Daring Time

"Sure. Big Mario keeps everyone in line if Diamond Jack tells him to. He does more than just discipline the girls, though." Alfie leaned across the bar and spoke more intimately.

"He breaks in the new ones, if ya get my meanin'. Everyone knows how much Big Mario likes doing that. Ain't exactly gentle with 'em, but maybe that's best considering their new profession an' all." Alfie nodded knowingly toward the stairs Ryan could just make out in the distance through the doorway. "Word is, the girl Diamond Jack's got upstairs for him tonight is special. . . beautiful as a real princess."

Ryan took a sip of whiskey. "I guess that's what Diamond Jack meant when he said Mario was 'doing something for him.'"

Alfie looked confused by his statement. "No, Mario won't be breaking the new girl in until he wins her later tonight."

"Wins her?" Ryan asked slowly.

"Sure. Diamond Jack awards the winner of the match not only prize money but a virgin.

Shapiro didn't tell you that before they sent ya over?"

Ryan kept his face impassive to hide his repulsion.

"No. Must've slipped Shapiro's mind. I'm the man who's taking on Big Mario tonight,"

Ryan said, covertly measuring Alfie's expression to see if he'd gotten that guess correct.

When Alfie just shrugged like what he'd said was obvious, Ryan continued. "So how come you don't think I have a chance of winning the prize money and the lady?"

Alfie's blue eyes popped open wide. He guffawed like Ryan had told him a hilarious joke.

"That's priceless," he muttered as he shook his head, laughing. The other bartender scowled at Alfie for leaving all the work to him. Alfie scurried away momentarily, setting several drinks on a tray. When he returned he took one look at Ryan and started laughing again as if his mirth had never been interrupted. He glanced at Ryan's face and stopped suddenly.

"Wait. . . ya weren't serious, were ya? Uh ... sorry to have to be the one to break it to ya, fella—you'll still get yer pay, fair and square—but nobody ... I mean nobody beats Big Mario in any fight, least of all one-on-one in the Sweet Lash's boxing ring." He pointed into the room and Ryan turned. Two men had been busy since he'd last looked and had roped off the center platform with sturdy, utilitarian rope versus the gold braid used on the sideshow areas. It hadn't struck Ryan when he'd originally noticed the center staging area that it was the approximate size of a boxing ring.

He stared incredulously. He was supposed to box some unbeatable foe named Big Mario for a virgin? This situation became more bizarre by the second. In the back of his mind it kept niggling at him, 'however, that if he walked out of there in search of Hope, he left the girl upstairs that Alfie had mentioned with a chance of being brutalized by Big Mario.

The detective O'Rourke had obviously been correct about one thing: Diamond Jack Fletcher was most definitely a white slaver just as the twenty-first-century version of him was.

Ryan realized that the room was now entirely filled. Several gaslights suddenly flamed to life along the rim of one of the smaller stages to the right of the boxing ring. The rowdy crowd began clapping and whooping uproariously when they saw Betsey and Mel strut onto the stage. Several of the men pulled women into their laps and began to caress and grope them familiarly while their eyes were trained on the stage. Betsey and Mel flashed their most seductive smiles, occasionally parting the robes they wore to the tops of their large, powdered breasts.

Suddenly Mel, who was the taller and older of the two women, went behind Betsey, reached around her and began lowering Betsey's robe. The men whooped when Betsey pretended to look scandalized and afraid, shaking her head and trying to clutch the robe around her shoulders, conveniently plumping her breasts in the process. Mel swatted her bottom, however, and Betsey, now chastised with head lowered, stood still while Mel removed the robe. She was naked beneath it with the exception of a too tight, black corset that failed to cover either her voluptuous belly and hips or the majority of her generous breasts. The crowd's cheers swelled as Mel possessively ran her hand over Betsey's breasts, belly and thighs. She turned the younger woman's back to the audience and massaged Betsey's curving buttocks to the men's obvious delight.

Mel now made a show of removing her own robe, glancing seductively over her shoulder and lowering it inch by inch. She also wore only a scanty corset, but her costume was supplemented by a pair of supple brown riding boots.

Both women possessed abundant amounts of round flesh, their looks strikingly different from the twenty-first century's concept of svelte beauty. Ryan liked a woman with curves; he found Hope's elegant carriage, narrow waist, full breasts and generously curving hips and ass to be his idea of female perfection, for instance. Betsey's and Mel's dimpled flesh, on the other hand, struck him as blowsy and unhealthy-looking. Not that the Sweet Lash was likely to offer its residents the healthiest of living and working environments, Ryan thought wryly.

He watched with mild interest as Mel picked up a bottle from the stage and gave the men a suggestive look. The men roared their approval, especially when Mel pointed sternly to the floor and Betsey obediently went down on her hands and knees. Mel proceeded to rub oil into Betsey's skin, making her hips, thighs and ass gleam in the gaslights. Their performance was almost as over-the-top contrived as the men's frantic, chest-beating excitement.

The crowd cheered rock-star loud when the blonde parodied a look of stern dissatisfaction and picked up a small, black whip and the redhead reacted with a similarly dramatic expression of anxious desire to please. Betsey squealed when the blonde woman flicked the whip threateningly on the stage to loud applause and appreciative catcalls.

Much to Ryan's amazement, at this point of the performance several of the men grabbed a female and hastily headed for the exit and the rooms upstairs. Jack glanced up from his conversation with Mason, smiling and nodding his approval as the couples passed. But Ryan sensed from his narrow-eyed gaze that Jack was checking which men had taken their satisfaction early so that if they should want another round later, Jack got his extra pay.

"There's no chance I'll beat Big Mario, is that what you're saying?" Ryan asked when he faced Alfie again. Like him, Alfie seemed relatively impervious to the

enactment on the stage, matter-of-factly filling a beer from the tap and pouring a glass of gin at once. "Why is that, exactly?"

"Ye've never seen him, eh?" The bartender seemed a tad pitying.

"No, but I'm guessing he didn't earn his name from the size of his heart," Ryan muttered wryly.

Alfie gave him a blank look. "He's a monster. Jack bought him off the Algerian contingent from the Chicago World's Fair years back. They claimed he was the strongest man on earth, and nothing any of the other participating countries or America had to offer could ever prove the Algerians wrong. He dead-weighted more than any man ever before recorded in history. Mario's so strong he can pull a tree up by its roots and stop a carriage in its tracks."

"What about his boxing skills?"

"What about 'em? Who needs to worry about skills when ya can hammer a guy's head into the floor with yer fist anytime you—"