Pole dancer slips away

BIRDS OF PARADISE a novel collaboration

Where we left off: Television producer Charlie Bonner thought his scheme was on track. He’d gotten his wife, Genie, to the airport with the promise of a “surprise,” and they were ready to board a plane to Cabo. But it turned out that she had a surprise for him too. Saying she was going to the restroom, Genie took a powder instead and left with his “Birds of Paradise” flash drive. Waiting for her at the airport curb was Ernesto, the man Bonner paid to clean up his messes. But Ernesto was working for Genie now. Leaving Bonner to fend for himself, Ernesto and Genie headed for the Reseda apartment of Carmen, a pole dancer with whom Bonner’s friend the congressman had gotten a little too friendly. But someone has gotten there first.

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Carmen Madonna Louise Ventura shimmied down the old, iron drainpipe that ran from the roof of her apartment building to the alley in the back, her strong legs gripping the slightly rusted metal. It wasn’t her usual kind of pole, and under normal circumstances, she might have smiled at the irony. She was, after all, a pole dancer.

Still, when her feet finally touched the broken pavement, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her heart was pounding and her head hurt. That guy could certainly pack a punch. He hit harder, even, than her ex-boyfriend.

It had happened so quickly.

She was sitting at her crappy little kitchen table, the newspaper spread out in front of her, as she painted her toe nails a vicious shade of red. An open beer was on the window ledge, her third of the morning. Beer always helped her to unwind after a long night at the club.

Carmen downed the remainder of her Pacifico and put the empty bottle down on top of a story about a congressman named Falco. The name was familiar. She wasn’t sure why.

Suddenly, the apartment door splintered and a tall, blond man flashing a switchblade burst in, lunging in her direction.

“What the . . .,” she cried. She whirled out of her chair and grabbed the first thing she could find to defend herself with: a clay flowerpot.

She threw the pot at his head but he was fast, ducking out of the way and letting it crash behind him. He lunged again. Carmen tried to run past him but he stopped her with his fist, snapping her head back and knocking her to the floor.

Rolling to her left, she grabbed a piece of the broken pot and as he shoved the knife toward her she brought the jagged piece of pottery up and lodged it in his neck. As his blood spurted, she scrambled to her feet, climbed out onto the fire escape and grabbed the pole. And not a moment too soon.

Before she even hit the ground, she heard the sounds of people in her apartment. A man and woman from the sound of it.

Now with the grace of a feral cat, she stole down the alley, her eyes darting back and forth, watching everyone and everything. A curtain fluttered out through an open window and she almost jumped out of her skin.

“Ay, Dios mio,” she muttered, running her bloodied hands through her jet-black hair as she stopped at the corner of the building.

A black Crown Victoria was parked in front of a fire hydrant and Carmen shook her head, marveling at the stereotype. A thug in a big, black car. Like THAT had never been done before.

“This really is like a bad movie,” she thought as she crossed under the low-hanging tree branches and darted into a doorway.

She put her hand into her pocket to make sure the piece of paper with the phone number was still there. She watched the car, not sure what she was watching for. In the distance, she could hear helicopters and sirens piercing the morning air. Neither were out of the ordinary, not in this area of the Valley, but both were enough to get her moving again.

And the scream she heard coming from the vicinity of her apartment made her move even more quickly.

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Lorin Michel is a freelance writer who says she writes “anything anyone pays me to write.”