Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “You wanna play?” I asked.

  That was all it took. I hopped in the car, flipped my new automatic toggle switch, and roared off out of the parking lot and into the almost deserted street. It was lunchtime and there was almost no traffic. The sky was gray and overcast and the air was still and cold. Up north I could’ve told you it meant snow, but on the beachfront of northwest Florida it probably meant a long, cold rain.

  “Where am I going?” I asked Frankie.

  “Across the bridge, back into town. Go to the Pink Pony. That’s where my friend works.”

  Eugene snorted. “That dump? I ain’t been there in years.”

  Frankie snickered. “Then you don’t gotta pay for pussy,” he said. “And you ain’t a biker.”

  Eugene and Frankie were still sniffing each other out, looking to see who was gonna turn alpha dog. I didn’t have time to handhold or lead them through a trust walk, so I ignored them and turned on the radio.

  “Remember,” the announcer said, “if you’re going to drink tonight, designate a driver. The local clubs all have free taxi services ready and waiting, so don’t hesitate to use them.”

  “There it is,” Frankie said. “Pull up into the parking lot. I’ll go get her.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “The people who are looking for you will be in there. Just tell me what she looks like. I’ll go get her.”

  Frankie laughed. “A, she won’t come with you and, B, you won’t make it back out.”

  Eugene leaned forward from the backseat. “Mr. Uzi would be glad to accompany the lady.”

  We rolled into a potholed lot and parked in the farthest corner. Even in the middle of the day, the Pink Pony was crowded, Harleys ringing the door, beat-to-shit cars taking up the rest of the lot.

  “Nope,” Frankie said, “I can handle it. I don’t see nobody I know here. There ain’t no bikes I recognize either.”

  Eugene and I looked at each other. What’s to recognize on a bike?

  “I’ll come with you,” Eugene said. “Just in case.”

  “No,” Frankie said automatically, then hesitated and said, “Listen, these guys are kind of militant, you know? Like Aryan-nation militant.”

  Eugene laughed. “Then me and Mr. Uzi are gonna have a big time desegregating the place.”

  Frankie smiled. “We should do that, Eugene, but now is not the time. We gotta pull that girl out of there without attracting a crowd, you get me? You wait here. Be ready because if anything goes wrong, it’ll go big wrong.”

  It was a bad situation about to be made worse by Frankie risking being discovered by the very people he’d helped put in jail a few months back. I couldn’t see a way around it, but then, fortunately, we didn’t need an alternative plan after all.

  A reed-thin girl wearing a dingy white rabbit fur jacket stepped out the front door, a burly man right behind her, reaching out to slip his arm possessively around her waist.

  “Well, shit,” Frankie said. “Here we go.”

  He was out of the car and across the lot before I could say anything, walking quickly, hunching into his leather jacket, with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.

  There were words—her soothing her disappointed customer, him wanting to dispute the point, Frankie stepping up into his face and arranging the guy’s future, pro and con, for him—but I could only guess at what was being said. Finally Frankie walked back with her, talking with his arm around her shoulders, smiling but not giving her a reason to smile back. She looked sullen. He stopped, spun her around, looked down at her, and said something that made her smile, then continued on toward the car.

  Eugene moved over as Frankie opened the door and held the seat back for her so she could scamper in.

  “Louise,” Frankie said, “these are my associates.”

  He didn’t introduce us by name. He was smiling like we were at a cocktail party and he was the host.

  “Louise, we are looking for one of your colleagues, girl by the name of Yolanda. You know her?”

  Louise was sizing me up, then she shot a sideways glance at Eugene. He gave her a big smile and winked, like we were all about to have a really good time.

  “Yeah, what about her?” she said.

  “Where is she?” Frankie asked.

  “How would I know?” Louise whined. “I’m not her mother.”

  “Ah …” Frankie said. “You are under the impression that this is negotiable information. I’m sorry, did I not make myself clear?” Frankie’s tone had changed. It was deep and strong and I wouldn’t have argued with him given the opportunity.

  “All right,” Louise said. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of days.”

  Frankie nodded, satisfied that we were moving along. “Who’s she working for?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Louise said, her mouth trapping shut, looking out the window, making movements like she was leaving.

  Frankie wasn’t having any of it. “Louise, tell me.”

  She looked at him, gave him this hard stare like she didn’t care who he was or what he had, and said nothing. We sat there for what felt like a full minute before I decided to intervene.

  “Louise,” I said. “Yolanda’s in trouble. She may not be the only one in trouble. I think someone’s looking to hurt her and anyone else who gets in his way.”

  Louise looked at me, a tiny spark of fear crossing her face, then dying out. She was not going to talk.

  “Okay,” I said, “then how about this: The guy she works for, the guy you guys have to pay off in order to do business, is it a cop?” I rushed on. “You don’t gotta say nothing, just nod if it is.”

  We all waited, watching her head. Finally it came, an imperceptible nod, and then she was out, pushing her way past Frankie, half running in her strappy little sandals into the club, not looking back and glad to be rid of us.

  “So,” I said into the silence of the car. “Bingo.”

  I drove out onto the road and almost immediately pulled into a tiny convenience store parking lot.

  “Hey,” Eugene said, “I don’t eat hot dogs. If you’re buying lunch, let’s go somewhere with real food.”

  “I’m looking up something in the phone book,” I said. “If you two are hungry, go on in and knock yourselves out, but get back out here as soon as you can.”

  Frankie and Eugene couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Apparently interrogating prostitutes made them hungry. Maybe they weren’t thinking like I was, maybe they assumed Yolanda was already dead and time was no longer of the essence. Maybe I was just an optimist. No, change that—I knew I was an optimist, I just didn’t want to give up and then find out later something could’ve been done to save Yolanda.

  I stood outside in the cold and looked up Nolowicki’s name in the phone book. Nothing. Cops don’t list their numbers in the phone book; I should’ve remembered that. So then I did the only other thing I could do. I called Raydean and she took care of it as only she could.

  “Darlin’,” she said when she called me back. “It weren’t easy. Juanita’s only there part-time and this weren’t her time, and she had to call one of her friends and, well, anyway, he lives out in the county. You want the number and the address?”

  I wrote it down, hung up, and immediately dialed the police department. I asked for Nolowicki and waited, my heart pounding in my chest.

  “Ma’am,” the secretary said, “he’s around here somewhere. Just hang on while I find him.”

  That was all I needed. “Wait,” I said, “how about giving me over to Detective Nailor.”

  “Now, he’s definitely not here. I think he’s off until the day after tomorrow. You want his voice mail?”

  I said yes, but I didn’t really think it would do any good. “John, it’s Sierra,” I said after the beep. “I really need to talk to you. I think I know something that might help you figure out what’s going on. I’m going to check on one other thing and I’ll get back to you.”

  I hung up, my heart pounding, thi
nking about him and Carla and the locket that I kept in my pocket because I couldn’t bring myself to wear it, but I couldn’t bear to let go of it either, not just yet anyway, not when I wasn’t absolutely sure there was no hope for us. Just the optimist in me coming out, I supposed.

  I drove off, heading out toward the county, thinking about Nailor, thinking about me and Nailor, seeing scenes from our relationship like a slide show. I’d been gone fifteen minutes before I even realized I’d left Frankie and Eugene inside the convenience store pigging out on chemicals and preservatives.

  “Well,” I muttered, “it’s only for a little while. Maybe they’ll still be there when I get back.” Because I wasn’t going back until I had looked for Yolanda. Two grown men stranded in a warm convenience store with all the comforts of home didn’t need my help, not like a bimbo prostitute looking to work an angle and getting herself trapped by a killer.

  I headed out Route 231, moving toward Chipley, looking for the side road that led to Nolowicki’s house. I was working out my plan: First scout out his place, make sure Yolanda wasn’t tied up and sitting on a hard wooden chair where I could easily see her, and then leave, coming back later with Frankie and Eugene to search the place more thoroughly with a lookout and bodyguard. This was just the preliminary, make-sure drive-by.

  I told myself this all the way down his isolated road, which was rimmed with pine trees and spotted with a few mobile homes and tiny stick-built houses. I would’ve missed Nolowicki’s place entirely if I hadn’t seen the mailbox almost camouflaged by the green plastic. The house was set back from the road, hidden from sight by the pine trees, but it was easily visible once you made the turn into the driveway.

  It was a plain modular home, set on a large rectangle of grass. The backyard was cluttered with pine trees and left natural, but the front was a green square. There were no frills in Nolowicki’s life. The house was simple, no curtains, only miniblinds. No flags or flowers to indicate a woman’s touch. It was a house without personality. It was also impossible to approach it without being seen, a fact that made me nervous, even though the carport behind the house stood empty and I knew Nolowicki was sitting in his office ten miles away.

  My stomach was flipping over and over with monster-sized butterflies. My hands shook as I pulled the car slowly past the house and around to the back where it wouldn’t be seen.

  “No one is home,” I whispered to myself. “We’re just checking. If he drives up, I’ll tell him I have a drug tip or an informant for him.” I stopped the car and got out, standing beside it and listening for any sound that might indicate life. Nothing.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice shaking a little even though I knew no one was there. “Let’s check the back windows first.” I stepped toward the house, looking over my shoulder at the carport and the large metal outbuilding that lay beyond it. “Fear is pointless,” I told myself. “Your body is having a physiological reaction to a stimulus that is all in your mind. I know this. Freud would back me on it, I’m sure. Pa would tell me I was being a baby and to just do what I need to do.”

  But, see, I knew Pa wouldn’t say any such thing. Pa would say, “You have no business being there. Get out!”

  I stood on tiptoe and tried to look in the back window, but like every other window in the house, it had closed miniblinds blocking my view. I couldn’t even see through a chink in the side. Nolowicki liked the dark, or privacy.

  “Yolanda? Turk?” I called finally. “Are you in there?” I banged on the back door, then stood very still, listening. I heard nothing.

  “Okay, then, well, fine,” I said. “Just look in the storage building and be gone. Didn’t figure anybody’d be home anyway.”

  I turned and walked down the steps, crossing the backyard, almost whistling with relief. We’d come back later, when it was dark, and raid the place. We’d wait for a night when Nolowicki was gone, like maybe tonight. Maybe he would have a hot date with a prostitute. Maybe he’d fly to Vegas and gamble. After all, he had to do something with the money. He sure wasn’t spending it on the house.

  I walked up to the Quonset hut and checked out the padlock on the double doors. Whatever Nolowicki had inside, he didn’t want to share it with your common criminal. The door handles were wrapped in thick chain, with a padlock attached to it. It looked like quality construction.

  “Yolanda?” I called. “Turk?”

  No sound. I looked back over my shoulder and thought about returning to the car, grabbing Eugene’s Uzi, and blasting away at the lock.

  “No, there’s nothing like breaking and entering into a cop’s house to get your ass locked up.”

  It was Sister Mary Frances, her voice stuck inside my Catholic mind, reading me the riot act about fair play.

  “Wait,” I said, “the guy’s a murderer. You don’t play fair with murderers.”

  Sister Mary Frances sat back in my head, frowning her disapproval. With us Catholics, fair is fair all the time and right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who the enemy is.

  “Fine,” I said. It made me feel better to talk to myself, like I actually had company. On the streets in Philly, you had to talk to yourself as a mode of defense. It made people think you were nuts, and nuts is a good thing. Muggers like quiet, mousy sane people, predictable victims. Nuts tend not to realize that the danger of a mugger is real. They tend to attack their attackers, at least that was the prevailing logic on the street.

  I was shaking inside and out as I rounded the corner of the metal hut and looked into the only window in the building. Inside I found Nolowicki’s stash, sitting up on a trailer, gleaming in the dimly lit room. It was a huge red cigarette boat, the kind Bahamian dope dealers routinely use to outrun the law.

  “Holy shit!” I said, ignoring Sister Mary Frances. “The freaking mother lode!” I looked past the boat, trying to take in the rest of the space, hoping to see poor little pink-haired Yolanda all tied up and breathing, but it wasn’t to be.

  “I should take a picture,” I said, walking around to the back of the hut, thinking maybe there was another way in. “I should learn to carry a camera because I’m starting to think I have a gift for this sort of stuff.” I was feeling like I was the total shit of homicide investigation. I was picturing myself giving Nailor and Terrance the business, leaning back in a wooden office chair and smiling while they watched me wide-eyed and grateful. I started humming “Who’s Sorry Now?”

  That’s how come I tripped over the well instead of looking down and seeing it coming up on me.

  I sprawled spread-eagled on top of the thick wooden lid, not knowing for an instant what had happened or what I had landed on. At first I thought it was like Philadelphia, where we keep our trash in containers buried in the ground beside the row houses. The trash guys would come by, or at least they did in the old days before those robot trucks came along, hop off the truck, lift your trash out of the canister, and batta-bing, they’re gone. I figured it was the same with this house. Keeps the animals out of the trash. Out in the county, they probably had trouble with raccoons.

  But as I sat on the edge of the big wooden and concrete circle, rubbing my shin where I’d barked it tripping, I realized this wasn’t a trash receptacle. For one thing, the lid was wooden and it wasn’t hinged like they are in Philly. Being a city girl, it took me a moment to realize I was sitting on a well lid. But it took no time at all to realize where Yolanda and Turk might be now.

  I jumped up, turning around and reaching for the lid, trying to shove it off so I could look down inside, shaking and not wanting to see what I figured was waiting.

  “Shit,” I said, shoving and clawing at the lid. “Don’t be in here.”

  “Why not?” a low voice said behind me. “Two’s company. You’ll have something to talk about.”

  I hadn’t heard him sneaking up on me. Nolowicki stood in front of me, Eugene’s Uzi in his hand, wearing the goofy red satin jacket with his name above the pocket, an unlit cigar hanging from his fat lips.

 
; All the smart-assed comments I usually had waiting at my fingertips vanished, along with the image of Sister Mary Frances and her disapproving frown. Instead I was a blank—a blank focused on the tip of an Uzi submachine gun. This was really not my day.

  “I was just …” I said.

  “I know, you were just going to check and see if I’d stuffed Yolanda down my well.” He smiled, but his dark eyes never left mine. “I did. There. I saved you the trouble. The well’s very useful for things like that, you’ll see.”

  He looked like we were having a normal conversation, like he’d shoot me with that same expression on his face, like nothing would faze him about killing me and anyone else who got in his way.

  “So why didn’t you stuff Rodriguez down the well, too?”

  I wanted him to talk, to postpone whatever he had planned long enough for me to come up with a plan. But there were no plans. I was stuck. I couldn’t run and I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t overpower a cop with an Uzi.

  “He was an afterthought,” he said. “No one was supposed to see me. I went in the back to meet with Izzy. He let me in. No one saw us because he didn’t want them to. He thought we were transacting business.”

  “What about Tinky?” I asked.

  Nolowicki laughed. “Stupid biker. Didn’t know he was shaking down a cop!” He looked at me and for a second there was a twinge of regret in his features. “Too bad you had to find them both. Must’ve been traumatic. But,” he added with a shrug, “it could’ve been worse. You could’ve seen me, too. That would’ve been a shame. This way we prolonged your life a little while, made your boyfriend happy a few more times, eh?”

  He was looking at me like I was meat. That was good. If his little head was starting to think, I could deal with it. I can work a little head; it only holds one thought at a time.

  “So, that’s that,” I said, wetting my lips and widening my eyes a little. “I’m toast; you’re going to kill me and have a clean shot at taking a cut of all the drug and protection money in Panama City. There’s no looking back.”

  “That’s about right,” he said. His eyes roved over my body, hesitating at my breasts, then moving south to take in the total Lavotini package. He motioned to me with Eugene’s gun. “I’m thinking to maybe make one stop before the train pulls out of the station and you become a pleasant memory in most men’s minds.”