"She obviously had more than one 'private' lined up, and she's taking them in turn. The other two girls that're still up there? Obviously the guys they're with were willing to spring for more than one." "Twenty-five dollars again?" Cindy demanded. Henry shrugged.

"Maybe. Maybe forty-five for two, or sixty for three. Up to the girl, but six songs for a hundred is about as cheap as they'll go." Suddenly he looked to their left. "Hey, Kitty! Come here!" Henry called to a tall blonde girl he recognized. She was nude except for a G-string and heels, and had a deep tan with no tan lines. "A woman that was in one of my self-defense classes," Henry explained to his companion.

"Henry Bowman! I haven't seen you in months! Who's this?"

"Kitty, this is my friend Cindy Caswell. You and she have a lot in common," he added with a grin.

"Well, now," Kitty said as she pulled a chair up facing Cindy, sat in it, and ran her hand between Cindy's thighs.

"The rules are different with women customers," Henry said with a laugh. "'

"I don't have a dollar," Cindy said as she blushed crimson.

"This one's for free," Kitty said as she leaned over, kissed Cindy on the mouth, then gently bit Cindy's nipple through her shirt. Henry noticed that quite a few of the patrons were surreptitiously staring at what was going on between the two women. All of them were smiling.

"The dancers who are friendly make more money," Henry explained as he signaled the waitress for two Cokes, "and the dancers who are friendly and bisexual make the most money of all. If you were up on stage with her right now, you'd each make over fifty for a set."

"We'd do a lot better than that, Henry," Kitty corrected, then added, "I've got three privates that're waiting for me, so I can only stay for a few minutes."

"Lord, shouldn't you be taking care of them?" Cindy asked, trying to keep her composure as the woman stroked her crotch. The dancer laughed.

"They're all watching right now, and I guarantee they're more turned on than they were two minutes ago. Probably get an extra twenty from at least one of them. Maybe all three." She reached over and gave Henry's crotch a quick squeeze. "Come find me later, and I'll give both of you a special." The dancer stood up, went over to her eager-looking customer, and led him away.

Cindy Caswell looked around the club, focusing on the dancers that were onstage. "Some of these girls have no rhythm," she said immediately.

"Look at their faces," Henry instructed.

"The one there looks like she's into it. Those other two look bored to tears."

"Think you could do better?"

"In my sleep."

"Check out the girls doing private dances." Cindy Caswell stood up and looked over the brass railing at the girls in the north end of the room.

"Your friend Kitty is laughing and climbing all over her guy. The other girl looks like a robot." "And she's still getting at least twenty dollars for four minutes work," Henry said with raised eyebrows. "Kitty, on the other hand-she probably won't be free until after her next dance set, in maybe an hour." "Lord, how much does she make in a night?"

"Busy weekend night like it is now? Thousand bucks. More if some guy wants to play big shot. Maybe five hundred on a Monday or Tuesday." Cindy Caswell's jaw dropped, and Henry grinned. "Pissed-off-looking girl like the other one up there? Half that much."

"But...that's crazy!"

"It's what I wanted to show you. Missouri legislature bans it on our side of the river, it throws a big distortion into the market, and the few places that don't ban it have a license to print money. Like cigarette advertising. They ban it on television, and it all goes to billboards. Drives the price way up. Same deal here. Couple of the girls, like Kitty, they've got their heads together, invest a big chunk of the money they make. After she went through the self-defense class, I told her to talk to the investment guy I use. She says her portfolio's worth about two hundred Gs now. Lot of the other girls, they blow every nickel they make. Some of 'em support shitbum boyfriends, some of 'em have a couple kids, some get into coke, and get fired. Ones that really look at it like a business, and they're in the minority, they make out like bandits." Something caught Henry's eye, and he started laughing.

"That girl over there?" he said, nodding at a slender, well-tanned blonde that was sitting on an older customer's lap. "She was in a class I helped teach. Different one, though. She works here once a week, or did when I met her. Care to guess what she does the rest of the week?"

"Dental technician. Nursing student. Housewife," Cindy guessed. "Advertising specialties sales," she added with a laugh. "No? Then I have no idea."

"Springfield police officer," Henry announced.

"No."

"Ask her. Only keep it quiet-the department doesn't know." He watched his friend as she stared at the

moonlighting policewoman straddling the man in the business suit. "Getting some ideas for how to finance your catering business?"

"Damn right," Cindy said with feeling.

April 19,1993 "The tanks are defensive only," Bob Ricks' image on the television screen asserted. He was answering a reporter's question about the armored vehicles being used to smash t he walls of the 50-year-old wood-frame building that housed the Mount Carmel religious group.

Bullshit Alex Neumann though as he tipped up his beer bottle and took a long swallow. You've smashed a fifth of their building into kindling. Defensive, my ass.

The newsmen clustered at the 10:30 press conference started talking all at once, but the FBI spokesman motioned for them to be silent. "We're not negotiating. We're saying 'come out'."

They got no food, no water, and no power Neumann thought, shaking his head. You want 'em to come out, Bob, send everybody home 'cept one guy with a folding chair, some suntan lotion, a good book, and a cellular phone. Smashed-up wood-frame building pumped full of CS doesn't say 'come out', Bob. It says 'you're dead.' Neumann finished the beer and set the bottle on the floor. Thank God I'm a thousand miles away for this one.

Bob Ricks wanted to step down from the podium amid myriad shouts and questions from the television reporters. Then he decided to make sure his point was understood. He leaned over and brought the microphone close to his mouth. "We're telling them that this matter is over."

"Yeah, no shit," Agent Alex Neumann said aloud to no one in particular.

'"Bout fuckin' time," the FBI man muttered when he saw some smoke appear from one of the second-floor windows of main building in the Branch Davidian compound. The tanks had been smashing first-floor walls for over an hour. The gym roof had collapsed a half hour earlier after tanks had knocked out most of the load-bearing wall in the gym area at the back of the building. During the time since the collapse of the roof, the feds had been firing pyrotechnic tear gas canisters through the sheetrock interior walls of the building. This had driven most of the adults and all of the children inside the building up to the second floor. Then stairwells had been destroyed by the battering ram, and the wood-frame structure was just now beginning to catch fire.

"I guess we better call the fire department," the agent next to him commented, but made no move to cany out the suggestion.

"Give it a few minutes," his superior said as he looked at his watch. The time was 12:01. "When you do, route the call through the sheriff's department. And make sure they know they got to go through the checkpoints."

"Yeah. Got it." While he was waiting, the agent remembered something he had wanted to ask his boss. "Think anyone will ask why we didn't already have fire crews standing by, along with all the armored vehicles, and waited so long to get them out here?"

"Fuck 'em. Let 'em wonder," his superior replied. "And don't forget, we got a tame ATF agent, friend of that first guy killed, Willis, all lined up to be the independent fire investigator. Besides, who's going to challenge us on procedures?"

"Good point."

The news guys might also figure out that we sent the fire-suppression helicopters home the supervisor thought with a smile. And waited for the windiest day in six weeks to shoot pyrotechnics into an old woodframe building. After we filled that building full of stuff that produces mustard gas when it bums. His smile grew a little wider. Fuck 'em on that, too.

"Jim, the stairwell's gone! We can't get out!" the woman screamed at her husband as she clutched her daughter. She was choking and nearly blinded from the tear gas.

"I'll jump down," he gasped. "Find something to...prop up...climb down on...catch you if I have to." His lungs felt as if they were on fire as he swung his legs out over the hole in the floor and dropped down. An exposed lag bolt from the broken stairwell raked his side, making a ragged gash up his ribcage. The man cried out in pain just as his right foot wedged itself in the shattered lumber on the floor and his ankle snapped with an audible crack.

Nausea and searing pain washed over the man as he collapsed, but he forced himself to his feet, determined to get his wife and daughter to safety. He inhaled deeply, and it was then that his lungs filled with hydrogen cyanide. The man's face turned a shade of blue, and he fell to the floor, dead.

"Jim! Jim!" his wife screamed, gasping for breath. She could not see her husband through the smoke, and he did not answer her. It did not matter. The Branch Davidians were all getting their final chemistry lesson, and it was going to kill every one of them in the building.

The CS tear gas which permeated the building was not itself classified as flammable. Nor was the solvent used to carry it. However, when the solvent evaporated, the remaining CS material was suspended in the air. As any high school chemistry student can attest, virtually any fine material will burn when it is uniformly suspended in air because of the tremendous amount of surface area exposed. A pinch of powdered aluminum tossed in a fireplace will prove this. A handful of cornstarch sprayed from a squeeze bottle will do so even more spectacularly. Grain dust explosions in grain silos and sawdust explosions in sawmills are more serious examples of this phenomenon.

The pyrotechnic devices fired into the old wood-frame structure had started several fires, which were spreading rapidly. When the fire hit the fine CS material suspended in the air inside the building, the CS burned, releasing deadly hydrogen cyanide gas. In less than a minute, the woman and her daughter were dead, as were others trapped in that section of the second floor.

"Sheriff's office."

"Yeah. FBI calling. Ah...listen, you'd better call the fire station and have 'em send some trucks to the checkpoints. It's a pretty good fire. The entire compound is going up right now."

"You got it."

The time was 12:16.

"Sheriff's office dispatch here," announced the man from the McLennan County Sheriff's Department.

"Yes?" said the fireman on the other end of the line. He had been wondering when the call was going to come.

"This Hawthorne?"

"Yeah, it is," the fireman replied.

"They've got a fire at the compound."

"Tell me about it!" the fireman said immediately. No shit, Sherlock was what had been going through his mind. He could see the flames from where he was standing.

"Are y'all en route?" the dispatcher asked.

"No, we're looking at it. Just waitin' for you to call."