Corrupting Power
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Brewster's Brood - Part 29
🕑 Added 2023-05-19 00:10:44 +0000 UTCPart Twenty-Nine
Max Brewster – 3/10/2017 – Saturday – 2:37 pm
“Okay,” Max thought to himself. “This is starting to get ridiculous.” He’d just basically hooked up with yet another woman completely outside of his league, and if he hadn’t been suspicious before, now he was starting to really wonder what the hell was going on, because everything was feeling a little too organized for it to just be a random sex club with a new member.
Pacifica was a long way from his normal haunt, but he’d come out to the small little sleepy oceanside town enough times that he knew the general lay of the land. There were a few places he could stop by, and it would look innocuous enough, so he began to hatch a start of a plan.
Max headed out of the bathroom and back towards his motorcycle, seeing there were a handful of people trying to be subtle, but still he could feel them whispering and pointing in his direction, his bathroom tryst obviously not as unnoticed as he might have hoped.
He wasn’t going far, at least not for this first leg, so he didn’t really need to put his helmet on, but he didn’t want to give away any information in advance at this point, so he pulled it on anyway, strapping it down, then climbed on top of his bike and brought the engine to life. Navigating out of the parking lot was a little bit of a maze, but within a few seconds, he’d gotten his bike back to the intersection, setting the turn signal on his bike to flash for a left turn.
It was a bluff, because as soon as the light changed to green, he drove straight through the intersection and onto Linda Mar Boulevard. If he was really being paranoid, it wouldn’t matter, but if he wasn’t, well, it might have bought him a few seconds as whoever was tailing him had to readjust.
Max zipped off like a bolt, doing close to 60 on a road that was zoned for 35 tops, but he wasn’t going so far as to draw any real attention. It needed to look like he’d just had a sudden change of heart, so he pulled the bike into a parking lot for a little bodega called Sun Valley Dairy, which had tons of drinks and snacks, the perfect excuse for him to stop in.
He quickly grabbed a bottle of Orange Vanilla Coke and a Twix bar, and a container of oil, as if he wanted to use that as a reason why he was here. But once he got up to the counter, he looked at the guy behind the counter with a soft smile. “Hey man, any chance I can borrow your phone and make a quick call?”
The guy behind the counter looked like a complete stoner burnout, long stringy black hair hanging loose around his face and partially draped over his eyes. He had what had to be somewhere between a five o’clock shadow and an attempt at a beard, not nearly enough into either category to be fully appropriate. His eyes had such giant sunken bags beneath them that Max wasn’t entirely sure how awake the man was. “Uh, why?”
“My cell phone’s dead,” Max lied. “It’ll just be a quick call, I promise.”
The man frowned for what felt like an eternity, but eventually he caved, picked the phone up off the cradle and handed it to him. “Keep it short.”
“You got it, man. Promise.” Max had to stop and think for a second, recalling a number from the back of his mind, something he hadn’t needed for the longest time, but the number had been burned in there from the importance the man had stressed on it. The man had even given him a ten-letter word to remember instead of the number, and Max was thankful the old phone still had the letters on its ancient push buttons.
The old land line rang, four times before a voicemail clicked on, and spoke to him, heavily distorted. “If you have this number, you know protocol. Leave the message.”
“Shit, uh, oh right! Operator Code: Meals On Wheels Omega. It’s been a while since we talked, I know, but you said if I was ever in a bind, I could give you a call and you’d lend a hand. I don’t know even what I’m into right now, but something weird’s going on, and I think I’m being followed. Anyway, I’m sure you know all about how to get ahold of me, so if you could just look into it, see what’s what, let me know, I’d feel a lot better. Thanks man.” Max put the phone back on the cradle then looked at the somewhat confused expression on the clerk’s face, completely uncertain whether the man’s demeanor had changed, or if Max was looking at the same blank, baked out look that it had had on it before. Now he just wanted to pay and get out of there, so he put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change.”
He scooped up his three things and headed out to the parking lot and set out to put some of the newly purchased oil in his motorcycle. It wasn’t something he needed to do immediately, but it sold the whole side tip of why he’d stopped before getting back on the road, and it gave him time to eat his Twix and drink his soda. A little bit later, he was ready to get back on the road again, but during the time he’d been taking his break, he’d also been watching his environment, trying to see if anyone was watching him. It wasn’t something he was especially great at, but he started to realize that if someone was keeping tabs on him, there were a number of spots within visual range where they could’ve been sitting, out of sight but still with a perfect eyeline to where he was working. He took way longer than he needed to, checking the amount of oil he’d added, passing it off with the excuse that he was finishing his soda and candy bar, throwing the wrapper in the trash and the empty soda bottle into the recycling bin next to it.
He couldn’t delay leaving any further, so he pulled his helmet back on, climbed back on the bike and pulled out back onto Linda Mar Boulevard, heading back down to turn right on good old Highway 1, heading north back towards San Francisco again. He wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought he’d caught a glimpse of another motorcycle somewhere back behind him.
The drive into San Francisco was frantic, as traffic had seemingly multiplied, and Max was a little grateful he’d decided to take the whole day off, because trying to get in and out of the city with the truck would’ve been an utter pain in the ass. The Bay Bridge looked like it was bumper to bumper lock stopped, and while he could probably weave through it on his motorcycle, he decided to detour into the city and stop by Amoeba Music on Haight Street.
Amoeba had something definitively authentic about it, like it was as much a part of the city’s DNA as the Golden Gate Bridge, row after row of CDs, DVDs, Laser Disks, VHS tapes, and, of course, loads and loads and loads of vinyl. (They also had a section of 8-tracks, but Max hadn’t even seen an 8-track player, much less own one.)
It was the kind of place that Max could pass off as another casual stop he wanted to make but just hadn’t had time with his busy schedule. He did love spending time combing through the vinyl, trying to see if there were things he’d missed or stuff that had just shown up. He’d been picking up a lot of 70s prog rock as of late and was delighted to find that someone had come in and dumped a whole slew of it recently. Vinyl of Alan Parsons Project, King Crimson, Rush, even a couple of Pink Floyd albums (although none of them first printings). Just to confuse whoever was watching him, he also picked up a copy of Television’s “Marquee Moon,” and a couple of Talking Heads albums that he didn’t own on vinyl. He was so happy to find “Remain In Light” on vinyl that he almost forgot about how weird his week had been. Almost.
The entire time he was rifling through the stacks, though, he was also keeping lookout for whoever was in the store, trying to see if he could spot any familiar faces. It wasn’t exactly the easiest of things he could’ve thought of, but he felt like he needed to at least indulge his paranoia a bit, see if maybe there really was someone following him around. He wasn’t enough of a regular to be able to spot people who were out of place, but the area allowed him to watch the door of people coming and going pretty easily, and he didn’t see anyone come into the building and straight away look around like they were trying to find him. He was starting to think maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.
When he headed back to the bike, he was starting to think he was just jousting at windmills, and that maybe he’d imagined everything. He loaded the vinyl into the saddlebag compartment on the back of his bike, grabbed his helmet out, pulled it on and then climbed back onto his bike. He was just about to start the engine back up when he was almost certain he saw a familiar figure just at the very edge of his vision – was that Danny on his bike, Max wondered? Why would Danny be following him around? He couldn’t imagine what the guy would gain out of tailing him.
As his bike started to zip across the Bay Bridge back over towards Oakland, he started to wonder if he was on some sort of long-form practical joke show. There’d been that one show, The Joe Schmo Show? Where everyone on the show was an actor except the one lone guy who was basically guaranteed to win everything? His life was starting to feel a little like that, except for sex, but that didn’t feel like it was a show anyone could air anywhere, he thought to himself.
I mean, how would you even advertise such a show, he wondered?
Still, there might be a way to see if the whole thing was a false front – he could just swing by Ironwood Estates unannounced, completely off plan, and see if he was turned away or encouraged not to do anything, or if the place was just totally dead. The key would be to go somewhere near Ironwood Estates, make it look like he was turning around, and then head straight there without any pause. He knew exactly the place. He headed towards campus and then headed up towards the stadium before putting his bike into a nice little parking spot, over by the Rugby field.
There was a climbing course just off to the side, and he spent an hour or so practicing climbing, a couple of other people there teaming up with him so they could all trade spotter duties with one another. He’d used to do this sort of thing once a week, but the last couple of years, he’d been so busy with the food truck that he’d always found himself too tired to get out here regularly.
When he first arrived, he’d said he was going to be there for the rest of the day, trying to make it look like he wasn’t going to be leaving, but after just an hour, he pretended that he was a bit more exhausted than he’d expected to be, and that he was going to pack it in. Of course, that wasn’t what he was doing at all.
As soon as he got back on his bike again, he was heading down Canyon Road before he made the turn up into the hills, and within just a couple of minutes, he was back outside of the Ironwood Estates gate, and the whole place sounded like there was a giant party going on. Max pressed the button on the buzzer and a familiar voice talked to him through the intercom. “Oh hey Max!” Esme said. “C’mon in. Lemme buzz you through.”
The gate opened and soon as Max could drive in, he noticed that basically the entire driveway and lawn was packed with parked cars. He wondered how hard it had been to get them lined into their particular spots, and it occurred to him that there was no way they could’ve gotten all this set up in just a few minutes. Clearly whatever party was going on at Ironwood Estates was going on when he wasn’t there, and so now that he was here, he needed to see how much he could push just a little bit and get away with it.
He was trying to figure out where to put his bike when Esme came scurrying out of the front door the place, gesturing for him to bring the motorcycle right up onto the lawn, pointing a spot against the side of the house where there would be room to leave the tiny vehicle. As he moved his motorcycle into place, he noticed there was already a motorcycle in place – Danny’s.
Well, Max thought to himself, if he was here now, there wasn’t any chance he could’ve been following me.
“Sounds like the place is popping off,” Max said to her as he hooked his helmet into its case in the other saddlebag container. “I know you said weekends were crazier, but I thought I’d come and see for myself.”
“I’m sure whatever you’re craving today, Mister Brewster, we probably have it on the menu in spades. Have fun!”
He headed into the backyard and found that Esme hadn’t been underselling. There were half a dozen naked women in the pool, playing some aquatic version of tag, one insanely well-built man in the pool with them, covered from the neck down in tattoos. Lining the pool, there were at least five women on each side of the pool, laid out on deck chairs, tanning naked, an endless amount of flesh for his eyes to feast on, almost all of which was on offer for him.
“Oh, hey Max!” Danny said, calling him over to join him at a deck table beneath a giant umbrella. His girlfriend, the insanely tall Liane, was sitting next to him, and while she wasn’t fully nude, she’d decided to eschew a top, and despite the fact that he knew she wouldn’t mind him looking, he did his best to keep his eyes above the neckline. “I didn’t think you were going to be here today. Good thing you did! It’s actually pretty busy, but it’s still way more women than dudes. I think you’re only guy three or four here today.”
“I swear, I still do not understand how this place gets so few men,” Max said as he looked around, shaking his head. “Like, I can get my head around why all the women are here, because there are so many good-looking other women, so if they’re into that, and it seems like nearly every woman here is bisexual, but there aren’t enough men to keep them satisfied.”
“That’s why they’re recruiting so hard, man,” Danny told him. “That’s why they sort of rushed your application through the process so quickly, because they need guys here. I’m tellin’ you, it’s the perfect time to be a guy at this particular branch of Ironwood.”
“So if I go to other branches, it’s not like this?”
“Look,” Danny said, glancing back and forth before leaning so he could whisper. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but they ousted like twenty men from this place just a few months ago, because it turned out they’d been trying to sneak cameras in here to film and shit, and that’s, like, a major no-no. I don’t feel too bad about mentioning it, because I’m the one who helped catch them, and I helped them redo all of the security for the building, so that the only cameras around the place are the ones that Ironwood has access to, and all of those are wiped clean daily. They don’t even have the ability to save recordings without hooking up a special device to them, and that thing’s in a lockbox within the safe that requires different keys, one from the owner and one from the manager. Now all the girls feel safe again, but they feel like there aren’t enough men coming in for them to play with, so they’re all going a little cock crazy, and you’re new meat.”
Max scowled a little bit. “Filming? Jeeeesus, what kind of sick fucker gets off on taping women without their permission?”
Danny nodded. “Ironwood doesn’t judge about whatever kinks you have, as long as everybody’s consenting. But filming without someone’s knowledge? That shit’s very very uncool, and I’m glad they didn’t stand for it.”
“What the hell happened to those guys?”
“The club’s got an arrangement with the local police, so there were a bunch of arrests, but it was all kept very quiet.”
“Considering the kind of people who are here, I’m surprised it stayed quiet.”
Danny smirked a little bit. “Yeah, well, that’s sort of the double-edged sword to what they were doing. In addition to having all these women on tape, they were also on tape, and if anyone had made a big deal about the trial, all of that would’ve been entered into public evidence. Suddenly these people had a lot more shame about what they’d done. I mean, most of the guys avoided jail time, and those that did get sent to the pen went to soft, white collar crime places, but all of them paid out huge amounts of cash, enough for all the new security, enough for the club to waive membership fees for a bunch of the women here so they’d feel safe again.”
“I’m kinda shocked anyone would want to come back here after that.”
“See, see, see that’s just it, man. That’s why they were trying so hard to keep the club afloat, to get everything back to normal, and why it’s so many more women than it is to men,” Danny said. “They wanted to make sure we were not just good guys, but great guys. And once they got great guys, they wanted to make sure they would do anything they possibly could to keep us around, to keep the ladies happy. And I know it’s weird how much they all seem super eager, but you’re the first new dude we’ve had here in quite a while, and the girls… they’re… well, they’re hungry, man.”
“You have no idea how hard it is keeping some of these bitches off my man, Max,” Liane giggled. “I don’t mind him doing a little touching here and there, but I don’t want them thinking they can have too much of him. Although, to be fair, I’m starting to rethink maybe letting one or two of them have a swing, just to get the rest to back off.”
“Oh, baby,” Danny said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t do it entirely without getting something back,” she giggled. “Maybe I’d take a swing at Max here in exchange for it.”
“I can’t let you do that, baby,” Danny said.
“Well, we need to get some of these bitches to have their eyes off of my man, Max,” Liane said. “So maybe we should get them all onto you instead.”
“Aw, Max needs a break, baby.”
“He’s here, isn’t he? That means he’s up and ready for another go at the girls.”
“What do you say, Max?” Danny asked him. “You want us to help you get some sort of crazy experience lined up?”
Max rubbed his chin for a moment, considering the whole thing for a long moment, before he finally spoke again. “I’ll tell you exactly the kind of thing I want to do, Liane. I want you to gather up all the girls who’ve been making eyes at your man and tell them that if they agree to keep their hands off Danny, I’ll give’em whatever kind of ride they want. Soft and slow, hard and fast, even if it’s just a foot massage and a back rub. I will aim to please.”
“There’s too many for that, Max,” Liane said with another giggle. “But how about I round up the top three troublemakers and get them into a bed with you?”
“Only three?” Max chuckled. “I mean, you sure that’s going to do enough to keep Danny safe from wayward hands?”
“It’ll be a good enough start that I think I’ll be okay,” Liane said, waving a hand in his direction. “Why, you think you can handle more that?”
“Well, I think at some point, if I’m really going to go all in on this sort of thing, I should probably fall asleep entirely surrounded by naked women, and wake up the same way. I mean, if I’m going to go all in, I should go all in, right?”
Danny nodded. “Absolutely. But I’ll bet you if you wanted to, next weekend, you could probably have a night here where you were asleep in a room filled wall-to-wall with naked women. The word’s still getting around that we’ve got a new stud in here, so not all the regulars have come in to get a bit of the beefcake show yet. But by this time next week? You could totally make that happen.”
“Can I ask one more thing, though?”
“Hey,” Liane laughed, “you’re doing me a favor. I should be asking you if there’s anything I could do to sweeten the pot for you. I mean, you’ve already seen my tits, otherwise I’d offer to throw in a flash of them. But you name it, and if I can make it happen, I’ll do it.”
“You know if Jenny’s around?”
“She’s not, why?”
“Oh,” Max said, a little deflated. “Sorry, I just liked spending time with her, and it’s a little easier to keep screwing new girls if there was another girl I’d already sort of built a connection with there to help.”
“Any of the other girls you make something of a connection with? I know a bunch of them are hanging around, and most of them would probably leap at another chance to spend some time with you.”
“Yeah, there was that really fit girl—”
“That describes all of them, Max,” Liane giggled.
“The one with the slight limp. Kelly?”
Liane nodded. “Oh sure, Kelly’s around here, and I know she super likes spending time with you. She just didn’t want to be seen as being too clingy, but I’m sure she’d be incredibly excited to get a chance for another turn with you.”
Max shrugged, as if he was trying to learn to accept that this was just how his life was now. “Okay then, so the three biggest troublemakers for you and Danny, and Kelly to boot. And if there’s still more troublemakers, maybe I can take on one or two more after dinner.”
Liane reached over and grabbed Max’s hand with both of hers, holding it gingerly. “That would be super helpful, if you think you can handle a second batch tonight, because I just know some of those needy bitches who’ve been trying to put hands on my man will show their faces here once the evening picks up. There’ll be a DJ here around 7, and that’s the point when the dance floor comes out, and the shit starts popping right out in front of everyone.”
“Oh yeah?” Max said, waggling his eyebrows. “You and Danny gonna be banging between slow dances?”
“I’ll tell you what, Max,” Liane said, licking her lips. “You agree to take three more bitches off my hands tonight, and I’ll make sure you can watch Danny fucking my brains out right there in the center of the dancefloor before you do. I love being watched.”
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a deal then.”
“One more condition, though,” Liane replied with a grin. “When I’m getting off on the dance floor, you gotta be getting off on the dance floor right next to me.”
Max tilted his head, a wry grin matching hers. “You know what? Sure. Fuck it. Let’s do this shit.”
“Game on, brother!” Danny said.
Max hoped he wasn’t going to regret this. Something was definitely going on, but he still had no idea what it was. They’d seen him reticent, so it was time to go the other way, full force. How the hell were they going to handle him going from first gear straight to pedal to the floor? He suspected it was going to throw them for a bigger curveball than they’d expected.
Danny Garney – 3/10/2017 – Saturday – 5:18 pm
The advantage of having the place being a swingers club was that any time he needed privacy, Danny could just step into a room and lock the door, which was what he’d done to phone Mrs. Churchill. “So, barring our weird little detour this morning, I think we’ve got our boy on track for a bit. He seemed pretty eager to get back into it after he came back from his time on the beach and his time at the record store.”
“You think there was anything odd about his whole day today?”
“I’m a little surprised that Svetlana was able to get to him so fast,” Danny admitted. “We know how that happened?”
“Yeah, she had someone tailing you, and apparently you didn’t see them.”
“Is that who that was?” Danny laughed. “No no, I did see him, but I assumed it was about something else.”
“Something else?”
He couldn’t help but laugh pretty hard about it. “It’s a big fucking Russian goomba, boss! I assumed it was something professional from soldier days, but considering how fucking obvious the guy was, I figured if he was going to make a run at me, I’d see him a million miles in advance, and I probably wouldn’t even have to get serious in putting the guy down. He wasn’t exactly subtle. But I never thought any of the girls would have me followed. We’ve got a tracker on the guy, and his location is almost always exactly known to all the girls. So, I can’t understand the need to have someone following me.”
“I’m guessing she must’ve thought it was a backup play,” Mrs. Churchill said. “And it worked, didn’t it? She got some one-on-one time without any real distractions, and that means she got at least one attempt. Good on her, I guess? But you think the whole thing at the beach, that was just something he needed to get out of his system?”
“I think it might have just been a fuse breaking, y’know?” Danny sighed. “We’re asking a lot of this guy, and not being able to tell him is the hardest fucking thing about all of it, but that’s the terms that fucker Brand set for him, ‘to teach him a lesson,’ or whatever. Are you really going to pull the plug if he finds out what’s going on?”
Mrs. Churchill clicked her tongue as if debating what to tell Danny before she finally spoke again. “There’s sort of a loophole, but it isn’t anything we can directly take advantage of.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“If he figures it out, or if he gets some idea of what’s going on without anyone involved in the game telling him about it? We keep on keeping on. They’re probably going to be a little paranoid about it, but, like, if he figures out one of the girls is lying to him about who they are or where they’re from, we just keep on rolling like nothing’s different. We just can’t tell him what’s happening.”
“Huh. Yeah, well, I guess that’s fair enough,” Danny said. “We can’t be prepared for everything, and the idea of having to start this up again after a few months would only make it worse, so I guess they just want us to get him through it.”
“We’ve got a good start on it, and the adjudicators are pleased, so we just stay the course and see what happens.”
“Were you watching when he asked if Jenny was around?”
“It certainly seems like that girl’s left her mark,” Mrs. Churchill said. “Him going to Kelly next, however? Total shocker. Your girl really sold her part, though. She going to actually follow through with fucking on cameras tonight?”
“Liane knows that it’ll be visible to anyone watching the streams, but that it’ll go away immediately afterwards, and she likes it when people watch. She wasn’t lying about that. And I told you she’d be game for just about anything to try and get us over the goal line. She knows our payout’s performance based, too, and she’d love for us to score big so I can take her on holiday after the gag’s done. That’s why she was doing the push for him to have another go at three of the new girls later tonight, when Foxtrot Group starts showing up.”
“We’ve got half the players in the game already, Danny. So now we just need double that and then all the girls will be in. Who’s he in with right now, besides Kelly, who, by the by, was not at all who I expected to be his go-to back up for a connection?”
“Yael, Keisha and Evelyn, who was very thankful for the support, as she seems like she would’ve been too shy to do anything on her own without the help. And we’ll see who from tonight’s batch might need an extra hand, and won’t mind doing it in the middle of a bunch of other people. You think he and Kelly made something of a connection that the rest of us didn’t see?”
Mrs. Churchill sighed. “Danny, this man is harder to read than a backwards upside-down braille Bible with half of the pages missing. But, he did genuinely kiss her as soon as she came into the room. So maybe it’ll work? We’ll see if comes back around for her again. There’s quite the age gap.”
“Yeah, to me, she seemed like she was definitely a second choice because Jenny’s not around, so we’ll see how she treats him when she’s back around again.”
“Tonight, we’ll see how he’s holding up.”
Comments
SovietDegendays
Good chapter def like that our joy is feeling the sus. That being said rip cliffhanger
Ronan
I like that Max is clueing in and doing some sleuthing of his own.
