Spin (Songs of Corruption #1)(53)

The bouncer, his hairline a receding M, moved the rope before we’d even slowed down. He ushered us past the register for the cover and into a room so dim I wouldn’t have been able to tell the girls from boys if there had been no high hair involved.

I was still mad. I didn’t know how I’d held onto it that long, because anger wasn’t my forte. It was unattractive and uncontrollable. It pushed people away andm for the most part, achieved nothing. This anger was mine, though, and it was a caged mink about to get skinned.

The bouncer nodded to the bartender and opened a door to the back room for us. We passed through then down steps, past a smaller door, into an underground office. I should have been scared, but I was too pissed off. Even when I saw four men lounging around the room, two playing backgammon, one on the phone, and one tending blood on his knuckles, I wasn’t afraid.

Before anyone had a chance to explain our presence or introduce us, I spoke. “Which one of you is Scott Mabat?”

One middle-aged dirty-blond man in a black leather jacket, bent over the backgammon board, raised his hand slightly, the pointer extended to say, one second.

“Scotty, come on,” the skinny guy across from him demanded. He pushed aside a tiny cup with a lemon peel in the saucer.

“Shut the f**k up, Vinny,” Scott said.

“This is a fast-paced game.”

Scott moved his piece. “Not when I play it.” He stood. “Kat, nice to see you so soon. Who’s the friend?”

“She’s—”

“I’m the money.” I wanted to throw the envelope down and storm out, but common sense cut through my anger. “I’m putting up her interest, and I’ll be paying off her loan next week.”

He stepped around the desk and slowly opened his top drawer. “Cash.”

“Cash.”

“I recognize your face.” He flipped through a folder. “You marrying the district attorney?”

“No. Let’s get this over with. I have last week, this week, and next week on me. I’ll get you the—”

“Whoa, whoa, lady. Don’t rush. Kat, did you explain that our terms changed?” He spoke to her as if she was a child.

I wanted to kill him slowly.

“No,” she said.

I’d never seen her so cowed. She was the f**king Directrix, for Chrissakes.

“This is the contract,” he said. “It’s easy as shit. A moron could understand it. The studios give you a ream they nail together. You go to the Giraldis, they don’t even write shit down. You’re lucky.” He flipped me two stapled pieces of paper. The contract was in bullet points and looked as if it had been the result of a hundred generations of photocopying.

“Point four,” he said with his arms crossed. “Kat, would you like to read aloud to the class?”

She held out her hand for the pages. Was she insane? That docile girl couldn’t direct a movie.

I read point four myself. “‘Recipient has made no misrepresentation of their ability to repay the loan.’” I shrugged. “Okay, so?”

“So?” he said. “So!”

Throats cleared and chairs squeaked. A heightened intensity vibrated in the room.

Scott pointed his rigid finger at me as though he wanted to stab me. “This bitch didn’t tell me she was poison. I put up half a mill on an Oscar nominee, not a whining cunt no one wants to touch. Her f**king shit’s gonna be at the CineVention selling to Latvia for five G.”

“A little underwriting would have gone a long way, Mister Mabat.”

The guy whose knuckles were now fully bandaged snorted a laugh.

“That’s f**king funny?” Scott said.

Knuckles shrugged. Scott, a man who could not be rushed through a game of backgammon, picked up a dirty coffee mug and bashed Knuckles in the back of the head so hard his neck seemed to shake back and forth like a seizure. It happened so fast, Knuckles’s head had dropped to the table before either of the other guys could stand to aid him.

“This was easy money.” Scott pointed the cup at me. There was blood and a single black hair on it. “A no-f*cking-brainer. Terms changed. There are no prepayments. There’s a thirty-year schedule she’s keeping.” He slapped the cup down. “We’ll be happy to take it out of her ass when she can’t shell out.”

I was scared finally, but I didn’t flinch. Knuckles was conscious and being tended by his two compatriots. Katrina sniffled behind me.

“Shush,” I said to her. I held my chin up to the loan shark. “You will take the prepayment, plus five thousand, and you will be happy with that.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“Or what? You getting the mayor after me? I’m all grown now. He can’t do shit.”

I pressed my lips together in a smile. “He can’t. But if you knew my name, you’d know I have a family. And if you knew anything about how they settle debts, you’d back away slowly.” I pulled the envelope out of my jacket and plopped it on the desk. “I suggest you do your research before dismissing my offer out of hand.”

I dragged Katrina out by the forearm and didn’t look back. I pulled her up the stairs, through the club, and into the street. I walked with my shoulders straight, confident that I owned everything in my sight. My friend blooped the car and got in. I followed and got into the passenger seat as if I was being chauffeured. It wasn’t until Katrina stopped at a light on Temple that, in order to release the tension, I started crying.