Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  “I usually think I know what's best for other people,” said Jane. “Not for myself necessarily.”

  He laughed. “That's right. If you think about what you're supposed to be doing, you don't have time to sort everyone else out. Anyway, when you're a police officer, the higher up you go, the bigger hassles you have with administrators who think they know what's best— mostly for their own careers—and there's tons of paperwork and the money's not so hot, so I work for myself now. I have a couple of big clients. I work as much as I have to in order to make what I need to enjoy the free time.”

  They walked along in silence and clammy coldness a little longer. Her clothes weren't the least bit dry as far as she could tell. “Something about this landscape brings out revelation,” said Jane. “When we were walking on that perfect little trail at the hot springs we didn't talk at all.”

  She looked around her. Aesthetically, this place was a disaster. Burnt over, chopped up, messy, out of balance. The rain forest they'd walked through before looked planned. It had to have been. There had to have been some divine plan behind it. She thought of her Christmas card angel.

  “When he was coming at me,” she said, “I prayed for a guardian angel to come rescue me. I guess you were it. Plucking me out of the Devil's Bath.”

  “I'm no angel,” he said, “any more than your uncle was Saint George. We're just a couple of people who mess around with bad stuff because we think we're supposed to.”

  “And we don't know what else to do,” she said. “Listen, if the RCMP get involved,” she said rather urgently, “they might scare off Brenda. I want a chance to talk to her. Let me call her and warn her. We can call the police in twenty-four hours.”

  “So you can get your hands on your uncle's money,” he said.

  “ That's right. If I get paid, then I'm not an amateur anymore.”

  Chapter 32

  Calvin Mason never liked it when the phone rang late at night like this. It generally wasn't good news. Good news could always wait. Late-night phone calls usually meant bailing out some sleazeball client, or some emergency with a tenant in the building he managed—a flood or electrical problems.

  He let the machine answer.

  “Calvin? This is Jane da Silva.”

  He picked it up and shouted over his own recorded voice. “Hang on, hang on.” He turned on the light on the bed stand.

  “Where the hell are you?” he said. “Did you get my message?”

  “Port Hardy. At the northern tip of Vancouver Island. I'm staying in a hotel at the dock. A big trawler just came in and the elevator smells like fish. They've got a one-man band in the bar. Yes. I got your message and it helped me make sense of it all. I know who did it. I know who killed Mrs. Cox.”

  “You mean it wasn't Kevin?” he said.

  “No, it was—”

  “Stop!” he said. Did he want to know this? Maybe not, if she wasn't going to tell the police. If she was going to try to be some one-woman vigilante squad so she could get her hands on Uncle Harold's money.

  “Stop? Don't you want to know? It's your client I'm saving here.”

  “Are we going to tell the cops about this?” he said.

  “That's why I'm calling. I want you to get to work doing whatever you have to do to get the State of Washington to extradite him.”

  “Where is he? Who is he?”

  “He's Mr. Cox. The pharmacist,” she said. “I think he killed his wife, Betty. And I think he's still on Vancouver Island. Kevin dropped the gun. Cox picked it up, shot his wife and called the police. Tell me again, did he say he saw Kevin do it?”

  “No. He said he came out of the back room and the deed was done.”

  “That's because Kevin had left and he never really saw him. And maybe because he didn't want the police to find Kevin. It would have been better for Cox if it had been some mysterious robber who fled the scene.”

  “Did Brenda tell you all this? She wasn't even there.”

  “No. I haven't found her yet. That is, I've found her but I haven't reached her yet. Calvin, Cox tried to kill me. I'm pretty sure he killed Jennifer. And Brenda was there. She was impersonating Jennifer so she could use her health insurance.”

  Calvin thought for a moment. “There weren't any powder burns on Cox.”

  “There weren't any on Kevin, either. And he's sitting in Monroe.”

  “Start at the beginning,” he said.

  “I can't, I have to get some sleep. I have to get the moss out of my hair. We have to get up early and get down island.”

  “We?”

  “I hooked up with an insurance investigator. He scared off Cox and tried to rescue me from drowning, but I wasn't really drowning—at a lake called the Devil's Bath— the most godforsaken spot—we had to walk out of there on their weird logging road because Cox ripped out the distributor and slashed the tires. It's a long, long story. We got to the main road—thank God we didn't run into any bears—and hitched a ride with a mill hand into Port Hardy and we can't get a rental car till tomorrow morning.”

  Chumped again. Here he was, getting beat up on some dentist's lawn and putting in time fixing Carol's garbage disposal and she was shacked up with some slick son of a bitch in Port Hardy.

  “Who is this guy exactly?”

  “His name's Steven Johnson. The main thing is he knew that Brenda had been using Jennifer's insurance. Actually, he's the guy who visited Jennifer before she was killed.”

  “Terrific!” said Calvin. “He probably strangled her. He's probably working for that slimy dentist. Jane, the guy you're with is a person of interest to the police here. I got that from a reliable source in the department. I have half a mind to call the Mounties and send them over to that fishy hotel. How are you registered?

  As Mr. and Mrs. Smith?”

  “I already turned him over to the Mounties once,” she said. “He talked his way out of it. He's an ex-cop. He convinced them he was perfectly legit and he talked to the Seattle police already and he's going to come in and tell them everything he knows when we get back to Seattle.”

  She sounded completely sold on the guy.

  “And besides,” she added, “he wanted to go to the Mounties himself. I talked him out of it because I said you'd be telling the whole story to the Seattle police in the morning.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “Really, Jane, this whole thing sounds very screwy.”

  “I can hardly wait to see you and tell you everything,” she said. “I think I did it this time. I think I found a hopeless case. We just have to nail Cox and get a new trial for Kevin. How long will that take? Do you think the board will give me the money before he's acquitted?”

  “You sound kind of manic,” he said. “I think I'd better get up there. I can get a float plane from Lake Union. Meet you somewhere on the island. Or I can get one from Lake Washington that lands up at some of those salmon resorts.”

  “No,” she said. “I need you down there. See if you can figure a way around those powder burns. After I talk to Brenda, I'll know more. I'll call you after that.”

  “When are you going to catch up with her?”

  “I can't get in touch with her. We tried. But I'll see her tomorrow. All of her. She starts stripping at noon at the Tip Top Club in Victoria.”

  “Sounds like a great witness,” said Calvin. “Call in, will you? Let me know what you're up to.”

  “I will. Talk to you soon. Bye. You're wonderful,” she said.

  He didn't like that last “you're wonderful” one bit. It felt like a pat on the head. And he hated himself for being jealous and making that Mr. and Mrs. Smith crack. He really doubted the guy was a strangler. After all, the RCMP had let him go, and they had pretty broad powers up there.

  He sighed and looked over at good old Marcia, who slept through anything. Marcia was a beautician, so she changed her hair all the time. At the moment, it was red and curly, and splayed out over the pillow, except for one curl that clung damply to her cheek.

 
; Not without tenderness, he brushed it away, turned out the light and reflected that it was completely illogical and unfair of him to get bent out of shape about Jane da Silva fooling around with a boring insurance guy. But there was never any logic or fairness to these things.

  . . .

  After she hung up, Jane, wearing a T-shirt of Steven Johnson's, fell back on the bed. Her legs ached from the hike, even after the hot bath she'd had. Calvin Mason, she was sure, imagined her now making riotous love with Steven Johnson, who was safely down the hall in his own room, having kindly lent her some clothes. She had kissed him lightly on the cheek, in a sort of cocktail-party greeting way at her door, and thanked him.

  It felt rather glorious to be all alone in a locked room, away from Mr. Cox and his knife or wild animals. Grooming instincts took over. She had rinsed out her own clothes and thrown them over the towel rack, taken a hot bath and washed her hair with a bar of soap, and picked out most of the shreds of moss.

  After they'd checked in, they had eaten very tasty burgers and fries—nice and greasy the way she liked them—washed down with Scotches in the hotel pub, and watched the one-man band—a pale young man in shredded jeans and a tank top who sang seventies rock tunes as he played the guitar with his hands and kicked at various mechanisms connected to computers and synthesizers with his scuffed boots to create prerecorded drum rolls and more guitar licks. Some of the trawler crew shot pool behind them and some local Natives sat primly at the tables drinking beer.

  She had managed to convince Johnson not to call the cops until after they'd talked to Brenda, mostly by playing on his desire to see the job through and give her a chance to interview Brenda. She also pointed out that they hadn't been able to find her, so the police probably couldn't either. When he finally caved in, she thought it was probably from exhaustion.

  Phone calls to the Tip Top Club had elicited the information that Brenda would be staying in rooms above the bar when she arrived for a week's engagement, but she hadn't arrived yet and wasn't due until noon the next day.

  Right before she fell asleep, the synthesized bass line from the one-man band reverberating a little through the floorboards, it occurred to her she was just a little irked he hadn't come on to her now that they were back in civilization. She realized it was mostly her own vanity that made her feel that way. Although, it might be rather pleasant to be curled up with him right now, after all they'd been through together.

  The next day they got a rental car with cruise control and a terrific sound system. He drove fast and she slept for a while, then woke up, and feeling sort of teenaged-middle-aged crazy now that they were getting so close to Brenda, she sang along to old Motown songs on the radio. He told her she had a good voice and was just as good as anyone in the lounge at any airport Holiday Inn, and added that she looked good in his rolled-up, cinched-in jeans and dark blue shirt, which cheered her up immensely.

  They arrived at the Tip Top Club in Victoria, tucked away on a street just a few blocks away from the teacup shops and kilt emporiums aimed at the tourists, but in a block the tourists never penetrated.

  A flapping fabric sign outside the building read, AMATEUR NIGHT—SUN. NOON. The bar was in an old hotel, a squat stucco building that looked like it had served commercial travelers in the premotel era. There was a hand-lettered sign that said ROOMS in a smudgy upstairs window, a handsome old carved doorway, its lines obscured by a dozen coats of paint, and a couple of windows with neon beer signs. A reader board stuck out from above the door. It proclaimed, LESLIE 44DD WED.

  “Amateur Night at noon is an oxymoron,” said Jane as they pulled up in front. She turned to him. “I'm nervous.”

  “About meeting Brenda?”

  “No. About going into a stripper bar. I'll be the only woman there. I know it's dumb. I mean, this is a matter of life and death, but still—all those men.”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” he said. “They won't be watching you. These are red-blooded Canadian men. They'll be watching naked women on the stage, seeing as it isn't hockey season.”

  Inside there was a beautiful old mahogany bar, cluttered up with more neon beer signs. The bartender had black hair, slicked back into a ponytail.

  The rest of the bar had been cheaply remodeled, and consisted of raised tiers of tables and chairs. Like an island in the center of the large room was a stage about table height. There were four brass poles at each corner, a row of blinking lights around the perimeter, and, off to one side, a cheap-looking fiberglass tub and shower. It reminded Jane of something a parsimonious landlord would install.

  The place was about half full of men—many of them alone, some with a friend or two. It was your basic T-shirt and tractor cap crowd, with a few military men in uniform. There was an Asian man in the corner, sitting with a long-suffering little woman who appeared to be his wife. A lot of them seemed to be eating lunch—hamburgers and sandwiches.

  “It'll be better if you ask for her,” he said, leading them to a table near the back. “I can't imagine they let the customers at the girls.”

  “We should wait till her set is over,” said Jane.

  They sat down, and a waitress with sturdy legs, wearing a T-shirt and black drawstring shorts, white socks and tennis shoes, and looking like someone from a college PE class, came over and took their order for two Kokanee beers. They hadn't had lunch yet, so Johnson ordered a French dip sandwich; Jane went for a basket of prawns and chips.

  The beer arrived at about the same time a disc jockey's voice announced the arrival of Melanie. Jane, who had vague notions of satin gloves and beaded evening gowns, long red nails and eye shadow, was fascinated to see that Melanie looked well scrubbed and wholesome.

  She was blonde, about nineteen or twenty, with minimal makeup and long silky-looking hair, short pale nails. She danced around a little to some vaguely disco-ish music, looking like a teenage babysitter.

  Within seconds she had peeled off her clothes. She had started out in a little navy blue short knit skirt and a stretchy white blouse with three buttons that showed her nipples through the fabric. It was an outfit a teenager might wear to the mall, except for the five-inch spikes. Underneath, she had on a lacy white thong.

  She danced around some more, twirling herself around the poles and landing bouncily on her spikes, shaking her hips, gathering her hair up on her head and letting it spill back down, smiling like a cheerleader. Once in a while, she pinched her pale nipples between thumb and forefinger, with an accompanying stylized rolling of the eye, flung-back head and toss of her silky hair.

  All the while, the men sat hunkered over their hamburgers and beer. They were hardly a bunch of frenzied animals. They'd just managed a few whoops when the skirt and blouse had come off and she'd deposited them in a neat little pile on one side of the stage. They showed a little more polite interest when she peeled off the scrap of white lace between her legs and tossed it neatly with her other two items of clothing. Now she was down to her heels, and she pranced around some more, tossing her head like a pony and occasionally running her hands over herself.

  Her pubic hair was trimmed to a neat blonde oblong. Jane suspected it was bleached to match.

  She turned to Johnson. “She looks so wholesome,” she said. He was paying more attention to his French dip than the stage. “Like the girl next door if the girl next door had a great body.”

  “And tore off her clothes,” he added. “They look sleazier in the States,” he said. “Even though they have to keep a G-string on. At home they make their money on tips. Here, I understand, they get a salary. It's a little less demeaning, I suppose.”

  He took a sip of his Kokanee. “I had to do a surveillance once on a guy who hung out at these places all the time. I got pretty sick of it. It got so I got excited when the girls put their clothes back on. And the drinks were terrible.”

  Jane smiled at him. He was looking at her rather earnestly. “Yes,” she said, “and it's very sweet of you to maintain eye contact with me, but seeing as we
're here, I really won't be offended if you look. I know it's sleazy, but she is very pretty.” Jane had made a mental note to start working out again seriously as soon as she got home. Melanie didn't have an ounce of flab on her anywhere. Everything was smooth, tight and perfectly proportioned. Jane watched the men surveying all the dancer's body parts. They could have been at a horse auction, looking for breeding stock.

  He laughed. “You want to hit a couple more places after we find Brenda?”