by David Levien
“This ’ ll be sixty,” he said. “You want to open a tab?”
Behr reached out and stopped the man ’ s hand on the cork. “Better not pop that, son.”
The bartender scowled, shook his head at the dancer, and walked off.
“Hey,” the dancer said, indignant.
“Where can I find Michelle?” Behr demanded. The dancer scoffed, trying to come off hard and unhelpful, but she just didn ’ t have the experience for it.
“Tell me,” he barked.
She looked like a startled kid for a second, and then she came back to herself. “She ’ s got a condo off County Line. That ’ s all I know.” She wanted the chat to be over.
Behr moved to go, then stopped. “You talked to me. How come you ’ re not afraid of Rudy?” he wondered.
“Why would I be afraid of Rudy?” She opened her hands in a gesture that presented all six feet and nineteen years of her barely clad self. Why, indeed?
Behr crooked a wave at Paul and went for the door.
Back in the car and heading for County Line, Behr dialed his cell phone.
“Hey, Bobby,” Behr began. “Can you get me a home add on a Michelle Ginelle? Vicinity of County Line, I believe.”
Behr waited and glanced at Paul. “Guy in my line of work. He ’ s home on his computer most nights. We help each other.
“Hey. Great. Thanks, Bobby,” Behr spoke into the phone, then changed course slightly and drove for a while. Paul rode wordlessly. Though it seemed he wanted to ask questions, he resisted the urge. Behr appreciated that. He wanted to remain rapt in his own thoughts but decided to give a few words by way of reward.
“We ’ re gonna go talk to a girl, a dancer from that club. She knew this guy who used to be a bouncer there. He might ’ ve been involved.”
“ Used to be a bouncer?”
“Yeah.” Behr didn ’ t elaborate.
I ’ m getting a pooch already. Oh, Michelle, she said to herself and turned away from the mirror. After looking at her body, she had glanced at her eyes as well. Bad news there. She wasn ’ t looking particularly fresh-faced. Twenty-four just wasn ’ t twenty-one and she saw where it was going from here. She ’ d been sick all day, all week really. Tired and pukey. She knew what it meant. That goddamned Rudy. He said he ’ d pulled out in plenty of time. It was her own damn fault, anyway. Rudy had a nice body and a nice car but was not a man of means. He was not a gentleman. That ’ s what happens when you break your own rules: Don ’ t fuck for fun. Play for play, but draw the line if they ’ re in the industry.
She sat down at her kitchen table and played around with a pack of Merits. She wanted one badly. Along with one of the three silver cans of Coors Light in her refrigerator to go with it. But she stopped herself. She was going to go ahead and take the day after pill that would get rid of her problem. It seemed less invasive than a procedure. The decision occupied her room that morning like a dark, threatening figure standing in the corner. It was hours before she could get out of bed and face it. She ’ d finally decided, though, and knew it was the right choice. The only choice. All the same, she just didn ’ t feel right about drinking or smoking until next week when it was done. Whatever level of being, formed to whatever degree, just didn ’ t deserve to suffer the smoke in her lungs or the alcohol in her blood. Let it spend its time in peace, she thought.
She ran her fingers through her hair, appreciating the softness, then her phone rang. She had the momentary instinct to answer it, but she checked that urge. It was the club or her mother, and she didn ’ t want to talk to either. She hadn ’ t had a decent conversation with her mother in a year, since she ’ d slipped and admitted she was a dancer and not just a waitress at the club. Her mother was a moralist, though it didn ’ t seem to come from any pure place. Michelle believed her mother was afraid of life and embraced what you shouldn ’ t do rather than what you could do, and she just didn ’ t need that negative energy right now. Nor did she want to talk to Rudy or any of the girls from the club. She was in no mood to work, in no state to decide on when her next shift would be. After hearing about Tad, she wondered if she should try to find a new club. There was just a bad vibe around the Golden Lady now. She shuddered and felt like she had a cold, wet bath towel wrapped around her bare shoulders, such was the clammy weight that pressed down on her.
The phone stopped ringing and she had a moment ’ s solitude, then there was a rapping at the front door. Two big dudes were standing there. The bigger of the two asked if she was Michelle Ginelle. Cops, she thought. A pair of them had been by around midday asking a few questions: Had Tad fought with anyone at the club? Did he have any enemies? She opened the door farther. “We want to talk to you about Tad Ford for a minute,” he said.
The dancer let them in, and he and Behr followed her down a short hallway to her living room. It was impossible to ignore the grace with which she walked. The town house was cool, the thermostat set low to save money, and she wore loose sweat pants and a tattered T-shirt that was punctured by her nipples. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and despite her lack of makeup and the start of faint dark circles under her eyes, she was stunning. She had full lips and soulful eyes, and a tight curvaceous form beneath her clothes. She had a certain energy that he ’ d noticed before in very beautiful women — as if she were a perfectly fresh sliced orange extended on the palm of the world. Carol used to have that quality. Before. The girl pointed to the couch for them and pulled her stocking feet up under her on a leather recliner. A huge television across the room silently played an infomercial and cast a flickering light along the side of her face. She had the largest CD collection Paul had ever seen, and they were stacked next to the television. He looked around the place. He ’ d never been inside one like it. The town house was in an eye-numbing development that seemed to stretch for miles. The outsides of the units were dun-colored vertical planks with black slanted roofs, and without the well-lit streets and heavily organized numbering system it would have taken them hours to find her door. Paul had wondered what kind of people settled in places like this. White-collar government workers, computer programmers, and corporate managers, he would have thought. Exotic dancers as well, he knew now. The units were spacious, with two and three bedrooms, but appeared to be inhabited by single people only. There were no bikes outside on the patches of lawn, no toys, no basketball hoops, no multiple cars, nothing to indicate that families lived in the development. Maybe he ’ d end up in a place like this in the future, he considered, a broken-down, divorced insurance salesman.
The girl was young, in her early twenties. She sat across from them and played with a pack of cigarettes.
“I ’ m trying not to smoke,” she said when she saw them notice. Her voice was low and purring, as if she had glycerin in the back of her throat. She wasn ’ t trying to be seductive, but she was having an effect on him. He was glad Behr was there, because if it was him alone, he would stutter and stumble. “So you want to hear about Tad? I don ’ t know who killed him.” Paul shifted as the news of a murder hit him, but he kept himself together.
“That ’ s fine,” Behr said. “What did you think when you heard?”
“It freaked me. Totally. I never knew anyone who died like that. But what can you do? It ’ s not something I can think about much. I ’ ve got my own issues I ’ m dealing with right now.”
“I understand.” Behr nodded. Maybe he did understand. Paul had no idea how to tell how much Behr could read off of people. “He had a thing for you, though.”
She took a cigarette out, habitually, then realized and slid it back into the pack. “Yeah, a one-way thing.”
“Not your type?”
“Yeah, right,” she started with a laugh, then caught herself. “Look, I don ’ t want to talk bad about those who ’ ve passed. You know?” Behr nodded like he did know. Paul followed suit. “But you learn pretty quick when you ’ re a dancer not to date inside the industry.” She said the last part with considerable bitterness. “His, uh,
attention…it just got kind of uncomfortable after a while. Anyway, that ’ s about all I ’ ve got to say. That ’ s what I said to the other cops who were here, too.”
“We ’ re not cops,” Behr said, and Paul saw her eyes flare, angry and betrayed. “Hey, I didn ’ t say we were — ”
“Yeah, but — ”
“We ’ re private. Hired by Tad Ford ’ s family,” Behr told her. Paul watched her try and catch up with this.
“His family?”
“Let ’ s just say they ’ re prominent.” Behr let this land. It seemed to reverberate off the chalky white walls. “They have a big family business you may have heard of. In Detroit.” He waited as she put it together. Suddenly it clicked, and what might have been went across her face so clearly that Paul could ’ ve reached out and touched the thought.
“Tad never told me he was…” Her words trailed off in a whiskey-voiced puddle of disappointment.
“Jeez, you think he would ’ ve mentioned it,” Behr shot across the couch to Paul. Paul gave him a shrug back. “I guess that ’ s just the kind of guy he was.”
“I guess,” the girl said. She sounded sick about it.
“So you think you remember any details about him? What he did before starting at the club? Any friends or associates you might ’ ve seen?” Paul admired Behr ’ s style with her. He was neither friendly nor heavy, more like an immovable object that would not be leaving until he got his information.
Now the girl spoke to them from a faraway place. Her own troubles had magnified and were making the room crowded. Paul expected Behr to give her a line about how Tad ’ s family would be grateful for any information, how they might pay for it. That ’ s what he would ’ ve done. But Behr didn ’ t. Paul made a mental note to ask him why not. Then he saw why. A change had come over the girl. Tad ’ s having been special made her special in kind, and now she wanted to talk.
“Tad used to be a customer, starting a while back. That ’ s how we met. He was a regular. I was his favorite. He didn ’ t spend money on any of the other girls…” She smiled. It was like a cold knife in Paul ’ s chest. He could imagine how powerless men at the club were in her presence. He was aware of how this bouncer had gone from an object of revulsion to a mysterious man of good taste in an instant when she thought he was from a wealthy family, and still her smile pierced him. “Come to think of it, he did spend plenty back then. And he used to come in with a guy back when he was a customer, then it tapered off when Tad started working at the club and I didn ’ t see the guy anymore.” Paul caught himself leaning forward on the faux leather sofa and tried to ease back into a more staid pose.
“What kind of guy?” Behr asked.
“A wiry little guy. Called Rooster.”
“Rooster.”
“That was his nickname, obviously.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kinda sexy, but a little weird. What ’ s the word…?” She fished around in her mind for a minute, then gave up and continued. “He had kind of an Axl thing going, but with a little shorter hair. Spent lots of time in the gym. Would always leave the club to go and do late-night workouts. He was religious about it. He was pretty uncomfortable sitting and talking with the girls, too.” Behr absorbed the information, making a mental note to ask Terry Cottrell and other sources for help in running down the associate, but she wasn ’ t done yet. “I always knew Tad was in love with me. He was kind of shy and clumsy around me, but I thought that ’ s just the way he was all the time, then I realized how much worse it was around me… Then he started working at the Lady and that disqualified him.”
“Do you know what he was doing before?” Behr wondered in a voice so soft, Paul would have never thought he possessed it.
“He said he was a driver.”
“A driver. Like a chauffeur or a trucker?” Behr wanted clarification.
She shrugged, her breasts moving upward against her T-shirt. “Just a driver of some kind. Long hauls. He had that left-arm tan.” She demonstrated the arm hanging on the windowsill of a car door. “He used to try to impress me by promising trips. I thought he was trying to impress me.” They watched while she rethought her dealing with the dead man.
“Where ’ d he want to take you?”
“He knew Mexico. He said he could take me down to this or that amazing beach where nobody was around. Totally private. To villages where you could hire a native to cook you the best chicken you ’ d ever tasted for like seventy cents. But all the girls know: There are only certain guys that you go on a trip with. The ones who give you a first-class ticket or have their own plane.”
“Right,” Behr said without judgment.
“Makes sense,” Paul added, because his saying nothing was starting to feel conspicuous.
“Oh. Hold on,” she said, and bounded up and left the room with alarming speed. They heard her in the kitchen rustling around. A drawer opened and closed. Paul looked to Behr. Behr gave him nothing back. She returned and held out her hand to Behr. He took a small, carved wooden key chain from her. It had letters painted on it and a sun setting between palm trees.
“He gave it to me.”
“Ciudad del Sol.”
“Yeah.”
“This where he wanted to take you?”
“No. Someplace else. Jalisco or something.” Then she shuddered and hugged herself. “You can keep that, I don ’ t want to remember what happened to him. It gives me the creeps.”
“Okay,” Behr said, and palmed the little key chain.
“Recently he was talking all about how he had to distance himself from Rooster, which was strange because the guy hadn ’ t even been around much for a long time. I thought maybe he was jealous because the guy would get all the attention from the dancers, but Tad said he was a bad person.”
“Really.” Behr nodded. “Anything else?”
She bit her lower lip in thought, causing it to whiten. Then she stopped and it reddened to the point of near bursting. “No. Guess not.” They all stood and started for the front door.
“Menacing.” She stopped. “That ’ s the word I was looking for. That guy, Rooster, he was menacing.”
TWENTY-ONE
After midnight Sebo’s Gym was populated almost exclusively by fags, bodybuilders, and psychos. If anyone had any misconceptions about Rooster belonging to one of those groups, he ’ d be glad to straighten it out for him. Anytime. The place shimmered under banks of fluorescent lights. Barbells and iron plates sang out in harmony with violent grunts. The air smelled of disinfectant and steroid-laden shits that wafted out of the men ’ s locker room, where juiced-up lifters dropped them in between squeezing the boil-size pimples on their backs and shooting their next dose.
Still, it was the only option in town for guys in serious training. Not pumped-up buffy boys with their show muscles, but those looking for power. Rooster had tried to stick to morning workouts for a while, in the hope of avoiding the degenerate crowd. He ’ d learned of a method: Do the most important task of the day first, that way you can focus on it, do it to the highest level of your ability, and there would be little chance of putting it off or skipping it. He couldn ’ t stay with the plan though. It just didn ’ t work for him. Daylight left him cold. He couldn ’ t generate the intensity required for power cleans before nightfall, regardless of how many Turbo Teas he drank first. No, for Rooster, the only way to find the purging, heart-pounding, iron-pounding force was late night. He was never one to skip his workouts, anyway. Especially now.
He was on the bench. It was an indulgence he rarely afforded himself. Most guys in the gym threw down on bench press every single workout, skipping more important stuff like legs and core strength for the ostentatious chesty look that benching gave. Rooster knew doing a series of rows and sumo squats would serve him a lot better in the long run. But at 1:00A.M., a few days after a piece of business like that with Tad, nothing suited mind movies like bench press. Rooster crashed the bar, loaded with plates and memories, down on his chest. The stupef
ied look on Tad ’ s face when Rooster was suddenly standing in his living room was one that he would never forget. Rooster pushed his reps as he relived the moment.
The first shot had entered just below the sternum and it shook Tad all over. Rooster gave him the rest of a five-pack to the torso, taking the trouble to line up the front blade through the rear ramp sight between each shot. He saw Tad shimmy and fall forward, blood all over his tightie whities. He considered putting the last one in his dome, but stopped himself. Tad already had X s for eyes by that point, and Rooster figured he should keep an extra, without taking the time to reload, in case he ran into a looky-loo in the hall on his way out. He hadn ’ t, though, he hadn ’ t seen a single person, and now he regretted saving the round. Oh, well. His chest burned. His arms quivered. He racked the bar, ran a hand through his recently cropped hair, and breathed. He sat up and looked across the gym to the front desk.
Behr and Paul parked out front of a large corrugated-metal and cinder-block building that took up a city block. The place housed several businesses, a self-storage facility and a car wash among them.
“When she said the guy was the night-owl workout type it rang a bell,” Behr said, his words whitening the dark, frosty air. “There ’ s only a couple of places open all night,” he went on, entering the building, climbing the stairs ahead of Paul. “And this place is pretty special.”
Behr swung the door open and cleared the doorframe, allowing Paul his first look at Sebo ’ s.
“Je-sus,” Paul uttered softly. He felt like a high-order extraterrestrial discovering a strange savage Earth custom. Flesh, barely covered by tank tops, writhed on purple-covered workout equipment under harsh lights. There were guttural sounds and clanging, as would accompany a dog fight in a blacksmith ’ s shop. The air was bleachy and fetid, the humidity high enough to grow ferns. Paul ’ s eyes adjusted and he saw the place was merely a gym, full of muscled men applying themselves to force/resistance training.
