The Detective's Angel

Chapter 1 Strip clubs weren’t a new thing to Brian, he’d seen inside them a dozen times already, and they were really no big deal. Before he became a cop, he’d often wondered why movies or TV shows always had the detectives going into strip clubs for no apparent reason, other than to show half naked women onscreen. When Brian grew into an adult, and made detective before he was thirty, he realized a couple things. One, that he was actually pretty gay, so strip clubs with half naked women didn’t distract him like they did the other cops. Two, the fact that detectives had to go into strip clubs to get information happened more often than Brian cared to admit. He did try to work around it but if he called persons of interest over the phone, often none of them wanted to speak to cops in the first place, and it was easy to hang up on one. Less easy to avoid cops face to face. So, there he was, visiting another strip club. Second one this month. Brian drove the squad car with Raymond, his partner, in shotgun. Raymond was pretty straight, so the prospect of going into a strip club on a Tuesday afternoon put a certain spring in his step. Brian, he just wanted to get the information they needed, and go. This case was dragging on and on, because their main suspect, an older man named Joseph Anderson, was a slippery customer. But they’d heard from a reliable source that Anderson often frequented a club called The Velvet Lounge, and spent a lot of time with one stripper in particular. If they were lucky, they could get Intel on Anderson and catch him before he slipped away again. Brian found the backstreet they needed and drove slower, so Raymond could check building numbers as they drove past. “Got it,” Raymond said. “I see a sign above that doorway.” “Great.” Brian started looking for a place to park. “Let’s hope this leads somewhere.” “Where it needs to lead to after this,” Raymond said with a chuckle, “is some lunch. I’m starving.” “Alright,” Brian agreed. He parked the car on the street a block over, and they got out together. “Let’s hope she knows something.”