One Wild Night

"Who?"

"Not long after Billy and I broke up, he started dating this girl I know, Misty Hale. We used to work together at this other bar. That's where I met Billy originally. I warned her he was bad news, but Misty never was the brightest bulb. If she's working tonight, she might know why Billy is on my ass."

"Where is this 'other bar'?" asked Karl.

"Corner of South Gramercy and Rodel Drive."

Karl wrinkled his forehead in thought, "That's a rough part of town."

"Don't I know it. Why do you think I quit working there?"

It turned out Nora probably had more reasons than just location for why she had left her previous employer. This thought occurred to Karl as he pulled into the parking lot of an all-night strip joint called "The Lucky Beaver."

"So...You used to bartend here?"

"No..." said Nora in a voice so low he almost didn't hear her.

"Waitress?"

"I wish..." she said, opening her door and getting out.

"Shit..." breathed Karl, pulling on the handle of his door and joining her.

The time may have been late, but The Lucky Beaver was still hopping. Music blared when Karl pulled the heavy steel door open and stepped inside, hitting his sensitive ears like a cannon going off. The interior was loud and smoky, packed with desperate, lonely people looking to forget they were either.

"That's a ten-dollar cover, Friend," growled a huge, bald-headed bouncer who towered over Karl by a good six inches.

While he fished for his wallet, Nora tried to step around him only to be halted by a large, hairy arm.

"You got to get stamped before you enter, Girl...Hey! Sabrina Starr! I haven't seen you in months. Fred told me you quit!"

Nora turned bright pink, a blush darkening her skin.

"Good to see you, Randy. I did quit. Better opportunities, you know what I mean?"

"I hear you! Whose this? Your sugar-daddy?"

"Her what?" asked Karl indignantly, but before anyone could speak again, Nora stepped close to him and looped her arm through his.

"That's right. He takes care of me. Right, Baby?"

Karl looked from Randy to Nora and back, at a complete loss as to what to say next.

"Pay the man, Sweetie," said Nora, giving him a nudge.

Karl passed over a twenty, and Randy stamped the back of his hand with an image that he assumed was supposed to vaguely resemble a beaver. He did Nora next.

"Is Misty dancing tonight?"

"I don't think so, but if you're looking for her, you could ask Trudy. Those two are thick as thieves. She's dancing in the private rooms tonight."

They moved into the club together, strobe lights making it hard to see across the space for more than a few feet.

"What was that all about?" asked Karl right into Nora's ear.

"They don't allow girls into the club unless a guy escorts them. It's sexist if you ask me."

"Sabrina Starr?"

Nora looked away, her blush returning.

"The name I danced under. I never told anyone here my real name, even the other employees."

"I see. So, where are these private rooms?"

"Follow me."

Nora led him by the arm while he glanced around at both the patrons and the scantily clad and often naked women on stage. He had rarely ever visited places like this except for a couple of notable bachelor parties. The music was too loud for his taste, making conversation difficult, though he imagined that was probably the point.

People weren't there to exchange ideas.

They arrived in front of a red door covered with velvet fabric and guarded by a bouncer equally as intimidating as the one at the door.

"I need to see a Benjamin if you want in back," he barked without preamble, his voice loud enough to be heard even over the noise in the bar.

"A Benjamin?"

"A hundred, Baby," advised Nora, squeezing closer to him.

"A hundred fucking dollars!" hissed Karl into her ear.

"I'll pay you back. I promise. Just give the man what he wants!"

Rolling his eyes and hardly able to believe where this night had gone, Karl emptied the cash from his wallet, barely able to cover the fee. Grudgingly, the bouncer stood aside and opened the door for them, letting the pair into a dim corridor.

When the door shut, the volume of noise dropped instantly, and for the first time since entering the club, Karl could almost hear again.

"Now what?"

"We find, Trudy," said Nora simply.

"Who the hell is Trudy?"

"A mutual friend of Misty and I. She would know where Misty is and how to get in touch with her."

"This just keeps getting better and better..." said Karl under his breath.

Nora took the lead, carefully peeking into the rooms they passed until she found an empty one. They went inside a small cubicle with a low table in the middle of the floor surrounded by a circular couch. The walls were covered in black cloth, and the music was piped in, though at not quite the ear-splitting volume prevalent in the main club. Nora took a seat on the couch and picked up a laminated menu that sat on the table. Karl assumed it was some sort of drink menu, but when he joined her and looked over her shoulder, he quickly saw that it consisted of women's photos.

"Good. Trudy is in tonight. Let's see if we get lucky," said Nora, pushing a button on the table that Karl had missed.

"What's your pleasure?" came a voice over a hidden speaker in the ceiling.

"Is Trudy available?" asked Nora.

"One moment..."

"This is the weirdest drive through ever..." joked Karl, but he just drew an eye roll from Nora.

"She's on her way. Enjoy the show..."

"Finally. Something goes our way," said Nora.

"So..How did you..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay," said Karl.

They waited in silence for another minute, the pulsing music starting to give Karl a headache.

"There's no big sob story," said Nora at last, "I was poor, and I needed money. It was just a job, and the pay was pretty good, but I hated the clientèle and my boss, so I quit. Greener pastures and all that jazz."

"Fine...I wasn't trying to pry."

"Not everything is a Hallmark movie, okay? Sometimes you do what you gotta do to pay the bills!"

"I get it. You don't owe me and explanation."

Nora pursed her lips in thought, and Karl got the impression she felt like she needed to explain herself to him. He suddenly took her hand, surprising her, she looked down at where his hand cradled hers and then back up into his face.

"It is okay. You don't have to explain yourself to me. Whatever you had to do, I don't think any less of you for it."

She seemed to relax, sitting back against the soft cushion of the couch behind her.

"You know, Karl. I never met your wife, but I think she was an idiot."

He smiled and started to reply when the door to the room opened to admit a woman that looked like nothing more than a Barbie doll brought to life.

"Hey! Kids! I'm Trudy!" said the Amazon-like female in front of them.

"Hey, Trudy, it's good to see you again," said Nora.

"Oh! Holy shit! Sabrina! AHHHH!"

Karl looked on incredulously as the two women embraced like long lost friends.

"Wow! Sabrina Starr...What's it been, eight months since you split?"

"Give or take. How have things been here?"

"Same old, same old. To much groping and not enough tipping! Who's your friend, by the way?"

"This is Karl."

"I'm her sugar daddy," he said with a grin, shaking Trudy's hand.

"You do look pretty sweet..." commented Trudy, eying him slowly up and down.

"Is this what it feels like to be objectified?" thought Karl, feeling strangely uncomfortable at the intensity of Trudy's stare. He also noted that Nora didn't seem to care for how her friend was checking him out.

"Trudy! We need to talk. Have you seen Misty around?"

Trudy started to answer, but then looked up at the ceiling and frowned.

"Look, Sweetie. We can talk, but I have to dance for you guys. They've got us on camera, and if Fred doesn't see me dancing, he'll get pissed.

"What?" asked Karl, trying to see where Trudy was looking.

"They have all the rooms on closed-circuit to make sure nothing illegal is going on. You guys get two free dances, it comes with the price of getting back here."

"You don't need to..." began Nora.

"Sorry, Kid, if I don't dance, they may send Gordy in to see what's going on, and this won't be a private conversation anymore.

"That behemoth at the door is named 'Gordy?'" laughed Karl.

"Doesn't seem to fit, does it?"

"Fine!" said Nora in an exasperated tone. She returned to the couch, taking a seat a few feet over from Karl.

A new song started playing, and Trudy struck a pose. She was a taller woman than Nora, around five-foot-nine with a vast cascade of dyed-blond hair that billowed out over her shoulders and rained down her back. Her face was a bit overdone, and Karl suspected it was an attempt to conceal the fact that she was older than the average dancer, probably in her early thirties at a guess. Her outfit left little to the imagination, consisting of a glimmering, gold-sequined crop-top that barely covered her enormous breasts and white shorts that appeared painted onto her body.

While he looked on, Trudy started to sway in time to the music, hips moving provocatively from side to side.

"When was the last time you saw Misty?" asked Nora.

"I haven't seen her for at least a week. She's been calling in sick."

Trudy pivoted around, bending over and shaking her ass right in Karl's face. He had to admit. She did have a very firm, heart-shaped backside.

"You haven't talked to her for a week?"

"I didn't say that. I said I hadn't seen her for a week."

The tall blond swung back around, grabbed at the bottom of her shirt, and slowly, in a very teasing fashion, slipped it off over her head. Not surprisingly, she wasn't wearing a bra underneath. Trudy's huge, surgically enhanced mounds sprang free from their confinement and jumped forward, defying gravity in a very unnatural way for their size. She smiled at Karl and edged closer, giving him a full-on view of her chest while taking her cannons in hand and rubbing at her small, acorn-dark nipples.

"Then you've talked to her?" asked Nora, a bit of irritation slipping into her voice.

"Yeah..." answered Trudy evasively.

She turned around again, shaking her ass while unzipping her shorts so that they moved down on their own, revealing the lacy red thong she was wearing. Without warning, she was suddenly in Karl's lap, straddling his crotch while leaning back so that her tits pointed at the ceiling. Her hands moved across them, fingertips tweaking her nipples so that they jumped to attention. Then she popped back up, putting a hand on either of Karl's shoulders while swinging her breasts from side to side.

"What do you think? I just had them done," said Trudy, licking her lips and grinning.

"Uh...They...Look...Uh...Very pretty," stammered Karl, having trouble focusing. This was as close as he had gotten to a naked woman in over a year with his soon to be ex-wife freezing him out of bed. Trudy's hips were grinding her crotch onto his, making it very hard to think straight.

"Trudy! Can you please stick to the topic? What did you and Misty talk about? Did it have anything to do with Billy Boothe?"

"Yeah...I was afraid you were going to ask me about that..."

Nora sat up taller on the couch.

"What about Billy?"

"You know, Karl, was it? You're allowed to touch them if you want. Just don't twist my nipples like you're opening a beer bottle!" she teased.

"Really! I mean...I don't know if..."

"It's fine," soothed Trudy in a low, sexy voice, taking his hands off the couch and putting them right onto her chest.

Karl swallowed hard, these were far and away the biggest tits he had ever held on to, and his body reacted instantly, cock leaping to full mast in his pants.

"Thar, she blows!" laughed Trudy, feeling him spring to life against her thong-covered vagina.

He briefly glanced at Nora and couldn't help but notice the dirty look she was giving back to him.

"Focus, Trudy! What did Misty say about him?"

"Right...Well...You're not going to like it."

"Just tell me already!"

Trudy executed a swift maneuver, putting her hands on either side of Karl's legs and letting her legs shoot straight out behind her so that her head was hovering over Karl's bulge, leaning down to briefly nuzzle his stiff dick with her nose before dropping back onto her knees and running her nails along the insides of his thighs.

"Shit..." groaned Karl under his breath.

"I guess Misty should have listened to you. She started dating Billy, and he was up to his usual shit, all nice at first until he got his dick wet then not so much...Anyway, they had been fighting, and she was thinking about dumping his ass."

"Big fucking surprise," said Nora.

"I know, right! So, she was getting his stuff together that he had left at her apartment to give it back to him, or burn it, she wasn't sure, and that's when she found it."

"Found what?"

"The flash drive in his pants pocket that had all the incriminating shit on it."

"What incriminating shit?"

Trudy didn't answer straight away, pausing in her explanation to duck her head back between Karl's legs and give his bulge a friendly nibble that made him jump before rising off the floor to straddle him once again.

"Trudy?"

"You know you're pretty cute for an older guy. Think you might want to spread some of that sugar around, Daddy?"

Karl could only grin foolishly back at her while Trudy started grinding again on his crotch.

"Flash drive?" snapped Nora, trying to get things back on track.

"Yeah, so Misty finds this flash drive with all sorts of stuff on it. Lists of payouts to the cops mostly and delivery schedules and whatnot. It turns out that garage Billy runs is a front for moving stolen cars, and he has his brother spreading money around to some of his cop buddies to look the other way."

"Holy shit! I knew he was a jerk, but I had no idea he was a criminal," admitted Nora, "But what does this have to do with me?"

"That's the thing. Misty decided to shake Billy down. I guess she figured it would give her a bunch of money so she could stop stripping sooner, but she didn't count on him coming after her so quickly. He got to her before she could hide, and...this is the part you're not going to like, she told him it was all your idea."

"What!"

Trudy managed to look contrite even while sitting half-naked on Karl's lap.

"Misty made it sound like it had been your plan all along. A vengeance thing for the break up you and Billy had, and that you had the flash drive."

"That bitch!"

"Some friend, huh? Anyway, she called and told me what she did, and I tried to call you, but you weren't answering."

"I was at work, and the bar was too loud. I never heard my cellphone."

"I left you a bunch of messages."

"Billy got to me first before I ever saw them. If it weren't for Karl, I wouldn't even be here."

"Ummm...A hero and a gentleman..." sighed Trudy, leaning back to give his cock a thorough grinding. Karl's eyes started to roll back.

"Easy, Cowgirl. You're going to make him mess his pants," observed Nora.

"Sorry, I can't help myself. It's kind of a signature thing with me," laughed Trudy.

When Karl looked confused, Nora added, "She thinks it's funny to see how many guys she can get to jizz in their pants each night."

"My record is seven," confirmed Trudy proudly.

"Do you list that on your resume?" asked Karl, which got him a blank stare from Trudy but a laugh from Nora.

"Wait. Billy just let her go? Then she still has this flash drive?"

"If only it were that simple. No, sorry, Sweetie. Billy left one of his grease monkeys watching Misty, but she managed to give him the slip by climbing out her bathroom window. Unfortunately, she lost the flash drive in the process. She told me it fell out of her pocket when she was trying to get to the ground and went right into a storm drain."

"Fuck me...Where is Misty now?"

Trudy dismounted from Karl, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek and making him blush in the process.

"I have no idea. She said she was getting her ass out of town and hung up."

"This is just great! No wonder Billy is out to get me. He thinks I'm trying to blackmail him."

"I'm sorry, Kid. I wish I had better news. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Nora was too stunned by this turn of events to answer and instead picked up her purse and headed for the door. Karl went to follow her but was stopped by Trudy, who put a hand on his chest.

"What? No tip?"

"Sorry. I'm all out of sugar," he said somberly, nodding at Nora's fleeing back.

"I'll bet," said Trudy as he turned and followed his companion back out into the club.

A NEW PLAN -

Minutes later, they were sitting back in Karl's car, Nora staring forlornly out the front windshield.

"I'm screwed. I can't go to the cops, and Billy is going to kill me."

Karl gave her a sympathetic look but couldn't see how he could help her.

"You should just drop me at my sister's. I...I guess I need to get out of town like Misty."

"I'm sorry, Nora," he said, tentatively reaching out to rub her shoulder.

She managed a slight smile, "You've stuck with me through some serious shit tonight, and I appreciate it. You're a good guy, Karl."

"I just wish I could do more."

"It's okay. This is on me. I've made a lot of poor life choices along the way, and now they're catching up with me."

She started to cry, and Karl withdrew his hand, searching through his vehicle's interior for a tissue. He found an old t-shirt of his in the backseat and handed it to her timidly.

"Best I can do..." he apologized.

Nora took it, dabbing at her eyes.

"Shit! I hate crying. It makes me look red like a fire engine."

"You still look beautiful," blurted Karl without thinking.

She looked at him with surprise, then smiled slowly.

"Flirting with a girl when she's in distress? You're not trying to take advantage of me, are you?"

"Huh? No...I wouldn't...I would never...That is..." said Karl, embarrassed and struggling to apologize.

"Karl?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm teasing you. Relax."

"Right," he said, leaning back on the headrest.

"I can't believe I'm being outwitted by that moron Billy Boothe! He doesn't even own a computer!"

Karl sat back up with a puzzled expression on his face.

"He doesn't? Then where did the flash drive come from?"

"Maybe it was Earl's, and Billy just had it with him?"

"No...I doubt Earl would risk keeping that kind of information close at hand being a cop and all. It sounds more like insurance for Billy in case he runs into trouble with his people. You never saw Billy with a computer? Maybe a laptop?"

"The only computer I ever saw was at his garage in his office."

Karl started rubbing his jaw again, and old habit when he was thinking. Before Nora could ask him what was on his mind, he had started the car and thrown it into gear.

"Put your seat belt on," he advised as he sped out of the parking lot.

"Where are we going?"

"You're going to guide me to Billy's garage."

"Why in hell would we want to go there?"

"Because I'm willing to bet there's a good chance the info that was on that flash drive originated on Billy's computer and if we can get another copy..."

"Then we would know what cops were on the take and who we could trust!" exclaimed Nora.

"And...we would have the evidence to put Billy and his brother away."

"But wouldn't his gang be there or something?"

"At four a.m. on a Saturday? I kind of doubt it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, though. It's not like we have a lot of options."

"Thank you for doing this. No one...no ones ever stood up for me this way," said Nora softly, putting her hand over his where it rested on the center console.

Karl forced a smile on his face, trying to appear more confident than he felt.