by Adan Ramie
In the parking lot of Wet, Sunny's last recorded place of employment, Harry went back over the facts in her little tablet, then tucked it into her pocket. She jerked the band from her hair, then pulled it back into the same low ponytail, only tidier, and flipped the mirror back up into the sun visor.
She got out of the car and stepped immediately into a pothole. Grimy rainwater splashed up over her boots and onto her trouser cuff. She swore, slammed the car door shut, and marched up to the meaty bouncer standing guard outside the strip club’s steel door.
“We don’t open ‘til 4, Miss,” he slurred.
Harry looked from his slouch to the dewy drool on his lips and pinged him for a pill popper. She gave him a tight smile and flashed her badge just long enough for recognition to show in his bloodshot eyes. He stepped aside so fast, he almost lost his footing, and had to steady himself on the door as he jerked it open.
The inside of Wet lived up to its name. Harry couldn’t tell if it was sweat, saliva, mildew, or something more repulsive, but a thin sheen of moisture seemed to permeate the whole building. The tables near the bar were empty, and no customers were inside, but the placed was dirty, like it had only just closed, instead of being near opening.
From the bar, a man looked Harry over with a furrowed brow. He was short and had a small frame accentuated with a pot belly that hung lazily over his belt. Harry could just see the gold buckle gleam in the lighting from behind the stage. As she approached the empty stage, he wiped his hands on a towel, walked around the bar, and made his way to her.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Derek,” she said casually, her eyes still on the oil-slicked stage. She wondered how the dancers kept their footing on the shiny surface.
“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” He held out a hand for Harry to shake. She took it, then immediately regretted it. His palm was moist, his grip slippery. She wiped her own hand on her slacks.
“Detective Harrison Thresher. I’m investigating a case involving one of your dancers.”
The man crossed his hairy arms over a hollowed chest and clenched his weak jaw. “It didn’t happen here. Nothing here is illegal.”
Harry shot him a sideways glance, then took a few steps toward the stage. A closed door with the letters VIP emblazoned on it in gold glitter stood just behind and to the side of the stage, and Harry made a show of looking that way.
“I’ve heard differently.”
“Listen, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” he started, but Harry cut him off with another step toward the door. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” he whined.
Harry nodded, pulled out her phone, and opened a picture. She showed the club owner the screen. “Do you know this woman?”
“Her? Sure. That’s Sunny. She's supposed to go on at 9:30 tonight."
Harry put her phone away. “Well, she's going to miss her curtain call.”
He groaned loudly. “What kind of trouble is she in? I can bail her out if you just tell me where she’s being held. Of course, she will owe me, again, but it’s nothing she can’t work off.” He smiled, and Harry was reminded of an opossum.
"She hasn't been arrested, Derek. She's dead." Harry pulled out her notepad. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Are you for real?” When she nodded, he leaned against the nearest chair, and put the back of one clammy hand to his mouth. He bit down on his own flesh, and Harry fought against the rolling of her eyes. "I can't believe it. What happened?"
"She got herself into some trouble, as far as I can tell. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me more."
He shook his head back and forth twice, definitively. "I don't know anything about any kind of business Sunny has outside of the bar. I have the girls keep their personal lives outside the club. I don't want anything splashing back on the business." He crossed his arms and leaned his weight back on one foot.
Harry scribbled into her notepad, and Derek tried to glance over the top at what she was writing. She raised an eyebrow, pulled the notepad toward her, and cleared her throat. "Maybe there is something you can help me with, Derek."
"Yeah?" he asked, and made a face somewhere between disgusted and intrigued.
Harry pulled the photo in its evidence bag out of her jacket, and handed it to him. "Do you know the woman in this picture with Sunny?"
He squinted at the photo, then handed it back and wiped his hands on his jeans. “That’s Lee. She comes in a couple times a week to watch a few shows. She tips the girls, buys a couple of drinks, and keeps her hands to herself. The model customer, really." He tapped his foot on the filthy floor, and each time it pulled away with a sticky jerk like wet Velcro. Harry fought a revolted shudder that crept up her spine.
"The last time you saw her?" Harry asked.
"I can tell you that," he said, and tossed a glance at the calendar over the bar. "It was yesterday. She came in like usual."
“Nothing special, just a regular night?” Harry asked. She was leading him, but she didn’t want to give him any ideas.
“Now I think of it, I guess it was right before the fire. You know, when the projects burned to the ground.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why those bums would burn down their own free housing. Drugs, I guess.”
Without looking up from her notepad, Harry cleared her throat. “I think that was ruled an electrical fire. The building wasn’t up to code.”
He snickered. “Well, maybe if they had gotten jobs instead of living off my tax dollars, they could have afforded something more respectable.”
She set him in a hard gaze. “Like a greasy strip club barely masking the prostitution going on in the back room?”
Derek stuck a dry tongue out to run it across his chapped lips. “I meant like a nice apartment.”
Harry nodded and let her gaze sweep the club again. “I was told one of your dancers might be able to tell me more about Sunny.”
“Yeah. Deisha would know. They were close, I think.” He hurried over to a pink-washed door behind the stage. “I think she’s already here getting ready for her show. Let me go get her for you.”
Harry followed, then shook her head at the door. “Mind if I just go in and talk to her? It’ll save us some time, and I won’t have to follow her to any other parts of her job.” She gave him a pointed look, and he backed off.
“She goes on at 5,” he said, his voice rasping through a dry throat.
“I won’t keep her.” Harry opened the door and walked down a long, dark tunnel of a hallway lit up only with cheap Christmas lights. “What a dump,” she said to herself before she breached the next door and found herself face-to-face with half a dozen exotic dancers in various stages of undress. She put on her best smile. “Hello, ladies.”
HARRY STRADDLED A CHAIR, the pen and pad forgotten in one hand, and watched the show. It wasn’t what happened on the stage that intrigued her, but what happened behind the scenes in the dressing room the dancers grudgingly shared. She got the name of the woman in the photo – Malena Barsten, goes by Lee – and an idea that she was a regular.
For a few minutes, she had been mostly forgotten by the girls, only warranting an offhand comment here or there as they smeared on glitter, brushed on makeup, and shimmied into skimpy outfits that left little to the imagination.
The dancer she watched reapplied a stray strip of fake eyelashes. Deisha, who turned out to be only a passing acquaintance of Sunny Galaviz, only turned her head when the door opened and another younger woman with black and blond streaked hair walked in. The woman dropped her bag on the counter and was halfway out of her street clothes before she noticed Harry.
“Who’s this?” she asked the woman beside her.
“This is Detective Harry.” The dancer winked at Harry in the mirror, then wiped a smudge of lipstick from her teeth before she backed away from her reflection. “She’s looking for Lee.”
The recent arrival turned to look at Harry with a mix of shock, anger, and relief. “What are you doin
g here? She’s not here.”
Harry stood and bridged the gap, her hand outstretched to shake. The woman took her hand, but her face was guarded.
“I know she isn’t here, but I understand that you know her pretty well.”
The woman let go, shrugged her shoulders, and then turned back to the mirror. She studiously stripped down, folded her clothes neatly in a pile on the barstool beside her, and got into her costume. The deep red vinyl suited her, and brought a peachy glow to her mottled cream skin.
“Derek told me I could get some answers from you,” Harry said, and leaned up against the counter beside her. “You are familiar with Sunny Galaviz and Lee Barsten, aren’t you?”
The woman nodded. “But you know that already, because nothing's a secret at Wet.” She pulled her hair into sloppy pigtails that she secured tightly with elastics decorated with lipstick marks. “Why? Are they in trouble or something?”
“You could say that,” Harry said, and let her shoulders drop. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Sunny was murdered.”
The dancer turned to face her, forehead creased with worry. Then she flopped onto the nearest empty chair with a loud swear that turned into a sigh. She rubbed the back of her neck and tried at a smile. “I don’t really deal well with stress,” she said.
Harry nodded. “Just a few questions, and you can go back to your day. What's your name?” She flipped the notepad to a new page, and then met the woman’s eyes.
"Andrea Daten."
Harry scribbled the name into her notepad. “When was the last time you saw Ms. Galaviz or Ms. Barsten?”
“I was waitressing last night with Sunny. A couple of girls had called in lazy, so we were working the early shift,” she said, and gave one of the girls at the mirror a dirty look, “and the place was dead. Sunny was waitressing, but she was going to be dancing on her next shift. Lee usually stays to watch us all, but she left early. Sunny told me Lee said she was tired, but I figured she just went out to score. She’s been using pretty heavily, so she wasn’t really herself lately.”
Harry tapped her pen. “So, she said was headed home?”
Andrea laughed. “Yeah, but probably not. She said she wasn’t getting much sleep, and when she can’t sleep, Lee is all over the place. She likes to wander.”
“On foot?”
The dancer leaned forward as if she was going to say something confidential. “Lee isn’t afraid of anything, Detective. She doesn’t worry about walking alone late at night through the worst parts of town. The girl is totally fearless, and with good reason.”
“Good reason, huh?”
Andrea grinned. “I’ve seen her take down a couple of grabby perverts without breaking a sweat, and still have the energy to crack a few jokes and break a few hearts on her way out.”
Harry frowned. She dropped the pen and pad on the counter, pulled out her phone, and pulled up the mugshot she had for the missing woman. She turned the screen around so the young woman could see it. “Are we talking about the same person?”
“That’s Lee,” Andrea said. She beamed with pride. “She doesn’t look like much of a fighter, but I guarantee she’s seen as much action as a soldier. She’s all scar tissue.”
A knock sounded on the door, and the manager peeked his head in. “Are you done?” he asked, his eyes on the dancer. “You go on next.”
“I think we’re through here,” Harry said. “Just one more thing.”
“Shoot.” Andrea stood up and adjusted her corset, then leaned close to the mirror. She smeared dark red lipstick over her mouth and blotted it on a stray tissue.
“Is there anyone else who might be able to help me figure out where Miss Barsten is?”
Andrea walked to the door and shooed the manager out of her way. Before she left, she turned and shot a skeptical look at Harry. “Maybe. But it would be a long shot,” she said.
“My favorite kind,” Harry said. She scooped up her pen and pad, and then followed the dancer out of the dressing room.
CHAPTER 10
Lee draped herself over the arm of the sofa and stared at Ruby. Her chest rose and fell steadily, and the pulse at her neck beat just hard enough for Lee to watch it through her nearly translucent skin. Her eyes were closed, but Lee knew she wasn't asleep.
"I need some coffee," she said, and pushed herself off the sofa with a grunt. She tapped Ruby on the shoulder, and Ruby's eyes dragged open.
"What? What time is it?" She raised her arms in a languid stretch, and Lee couldn't help but trace the outline of her body with her eyes.
"It's one o'clock," Lee rasped. She cleared her throat and let her eyes slide away from Ruby. "Come with me to the kitchen for coffee."
Ruby uncurled her limbs and stepped to the floor. Her bare feet sunk into the carpet as she padded through the room and down another hallway that opened up into a gleaming steel kitchen. Ruby walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a small metal pitcher. Then she went up to a shiny black metal contraption, placed her hands on the counter, and turned to look at Lee over her shoulder.
"What kind do you want?"
Lee walked up beside her and hopped onto the counter. She pulled one leg up and wrapped her arm around it, below where her knee peeked out of the torn jeans, and rested her chin on top. "I just need caffeine."
Ruby knelt and opened a cabinet, then pulled a metal canister out and stood back up. She poured dark beans into an electric coffee grinder. After a few pulses, she pulled the porta filter basket off the machine, and spooned the fine ground espresso into it, then tamped it down. She put the basket back, poured water into the reservoir, and tapped a button to start it up.
"That's a lot of work for a cup of coffee," Lee said.
"Maybe." Ruby pulled two tumblers from a cabinet and placed them on the counter in front of her. One hand still on the counter, she turned on her heel to look at Lee. "If it was just regular coffee, I'd agree with you. But this is espresso, and I'm making lattes." She tapped her fingernails on the counter, then bent down to inspect a half dozen glass bottles in a lower cabinet. "Do you want mocha, caramel, vanilla, raspberry, white chocolate, or peppermint? Or a combination?"
Lee picked up her head, then slid down off the counter to admire the collection of flavored syrups. "That's a lot of choices," she said. She bent down, and her knee brushed Ruby's thigh. Their eyes met and lingered for a moment before she turned her attention back on the bottles. "Caramel vanilla?"
Ruby still had her eyes on Lee. "Good choice," she said, and licked her lips. "You have good taste.” Lee glanced back at her. Ruby's cheeks reddened, and she stood up with the two bottles in hand. "Now we just have to wait... Oh."
Lee followed Ruby's gaze to the tiny pot that was full of piping hot espresso. "It's finished?"
"Yeah," Ruby said. She poured a random amount of each syrup into the tumblers, then put them away, and closed the cabinet with a toe. "Now I have to make more water to steam the milk that I forgot to have poured already."
Lee jogged over to the fridge, grabbed the milk, and brought it back to her. Ruby held out the little pitcher, and Lee poured until she said stop. She went back to the fridge and put away the milk while Ruby poured the espresso into the tumblers.
"Sorry, I'm usually better at this," Ruby said.
In a few minutes, Ruby had two lattes ready, and they retired back to the sofa. Lee resumed her perch and Ruby curled back up. The way she arranged her limbs reminded Lee very much of the way the kitten had earlier; in many ways, Ruby was definitively feline, from the graceful arch of her back while she stretched down to the razor thin nails on her fingers.
"So," Lee said, after a long sip of her latte. "You never did finish telling me about your husband."
Ruby avoided Lee's eyes, her legs pulled tight underneath her, and her hands clasped in her lap, curled around the tumbler so tightly that her skin shone white.
"His name is Truman. He’s away on business right now.” She kept her eyes down like a chastised schoolgirl
. "Actually, he’s away on business most of the time. He makes sure I have everything I need," Ruby said, and to Lee, it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than anything. It played like a mantra, a pretty lie that the young woman needed just to make it through her days.
Lee dropped down from the arm of the sofa and slid over across the satin-smooth cushions. She laid a hand on Ruby's skinny thigh. "Everything but compassion and love, right?"
Ruby kept her eyes on the floor. She pulled in a breath, then let it slip silently from between parted lips. "I don't think he ever loved me."
"Does he beat you a lot?"
Ruby's eyes met hers, and for a second, Lee thought she saw white hot anger brewing there. Then, she let out a sigh, and took a measured sip of her latte. She licked her lips to catch a stray drop before it fell. She didn't meet Lee's eyes.
Minutes clicked by as Lee sipped her latte and watched Ruby stare into the empty room in front of them. When she finished her drink, Ruby uncurled her limbs and stood, a hand out to Lee. "Are you finished?"
Lee handed over the empty tumbler. "I'm going to go check on Josie," she said.
She was halfway down the hall before she realized she had been whispering. It occurred to her that Ruby could run away, call the police, or come up behind her with a heavy object to bash in her skull in the darkness. The frightening part was that she wouldn't begrudge the woman her righteous anger, and probably wouldn't fight back very hard.
She glanced behind her as she turned the corner. Ruby sat on the sofa with her pet in her lap. The tumblers sat forgotten on the table beside her. The kitten stretched its head on its neck, eyes closed in ecstasy as Ruby's nails scratched it softly across the ears.
"Hey, Jo," Lee whispered when she got into the room. He stirred slightly, and his eyes fluttered open for a moment, but didn't focus on her face. "I don't know what to do."
He opened his mouth as if to speak; nothing came out but a high-pitched croak. Lee wrapped her fingers in his much larger ones and leaned over him. His pupils were dilated, his skin was clammy and white, and he wheezed as he breathed in and out.