by Susan Fleet
He said he would. Then we got in his car and went out for a beer.
Gabe looked sad, but I think he’d always known that I would leave Pecos someday. When I asked how his courses were going, he shrugged, like that wasn’t something he wanted to talk about right now.
When we went out to his car, I hugged him. “I love you, Gabe.”
“I love you too, Nat. I’ll miss you.”
His voice was husky and his eyes were wet. Mine were, too.
“We’ll always be best friends,” I said. "I'll email you.”
Gabe nodded, but I could tell he was working hard not to cry.
He didn’t ask where I was going. And he didn’t ask about Randy.
The next day I got on a Greyhound bus bound for New York City.
_____
1996 1997
Two weeks after I got off the bus I took a one-week class at an exotic dance studio: Pole Dancing, Exotic Dance and Lap Sinsations. When the class ended I asked the teacher (her name was Val) if I could take the Professional Program. I said I was running out of money and I needed a job.
Val put her arm around me and said, “Honey, you are gonna be HOT.”
Like we were girlfriends. I was amazed. I’d never had a girlfriend. The next day Val took me shopping. I bought two pairs of 5-inch stiletto heels and a bunch of glittery pasties and G-strings and took the Intensive Professional Course. My bra size was 36-D now, but my breasts were small compared to some of the girls. When I mentioned this to Val, she winked and said, “Honey, it’s what you do with ‘em that counts.”
At the end of August she helped me get a job at an entry-level club. “Not a dive," she said, "a club where you can get experience and make decent money.”
And did I need money. I was renting a room at a boarding house and my savings were almost gone. I auditioned for the manager of Cheetahs, a club in Manhattan near a subway stop, and got a job dancing topless from three to seven. After my dinner break I danced from nine until two a.m. I called it dancing in the dark.
Dancing topless in front of strange men didn't bother me. I was proud of my body. It was strong and supple, and my legs were slim and muscular from taekwondo. My long hair was an asset, too. I draped it over my breasts to make my strip sexier. The tips were good: lots of dollar bills, fives for a good dance, ten for a lap dance.
Val warned me never to go home with a client. I think she worried because I was young. Val was twenty-eight. I was eighteen, but I told her I was twenty-one. She also warned me not to get into drugs. As if I would. I had to stay healthy and strong and focused. Mom had been waiting eight years for me to avenge her. Every October on the anniversary I did my Veneration of Elders ritual. I'd light an incense stick and sit in front of Mom’s picture and chant my taekwondo oath: I shall be a champion of justice and freedom.
Then I'd promise Mom that I'd find her killer and punish him.
I sent Gabe an email from an Internet Café to let him know I was okay. I didn’t say where I was or what I was doing. At the end I wrote: I LOVE U, IRS. Our private joke. My birthday is April 15th, tax day. I wondered if he'd finished designing his videogame. I missed Gabe a lot.
The boarding house where I lived had a kitchen, but it stank of stale food so I ate at a cafeteria two blocks away. That’s how I met Darren. One Sunday it was crowded and he asked to sit at my table and we got talking. We started meeting for breakfast every day. Darren was an actor, but he didn't get many acting jobs. To support himself, he modeled for clothes catalogs. He showed me his page in a Sears catalog. He had dirty-blond hair and an average face, but he looked great in a suit. I don't know if he was a good actor or not, but he took a lot of auditions. The second week he asked me out to a movie.
I liked him. Not as much as Gabe, but he was fun to talk to, so I went. Darren loved foreign movies. We saw The Full Monty. It was hilarious; a bunch of unemployed Brits turned themselves into male strippers. Afterwards we ate pastrami sandwiches at a deli, and I told Darren I worked at a strip club. He didn’t seem shocked. “We do what we gotta do to survive,” he said.
I was thrilled when Dennis Franz won an Emmy for N.Y.P.D. Blue. He's great. He takes no shit from anyone. That's what Gabe said about me: You take no shit from anyone, Natalie.
In October Darren invited me to his apartment. I knew what that meant, but I was eighteen and tired of being a virgin. I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, I knew how it worked, but Mom never got a chance to talk to me about sex. I still missed her terribly. I couldn't tell her about Gabe or Darren, couldn't ask her advice about how to dress. Or what to do when I was about to lose my virginity. I figured I'd just close my eyes and endure it, but Darren was gentle and considerate. He seemed surprised that I was a virgin but didn’t question me about it.
His apartment was tiny, but it didn’t stink of food. The next time I went there I asked how much the rent was. When Darren told me, I mentally divided it in half to see if I could afford it. I could, but I wanted him to suggest it. Six weeks later I moved in. It worked out great. Darren was cheerful and affectionate and very clean. He didn't leave hairs in the bathroom sink and he loved movies. On Thanksgiving we went to see LA Confidential. Kim Basinger played a call girl and two cops fell in love with her. I wondered if any of Mom’s customers had fallen in love with her.
I also wondered if anyone would ever fall in love with me.
Darren was nice, but I wasn’t in love with him. When we saw France Nuyen in Angry Café I didn’t tell Darren she was my idol. I didn’t want him asking about my heritage. Joan Jett was still my idol too. After I got the job at Cheetahs I bought a Walkman so I could listen to her CDs.
One night in April I was partying outside the Cheetah's employee entrance with three other dancers. They'd bought me a cake to celebrate my birthday. They thought I was twenty-two, but I'd just turned nineteen. Alexa, another dancer, brought a customer outside. Some men take the girls outside to ask them for extras. But I wasn't going to give blowjobs in an alley or get in some guy’s car, not even if he flashed fifties and hundreds. It's too dangerous.
That night, Alexia went with this customer. I don’t remember what he looked like. I never noticed what they looked like.
This wasn't about looks, it was about money.
The next day the cops found Alexia's body in the East River. Val called my cell that morning, hysterical, and warned me not to go back to Cheetahs. She said the cops would find out Alexia worked there and question all the dancers. She knew a club with better clientele. She told me to call the manager and say she’d recommended me. That’s how I wound up working at the Platinum Plus Gentlemen’s Club.
It was way better than Cheetahs. I worked the lunch crowd from eleven to two, took a long break and danced from seven to midnight. That was great. I got home earlier and got up earlier. During my break I worked out at a taekwondo studio to make sure I didn't lose any of my moves.
I also started looking for my father. He and Mom had met in New York so I thought he might still live here. One day I went to a community center in an area where many Asian-Americans lived and told a lady I was looking for a Vietnamese man named Thu Phan. She gave me directions to a church where a Korean group met. Useless. Some people think all Asians are alike.
I looked in the phone book and found four numbers listed for Phan. But no Thu Phan, not even a T. Phan. When I called the numbers, no one spoke English. I couldn’t think of another way to find my father so I stopped looking. That made me sad. I wondered if I would ever meet him.
But not knowing who murdered my mother made me feel even worse.
One day I found an ad in the Yellow Pages for Private Investigators. It said: Discreet Inquiries. I was hoping to hire a PI to go to New Orleans and find out if the police had any suspects. I dialed the number and right away this gruff voice said: "Scanlon Investigations, can I help you?"
Startled, I blurted, "I'm trying to find the person that murdered Jeannette Brixton."
After a pause the voice said,
"When and where was she murdered?"
"New Orleans, in 1988. They never found the killer, but they must have had suspects and I need to find out who they were."
"And you want me to find them?"
"No. I don't want you to find them. I want you to find out their names." My heart was thumping like mad.
"Oh. Okay, I'll give it a shot, but it's gonna cost you."
"How much?"
"First off, there's my daily rate, which isn't cheap. I gotta fly to New Orleans and bribe a cop to get me the file. That might cost you a grand, maybe two. And I got my plane fare and living expenses ..."
As his voice droned on I started to feel sick.
"Bottom line," said the gruff voice, "it might cost you four or five grand. I'll need three grand up front."
Three thousand dollars. Most of my clients at Platinum Plus were stockbrokers and lawyers, and the tips were great, but living in New York was expensive. After working there three months I had saved four hundred dollars. It would take me years to save three thousand.
Tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I closed my cell and put my head down on the kitchen table and cried.
How could I avenge Mom if I didn't know who killed her?
I made myself a cup of green tea, but it didn't make me feel any better.
I got out Mom's picture and thought about the day I brought home my fourth-grade report card. I thought it was pretty good. All A's except for the B in math. But Mom said, "How come you got a B in Math?"
"It's the word problems. They're hard. Who cares where two cars meet up if one starts from Boston and the other one from San Francisco, and they tell you how fast they're going? It's stupid."
Mom gave me one of her stern looks, the kind that made her green eyes extra-green. "Natalie, you're a smart girl. Don't be a quitter. Bring the math workbooks home and I'll help you with them after school." So Mom helped me, and she was right. The word problems weren't really that hard.
On my next report card I got an A in Math, too.
I kissed Mom's picture and decided I would never give up.
I wasn't a quitter. No matter what it took, no matter how long it took, I would find Mom's killer and punish him.
_____
The second week of December a distinguished-looking man in a charcoal pinstriped suit came in the club and asked me to sit at his table. “You are a wonderful dancer. Have you studied karate?”
I just about fell off my chair. Judging by his eyes, he was part Asian, but I couldn’t tell where his ancestors were from. When I told him about the taekwondo, he smiled. "I would like to hire you for my business. You are much too good to waste your talents in here. Compared to the other dancers, you stand out like a red flare against the night sky. What is your name?”
“Lorelei,” I said. That was my dancer name.
He shook his head. “No, what is your real name?"
I was afraid to tell him. Even Val and Darren didn't know my real name. Darren’s name was on the apartment lease and I paid cash for everything, including my new Social Security number and the fake ID I'd bought from the guy at the pay-as-you-go cell phone store. I didn't want anyone to be able to trace me through my tax returns and figure out where Natalie Brixton was.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He smiled and gave me his card. “Just call me Lin. My last name is hard to pronounce.”
He was right. His last name was twelve letters long with only one vowel.
“Are you hiding from someone? Are you in trouble with the police?”
I thought about Randy. But the cops never charged me so that didn’t count. “No. I just don’t like to give my real name.”
“As you wish, Lorelei. But you are too intelligent for this mindless dancing. Most of these men would like to have sex with you. But what they really want is a girlfriend, someone to listen to their problems and make them feel important. And maybe have sex, maybe not. The men who patronize my business are quite wealthy. For one hour of your time they would pay me two-thousand dollars.”
My mouth fell open. $2,000 an hour? It took me a month to make that much. “My name is May Hargrove," I said. "How soon can I start?”
Lin laughed. He seemed cultured and intelligent, and my instinct said to trust him. I don’t know why. Sometimes I just went with my gut.
“Do you by chance speak any language besides English?” he asked.
“I speak French pretty well.”
His eyes went wide like he’d just won the Powerball.
"Wonderful. How would you like to go to Paris?”
CHAPTER 10
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 New Orleans
“Natalie Brixton.” Frank set the Pecos High School yearbook on Vobitch's desk and pointed to a photograph. He'd already told Vobitch what he'd learned from Tex Conroy’s mother, Randy Brixton’s mother and sister, and Natalie Brixton’s friend Gabriel Rojas.
After studying the photo for several seconds, Vobitch nodded, smiling now. “I like it. Looks like we know who the woman in the security video is. Her cousin fell off a cliff, and she was the only witness. So. Did he fall or was he pushed?”
“The cops questioned her and let her go.”
“She knew Conroy, maybe she knew Peterson, too. Ballistics report says the bullets that killed Conroy and Peterson came from the same gun.”
“But that doesn’t prove she shot them. And don't forget the fire escape. Maybe the shooter got in the room while Peterson was in the bar.”
“And hid where? Don’t tell me the bathroom. Most guys have a drink in a bar, first thing they do when they get to the room is take a leak. Frank, Spiderman didn't climb up the fire escape to a room on the sixth floor."
"Maybe Spiderman was one floor down in Room 535.”
“Fuck!" Vobitch raked stubby fingers through his silvery hair. "The techs lifted prints off the window casing, some Peterson’s, some not. Coulda been the cleaning lady for all we know. I think the woman's the shooter, but we better find out who rented rooms with access to the fire escape that night.”
“If you think Natalie's the shooter, what’s her motive?”
"Looked like a hooker to me." Vobitch glanced at a 5-inch mini-TV on the file cabinet beside his desk. A commercial was on with the sound muted. "We already know Peterson couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Maybe she had a peashooter .38 Special in that fancy little purse she was carrying. Maybe Peterson asked her to do something she didn’t like, so she popped him.”
“That’s one possibility. But Peterson was in debt. Maybe he borrowed money from a loan shark and didn’t pay—”
“Frank. Be serious. He didn’t pay the vig, those guys wouldn’t send a woman to take him out.”
“Okay. But if you like the hit theory, we need motive.”
“Maybe she killed him at someone else's behest.”
“Behest,” he said, half-smiling.
Vobitch jutted his jaw. “Yeah, behest. You think I don’t know what it means?” Glaring at him. “You think I’m from Texas or some fuckin thing?”
They both cracked up. Vobitch often used sarcasm to burn off stress. And the media drumbeat was louder now than when he left for Pecos.
“Okay,” he said, “but if the woman was a hired gun, who hired her?”
“I’d start with the wife. Nine times out of ten the spouse is the killer.”
“I can’t picture Corinne Peterson hiring a hitter. Hell, she wouldn’t know where to find one.”
Vobitch grinned. “I know a certain family in this town she could call . . .”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, knowing the certain family his boss referred to was Italian. Vobitch loved jiving him about his heritage. He dished it right back, busting Vobitch about Jewish guys who married beautiful black women, like his elegant ballet-dancer wife.
The phone rang. Vobitch glanced at it and made a face. “Gotta take this one. I give the mucky-mucks my hotline number so I know to answer it. The rest get my regular number, have to leave a
voicemail message.” He picked up, barked his name and listened silently.
Restless with energy, Frank rose and paced the room. It was half the size of the homicide office. The window behind the desk looked down on the area where the NOPD motorcycles parked. The desk and two visitor chairs took up half the space. File cabinets lined the pale green walls. Above a two-drawer cabinet was a framed photograph: Vobitch in his NYPD uniform shaking hands with the mayor of New York. Frank smiled, recalling the day they'd met five years ago.
“We’ll get along fine, Renzi," Vobitch had said. "I’m a New York Jew, you’re a Boston wop. The good ol' boys down here hate us Yankees. They're still fighting the Civil War. But we know who won.”
Since then they'd had a few disagreements, but two years ago when he'd shot and killed a deranged stalker, Vobitch had backed him to the hilt.
Vobitch slammed down the phone. “Fuckin asshole.”
He returned to his chair. “Who was it? Donald Trump?”
“Worse. The DA. Roger kiss-my-ass Demaris." Vobitch drew a finger across his throat. "While you were gone, Miller talked to Peterson's wife, asked if the name Tex Conroy rang any bells. She said no, but I’m not writing her off as a suspect. She's pissed at hubby, hired the woman to take care of it. These days you can get anything on the Internet, including a hitter.”
“Maybe she hired Conroy to set up the hit. The woman kills Peterson, gets worried that Tex will blab and pops him, too.”
“Frank, everything we got points to Natalie Brixton. She knew Conroy” Vobitch glanced at the TV, grabbed the clicker and sound blared from the TV set. The weather channel.
He’d forgotten about the hurricane churning into the Gulf, a common occurrence in the summer. Hurricane Gail had been upgraded to a Category 3 and it’s projected path included New Orleans. When the report ended, Vobitch hit the mute button and looked at him expectantly.
“Maybe she's Peterson's mistress," Frank said. "Maybe she asked him to get a divorce and he said no.”
