The Girls Club Read online

  “Ambulance please, Holiday Inn, and step on it yeah, we got a dying girl here” she tossed her cell on the floor. She didn’t think she’d ever touch one again the amount of shit she’d had with hers today.

  She looked over and saw Sarah tackle Karen to the ground. She raised the gun and prepared to shout at the girls to pack it the fuck in when she was relieved of her gun by one of the goons she had forgotten to take care of.

  “Lets just let them work it out themselves shall we?”

  Sarah began beating Karen with gusto. After doubling her up with a gut punch she brought her knee up into her face and put her on her back. Karen lay gasping, crying, garbled noises that could have been grief issuing forth from her mangled mouth.

  Sarah wasn’t much better. She had taken more than a few punches, the wounds on her chest were open and bleeding freely now, her red shirt darkened, the waistband of her pants burgundy with it.

  Heidi thought she had a good idea why that was. They had often called her ‘vinegar tits’ behind her back. Maybe someone had tired of the name and decided to correct her tit owning status.

  “Do you think she’s hot?” she asked of the shadow behind her.

  “What the fuck? Fucking shut the fuck UP!”

  “Tut-tut-tut. You kiss your mom with that mouth?”

  Sky cried. Sarah laughed. Heidi sighed.

  Rochelle had stopped her laboured breathing. Sarah felt her victory now in hand. Heidi made a life or death decision.

  Heidi turned and put her hands round the head of the girl who had been looking over her and planted a kiss, a warm and lingering kiss, right on her mouth. She lowered the gun, Heidi could see the other car had gone over her shoulder. The other goon must have taken her fallen comrades away then, it was now or might as well be fucking never. She grabbed at the gun, the goon stepped back and raised it.

  “No wait, LOOK OUT!” Heidi screamed whilst looking directly behind the guardian in the best theatrical manner she could muster. Maybe it had been the arrival of strange parties previously, or Heidi’s convincing scream but the goon turned. Heidi reached out and took the gun.

  “HA! Stupid fucking bitch” and shot her in the knee from behind.

  “Won’t be sneaking back up on me again any time soon will ya?”

  “Heidi!” Sky’s shoulders were shaking, “She’s stopped breathing!”

  Yeah, which fucking one of them?

  Sarah was stomping on Karen at will, Sky was laying Rochelle flat on the ground, who said there was a fucking plan? Half of the fucking Chain would be dead by the time the reprisals finished reverberating.

  “SARAH!” Heidi walked to where she had been about to kick Karen in the head again.

  “It’s over”

  Sarah kicked Karen again.

  “I said its OVER!”

  “Ha, fuck you its over, fuck you, I’ll say when its over, fuck you, fucking fuck you” and she kicked Karen again.

  “Rochelle’s dead Sarah. After everything you ever said about her. How much you said you loved her, go look, she’s dead Sarah. AND YOU KILLED HER!”

  Sarah’s face contorted. The victory she was supposed to be feeling being replaced with doubt.

  “Dead?” she face twitched.

  “Dead”

  Karen opened her eyes and saw Sarah was facing Heidi, what the fuck she doin’ here?

  Where’s Rosh?

  WHERE‘S ROSH?

  She started to bring her good arm up to get up off the floor and Sarah went on making her weird facial gestures. Heidi kept her gaze on Sarah, Karen knew this was it, for Rochelle, Denise and Demi. She got off the ground and threw her good arm around Sarah’s neck. She jumped up, Sarah toppled and fell but Karen stayed on. Using her body as leverage she gripped the other side of her arm with her bad hand and wept at the pain it caused. Frustrated howls accompanied each movement she made to pull her grip tighter.

  The first of the emergency services began to arrive, two ambulances screamed into the now near empty lot and Sky jumped up, “Here, quick, HERE!”

  “Heidi…gun” Karen gasped.

  Heidi was stood over the pair, Sarah strangely listless now, Karen grunting and pulling her arm tighter.

  “Heidi, GUN!”

  “No Karen, what good would it do?”

  “Gimme the fucking gun!” she sobbed.

  “No. You’re better than that”

  “BUT SHE KILLED ROSH!”

  Heidi bent down, “And her knowing that will feel far worse than you killing her ever will”

  Karen relaxed her grip. Sky had come trotting over, “Fuck Karen! OH FUCK, come on”

  Sky put her arm under Karen and helped her up, “They brought her back, she’s breathing, barely, they’re taking her, COME ON!”

  Karen headed for the ambulance, Sarah Steiger whose weeping breasts had burned the whole time she had been down there, wound herself up for the final attack.

  BANG!

  Karen blearily turned round, “Wha?”

  Heidi dropped the gun, smoke coming from the muzzle.

  “She was fakin’ it, saved time just to fucking shoot her.”

  Heidi burst into tears. Karen waved her arm.

  “Come ’ere” the three of them went over to find the ambulance with Rochelle in it had sped off. Three police cruisers pulled into the lot in a spume of unnecessary dust. The second ambulance took Karen and Heidi. Sky said she’d talk to the cops and meet them there.

  There would be some tall explaining to do before the day was out. Karen knew she would have to do some. Heidi knew she’d also have her share of tall taleing to tell.

  As Karen was wheeled off down one corridor, she lent up on her elbow and pulled the air mask down, “Oy, Heidi!”

  “What now limey bitch?”

  “Find Rochelle, find out if she’s alright”

  Heidi waved her arm in a, yeah sure, gesture.

  At the desk she asked about Rochelle Kobolowski and was told only that she was there and stable and that as she wasn’t next of kin they couldn’t advise on where she was in the building. Heidi wasn’t unfamiliar with reconnaissance, so many shopping expeditions started out the same way. She wandered the floors. Opening doors here and there at random. Always striving to look like she knew just where she was going and belonged there all the while.

  In the end she gave up and went back to the reception desk.

  She couldn’t imagine why she was still there in all honesty. Then she had passed out.

  When she woke up the light coming through the windows was very dim. She must have been out for hours. Sky had her head on the bed and was sleeping deeply from the look.

  Awww.

  She was in danger of getting sappy if she let things continue with this girl.

  Looking over the other side she saw Karen was in the next bed.

  Nicely corralled in the same room eh?

  She could see the shadow of a person right outside the door.

  “Fuckin’ pig cop” she laughed.

  There’d been so much trouble with cops just lately she wasn’t even bothered any more by the prospect of being arrested.

  Sky rolled her head up, “Hmm, H?”

  “In the flesh”

  “How’s your head?”

  “It’s alright, I guess they give good drugs in here, whose the guy outside”

  “Police protection”

  “Owww, after all these years of struggling to make a name for myself all I had to do was kill a fucking high tits lez to get a body guard” she slumped back into her pillows.

  “What’s her story?” she nodded in Karen’s direction.

  “They did some surgery on her arm and collarbone. Her heads bashed up. Cuts and bruises mainly. She’ll be OK though they think.”

  “And her girl, Rochelle?”

  “Stable, but they have her in ICU. Not out of the wood yet”

  Heidi sighed, “Thank the Lord for small favours, that lovely pink shirt got ruined I take it?”

&
nbsp; Sky smiled, “Yeah, you bled all over it”

  “Steiger?” a chill sprang up at the mention of her name.

  “DOA, the cops are really going to want your side of it you know.” Sky took her hand, Heidi let her.

  “I told them as much as I could, and that you only shot her because you had no choice, she’d already tried to kill all of us.”

  What kind of fucked up state would this leave the Chain in? How many secrets like previously buried bodies would be unearthed while the police tried to understand just how it came to be that a bunch of bitches packing heat had shot it out in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.

  Heidi found she didn’t care.

  “Oy,” came a the dusty croak.

  “Another fucking country heard from”

  “You got a right…potty mouth on you”

  “KAREN!” Sky went over and grabbed her hand.

  Karen couldn’t open her eyes.

  “Tell me”

  She was on the floor covered in blood. The car had hit her dead on. Interesting use of the word dead eh?

  “She’s alive!” she whispered directly into her ear.

  Karen’s face lifted in a smile.

  “D’ya hear that you crazy limey bitch, ALIVE!” Heidi shouted.

  The cop stuck his head in the door and looked at the girls.

  “Everything in here alright?”

  “Fuckin ‘A’ ossifer, how ‘bout you get us a beer?”

  He promptly shut the door again wishing he hadn’t asked.

  Karen started to get up and Sky put her hands on her shoulders.

  “You can’t get up yet! Sleep Karen, sleep and get better, in the morning we’ll go see her”

  “All of us”

  “You guys speak for yourselves, I haven’t had sex in over 24 hours. I need to get laid” Heidi muttered.

  Karen tried to laugh but it just felt like her whole body was tired.

  As Heidi and Sky feel asleep Karen made another attempt at getting up. There were tubes in her arms but the tripod they were suspended from had wheels and was good to go. She had to see. Had to know. Her stomach wouldn’t settle until she knew. Until she knew that her promise, tattered and torn, had been kept. That Rochelle was still alive. One arm jutted out in a cast the getting out of bed part was a very slow affair.

  Her head felt too big for her shoulders and her eyes dry and dusty. Once she was off the bed she gripped the tripod and started her shuffling gait over to the door.

  She was halfway across the room when she heard an ‘ah-hem’.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re pig headed?” Heidi whispered.

  “I wanna see her…I need to see her” her hand slipped down the tripod.

  “Alright” Heidi hissed and hopped out of her bed. At first she had more trouble standing upright than Karen had. Karen almost wet herself as Heidi cursed, trying her best not to look hurt or disabled in anyway.

  “Limey fuck” she muttered as she opened the door for them.

  The cop jumped up from his chair.

  “Where do you think you’re going ladies”

  “Disneyland”

  “Heidi!”

  “ICU, our friends up there”

  “What about her” he pointed to Sky who was sleeping peacefully with her head still on Heidi’s bed.

  “Let her sleep. She’s earned it”

  “Its not that I’m bothered about ma’am, I’m one cop to protect three lucky ladies, if you split up whaddya expect me to do?”

  “Please” Karen pleaded as she swayed like a drunk.

  Heidi touched his arm, “Give us ten minutes, then we’ll be good little injuns”

  “Sure thing, but if you’re not back in ten you’ll go under room arrest”

  And off they went to the end of the hall.

  “Which floor?” Karen stared at the elevator console like she could really see any of the buttons there.

  “Em, the map says three” and she hit three.

  Karen was leaning against the wall and Heidi had her pinned up.

  When the door opened they were greeted by a nurse at a desk, “Visiting hours are clearly stated, you’ll have to come back tomorrow”

  Heidi propped Karen against the wall and leaned over the desk, “Listen,” she read the badge, “Velda, the cop said it was OK, so I’m not gonna take any shit from you”

  The nurse blushed, “But you…”

  “Come on” Heidi lifted Karen from against the wall and they wandered along the glass walled corridor looking for signs of Rochelle. When they turned the bottom corner together they saw another cop. When he looked up and saw them he put his hand on the butt of his gun.

  “It’s cool, buzz your buddy, he said we could come see our friend”

  He pulled his mike, “Say, your ladies headed my way, out?”

  “That’s a roger, I told them ten minutes but you know women, probably be half an hour, out”

  “Tell him we heard that” and Heidi opened the door.

  Karen shuffled in, looking behind her she saw Heidi had stayed there.

  “I don’t need to see this. I’ll wait here and re-educate this fucking cop on sexual equality”

  The door whispered shut. They were alone.

  Little Rochelle. Poor sweet little Rochelle. It looked like she had been attacked by a monster made of plastic and tubes and was still fighting for her life.

  There was a bump hiss of air. A steady beep, der, beep, der of a heart monitor. Her head was swaddled in bandages and her arms were in casts right up to her shoulders.

  Karen shuffled closer to the bed. Rochelle’s colour was good. It looked as if all the major damage was under the bandages.

  Oh Rosh, my Rosh, poor angel.

  She got closer to the bed and touched one of the fingers hanging out of the end of the cast. It felt cold.

  “I made it. Eventually.”

  Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

  “ Sarah’s dead. I’m sorry about that, I know she was your sister for whatever she did”

  Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

  “I think Charlottes on this floor somewhere, Heidi thinks she saw her coming in. Strange how bad things got before the end”

  Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

  She touched the fingers again, willing them to move, willing them to feel warm.

  “You know what else? I think Sky’s fallen in love with Miss Heidi, who by the way saved my life. I’d have never imagined that of her on first sight”

  Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

  She could feel herself wanting to cry now, her throat filling with the salty taste. What had she achieved if Rochelle never woke up?

  “I was lousy at keeping my promise. But don’t stay like this to punish me” she broke down. Standing there, with her tripod and open gown she felt used up and weak. Worse than that she felt alone. Something she’d never known for a minute since their first kiss.

  “Rosh, for me” she took her hand off the tripod and placed it under Rochelle’s bruised chin.

  “For me”

  Tap tap.

  “We gotta get back in a sec” Heidi said through the crack in the door

  “Yeah, just a minute”

  She leaned right over Rochelle now, letting her battered body touch Rochelle, letting Rochelle feel she was wanted, needed.

  “I’ll be here when you wake up.” She kissed her gently on the mouth and nuzzled her cheek.

  “I’ll be back in the morning” she took her tripod and began her shuffle back to the door.

  Chapter 19

  After three days of slumber Rochelle finally awoke.

  By which time the police had amassed an amazing array of evidence on the seedy underworld activities of the organisation formerly known as ‘The Chain’.

  Ladies left LA, ‘in fear for their lives’, there were a lot of bodi
es and a lot of finger pointing. When one bit came out, the rest, inevitably followed.

  It was with some relief a certain amount of atrocity could be attributed to the former Chain big shot Sarah Steiger. Many who had feared her in life felt tremendously liberated after her death, in their liberation they gave up their secrets.

  Heidi let Sky take her home after a day of being incarcerated at the hospital. Smoking in the toilets was something she’d given up at high school she exclaimed. She further demurred that hospital johnnies failed to meet necessary standards befitting to a young TV starlet.

  Rochelle was taken off life support after making the effort to breath on her own.

  Karen was discharged after two days but stayed anyway. One arm in a cast up to her neck they looked a very sorryful pair. Only one good arm between them.

  Tarkingtons was stripped bare, police, detectives, media, the place became a hive of activity.

  Karen had been sat there, chin on her chest, dozing lightly when she’d first heard her try to speak.

  “…idiot”

  She had looked up and tried to turn round to see if anyone was behind her giving herself a nice sharp stabbing pain in her neck.

  “…ing idiot”

  There was no mistaking where the voice had come from that time.

  She stood over her angel. Some of the bruises had faded to browns and the absurdly large bandage discarded in favour of a smaller dressing.

  With her good arm she reached over and put her hand on her cheek. It was about the only place that didn’t have visible damage.

  “Hey you”

  And as Rochelle fluttered her eyes, trying to make the world come into focus Karen knew it had all been worth it.

  “Sarah?” she whispered.

  Karen could only shake her head a little.

  Rochelle’s face smoothed out, there were emotions there to be unleashed, but relief had triumphed overall. Karen would help her weather whatever storms came later. Losing kin, no matter how psychotic, was apt to be painful. It wouldn’t matter that she’d tried to kill them, because Karen remembered the look Rochelle had given Sarah one day. Simple love. Rochelle was true blue. Loyal. Karen felt that was a heavy burden for her own heart.

  But one that would happily shoulder.

  Charlotte Toulouse recovered from her injuries and left LA. 65% burns had left her with very little outlook on life. But deep down she knew she had also been lucky to escape the Chain. Some surgery and a new locale, she figured she could be a shyster lawyer anywhere.