Strip Search

by Rex Burns

  “What the hell’s he got to ask? He knows you’re a cop. And besides, Wager, he’s laughing at you. I hope to Christ he don’t know I’m finking for you—he won’t be laughing no more, and neither will I.”

  “Just stay cool. King could have shot off his mouth to anybody and probably did. Clinton won’t do a thing—there’s still too much heat.”

  “I hope to hell so. But for any more stooling, go find yourself another pigeon. My insurance premium’s getting too high, Wager.”

  He remained in the shadows as Plummer, a small roll of new bills in his hip pocket, turned back toward the noisy lights of Colfax; his elbows angled out and his walk waddled slightly, like—Wager thought—a lizard.

  The Cinnamon Club.

  It wasn’t Rome, but all of a sudden most of the roads seemed to lead there. The trouble was, they were more like trails than roads, and twisted and dim ones at that. And none of them showed how Angela or Foxy Dick’s fit in. Or who was asking questions about him.

  Wager, his mind going over the facts and guesses that the Lizard had stirred up, drove down Colfax to LaBelle’s roadside stand. Do something, lieutenant.

  Even among the extra crowds and flurries of a Saturday night, Wager could make out the regulars on the strip as he slowly drove by. They formed a pattern of reference points like boulders under a frothy mountain stream. At first glance, the swirls and splashes of laughter and music seemed chaotic, but, when looked at long enough, the chaos revealed a pattern: that bulge in the flow of pedestrians was around Hey You Jones, the half-crazy beggar who every night stationed himself as close to the movie theater as the management would allow. That dimmer section, where pedestrians hurried their pace because there was nothing to lure them, was the wall around a fancy French restaurant; and that long-haired kid sitting on it and swinging his feet was the restaurant’s rent-a-cop, watching over the customers’ cars parked behind the partial safety of that wall. Across the street, a burst of loud, welcoming laughter, where one of the steerers for the Nude Review Disco greeted a pair of cowboys like they were descending gods. Up there, where the traffic of a major artery cut across the strip, a frizzy-haired blond in short-shorts and high, shiny boots posed on her corner. Periodically, like a figure in a cuckoo clock, her black pimp, Emery Reeves, AKA The Spook, emerged at the doorway of Pert’s Place to check on her. Wager didn’t know this girl’s name yet, but he would in time. Ahead, turning into the line of stop-and-go traffic, an unmarked police cruiser stood out as if it had flashers: Moffett and Nolan making one of their routine patrols, another part of the subsurface permanency.

  Down past the shill for the Varieties, the half-naked Raymondo in his black jockstrap waved toward someone dealing something on a corner; and beyond that, back at her regular place now, stood LaBelle. Wager blinked his lights as he neared, and her dark face stilled. Then she shrugged. He paused at the curb and leaned across to open the door.

  “You getting to be a regular, honey.” Her pink dress had a network of fresh wrinkles and she smelled of a bath of strong perfume. “Once around the block, piggy—it’s a busy night.”

  “Saturday night crowd?” He eased back into traffic.

  “That and payday, honey—down at Fort Carson. Most of the other girls gone down there this weekend.”

  “What have you got for me, LaBelle?”

  “I got what every man wants, honey.” She giggled slightly and he saw the large, black circles of her pupils.

  “Are you on hard stuff again?”

  “You go to hell.” The giggle changed abruptly to a sneer. “What I’m on—what I ain’t on—that’s my business. Not yours, not nobody’s. Mine!”

  “Sure, LaBelle. All I want is some information. Do you remember what I wanted you to find out?”

  “I remember. You think I’m a monkey-woman. Maybe I am, piggy, but I remember you.”

  Wager wasn’t very good at dealing with drunks or people who were stoned. Even in uniform, he’d had his problems trying to mask the repugnance he felt for their lack of control and the ease with which they fell into self-pity. And he never quite erased the suspicion that most of them were not nearly as blanked out as they pretended to be. But he tried to stifle his reaction—LaBelle was touchy enough when she was sober; she was twice as volatile when high. And he needed any information she could give him. “Anything on Annette Sheldon?”

  “Never heard of her. I asked around, but them dancers, they not real professionals, so they don’t have no regular customers, you know? I heard of maybe a dozen that’s in the life regular. ‘Call girls’—sit on their tails and wait for a man to call them, you know? Shit, amateurs!”

  “But not Annette?”

  “No. Nobody out of that Cinnamon Club that I heard of.”

  “What about Foxy Dick’s?”

  “Not the one you wanted—that Angela. What’s she, another Spick?”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “Well, yeah! A lot of places got girls that does what their pimp tells them. But not me, piggy. I don’t have no pimp and I don’t need no pimp. LaBelle Brown is her own woman, and I don’t work for no man.” She added, “I heard most about a dump way out east on Colfax—the Turkish Delights.”

  That one used to be the Arabian Nights before the Iranian embassy thing. It was past the city limits and beyond Wager’s official territory. “Did you hear anything about either girl dealing dope?”

  “I told you I ain’t.” Her hand flapped toward the approaching corner. “But these days, who ain’t dealing? Let me out here, piggy. I got to use the little girls’ room. And that’ll be twenty dollars for my time, honey.”

  He watched her sashay into the porno arcade, a familiar word and cackle of laughter for the doorman who paced his three or four steps back and forth in front of the entry. Then Wager pulled an illegal U-turn away from the avenue and looked for another telephone. He might as well make the full round like the busy little bee he was, flitting from one bright blossom to the next. Almost, he thought wryly, like LaBelle.

  Fat Willy’s office was a bar phone, and he did not like Wager to call him there. But sometimes the big man needed a little goading, and the frustrations Wager felt about these cases gave him a touch of satisfaction in needling Willy.

  “I told you I would call you, Wager.” The muttered words barely carried over his labored breathing.

  “Do you want to talk now or meet me somewhere?”

  “Man, you cannot take a hint, can you?”

  “What have you picked up on, Willy?”

  “Nothing more on you, since you’re so worried. That meatball, Little Ray, he’s running around like Sherman marching through Georgia. I hear tell he’s going to be the main man for the whole strip—or so he says.”

  “Just rewards for honest labor. Did you ever hear of a guy named Doc?”

  “I heard the name.”

  “He got killed last night.”

  “I heard that, too. It’s my business to hear things.”

  “Anything on it?”

  “Just that he got it in the back of the head. It sounds a lot like them two girls, Wager. Pretty soon people going to ask what you’re doing to protect the citizenry.”

  “What have you heard about the Cinnamon Club?”

  “Word I get is they’re worried about going under. Them and Foxy Dick’s, too. But, hell, a lot of people’s worried about that nowadays.”

  Wager remembered both Berg and Thomas complaining about bad business. But he thought that was just the usual poor-mouthing that managers handed out. “They look busy tonight.”

  “Sure—but one weekend ain’t a whole week. My sources tell me that both them people borrowed big to get going, and times, they are hard. They are also a-changing, and that has people worried.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They got a law against bottomless dancing where liquor’s served—the one they been appealing. It’s coming up for decision soon. The state supreme court.”

  That had been pending
for years, since the legislature passed the law and the clubs had joined together to dump it into the judicial mill with a challenge. First amendment. Artistic expression. Wager, like everyone else, had almost forgotten about it. “It won’t hurt business that much.”

  “Any much is too much right now. And my sources tell me that if they go to a federal appeal, they’re going to have a big overhead item with lawyers’ fees. Man, the lawyers end up with it all, don’t they? Sometimes I think I’m in the wrong business.”

  “Annette Sheldon was bringing in extra money, Willy. A lot of it, and it doesn’t look like she was whoring for it.”

  The line was silent for a lurching breath or two. “She dealing?”

  “Little Ray couldn’t tie her to the action. I can’t find anybody who can.”

  “Uh huh. But that don’t mean she wasn’t. It only means she wasn’t big at it.”

  “It was steady income. Long-term and steady and out of the club. If she was a competitor for Little Ray, he’d know her.”

  “Uh huh, yeah, you right. Well, now you got my curiosity up. Man my size got a lot of curiosity in him. Maybe I’ll mosey over to that Cinnamon Club and look at some white pussy.”

  “Just before he was killed, Doc visited that place.”

  “No shit?” In the background someone started a jukebox with some hard, tuneless pulse. “Was he one of your people?”

  It couldn’t hurt Doc now. “Yes.”

  “And now you telling me to be careful, Wager? You worried about ol’ Willy?”

  “I’m just telling you what happened.”

  “Haw—next thing you’ll want to tuck me in bed. Give ol’ Willy a good-night kiss and tuck me safe in beddy-bye! That what you want to do, Wager?”

  “I don’t give a damn if they slice you into pork chops, Willy. All I want is the information.”

  “Mr. Hard-Ass hisself, worried about his poor little Willy-Boy.” The voice went falsetto. “‘Y’all take care of yourself, y’hear’—ha!”

  Wager half-grinned at the buzzing telephone. It served him right for hinting at any tie other than money or leverage between him and Willy. They’d known each other for ten years or more, longer than he’d known Doc. But this relationship was one where score was kept by a hazy kind of coup-counting; the money was always paid, the information was usually straight, but the manner of trade required triumphant laughter over some discovered weakness in the other. Score one for Fat Willy; Wager half-wondered, and not for the first time lately, if he was getting too old and kindly for this type of work. He’d have to tone himself up—bayonet a few babies, maybe. Or visit the Cinnamon Club again.

  He reached it a little before midnight, the same time, perhaps, that Doc would have been leaving last night. The bouncer recognized him as he crossed the glare beneath the marquee, and it wasn’t just Wager’s suspicious nature that detected a nervous scurry among some of the girls working the crowded floor.

  “Something you need?”

  Wager held out the police sketch of Doc. “Was this man in last night? Say, from eleven to around twelve or one?”

  The bouncer tilted the paper against the glow falling in from the marquee. “I already told those other two cops: I don’t know.” A thundering crescendo of drums forced him to half-shout. “It was real crowded last night.”

  “Witnesses say he came here about eleven, to meet a man. Later on, he was found shot.”

  “I don’t know if he was here or not. I didn’t see him.”

  “All right,” said Wager. “Let’s start with the bartender.”

  The bouncer tugged at his lower lip, then turned. Wager followed the man’s wide back to the bar. The counter light glowed faintly up against the tiers of bottles, each with its bright chrome spout like a curving finger. Berg, the manager, was already there; Wager figured that he, too, had a little red light that blinked Cop.

  “What’s the problem, Cal?”

  “He’s looking for somebody. Says he was in here last night.” He handed the drawing to Berg. “I don’t remember the guy.”

  Berg peered at the drawing in the dim light. Overhead, like heat lightning, the steady flicker of strobes from the dance ramp sent red pulses across the glitter-spray of the ceiling.

  Berg shook his head. “It was crowded last night. For a change. You’re not going to want to question all the girls again, are you?”

  “Why not?” Wager handed the drawing to Nguyen, the bartender, who held it in the light beneath the bar. As he expected, the Vietnamese shook his head, gold teeth glinting.

  “Because we’re busy tonight! Goddamn, look—the house is full. Best night all week, and you show up to hassle my waitresses!”

  “It shouldn’t take long, Mr. Berg. Just call them to the office one at a time. Yes, they’ve seen him; no, they haven’t. And they’re back on the floor.”

  “I’m a taxpayer, goddamn it! I run a legitimate entertainment business, and I don’t have to put up with this kind of harassment!”

  “And I’m running a police investigation of a homicide. I’m trying to do it without issuing warrants or calling all your employees down to headquarters to answer questions there.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re threatening me? Goddamn it, what’s your badge number!”

  Wager held it up and waited until Berg had made a show of copying it on a bar napkin that he poked angrily into his trouser pocket. Then he said pleasantly, “Now, Mr. Berg, I’m going to give you one minute to make up your mind: either call in the girls or you’re under arrest for accessory to a crime.”

  “Accessory!”

  He nodded. “Colorado Criminal Code, article 8, section 105, paragraph 2(d), ‘the obstruction of anyone in the performance of any act which might aid in the discovery, detection, apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment of a suspect.’ You will also be charged under section 106, ‘refusal to permit inspections,’ and section 108, paragraph 1(b), ‘refraining from reporting to law enforcement authorities the commission or suspected commission of any crime or information relating to a crime.’” It was a section of the criminal code that had served Wager well in the past, and he had long ago memorized this little speech. “Sections 106 and 108 are misdemeanors. But ‘Accessory’ is a class-four felony and punishable by up to ten years in prison and a thirty-thousand-dollar fine or both.”

  “Thirty—!”

  “And ten years in Cañon City.” He smiled.

  “Shit. Come on.” Berg stamped his way through the crowd toward the office. Wager, behind him, could feel the presence of the bouncer at his back. In the office, with the closed door muffling the noise of the dance floor, Berg took a moment to light a cigar and blow a stream of thin brown smoke across his littered desk. Then, “Cal, start bringing them in. Quietly, you hear?”

  “Okay, Mr. B.”

  He waited until he heard the door close behind Cal before telling Berg, “I hear you’re worried about the business folding.”

  The man’s face jerked up in the small circle of light that covered the desk top. The glare accentuated dark rings under his eyes. “Who says? I’m worried about profits. Who the hell’s not worried about profits? But the business is good—it’s sound!”

  “Happy to hear it.” Wager tried another angle. “One of the girls told me that Shelly brought in maybe a thousand in a good week. Does that sound about right to you?”

  “Yeah. For a good week. We ain’t had many like that in a long time, but, yeah, Shelly did all right.”

  “Her husband says she averaged fifteen hundred in a poor week.”

  Berg slowly took the cigar off his lip. “He said what?”

  Wager repeated it as the man leaned back out of the light.

  “She might have done that good once or twice,” said Berg. “Maybe that’s what he meant.”

  “Do any of the girls ever skim?”

  He shrugged. “A little, maybe. But Cal and Nguyen keep a good eye on the cash flow. A
nd so do I. It’s not exact, but you get a rough idea how many bills a girl gets stuck in her G-string each night. Where’s she going to hide it?” He chewed his cigar slowly. “If Shelly was skimming that much, she’d have been spotted; she’d have been out on her sweet ass long ago.”

  “Maybe she had some business on the side.”

  “She wasn’t laying the customers, if that’s what you mean. You can tell if a girl organizes a little business on the side. It’s my license to tell, right?” His eyes half-closed, he looked somewhere into the darkness beyond Wager, then he ran a restless hand across his pink scalp. “She could have been screwing around outside. Maybe she was. I can’t watch them when they’re not here. But she wasn’t pulling any extra money out of this place, that’s for sure. Not one damn dollar. Her husband’s not telling you right, Wager.” He poked the cigar through the air with a burst of fresh anger. “And you can charge me with every goddamn section you want to, it won’t do you no good. I know nothing about anything she did, except dance and serve drinks!”

  “The man whose picture I showed you, he was asking about Shelly the night he was killed. He came here to meet somebody.”

  “Well, he didn’t meet me. I didn’t see him.”

  “He was a snitch, Mr. Berg. He said he was onto something big, and he came here to check it out.”

  Even in the soft, yellow light of the desk lamp, Berg’s face looked as gray as the ash on his cigar. He stared at Wager for a breath or two and finally said, “If he was a snitch, anybody could have hammered him. If he was a fucking snitch, he deserved to be hammered!” The cigar plugged his tight mouth.

  The girls, ushered in by a stiff-faced Cal, took turns looking at the drawing. None of them recognized the man until Carmen, one of the new dancers, said she might have served him. “He sat away from the ramp. A beer drinker,” she said.

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “Not that I saw. I went up for a set, and he didn’t even tip me.” She shrugged. “Screw him—I let him suck his one beer all night.”

  “No one came to his table to talk?”

  “Well…” she tugged at the gold earring glittering down the side of her neck,”… there was maybe one guy who did, but he didn’t order anything. I don’t remember much about him.”