Gutshot Straight with Bonus Excerpt by Lou Berney Read Free Book Online Page A

do.”
    “But I’m not like the other girls, am I?”
    He sighed, shook his head, and poured her another one, just like she knew he would.
    “No,” he agreed, “you’re not.”
    Gina gave him a wink and turned on her bar stool so she could see the booth. The new DJ was a metal freak with no ear for rhythm. When he glanced up from his turntables, she made a pistol with her thumb and forefinger and pointed it at him. He tried any of that headthrasher crap during her set, she’d personally kick his ass.
    He thrashed his head and grinned like a retard at her. The shrieking guitars of the last song faded out. The girl on the main stage—cute in pigtails and a plaid Catholic-school skirt—used the toe of one Mary Jane to scrape together the crumpled dollar bills scattered like carnations along the edge of the stage.
    “Gentlemen,” the DJ breathed into the mike, “The Jungle is proud now to present, on stage number one, the sexy, the sizzling . . .”
    Slowly, languidly, Gina moved through the packed house. She was wearing one of her favorite outfits—black leather thigh-high boots, red leather boy shorts, and a tiny cutoff T-shirt that said DUH—and in her platforms she was a head taller than most of the dopes staring slack-jawed up at her.
    She felt great. She felt sleek and fluid. She felt like a silk curtain drifting in a breeze.
    Gina giggled. Or something like that.
    Tonight was the night.
    “Gentlemen, put your hands together for . . . the queen of the jungle.” She climbed the steps to the main stage, and the first funky riff of Prince’s “Kiss” kicked in. Gina blew the DJ a smooch—good song, good boy—as guys from every dark corner of the club oozed toward the stage, crowded the rail, and the sky rained money.
    TWO SONGS LATER’RILO KILEY’S “Smoke Detector” and “Turn It On” by the Flaming Lips—Gina was down to her thong, her boots, a light sheen of perspiration, and nothing else. Normally the top girls bought their way out of the stage rotation—the real money was on the floor, in the VIP rooms—but tonight Gina needed the elevated perspective. And sure enough . . .
    Right on time she spotted the Whale as he rumbled into the club. Fat and scowling, so pale he glowed like a grubworm under the Jungle’s black lights. Gina spotted him during her final stroll along the rail and felt a little chill of fear and excitement.
    The Whale gave the room a quick, bored glance, then turned to ream out the doorman about something. Lucy was with the Whale, and so was Jasper, his varsity-team muscle, and also some ferrety dude Gina didn’t recognize. The Whale had one hand on poor Lucy’s ass and the other deep in his front pocket, gently jiggling loose change and, probably, his own wiener.
    All the silly stories Gina had heard about the Whale before she took the gig at the Jungle, she now—after five months working for the foul-tempered, foul-smelling creep—believed most were probably true. Didja hear about . . .
    How one time a dancer smarted off to the Whale and he slapped her so hard he broke her jaw?
    How one time the Whale set a guy’s car on fire, with the guy inside it, then went to dinner downtown at the Golden Nugget afterward and ordered the porterhouse special?
    How he used his titty clubs to launder money from his drug operation and didn’t bother with a safe for all his cash, because who the fuck was stupid enough to rip off the Whale?
    Gina smiled and plucked a ten from the teeth of a gray-haired guy with his chin propped on the rail. She hoped that last story at least was true. She was counting on it.
    The song ended. Gina sat on the stage steps to pull her T and shorts back on. She watched the Whale, his hand still on Lucy’s ass, make his way toward the door across the room marked NO ADMITTANCE .
    “Hey, cookie,” the gray-haired guy from the rail said. He squatted next to her and breathed cheap, watered-down gin into her face. “What say you and I go back to my hotel for