CHAPTER FIVE
Nick and Iggy toast with some shots of jagermeister as Wonderful Red and Starr give them lap dances in a dark, plush private suite in the back of the Crazy Horse.
"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Nick says, his inhibitions now non-existent a few drinks into the dance. Iggy silently nods from across the room, slapping Starr's ass (to which she responds with a vicious scowl). If either of their girlfriends ever found out about this, it would quite literally be the end of the world for both of them. But honestly, what else did they expect when they said they were going to Vegas for Dylan's Stag? A few clowns, virgin drinks, and some cheesy balloons that said 'Dylan's Bachelor Party' on it while they sat around watching porn on the big screen like adolescent boys who've never once felt the touch of a woman before? Absolutely not.
"You two are the best bridesmaids ever." Iggy mumbles, relaxing his head against the wall behind him. This would soon be cut short once Ari hurries into the room with Wolfy, looking like he could just kill a man without even a second thought.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Two for ones, man. Two for ones." Iggy groans at Starr's movements, unphased.
"We don't have time for this! We need to find Dylan!"
"What do you think we're doing?" Ari looks at Iggy, thoroughly perplexed at how a lapdance was gonna find their missing friend. "We're getting into the mindset of last night, to see if it sparks any memories."
Iggy looks at Starr, and says "Now, is this exactly how you were dancing for me last night, right?"
She nods, rolling her eyes. Iggy pretends to think to himself, as if he were an actual scientist conducting legitimate research.
"Yeah, still no memories. Keep going -and put your back into it."
"Don't tell me what to do." Starr growls, she still does it anyway.
"You are so goddamn selfish, Iggy. You really are. Nick, let's go."
"No. Nick, sit and enjoy your dance." Nick pulls his head out of Wonderful Red's more than likely fake tits and looks between them, torn.
"Dude: Dylan is missing! We have less than 18 hours til his wedding! We do not have time for this!"
And right as Ari screams this, the two fake Canadians barge into the room. Peering through the darkness, on a mission to seriously fuck up the gang. They all immediately see them, surprised they were able to track them down so soon.
"Shit." All three of them swear in tandem, a whole gaggle of curses leave Wonderful Red and Starr's mouths as they both hop off Nick and Iggy's laps. This action brings the fake Canadians' attention dead onto the trio as they begin gunning for them.
"Wolfy, honey, is there a back way out of here?" Iggy asks, and thinking fast, she quickly leads them to an unlabeled fire door.
"Come on!" Everyone but Wonderful Red and Starr leave since the fake Canadians didn't seem to be hunting them down.
Wolfy and the guys sprint through the bright, almost secure inducing light, crowded back hallways of e Crazy Horse, weaving through strippers and cocktail waitresses. The fat fake Canadians try to keep up, but either get stopped by nearby foot traffic or they need to stop to catch their breath.
"ANNND ON STAGE ONE, PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR...DOUBLE STAXXX!" The gang hear the greasy stripper DJ scream, and as the crowd begins cheering, Ari runs through stage one's illuminated by spotlight curtain. The patrons looked at Ari, confused, and Ari flashed them the same exact look. A few seconds pass, and then the patrons start to 'boo' just as Wolfy, Nick, and Iggy join Ari on the stage.
"Come on!" Wolfy hollers, and in six inch lucite heels, she sprints down the main runway and leaps over the patrons sitting at the end. They all "ooo" and "aaaa" when she unintentionally gives them a free panty shot underneath her steadily unraveling toga. She soon hits the floor, running at top speed.
"Did she just do that in heels?!" Ari says, in awe.
"I'm really starting to like this girl." Iggy grins, hopping into the crowd so he could crowdsurf for at least a little bit.
Ari and Nick follow down the same path Wolfy went in, and they all successfully reconnect around the same time the two fake Canadians blow through the curtain. Both panting as if they just ran a whole-ass marathon. They rocket off the stage and the patrons clear the middle area so that they didn't end up being bowled over by these two morbidly obese individuals. By the time they reach the end of the route, the gang is already long gone and instead, they are greeted by two security guards with chairs that they swing into their (the fake Canadians') chests without warning. The fake Canadians stumble backwards.
"Viper One, this is Rolling Thunder, we've subdued the targets, over." One security guard says as the other pounces on them, single handedly wrestling them on the ground.
Wolfy and the guys hurry around the corner of the Crazy Horse, all crying laughing with exhilaration from the Disney Channel-esque chase.
"Did you see them trample those tiny Peruvian businessmen?! I think they killed like four of them!" Iggy says, ramping up the laughter even more. He puts an arm around a chuckling Ari.
"We didn't find much out, but hey, you can't tell me that that wasn't the least bit fun."
"That was…a little fun." Iggy genuinely smiles for once just as a Las Vegas police car rolls up to them. Siren blaring, lights flashing, the whole nine yards. Two guys who looked like pigs personified what with their round donut and beer bellies, and naturally reddish-pink skin, get out of the car. Intensely pointing at the trio.
"Nick Walker? Ari Batchhelder? James Griffiths?"
"Y-Yes?!" Ari responds, meekly."
"You're coming with us."
The trio get sent to the interrogation room at Officer Sandusky and Officer Hartwell's (the pig-looking ass motherfuckers) command, which was entirely bare aside from a cold hard metal table, and some uncomfortable chairs. Nick's figure is rigid and tense but he doesn't allow an ounce of his fear to show on his face, Iggy is anxiously smirking, and Ari is visibly petrified.
"Where were you last night at 3 am?" Officer Sandusky asks with the kind of no nonsense voice parents use whenever their kid does something stupid.
"No idea." Iggy answers, but because he was still smiling, the officers didn't really believe him.
"Okay, how about at 2 am?" Officer Hartwell tags into the 'conversation', as if that was going to change their answers.
"Ditto." Officer Hartwell slams his fist on the table, not even waiting a few minutes before already jumping to intimidation tactics.
"You think this is cute, son?! You think this is a game?!"
"Whatever we did, we're so sorry!" Ari's usually low, gravely voice turned into a girlish squeal. "Honestly, man, I will confess to anything you want!"
Iggy and Nick exchange annoyed looks.
"Listen, we've already told you that we have no memory of last night. Now either charge us with a crime, or let us go." Sandusky scowls at Nick when he says this and nods at Hartwell who goes over to an antiquated television substitute teachers used to roll out whenever they didn't want to actually teach a class and turns it on. Officer Sandusky pulls out a photograph of a sketchy, middle aged Asian man with slicked back hair, a long well put together goatee, and a black button up on.
"What do you know about Robert Chu?" Iggy flinches ever so slightly, obviously recognizing the man in the picture, but Nick and Ari just stare at it. Confused.
"Nothing?"
"Who is he?"
"Robert Chu runs the infamous Shiang-Xi crime organization, and is wanted in seven states for money laundering, drug smuggling, racketeering and murder." Both Nick and Ari's jaw's drop.
"Oh my god- "
"Did we kill someone last night???"
"We have no idea who this man is." Iggy feigns ignorance as convincingly as he can.
"Is that right?"
"Yep." Iggy pops the 'p' at the end. "That's right."
Officer Hartwell turns the television to some grainy surveillance footage (presumably from the night before) where Robert Chu is sitting inside an upscale restaurant, in front of a red velvet cake with what appeared to have a word much longer than the word 'Birthday' written underneath the 'Happy' part and a few roses piped on the sides as a table full of younger, more chiseled guys serenade him with an off-key, very drunk rendition of the 'Happy Birthday' song. Afterwards, they wait for him to make a wish before they lean forward to help him blow out his candles. These guys reveal themselves to be Iggy, Nick, Ari, and some random Mexican guy. All balls to the wall drunk.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR ROBBY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOO YOOOOU!" Everyone applauds as Iggy drunkenly hugs Robert Chu.
"I love you, Robert Chu!" The Iggy in the video kisses him on the forehead, and Officer Hartwell freezes frames it. In the interrogation room, the trio all sit fearfully in silence.
"We're in a lot of trouble, aren't we." Ari breaks the silence, phrasing the question a lot less like an actual question and more as a statement narrating the inevitable.
"Officers, I swear, we have no memory of that ever occurring–" Nick starts, but Officer Sandusky was having none of it.
"Okay. Maybe a night in jail will jostle something loose."
"Oh no, sir, please don't!"
"We have a very important wedding–!"
"I know Robert Chu." Iggy confesses, semi-redundantly. I mean, they did just watch him kiss him and proclaim his love for him on film, after all. "Robby and I tried to raise capital for a 24 hour fire themed titty bar that used actual fire, but it never got cleared by the LA Fire Department. It was an entirely legitimate enterprise -- I had no idea he was a criminal. We must've bumped into him last night, and he must've invited us to join his birthday celebration. No crime in that, is there, Officers?"
Sandusky gets in Iggy's face, veins popping out of his neck and forehead while his eyes goofily bulge out of their sockets. He looked as though he was trying to read Iggy's mind in order to see if he was lying or not.
"You really expect me to believe that bullshit?"
"Why yes, Officer Sandusky. I do." Iggy stares at him dead in the eyes, hands calmly folded in front of him.
"If I find out you're lying to me, son, I will take all of you down, is that clear?"
"You boys wouldn't last three hours in prison." Officer Hartwell says, turning off the TV.
"Nick might." Iggy smirks, and Nick rapidly shakes his head in case the Officers changed their mind last minute.
"Hey, and I wouldn't?!" Ari scowls and Iggy just kinda shrugs. "Unbelievable."
"Now are you gonna charge us with something, or are we free to go?"
"Hmmmmm." Officer Sandusky and Officer Hartwell exchange a look, smirking a little. "No, but we do have something we'd like for you to do for us. Do any of you have a heart condition by any chance?"
The guys are all lined up in front of a room of grade schoolers, not really sure what they were doing there. Officer Sandusky and Officer Hartwell join them in the front of the room, carrying in mysterious small black cases of some kind. They set it on a nearby table, and begin their presentation.
"Okay kids, today you are in for a real treat!" Officer Sandusky says, with a large shit-eating smile stretched cheek to cheek upon his very punchable visage. Pointing at the 'volunteers' as he speaks. "Today these gentlemen have kindly volunteered to demonstrate how a stun gun is used to subdue a suspect."
The guys all freeze. Wait. What?
"Now there's two ways to use a stun gun, but today we're mostly going to be shooting at a distance!" Hartwell continues on with what Sandusky was saying, as if reciting his lines from a script. "Any volunteers."
A bunch of the kids raise their hands and the trio collectively gulp, wondering who was going to be offered up first as tribute.
"Huh, alright. How about you young lady?" Officer Hartwell points at a small girl standing in the back. She smiles and skips forward. The guys inwardly let out a sigh of relief, no way this little girl could do any damage. Stun gun or not.
However, this sigh of relief would turn out to be premature.
"Come on up here, chicken legs." Officer Sandusky waves Iggy upwards. Iggy rolls his eyes but begrudgingly walks up to him. He knows that Sandusky doesn't like him very much (and for good reason too), but c'mon. That was totally uncalled for.
"It's real simple, really." Officer Hartwell hands her the weapon and bends down to her level, speaking softly. He ever so lightly guides her armed hand so that it was pointing right in the middle of his chest. "All you gotta do is point, aim, and shoot."
"Come at me with your best shot." Iggy smirks, standing with his arms and legs directly parallel to each other. Shoulders squared.
"Now on three…"
"One…"
"Two…"
"THREE!!!" She shrieks, somehow shooting much lower than where her hand was originally angled. Iggy shakily drops onto his knees, cupping his private areas while screaming. The room erupts into laughter. Even Nick and Ari can't help but chuckle.
"Right in the nuts!" Sandusky and Hartwell clap after giving the little girl a high five. "Good job."
"Hey, we got one more charge left. Anybody else want to come up here and do some shooting?" Sandusky says as a tubby little boy wordlessly walks up to the front. "Okay, same instructions. Just point aim and shoot. There you go, that's the stuff."
The kid stares out into space with a kind of dead, borderline predatory look that didn't belong on someone his age in the slightest.
"This time, let's do the…meathead. Come on up here." Hartwell signals at Ari to come closer towards the the stun gun which was now tightly enclosed in the tubby kid's equally as chubby right fist of steel. Ari once again gulps, as he passes over Iggy's still reeling form on the floor. He stiffens into a similar stance to the one he was in earlier and tries to mentally prepare himself.
"Like the intensity, kid. Just think eye of the tiger." Sandusky riles this kid up, much to Ari's disatifsction. "You're holding 50,000 bolts little man. Don't be afraid to ride the line."
"I don't think you really want to this…"
"Don't listen to this man, kid. Focus."
"Are you reallyyyyyyy sure about th-"
Just then the kid shoots without so much as a moment's notice. Flinging the stun gun's electric lining dead on Ari's forehead.
Ari starts going down but miraculously grabs on to a table nearby, determined to stand his ground. He shakily shifts back on to his feet and shuffles slightly forward. Looking like a man possessed, with his arms playfully outstretched in front of him as if he were a zombie. With his brain pretty much fried at the moment, he didn't realize the thoroughly creeped out looks on the children's faces or the extremely dissatisfied Sandusky coming after him with a stun gun of his own. Shocking him right in the neck. Everyone aside from the two cold hearted pigs of police officers in the room wince when he collapses on the floor.
"Yo…guys. You good?" Nick asks, somewhat redundantly. Hearing nothing but an animalistic grunt in response.
By the time the guys leave the police station, day has already turned into night and all the excitement from earlier has dwindled into a tired, grim feeling. Especially Ari, who had a mega headache. Iggy on the other hand, just felt a dull sting in his balls since his brain was already beginning to adapt to the sensation of having his swimmers float around in their 'electric sea.' They may never get their time to shine, but at least they could get down with the funkiness now.
"Did you have to be such a dick?!" Ari randomly asks Iggy, too tired to actually describe the specifics of why he was upset. Then again, who wouldn't be?
"We got out, didn't we?"
"Yeah, many hours later! If you'd just shut up and let them do the talk-"
"Oh hush. We were only in there for probably an hour max. Besides, if we cooperated with them, we'd be in Jail cell right now, Ari." Iggy rolls his eyes as they all stagger to the curb, Nick occupies himself with hailing them a cab in order to avoid lashing out at Iggy for wasting their goddamn time. Seriously, why were they even friends with this guy?
"What are we gonna do now? We've got zero leads on where Dylan is!" Ari reminds the gang how absolutely nowhere this search has gotten.
"Why the hell hasn't he called? It's 8:30." The guys all shake their heads, at this point, it'll be a miracle if they even get home at all. Let alone find someone who's been missing for almost 48 whole hours. Normal people would've filed a missing persons case by now, but this thought doesn't seem to dawn on our guys.
"Do you think he's okay-"
"Ari, don't, Dylan's fine."
"Oh brother…" Nick says, preparing for yet another fight between Iggy and Ari.
"I mean, we were hanging out with mobsters last night, man! They kill people for looking at em weird–!" Ari points his index and his middle finger at the side of his head and pretends to shoot himself, looking mad with paranoia.
"Ari. Dylan is fine."
"Or what if we like drove Dylan out to the desert and left him, just as like a funny prank--?!"
"Ari! Enough!!!" Iggy screams at the top of his lungs for the first time in this entire trip. Nick looks away, thoroughly annoyed.
"I knew I shouldn't have come…" He mutters under his breath, massaging his temples. Iggy and Ari hear this, now deflecting their attention onto him.
"What did you just say?" Iggy says, fuming. Nick sighs and clears his throat.
"I said that I knew I shouldn't have come this weekend, Iggy."
"Is that right?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is. I only came here because Max wanted me to get closer to Dylan and she wanted me to keep a close eye on everyone, but obviously that's not really working out. Now is it?" Nick says the most he's probably said in this one sentence than he has during this entire trip. Iggy steps up to him, heated.
"Why do you think you're so much better than us, dude?!"
"Oh, so you're an 'US' now? That's news to me." Nick steps closer to Iggy with his arms crossed. They're chest to chest with each other but Nick has to reel his head slightly backward since Iggy is a few inches taller than him. "And for the record, I don't -- I just am better than you, Iggy! Trust me, it's not that hard! You haven't changed one bit since high school! Jesus, you're 28 years old and you still talk back to cops?! Really?!"
"You're way out of your depth, Nick-"
"And you're still the one getting us in trouble! Only then it was hiding your weed in our locker, and now you've got us partying with wanted felons! It's not cute anymore, man! We're too old for this!" Ari watches, now deeply invested in Nick and Iggy's past unresolved beef.
"..."
"When's the last time you actually had a real job, man? The last time you actually paid for yourself instead of bumming money off of other people? When's the last time you haven't had to rely on bullying someone to boost your fragile ego? When's the last time you actually loved your girlfriend???" Nick continues, each remark cutting deeper and deeper.
"What's so great about any of those things?!"
"Those "things," Iggy, are what grown men do!" Nick turns and walks away towards the still empty road. Wondering where all the goddamn taxis could've possibly gone-
Just then, Iggy charges at Nick from behind and tackles him into the rocky dirt. They cartoonishly roll on the ground, attempting to land a solid punch on the other's body, but it just ends up looking like a cat fight. What with all the scratches, bite marks, and hair pulling. Instead of pulling either of them apart from each other, Ari just gets out his phone and records the fight like the little shit he is.
"You punch *cough* like *cough* a girl." Iggy taunts right as Nick throws a well aimed punch right into his misogynistic pie hole.
"At least I'm *cough* able to *wheeze* land some."
Ari spectates over the fight, constantly switching teams depending on who ends up on top. This, however, is short lived once a poorly aimed kick lands on one of his legs. He joins the other two on the ground, and takes a significant lead over the both of them with his much greater physical prowess.
A car horn sounds, before stopping at the curb near the fight. The guys all look up at the sudden new source of light and noise.
"This might not be like, the smartest place to fight?" Wolfy says inside of Nick's severely beat up Caddy, glancing at the humongous, flickering Las Vegas Police Department sign right next to them.
"Shit. Yeah you're right." They all get off the ground and return back to 'grown men' mode. Ari checks his phone to see if he still has the fight logged but it appears to be deleted.
"Ah man, it was really funny too…"