So, this was the legendary Magic City, the strip club where rappers nationwide came to jettison their money. It didn’t look like much, Tilly thought. They approached a windowless rectangular building, a blocky citadel with the squat dimensions of a brick. When she’d moved to Atlanta, all her girlfriends in DC had joked she’d secretly been hired here. “People move to Atlanta for two reasons,” Nikki told her the night before she moved. “More money and more space.” Maybe she’d put in an application, Tilly thought, if that was how strip clubs even worked. She’d have to ask just for kicks, she decided as they neared the entrance. This place was always coming up in cases anyway. There had to be something going on.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rick warned when they reached the door. She tended to grimace when she was thinking about casework. “This is pleasure, not business.”

Tilly scowled, slinking into the empty line for security. Two dozy guards patted them down then waved them off. Tilly was surprised by their professionalism. They checked everywhere.

Inside, there was just enough light to discern various bodies, but only when they were in motion. She knew they were mostly men. That was guaranteed. Rick was saying something, but Tilly struggled to hear him over the sounds of some Rihanna song that her body knew but her mind didn’t recognize. Something about working. Was Rihanna stressed or liberated? The fact that Tilly even had to ask made her feel old.

“What?!” she eventually shouted at Rick.

“Are you hungry?” he shouted back, finally audible. Extending his arm, he guided her into a seat near an empty, unlit stage.

“Yeah, I am.”

“The chicken and waffles is pretty good,” he advised, settling down a seat away.

A lean server dressed in black lingerie appeared soon after, taking their orders. Tilly surprised herself when she ordered a cocktail. Rick ordered coffee. Instinctively, Tilly scanned the room as the woman walked away. An unfathomable pile of money was forming beneath a gyrating dancer on another stage, all provided by one man. Tilly wondered if the waitstaff had a tip out arrangement with the dancers. In such a clearly hierarchical environment, it had to be competitive. There were probably weekly fights. High turnover. Cliques. Alliances. Spies.

“You’re doing it again,” Rick warned her, wrinkling up his face in mockery. “We’re not always on the clock.”

The cocktail arrived quickly. Tilly hesitated to drink it. Was she really about to drink on a Wednesday afternoon, with a coworker, in a strip club? She’d been to a million happy hours, but this was something else.