Slide by Jason Starr Ken Bruen Page A

many times was the man gonna say chill? Sometimes, listening to him, Felicia would think, does he know how stupid he sounds? And how about the way he treated her, giving her orders, making her walk around topless all the time so he can always be looking at her titties? And, shit, she had to give him lap dances and blow jobs whenever he wanted them. Yeah, he was paying her, but treating her like she was a damn sex slave was bullshit. Crack-smoking dumb-ass motherfucker had no respect for women and shit.
    Sometimes he took her out—yeah, like she was a dog that needed walking. Meanwhile, she knew it was only cause he wanted to show her booty off to the whole damn world. Sometime he’d take her to restaurants and clubbing—damn, somebody had to give that man some dancin’ lessons—but his favorite place to go was that swimming pool near Times Square. In the middle of the day, he’d make her get in the damn water with him, so he could be sipping on his drinks with the little umbrellas inside them, showing off her booty for all the white-ass businesspeople looking in.
    Shit, being around that asshole twenty-four-seven sure as shit wasn’t worth the four grand a week he was paying her. Actually, she was making more than that, because she was screwing Katsu, the man’s sushi chef, on the side. Yeah, like sometimes when Max was asleep, she’d go into Katsu’s room, be on his body, and then she’d go back to Max. One time he went, “How come you smell like fish?” and she thought she’d got busted. She told him she was hungry and went to have a tuna sandwich in the kitchen and the stupid-ass believed her.
    She was also making some money going in Max’s safe. One time Max was so shit-ass wasted he gave her the combination, so she was going in, taking fifty, a hundred bucks, figuring the man was so high he wasn’t gonna keep count.
    The money was good but, no, it wasn’t worth being around Max, twenty-four-seven.
    She was all set to quit—go back to dancing or whatever—when one day Max sent her out to buy some Cuban cigars and a white guy in an ugly-ass plaid suit—shit went out of style in 1974—came up to her and went, “Hey, Felicia.”
    Just like that, like they was old friends and shit. She never seen him before in her whole damn life but, shit, all you had to do was look at that motherfucker and know he was a cop.
    Pretending she didn’t know what was going down, she went, “What the fuck you want?”
    And then he laid the shit on her straight up. His name was Detective Joe Miscali, NYPD, and he was gonna bust her ass hard for prostitution, possession, whole mess of charges, if she didn’t give him some shit on Max Fisher.
    She was like, “Shit about what? I don’t know shit about nothing.”
    Playing hardball with the cop, waiting to see if he was for real or not.
    Turned out the motherfucker wasn’t playing. Said he was on to Max, was ready to take his ass down hard, and he gave her two choices—cooperate or go away. Shit, she didn’t want to do no jail, so she said, Yeah, she’d help. What the fuck? She didn’t like helping cops, but she’d love to see Max go down, give the old bald-headed bitch some payback for the way he been treating her.
    She started trying hard as she could to get Miscali some shit on Max. She was listening in on conversations, trying to always be by him all the time, whatever. Then, one night, he came into the shower, pointing the gun in her face. She thought, Fuck, he musta found out I’m gonna snitch on his ass . Then it turned out it wasn’t about that at all; it was about the stupid money from the safe. Played it right, denying all the shit he was saying to her, and he finally left her alone.
    Later, she heard him talking to his boy Kyle on the phone about some drug deal was gonna go down with some Colombians. He told her to get out of the room, but she was listening in on the call on the other line in the bedroom. Okay, so now she had the info for Joe Miscali and