by Stephen Frey
“What do you mean?”
“I stopped by the office today and all of a sudden she showed up. She works at Bedford too, but it’s Saturday. Why would she show up right after me on the weekend?”
“That’s not exactly—”
“I think I saw her in the parking lot of a store near my house a couple of nights ago too, and I could have sworn I saw her car go by my house this morning. But she doesn’t live anywhere near me.” I’ve got to get him to investigate her. Suddenly I’ve got a bad feeling about Mary.
“I can’t check anyone out based on that. Do you know—”
“She claims she was married to a real estate wheeler-dealer here in northern Virginia,” I continue. “A man named Jacob who she says left her two million dollars, a Jaguar, and a big house in McLean. She never told me his last name.” There’s no response from the other end of the line, and I’m worried I’ve lost the connection. “Reggie?”
“I’m here,” he says.
“She says the guy died last Christmas. He was older. In his sixties or seventies. He had kids who weren’t happy about him leaving her the money.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary Segal.”
No response.
“Does any of that sound familiar, Reggie? A northern Virginia real estate mogul dying last Christmas Eve?”
“No,” he says indifferently. “Augustus, you let me do the investigating.”
“Check her out, Reggie. Again, her name’s Mary Segal. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Augustus, but now you listen to me. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from Vincent Carlucci.”
I hesitate. “Why?”
“He’s organized crime.”
For a moment all sounds fade to nothing. This is Vincent he’s talking about. Someone I’ve known for more than twenty years. Reggie’s crazy. “Organized crime? That can’t be.”
“Believe me. He’s with the mob. He hangs with some very nasty characters.”
“How do you know?”
“Scott Snyder told me. He’s ex-FBI and he’s known about Vincent for some time.” Reggie pauses. “I believe you and Scott met this morning after you bought the cell phone you’re talking on right now. And the BMW you’re driving.”
I have to jerk the steering wheel to the left to avoid a slower car, and I glance down at the speedometer. I’m doing eighty. “You’re wrong about Vincent,” I say firmly, easing my foot off the accelerator.
“No, I’m not. Snyder called his buddies over at the Bureau, Augustus. Carlucci’s been under surveillance for the last few months. I’m not at liberty to tell you why, but if you’re smart, you’ll stay away from him.”
The money. The ten million dollars. I still haven’t met his investors.
“Call me tomorrow, Augustus,” Reggie says. “I want you to stay in very close communication with me from now on.”
“Why?” I ask shakily.
“I just do.”
Then he’s gone, the connection cut.
Twenty minutes later I ease to a stop in front of my house, walk up the path, and open the front door. For several moments I stand in the foyer in disbelief. The living room is a disaster area. Furniture is ripped apart and turned upside down, cabinets are turned over, and dishes and glasses lie shattered on the floor.
I stumble to the bedroom and find the same awful sight. The bed is a shambles, covers are on the floor, and the mattress is sliced down the middle. Clothes have been pulled from closet hangers and are tossed about. Dresser drawers lie overturned on the floor, contents strewn everywhere.
I move slowly into the room, dazed, and ease myself down onto the shredded mattress, allowing my face to fall into my hands. When I finally lift my head, I notice the half-dozen photographs spread out all around me on the bed. More horrible pictures of Melanie performing at the Two O’Clock Club.
CHAPTER 18
It’s Saturday night at the Two O’Clock Club and the place is in high gear. It’s packed with half-drunk men, their eyes fixed on the beautiful women performing up onstage or at the tables. Thursday night—the night Vincent brought Roger and me here—was tame by comparison. It was crowded, but not like this. Tonight there aren’t any empty seats around the stage and the smoke-filled bar is standing room only. The other night the men were reasonably well behaved. Tonight they’re rowdy, almost unruly, straining to stuff money into garter belts and shouting for more alcohol—and more skin.
Now I understand why Melanie had to “work late” more and more on weekends. It had nothing to do with “the load of new cases” she claimed Taylor had taken on, and everything to do with this target-rich environment. Money’s flowing like beer at a fraternity party, and money was what she wanted. Money and power.
Admission at the front door tonight was fifty bucks, which didn’t even include a complimentary drink or a lap dance, but I don’t care. I’m not here to get drunk or leer. I’m here to preserve a memory.
I make my way slowly along the bar through the tightly packed crowd of men watching the stage. They’re mesmerized by a dark-haired woman writhing against one of the shiny silver poles. She’s making them believe she’s actually enjoying herself, moving her hips faster and faster while she grabs the pole tightly with both hands and throws her head back, her expression a combination of intense sexual pleasure and excruciating pain as she grinds herself against the metal. The men around me are buying into her act completely, pointing at the stage and yelling to one another about how she couldn’t possibly be faking her pleasure. We’re so damn gullible, especially after a few drinks.
Suddenly there’s a commotion. The woman has dropped to all fours in front of a guy sitting close to the stage. She’s giving him a close-up view, intent upon getting paid. The guy stands up unsteadily, a drunken grin on his face as the crowd cheers him on, and the woman puts her hands on his shoulders and allows him to smell and briefly touch her. He looks back over his shoulders at his buddies and rolls his eyes as if he’s in heaven, then the woman slides one hand to his face and brings his eyes back to where she wants them.
It’s all over quickly. He shoves his hand into his pocket, pulls out a crumpled bill, and holds it up. With a move a magician would be proud of the woman slips the bill from his fingers. She keeps her eyes locked on his the whole time, and he never even realizes the money is gone. She stays in front of him a few seconds more, then moves on to her next victim after giving him a sly smile and a kiss on the cheek. When he looks at his hand, he can’t believe the money’s disappeared. I can see it in his face as he slowly blinks at his empty fingers.
The guy’s a sucker, like the idiot who pays retail at the factory’s back door. The woman probably whispered something seductive in his ear while she was draped all over him. Something about how beautiful she thought his eyes were and how she wanted to take him home, and, of course, he turned to putty in her hands because in his drunken state he actually believed her. He’ll wake up tomorrow morning with an empty wallet and wonder how he could have been so stupid. He’ll realize that there was never any chance she was coming home with him, and that the alcohol was in total control. Then he’ll come right back here again next weekend and do it all over again.
Once more I start moving through the crowd, excusing myself as I elbow people aside. Then there’s another commotion. The man who just lost his money has hauled himself up onstage and is crawling across it to where the woman’s putting on another intimate show. The guy’s so boozed up he can’t stand seeing his prize perform for someone else. He can’t handle the thought that she could turn her back on him so easily, and he’s going to do something about it. In a flash three huge security guards scoop him up and haul him away to a loud cheer from the crowd. His visit to the Two O’Clock Club is over.
If he’s got anything left in his wallet, the bouncers are doing him a favor. If he had stayed much longer, he’d have lost everything.
Finally I make it to the far end of the bar, near the VIP e
ntrance that Vincent brought me through Thursday night. Scantily clad waitresses breeze past me on their way to deliver drinks to men in the Champagne Room down the corridor, and I’m careful to stay out of their way while I inspect the wall of photographs, searching for the one of Melanie.
I decided after I found the photos of Melanie in my house this afternoon that I couldn’t allow that picture to stay on the wall for other men to gape at. Despite everything Melanie did to me, I can’t have her memorialized this way, I think to myself as I finally locate the photograph. She’ll always be the innocent girl I first laid eyes on in that high school hallway so many years ago. Not a woman who stripped for money.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?”
It’s one of those huge bouncer guys who nodded so respectfully to Vincent Thursday night. He’s dressed all in black again tonight, but he’s lost the sunglasses. “Nothing.” Actually, I was trying to pry the picture from the wall, but not surprisingly, it’s bolted on tightly in case of someone like me. “This woman is amazing,” I say, pointing at Melanie, trying to distract the guy from the fact that I was trying to take the picture. “But I haven’t seen her in here tonight.”
The bouncer sidles over to me, a toothpick protruding from his mouth. He glances at the picture. “And you won’t,” he says. “She moved away from the area a month ago.”
“Oh?”
“She was incredibly popular,” he says. “Somebody told me her real name was Melanie, but her stage name was the Vamp. She did this routine every once in a while. When she did, the place would go wild.”
I look over at him. “A routine?” There I go again, asking a question I probably don’t want the answer to.
He smiles and tugs at the collar of his shirt like it’s suddenly become too tight. “She had this soft-core bondage act. She’d have another girl tie her to a pole on stage, or tie her hands together in front of her and lead her out into the audience. It was nothing real bad because we don’t allow that kind of stuff to go on here at the Two O’Clock Club,” he says, like he’s proud to be associated with such an upstanding place. “But, man, it drove the guys crazy. She made some serious cash with that act.”
I swallow hard, remembering the purple bruises on Melanie’s wrists the night she asked me for a divorce. Remembering Reggie’s comment about the marks on her wrists and ankles the coroner had identified. How the coroner was confident that the marks had been inflicted well before her murder. How Reggie tried to dig into the darkest corners of our most private affairs during the first interview at Bedford.
A chill crawls up my spine. Melanie always knew how to bring out the animal in me. It was her special gift, and I always thought I was the only one who would ever get to enjoy it. But I was wrong, and I can understand why she would want to come here so much. Sure she wanted the money, but there was more to it than that. Much more.
“Have you ever been to the Champagne Room?” the bouncer asks over the music, gesturing down the corridor after a waitress who just flashed past with a tray full of drinks.
“No, I don’t—”
“Of course, if you really want to have some fun, you’ve got to try the Kitten Closet all the way down at the end of the hall.”
“The what?”
“The Kitten Closet,” he says. “That’s where we keep the hottest girls at the Two O’Clock Club. They never actually come out onstage. It’ll cost you two hundred bucks to go in,” he says, leaning close and grinning, “but it’s worth every penny.”
A few minutes later one of the cocktail waitresses leads me down the corridor toward the Kitten Closet. As we move past the Champagne Room I try to peer inside, but the double doors are tightly closed. Anyway, the bouncer assured me that the Kitten Closet is what I really want. A moment later we’re standing in front of another door.
“You get half an hour,” the waitress explains, like I’m going into a tanning booth or something. “Anything you and the girl arrange for later is strictly between the two of you. The girl will let you know when your time is up. And don’t get rough,” she warns, her demeanor turning tough, like she’s had that happen to her. “We do prosecute.”
“I understand,” I say, handing the girl a twenty.
She smiles at me, then opens the door and gently pushes me ahead. It’s pitch black inside except for these tiny bulbs in the floor that remind me of runway lights. It’s quiet too. The music fades to almost nothing when the door closes behind me.
Another woman appears out of the darkness. She takes my hand and leads me down a narrow corridor to another door, where she shows me into a room not much bigger than my Bedford cubicle. On one wall of the room there’s a small window—a foot by a foot square, I guess—and the woman leads me right to it. I follow her hesitantly as my eyes are still adjusting to the gloom.
“Choose,” she instructs, pointing at the window.
The window would be at eye level for a man of average height, but I have to stoop slightly to see through it. I take a deep breath, then lean down. It’s exactly as I anticipated. Everything is finally falling into place. “Second from the left,” I murmur, my emotions swirling. It’s much darker here in this room than where the girls are standing, so I know they can’t see me.
“Stay here,” she instructs.
I step back into a corner when the woman leaves. Back into the darkness.
A moment later a seductive form slips into the room and the door closes behind her. She’s wearing a short lacy slip that barely covers anything, as I saw when I peered through the glass and selected her over two other women who stood before me a few feet away.
Kitten. That was what Vincent called her the day he came by Bedford. Now I understand why.
As I move out of the corner, she recognizes me. Her eyes widen and she steps back as I come forward. “Augustus!” she says in her Spanish accent.
“Hello, Anna.” I make certain my voice is calm. I don’t want any trouble. All I want is answers.
She slides along one wall until she’s trapped in a corner. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to get my wife’s picture off that wall out there.”
She gazes at me for a few moments, trying to act as if she doesn’t understand.
“I know everything, Anna. I know Vincent brought Melanie here, and I know she was working a couple of nights a week.” I move closer. “I know they called her the Vamp, and I know about the routine. I know everything,” I repeat. “There’s no need to act like you don’t.”
Anna’s chin slowly drops. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I know how you must feel.”
“No, you don’t.”
She shakes her head. “No, I guess I don’t,” she agrees.
“Vincent told you about Melanie’s connection to me, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Anna admits, looking back up at me. “He said he wanted me to be aware of what was going on so I wouldn’t screw it up. He was worried you might put a picture of her on your desk at Bedford, and that I’d recognize her and say something that would give it all away.”
My vision has grown accustomed to the faint light. Now I can fully appreciate how little her lacy slip conceals. I can’t help myself and for a moment my eyes flash down. “Vincent had you send me all of that promotional material on Bedford, didn’t he? He told you to offer me the discount that kept getting higher and higher.”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Seaver never knew. That’s why he was so surprised when I told him about it the morning I came to rent the desk.”
Anna puts a hand on my chest, thinking that I’m going to get angry, maybe even violent. “Don’t try anything, Augustus,” she warns, her voice trembling. “If I yell, they’ll be in here right away. They monitor these rooms very carefully.”
“Just keep talking, Anna.”
“Vincent swore he’d have me fired if I didn’t help him,” she says, shaking her head. Her long black hair tumbles about her bare shoulders. “And he could have. He knows the p
eople who run this place. They don’t screw around. I need the money. What I earn at Bedford isn’t nearly enough. I have to send money home to my family in Colombia. I have many brothers and sisters. They depend on me.” She eases her head back against the wall.
I look down again. My God, she is beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, her voice turning hoarse. “I didn’t want to hurt you, especially after I got to know you a little. You seem like a nice man, but Vincent made me do it. He wanted you at Bedford so bad.”
“I know he did, and I know why.”
“I’m so sorry,” she apologizes again, starting to sob. “Now Vincent will kill me. He said that if I ever told anyone about this, I’d end up like Melanie.”
“Vincent, let me in! Wake up. Come on, Vincent! Push the button. Open up!”
Vincent’s drowsy voice finally filters through the lobby intercom of his apartment complex. “Augustus, is that you?” Vincent lives in Alexandria, a suburb across the Potomac on the southeast side of Washington.
“Yes! Now let me in. I have to talk to you.”
He clears his throat. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Just let me in,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm to hide my anger. If he understands how furious I am, he may not push the button. “Please.”
The buzzer finally sounds and I yank the lobby door open. Moments later I’m out of the elevator and rushing down the bright red carpet of the sixth-floor hallway toward his apartment at the end of the corridor. Vincent’s waiting for me at the door.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks, wearing a white T-shirt and light blue boxers. He’s bleary-eyed, obviously just awakened from a sound sleep.
If Reggie is shooting straight with me about Vincent being under FBI surveillance, the place could be bugged. But I don’t care. “I went back to the Two O’Clock Club tonight,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“Atta boy.” Vincent smiles and gives me a big-brother slap on the upper arm. “Now we’re talking. Now you’re getting back in the game.”
“Anna was there.”
