Film Strip

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “I’ve been noticing you,” I said. “You’ve been here for a few nights in a row.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe it’s the talent,” he answered.

  “You haven’t been in before or I would’ve remembered you,” I purred. “You in town on business or pleasure?”

  He laid his hand on my arm, a hot caress that left me a little breathless. “You could say it’s a bit of both,” he said. “A man can never have too much pleasure.” His fingers tightened imperceptibly on my arm and I felt my stomach flip over in response. Not since Carmine “The Touch” Virillo, back in South Philly, had I met such a professional. I recognized something else about him, too, something that I hadn’t run across in all the time I’d been living in Panama City: this guy was mob, the genuine, connected article.

  “How long are you gonna be around?” I asked.

  “As long as it takes to get my job done,” he answered.

  Behind us, Bruno stood off to the side, joined by Vincent Gambuzzo. Bruno was worried, that much I could see. And Vincent was aware that the Stallion was carrying and Bruno hadn’t pulled his piece to hold for safe-keeping. Vincent was quietly giving Bruno the business, but not so quietly that I couldn’t make out the occasional word, like gun and idiot.

  “I’d like to see you while I’m around,” the Stallion was saying. “I could use somebody to show me the town.”

  I looked deep into his eyes and decided to try my luck. “I work nights,” I said, “and I don’t make a habit out of associating with strangers. I don’t know a thing about you. Why, I don’t even know your name.”

  Up on the stage, the music was cranking up, signaling the beginning of another act. The Stallion’s attention wandered away from me and I turned to see who was currently captivating his attention. Frosty Licks had wandered onto the stage, her hair done in two blond pigtails. She was wearing a transparent baby-doll nightgown and fluffy bunny slippers. She was sucking her thumb and holding a teddy bear. From where I sat, the majority of her act was silicone. They do a lot these days with implants, and not just in the places you usually expect to see them. I think they’re even able to insert them in one’s posterior region. At least that seemed to be the case with Miss Frosty.

  The Stallion turned back to me, his fingers flicking gently along the inside of my arm, setting parts of my anatomy on fire. “It’s Alonzo Barboni,” he said softly, “at your service.”

  Jesus. The man had a talent. “I’m from New York,” he added, “and I sell insurance.”

  Yeah, I thought, and I peddle lingerie. I looked back up at the stage just as Frosty was strolling parallel to the table where we sat. She looked out, saw me, and smirked. Then she saw Barboni and came to a halt. She lost focus, an anxious look crossing her face. Beside me, Alonzo stiffened and his eyes went dull and hard. When Frosty tried to move off, she stumbled. The rest of her act was a waste of time, not that it hadn’t been to start with.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “Not really. It’s just business.” The way he looked at me sent a chill down my spine. I didn’t want to be on his bad side, and yet, I couldn’t pull away. Every instinct I had was screaming “Get out! Now!” but I couldn’t move a muscle. Instead, my mouth took over.

  “So, did you have this effect on Venus Lovemotion, too?”

  His eyes narrowed and sharpened. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, Venus and Frosty are imported talent, porn stars or what have you. I figured maybe you have this effect on all the movie stars.” It was as clumsy as it sounded, so I went for damage control. “Or maybe you just have this effect on all women,” I breathed. Then I gave him a look like maybe, just maybe, we had a short future in front of us.

  Alonzo shifted in his seat, moving back and bringing his hand up to caress the side of my face. This was a definite no-no in Bruno’s book, but at a glance from me, he stayed back. I was sitting just like that, with Alonzo’s fingers leaving trails of fire down the side of my neck, when John Nailor walked into the club and out of my life.

  Nailor and I had an understanding about my work. He knew my parameters, and he knew I didn’t take any man’s attention seriously. However, he also knew I had a hands-off policy. He knew they could look but not touch, and here one sat, touching me.

  I don’t know how long he’d been watching when I looked up. It wasn’t for lack of Bruno and Vincent trying in their own clumsy way to alert me to the fact. Vincent had a coughing attack and then tried to use Bruno and himself as human shields, but Nailor isn’t stupid. By the time I dragged my eyes off Alonzo and brought them to focus on Nailor, he had started walking away, out the door and into the night.

  There was no sense in following him. He wouldn’t have listened. He was too angry, that much I knew. And I would’ve blown my cover with Barboni. I was trapped.

  “Someone you know?” Alonzo asked.

  I stared helplessly at the door, saw Nailor look back and confirm that I had seen him and not attempted to pursue him, and then watched as he melted away into the parking lot.

  “No,” I said, looking back at Alonzo Barboni. “I don’t know him.”

  Fifteen

  I was a traitor. Worse than that, a Judas. Here I was, after months of working up to it, maybe about to fall in love, the real kind, not the make-believe, too-good-to-be-true kind, and I’d screwed it all up, as usual. I was thinking this as I sat with Alonzo, leading him to believe that I was genuinely interested. I’d done such a good job I’d even convinced myself for a moment. What a crock.

  Alonzo Barboni was the kind of bad news I thought I’d outgrown—tough, seductive, in charge, and morally bankrupt. In the olden days, back in Philly, I’d fallen for his type over and over again, finally culminating in my long-term affair with Tony the Married Mobster. Tony walked out on me. Well, not exactly; he’d gotten himself whacked outside of a local restaurant after eating a Sunday dinner with his wife and kids, the very wife and kids he’d denied ever existed. He left me alone and pregnant. The baby never made it, probably because of the grief that I allowed to ruin my body. I left Philadelphia on account of men like Alonzo Barboni, and now, like a true idiot, I’d allowed one to screw up the one good thing I’d found in Panama City.

  I let myself wallow in my trough of self-pity for all of three minutes before I realized that I had to get next to Alonzo. All the sorrow in the world wasn’t gonna help me now. I could clear Marla of murder, hand Vincent back his income, and then explain the real story to John. Hell, wouldn’t he have done the same in my situation? Hadn’t he done the same in the past? I threw it off like a heavy quilt on a summer night, and got back in the game.

  “So, you’ve never been to Panama City before, huh?” I asked. “Well, you’re in for a big time, Mr. Barboni, cause I know places even the locals can’t find.”

  Barboni smiled. “I’ll bet you do,” he whispered. “Why don’t we start with your place.”

  Freakin’ snake. He’d see my place when hell froze over. I looked at him like an innocent, offended virgin, and he backed right up. I guess he figured I was worth playing.

  “I mean, I’m sure you have a lovely home. It must be in a beautiful location.”

  Yeah, right, if you considered a trailer park romantic, then you were on the road to nirvana. The Lively Oaks Trailer Park was pretty much devoid of oaks and devoid of charm, but we were lively all right.

  “Well, I’ll look forward to showing it to you … sometime.” Mae West couldn’t have done it better.

  “Sierra!” Vincent Gambuzzo had finally had enough. He stood just three feet away, beckoning like I was supposed to jump up and run through a hoop.

  “Duty calls,” I said to Barboni. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  “Can I call you?” he asked.

  I looked down at him, reached across the table and into his inside pocket. At first, instinctively, he flinched, protecting his gun. Then he relaxed and let my fingers wander inside his jacket pocket. The predictable pen was there, a silver C
ross. I reached for Barboni’s hand and slowly wrote my number on his palm. I put the pen down and folded his fingers shut.

  “Shhh!” I whispered. “Let this be our little secret.”

  “Sierra!” Vincent called, impatient now. I whirled around and glared at him, reminding him that Sierra Lavotini moves at her own pace. I am not someone’s trained show dog.

  Bruno stood next to Vincent, chaffing to get to me. “Sierra,” he said, as I walked up to him, “don’t go messing with that guy. Word is he’s—”

  I cut him off. “I know exactly what he is and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  Vincent frowned. “Then you didn’t see him come in.”

  I looked him dead in the eye for a long moment. “No, I was watching the front of the house.” I said, “I didn’t see him until…”

  Vincent was watching me with something that might’ve passed for compassion mixed with a healthy dose of confusion. I think he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t blow Nailor off without a damned good reason. He just couldn’t figure out the rest of the puzzle.

  “Well, if you’re back in the club, then I expect you to work. Get your ass into costume and cue the deejay. I don’t have no prima donnas in my place.” That was a joke and we both knew it.

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “where’s Marla?”

  Vincent frowned and looked over at Bruno, who frowned and shrugged.

  “But she isn’t under arrest or anything like that?” I asked.

  “No.” Vincent sighed, pulling out a black handkerchief and wiping his damp brow. “She ain’t managed to get herself hauled in. I would’ve gotten a call. I guess she’s just running late.”

  As if she’d heard him, Marla suddenly slipped through the curtains and began her act. She was dancing to a country tune: “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” This time she had herself all dolled up in a white cowgirl outfit, complete with hat and six-shooters. In light of the charges looming over her head, I thought the act was in poor taste and said as much to Vincent, but he just shook his head. To him, it was enough that she’d shown up.

  I looked over at Alonzo. Marla had his complete and total attention. He even allowed himself a small, tight smile. Who knew? The Italian Stallion was human after all. Marla didn’t miss his reaction. She homed in on it like a pigeon coming in to roost. She was playing him for the big money. Too bad she hadn’t heard what a lousy tipper he was.

  I would’ve stayed to enjoy their little moment, but I was up next. I left without waiting to see Marla’s grand finale, when she’d tear off her bra and expose her Texas-sized bazooms. It was truly a picture, but not one I cared to have etched in my brain.

  Instead I walked back to the dressing room, lost in thought. What act was I gonna do to ensure that Frosty Licks never darkened the door of the Tiffany again? What could I pull out of my costume trunk that would positively ace my ranking as the Number One Act? I was so lost in my own thoughts, that I almost didn’t react to the open back door. As security conscious as we needed to be, it was unthinkable that someone had left the back entrance wide open to intruders, yet there it stood, open a foot and begging for someone to come along.

  I stepped over to close it, still with my mind on my next act, but the shrill sound of Frosty Licks’s high-pitched giggle forced me to snap back to the present moment’s reality. I pushed the door open a little farther and peered out onto the dimly lit back stoop. There was Frosty, happily ensconced on Little Ricky’s lap.

  “You are the cutest thing!” she was saying. “I could just eat you with a spoon! You can’t really be a wrestler. You wouldn’t hurt a flea!”

  Ricky must’ve thought that the heavenly gates had opened and ushered him right on in, because he was sighing and running his hands up and down her body like he might never pass this way again.

  “Ricky!” I snapped. “Do you just never learn?”

  Ricky jumped up like a thief, dumping Frosty once again on her perky little behind.

  “Sierra, now, it ain’t what it seems.”

  Frosty was glaring at me, slowly struggling up and brushing gravel and dirt off of her little baby-doll nightie.

  “It is every bit of what it seems, sport,” I said. “You’re thinking with your dick, Big Man, and that’ll mess you up every single time.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Frosty whined.

  I was about to answer her, but at that moment something flew past me, knocking me into the heavy metal door. Marla had finished her act. Apparently, seeing the three of us in conversation, and Frosty in a see-through negligee, had brought back traumatic memories of Venus Lovemotion and Little Ricky. Or maybe Marla had finally wised up to her skunky snake of a boyfriend. Whatever the reason, Marla had totally lost control and had launched herself into battle.

  A catfight between two well-endowed exotic dancers is the stuff male fantasies are made of, until you actually witness the real thing, with spit and blood and hair pulling. It is not a turn-on, not even to a pervert. Little Ricky stood back, clearly horrified, his knuckles jammed in his mouth. I was standing there, kind of dazed from my run-in with the door, still too unsteady to move. It was Bruno and little Rusty who broke up the action.

  Bruno took Marla, and Rusty tried to grab Frosty. Marla gave Bruno a good tussle, but Frosty had nothing left to give Rusty. She buried her face in his scrawny little chest and bawled like a baby. Ricky, aware now that he’d been buttering the wrong side of the bread, came to Marla.

  “Baby,” he gushed, “you done took it all wrong. I wasn’t doing nothing but minding my own business when this she-vixen came out and leaped at me.”

  Marla wasn’t any too sure who to believe. She stood, her arms pinned behind her by Bruno, her massive chest heaving like two mountains in a full-strength earthquake. She was sweaty and her lower lip was beginning to swell.

  We were starting to draw a crowd as customers in the parking lot wandered over to watch. This brought Gordon out from the front door, Vincent and several of the girls behind him.

  Frosty seized her moment and turned it on for the audience. “Is this the kind of place you’re running, Mr. Gambuzzo? A girl can’t even make a decent day’s wages without her life being endangered? Is this what you’re offering when you say I could be a Tiffany girl?”

  Vincent turned bright red and started stammering. Tiffany girl? Had Vincent offered Frosty Licks a job working with us? What was he trying to do here? And what kind of package had he offered?

  Marla heard the same thing I did. Her face darkened and she went ballistic all over again.

  “You mean to tell me you offered this slut a job?” she said. “Working here? With real talent?”

  Frosty didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. “Real talent? With a movie star in the house, Panama City will finally see what exotic dancing is all about. You girls are just little backwater lowlifes. I was classically trained. I studied in New York.”

  “Oh, you gotta train to flat-back it?” Marla sneered. She tried to wrench herself free from Bruno’s ironclad grip, but found it impossible.

  Gordon stood next to Vincent, worrying the tip of his little goatee. “You really offered her a job?” he asked.

  Vincent, seizing the opportunity to save face, began to stammer. “Well, now I, er, um, I merely said that, um, it was somewhat of a potential thing. Of course, that was only if Miss Licks pulled in a substantial increase in door take.”

  Gordon pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket. “Well, we made a ton of jack this week, but I think that’s only because of the killing and the fans concern for Sierra’s, er … well-being. After all, she’s the star.”

  I flashed Gordon a smile and promised myself to do him an extra-special favor sometime real soon, like maybe making him a pan of Ma’s Italian ziti. Gordon blushed and looked like the babe in the woods I knew him to be.

  “Besides, this ain’t nothing like what they make up in Atlanta.” Gordon looked at Frosty. “I used to work Club 69. We made more tha
n this on a weeknight.”

  Vincent glowered at Gordon, then regained his self-control and took over. “All right, all right! The last time I checked, my name was on the lease saying I own this place and I am in charge. I sign your paychecks, so what I do and whom I employ are not your concern. Right now I’m telling you to get back to work. And if there is one further incident, the entire lot of you will be seeking employment elsewhere!”

  He looked like a black barrel about to bust. He was wearing his black wrap-around sunglasses, but they still couldn’t hide the nervous twitch that starts up on the left side of his face when he knows he’s out of control and we’ve bested him once again. His black silk shirt collar seemed to choke him, because his neck and face were a brilliant red. This was not Vincent Gambuzzo’s best day.

  Frosty stormed off, muttering something about her agent. Marla was staring at Ricky like she’d just uncovered a cockroach. Rusty scampered on into the building, his mind on the next act. Vincent turned to walk off, saw the gawking customers and dancers, and made a flapping motion with his arms, kind of like a big black goose trying fruitlessly to take off.

  “Show’s over, folks. Let’s go inside where the real action is.” One by one they turned and walked away, all but Gordon. He stood rooted to the spot, his hand inside his pocket groping the wad of door money.

  “Gordon, you all right?” I asked.

  “Man,” he said, “Mr. Gambuzzo’s making a big mistake if he hires that girl. She’s nothing but trouble. I heard her talking to her agent. She has it all sewn up in her mind. She thinks she’s gonna be the star here.”

  Poor Gordon looked worried, like he thought maybe she could do it. I shook my head. Didn’t he know these kind of things happened every day in the business? Frosty Licks was no threat to me. There’d always be somebody breathing hard on one’s heels, but true talent won out every time.