Lady Boss Takes on Vegas Bullies! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Night Crew

In the sub-basement the night crew shares coffee and a short paycheck, and the head of security checks her ID and calls it too clean; the general manager posts her alone to the high room.

He walked me down four flights of back stairs without saying a word.

The stairs ended at a steel door marked SUB-BASEMENT, NIGHT CREW.

Behind it was a long room with a humming vending machine and eleven mismatched chairs.

Nine people in gray smocks sat around a folding table, eating out of containers.

A short woman with a gray braid looked up from the head of the table.

She had orthopedic shoes, forearms like a baker's, and a cleaning cart parked beside her chair.

"Ah, Lord," she said. "He got you already."

"Finnegan got her," the man behind me said. "I got her back."

"That's the right order of things, Reuben."

She said his first name.

The crew shifted to make a chair for me.

Nobody asked what I had done.

A skinny kid with a wrench in his back pocket slid a plastic container down the table.

"Rice and beans," he said. "My mom's. Eat before it gets weird."

I sat down because my legs said so.

The woman at the head of the table stuck out a hand.

"Dot Gallagher. Night lead. This is Bessie."

She patted the cart.

"I'm Lucy," I said. "Birch."

"You mouthed off to the Finnegan," Dot said. "In front of whales."

"I told him he spilled it."

A short silence.

Then the whole table burst out laughing.

It wasn't mean laughter.

It was the sound of people who had wanted to say that for a very long time.

"Eleven months," said a woman with a hairnet. "I've worked here eleven months and I never once said it."

"Say it now," Dot told her. "Say he spilled it."

"He spilled it!" the woman yelled at the ceiling, and the table lost it again.

I laughed too.

It surprised me how good it felt.

I had been eating dinner alone in a forty-first floor penthouse for four years.

I had not known that I missed a table like this one.

Reuben Lowry stayed by the door with his clipboard.

He did not laugh, but the corner of his mouth moved.

"Birch."

I looked up.

"ID," he said.

I handed over the laminated badge Leigh had made for me.

He turned it in the light, flipped it over and ran his thumb along the edge.

"Where were you before this?"

"Reno. A Marriott. Night cleaning."

"For how long?"

"Two years."

"Why leave?"

"Rent," I said. "Vegas pays more."

He nodded slowly.

He handed the badge back.

"Clean," he said.

My stomach went cold.

"It's a clean badge, Mr. Lowry. I just got it."

"I didn't mean the badge." He tucked the clipboard under his arm. "Your background came back spotless. No traffic tickets, no old addresses, no gaps. Most people have a gap."

"I've lived a quiet life."

"It's very clean," he said. "Too clean."

He said it plainly.

Then he looked at the pink form on his clipboard and slid it under the bottom sheet.

"Pending review means pending," he said. "It sits in my tray until Friday. By Friday Finnegan has forgotten your name."

"You can do that?"

"I can lose paper," he said. "It's most of what I'm good for."

Dot looked at him.

Something passed between them that I wasn't invited to understand.

The skinny kid cleared his throat.

"Dot, did you guys get paid?"

The table quieted.

It was Monday, and the Aurora paid its night staff weekly on Mondays.

Dot pulled a brown envelope out of her smock and set it on the table.

She did it carefully.

"Lucy, you'll get yours in a week. Everyone else, open them."

Nine envelopes went around.

Nobody looked happy.

A man with a mustache counted his bills twice, then a third time.

"Two-twelve short," he said.

"Two-twelve short," said the woman in the hairnet.

"Two-twelve," said everyone else, one by one.

I stared at them.

"Short from what?"

"Uniform fee," Dot said, and her voice was perfectly flat. "Two hundred and twelve dollars a week, taken out before the envelope. For these." She plucked at her gray smock. "The smock costs eleven dollars. The company buys them in bulk."

"Who decided that?"

"The general manager."

"Does anyone know where it goes?"

Dot looked at me for a long moment.

"You ask good questions for a Marriott girl," she said.

Behind me, the radio on Reuben's hip crackled.

He listened to it, and his expression did not change at all.

"Birch," he said, when it was finished.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Finnegan says he's reassigned you. Tomorrow night, twelfth floor. The high room."

"What's the high room?"

Dot set down her fork.

"It's where he keeps the people he wants to break," she said quietly. "He wants you alone up there."

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