by Thomas Perry
“You’re using her for parties? I’ve been paying you, and you’re—”
“That’s an ugly thing to say,” Tracy snapped. “I never said that for five hundred bucks you could own her. She’s a free person, and this is America, not some sandbox country where women wear veils and stay home. I just asked her if she wanted to pick up some extra money, and she did.” She let her irate glare soften a bit, and she looked at him with bleary, mock-sympathetic eyes. “Maybe the poor thing is worried. After all, you did fall a little behind on your payments . . .” Her voice trailed off so he could finish the thought himself.
“What do I owe?”
Tracy’s eyes glowed, opening wide to let a flash of greed show through for an instant. “Let’s see. A hundred a day for two weeks for the apartment suite is fourteen hundred. Five hundred a day for Mae for a week is thirty-five. I’ll only add a hundred for the lost interest, and keep it at an even five thousand, if you’ve got it today.”
“You want me to pay interest when you’re charging me in advance?”
“Sugar,” she said in a wheedling voice, “I’m just going by the due date. If money is due on a certain date, and you’re late, you always pay interest, don’t you?”
“I thought you were doing this as a favor.”
“I am, honey, I am. I’m fronting for you, putting up my own money in advance, keeping you safe. If you have the money today, I can knock off the interest, and make it forty-nine.”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“I know you walked here, but I can drive you home to get it.”
“It’s not there.” He could see the skeptical look coming into her eyes, so he said, “I’ll have to drive someplace out of town to pick it up. It’s going to take a couple of days.” He frowned. “I want to take Mae with me.”
Tracy sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have the money you already owe me—let alone poor Mae—but you want everyone else to change our plans at the last minute?” She raised a penciled-in eyebrow. “Maybe you ought to get a job.”
No sign of emotion appeared on his face. He might have been a photograph of a man looking off into the distance. When Tracy saw that, she felt relieved. She had been surprised by an instant of hot panic after she had said the part about the job, thinking maybe she had gone a tiny bit too far. Her own word “job” had reminded her of what he did for a living. As he walked out of the office, she began to feel the cool relief begin to turn into pride, then anticipation. The next time she saw him, he would be bringing more money.
25
Prescott began to work on his identity the day after he arrived in St. Louis. He rented an apartment in a building that was a new imitation of an old-style residence, designed by an architect who had not been able to resist adding ugly embellishments. He threw away his generic suitcase and began shopping. He bought an eight-year-old Corvette that had been badly rebuilt after an accident. He bought clothes from thrift stores, everything originally on the expensive side, but just a bit out-of-date. Then he went to a store that sold surplus military gear.
He wandered up and down the aisles looking for precisely the right items. He bought a navy watch cap and a black turtleneck sweater, then found a navy blue hooded sweatshirt. He found an olive-drab tool bag, and a pair of thin black leather gloves that were labeled “police-style.” He went next to a big hardware store and picked out a selection of tools that looked convincing: a battery-operated drill, a few punches and picks, a long, thin screwdriver, a pry bar. He bought a glass cutter and a suction cup with a handle on it made for carrying sheets of glass. By then the tool bag was full, so he stopped.
The second day, he drove the three hundred miles to Chicago, checked into a hotel, and slept. When he woke, he began to shop in earnest. He went to camera shops, computer stores, electronics stores, buying any item that appealed to his eye. Always, he searched for good deals on high-end merchandise that was used, but sometimes he had to settle for new. He spent most of his time looking at estate jewelry. He bought several watches—a couple of Rolexes, a Cartier tank watch, some women’s watches with diamonds, and a variety of others that had some resale value. He bought a wide assortment of women’s jewelry, being sure to include some spectacular finds and some junk. He picked up some men’s items too—a couple of sets of cuff links and studs that contained a lot of gold and semiprecious stones but weren’t in style, a stopwatch, fancy lighters, money clips, rings.
He went to a numismatics show and assembled a collection of gold coins. He went to antique shops and bought a set of ivory carvings and a silver tea set. He spent a day on the South Side searching secondhand stores, buying similar items that might be as old and didn’t look any worse but cost practically nothing. For three days, Prescott shopped. He walked through the stores pretending they were houses. If he could imagine an item as the one that would catch the eye of a thief, he bought it. He packed all of his purchases in boxes, shipped them to his apartment in St. Louis, and drove back to meet them.
He spent the next few days refining his identity by rehearsing his anecdotes, inventing and memorizing names, places, and dates, and compiling documents using the computer scanners and printers he had picked up in Chicago.
He spent a few evenings establishing himself as a regular at the Paddock Club. He would arrive there at around eight, go in, and sit at the bar. The man with glasses who had met with the two traveling couriers from Cincinnati returned from his dinner break between eight-thirty and nine, and presided at the bar.
Prescott watched him for an evening and confirmed his theory about him. There were two younger bartenders who did the heavy lifting and all the routine fetching of the endless bottles of beer. This man seldom waited on a customer except during the frantically busy period from nine to one, when all three were pouring drinks with both hands, shoving them onto the wet surface of the bar, snatching up money, and dispensing change on the way to the next customer. The rest of the time, he leaned on the wooden surface behind the bar, usually with his arms folded across his chest. Prescott could see that his eyes flitted to the cash register whenever one of the bartenders approached it, then surveyed the customers ranged around the room at small, round tables and along the bar, then focused for a moment on the front door, where he seemed to be counting the ones leaving and the ones coming in, and finally, went to the woman on the stage.
The women were the constant—hypothetically, the center of attention. But they existed on the edge of the huge room, in the world of the bar but not part of it. The place was like a water hole on a veldt, where two different species were side by side but had very little to do with each other.
The men drank and talked, sometimes laughing and then suddenly tense with anger, the sinews in their necks standing out and their faces acquiring the blank stare that wasn’t really seeing. About once a night, two of them would go outside, each accompanied by a companion or two, and then one set of men would return and the other vanish into the night. But the rest of the time, the men slouched in their chairs, now and then staring wistfully at the woman on the stage for a time, but then returning their attention to their friends, or going to join the crowd waiting at the bar for another drink.
Each of the women was alone. A number of the women seemed to have been doing this for a long time. The music would begin, and from behind a small black curtain at the side, a woman in her late thirties or early forties would appear, and she would dance. She would be preoccupied, her thoughts not on the men. When Prescott studied the faces of these women for thoughts, he imagined a compendium of the mundane. This one seemed to be thinking about the things she was going to buy on the way home: milk and bread, of course, and she was almost out of shampoo—had forgotten it the last two trips—plus some Ziploc bags, laundry detergent. Was she out of dishwashing detergent, too? Might as well get some just in case.
The woman Prescott was watching danced, completing the turns and gyrations far below the level of conscious thought, and when the music re
ached the point where she had taken off her top the last hundred times, her hands performed the practiced gesture, and that was done. She stripped without interest in the process, having thoroughly explored it for implications and possibilities so long ago that it could no longer hold her attention.
She already knew that it wasn’t a personal communication, or a step in a career, or a way to start a relationship with a man. The men didn’t know who she was, or have any curiosity about her. They looked at her breasts, her buttocks, the space between her legs, in that order, as she bared her body, but what they saw was not she. It was all female bodies, of which this happened to be the one example that was here at the moment, a symbol. What had been advertised as seduction had descended to the level of art.
The weekends were amateur nights. For the young women who competed, this had not yet worn down into a job that was a whole lot duller than checking out groceries at a cashier’s stand. They were still up there actually stripping in front of men—not a man, but a whole bunch of them at once—and they couldn’t get over it. This was wild, risky behavior, and they did it as though on a dare, took the money slipped into the waistbands of their G-strings like love notes from billionaires.
The customers on the weekend nights were perfectly suited to them. They were boys in their twenties who’d had too much liquor before the shows started, and subscribed to the same illusion that this was a form of communication between this woman and themselves about sex, and that the edge of the stage just might not be an impossible boundary—not for them.
Prescott spent his evenings here, becoming familiar. He always sat at the bar or at a table near it, and gave the bartender a five-dollar tip for each five-dollar drink. He always kept away from the customers who he could see were probably going to cause trouble. He spoke little, and when he’d had two drinks, he left. He kept this up for nine nights, then left town to search for the perfect piece of real estate.
He had a fairly clear idea of where such a place could be found, so he took a flight there. Once he had arrived in the right region, finding the exact spot and obtaining a lease took him only a few days. He spent three weeks getting the place ready, and then returned to St. Louis prepared to change his hours at the Paddock Club. He found that the effect he had anticipated had taken place. His presence, beginning over a month ago, had been noticed, and his absence for the past three weeks had been noticed too.
Prescott walked into the bar at eleven-thirty in the morning, as the proprietor was busy supervising the unloading of supplies. There were two men from a liquor distributor bringing cases into the building with two-wheeled carts, and two bartenders opening them to restock shelves behind the bar while the proprietor counted boxes and checked them off an invoice on a clipboard. Now and then the swinging door to the left of the bar would open, and Prescott would see waitresses hurrying back and forth to prepare the small round tables for the businessmen’s lunch.
The proprietor saw Prescott come in, smiled at him, and nodded. “How you been?”
“Fine,” said Prescott. He stepped closer as the proprietor signed the sheet and handed it to one of the deliverymen. “How about you?” He glanced at the pyramid of liquor cases. “Looks like you haven’t done too badly.”
“Nope,” said the proprietor. “Been pretty fair.” He went around the bar. “What are you drinking?”
“How about a beer and a shot?” said Prescott. He got out his wallet.
The proprietor put the draft beer and shot glass on the bar, and held his free hand up as he poured the whiskey from the silver spout on the bottle. “It’s on me,” he said.
“Well, thanks,” said Prescott. He held out his hand. “I’m Bob Greene, with an e. Three of them, come to think of it. You’re Mr. Nolan?”
The proprietor took his hand and shook it. “They call me that.” He smiled. “It’s because of the sign outside. Real name is Dick Hobart. When I bought this place twelve years ago, the sign said ‘Nolan’s Paddock Club.’ I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, so I left the sign for whatever good will it was worth. Wasn’t much, I can tell you. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone under. But by the time I knew things were going to work out for me, I was stuck with the name.”
Prescott nodded. “I’ve seen it happen that way before.”
“What about you? What business are you in?”
Prescott said, in an affable, confident tone, “I’m kind of between things right now. I’ve been out in California for a few years. Had a couple of car washes, and did pretty well. I sold out a few months back, and I’m looking around here for the right opportunity.”
He could tell that Hobart had instantly evaluated the story and taken it as Prescott had hoped. He knew Bob Greene was a liar. Greene had some money to spend, but he probably had not come into it a few dollars at a time operating car washes in California. Hobart said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find something you like. This is a good place to do business.” His own words seemed to remind him that he had to keep an eye on his men. He turned toward them.
“It sure seems to be,” said Prescott. “Thanks for the drink.”
At one o’clock, when Prescott heard the distinctive change in the music, as though someone had turned the bass all the way up to vibrate so he could feel it, he left the bar and sat at a table. The noon crowd consisted of men who looked older and more settled than the evening crowd. About half of them were wearing coats and ties, having come from offices. Two of them had been reading newspapers in the dim light while they ate lunch, but when the music changed, they folded them and set them aside.
The woman who came from behind the curtain was announced only as “Jean.” She had her dark brown hair pinned up, and she was dressed in a business suit and wearing glasses to begin with. She looked very convincing. She took off the glasses and undid her hairpin so her dark hair came down in a cascade, shook it out, and went into her routine. The theatrical lacy garter belt and push-up bra she had beneath the suit were not what the female business executives Prescott had known well usually wore to work, but he judged it didn’t destroy the effect.
It was not until she was wearing only her tiny G-string that she did one of her turns, looked over her shoulder, and seemed to notice that Prescott had returned from his trip. She looked directly at him, let her fixed, professional smile relax for a second, then resumed the mask again. He stepped to the stage and slipped a fifty into her G-string, then returned to his table. He drank through the next two women’s performances to see whether Hobart had told them all to notice him. They were women he had not seen before, and they went through their tasks without enthusiasm, largely ignored by most of the customers and ignoring them in return.
When Prescott went out to the parking lot to get into his car, he realized that his experiment had made him drink more than he had intended. The sun was impossibly bright, bouncing off the chrome of the cars into his eyes in little semaphores. The red surface of his Corvette seemed to have an aura around it, and the gravel on the ground was like a photograph of the surface of Mars, each tiny pebble bright on top with its own black shadow behind it. But as he carefully steered the car across the lot toward the street, he looked into the rearview mirror and saw Jean and Hobart beside the delivery door outside the building, watching his departure.
Over the next few days, he confirmed his impression that noon was the time to go to Nolan’s. The nights in a strip club were businesslike and concentrated. The customers crowded in, and the men behind the bar were frantic, pushing glasses onto the bar and snatching money as quickly as they could move, working like fishermen in a tuna run, making the most of their catch in a three-hour period.
During daylight, the atmosphere was calm and sleepy. The volume of the recorded music was so low that people could speak in normal voices except when a dancer was on the stage. The bartenders had time to talk with customers. Prescott exchanged greetings with Dick Hobart when he came in for lunch each day, and sometimes when he left. He was always good-natured and frie
ndly, always careful to give the impression that he had no desire for a longer conversation but had no reason to avoid one, either. There was an odd easiness to the atmosphere, and Prescott insinuated himself into it subtly and patiently, until he suspected that several of the employees were not sure just how long he had been around—maybe for years, coming in during some other shift. Hobart met with the couriers from Cincinnati once every three weeks, and met with other men more frequently, always during the day.
Prescott waited two more weeks before he decided he was ready to ease himself in further. He was in the bar before the businessmen’s lunch when Hobart came past him, checking the tables to see whether they had been positioned and set properly. When he came to Prescott’s, he said, “Hey, Bob. Didn’t anybody come to take your order yet?”
“Thanks for thinking about it, Dick, but I just sat down,” said Prescott. “While you’re here, though, there was something I wanted to talk to you about. Got a second?”
Hobart studied his face, as though deciding whether he really wanted to hear this, then said, “Sure. Let’s go over to the bar so I can take care of some chores while we talk.” Prescott went to the bar and watched Hobart taking inventory of bar supplies: olives, cherries, swizzle sticks, bitters. He emptied old bottles, moved new ones in. “What’s on your mind?”
Prescott said, “I was just wondering what your policy was on employees going out with customers.”
Hobart put his elbows on the bar and blew out a breath wearily. “Who did you have in mind?”
“Jean,” said Prescott. “I was considering trying to talk to her, but I won’t if it’ll get her fired or something.”
Hobart clamped his lips together and nodded sagely, as though it had been obvious. “You were right to ask me first. That’s sensible, and I appreciate it. We do have a rule against fraternizing. You start having that kind of thing going on, and the authorities get on you. As it is, every time there’s a city council election, everybody in the entertainment business has got to fear for his livelihood. But the truth is, I wouldn’t have that rule if the girls didn’t want it. This way they can say no, and it isn’t their fault. The guy who’s been a big tipper doesn’t get hurt feelings and go away.”
