The Enemy Inside

by Steve Martini

  Suddenly, a shadow from the other side of the car. Herman taps on the window. I reach over and unlock the door. He slips into the passenger seat and closes the door behind him.

  “The place is upstairs.” Herman points down the street toward a line of buildings on the other side. “It’s hopping,” he says. He’s already checked it out. “Place is like an old speakeasy. You don’t see or hear a thing ’til you get inside. Then they got a subwoofer give you a nosebleed,” he says.

  “Late on a weekday in the afternoon I can’t imagine they’d be doing that much business.”

  “Guess again,” says Herman. “Lotta pent-up libido in this town. Not what it used to be when the navy was young.” Herman is right. San Diego used to be a military town, mostly navy and marines. At one time, I am told, the shore patrol combed the bars and clubs downtown like they owned them. But that was decades past. Whoever is running Darkstone’s Bar and Grill is probably paying somebody to look the other way.

  “Did you have any trouble getting in?” I ask.

  Herman shook his head. “As long as you pay the cover, they open the door,” he says. “Top of the stairs they got a steel door thick as a safe, speaker system, and a camera. You talk nice, they let you in. Inside’s like an air lock. Once the door closes, they own you. They frisk you with a metal wand, check your ID, look you up and down and see if they smell a cop. If not, you pay and they let you in.”

  “How much?”

  “That’s the rub,” says Herman. “A hundred bills.”

  I look at him in disbelief.

  “They take a credit card,” he says. “I guess they figure, you can pay, you must be a gentleman. You get two drinks and you can talk to the girls. Anything more, the sky’s gonna be the limit,” he says. “I’m only guessin’, of course.” He smiles at me as he says it.

  “You’re sure she works there?” I am talking about the girl we know as Ben, the one who invited Alex Ives to the party and the fiery crash afterward that he can’t remember.

  “Yeah. I talked to one of the girls who works there, showed her the picture I got from the tattoo shop owner, and the gal ID’ed her. Says her name is Crystal. Stage name, of course. None of them use their real names at work. Said Crystal works the evening shift, four to whenever things go slack. They try to catch the guys going home from work. Noon until two or three in the afternoon, and then four thirty until closing.”

  I look at my watch. It’s twenty past four. “She should be there,” I say.

  “Give her a few more minutes,” says Herman. “If the shift starts at four thirty, she’s probably backstage getting ready. Don’t wanna appear too anxious. I already rented a room at the hotel down the street.” He points.

  I see the blue neon sign.

  “Room number seven.” He hands me the key. “We need a quiet place to get her to talk.”

  I take his lead on this. Herman is streetwise. He certainly has more experience in this realm than I do. We sit in the car.

  “We need to think this out. What we’re going to do,” I say. “Why don’t you approach her, figure out how to get her to the room. Once she’s inside we can both talk to her.”

  “She’s more likely to go with you. Oversize black guy with a shiny shaved dome is more likely to put her on edge.”

  “Statistics show that most serial killers are middle-aged white guys.”

  “Be that as it may,” says Herman. “You keep the key. We approach her inside the club, start talking about Ives and the accident, she’s liable to wanna go to the ladies’ room, powder her nose,” says Herman, “and disappear. That’s if things go well.”

  Herman gives me a briefing on what the place looks like inside, dark with a lot of mirrors, colored smoke, and laser lights. Cocktail tables and booths with a bar along the far wall. An elevated stage with a pole out front for dancing.

  “I didn’t see any muscle. Nothing at the door. But you can be sure there’ll be some,” he says. “Chances are if there are problems they won’t be calling the cops.”

  “You’re saying a frontal assault is not the height of prudence.”

  “I don’t know about Prudence, whoever she is, but if the one we know as Ben makes a stink it could get damn ugly,” says Herman. “We’ll be up to our armpits in bulging bouncers, or worse, the business end of a sawed-off shotgun.”

  Herman is thinking we need to get her on neutral turf before we start to talk about the business at hand, and then we pay her for the information, her time and trouble. He’s suggesting we go in separately so they don’t know we’re together. Sit at separate tables. That way we don’t overwhelm her.

  “Makes sense. One thing bothers me, though,” I tell him. “We’re assuming that the minute we tell the cops that we have a witness who can put him at the party and that she was paid to do it, they’ll drop the charges on Ives.”

  “It’s what we’re hoping,” says Herman. “Makes sense to me.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not a prosecutor. If they find out we paid the girl for the information, and they will find out, they’re going to say we paid her to lie. To give Alex an out. If they force us to trial on a reckless charge, vehicular manslaughter, I put her on the stand, the first thing the D.A.’s gonna ask is whether we gave her anything in return for her testimony. They’ll impeach the hell out of her. That and the fact we found her working in a strip club and I offered to hire her for sex to get her to the hotel. They’ll impeach both of us. Her testimony won’t be worth a damn and I’ll be wearing a scarlet letter branded across my forehead during closing argument.”

  “You’re the lawyer,” says Herman. “But what other alternative do we have?”

  Herman has me there. The cops have no evidence of drugs in Ives’s system, yet he can’t remember anything and he was clearly unconscious at the scene and for some time after. If we put our own medical expert on the stand to tell the jury what we already know, there is only one set of drugs we know of that causes memory loss like this and disappears from the bloodstream that fast—the date rape drugs. How are these normally used in criminal cases? Dropped into one drink, what Ives said he had, without the drinker’s knowledge. The police have no way to explain an accident that killed a prominent lawyer. We hand them the answer. It wasn’t a DUI. Our client was drugged against his will. Used as cover for a murder. That bumps it all up. A much bigger case for them. “Her testimony works. I just don’t like the idea that we’re paying her.”

  “You can ask her to testify out of the goodness of her heart,” he says, “but I doubt it’s gonna work.”

  He’s right. I look at my watch. “Let’s do it.”

  TEN

  OK, what do we have?”

  “Are you on a secure line?”

  “No. So let’s keep it cryptic.”

  “We have overlapping objects on the matrix. One of them in a vehicle outside. He was joined by someone else about six minutes ago. Right now the two of them are just sitting there. The girl is in the building.”

  “How close?”

  “Less than eighty meters.”

  The man gripped the tarnished eagle and moved his hand slowly over the smooth oxidized surface of the cane’s handle as he thought. “It could just be a coincidence,” he said.

  “Possible, but not likely.”

  The loose ends were multiplying. “Any idea who the other man is in the vehicle?”

  “We’re working on it. Nothing yet.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “We’re not sure. Depends when she leaves and where she goes. Assuming her usual ride, her boyfriend, we are four by four. Positive nav system is breachable.” In a word they were ready to go. “What do you want to do?”

  The Tarnished Eagle thought for a moment. “We sit tight and wait. Don’t do anything until you clear it here. If she exits the building, I want to know it. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “If either of them make any effort at contact, call me at this number. Do we have a cage over the
twitter, hers and his?”

  “Affirmative.”

  This meant that if either of them tried to contact the other by cell phone, the call would be picked up and recorded. There was no reason to believe that either of them had the other’s cell phone number, or that they had ever communicated or met. Still, how did they find her? It hit him like a bolt out of the blue. “If you have a cage up, you have his number?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is he on the grid now?”

  “Negative.”

  “Can you turn him on?”

  “Just a moment.” Several seconds passed. “Yes. We have him.”

  “Copy it. Everything. Even if it’s not clear, copy it all!”

  “Copying now.”

  “When you’re done, stream it through. You know the drill. And give me a transcript.”

  The ability to turn on a cell phone without the owner’s knowledge or consent was old technology. It had been used by the FBI to bring down members of the Genovese crime family more than a decade earlier. It was the reason heads of state do not carry cell phones and why they are often stripped from members of their entourage as well. It was a modern-day fact of life. If you carried a cell phone with a live battery, you were wired for sound, and anybody with the right hardware could listen in, not just to phone calls but to any face-to-face conversations as well. Anything within earshot of the phone could be recorded. Carrying a live cell phone was the electronic equivalent of wearing a bug.

  The place is everything Herman described and more. I am seated at a table in the middle of the room up nearly to my waist in purple smoke. This comes from a machine that heats glycol mixed with water, producing a thick vapor. It is blown like a ground-hugging fog over the stage until it spills down and piles up on the floor like bilious clouds of melted purple marshmallow. This is occasionally pierced by laser lights that scatter in the fog like bullets, every color of the rainbow.

  It is crowded. The pounding music vibrates off the walls, rattling the ice in my drink as I finger the tumbler on the table.

  Men are piled up against the bar at the other side of the room trying to get more libation, many of them rowdy, half gassed and working toward a full tank.

  So far I see no sign of the woman we know as Ben, Crystal to her friends here. Though with this mob it’s hard to tell. Every once in a while I glance at Herman, who is seated at one of the booths higher up against the back wall where he can get a more panoramic view while he keeps one eye on my table. He scans the room and shakes his head. He doesn’t see her either.

  Across the room a bunch of young guys in an overly festive mood seem to be vying for top honors, most obnoxious group in the house. I am guessing it’s an office party.

  One of them pulls his tie up around his head and wears it like a sweatband. Suddenly this becomes the craze. It is cloned among his followers until everyone has their tie draped down over their right ear like some new fraternal order. Who says people aren’t sheep?

  They compete with each other, ordering drinks, making lewd gestures, shouting until it reaches a crescendo in the contest to see who can become Emperor Odious. You could float a boat on the drinks they spill. The place seems to have a flexible definition of the term gentlemen. They are shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs just to be heard over the sound system. By morning, if they keep it up, one of them will be naked and the others will be missing their voice boxes. It is what passes for a good time among the young and stupid.

  I glance back at Herman. Still no sign.

  A few of the more sober types wait in ambush as the young women filter out from behind a curtain at the other side of the room.

  The sign above the curtain reads EMPLOYEES ONLY—out of bounds, sanctuary for the women if they fall into clutches and are able to make it that far.

  New customers keep coming through the door. I am surprised by the number of people already here, and it’s still early. A quarter to five and the place is two-thirds full. If things continue like this, by ten o’clock it will be a human press.

  A few of the men sitting at tables by themselves appear to be wallflowers. Though I suspect they might say the same thing about me. Herman clearly has more confidence in me than I do. In this scene, I exhibit the same shy reluctance I did in high school. It’s not my kind of place and I begin to wonder if I can pull it off, catch her interest long enough to get outside.

  Others appear to be regulars who have already staked claims. The girls cuddle up to them in the booths. One of them takes a seat on a guy’s lap, wearing a short tight skirt that leaves little to the imagination, and with no preliminaries, she starts to move to the gyrations of the music.

  There is a loud recorded drum roll from the PA system and a husky male voice announces: “Give a warm welcome to Carlotta, let’s hear it.” A few stuttering claps and a wolf whistle later, a girl with dark hair and a costume that is mostly a mirage from the designer’s memory enters the stage, leg first, through a slit in the curtain. She moves like a snake charmer, her feet and lower legs disappearing in the fog that spills from the stage. I wonder what the OSHA claim would look like if she sucks this crap into her lungs. Worse, I begin to wonder what my claim might be if I sit here much longer. That is when I see her.

  She enters the room through the curtain on the other side of the raised stage. There is no missing her. Even in the dim light with the fog and the disorientation from the laser lights, Ben stands out. Slender, petite, and with all the feline curves that nature designed for a sexual lure, to any guy with good vision, her form alone would be enough to stun sound judgment and put his libido on steroids. Your average caveman would have her by the hair dragging her back to his den before you could say “beat my time.” Two of the more rowdy guys from the party try to corral her. She sidesteps them and keeps going. Apparently she’s not into head ties.

  I stand up, wave my arms, and call the waiter over. He sees me but doesn’t move. I hold up some green, two crisp twenties to get his attention, and he skates toward me through the fog like a star in the Ice Capades. “That girl over there. I think her name is Crystal. I’d like to buy her a drink.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. A lovely girl. Good choice.” He says it like I’m ordering vintage wine as he snatches the twenties from my fingers.

  Before he can move, I see some guy on the other side of the stage grab her by the arm and start to hustle her off to his table. The only thing slowing him down is his staggering gait. I wonder if he’s with the wedding party. I look to the waiter. “It’s worth a hundred to you if you can get her away from him and over here,” I tell him.

  “Yes, sir. Let me see what I can do, sir.”

  “And open a tab for me.”

  “I will do that immediately.”

  “After you get the girl,” I tell him.

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” He is gone in a servile flash.

  I glance back at Herman. He gives me a shrug with one shoulder, then quickly nods toward the other side of the room. By the time I look back the waiter has arrived at her table. She is now seated as he whispers in her ear. Slowly she rises from her chair and looks my way. Before she can move, the drunk is up grabbing at her arm, haggling with the waiter. He reaches for his wallet. What started out as a well-laid plan is turning into a meat auction with the girl caught in the middle. The customer has hold of one of her arms, the waiter has the other, each of them pulling in a different direction as if she is a wishbone.

  I swing around to look at Herman, who turns both palms up as if to say, “What can we do?”

  The girl has a panicked look, embarrassed and at the same time scared. It’s a stalemate. She appears stuck in limbo. The waiter puts his free hand up against the customer’s chest and gently pushes until gravity takes hold. The drunk stumbles backward toward his chair, releasing her arm as he goes in order to protect himself as he falls. He lands in the chair. Before he can assemble his legs into a coherent force to rise once more, the waiter has his prey in tow and is head
ed back to my table. What a hundred bucks will do.

  “Ms. Crystal, this gentleman would like to buy you a drink.”

  I’m on my feet. “Please, join me. My name is Paul. Have a seat.” I pull the chair out for her and she settles gently onto it like a hummingbird on a perch. She is wearing a tight micro-mini dress that climbs precariously up her shapely thigh as she crosses one leg over the other.

  I have one eye on the drunk, who finally manages to get up. He is looking around on the floor as if maybe he’s dropped his wallet before he realizes it’s in his hand. He turns in a complete circle and very nearly returns to his chair before he remembers why he got up in the first place. He stands there staring at my table, a monument to drunk indignation, then takes a couple of tentative steps. From the look of it, his legs are not entirely sure they each have the same destination.

  “What would you like to drink?” The waiter looks first to her. He has excellent peripheral vision. He sees the man stumbling this way. Before she can speak, the waiter raises one hand and flashes a bright laser pointer toward the mirror behind the bar. He flashes it one more time and instantly two guys in black T-shirts, heavy-chested bouncers, come out from an area behind the bar. Like heat-seeking missiles they home in on the drunk staggering this way.

  The girl says something to the waiter, but I don’t hear it. I assume she’s ordered a drink. She may have ordered the club’s entire inventory of liquor for all I know. At the moment, my attention is drawn to the action on the other side of the room. The stumbling inebriate is scooped off his feet from behind. From the look of astonishment on his face, he seems to be questioning how it is that he can suddenly fly. He is carried like a stack of straw overhead and then soundlessly and within seconds disappears through a dark door that, for all I know, could lead to a coal bin on the other side of the room. For a moment I wonder if he might show up in Shanghai in a few months working cargo on some hobo-ridden, rusted-out freighter. I make a mental note not to find out.