Undetected

Chapter Four

Just then, I heard the bell, indicating that someone entered the front door. The studio camera showed a man and a woman walking up the stairs.Probably, the late student. 

The pair made it inside right before the street entrance door locked automatically. We kept the door unlocked for about ten minutes after class started for anyone that was going to be late.

There were three cameras at The Haus of Dance; one at the main entrance, one in the office, and one in the studio. There really wasn't much happening in the way of intruders, but the instructors needed to be able to lock the door if necessary.

If I wasn't around, my assistant, Taylor, took care of business. At an impressive six feet with an athletic build, Taylor commanded respect. Not to mention her aim with a gun was almost as good as mine.

We kept a loaded Glock 19 in a locked drawer inside the desk in the office. The drawer only opened when it detected mine or Taylor's fingerprints, thanks to Raul.

I knew firsthand how scary the world was. Our urban neighborhood was no exception. It housed a diverse crowd; the young, the old, professionals, drug dealers, addicts, the homeless and all that came with that culture. That was another reason I kept the studio hidden away from sight.

When I was searching for a space, I bought a two-story building that had multiple storefronts on the first floor, in a concrete building, with no windows facing the street. It required a code or notification to get in. Our studio was upstairs, in a private corner.

Pole dancing is an attention grabber, sometimes in the wrong way. Some people thought that women who were pole dancers were aspiring strippers. So, of course, they deserve the attention and negative attitude of others.

While a few women who worked in the strip club industry joined Haus of Dance, they came to master a craft in a safe environment not to attract a judgmental crowd. Sometimes I hire strippers as teachers. If they had a passion for dance, they were the best to learn from. The art of pole dancing originated from the strippers, so why not hire the women who were the masters of their craft?

As the man and woman entered the room, I realized the two looked more questionable in person than on the Surveillance Camera.

More girl than woman, she looked to be about eighteen, was skinny, in an unhealthy way. The man looked to be in his late forties, with bad tattoos that matched his vibe. The dark cheap ink on his arm, like liquid charcoal, was blue and blurred, dispersed into images by needles not meant for tattooing.

I've seen good ink, but his was prison art. Only a handful of prison tattoos were decent, his was not in that category.

I ran into many people with symbols of all kinds on their bodies. I paid attention to jewelry, piercings, clothing, any type of body art, that was there to reveal something about the person. Some were good people regardless of their coverings, but some weren't.

I remember a perp, covered in head to toe ink, that was ready to set off a bomb at a Jewish temple. I took him down quickly, but the bomb, which had five minutes to explode, was another matter. He was willing to die a martyr. I wasn't.

As he remained defiant, and time was of the essence, my attempts to get him to deactivate the bomb weren't working. I went to the extreme and chopped the bottom half of his pinky finger off.

With my hand over his mouth to muffle his screams, I made it clear that I was going to cut the rest of his fingers off, until he deactivated the bomb. The sight of his bleeding, severed fingertip, against the cement, and the pain he was feeling, persuaded him to defuse it in mere seconds. I used the memory eraser over him so that he stayed alive and confessed his crime to the police.