I don’t remember answering my cell phone, but a man on the other end chortled, then said, “Walked on the wild side last night, eh, buddy?” I recognized Ben’s voice.
“You saw the reruns?”
“Late night TV.”
“The department’s into reality prostitution shows?”
“Actually, crystal meth is the crime du jour. We’re recording some of the meth dealers we’re building a case against. DA’ll use the footage in his prosecution, but don’t worry, your dirty little secret’s safe with me”—he laughed—“and most of the police force.”
“How much did your guys record?”
“Just the pickup. At least you’ve got good taste in hookers. This have something to do with the three dead young women being in the same line of work?”
“Maybe.”
“After Legs gets into your car and the two of you drive away, ‘maybe’ is all you’ve got? You’re talking to a twenty-year veteran of the force. You got something on our three dead women or not?”
“Something, but I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Protecting a source?”
“I am.”
“You’re not a news reporter, you’re a PI.”
“I know that.”
“We’ve got you on tape committing a crime. DA could charge you as a john.”
“And you’d show the tape to him?”
“I said ‘could.’ Frankly, I was thinking that we got about a five-minute gap in last night’s recording just about the time you showed up. A problem with our equipment or something.”
“Thanks.”
“Look, you need to protect sources, fine. But watch your back out there. You’re dealing with hard-core criminals, many of whom have migrated from big urban centers to sleepy little Bellingham.”
“Like Danny the Pimp?”
Ben chuckled. “So you ran into Danny Escobar, did you?”
“Long hair, ponytail, likes to slap his women around.”
“Danny Escobar.”
“He’s Hispanic?”
“You sound surprised. Hispanics are the largest minority group in the country, and in the state. Washington’s an equal opportunity state, which means equal opportunity for crime. Escobar’s from Colombia or Argentina. I can’t remember.”
“And Frank Abadi?”
“Look who’s asking about this region’s most upstanding citizens. Abadi runs a strip club outside of Mount Vernon. Hispanic women, mostly Mexican, work his poles. Men stick dollars into G-strings out front, and stick other things into other places in private rooms in back. Even hear that Frank has one night set aside as ladies’ night. Men do the stripping, and women do the sticking. Skagit County vice has raided the place more than a few times. So I’m putting two and two together and coming up with three. Three dead young women who worked at Abadi’s place. Would I be right in assuming that?”
“It’s something I can’t confirm.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“But when and if you can confirm this, you’ll let me know?”
“If I can.”
Ben chuckled. “Loyal son of a bitch. Client’s lucky to have you on the case. You need someone to watch your back, you let me know.”
“I will.”
After getting off the cell phone with Ben, I called Kate, even though the Sea Eagle had not returned from her training maneuvers. I left my callback number. A moment later, Kate called back. I sat down at the galley table.
“I’m in the women’s head with my head stuck out the window to get better reception. I shouldn’t be calling you,” she said. “But I couldn’t resist. . . . Are you calling to say you miss me?”
“Yes and no. I wanted you to hear this from me before you heard it from someone else.”
“This sounds serious. Do I need to sit down?”
“I paid for the services of a prostitute last night.”
“I need to sit down.” She paused. “I’m assuming this is part of your investigation?”
“It is.”
“And how much of this prostitute did you investigate?”
“Little or nothing.”
“And how much of you did she investigate?”
“Little or nothing.”
“Then why call me?”
“Because a police undercover unit filmed her picking me up. Ben’s seen the tape. I’m sure Janet will hear about it. The story might get back to you.”
“Oops. Caught in the act. And that’s why you called?”
“It is.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Flattered?”
“That you care enough to want me to hear this directly from you.”
“I’ll also be at a strip club later tonight.”
“The kind where they do lap dances in G-strings?”
“Uh huh.”
“Also part of the investigation?”
“Uh huh.”
“Are you planning on investigating beyond the G-string?”
“Nope.”
“Then I’m flattered again. Hey, do I need to ask for an immediate shore leave?”
“Why?”
Kate laughed seductively. “To hold my own against the prostitutes and the G-strings.”
“I think I can wait.”
“But now I’m not sure I can.”
In the background, I heard a loudspeaker blare an indecipherable order.
“Gotta go,” Kate said.
“I do,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Miss you,” I said.
“That’s nice,” she said. “But now my body’s trembling and I have to go to work.”
I folded the cell phone closed. When I stood and walked toward the refrigerator, my body trembled too.
In Kate’s honor, I made a healthful protein smoothie and downed it before pulling out my guitar and the English Suite. My guitar lesson with Frederico Oller loomed less than two hours away. I’d gotten a jaunty rhythm back in the Prelude, but the second movement, Duarte’s classical adaptation of a Castilian folksong in a minor key, sounded heavy, grave, and stilted. I practiced the first eight lines several times. Afterward, I thought about taking a shower aboard the Noble Lady, but that meant using water from my tank and dumping gray water into the harbor. So I threw clothes and soap in a bag and hustled up to the pay-showers at the top of Gate Nine.
FREDERICO OLLER’S BASEMENT STUDIO always managed to stay cool, even on a warm day like today. Soft light filtered into the room from the large picture window that looked out on a small grove of fir trees. Señor Oller wore his usual dark suit, white shirt, and thin tie. He closed his eyes as I played the Prelude to the English Suite, humming along with me. When I finished he opened his eyes, nodded, and smiled.
“Good. Very good,” he said. He pointed to the picture of him playing with Segovia. “El Maestro would be proud.”
I launched into the second movement, but Señor Oller stopped me after two measures. “Slow down,” he said. “You’re jumping in too quickly. Step back. Here”—he pointed to the first four measures—“read and hum. Read and hum. Read and hum.”
Señor Oller took my guitar from me. I read and hummed the first four measures several times before he handed it back.
“Now play,” he said.
I did, and this time the folk song still sounded heavy and grave, but it flowed like billowy white clouds moving slowly across a dark blue sky.
Señor Oller tapped on the music and nodded. “Read and hum. Read and hum. Read and hum, before you play. Then the music comes from here”—he pointed to his heart—“not from here”—he pointed to his head.
I hummed the beginning of the second movement several more times. Then I played it. The first sixteen measures flowed effortlessly. But I ran into a brick wall, and I backed up. I tried playing beyond this first part several times but I couldn’t. I sighed and placed my guitar across my lap. I turned to Señor Oller. He rubbed his chin.
“Pl
ayed this before?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Played well?”
“Yes.”
His face lit up. “You must let go of remembering how well you once played. Approach it with a beginner’s mind, a beginner’s heart, a beginner’s hands. Then you may discover that you will learn to play it in a way you have never played it before.” He chuckled. “You might enjoy your playing even more.”
Señor Oller touched my arm. He pointed to the picture of Segovia, then to the English Suite. “Duarte wrote this for El Maestro’s second wedding,” he said. “El Maestro married Emilia, one of his prized, young pupils, at the age of sixty-eight. He fathered a child at seventy-seven. Love knows no age or condition; no beginning or end. Love is. And love asks only for a beginner’s mind, heart, and hands. It gives hope to us all. Yes?”
I looked into Señor Oller’s sparkling eyes and touched his shoulder. “Yes.”
DANNY THE PIMP HAD ONE THING RIGHT: Finding the only strip club near Mount Vernon proved easy. The neon sign atop the tall post in front read, “The Tulip Patch. Where Our Flowers Are Always in Bloom.” Okay, so Frank Abadi had a sense of humor, giving the club a name that dripped with local satire. Skagit County prides itself on its annual Tulip Festival, where every spring, fields awash in color draw thousands to this valley nestled between the mountains and the sea. Considering Danny’s business, it’s no wonder he recalled the club’s name as Two Lips.
The Tulip Patch took up two storefronts in a rundown strip mall on the outskirts of Mount Vernon. I got to the club just before midnight. Pickup trucks crammed the parking lot. In one of the windows, a miniature version of the lighted displays used in sports stadiums and arenas alternately flashed “Girls! Girls! Girls!” then a digital image of a tulip opening to reveal a nude woman. What did the display show on ladies’ night?
I pulled into a space and shut down the engine. I switched off the headlights and sat in my darkened car, watching. Men wandered into the club, in groups or alone.
One man leaving the club caught my attention. He strolled toward his car with his back toward me. I popped the glove compartment door and reached for the small pair of binoculars I kept there and raised them to my eyes, focusing them in the dim light. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see his hair pulled back and down, turning forward under his ear. He stepped into a red pickup truck piled high with crab traps. So Ray Bob not only liked snaring crabs but also liked snaring tulips.
I circumnavigated the building on foot before I entered. Bricks filled in most windows. Heavy chains secured exit doors. Apparently, fire marshals hadn’t visited the Tulip Patch recently. Several cars sat behind the club. A rear door opened, and a woman in a flowing silk robe stepped out. She took a long drag from her cigarette, then blew out a thin stream of smoke that curled upward like a shimmering ghost under the green glow of overhead security lights.
I patted my pockets to make sure I’d left my gun in the car. Then I walked to the front door and pulled the large, tubular Lucite handle toward me. The cloying smell of floral air freshener mixed with alcohol assaulted me. A big, bald man in black slacks and a black T-shirt greeted me at the door with a gap-toothed smile. He motioned for me to raise my hands, then frisked me quickly and waved me in.
Fake smoke blew across a large stage at the front of the club, where three women danced with shining silver poles. Red and blue lights cut paths through the smoke as they followed the women’s undulating bodies. A sultry saxophone played in the background. Tables sat in concentric half circles around the stage. A brass bar separated patrons from dancers. Men waving bills leaned over the bar. Dancers wiggled toward the excited sea of hands, stopping short then thrusting their pelvises forward to receive the phallic currency inserted into their G-strings.
I took a table at the rear of the club, but I didn’t go unnoticed. A blonde woman in net stockings and a tight outfit that reminded me of a Playboy bunny costume got to my table nearly at the same time that I did. She shook her cleavage in my face. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a lover of the female form, but somehow all this display of flesh for the sake of making money didn’t titillate or excite me. It actually made me sad.
The waitress cooed. “Must be your first time here, taking a seat so far away from all the action. Want a drink to help you relax?”
I ordered a beer, and the waitress threw a hip my way before sashaying off to the bar. At the front of the club, a man in a dark blue business suit with an open-collar white shirt and a loosened red tie hopped up onstage. He lunged for one of the dancers, who twirled around a pole just out of his grasp. Suddenly, two burly men pushed through the crowd and carted him out of the club on their shoulders.
My beer came with a petite brunette waitress who also showed ample cleavage. I got the feeling this was all part of the game—checking me out to see what kind of woman I responded to.
The brunette smiled, then she said in a faux southern drawl, “Should we run a tab?”
“I’ll pay for the beer now,” I said.
She set a glass down and bent over provocatively as she poured the beer. The head rose quickly to the top of the glass without spilling over. She played her fingers up and down the glass. “I love sipping head.” She pouted and winked. Then she tapped my bill onto the table. I broke out laughing. Pouty Lips twirled around and also gave me a hip snap as she left.
So far, the Tulip Patch reminded me of Comedy Central. I took a sip of beer then looked at the bill. I didn’t laugh then. For the price of one beer I could have bought a twelve-pack.
I’d only taken a few sips of beer when another woman in a skimpy outfit strolled up to my table. I imagined that somewhere in the club a man sat behind a one-way mirror, or maybe in front of a bank of video monitors, dispatching girls to lone patrons.
“May I sit?” the young woman asked.
“Yes,” I said.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when she wriggled herself between the table and me to sit in my lap. She draped her arm around me and whispered in my ear, “Lap dances are only fifty dollars for five minutes. Can I swing my legs around and give you one?”
I took a sip of beer and said, “I was hoping for a lap dance in a more private place. I was also hoping for a Mexican dancer.”
The woman didn’t miss a beat. “Honey, I’ll be right back. We aim to please our men.”
Now I imagined this woman strutting into that backroom like a waitress walking into the kitchen with an order. When the door closed, she’d yell, “One Mexican. Table 37.”
A young Mexican woman appeared from a corner of the club and walked my way. She wore a thong bikini that begged for a beach in the bright sun of Puerto Vallarta or Acapulco, but seemed out of place in the fake smoke of this darkened club. She stopped at my table and turned on a weak smile.
“Señor, this is Alex”—she patted her chest—“I may sit?” Alex spoke in a soft voice. She struggled with her English.
“Sí, señorita, por favor.” Her smile brightened as I struggled with my Spanish.
Under normal circumstances I’d be thrilled for this beautiful young woman to ask for my lap. But as Alex lowered her firm, round flesh onto my legs and turned so her barely covered breasts poked into my chest, a wave of nausea swept over me.
Atop her burgeoning brown beauty, my mind superimposed images of the corpses that Raven and I had found at the bottom of Eagle Harbor: fed on by crabs, a breast and one side of her face now bone, and a small crab scurrying from between her lips. I closed my eyes and shook my head. When I opened my eyes I didn’t see beauty and youth sitting on my lap, I saw only death. I reached for my beer again.
Alex put a hand on my shoulder. “The señor, he is okay?”
I patted her knee. “Yes.”
“The señor, he wishes for a private lap dance?”
“No.”
Alex gasped. “The señor, he is not pleased with Alex?”
“No. The señor is very pleased with Alex.”
&nb
sp; She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. She struggled for words. I pointed to the seat across from me.
“Please have a seat there.”
Alex stood up and pulled out the chair. Simultaneously, a door in the shadows of the club creaked opened and slammed shut. Alex had barely managed to sit when a short man dressed in a blue and white Hawaiian shirt strutted up behind her. He tapped her on the shoulder. She stood and quickly disappeared into the shadows. The man took her seat. He looked toward the front of the club and snapped his fingers over his head. Then he looked at me.
“Frank Abadi,” he said.
The first waitress I’d had appeared at the table. Abadi looked at my drink.
“Another beer for Mr. . . . ?”
“Campbell,” I said.
“A beer for Mr. Campbell. Whiskey for me.”
Abadi stared hard at me. Lights from the stage glistened in the sweat on his head, visible through his thinning hair. He adjusted the gold chain around his neck.
“You’re not from here, are ya?”
“Western sales manager for Mitsubishi, based out of San Diego.”
“San Diego, huh?” He nodded knowingly. “Got it. Developed a thing for Mexican girls, huh?”
The waitress slapped down a glass of beer in front of me and a shot glass in front of Abadi. Then she removed my half-finished glass. No seductive pouring or making a wisecrack about sipping the head this time. She turned and left promptly.
“You here long?” Abadi asked.
“Three days.”
“Something wrong with Alex? Too old. Too young. Meat in the wrong places? You want Mex for sex, I can get ’em.”
I took a sip of beer. “Alex is just what I’m after.”
“She say something wrong to you?”
“Not at all.”
“We got private rooms in the back. And a menu to suit your budget and your tastes.”
“I’m looking for something more,” I said.
A sly smile broke out over Abadi’s face. “Twosome? Threesome? We can do that too.”
Precious Cargo Page 11
