The last part of Alfie's sentence was cut off when the crowd roared in approval.
Mel's subtle gestures and Betsey's growing excitement made Ryan suspect the two women were familiar lovers. For the first time since they began their theatrics he felt an inkling of arousal. It wasn't so much that he found either of them attractive or that he particularly got off on watching lesbians. It was the glimpse of Mel's dominance and Betsey's submission, the exchange of their energies that had caught his attention more than anything.
During the height of the crowd's excitement over the tawdry spectacle unfolding on the stage, three men had entered the room and immediately approached Diamond Jack and Mason. The five of them retired to a solitary table on a platform directly by the entrance.
A big man with a square jaw stood several feet away, staring in a hawk-like manner out at the crowd. Ryan assumed he was one of Jack's henchmen. One of the waitresses brought the men drinks and also handed Jack several sheets of paper and a pencil.
All of the men except for Mason began conversing soberly. Ryan realized Diamond Jack was conducting high-level business. What better place to carry on in secret than in this boisterous crowd where they were sure to go unheard? Both the table and Jack's chair were perfectly positioned for Jack to see everything going on in the large room. Every time a man left with a woman on his arm he made a note on the paper in front of him and another note when they returned. Ryan observed that when the women returned from their forays upstairs they wore significantly less clothing, often nothing more than a petticoat and revealing corset. A few came down wearing frothy negligees, their breasts almost fully exposed beneath the sashes of their robes.
For the most part Mason ignored the men's talk and sat slumped in his chair, watching the Slip and Whip with a fixed, heavy-lidded stare. Despite the fact that he appeared to be no older than twenty-four or -five, he looked distinctly ill, like his body had been hard used.
At one point Mason sat up to attention at something Jack had said. He questioned the owner of the Sweet Lash. Jack's terse response made Mason tilt his chin in the general direction of the upstairs of the establishment. When Jack nodded, Mason grinned widely.
Mason's leer made Ryan uneasy. He needed to find Hope. What if his showing up at the brothel had been related to Hope, after all? There was a woman upstairs, "beautiful as a princess," who'd been forced into coming here. Detective Connor O'Rourke had suspected Diamond Jack of abducting Hope around this time period.
What if the woman upstairs was Hope?
Ryan jerkily stood from the bar stool. What if Jack or one of his henchmen had already killed her?
He was trying to think of a way that he could get past Jack's all-seeing eyes and poke around upstairs in search of the captive young woman Alfie had mentioned. Knowing what Alfie had told him about Mario's role with the abducted females made Mario's protracted absence alarming.
He paused when he saw Jack stand and put his hand on the henchman who'd been about to descend the stairs. Jack went down the stairs himself. He stalked over to a table where a balding man had pulled a pretty young woman into his lap and jerked down her dress and corset. He happily fondled a small breast while his other hand was busy beneath her skirts, his eyes glued to the Slip and Whip. When Betsey had begun her lewd humping motions up on the stage, the man had started hopping the prostitute's bottom in his lap at the same rate. Jack must've been wise enough to realize the man was looking for two pops for the price of one, having his pleasure here in public and also upstairs later on.
At first Ryan was thankful for the distraction. He unobtrusively started to move toward the exit and the wooden staircase in the far distance but Alfie almost immediately spoke to him.
"You're not gonna want to miss this, fella," Alfie murmured. Ryan turned to see both Alfie and the other bartender stopped dead in their tracks, eyes trained on Jack's intimidating figure as it progressed across the crowded room. Both men were directly behind Ryan, preventing a surreptitious getaway.
Like the bartenders, he watched as Jack approached the table, yanked the young woman up and shoved her out of the way roughly before he pounded the man's face with a beefy fist. The guy didn't know what hit him. He'd still been grinning lasciviously when he spilled over his chair backward.
"Get outa here. If you try and come back, they'll find you facedown in the alley," Jack snarled when the balding man sat up with a stunned look on his face.
"Big Mario usually keeps house down here," Alfie told Ryan by way of explanation.
"Jack's gotta watch over things while he's gone."
Ryan cleared his throat. "Look, I need to get some fresh air, you know?"
Alfie shook his head quickly. "Ye ain't going nowhere, friend. Marlo' will be here any minute." He nodded his head to the stage, where the whipping had now ceased. Mel knelt behind her lover, her face buried between a moaning Betsey's thighs. "The Slip and Whip's near finished. Ye're up next, fella."
Ryan sat back down on the stool while he narrowly studied the room. It was so dim he couldn't tell if there were any back entrances or not.
Betsey's moans became louder as she neared what appeared to be a genuine climax.
"Whip the bitch!" a muscular, stocky man who was clearly drunk yelled from a center table. Mel and Betsey had given their pound of flesh to the demanding men, however, and now appeared to be completely involved in each other. There were men in the audience who clearly appreciated the sensual display of Mel pleasuring Betsey with her mouth and tongue, but a few others echoed the man's desire for more brutality.
Ryan glanced over at Jack, curious as to how he would handle the belligerent man as he grew louder, eventually stood and moved toward the stage. Jack had returned to his seat, and although he glanced over when the man bawled again for more whipping, his attention clearly remained on business. Jack had his priorities, it would seem, and establishing that men couldn't come into the Sweet Lash and hope to cheat him of a dollar was one of them.
The safety of the women apparently was not.
Something about the jerk's fixed, ugly expression sent off a warning bell in his head. At first Ryan didn't understand what the guy was doing as he fumbled at his waist, but then Ryan saw him pull off his belt with a snap.
The man leapt onto the stage, the leather belt doubled in his hand, and began to viciously strike both Betsey and Mel. Betsey cried out in stark pain, her flesh having already been abused by the whip. Several people called out in anger, but a few others cheered on the stocky man.
Mel bared her teeth in fury and gripped the belt, stilling the attacker's actions. She kicked at the man's shins with her riding boots. He cursed and grabbed her shoulders, shoving her down forcefully. Mel's head smacked into the floor of the platform. The man with the belt raised his hand over his head, poised to beat the stunned woman.
Ryan caught the attacker's wrist and jerked his other hand behind his back at the same time. He pressed the man's body into him, taking his weight with relative ease and tilting the struggling man off balance, diminishing the power of his short, muscular legs. Ryan pushed the man's wrist up his s
pine until his fist pressed against his skull.