traffic, but if I got lucky, I’d make it back to the shoot on time. It wasn’t like they needed me to start. If Laster wasn’t so dead set on running every creepy face he could make by me before each scene, I’d be fifty percent less necessary.
I got stuck in light traffic, like expected, and then nearly ran a man off the road while getting off the freeway. I wasn’t used to the larger roads. Back home, my town only had two roads with more than two lanes, and they were both roads that just happened to pass by our town. I waved an apology and swore to myself.
I received a finger and a clear view of a man’s mouth shouting at me for my troubles. He seemed personally offended by my out-of-state tags and was ready to fist fight me over it, apparently.
By the time I got to Cerrito’s, lunch was already half over on set and I was starting to sweat. Tabatha’s warning rang out in my head and I had to sit in my car for a second and calm myself down. I didn’t want to run into Ricky. Ricky Meyers wasn’t a good guy. I didn’t look like anything he’d be interested in, but I didn’t want to take a chance at him finding out I was asking around about him.
I crossed the trash-lined street and didn’t stop to reconsider my decision to go in. Not even once. If I’d hesitated for even a second, I would’ve talked myself into going back to my car so I wouldn’t have to face whatever was waiting for me inside Cerrito’s. There was no turning back. I needed one of the women to help me and if Pamela was the one who was going to do it, I would’ve crossed the street into hell if I’d had to.
I pushed my glasses higher onto my nose and said a little prayer before pulling open the door to Cerrito’s and going inside. The stench of something sour immediately hit me and I realized my mistake right away. With the blacked-out windows and the barely-visible sign on the door, I should’ve known it was a seedy strip club, at best. I couldn’t say I was familiar with the stench of old sweat at noon in a strip club, but the smell wasn’t so foreign that it didn’t call up some vivid scenes from movies.
I considered turning around and going back to my car. Knowing what I knew about Ricky, it was easy to believe that he was in the club somewhere, sitting with a couple empty glasses beside him, and whatever woman had drawn the shortest stick on his lap. I couldn’t leave, though. It looked like I literally didn’t have a choice.
The door slammed shut behind me and all eyes closest to me turned towards me. It was so damn obvious that I didn’t belong there, but I had to take my chances.
I forced a smile on my face and headed towards the bar. The bartender was a big guy who looked like he’d eaten nails for breakfast that morning. One look from him and my bladder threatened to embarrass me.
“You lost, lady?”
I sucked in a breath and forced myself to calm down and focus. No one had moved closer to even bother overhearing my conversation with the bartender. I wasn’t on anyone’s radar. “No. I’m looking for a friend. Pamela. Is she up soon?”
The guy’s big arms bulged as he crossed them. “You a dancer?”
My hands self-consciously went up to my hair that’d recently been dyed in an attempt to look more like I belonged in LA. I’d only gone a shade lighter than my normal dirty blonde, but maybe it’d turned out more stripper than I realized. It definitely wasn’t my outfit that made him think I was one of Pamela’s dancing friends. I was in leggings and a two sizes too big sweatshirt that hung off my body and hid everything possible.
“What makes you say that?”
Muscles raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I don’t get why strippers are always so damn sensitive. She’s in the back. It’s the door to the right of the stage.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I wasn’t a complete idiot. I hurried through the room, trying to stay on the outskirts so I wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention.
Through the side door and down a hallway, I followed the sounds of women talking into a small dressing room. Women, in varying degrees of dressed, looked up at me and then went back to whatever they were doing, after deciding I was inconsequential. There were three bleach blondes and a redhead. All of them had impressive boob jobs that were starring in their outfits.
“Pamela?”
The redhead looked up at me and shook her head. “She’s in the bathroom. What a mess.”
My stomach dropped. “She okay?”
One of the blondes gave a dramatic eye roll through her reflection and then turned to me. “You her girlfriend or something?”
“Just a friend.”
“Not a very good one if you let her run off and piss Ricky off like she did. Go see for yourself.”
I hurried to the only other door outside of the dressing room and knocked on it. “Pamela?”
A muddled voice came from the other side and I took it as my invitation. As a journalist, sometimes you had to take things as invitations when maybe at other times they really wouldn’t be. I pushed on the door and it opened to reveal a small blonde with a larger than life black eye.
“What the fuck? Doesn’t anyone listen around here?! I said stay out!”
I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m Darby Connors, a friend of Tabatha’s. She said you wanted to talk to me.”
Pamela suddenly pulled herself to her feet and rushed me. She shoved me into the door that I’d let close behind me and got in my face. “Yeah, well, guess who wanted to talk to me because of you? Ricky! He heard that I was going to talk to some white bitch from the suburbs and he beat my ass.”
My stomach dropped. It was always the same. Sources put their own lives at risk when they talked to me. Inevitably, I was asking them to when I sought them out. Seeing her face, the way her eye was stained red with busted blood vessels, made me want to vomit. I didn’t bother stopping her as she pushed me again.
“Did you tell anyone besides Tabatha that you wanted to talk?”
She backed away and threw up her hands. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I told everyone I know. I was just hoping Ricky would find out. You know, because that makes total fucking sense.”
“Alright!” I harshly lowered my voice and blocked her hands when they flew at me again. Luckily, I had at least four inches and twenty pounds on her. “I get it. You didn’t tell anyone. I don’t know how Ricky found out. Tabatha set up the meeting, but”
“She would never sell me out!”
“I know that. I was trying to say that I know she would never do anything to hurt one of you.”
With barely restrained violence, Pamela crossed the small bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet seat. “Fuck. I don’t know. I convinced Ricky that I wasn’t going to talk and that someone was lying to him. He wouldn’t say who told him, though.”
I heard male voices in the hallway and my heart accelerated. “Pamela, what did you want to tell me? I need to know. Give me something, anything, so I can take him down.”
She looked warily at the door and then at me. “You’re going to get me killed!”
“No, I’m not. I’m going to stop the man who thinks it’s okay to bust up your face.”
“You think it’ll make a difference? You take him down and two more pop up. It’s the same way it always is. You running in here from your pretty little house in the hills isn’t going to stop anyone. You’re blind, lady.”
I moved over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “You obviously thought I could help. You wanted to talk to me. Don’t let him scare you into your own death. You know what he’s done. You know that you could easily end up like the others.”
She shrugged me off and looked at the door. The voices were growing closer and I had a sinking feeling that one of them was going to be Ricky.
“He’s going to find you!”
I shook my head. “No, he won’t. Tell me what you know and I’m out of your hair, Pamela.”
She kept looking between me and the door, but finally her eyes landed on mine. “I can’t talk to you here. I thought I could, but I can’t now. Meet me at the park a few blocks south of here tonight. Midnight. That’s what time I get off.”
“You’re going to work like that?”
She gave me a look. “We don’t exactly get paid sick time. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I hurried back to the door and listened. The men were at the doorway across from me, checking out the other women. I cracked the door and saw their backs were to me so I stepped out of the bathroom and silently shut the door behind me before moving back towards the main bar. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end as I crept closer, fear shooting through me faster than I’d ever felt.
Thankfully, I reached the door and escaped the hallway before anyone noticed and grabbed me. I was brave enough to try and do my job, but I wasn’t brave enough to face off with Ricky. The man was a sick monster and I lacked the expertise required to handle him.
The bartender sent a leer my way as I passed him, but I didn’t give two shits. As long as I made it to my car in one piece, he could leer all he wanted.
I shoved opened the door to the outside world and sunlight blinded me for a second. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and bumped into someone. “Sorry.”
“Watch it, bitch.”
I reminded myself that I wasn’t in the best neighborhood to pick a fight and then looked in both directions before crossing the street. I was just stepping foot on the faded yellow lines on the middle of the road when the sound of a revving engine caught my attention. I glanced up and watched in horror as a rusty brown van lurched towards me.
A second passed and I waited for something to happen, something to change the direction of the van. When no intervention came and the van was bearing down on me, my feet moved of their own accord. Still too slow, I had to throw myself in front of my car at the last second to avoid becoming part of the street.
Pavement bit into my hands and arms and I felt the knees of my leggings rip right along with the skin there as I landed. Adrenaline caused me to surge back to my feet and look around. If anyone had seen the van almost mow me down, they hadn’t stuck around to ask questions. The few people that’d been on the street before were nowhere to be seen.
Panic ate away at me, but I forced myself to grab my keys from the small zippered pocket on my pants and get in my car. I immediately started the car and pulled away from the curb, wanting to put as much space as possible between myself and whatever the hell had just happened.