Jessie Keane - Black Widow

‘Get ’em off,’ shouted someone.

Annie remembered her Aunt Celia, once proud madam of what was now Dolly’s Limehouse brothel, telling her that men didn’t like topless dancers wearing tassels.

‘If they can’t see the nipple, they feel cheated,’ Celia had told her. ‘To a bloke, a naked tit has to be completely naked, or he feels put out.’

No danger of anyone here feeling cheated for long. The girl was now swinging her hips and leaning over the front tables, inviting the front-row watchers to pluck off her tassels.

Annie looked over to the bar as movement there caught her eye. Two girls were loading trays with drinks and gliding off between the tables, wearing tiny black skirts and white waist pinafores. They were topless. They deposited the drinks on the tables, smiling wearily at the punters, dangling their exposed dugs right under the noses of the men. As Annie watched, several of the punters grabbed a quick feel.

For fuck’s sake , thought Annie. It’s Tit City in here.

Jonjo. This was all down to him, she was sure of it. Left to his own devices, he’d installed his own idea of what passed for good entertainment.

Fucking Jonjo.

‘That girl,’ she said to Tony, having to shout to make herself heard above the noise, ‘on the stage.’

Tony nodded.

‘Don’t let her leave. I want a word with her.’

Tony nodded.

‘I’m going up to the office.’

A punter plucked off a tassel. The crowd cheered. Annie went back up the stairs and passed through the red doors again. She unclipped a rope on which was hung a small sign saying PRIVATE-STAFF ONLY, and clipped it back across when she’d passed through. Then she ascended a smaller staircase. At the top of the flight of stairs she paused before two doors. One she knew was a tiny flat, the other an office. She selected the smallest of the keys on Max’s bunch, labelled ‘P/Office’. She inserted the key in the lock, but it was already unlocked. She pushed open the door.

There was a naked girl spread-eagled on Max’s desk, her legs up around the neck of a man who had his back to Annie. Annie stared at his white spotty buttocks pumping away-his trousers were around his ankles-with first surprise and then distaste. What the hell?

The girl spotted her first and let out a small shriek. The man half turned.

‘Fucking hell, what do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

Annie’s face froze into an icy mask. ‘I was under the impression I was coming into my office,’ she said coolly. ‘Or am I wrong? What is this, a knocking shop now?’

He pulled out of the girl and Annie caught a flash of cunt and another, even less welcome, of a wet, deflating dick. She turned her head away as the girl scrabbled up, snatching clothes off the floor. The man adjusted his clothing and carried on shouting the odds, as if she was in the wrong here.

‘Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’d better get out now or you’ll be next over this desk, sister,’ he yelled at her.

‘Really?’

Annie pulled a hand out of her black coat’s capacious pocket and suddenly Max’s gun was there. She put the muzzle of the gun flat against the man’s forehead and flicked off the safety.

The girl screamed and froze.

‘What the fucking hell …?’ wailed the man, staggering back against the desk, trying to get away from the gun, staring at it cross-eyed in horror.

Annie’s eyes were ice.

‘Shut your noise,’ she said to both of them. The girl fell silent, the man was breathing heavily. ‘This is a hair trigger,’ she told the man. ‘You know about hair triggers?’

The man gave a tiny nod, then groaned and shut his eyes. Sweat was starting to pour out of him. He stank already. Disgusting.

‘Good. Now tell me-who the fuck are you , arsehole?’

‘Mrs Carter?’ It was Tony, bursting through the door with a struggling blonde in tow. He looked at the girl still trying to get dressed, and the rumpled, white-faced man, and the gun in Annie’s hand. ‘You okay?’

The white-faced man ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. He looked balefully at Annie, then at Tony.

‘Are you telling me this is Max Carter’s missus?’ he demanded.

‘Who is this wanker?’ Annie asked Tony, indicating the man.

‘Club manager. Lou Morris.’

‘Will you get your effing hands off me , you great ape,’ snarled the blonde with Tony. Then she saw Annie and grew still.

Annie looked around at the assembled company. Five people in Max’s office. The last time that had happened, someone had got themselves shot. She flicked the safety back on and pocketed the gun.

‘Can we all calm down?’ she said smoothly. She crossed the small room and threw open the window. Traffic roared outside and fumes billowed in, but it was better than the stink of stale sex and unwashed bodies.

‘You,’ she told the girl from the desk, who had gathered up her clothes and was now partly dressed. ‘You work here?’

The girl nodded. Bright blue eyes and straight brown hair. She looked terrified. ‘I’m a hostess.’

‘What’s you name?’

‘Roberta,’ she said.

‘Well, Roberta, you never do anything like this again in any of the Carter clubs, you got me?’

Roberta nodded.

A pound note fluttered to the floor and she stooped, blushing, to grab it.

Annie looked at her in disgust.

‘And don’t sell yourself so damned cheap,’ she told the girl. ‘Go on, get out.’

Roberta hustled past Tony and the blonde.

Annie turned toward Lou and looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.

‘You’re the manager here?’

‘That’s right,’ said Lou with bravado. ‘Jonjo Carter hired me last year.’

Annie nodded. ‘And I’m firing you this year. That’s sort of neat, don’t you think?’

‘Now wait.’ Lou looked outraged. ‘Just because I poked one of the girls over the desk?’

‘No, because I don’t like your face and I don’t like your attitude. Now-keys. You’re the manager; you’ve got keys, yes? Hand them over.’

Lou looked at Annie’s face. Then at Tony’s. The blonde was still, watching.

‘Ah, what the fuck, I hated the job anyway,’ snarled Lou, rummaging in his jacket pocket and slapping a bunch of keys into Annie’s waiting hand. ‘But you’re gonna be sorry you did this,’ he warned, pushing past her and past Tony and the blonde, and stamping off down the stairs.

‘See he goes straight off the premises, Tony,’ said Annie. ‘Don’t want him helping himself to the fixtures and fittings, do we?’

Tony pushed the blonde further into the room and followed Lou out through the door, shutting it firmly behind him. Annie shrugged off her coat and went around the desk and sat in Max’s high leather chair.

Right here was where she’d been shot. She looked at the wall behind the chair, where the bullet that had passed through her and had imbedded itself. The wall was smooth now, neatly repaired. No trace of that traumatic event remained. But there was still a safe in the corner. She looked at it.

A combination safe. She wondered what was in there, and if it was enough. She doubted it.

She turned back to the blonde and nodded to the chair on the other side of the desk.

‘Hiya, Jeanette. Take a seat. We need to have a chat.’

Jeanette looked sulky. She slumped down into the chair and stared at Annie mulishly.

‘You didn’t even say goodbye,’ said Annie coolly. ‘And I thought we were such good friends, too.’

‘You’re joking,’ snorted Jeanette.

‘That’s right,’ said Annie. ‘I am.’