Dirty Money by Steven Womack

Author:Steven Womack [Womack, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48382-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

The fog was still thick as fur on Mount Rose as I pulled the GMC rust bucket out onto the highway and pointed it down the slope. It was barely ten minutes past seven and I’d been up for almost an hour. Estella had knocked on my door at a quarter past six and I’d shot up out of bed like somebody’d thrown a snake on top of me. I was dazed, exhausted, still half-asleep after having trouble dropping off the night before.

Truth is, I’m not used to being up this early. Since I gave up regular office hours six months ago, I’ve taken to sleeping in late and then staying up all hours of the night either reading or working on my house. I spent a lot of time alone and nobody was waiting for me to check in anywhere. It just didn’t matter what my sleeping habits were.

The return of day-job reality was abrupt and painful. It was little help that in addition to the five bucks an hour I’d be making from the Mustang, I was also getting fifty bucks an hour from the Justice Department, by way of Jacques Barrone. He didn’t exactly come out and say that was who’d be paying me, but I figured he wouldn’t spend his own money on me. We’d talked last night and both agreed that ten days to two weeks ought to be plenty for me to survey the traffic flow at the Mustang. I’d turn my results over to Barrone, then he and his auditors would use it to do whatever they had to do. Maybe, I warned him, the Mustang did a better business than he thought.

Still, I remembered, there’d only been a few filled slots in the parking lot yesterday.

I maneuvered off the mountain and onto Virginia, then over to I-80 eastbound. In about forty minutes I was at the Mustang Ranch’s front gate, pressing the buzzer to get in. I gazed around at the parking lot and all I saw were two battered old wrecks and a Volkswagen minibus that looked remarkably good for its age.

Inside, Mabel had already waved the girls off their approach. She wore a pair of khaki cargo pants, a white sweatshirt, no makeup. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes bloodshot; in general, she looked like she’d had a rough night.

“Morning, Mabel,” I said, as pleasantly as I could muster through the fatigue.

“Look, the first thing you got to know is employees buzz in like this.” Mabel held up her right index finger and mimicked pushing a button, made a buzzing sound followed by a break, then another buzzing sound. “You got that? One long, pause, one long. That way you don’t disturb the girls. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“This way,” she said, heading down the hallway to the left of the entrance. To our immediate left, Mabel stopped and pointed into a small alcove. “That’s the computer room,” she explained. “The girls all log in their customers. You’ll have a code, too.

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