His aftershave smelled expensive and woody.
I straddled his lap, arms over his shoulders, fingers gripping the back of the chair and his cheek scratched me as I rubbed my boob on it. When he tried to suck my nipple I slapped him lightly on the face, ‘Naughty boy,’ and felt his cock go hard beneath his trousers. So much for the ice princess—I was beginning to feel a little tingling of my own.
Looking around for a bouncer and seeing none I pushed myself against his erection a few times then decided to quit before it got messy. I stood before him, playing with my G-string, starting to take it off then stopping. Sitting in the opposite chair I parted my legs and unclipped my G. I slid it off, placing my hand over my pussy, then removed my hand and he couldn’t help but stare. They all did, though to Alex’s credit he didn’t go slack jawed, just had an intent look, as if committing it to memory.
The tape finished and I put my G-string back on and kissed his cheek. ‘See,’ I said, ‘that wasn’t so bad, was it?’
I uncuffed him and gathered my clothes against my chest in a display of completely false modesty. ‘I’ll get changed and take you back to the bar.’
‘Take your time.’ Alex looked downwards. ‘It’ll be a while before I can re-enter polite society.’
When I got back he was straightening his hair in the mirror.
‘You look beautiful,’ I said. ‘Did you enjoy your first lap dance?’
‘It’s a sophisticated form of torture.’
‘Amnesty International has been after us for years.’
I turned to leave and he grabbed my wrist again.
Feisty.
‘Wait, Vivien.’ He handed me his card. ‘I know men must do this all the time but, fuck it. If you want to call then call. If you don’t . . .’
‘Thanks.’ I slipped it into my boot. ‘I’ll put it with all the others.’
Soon as we rounded the corner into the bar area I sensed something was wrong. Alex felt it too and stopped, like an animal sniffing the wind for danger.
Then I heard it under the thumping disco beat. Yelling.
Some shit was going down over by podium three.
Chapter Seven
‘Fuck.’ Alex pushed through the crowd. I hurried after him and caught a flash of sandy hair. Grant. The whole club surged over, trying to see what was going on.
‘You fucking bitch,’ Grant yelled. He held his hand to his forehead and I could see blood on his face. ‘You coulda fucking killed me, you slut!’
Alex was close but security, Vince and Brad, got there first.
‘What’s going on?’ Vince grabbed Grant’s arm but Grant shook him off.
‘That bitch just kicked me in the head with them fucken high heels.’ Grant pointed at Aurora who stood topless, doing up the sides of her G-string. She put her hands on her hips.
‘Throw this prick out, Vince. The dirty bastard tried to stick his finger up me so I kicked him.’
Vince punched him in the guts and Grant folded but didn’t go down.
‘No fucking touching the girls.’ Brad was about to lay one in when Alex got there, put one arm around Grant’s shoulders and stuck the other out to stop Brad.
‘You want a go too, mate?’ The tendons in Brad’s neck stood out, steroids pumping through his veins.
‘I’m a cop, mate.’ Alex kept his palm out. ‘We both are. We don’t want any trouble. I’ll get him out of here, OK?’
Vince moved in and Alex reached into his coat pocket for ID. He flipped it open and the bouncers backed off, their chests still puffed out and nostrils flaring. All that testosterone and nowhere for it to go.
‘Get that scumbag out of here.’ Vince wanted the last word. ‘No one touches our girls.’
‘Except management,’ Anais said quietly, standing behind me.
Alex helped Grant out and Vince and Brad followed.
The crowd dispersed but a group of girls remained around Aurora as she repeated the story. ‘I was lying on my back on the table and he just tried to stick it in.’
‘Dirty prick.’ Dakota was petite with long wavy hair.
‘You did good, girl. Pity you missed his eye.’
I looked around. Everything was getting back to normal. The soapie star and the ex-premier’s son were talking animatedly. This was what it was all about: the underworld, sex and violence. It was too cool.
I picked up an abandoned glass of champagne and drank from the side that wasn’t smeared with lipstick.
Brad and Vince walked back into the club.
‘Fucking cops,’ said Vince.
‘Just as well I didn’t deck him,’ Brad laughed.
Vince walked over to me, his walkie-talkie crackling.
‘You Vivien?’
‘Yep.’
‘Jim wants to see you, in his office.’
I got paranoid. Was I busted for going too close in the private? Did someone overhear me talking to Alex about the murder? I knocked and Jim unlocked the door and beckoned me in.
‘Have a seat, Vivien. You all right after that little scene?’
‘I’m fine. Does that kind of thing happen often?’
‘Now and then. Most important thing is protecting our girls. You can’t let pricks like that get away with it. I hope it didn’t freak you out.’
‘No, I would have kicked him in the head myself.’
Jim smiled. ‘Attagirl.’ He dragged on his cigarette then stubbed it out. ‘Time for a bit of wake-up juice, don’t you reckon? Get us through the rest of the night.’
He swivelled around in his chair, opened a safe behind him and carefully extracted a mirror with four lines of white powder already laid out. Cocaine.
Jim snorted two lines faster than the speed of light and handed me a straw. I hesitated. I was investigating a murder, trying to save my best friend, and I didn’t need my judgement clouded by drugs. On the other hand I’d fit right in if I did some. What would Tony Torcasio do in this undercover situation? He always said you had to become your character and I was Vivien, skanky stripper, confronted with two lines of free blow.
I held the straw up to my right nostril, blocked the left with my index finger and hoovered away. Amazing how your drug-taking skills never leave you, just like riding a bike.
A few seconds and I couldn’t feel my nose, the back of my throat, or my front teeth. It was coke all right. I leaned back, tingling down to the roots of my hair, the soulless concrete room sparkling around me. The out-of-it detective. Jim grinned, eyes glassy. ‘Not bad, ay?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Primo shit. You can’t get this on the street.’ He lit another cigarette.
‘Can I have one?’ Any willpower I might have possessed was gone.
‘I thought you didn’t smoke, Viv.’
‘I don’t.’
He shook one out of a pack of fifty and lit it for me. In my drug-fucked state the cheap cigarette tasted sublime. Jim pulled out a Diet Coke and offered me one but I stuck with my second-hand champagne.
‘Done many dances yet?’ he asked.
‘A couple. I did a fantasy dance, that was fun.’
‘For the copper?’
‘Yeah. I thought he was bullshitting me. I even dressed up in the police uniform for a joke. I didn’t think he was a real cop.’
‘Yeah? Why’s that?’
‘He didn’t look like one, he wasn’t fat enough.’
Jim laughed. ‘You’re funny, darl. Me, I can smell a cop a mile away.’
‘You can?’
‘Uh-huh. Got a sixth sense about it.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘He ask you any questions?’
‘Questions?’
‘About this place, about Frank . . .’
‘Actually,’ I whispered and leaned into the desk, ‘he did ask me who I thought murdered him.’
Jim looked pissed off.
‘Really? Fucking Farquhar. What’s his game, sending one of his boys in here?’
‘Farquhar?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘
Don’t worry about it.’ He swivelled around to the safe and retrieved a small bag full of white powder. ‘Another line?’
‘Sure, it’s really good.’ That was the trouble, I never could stop at just one.
‘When only the best will do . . .’
We snorted up the powder and Jim chain-smoked and swigged Diet Coke. He started pontificating about the stripping industry. ‘Strippers,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, ‘they’re pretty fucked up, most of them. No offence Viv, but believe me, I have seen it and heard it all.
Abused childhoods, a lot of them. And it’s not just the money, though that’s a big part of it. They want to take their clothes off. They like to flash their pussies. Most of them are very into sex, with bisexual tendencies, definitely, so if you don’t swing that way . . .’ He looked for a reaction to indicate I did. ‘Watch out, they’ll try to lead you astray.’
His walkie-talkie crackled and he put it up to his ear.
‘Tell him to come right up.’ He stood. ‘Well, Viv, better get you back to work.’
I walked to the door but Jim didn’t open it straight away. He moved closer, looking up at me, crystalline blue eyes sparkling with drugs.
‘You’re a good-looking girl, you know. In a classy way.’ He reached out and brushed a lock of hair off my face. ‘I think it’s the dark hair. Elegant.’ I could smell cigarettes, Diet Coke and the washing powder he used to launder his shirts. His teeth were very white and I wondered if he’d had veneers put on.
There was a loud knock on the door and Jim opened it. I turned to see who it was and almost had a heart attack. Sal stood there, smiling down at us.
‘Vivien,’ said Jim, ‘this is Salvatore, one of the owners. Sal, our new dancer Vivien.’
‘A pleasure.’ Sal shook my hand, palming me a note.
Jim patted me on the arse. ‘Make some money, honey,’ he said.
Chapter Eight
I woke up the next afternoon, opened one eye and squinted at the bedside clock. It was three oh-eight.
Jesus. I lay very still for a few minutes and assessed the damage. Dry mouth, one blocked nostril, throbbing headache, sore feet, sore legs, thirsty as hell and needing to piss. I opened the bedside drawer and took out a packet of codeine and paracetamol that said PAIN TABLETS in big red letters. I popped out four and washed them down with water from an old Mount Franklin bottle.
After staggering to the bathroom and back I flopped into bed, waiting for the drugs to kick in and memories of the previous night to flood back.
There was the lap dance with Alex, the scene with Grant and, Jesus—Sal. The note had been from Chloe, big loopy letters and hearts instead of dots over the i’s.
‘I’m all right,’ she’d written, ‘please find the killer.’
I was due back at the Red at eight and knew I should be out researching Frank’s background, or following someone, or devising a cunning plan to bring down Sal but I was paralysed with a hangover. Seriously, I felt like I was dying. No more drugs, I told myself, and only half as much champagne.
Backstage at the club all the girls looked like they’d just rolled out of bed. I’d spent a tragic afternoon on the couch eating tuna out of a can and watching crap Saturday TV, gardening shows and motor racing. My only effort to find Frank’s killer involved reading an article about the murder in the paper. I’d found out Detective Inspector Gavin Duval was head of a taskforce they’d dubbed ‘Velvet Curtains’, that Frank and his brother ran a restaurant in Sydney before venturing into the table-dancing world, and that one of the strippers’ boyfriends was ‘helping police with their inquiries’.
I sipped champagne as I got ready and felt better for the first time all day. Aurora and Betty entered the girls’ room.
‘Back for more?’ Aurora asked.
‘Yeah, but I don’t know how my knees are going to take it.’ My white minidress revealed bruises from kneeling on the wooden tables.
‘Ouch,’ said Betty. ‘The podiums’ll do that to you.’
She put her makeup bag onto the dresser next to me and I smelled dope smoke around her, like a cloud.
‘Your knees will toughen up the more you do it,’ said Aurora.
I finished my makeup and laced up a pair of white boots. The shameful truth is I can’t dance in those stripper heels. With my teased hair and liquid eyeliner I had a real sixties look going on.
‘Love your outfit.’ Betty slipped into the leopard-skin number she’d worn the night before. High praise indeed.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Listen, could someone show me a few pole maneuvers before we open? I felt like an idiot up there last night.’
Aurora adjusted her fluorescent yellow bikini top. ‘Flame will. She’s out at the bar.’ Oh great. Miss Congeniality.
Flame was smoking a cigarette and leaving lip-gloss marks on a tumbler of bourbon and coke. She wore an abbreviated sailor suit with gold epaulettes, brass buttons and a hat, and appeared seven foot tall but was probably five nine plus shoes. Hers had a spike heel and Perspex platform with orange fish floating inside. Way cool.
‘Great shoes.’ It was the universal compliment in stripper-land.
‘I know.’
‘Aurora said you could show me some pole tricks.’
Flame sighed and violently stubbed out her cigarette.
She strode across the floor to the centre podium and I jogged behind on tippy-toes trying to keep up. She hoisted herself onto the table and I stayed on the ground. Now she was fifteen foot tall.
‘What did you want to learn?’ She crossed her arms.
‘Oh, anything really, I dunno.’
Flame wrapped her legs around the pole and shimmied up until she reached the ceiling. She frisbeed her hat onto a chair then hung upside down and slid back until her palms rested flat against the podium. The handstand turned into a backflip and ended in a sexy kneeling position. I clapped politely like they do at the golf. Flame did another handstand and teetered over until her platform shoes clanked against the pole. She scissored her legs, gripped the metal with her calves, raised her body and climbed to the top again. For the finale she spun down fast and came to rest doing the splits. Ouch.
‘That’s amazing,’ I said, ‘but I just wanted to learn how to spin around.’
Flame snorted air out of her nose. ‘Take a run up, hook your ankle around the pole and extend your outside leg. The momentum will spin you around.’
I did what she suggested but spun slowly and awkwardly, my skin squeaking against metal and the pole hurting my hand. So much for the seamless, elegant spin I had imagined.
‘Or you can just hang on to the pole and dance,’
Flame smiled when she realised I wasn’t going to set the table-dancing world on fire.
‘I might just do that. Don’t your hands get sore?’
She shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Flame,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Frank. I heard you were going out and—’
‘People die.’ She stared off into the middle distance.
‘That’s life.’
Jim had been watching from the bar and sauntered over, hands in pockets, walkie-talkie hanging off his belt.
‘Flame showing you a few tricks, ay?’
I sat down on the edge of the podium, legs dangling.
‘It’s not as easy as it looks.’
‘Nothing ever is.’ He sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘If you need to see me at all tonight, don’t hesitate, any time. Just get Vince or Brad to radio me first, OK?’
‘Sure.’
He headed back to his office.
‘Jim seems really nice,’ I said, trying to be friendly.
Flame gave me a look. ‘That’s why I’m going out with him.’
I knew what that look meant.
I paced myself for the rest of the night, drinking just enough to keep me going and alternating water with champagne. I didn’t touch any coke but saw most of the other girls duck into the office at regular
intervals.
Hopefully Jim was so high he didn’t realise I hadn’t visited.
It was hard hustling for lap dances without being off your brain. Every guy I talked to said the same old shit: you’re too nice to be working in a place like this.
Maybe they meant it as a compliment but I couldn’t take it as one. It was like they were saying I’d made a poor career choice, possibly because of unfortunate personal circumstances, and they felt sorry for me. Give me a break. I made two hundred dollars but could see the other girls making more. And they were fast, talked to the guys for a couple of minutes then whisked them off to the lounges. Wham bam thank you sir and on to the next one. I wondered how they did it. I spent too much time talking to men who didn’t want to hand over money, telling the beauty school story over and over, and shouting above the music until I was hoarse.
Finally the crowds ebbed for the last time and the house lights came up. Flame was draped over Jim by the bar, both smoking furiously, and she tapped her fish heels to muted top forty hits. They didn’t look as good in the harsh lighting. Flame’s skin had a greyish cast and dissipation showed all over Jim’s face. He turned to me: ‘Hey, Vivien, good night?’
‘Yeah, great,’ I lied.
‘Wanna come back to my place for a drink with me and Flame? It’s only just around the corner.’ His pupils were huge and he chewed the inside of his mouth. Flame looked off into space.
‘I’m sooo tired,’ I begged off.
‘We can fix that,’ he said.
‘Maybe some other time.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
I walked to the staff room on aching legs. Aurora and Betty talked quietly while getting dressed. They seemed like good friends. Betty peeled off her leopard outfit and put on another fifties get-up: red pencil skirt, cap-sleeved blouse, bowling shoes and bobby socks. She dabbed makeup remover onto a cotton ball and rubbed her upper arm, revealing a dice tattoo.
Red lipstick and a ponytail completed the look. Rock around the clock.
Aurora pulled on a pair of hipsters so low they would have shown pubes if she’d had any and a midriff-baring Che Guevara T-shirt. Postmodern. Her twelve thousand dollar tits made Che’s beret go lumpy.
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