Rick eyed him silently for a moment, probably remembering the firearm tucked in Brooks’s holster. “You sure you’re not here on FBI business, hoss?”
Brooks’s Adam’s apple bobbed. I could practically feel him restraining himself.
“Like I said, I run a business.” There was a defensive edge to the private investigator’s voice. “I’m not here to do cops’ work for free.” He straightened. “And I offered to sell these photos to a guy at the LAPD, their crime scene photographer. One of the missing girls was the daughter of a detective, for crying out loud. I was sure they’d pay. But they flipped on me, got aggressive. Accused me of being a scam artist and threatened to shut my whole business down. A couple months later, I heard the detective whose daughter went missing was run out of the force for asking too many questions. I’m sure I don’t need to do that math for you. The cops were protecting these guys.” He jabbed a finger at the photo, at Knox. “Chose them over one of their own. So don’t give me that chivalrous shit about turning things over to the LAPD.”
I frowned. “Why do you keep pointing at Knox? You said this file had dirt on him, but if anything, he looks tame next to Easton and Reese.”
“Huh.” Rick’s laugh was hollow. “In my experience, it’s the guy who plays it under the radar you should be most scared of, not the sloppy ones. That girl, remember—the Lucky Rhino stripper? The one thing she’d tell me, when I asked what she was so damn scared of, was ‘him.’ I said, ‘Him who?’ And she looked at me like a fucking cow marching into a slaughterhouse; I’ll never forget it. And she said, ‘The quiet one.’ He’s the one who will come if I talk.”
Chapter 32Alice, the Bottle Girl
TWELVE YEARS EARLIER, THE SERPENT ROOM
Alice Holloway soared through the Serpent Room, reveling in the darkness and heartbeat-setting pulse of the music and strobe lights. She paused to kiss the cheeks of one of her favorite patrons, a French financier, and take a drink order from his companion, one of the escorts he kept on rotation. John, the club’s burly manager, even twirled her as she passed through the velvet ropes, singing along as she crooned “Lucid Supérieure.” Alice set the tall green bottles of absinthe on one of Carlie’s VIP tables with a flourish, igniting a roar of approval from her bachelor party.
“Angel of the club.” Carlie swept over and kissed Alice squarely on the forehead. “You’re saving my ass.”
“Anytime.” Alice laughed, swatting the ass in question. She and Carlie wore matching green velvet tops and black hot pants, the Serpent Room uniform for bottle girls, and Alice loved the ’70s look of it, the way it highlighted everyone’s unique beauty by making them all the same. “Be back in two with your garnishes.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Carlie shouted at her back. The opening notes of one of Alice’s favorite songs pounded over the dance floor, and a grin split her face. There was nothing better than the club on a Friday night. The energy was electric. It felt like all of Los Angeles was here, eager to dissolve the memories of their workweeks like cubes of sugar in one of the Serpent’s signature absinthe cocktails. As a bottle girl, Alice got to be in the thick of it, the life of the party. There was no better place in the world for—as her friends liked to tease her—the Valley’s Number One Party Girl.
Alice pushed through the low double doors guarding the entrance to the bar, which had always reminded her of an old-timey saloon. “Don’t mind me,” she yelled to Nico, who was moving at lightning speed, shaking drinks in frosted mixers. “Just grabbing some citrus and herbs for Carlie’s bachelor party.”
“Better you than me,” he called, sliding drinks to a line of waiting servers.
Alice grinned again. She loved the family feel of the club’s staff, the way they helped each other when it got slammed, joked and smoked cigs after shifts to decompress. In fact, people like Nico and Carlie were a better fit for Alice than her real family, at least better than her dad. Detective Holloway—and he insisted Alice’s friends call him that—was stiff and traditional, the kind of dad who’d warned her prom date he was armed and in possession of a license to kill, who used to make her change when she tried to leave the house in a short skirt. He would be livid once he found out Alice’s big news, that she’d dropped out of Cal State to focus on the club, which was why she was taking every shift possible to avoid going home.
Even her college roommates had understood she didn’t belong there. They’d held an honest-to-god intervention, informing her she was failing her classes and doing nothing but chasing parties—facts she knew, for the record. She would always remember the awkwardness of their worried faces early that morning, Amira’s smudged eyeglasses, Carmen’s pajamas. They’d begged her to change. A few days later, Alice’s party-hopping had brought her to the Serpent Room, where, like a sign from God, they were searching for bottle girls. She’d made a change, all right.One year short of graduating, she could almost hear her dad yell.You wereoneyear away, and you threw it in the trash.
“Alice, you won’tbelieveit.” Daisy rushed up, out of breath, and Alice stifled a laugh. If there was one person on staff who was a bigger party girl than her, it had to be Daisy. Daisy was the first person to try the ketamine one of the line cooks had brought in, the first to beg everyone to keep partying if they got off early on a shift. She was a wild one, moving through life like one of those desert tumbleweeds Alice had seen on her drive back from Coachella.
“What won’t I believe?” Alice teased, as she shredded the last of the mint.
“Those guys are back.” Daisy wiped her sweaty bangs. “The high rollers.”
“Be more specific.” The Serpent Room was crawling with the rich and famous. Celebrities had never been Alice’s fetish, but she appreciated anyone who racked up a hefty bill and left a good tip.
Unexpectedly, Daisy reached out and put her hand on Alice’s to still her. Alice met her eyes.
“Thereallyhigh rollers.” Daisy’s pupils were so large, like two dark planets, that Alice wondered for a moment if she was on something. “The ones who tipped Tatiana two thousand dollars. They sat them in my section. Help me. We can split it fifty-fifty.”
At the mention of Tatiana, Alice knew exactly who Daisy meant. “Tati quit after that night, remember? She said those guys are bad news.”
“Tati is a drama queen.” Daisy rolled her eyes. “A lot of guys are handsy. But these guyspay.”
The men Daisy was talking about were regulars, though Alice had never waited on them. She didn’t know their names or what they did for a living, which was unusual, since the club was gossipy and things got around. All she knew was they were friends with the Serpent Room’s owner, a Dubai-based real estate magnate turned Hollywood investor Alice had never met. Their manager, John, had been given orders to treat them well. Sometimes the guys rolled in with a big raucous party, a full cast of men and women who ordered tens of thousands in booze and took up nearly the entire VIP section, and other times it was a small group. Either way, they usually closed down the club.
“I don’t know.” Alice bit her lip. “I’m supposed to deliver this to Carlie’s table.”
“Nico!” Daisy yelled. “Can you take these garnishes to Carlie?”
“And cross swords with the bachelors?” Nico complained, but he winked at Alice and whisked away her plate.
“Come on.” Daisy tugged her hand. “This will be easy money.”
Alice didn’t knowwhether to be disappointed or relieved that Daisy’s table was just three men. They sat in the Serpent Room’s best spot, raised on a platform to give guests a view of the dance floor from behind the shroud of VIP curtains.
The youngest man was dark-haired and handsome in a clean-cut, board chairman way, and the other two looked like your classic middle-aged men, battling the first signs of receding hairlines and bodies starting to go to seed around the middle. They introduced themselves as Gabriel, Reese, and Easton, and both their smiles and their eyes were too wide right off the bat, pupils as large as Daisy’s. Alice went hot with the idea that they’d all snorted something together before she’d gotten there, and Daisy was keeping it a secret.
