“I told you to drop that inquiry, Detective!”

“But Lieutenant, There’s definitely something going on there.”

Lieutenant Walker sighed. Claire was an excellent Detective, but she was sometimes too keen to dig into things, especially when she thought women were being exploited. “What have you got now?”

“I parked my car near the club shortly before closing. I left the dash-cam running overnight. Nobody left. None of the doormen, none of the women. Nobody. They all stayed inside all night. There’s definitely something going on there, sir.”

“You know they have rooms in the building, don’t you? When they bought the place they added the third floor. The plans they filed have it clearly marked as overnight accommodation.”

“Yes sir, but the women in there are never seen outside. I’m not sure they’re even allowed to go out shopping. I tried tracing the owners, Nushela Hospitality Inc. They exist, but the trail doesn’t go anywhere, it hits one of those Caribbean islands that won’t let you trace further without a warrant. It all looks too suspicious sir. They’re obviously hiding something.”

Troy knew Claire was right, Mata Hari’s was indeed hiding something, though it wasn’t what she thought it was. Unfortunately he couldn’t tell her himself, so he’d have to put her off for the moment. Maybe the club would tell her?

“OK Claire. Leave it with me. See me at quarter past five this afternoon and we can talk about it some more.”

“Yes sir.” Claire wasn’t happy with the delay, but she did have other work to do. Mata Hari’s would have to wait.

As soon as she’d left, Lieutenant Walker picked up his phone. “Hello Leanne, this is Troy Walker from the Police Department. I need to speak to Natalie.” He listened to the reply. “No, not that Natalie, attractive though she no doubt is. I need the other Natalie, your boss.”

Claire arrived at 17:15 precisely, as he’d expected. “We’re going for a walk,” he told her.

“Where to, sir?”

“To Mata Hari’s of course. I need to show you something there.”

There was a big Army base at the edge of town. With the Swarm in Africa, and spreading, the Army was making preparations, training a lot of volunteers, Reservists and National Guard. That was a bunch of men, who needed supplying with wine, women and song; though beer and women would suffice for most of them. The town had a lot of bars and clubs devoted to fulfilling those needs; there was money to be made, even in the middle of a war.

Mata Hari’s Exclusive Gentlemen’s Club, to give it its full name, was one of the less rowdy places. It concentrated more on supplying women, with sidelines of expensive beer and very expensive Champagne. If you wanted to get drunk you went somewhere else. If you wanted to get laid...

The receptionist recognized Troy, or more likely she’d had advance notice. “Hello Lieutenant. Natalie will be with you in a few minutes. Mateo can take you both through.” She beckoned one of the big doormen over. Something about him was tickling the back of Claire’s brain, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. He led them through a discreet door to a row of offices and showed them into the second one on the left.

Mateo told them, “Natalie will be with you shortly.” He handed Claire a tablet, “While you’re waiting you can have a look at this short presentation about the club.”

“Coffees?” he asked Troy.

Whoop-de-doop! Josh was happy. A day’s leave. One whole day. He’d made 6.1 on his last CAP test and at twenty-three he knew he wouldn’t make sponsor anytime soon, so he’d enlisted. With the aliens already on Earth, it felt the right thing to do. After six straight weeks training, even a single day off was welcome. Not enough to go anywhere interesting, so it would have to be a visit to town to get laid, or drunk, or both. Only one day, so the drinking would have to be limited. Getting up at zero dark thirty tomorrow would be bad enough, but with an accompanying hangover ... So, easy on the beer, he decided.

He boarded the shuttle bus from the camp gates into town. “Hi, I’m Josh,” he introduced himself to the guy next to him.

“Marty,” the other guy replied.

“Do you know anywhere to go in town? This is my first leave here.”

“Yeah, I’ve been into town before. I’m Army Reserve, which means they call me back regularly to retrain, so I know some places. What do you fancy?”

“Well, I haven’t gotten laid in...”

“Say no more,” Marty interrupted. “I know just the place.”

The bus dropped them in a street full of clubs and bars. This part of town was set up for entertaining soldiers and separating them from their money. Marty led the two of them towards one of the clubs, Mata Hari’s.

“Twenty thousand dollars membership!” Josh exclaimed.

“Look more closely. That’s a lifetime membership. It’s bullshit to make you think this is an exclusive club. We’ll pay $5 for a day’s membership, and we get a $5 drink token in return.”

“Why? There’s no money for them in that.”

“Legal stuff. It makes them a private members-only club. They can do things that an ordinary business can’t,” Marty explained. “And you haven’t seen their prices.”

Marty was right. Josh paid his $5 membership. The pretty receptionist scanned his CAP card for ID, gave him a $5 poker chip to use at the bar and a nice smile. The security guy didn’t smile. He was bigger than most, but bouncers were never small.

Inside was retro-thirties chrome and black with poles and dancers. The dancers were topless and the waitresses weren’t far behind. Josh wondered how the hell they got their tops to stay up.

The beers were expensive, as Marty had said, their $5 chips didn’t go very far. This wasn’t a place to get seriously drunk, unless you had money to waste.

“No lap dancers?” Josh commented.

“No, it’s not that sort of club.”

“But I want to get laid.”

“See those doors there,” Marty pointed. “Go through when you’re ready.”

“That’s where the lap dancers are?”

“No. That’s where the brothel is.”

“What! A brothel! This isn’t Nevada.” That surprised Josh. A lot of things had changed since the President’s announcement all those years ago, but still ... a brothel. Here?

“This is a private club. Apparently that makes it legal.”

“That’s a new one on me.”

“On me too,” Marty commented. “I’m no lawyer, but apparently it’s true.”

Marty let Josh go first. Through the double-doors the décor changed from thirties chrome to an appropriate red velvet brothel-Victorian. Behind the counter was a woman, late fifties Josh estimated, with dyed blonde hair and an enormous chest on display above a very low-cut green dress. Her cleavage probably reached all the way down to China.

“Hello soldier, I’m Leanne. What’s your pleasure today?”

“A girl please, Leanne.”

“Of course, sir. Take a seat over there...” She pointed to a well-stuffed red settee next to a coffee table with four tablets on it, “ ... and pick a girl from our video selection. When you’ve chosen one – or two – come and talk to me again.”

“Just the one today. Two would be ... too many.” Josh decided that ‘too expensive’ wouldn’t go down well.

That morning, Leanne had greeted the latest batch of new arrivals. “Okay girls. I’m Leanne, and I’m the Madame here. I have the biggest tits so I’m the boss. I know they’re the biggest because I don’t let anyone bigger than me come here.”

That got the usual laugh from the bunch of new women.

“First, how many of you have worked in the sex trade before?” Some hands went up. “I want you girls to help the others. We’re legal here, so they won’t need to learn some of your tricks, but you can help them with the other stuff. Next, how many of you can pole dance?” Fewer hands went up. “Hmmm ... not enough. We’ll need to train some of you. I’ll let you know who you are when I’ve had a chance to look at your backgrounds.”

One of the younger women put her hand up, “I did a lot of gymnastics in high school.”

“You’re Carmen, right?”

“Yes Leanne.”

“Good. That’s one less for me to pick. Talk to one of the pole dancers to help you get started, Carmen.”

Leanne paused before continuing. “All of you have volunteered to be here. We’ll provide training to help you, even for those of you who’ve done this before. You won’t be fucking the Johns like you were before. You’ll be fucking the Johns better than you were before. This place has a good reputation, and it’s my job to keep it that way. Which means I’m going to be very unhappy if you don’t come up to the mark.”

Her audience nodded.

“Others of you are new to this game. That’s okay, you don’t have any bad habits to unlearn. But you’re going to have to learn to fake it better than you probably did with your husbands and boyfriends.” They laughed dutifully. Leanne’s jokes were old, but these women were intelligent enough to know when laughing was obligatory.

“You’ll also need to think hard about what you can and can’t say to the Johns. A lot of the men will want a conversation, a short one, as well as a fuck. Telling him, ‘I was doing six years but they let me out early to work here,’ won’t fly. You’ll all have to work on a story. Try to keep it as close to the truth as you can, that makes it easier to remember.

“Now some bad news. Despite what you might have thought, you’ll all be here for at least two weeks. There’s more to it than fuck one John and off you go. All of you will need training and medical checks. We can’t get all that done in one day, and we need to get enough work out of you to repay our investment. So, two weeks minimum. Some of you are here for longer, months longer, which we already told you.”

That didn’t go down so well. One of the big security men came in at that point and stood quietly to one side.

“Okay. Next is medical checks. I’ll read out some names, those people follow Ivan.” Leanne read the names from her phone, then waited while everyone sorted themselves out and Ivan led his group off.

“Don’t we get medical checks?” one of the remaining woman asked.

“Yes you will, but we can’t do everyone at once, so you’ll have to wait your turn. Besides I want to talk to you lot alone.” She paused and looked around. “Those who left were the good girls, the two-week girls. Most of them are doing this for the first time.

“You’re the bad girls: the addicts, the ex-prisoners, the whores, here for three months or more. I’m a bad girl too. I was doing time for running a brothel. The chance to run a legal brothel, without having to move to Hicksville Nevada, was too good to turn down so I took it. I can act good if I have to, but don’t let that fool you. I’ve been inside too, probably longer than you have if you add it up, so I can be nasty as well. You’ve all got a chance here, so don’t mess it up. You behave yourselves and you’ll do fine. You fuck up and I’ll slap you round the head, hard, and then give you to Ivan and a couple of his buddies to make you airtight for an hour or two.

“You need to be nice to the other volunteers, to help them. You’ve done this before, they mostly haven’t. You can shout at them if you really have to, but if you attack them then I’ll hand you over to Ivan and the boys for their evening’s entertainment. As far as we’re concerned the two-week girls are more important than you; a whole lot more important. With our backing, they’ll win any argument, so don’t get stupid and start one.”

Her audience looked back sullenly. Leanne wasn’t sure how many of them really understood. They would as soon as one of them stepped out of line. She didn’t make idle threats.

“I told the others two weeks. You girls already know you can forget that. Most of you will be working on your backs here for at least three months. Two of you, only two, might get lucky and be out of here in two weeks.”

“Which two?” someone asked.

“I’ll tell you in three weeks.”

“I’ve picked Natalie,” Josh told Leanne.

“Going black?”

“Yeah. She looks nice and I like her French accent.”

“She is, nice that is, and French. Credit card or cash, sir?”

The financial necessities completed, Leanne told him, “Up the stairs, turn right. Room ten will be on your left, sir,” and pointed Josh to a curtained door. As he approached, the curtain drew back automatically and he heard a click as the lock opened.

Room ten was small with a big bed and a smiling Natalie, looking exactly like her video: wearing a see-through white negligee and a white thong. A good contrast with her dark skin and darker areolae. She had short Afro hair, not straightened like a lot of African-American women.

“You really are French?” Josh asked. “I love your accent.”

“Yes. My parents moved from Cameroon to France and I was born there. I’m in America to learn English.”

“Your English is very good, much better than my French Mademoiselle.”

Natalie smiled at that and then got down to business, “Do you like my body as well as my accent, M’sieu?” She did a slow 360 so he could get the full effect. Nice breasts, firm if a little small, above a flat stomach. Her ass was as firm as her breasts and definitely not too small. Just right.

“Now let me see you,” she asked.

As Josh stripped off his uniform he warned her, “Don’t tell me my cock is big. I know it’s average.”

Once he was naked she commented, “A blond. And nice muscles, all you Army guys are so fit.” Followed by, “Oooh, that’s a really average cock. You can stick it in my hot pussy and give me ... an average fuck,” accompanied by a wide smile. Josh had to laugh, he’d really walked into that one.

She took off her negligee and thong. “You don’t look like you need it, but do you want me to suck you first?”

Josh was already hard, as Natalie had observed, but he wanted more than a simple fuck after so long without. “A short suck, then fuck.”

“Sure. Missionary? Cowgirl? Doggy?”

“Cowgirl please Natalie.”

“Good. I like cowgirl.” Naked, she walked over to a bowl of condoms in colored wrappers and picked out a green one.

Josh lay on the bed, his cock pointing to his belly-button. Natalie’s video had offered bareback as an optional extra. She looked like she could be worth the extra money, but having her without the rubber would have cost too much. Maybe next time?

She settled between his legs, unwrapped the condom and put it between her lips. Lowering her head she took him in, unrolling the rubber as she descended.

“Shit yeah!” Josh exclaimed. She was good. He’d have to be careful not to cum too soon. He wanted to finish in her pussy, not her mouth.