Even Money

by Stephanie Caffrey

  He put his hands up in mock innocence. “Just doing my job,” he said.

  “How is that doing your job? You’re a bouncer!”

  He folded his massive arms in front of his chest. “Employee security. You know, I need to be able to recognize her if anything happens.”

  I felt like punching him, but instead I just stared into those dark, alluring eyes. It was hard to stay mad at him. He was full of lust, and he wasn’t hiding it. At least he was honest, I figured.

  “So,” I began, “any idea where she lives?”

  He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

  “What, you don’t have everyone’s home address memorized? For employee security purposes?”

  He rolled his eyes. “We can get it if you want. You were right,” he said, changing the subject.

  “Right about what?”

  “I was bored,” he said. “I can’t stand here another hour like this. I’m sure Andre or someone will fill in for me.”

  “What makes you think I need you?” I asked.

  “I can always tell.”

  “You can?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “It’s the way you go about it. The casual questions, the light banter. Small talk isn’t your specialty. Let’s just leave it at that,” he said, leaning close so I could hear.

  Just then, a patron sidled up to me and cupped his hand against my backside. Before I knew what had happened, Carlos had pounced on the guy and had his hands behind him in a half nelson, with Carlos’s knee jabbing into the poor slob’s back. The guy’s face was kissing the nightclub floor.

  “That’s not how it works!” Carlos yelled. Before a crowd could form, he hoisted the guy up onto his feet. Andre appeared out of nowhere, and the two of them escorted the man to the exit before more than a few other patrons noticed the scene. Very professional.

  When he returned, he had a stern look on his face.

  “My hero,” I gushed, flitting my eyelashes.

  He finally cracked a smile. “That guy is bad news. He’s been warned before. No touching. How hard is that to understand?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose some men simply cannot resist the urge when they see a rear end like mine.”

  “Now you’re talking nonsense,” he said, though I know he didn’t mean it. I had succumbed to Carlos’s charms one night a few months earlier, and he had not been shy about using his hands.

  “You’re coming with, right? Get Sarah’s address, and we’ll go pay her a visit.”

  He looked at me cockeyed. “It’s after two in the morning.”

  I feigned shock. “She’s a stripper, Carlos. She’ll be up.”

  “And you think I can just snap my fingers and get any employee’s home address, just like that?” He folded his arms across his chest again, his traditional sign of defiance.

  “You must know someone in here who knows where she lives. You know more people than I do.”

  He let out a fake sigh. “Fine. Just give me a minute.” He looked around the club and then stalked off into a back room, leaving me standing in the middle of the club. In my heyday it would have taken exactly two seconds before some guy approached me and asked for a lap dance. After Carlos left, I began silently ticking off the seconds in my head. One…two…three…four…

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice behind me.

  Phew. I’ve still got it.

  “Yes?” I asked, turning around.

  “I think you dropped this,” he said, holding a small glossy piece of paper up for me to inspect. It was an ad for an escort service.

  I examined it, but it clearly wasn’t mine. “Nope, not mine,” I said. Jerk.

  Apparently I didn’t still have it, at least not that night. After I could no longer stand the awkwardness anymore, I eased myself over to the wall to avoid looking too pathetic. Finally Carlos returned, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  “Get me out of here,” I said.

  “She’s close by,” he announced. “I assume I’m driving?”

  I nodded. “You can bill me for the gas.”

  “Don’t forget the mileage. Each mile depreciates the value of a car by—”

  “Carlos!” I screeched. “I’m kind of not in the mood right now.”

  He chuckled and then leaned down to my ear. “Baby, you’re never in the mood,” he said. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my neck. I elbowed him softly in the gut, even though his attentions were not entirely unwelcome, especially at that moment.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” I stammered, flustered.

  He nodded somberly as he followed me to the entrance of the dressing room where he waited for me while I changed into something appropriate, which that evening meant yoga pants and a red pullover.

  When I emerged, we made our way to the employee exit in back where Carlos’s black Mustang was parked.

  “So where does she live?” I asked.

  “East of the Strip,” he said. “Kind of by the airport.”

  I crinkled my nose involuntarily. “That’s not the nicest of neighborhoods,” I observed. We pulled out of the parking lot and soon found ourselves at a stoplight. Carlos turned to face me.

  “Hey,” he said, “people gotta live somewhere.”

  A light bulb went off in my head. Carlos owned rental property around there, so I should probably keep my mouth shut. We pulled out and headed south on the Strip, which was still busy with cars and taxis at that hour.

  “You’re in some kind of mood,” he said.

  Was it that obvious? “No I’m not. Just a little tired.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I saw you standing there against the wall inside the club. You looked like you had just entered hell. Like you’d rather be anywhere on earth than there.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” I muttered. “It was just…” I trailed off, hoping the subject would die a peaceful death.

  “Just what?”

  I found myself unable to control my mouth. “It’s just that I stood there for at least a full minute.”

  “And?”

  “And no one asked for a dance. Not a single person. And it was busy!” I said.

  He chuckled. “One day you’re cursing men because they want you to dance for them, and the next day you’re mad when they don’t ask. You’ve got to pick one!”

  I sighed. It must be easy for men, whose appearance had so little to do with how they were perceived. If you were rich or powerful, or even just funny, you could command a room, marry an actress, buy a yacht, or whatever you wanted. For a woman, though, and especially for a woman like me, looks were the whole enchilada. And my enchilada was getting squishy and less spicy by the month. Maybe because I ate too many enchiladas, I thought ruefully.

  We spent the rest of the trip in awkward silence. I sensed that Carlos wasn’t as clueless as he let on but that he preferred to treat the subject with light humor rather than engage with me in a deep discussion about my feelings. I can’t say I blamed him. What sensible man would want to have that conversation?

  He pulled the car into an alley behind a large rectangular block of apartments. Even in the dark of night, it was obviously a dated property, with visible cracks in the pavement and paint that had baked too long in the Nevada sun.

  “Maybe this is why she’s so eager to get all those kickbacks from getting people into the oil field investments,” I said. “She’s gotta want to get out of here.”

  Carlos sniffed. “It’s not without its charm. You’ve become too pampered, Raven. This is how regular people live. They don’t have a balcony overlooking the Strip with a gym and a pool in their building. Here, these people don’t see all the cracks, the crumbling roof, and the detached fire escape up there, which by the way is a major code violation. They see a place to be with their families.”

  He was right, I knew. I was too judgmental about appearances, probably as a result of working in such an appearance-based profession for so many years.

  “You’re right,” I said. �
��Which one’s hers?”

  “It’s 229, so I’m assuming that it’s up there on the second floor.” He pointed up at a walkway that connected all the apartments. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Let’s go.”

  Despite his little speech about how this was the kind of place where regular people lived, Carlos didn’t hesitate to lock his car, which emitted a little chirp when he pressed his key fob. We climbed the stairs and found apartment 229 near the stairway. Outside was a cheap wooden chair that looked like it had been borrowed from a kitchen set and a pair of ashtrays, one of which said Bud Light on it. Both were full of ashes and cigarette butts.

  “Does she smoke?” I whispered.

  “I doubt it,” Carlos said. “I’d have smelled it on her.”

  “No doubt,” I said, giving him a friendly push. “One of those cigarette butts is still smoldering,” I said.

  There was a dim sliver of light emanating from underneath the door, but the window curtains were drawn shut, so we couldn’t tell if anyone was awake.

  “TV’s not on,” Carlos observed.

  I was pondering what to do next. I had been cocky about simply ringing her doorbell at three in the morning as though it was no big deal, but out here in the quiet and dark of night, it seemed a little odd.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Carlos whispered.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a woman staring up at us curiously from the parking lot below.

  “Kiss me,” I said, moving close to him. He instinctively knew what to do, and his embrace was firm. I didn’t protest when his hand inevitably found its way down my back. After a few seconds, I gently pushed him away.

  He was looking at me with a quizzical expression that I took as a mixture of WTF and Can we do that again?

  I nodded discretely down to the parking lot where the woman had swiftly occupied herself with something other than watching the two of us.

  “She was staring at us,” I said. “I didn’t want her seeing us lurking out here. Nice of you to play along,” I muttered.

  Carlos flashed a toothy grin at me. “Anytime, boss. And I don’t even charge extra for those kinds of, uh, services.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “So you still think it’s weird to show up like this in the middle of the night?”

  He nodded. “Even more so now. We’ll wake the neighbors, if nothing else. Why not just give her a call tomorrow or something?”

  He had a good point. I was getting cold feet, and I remembered what I had told myself earlier: asking lots of questions could make people nervous, and that could cause a run on our investment with everyone wanting her money at the same time. If there was any hope of getting my money back, I needed to tread very lightly. Showing up at three in the morning was the opposite of that.

  “Okay, you win,” I began to say, but before I could finish my sentence, Sarah’s door opened abruptly, and the sounds of human voices pierced the night. They were low voices tinged with laughter, as though you could hear the people smiling while they talked. I sprung backwards and slunk back to the stairwell. Carlos was kind of trapped, being just a few feet from Sarah’s door. Without missing a beat, he dug into his pocket and whipped out his smartphone, pretending to be looking something up.

  Not that the pair noticed. The man was sneaking in one last grope of the woman who I presumed to be Sarah. Carlos and I exchanged looks, and I made a shooing motion with my hands. In response he took a few steps back and then casually began walking in the other direction down the walkway. When I sensed that the lovers were about to remove themselves from their embrace, I tucked my head back behind the corner and crept silently down the stairs, in the opposite direction from Carlos. I just hoped that the nosey woman had turned in for the night.

  I found my way down to the parking lot and then turned into the open gate allowing access to the next apartment block, an equally dingy and depressing building no different from the first one, except for the presence of a pair of stray cats who mewed at me in a challenging tone.

  I turned around. From here I could capture a glance of anyone going down the stairs, but at this angle it would be unlikely for any such person to look in my direction. I waited.

  It took longer than I’d imagined. Maybe they had lingered together longer, or maybe the guy had enjoyed another cigarette outside, but it was a good five minutes before I heard the gentle clang of footsteps on the metal stairway. I eased back a few inches and watched the opening. Again, whoever it was was taking his time, in no hurry whatsoever. Finally, I saw his feet and then his legs as he descended the steps. But as luck would have it, he entered into a shadow just as he turned to face the parking lot, so I couldn’t quite make him out. The fact that he was wearing a baseball cap didn’t help, either.

  I waited a few seconds and then eased out of my hiding spot and slowly traced the man’s path to the parking lot. I spotted Carlos on the far end, lingering casually against a post, but the mystery man had vanished.

  I threw up my hands. Across the lot, Carlos jerked his head to my left. I looked at him quizzically, and then he pointed discretely with his hand in the same direction. Before I turned to see what he was pointing at, I heard it: the start of an engine. Triangulating to the sound, I spotted it as it eased out of a spot just forty feet from me.

  Huh, I thought, backpedaling around the corner. It was a BMW. A red one. Wasn’t that the same car Aaron had been driving? The car registered to one Mrs. Vandenhoovel? I listened to it pull away, its engine revving as it exited the lot onto Salton Street.

  Carlos and I met up at his car.

  “Close one,” he said, pressing the key fob.

  “Let’s follow him,” I whispered, opening the car door.

  He got behind the wheel. “We have no idea which way he went.”

  “It’s a red BMW at three in the morning. Too hard for you?” I knew he was a sucker for any challenge to his ego.

  He sighed and fired up the car.

  He pulled out and instinctively turned to the left, probably to head up to Koval Lane, the busiest street in the area. I kept my mouth shut (a minor miracle), interested to see if Carlos and I would make the same guesses trying to track the car down.

  That didn’t last long. Carlos turned left onto Koval Lane, where I would have gone right. Left took us towards the airport and not much else, while the rest of the city was north, off to the right. Carlos gunned the engine, trying to make up time, but there were no BMWs in our field of vision, much less red ones.

  “Well, that was fun,” I said. We were stopped at a light on Tropicana Avenue. “Call Guinness. World’s shortest car chase.”

  He smiled. “It was a fifty-fifty guess.”

  Biologically unable to keep my mouth shut, I challenged him. “There’s nothing over this way, though. Most of the city is in the other direction.” I pointed my thumb backwards for effect.

  He shrugged. “It was a long shot, Raven. Did you get the plates at least?”

  Crap. The familiarity of the red BMW had distracted me so much that I’d never thought to check the tag to make sure it was even the same car. Carlos picked up on my silence.

  “Sherlock Frickin’ Holmes,” he said, shaking his head. It was a fair point, a zing I’d brought on myself by questioning his decision to make a left turn.

  “How many red Beamers you figure are zipping around this town?” I asked.

  “Can’t be more than a few thousand,” he said, flashing his teeth. He was enjoying this a little too much.

  “Well, it’s no big deal, really,” I said, not even convincing myself. “It doesn’t even prove anything. If it was Aaron himself, so what? He’s sleeping with a stripper. It would explain why she’s so hot to sell these investments to everyone else.”

  “I think you have to assume it was him,” Carlos said. “They know each other, and she’s working for him. It wouldn’t be the first time a stripper slept with a client at the club. It doesn’t really matter much, does it?”

  “
You’re partly right. Either the thing’s a scam, or it’s not,” I conceded, “and whether Sarah is sleeping with Aaron really doesn’t change that fact. But it sure would be nice to know,” I added.

  “How come?”

  I thought for a second. “Partly because it could mean Sarah’s in on the whole thing. If she’s tight with Aaron, and they’re running this thing together, then I can’t just go asking her all kinds of questions about it.”

  “That would be awkward,” he allowed.

  The light changed. Carlos waited until the intersection was clear and then made the most illegal U-turn I’ve ever seen, right in the middle of a three-way intersection.

  “Nice,” I said, impressed.

  Carlos was silent for a minute as we made our way back towards the club, where my car was parked. “If this guy likes sleeping with strippers, you think maybe he was sleeping with Miranda?”

  I looked out the window, a touch embarrassed. Miranda, who’d been missing less than a week, hadn’t even factored into my analysis.

  “I can ask Kayla,” I said. “But she didn’t mention anything like that. Anyway, we still don’t even know if Miranda was killed. The cops are dragging their feet.”

  “That’s what cops do,” Carlos muttered. “They’re city workers.”

  “You think Sarah’s in danger herself?” I asked, suddenly concerned.

  “No way to know. They seemed pretty close up there. All that giggling and grabbing. Disgusting,” he said. “If that was Aaron, I don’t see him offing Sarah. At least not right now. He’s got too much…use for her at the moment.”

  I nodded. It was always interesting to get a man’s perspective. Things could be so clear when viewed through their eyes.

  Carlos dropped me off, and I drove home, swearing to myself that I would enjoy a sensible dinner and possibly a bottle of something bubbly. I imagined that the odds were against me, probably nine or ten to one, but somehow I managed to get by on a Cobb salad and half a bottle of Mumm, my favorite California sparkling wine. Sleep, for once, came easily.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sleep had come easily but had vanished with even more haste. I’d had a nightmare about Miranda. In my dream she was still alive, frolicking around with Kayla, with both of them in some sort of Bizarro World fashion show. They were walking down an otherwise empty runway as they displayed their latest couture handbags, pausing at the end of the aisle to strike a pose, and then returning into a mist-filled, invisible back room, only to return with still more handbags to show off. The dream was in black and white, except for the handbags which were ostentatiously eye-popping colors like chartreuse and fluorescent orange. I was the only person at the fashion show, seated alone on a giant beanbag, and I kept rubbing my eyes to shield them from the bright lights emanating from the purses.