“I think so,” said Poe. “Can you give me any advice?”
“In quick, out fast.”
Stark parked the long black Lincoln precisely halfway up the block between Fifty-First and Fifty-Second. They walked the half block to the door of the strip club and skirted the line the bouncers had established behind a red velvet rope. The sharp-eyed doorman cracked a joke at their expense. “Yo, limo drivers! You forgot your limo.”
“Around the corner,” Stark said quietly, then he leaned in close so only the doorman could hear. “Our bosses are in there. The feds are coming for them. We’re supposed to get them out.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s their names?”
“Mine’s name is Smith.”
The doorman rounded on Poe. “What about yours?”
“Smith.”
The doorman cast a dubious look on his reservations book. “I got eighteen Smiths tonight.”
“We only want our two,” said Stark.
“Text ’em you’re here.”
Stark said, “Text them? On what? You think they carry cells?”
The doorman gave a small nod and several bouncers, big men, larger than the doorman even, gathered around. The doorman said, “Your problem ain’t our problem.”
“It’s about to be,” said Stark. “Just ’cause they don’t carry cells, don’t mean they don’t carry.”
“What?”
“I’ll paint a picture for you. In red. That’s going to be the color of your club when the shooting stops.”
“Nobody shoots at feds. Let the lawyers handle it and stop blocking my door.”
Stark took off his visored cap and said calmly, “Guys whose asses lawyers can’t save shoot at feds.”
The doorman spoke urgently into a shoulder mike, listened in his earpiece, spoke some more, and listened some more. Then he said to Stark, “I’m turning you over to the inside guys. Tell them your story. Do exactly what they tell you if don’t want your face broken. That goes for you too,” he said to Poe.
“We’ll be in quick and out fast,” Poe promised.
It looked like it might go just as well indoors, a huge room crowded with guys with their suit jackets draped over the back of their chairs and shapely naked women wearing high heels. They had arrived just in time for the March of the Ladies, where every woman in the joint formed a dancing line that snaked slowly about the room, accompanied by thundering music and flashing lights.
The head inside bouncer said, “I can’t let you go wandering around gawking at the customers. You’ll throw everybody off their game.”
“Is there someplace where we could look for them without bothering people?”
The bouncer snapped his fingers. “Right. Right. Good idea. Come on. We’ll scan the place. You can watch on the security monitors.”
“Let’s go,” said Stark. “The feds will be here any minute.”
“Got to clear it with the boss.” He spoke into his shoulder mike and listened to his earpiece. Stark remained expressionless. He was pleasantly surprised when the boss bought it.
Led, flanked, and followed by bouncers, Stark and Poe were hustled along the edge of the main room, up a back stairway to the second floor and down a hall toward an ordinary-looking door that swung open as they approached. Stark was thinking that security was pretty light up here. The head bouncer ushered them into an office that had a wall of video monitors. In one corner stood an enormous funnel.
The music from below shook the floor. Women wearing not much more than they were downstairs were wandering around, drinking and joking with a fit guy in a suit whom Stark pegged for the mobster who owned the strip club.
“Make it quick. Find your guys and we’ll send ’em out the back.”
Stark and Poe paced along the wall of monitors, pretending to hunt for their limo passengers. Stark stopped suddenly, signaled Poe, and pointed at a monitor. “Look at this, Ed. These our guys?”
“They all look the same,” said Poe.
“See the funnel?” Stark growled quietly.
“What’s it for?”
“That funnel is why winging it is for stick-up artists. That’s why they let us in here. That’s why girls are wandering in and out. Stuff you pour into the funnels goes straight down a pipe to the cellar.”
“Do you mean the room in the cellar is a vault?”
“You got it, Sherlock. So they don’t have to unlock the cellar room every time someone brings up a deposit, which they do regularly so there’s not a lot of cash on the floor to attract guys like you and me.”
“What do we do?” asked Poe.
“Stall until the next load of cash comes up here, and then grab it before they pour it.”
“But that will be only a tiny fraction of what’s in the vault.”
Stark stared. “You want a fraction or nothing?”
“Hey!” yelled the mobster. “Where are your guys?”
“Still looking, sir.”
“Look faster.”
The office door, which had been opening regularly, opened again, admitting two mostly naked women—a brunette who carried a canvas bank sack toward the funnel—and a beautiful bright-eyed blonde who walked straight up to Poe.