by Jude Hardin
Wahlman knew exactly where to find Charlie at that time of the morning. He was in the office, sitting behind a heavily-scarred wooden desk, punching numbers into an electric adding machine, a relic that had originally belonged to his great grandfather.
Charlie smiled when Wahlman walked into the room. His teeth and the plastic housing on the adding machine were approximately the same shade of yellow. From years of tobacco abuse. Probably multiple generations of it, in the case of the adding machine.
“How’s it going, Rock?” Charlie said.
“I need a car,” Wahlman said.
“Is it going to smell like cat piss when you bring it back?”
“I’ll buy you a can of air freshener,” Wahlman said. “I’ll buy you two. One for the car, and one for your breath.”
Charlie laughed, opened the desk drawer and pulled out a familiar set of keys.
“It’s parked around back,” he said.
“You’re going to make me drive that thing again?”
“It’s a classic.”
“It’s a piece of shit.”
Charlie laughed some more.
“Greg’s going to need the night off tonight,” he said. “Think you could watch the place for me?”
“Think you could give me a better vehicle?” Wahlman said.
Charlie lit a cigarette, took a long drag, exhaled toward the ceiling.
“Which one do you want?” he said.
“I want the black one parked out front.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“You asked which one I wanted.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t worry. I’m not taking Alice to the vet today.”
“Why do you need a car? You have a client?”
“Kind of.”
“What’s that mean?” Charlie said.
“I’ll tell you later,” Wahlman said. “Can I have the car or not?”
“Why do you need such a fast one?”
“Because you never know,” Wahlman said.
Charlie opened the desk drawer and pulled out another set of keys.
“I need it back on the lot by the time I leave at seven this evening,” he said.
“Okay.”
“And I need you to watch the place for me tonight.”
Wahlman nodded. He grabbed the keys and exited the office, walked to the front of the lot and slid into the driver seat of an automobile that was probably worth more than his house. He started the engine, sat there and tried to remember if his insurance bill had been paid, decided that it had, shifted the transmission into gear and headed downtown.
5
Wahlman entered the police station, walked to the front desk and identified himself as a licensed private investigator with a possible lead on a homicide. The officer behind the counter didn’t seem impressed. She told him to have a seat. And it wasn’t even a very comfortable seat. And Wahlman doubted that the other dozen or so men and women sitting there were licensed private investigators. He doubted that some of them were even licensed drivers.
He waited.
An hour or so and two terrible vending machine cups of coffee later, a man in a suit stepped up to the waiting area and called his name.
“I’m Detective Brannelly,” the man said. “Follow me.”
Wahlman followed him to a door marked POLICE ONLY, and then into a room with a bunch of cubicles and a tile floor that was way past due for stripping and waxing. Brannelly stepped into one of the cubicles and sat behind a small steel desk and motioned for Wahlman to sit in the chair in front of it.
“I’m here regarding the Rokki Rhodes case,” Wahlman said.
“Who?” Brannelly said.
“Rokki Rhodes. It was on the news this morning.”
Brannelly clicked some keys on his computer keyboard.
“Here it is,” he said. “What about it?”
“I’m a private investigator,” Wahlman said, pulling his wallet out and flipping it open to display his license. “Ms. Rhodes came to my office yesterday, claimed some guy was stalking her at the club where she worked.”
“Stalking her?”
“She said he came to every show and sat in front and stared at her.”
“Isn’t that what guys do in those kinds of places?” Brannelly said.
“He was making her uncomfortable. She wanted me to have a word with him.”
“Did you?”
“No. It didn’t sound like the guy was breaking any laws. I told her I couldn’t take the case.”
“Did she give you a description of the man?” Brannelly said.
“No. The conversation didn’t get that far.”
Brannelly stood.
“I’ll make a note of it in her file,” he said.
“That’s it?” Wahlman said. “Seems like—”
“We’ll check into it. And I probably don’t need to remind you that you shouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” Wahlman said. “But—”
“Then don’t,” Brannelly said. “Can you find your way back out to the front desk?”
“Sure,” Wahlman said.
“Great. Thanks for coming in.”
Wahlman exited the suite, nodded to the sergeant at the front desk on his way outside.
Wahlman knew from experience as a law enforcement officer in the Navy that places like Laupin’s had a high turnover rate. Which meant that the time to go there and talk to Rokki’s coworkers was now. Not two weeks from now, or a month from now, or whenever the homicide detectives assigned to the case got around to it. Not that it was their fault. Not necessarily. Louisville had one of the highest murder rates in the country. The men and women in charge of investigating those crimes were kept busy, all day every day. They could only do so much. And a case involving a woman who made her living dancing in a club probably didn’t get top priority.
Wahlman had been sincere when he’d told Brannelly that he didn’t want to step on any toes, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to drive over to Laupin’s and talk to some of the employees. Maybe get a description of the guy Rokki had told him about. Maybe pass the description on to the police.
Then he would be done with it.
Then he could go out and start looking for a job.
6
Wahlman waited in the parking lot until the club opened for business, and then he walked inside. There was an anteroom with black paint and mirrored circles on the walls and framed photos of the dancers and a small rectangular chalkboard. The photos were tasteful. Professional. Like something you might see in a magazine. Rokki’s wasn’t up there. Maybe they’d taken it down already. Or maybe she’d never had one. The chalkboard said NEXT SHOW 1:00 PM.
A set of double doors opened into the main lounge. Throbbing music, strobes, disco balls. There was a long bar with a mirror behind it, and some bistro tables with salt and pepper shakers on them, and booths with curtains you could close for privacy. At the far end of the room, a horseshoe-shaped countertop wrapped around a stage about the size of an average bedroom. Shiny brass poles had been positioned strategically near each corner. Wahlman sat on one of the ringside stools, and thirty seconds later a redhead wearing silvery lace-up stiletto heels and a sparkly blue bathing suit slid in next to him and put her hand on his thigh.
“Want to buy me a drink?” she said.
“I just want to talk to you for a few minutes,” Wahlman said.
“I can’t sit here unless you buy me a drink.”
“How much?”
“Thirty bucks.”
Wahlman pulled out his wallet, handed her a twenty and a ten. She walked the money up to the bar, came back carrying a highball glass with some ice in it and a skinny red straw and something clear and bubbly.
“Soda water?” Wahlman said.
She shrugged, pulled the straw out of the drink and dragged the wet end across her tongue.
“What do you want to talk about?” she said.
“Rokki Rhode
s,” Wahlman said.
She slid the straw back into the drink.
“You a cop?” she said.
“Private investigator,” Wahlman said.
He handed her a business card. She looked it over, secured it to her hip with the stretchy band on her bikini bottom.
“I’ve only been here for a week,” she said. “I didn’t really know her.”
“Who really knew her?”
“There’s a girl in the dressing room crying her eyes out. I’m guessing she did.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know. I’m not very good with names.”
The double doors swung open and a very large man walked into the room. He wore jeans and leather work boots and a plaid flannel shirt. Like some kind of lumberjack. He was carrying a Daily Racing Form in his left hand. Wahlman guessed him to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Six-two or six-three, forearms like propane tanks. He stopped at the bar and bought a bottle of beer, and then he sat at one of the bistro tables and opened a menu. The redhead glanced over at him and smiled.
“You know that guy?” Wahlman said.
“Never seen him before,” the redhead said.
“Could you ask the young lady who’s crying her eyes out to come out to the lounge for a few minutes?”
“I don’t think she’s in any kind of shape to talk right now.”
“I just gave you thirty dollars. Could you ask her for me?”
“I need to take care of that guy first,” the redhead said. “I’m all alone out here right now.”
She sauntered back up to the bar and handed the highball glass back to the bartender. He grabbed a wine carafe that had been loaded with poker chips, shook one out and dropped it into a plastic peanut jar. Someone had written CALLIE on a piece of paper and had taped the paper to the jar. Wahlman figured it was the club’s way of keeping track of how many drinks each lady sold. He figured Callie would get a percentage at the end of her shift, based on how many chips were in her jar.
The man in the plaid flannel shirt was studying his Racing Form, making marks on it with a stubby little golf pencil. Callie walked to the table where he was sitting, slid in next to him and put her hand on his thigh. Wahlman couldn’t actually hear what was being said, but he was pretty good at reading lips. And Callie was pretty good at sticking to the script. She asked the guy if he wanted to buy her a drink. He shook his head, told her no thanks, pointed at something on the laminated menu. Callie moved her hand from his leg to his shoulder, leaned in and whispered something into his ear. He shook his head again. Pointed at the menu again. Callie nodded disappointedly, stood and walked back over to the bar. She picked up a tablet computer and started tapping and swiping, probably relaying the food order to a similar device in the kitchen. When she was finished with that, she headed over to the left side of the stage and reached for the knob on a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Wahlman thought she was going to go to the dressing room and tell the young lady crying her eyes out that a private investigator wanted to talk to her. But she didn’t. Instead, she turned around and walked back over to where Wahlman was sitting.
“That guy was asking about Rokki,” she said.
“The guy in the flannel shirt?” Wahlman said.
“Yeah. And who wears a flannel shirt in August, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Wahlman said. “What did he say to you about Rokki?”
“He didn’t say anything to me,” Callie said. “He asked the bartender about her. He wanted to know why her picture wasn’t out front anymore.”
“What did the bartender tell him?” Wahlman said.
“He told him she doesn’t work here anymore,” Callie said.
“That’s it?”
“I guess he figured it was none of the guy’s business.”
“It was on the news this morning,” Wahlman said. “It’s no big secret.”
“I know. Anyway, I just thought I would tell you.”
“Are you sure you’ve never seen that guy before?”
“I’m sure. But like I said, I’ve only been here for a week.”
She clomped back over to the EMPLOYEES ONLY door and exited the lounge. The extreme shoes suddenly seemed like bricks strapped to her feet. Wahlman sat there and stared at the empty stage, wondering if she would take them off when it was time for the show to start. It was hard to imagine anyone trying to dance in those things.
Wahlman waited for a few minutes, and then he moseyed up to the bar. The bartender was cutting a pineapple with a long serrated knife and dropping the wedges into a zippered plastic storage bag. He wore black pants and a black vest and a white shirt and a nametag that said Cliff.
“Can I help you?” he said.
Wahlman pulled out a business card. Cliff made a gesture indicating that his hands were sticky. Wahlman held the card up to where he could see it. Cliff leaned in and squinted, immediately went back to the chunk of pineapple he’d been carving on.
“Did you work last night?” Wahlman said.
“No. I was off.”
“The guy in the flannel shirt over there. Is he a regular customer?”
“I’ve seen him a couple of times.”
“Just a couple?”
“We get a hundred guys in here every afternoon, twice as many at night. I don’t keep track of who comes and who goes.”
Wahlman looked around. So far, he and the man in the plaid flannel shirt were the only customers in the club.
“Where is everyone?” Wahlman said.
“It’ll start picking up in a little while,” Cliff said.
“Have the police been here yet?”
“A couple of guys came in a while ago, looking for Mr. Laupin.”
“Detectives?”
“That’s what they said.”
“You didn’t ask to see their badges?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Laupin talk to them?”
“He’s out of town,” Cliff said. “Should be back tonight.”
Wahlman ordered two beers and walked over to the table where the man in the plaid flannel shirt was sitting. The man was still studying the Racing Form. He was punching numbers into a pocket calculator with one hand and making notations with the other. He had dark circles under his eyes and a small adhesive bandage on the left side of his neck.
“Cut yourself shaving?” Wahlman said.
The man in the plaid flannel shirt glanced up and looked Wahlman directly in the eyes.
“Huh?” he said.
“I’m a private investigator,” Wahlman said. “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”
The man in the plaid flannel shirt slid the pencil into his shirt pocket.
“About what?” he said.
“About a young lady named Rokki Rhodes,” Wahlman said.
“Apparently she doesn’t work here anymore,” the man in the plaid flannel shirt said.
“She doesn’t work anywhere anymore,” Wahlman said. “She was murdered last night.”
“She’s dead?” the man said.
He seemed genuinely surprised. Wahlman set the beers on the table, climbed onto the stool across from him.
“Did you know her personally?” Wahlman said.
“Is one of those for me?” the man said, gesturing toward the longneck bottles.
“Yes,” Wahlman said.
The man reached over and picked up one of the bottles, took a long pull, set it back down on the table.
“I didn’t know her,” he said.
“She wanted me to have a word with a certain gentleman who’d been—”
“Excuse me,” the man in the plaid flannel shirt said. “I’ll be right back.”
He got up and headed toward the restroom. He started to push the door open, hesitated, turned around and made a beeline for the exit. He still had food coming, and his calculator and marked-up Racing Form were still on the table, so Wahlman didn’t think he was actually going to leave the club. Maybe he needed to
get something out of his car. Maybe he needed to make a phone call.
Wahlman sat there and waited for a couple of minutes, and then he walked outside and checked the parking lot.
The man in the plaid flannel shirt wasn’t out there.
The man in the plaid flannel shirt was gone.
7
The young lady who’d been crying her eyes out in the dressing room told Wahlman that a big guy who usually wore flannel shirts had been coming in and sitting ringside and staring at Rokki while she was on stage, confirming Wahlman’s suspicions that the man in the plaid flannel shirt was the stalker.
But Wahlman didn’t think he was the killer.
Wahlman didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to show up at a club and order a beer and plate of food just hours after murdering one of the dancers who worked there.
Then again, it seemed strange that the guy had bolted as soon as Wahlman started asking about Rokki. Maybe the man in the plaid flannel shirt had other things to hide.
Wahlman didn’t think he was the killer, but he’d asked Cliff for a couple of the plastic storage bags, and he’d zipped up the items that the man in the plaid flannel shirt had left behind—the calculator and the Racing Form—just in case.
The young lady who’d been crying her eyes out had told the police the same thing she’d told Wahlman. Which meant that they knew at least as much as he did. Which was good. It meant that Wahlman wouldn’t have to go back to the station again and wait his turn to talk to one of the detectives again. It meant that Wahlman had done as much as he could do without getting in the way of the official investigation. It meant that he needed to step away now and go about his business and let the police go about theirs.
Wahlman felt bad about what had happened to Rokki. But, as it had turned out, taking her case probably wouldn’t have changed anything. Because, as it had turned out, the stalker and the killer were probably two different people.
Wahlman climbed into the car that Charlie had loaned him, started the engine and turned on the air conditioner and tried to call Natalie again.
Wahlman didn’t like cell phones. He didn’t like them, but he carried one now, mostly for his P.I. business, a simple flip phone, technology that had been around close to a hundred years, technology that was less likely to be hacked or tracked than the so-called smart phones that had been all the rage in the early and middle parts of the twenty-first century. Those kinds of phones were still around, but most people didn’t bother with them these days, preferring privacy over convenience, preferring to be focused rather than distracted. And the people who did use them weren’t allowed to use them in cars, or in their places of employment, for the most part. Not legally, anyway.
