Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “I guess they didn’t count on an undercover cop working the game, either, huh?” I asked.

  Nailor shrugged. “Vincent’s finally done it to himself this time,” he said.

  “You didn’t arrest him!”

  “Didn’t have to, Joe Nolowicki’d already done the deed.” Nailor looked at me and sighed. “Come on, Sierra, what d’ya think was gonna happen? Not a thing I could do about it, and I would’ve popped him, too. Illegal gambling and drugs. What choice did he have?”

  “Drugs? What do you mean drugs?”

  Nailor took out his notepad, read something, and stuck it back inside his jacket. “Cocaine, Sierra. It was right there in the drawer of Vincent’s desk.”

  “Vincent hates drugs!”

  “So he only breaks some of the laws in an attempt to make money, not all of them?” He shook his head. “Sierra, we found drugs and evidence of gambling. What else could Nolowicki do? Let him go because the money was for the IRS and Vincent meant well?”

  No love lost between Nailor and Gambuzzo, that was always obvious. What else could I expect?

  “I guess not,” I said. “Did he call Ernie?”

  Nailor shrugged. “He was making a lot of noise about a lawyer, so I’m sure he did. But some charter-boat captain named Mike Riggs is holding the paper on the club and says he owns it now, so Vincent won’t be using the club as collateral.”

  Tonya the Barbarian, ever vigilant for the slightest morsel of gossip, jumped up at the mention of Mike Riggs and the club.

  “What?” she yelled. She whirled around and faced the other dancers. “Gambuzzo’s done lost the club in a game! Some fisherman owns us!”

  That was all it took. The dancers and Eugene all started firing questions at once, yelling to make themselves heard, and creating enough of a disturbance that two nurses came running, towing along a security guard.

  Nailor finally put a stop to it. In his most commanding voice he boomed, “All right, that’s enough! Sit down. Shut up, or I’ll start taking you in for disturbing the peace.”

  I think Nailor thought they listened because he was a cop, but if the truth be told, half of the women listened just because he was a breathtaking specimen of human manhood. The other half shut up because they saw me hold up my hand like we do during rehearsal, motioning them to silence.

  “Let me talk a minute,” I said to Nailor. “Let me explain it to them. They’ll listen to you after they listen to me.”

  And it would’ve gone down that way had not a blood-spattered surgeon picked that moment to appear in the doorway. He was young and tired. A kid playing dress-up to my mind, but something in his eyes aged him. He was searching the room, trying to figure out who was in charge.

  “Doc,” I said, stepping forward, “how’s Bruno?”

  The doctor looked at me and seemed uncertain. “Um, are you a member of Mr. Bronkowski’s family?” he asked. His voice cracked a little, but that was probably because he was staring at my chest and not my face.

  “They aren’t,” I said, “but I am. Up here. It’s all right; you can make eye contact. I’m Bruno’s, uh, sister.”

  To his credit, he smiled, a sweet boy smile that lit up his blue eyes for a second.

  “I’m Kelly Thrasher,” he said. “I did the surgery.” He didn’t make us wait. “Mr. Bronkowski’s not out of the woods. He’s lost a lot of blood and he’s been through a very stressful surgery, but if we can keep him alive for twenty-four hours, we should be fine.”

  There was a collective sigh of relief and then Eugene lunged for the doctor, sweeping him up off his feet in a massive bear hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he cried, tears streaming down his face.

  Dr. Thrasher’s face was bright red, but he seemed none the worse for wear as Eugene returned him to the ground.

  “Now,” Eugene said to the doctor, “I am Mr. Bronkowski’s security. I’ll be right outside his door twenty-four seven, so you don’t gotta worry about any assholes trying to disturb your patient. ’Cause I’ll tell you right now, the motherfucker that tries—”

  Dr. Thrasher cut him off. “We have security, Mr.—?”

  “Uzi,” Eugene said. “Eugene ‘Fully Automatic’ Uzi, at your service.”

  Thrasher smiled slightly and tried to hide it. “Mr. Uzi, your friend’s in ICU. We can’t have anyone in there except his immediate family, and then only for five minutes an hour. Nothing must disturb Mr. Bronkowski.”

  Eugene looked ready to pop, so I intervened. “Dr. Thrasher, Mr. Uzi here is Bruno’s brother.” I stared right into his face, daring him to tell me that it was impossible. But Thrasher was a wise man. He nodded, his eyes twinkled, and he went with it.

  “All right. Mr. Uzi, five minutes an hour, no talking, no gunplay.” Here Thrasher looked stern and years ahead of himself. “You may, um, surveil the ICU from the vantage point of this chair.” He dragged a blue waiting room chair out into the hallway and positioned it halfway between the ICU doors and the waiting room.

  Eugene looked at the chair and then at the doctor. He mulled it over for a few seconds, trying to figure if he should push the odds and go for a larger stake. But Thrasher’s clear blue eyes never left Eugene’s face, and in the end Eugene nodded his acceptance.

  “One last thing,” Thrasher added. “My security is top dog. In other words, it’s their house and you’re the guest. Play by their rules. If there’s trouble, call them.”

  “But they’re fucking rent-a-cops,” Eugene blurted.

  Dr. Thrasher, apparently suicidal, took a step closer to Eugene. “Yeah, but they’re my fucking rent-a-cops, understand?”

  “My brother will, of course, abide by the house rules,” I said, glaring at Eugene. “Fully Automatic” my ass.

  The doctor, satisfied for now that his orders would be followed, turned and walked back through the swinging doors and into the ICU. Eugene sighed, his shoulders slumping. He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me into him, hanging on for dear life.

  “He’s gonna make it, isn’t he?” he whispered in my ear. “I mean, that’s what the doctor meant, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, honey, he’s gonna make it. God ain’t ready for Bruno yet. She couldn’t handle it!” And I laughed softly into his iron chest.

  Nailor, not one to let me stay in the arms of another for long, broke in.

  “Eugene,” he said, “I’m going to need some help here. You think you could answer a few questions?”

  Eugene, sensitive to my relationship, looked up at Nailor and nodded. I knew what he was thinking. He was figuring that the cops couldn’t help, but what the hell, keep Sierra’s boy happy.

  “Thanks, ‘Fully Automatic,’” I whispered.

  I broke away from Eugene and turned back to Nailor. “Do you need to talk to any of the rest of us?” I asked.

  “Just briefly. They can go home after that.” I nodded and turned away. We were working, like a team maybe.

  “Hey, listen up,” I said to the others. “We can’t all stay here. Here’s what I’m suggesting: Tonya, why don’t you cover Bruno’s apartment. I think you have a key?” I knew she did. Tonya thought her stuff was smooth, but nobody missed the fact that upon several occasions when Tonya’s man had pulled time, she’d spent her free time with Bruno.

  Tonya looked disconcerted, but nodded. “I got one. I house-sit now and then.”

  A, Bruno does not ever leave Panama City proper. And, B, it wasn’t Bruno’s house she was sitting on, but I let it go.

  “Why don’t you get over there and check on his cat? You know of any next-of-kin types we ought to get ahold of?”

  Tonya looked a little pouty. “We didn’t exactly talk about his mama or nothin’ when I went over there,” she said.

  “Well, honey, see what you can find out, all right?” Where handling Tonya was concerned, patience was a virtue. I looked at the others. The U.S.S. Freedoms had fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, but the dancers were all watching me.

  “Listen,
guys,” I said. “We’ve got to pull together. Vincent lost the house to Mike Riggs, a charter-boat captain. I’m sure it’s only temporary, but it don’t help that we got robbed and have that to deal with, too. So bear with it. Try and help out Detective Nailor here. Show up for work like it’s a regular day. And if you got any no-necked boyfriends that wanna man the door for a few weeks, let me know and we’ll hook it up.”

  “Who’s gonna pay us?” one of the strippers asked. “I cain’t work if I don’t get no check.”

  Wasn’t that just like a stripper? Couldn’t see beyond the tip of her nipples.

  “You’ll get paid, I’m sure,” I said, but I wasn’t that sure. “What’s important is that we’re a family and this is a crisis. We gotta stick together.” The stripper rolled her eyes and smirked at one of her friends. For a brief moment I considered kicking her ass, but just as quickly discarded the idea in favor of a longer-term payback.

  “When the police have what they need, go home and get some sleep. Bruno won’t be seeing anyone for a while. If his family comes to town, we’re gonna need some hospitality, and I know the Tiffany can produce hospitality for visiting relatives, am I right?”

  A chorus of agreement followed. I was thinking hospitality in the form of housekeeping and casseroles. God knew what they were thinking.

  “All right, then, I’m going. I’ll see you guys at the club tomorrow night. Same time, same—” I stopped. The Tiffany Gentleman’s Club was not the same place. Tonight’s events had turned the club in a different direction, and despite the way I talked, I didn’t have any guarantee that things would be all right. Things at the Tiffany Gentleman’s Club might never be all right again.

  Five

  Rusty and I walked out into the crisp, cold air of a December morning in Panama City. Merry fucking Christmas, I thought. As we drove away toward my trailer park, I took in the streetlights all draped in fake green garland and wondered if Bruno was going to be around to see Christmas this year.

  Rusty must’ve been having the same thoughts because when the radio started playing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” he quickly switched it off and left us sitting in silence. When I pulled into the Lively Oaks Trailer Park and turned onto my street, I reached over and rested my hand on his knee.

  “Rusty, it really is going to be all right.”

  Rusty said nothing until we’d pulled up into my driveway. Then he turned and looked me straight in the eye. “Sierra, I’m not a kid. You don’t have to give me the Big Mama talk you give the bimbos we work with.”

  I pulled my hand back, stung. “Rusty, I wasn’t trying to …”

  “Yes, you were.” He sighed. “Everybody does it to me. I know, I know, red hair and freckles. I look like a kid, but, Sierra, I’m twenty-four. I run the show at work. There’re twelve crises a night, and that’s on a good one. I’m not a flippin’ baby!”

  “Yeah, well, I was just trying to be a friend. You don’t need to blow up on me just because you’re freaking out. I’m sorry, but I’m a little freaked myself, so wise up!”

  We both looked at each other, mad as hell and scared, too. Then Rusty looked away for a second. “You’re right. I’m scared shitless. How’s Vincent gonna get the club back? What if that fishing-boat captain fires me?”

  “He fires you, Rusty, and the whole lot of us will walk out with you. All right?”

  Rusty grinned. “Hell, just you walk out and the place’ll fold.”

  I opened the car door and got out, then leaned back down and looked through the open door at him sitting there. “Hey, it’s a talent,” I said. “Either you got it or you don’t. Now, you wanna come in and flop on my couch or what?”

  Rusty shook his head no and got out of the car.

  “I’ll just go stay with my sister and them,” he said. “She’s got the beat-to-shit Silverstream two streets over.”

  I stood watching him walk away, then started up the steps to my trailer. I shouldn’t have bothered. The moment my foot hit the bottom step, two things happened simultaneously: Fluffy, my hairless chihuahua, came flying out through her little doggie door, and Raydean, my psychotic, elderly neighbor, stepped out onto her porch stoop across the street.

  “Even a turtle gets the early bird now and then,” she said cryptically. She was leaning on her porch railing, pink curlers in her frizzy gray hair, a worn pink chenille robe wrapped none too tightly around her ample middle, and a Hawaiian shirt thrown over her shoulders like a shawl.

  Fluffy pranced at my feet demanding breakfast, and Raydean began her slow journey toward my yard, a baby monitor clutched in her left hand and a coffee cup in the other. Well, no guessing as to how she knew I was home.

  “Bruno all right?” she asked.

  “How’d you know?”

  Raydean touched her left temple with a gnarled finger. “Kidneys,” she said. “That and the news. You didn’t come home on time, neither. Don’t take a Flemish to know where you were. So’s he all right or what?”

  Raydean’s eyes darted back and forth, taking in every little detail of her surroundings, scanning the yard for signs of alien life and invasion. Raydean was certifiably insane, and that was on her good days. The rest of the time her psychiatrist called her “floridly psychotic.” I somehow always pictured that to mean she was a mass of blooming, tie-dyed hallucinations that swirled about her in cheerful colors, like nodding flowers. Florid seemed so appropriate for Raydean. She bloomed nuts whenever her medication wore off, which was about once a month now that they wised up and put her on something long-acting and injectible. This meant she only fired off her shotgun once in a while at the invisible aliens she called the Flemish.

  “Bruno’s gonna be fine,” I said.

  “Oughter be,” she muttered. “Too damn dumb to die.”

  “Raydean!”

  She cut her eyes up at me and smiled. “Come on, honey, you’ve said the same thing any number of times. You don’t gotta be nice on account of a near-death experience. I calls ‘em like I sees ’em. Besides, you scare folks if you start talking nice about them. They’ll think you really think they’re dying, and they might just do it to oblige your expectations!”

  I shook my head. She was impossible and very probably right.

  “Guess that po-lice of yours is on the job, huh?” She turned her head to the side and spit into the little bit of grass I had growing in the front yard. Raydean did not suffer the police gladly.

  “Raydean, I’m fixing to go get some sleep, and you ought not to be out in this cold without a coat.”

  Raydean’s eyes narrowed. “Optimal conditions for Flemish.” She held up the baby monitor. “Want me to keep extra surveillance on things until you wake up?”

  There was only one right answer. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Roger,” she said, turning away. “I got your back.” She looked down at Fluffy. “Come on, you little yard ape, breakfast is on me.” Fluffy didn’t give me a backward glance. She trotted off at Raydean’s side, practically prancing in her attempt to avoid chilling her tiny feet any more than necessary.

  “What’s that, honey?” Raydean said, leaning to hear something she imagined Fluffy to say. “What’s the special?” She straightened back up. “Sausage and gravy. Modified shit on a shingle.” And with that, they were gone, vanishing inside Raydean’s trailer to spend a morning filled with talk shows and The Price Is Right.

  I barely made it into the trailer and down the hallway before I was stripping off my clothes and heading for the big bed that took up most of my small bedroom. I paused in the bathroom, stared at my huge Jacuzzi tub, and decided to forgo that in favor of a fast shower. In fifteen minutes I was under my purple satin sheets and sound asleep.

  The phone woke me up, ringing insistently. I grabbed it before it could totally shatter my dreams and held the receiver to my ear.

  “Got your po-lice at ten o’clock, fixin’ to enter the premises without a warrant. You need backup, or you got this one covered?” It was Raydea
n, on the job.

  I sighed and snuggled down deeper under my comforter. “I got this covered,” I murmured, and replaced the receiver. Then I waited, listening as the key slowly turned in the lock and the door softly shut behind him. I heard him take off his shoes, leaving them by the kitchen door, then walk softly down the hallway to my bedroom.

  I feigned sleep, peeking as he started to undress. First he took off his tie and loosened his collar. Next went the shirt, and I couldn’t help but squirm as he turned around and began to unbuckle his belt. Nailor naked was becoming one of my favorite sights.

  He was taking his time, arranging his shirt neatly over the back of the one chair in the room, carefully folding his pants and draping them over the seat. I snuck a quick look at the clock; it was almost eight A.M. I’d been asleep for about an hour and a half. Nailor had to be exhausted, but when he turned around and dropped his boxers, I knew he was also an eternal optimist. I like that in a man.

  He crossed the room and slipped under the covers beside me.

  “Done watching?” he whispered as he pulled me to him.

  “How did you know?”

  “Sierra, your act is so lame.”

  “Nailor,” I said, turning over to face him, “bite me.”

  Nailor laughed, kissing me and beginning a slow nibble on the side of my neck. “Gladly.”

  His lips moved down my neck, touching my shoulder, his tongue leaving a fiery trail as he slowly worked his way to my breasts. What had begun playfully was now becoming a serious intention on his part. I responded by moving my hands down his sides, running them across his back and down, closer to what had become a very large sign of his level of desire.

  “Oh, Sierra,” he said, sighing, “you are so beautiful, sweetie.”

  That’s when it happened. It was as if a switch clicked inside my head, and what had been a ten on the Richter scale of desire dimmed to an eight. It wasn’t anything Nailor was doing. It was me working a number on myself. Nailor was continuing on his path, doing what normally sent me over the edge, and I was responding, but as if I were some distance away.