Chapter
31
THE LINES WERE long again, but this time there were no disruptions. What had happened the night before seemed to have reverberated among those who frequented the Grunt.
Rogers saw Karl leave at around one-thirty, followed by Helen Myers at two.
Karl had waved to him. Myers had not.
At three the bar was empty and clean enough for the staff to head home. Rogers offered to lock up and set the alarm.
Finally, he was the last person in the place.
He had earlier noted the CCTV cameras. They were all around the bar area, and also posted outside.
But they were not, he had also noted, stationed at the stairs leading up to the VIP room. Nor were there any cameras on that level.
Someone didn’t want a record of those heading up there, and he wondered why.
He took the stairs two at a time, jiggling the set of keys in his pocket. He arrived on the upstairs landing and looked around. There was only one door, although the room it accessed seemed to run the length of the corridor.
He assumed that this might have been the living quarters of whoever had owned this building before it had become a bar.
He tried the door. It was locked.
He tried the keys in his pocket. The third one did the charm.
He opened the door and stepped into the room, closing it behind him. He didn’t have a flashlight and didn’t need one. His eyes were capable of seeing amazingly well in the darkness. He moved around the room, which was comfortably furnished.
It was actually more than one room. There was another room leading off it, separated by another doorway.
He opened this door and stared at the large bed. It was neatly made now. He figured it would not be so neat when Quentin and his ladies were here.
So was that what this was all about?
Just a place for Quentin to bed his entourage?
Yet he had been here with other men that night. So did the boys get equal turns between the sheets? Was that how Quentin paid his bonuses to executives at his company?
And why here? Quentin had the beach house not even two hours from here. And he must have a place in town somewhere. So why come to a room above a bar and spend a big sum each month for the privilege?
He made a search of the room and turned up exactly nothing. And Rogers knew how to search.
He closed the door behind him and locked it. Then he left the bar after setting the alarm and locking the exterior door securely behind him.
He had taken three steps down the alley leading to where he had parked his van when he saw them up ahead.
The players from the night before.
He turned around and looked behind him.
More big bodies had filled his rear flank.
The big black guy stepped forward, a malicious grin on his face.
“Told you we’d be back, asshole. And I keep my word.”
Rogers looked to the man’s left and saw the fellow whose wrist he’d broken. Next to him were the other two men he’d kicked the shit out of. One of them looked like he’d had his jaw wired.
Rogers looked back at the black guy, who had taken another long step forward. “Do you really want to do this?” he asked calmly.
“You got somewhere to go?” snarled the man.
“Actually, I do. So why don’t you and I go one-on-one? I win. I walk. It’ll save a lot of time.”
The black guy stiffened and looked around at the men he’d brought with him. “I saw you were some kind of ninja, fuckface. That’s why I brought reinforcements.”
Rogers looked at the man with the broken wrist and the guy with the wired jaw. “If you come at me again, I will kill both of you.”
The two men looked amused until they caught the expression on Rogers’s face.
The black guy, perhaps sensing they were losing the upper hand, pulled something from his pocket. It was a knife.
“That’s not going to change the outcome,” said Rogers. “You just brought the weapon that I’ll use to kill you.”
Rogers was walking past the cruiser when the passenger window came down.
“What was all that about?” asked the police officer.
“I’m the bouncer at the Grunt. That was about some punks not getting to drink beer and wanting someone to take it out on. Namely me.”
“Okay, I get that. Well, lucky for you we came along.”
Lucky for them, thought Rogers.