Maelstrom

Chapter 10: A Fake Drink

"Do you know how to make a Screaming Blue Meanie?" a young man at the bar asked.

I looked sharply at the customer in front of me. He was paying me no obvious attention, instead scanning the room as though looking for a possible score. From his profile I didn't recognize him as one of my fellow OCCB detectives; maybe DiMarco borrowed a patrolman to contact me.

The signal the lieutenant and I had worked out involved someone coming to my station and asking if I knew how to make a nonexistent drink with the word "blue" somewhere in the name, a nod to the police force that I couldn't resist throwing in. If I said I could make one, it meant I was clear to meet DiMarco for a debrief that night after my shift; if I said I wasn't familiar with it, then for whatever reason, a meet was too risky.

The second night I'd worked, Amalia had been the one to order the fake drink – "I wanted to check up on my newbie myself," she'd explained, "Plus I've always wanted to see this place!" – but I had had nothing to report at that meeting, other than how I was handling the new job and a quick rundown of club security deployments. Tonight, though, I'd actually be able to pass on a bit of real info.

"Of course!" I shouted over the music. A sympathetic part of me regretted making "blue" part of the code, since it basically mandated that whatever drink I made up to fill the fake order contained blue curaçao, which wouldn't be popular with most of the officers. But it wouldn't be much of a signal if my contact just ordered a scotch or a beer, and besides, if the people ordering from me were cops, they shouldn't really be drinking on the job anyway. I quickly rimmed a lowball with lime juice and salt, threw in a scoop of ice, poured in a couple of shots of tequila, added sweet'n'sour, and topped it with a float of sticky-sweet blue liqueur. It was the first thing I thought of, but as an afterthought, I threw in a maraschino cherry to make it look like something other than a blue margarita.

My fake customer looked at the drink questioningly. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. I was running numbers in my head. The bar closed at 4:00a.m., it would take me a bit of time to count out my till and calculate the share of my tips to give the barbacks, clean my station, then Glory might actually take me up on the offer of a flair lesson, plus some commuting time ...

"Six dollars," I shouted, telling him – and therefore, DiMarco – that I could meet at 6:00a.m.

The man nodded, paid me six for the drink, and tipped me an additional two dollars – that meant we would rendezvous at the second of our four potential meeting locations. I shoved the tip in my jar and turned to help the next customer, switching my brain back into full bartender mode.

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My watch read 4:47am.

"You still up for a little lesson?" I asked, spinning a mostly empty bottle of 151 on the back of my hand. Say no, say no, say no, I chanted in my head, hoping that for once my attempt at a Jedi mind trick would work.

Glory held up a long-nailed finger while she calculated the backs' share of her tips. She quickly counted out the cash and held it out to Colin, who was waiting next to her with a stack of bills from the other bartenders already in his hand. The four barbacks split a percentage from eleven bartenders each night – six mixologists working the main bar, three at the small bar at the far end of the dance floor, and two in the mezzanine-level chill loft, which also served the two VIP balconies at the front of the club. My mind boggled at the crazy amount of cash that flowed through Asylum on a nightly basis. Of course, that's exactly why a money launderer like Alkaev would want a business like this in the first place.

"You're joking, right?" Glory pressed her fists into her sacrum and tried to lean backwards. "My back is fuckin' killing me. Isn't your back killing you?"