“There are a couple things. A reporter wants to interview Charlie. I thought it might help prod the government.”
“No. What else?”
“This reporter seems sincere, and I’m not sure how it can hurt.”
“It is reporter. They can always hurt. And remember what I tell you about my son? He’s fool. You think anything he say can help, maybe you fool, too. What else you got?”
“It’s not going to be as easy as we thought getting him home.”
“Tell me.”
“First, it appears, even after fifteen years, Charlie is still in danger. I received a visit from Charlie’s old gang. The visitors roughed me up a little and then said worse would come Charlie’s way if he came home.”
“Okay, no problem. Lean close. This is what we do. We don’t tell Charlie nothing about this.”
“I can’t do that, Mrs. Kalakos.”
“You can and you will. Charlie is coward. He was afraid of bath, he was afraid of girls, he shakes in terror from his own shadow. It is why he ran so long ago. We tell him this, he disappear for good. You no tell him. Better we protect him when he comes.”
“They’re going to kill him if he comes home, Mrs. Kalakos.”
“Pooh, Victor. They just talking. Big talkers, all of them. They want to come, they come to me, right? I’m reason for my Charlie to come home. And when they come, I show them something.”
She sat up, reached over to a table by her bed, opened a drawer, pulled out an obscenely huge gun that glittered gaily in the candlelight.
“Gad, Mrs. Kalakos. That’s a cannon.”
“Let them come. I blow holes in them size of grapefruits. You hungry, Victor? You want grapefruit? I’ll call down to Thalassa to bring you grapefruit.”
“No thank you, ma’am, no grapefruit. Do you have a license for that?”
“I’m eighty-nine years old, what I need piece paper for?”
“You should get a license for the gun.”
“Be like that, Victor, and I won’t tell you what else I have for those skatofatses.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to know. I’m going to have to tell your son about the threats, Mrs. Kalakos.”
She waved the gun a bit before shoving it back into the drawer. “Do what you must. But you tell him, too, that I take care of it for him, I protect him if police won’t. What next?”
“There’s a federal prosecutor who is causing problems. She’s the key in allowing Charlie to come home without being thrown in jail, but she is refusing to do anything unless Charlie gives her what she wants.”
“And what is it she wants?”
“She wants him to talk. To tell her everything.”
“No problem. I make him talk.”
“But she doesn’t want him to just talk about the Warrick Brothers Gang. She wants him to talk about before that, about what went down when that painting was stolen thirty years ago.”
She looked at me for a long moment, her moist eyes glittering in the sputtering candlelight. “Ah, yes,” she said finally. “That might be problem. You have friends, Victor? Old friends, from when you were child, friends that are closer than brothers, closer than blood?”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Too bad for you. I had friends like that in old country, and Charlie, despite himself, he found such friends here. When they was just toddlers, they ran around with each other in the blow-up pools. Five closest friends in all the world. My Charlie, and Hugo, always running around like a crazy boy, all legs, he was, and Ralph Ciulla, big like man already at twelve, and little Joey Pride. And then, of course, Teddy, Teddy Pravitz, who was leader. Five neighborhood boys, always together, always. Once—and I tell you this so you know what it was—once a group from the Oxford Circle—you know this place?”
“Down Cottman?”
“Yes, exactly. Once a group boys came into our neighborhood looking for trouble. This was when my son Charles was in high school. The Oxford boys found little Joey Pride. Joey was a nice boy, but black and with a mouth on him, and they beat him bloody. Just for the sport of it, Victor. Animals. The police threw up their hands. What was to do? But Teddy, he knew what to do.”
“What was that, Mrs. Kalakos?”
“You want tea? I call down to Thalassa.”
“No thank you, ma’am. Really, I’m fine.”
“No, we need tea.” She opened her mouth wide and shrieked, “Thalassa. Come now.”
There was the sound of something dropping onto the floor below, a rustle, a sigh, weary footfalls rising up the stairs. The door creaked open, a withered face appeared.
“Victor, he wants tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos.
Thalassa turned her head to me, stared with unalloyed hatred.
“He likes sugar with his tea,” said Mrs. Kalakos. “And those round cookies.”
“Really, I’m fine,” I said.
The face slipped away, the door creaked closed.
“She good girl. Alas, her tea, it is thin like her blood. She saves her tea bags from cup to cup, as if tea were gold. We still have tea from when Clinton was president. Ah, Clinton, he was part Greek, he didn’t know it, but I could tell.”
“What did Teddy do after the beating?”
“Teddy, he was such a beautiful boy. So clever. He came to me, asked for keys to my car. I knew what he wanted, and so I gave to him. That boy was Greek where it counted. Off they went into the night, even Joey with his arm in sling, the five of them with their blood hot and their baseball bats, off they went. And they took care of it, Victor. It didn’t even matter that he was wrong boy. Those animals from Oxford Circle, they not come round no more. The boys protected each other, you understand? Such bond survives the years.”
“And these were the guys who pulled off the theft?”
She patted my cheek. “You smart boy. You sure you don’t want to date my Thalassa?”
“No, ma’am. But this is what I don’t understand, Mrs. Kalakos. I heard it was a crack team of professional thieves that robbed the Randolph Trust, not five schmoes from the neighborhood. So how did they do it?”
“They were not simply five schmoes from neighborhood, Victor. They were four schmoes and Teddy. That is difference.”
Just then the door creaked open, and Thalassa, with gray body hunched and gray head bowed, brought in a tray. Mrs. Kalakos was right, the tea was weak, and musty, it tasted as old as Thalassa looked, but the cookies were surprisingly delicious. I was on my fourth cookie when my cell phone rang.
I stood up, slipped into the dark corner of the dark room, flipped it open. “Carl,” I said.
“You free tonight, mate?” said the unmistakable voice of Phil Skink.
I looked at Mrs. Kalakos, sitting up now, her pale face bowed toward a porcelain teacup, steam rising around her sunken eyes. “Sure,” I said. “I’m in a meeting, but it won’t last much longer. What’s up?”
“I gots someone I wants you to meet.”
My heart skipped a beat. I could feel myself blushing in the darkness. “Did you find her?” I said. “Did you find Chantal Adair?”
“That’s what I wants you to tell me.”
17
“Where are we going, Phil?” I said as I drove us down Spring Garden Street toward the eastern edge of the city.
“I just wants you to check someone out,” he said.
“Is it her?”
“Don’t know, does I? I put out the word, quietly like you asked, and this came back my way as a possibility. Things, they are not exactly as you’d expect in one way, and then”—he laughed—“in another way they’s exactly as you’d expect.”
“Did you take a picture? I might not want her to be the one, if you get my drift. Did I tell you I have a thing about mustaches? Big, thick mustaches? I don’t like them on women. I don’t like them on men either, actually, but on women they give me the creeps.”
“Look, mate, if she’s the one whose name you got scrawled on your chest, you’ll like the looks of her, d
on’t be worrying about that. But I gots some other pictures, too. You want to see them first?”
“Sure.”
“All righty,” he said. “Pull over there.”
I edged the car to the side of the road, stopped behind a parked van, put it in neutral and left the engine running. Skink turned on the overhead light and took an envelope out of his suit pocket.
“There was no Chantal Adairs listed for Philly, South Jersey, or Delaware,” he said, “but I found us a few C. Adairs, with no first name given. Usually an initial instead of a first name is a lady trying not to look like a lady in the book in case a predator is stalking, you got me? So I checked out thems that I could. Found one in Absecon, one in Horsham. Take a peek and see if a face rings a bell.”
He passed me over the first of the photographs. A color shot, a little grainy and taken from pretty far away. It wasn’t the clearest photograph, but right off I could tell that the woman in the picture was not whom I was looking for. She was older, much older, with steel gray hair that matched her walker.
“Is this a joke?” I said.
“Don’t know what you are into these days, mate, now, do I?”
“Who else?”
The next photograph was of a younger woman, hugely pregnant, holding a young child on her ample hip. She had a pretty face, though, despite her evident maternity, and I squinted to see if it was familiar.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think I ever saw her before.”
“Don’t think so neither, since her name is Catherine.”
“Then what was the point of showing me the photograph?”
“I just wanted you to know they ain’t too many of these Chantal Adairs out there. So you won’t be sniffing up your nose at who we’re seeing tonight.” He switched off the light. “Let’s get a move on.”
I popped the car in gear, pulled out from behind the van, and continued heading east.
“What do you mean,” I said, “that things aren’t exactly like I would expect?”
“Well, her name ain’t exactly what you got printed there on your chest.”
“Then exactly why are we checking her out?”
“Because it’s close enough.”
“Close enough for what?”
“For you to tell me if she’s the one. Turn there.”
I turned. “What if I don’t remember her?”
“Then maybe she’ll remember you. Okay, take a right and then go under that bridge.”
“What’s that there?” I said, nodding toward a bright neon sign.
“Where we’re headed, mate. Pull in to the lot.”
The parking lot surrounded a one-story building wedged beneath a highway bridge. The lot held pickups and high-priced sedans, the building was painted black, the purple neon in the sign was blinking, alternately spelling out the name of the place in script and then showing a figure, a female figure, like the kind of thing you see on the mud flaps of a sixteen-wheeler. I stopped the car in the middle of the lot, felt my expectations deflate and my heart sicken. But I should never have been surprised. Whenever men head off into the limitless American night in search of true love, they more often than not end up at a strip joint.
“Club Lola?” I said, a tone of defeat in my voice.
“’At’s it, all right.”
“Isn’t this the place where that guy met the stripper he killed his wife for?”
“’At’s the one.”
“And I suppose this Chantal Adair is one of the dancers here.”
“’At’s what we’re here to find out.”
“What’s the point?” I said. “Of all the things I could have imagined for the tattoo on my chest, this is the absolute worst. What kind of loser gets drunk, ends up at a strip bar, falls in love with a stripper, and is determined to show her his undying devotion by tattooing her name on his chest?”
“We’ll find out tonight, won’t we?”
“Forget it. It’s no mystery how this story turns out.”
“You don’t want to know for sure?”
“I’ve seen enough already to know the whole thing is a crushing mistake.”
“If you give up now, mate, whenever you look in the mirror, you’ll always think the worst,” said Skink. “Not about the bird but about yourself. Park the car. Let’s find out what’s what.”
“You just want an evening’s entertainment.”
“That, too, yes, and on your dime, which makes it all the sweeter.”
I could feel the bass of the music even before I reached the entrance. My general rule is to never go into a place where the bouncer is dressed entirely in black and sports a ponytail, which conveniently keeps me out of all the places that don’t want me inside, but I suppose this was an exception.
“You ever see me before?” I said to the bouncer as I paid the cover for the two of us.
Without looking up, he said, “I got a bad memory for faces.”
“But this was just a few nights ago.”
He lifted his head, sniffed like a Doberman. “If I didn’t kick you out, I didn’t know you was in. That’s the way it is. Keeps me out of the courtroom, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But was I in?”
“Like I said. And I’ll tell the wife the same thing.”
“Well,” I said, taking my change, “that is a relief.”
And off we went, into the fleshpot.
18
Club Lola was a wide, spotlit room, smoke-filled, dark-walled, with scores of tables and a long bar across the far side. There was a grand stage in the middle, on which a woman with a G-string and pasties and white high heels was hanging upside down. Her legs were hooked around a shiny pole, her hands were hooked around her breasts. The music was loud, the tables were small, the chairs were plush, the dancer was licking her own breast with a long, narrow tongue. Nice family entertainment.
The joint was half full, customers sitting with strange sated looks on their faces as a pack of she-wolves in high heels and sheer bikinis, their surgically enhanced bodies adorned with bracelets and tattoos, swarmed and socialized. What is it about high heels and bikinis that sings seductive songs straight to the masculine gut? And all it took was one look at the bikini tops to know that the air conditioner was definitely on.
Skink thumbed his fedora back on his head, took a cigar out of his jacket pocket, spread his arms wide, breathed deep the foul air. “My kind of place,” he said.
“I bet,” I said.
“Classy is what I mean. It’s got ambience.”
“It’s got something, all right.”
“Oh, quit your bellyaching. Let me buys you a drink.”
“On the expense account you’ll be charging back to me?”
“Victor, mate, what do you take me for?”
“That means yes.”
“I’ll see what kind of action we can rustle up. Now, take a seat, pop a smile, and enjoy yourself.”
I sat, I smiled, but I didn’t enjoy myself. And it wasn’t just the mark of loserhood on my chest that was dampening my mood.
I know, I know, every woman believes that every man, in his secret heart, loves a strip club. But I, for one, don’t. They give me the skives, and I think I know why. Every time I enter a joint like Club Lola, I feel squirrelly about the roles available to men in the little strip-club drama.
Am I the arrogant he-man who just assumes it is his due to have beautiful women wind their naked bodies into knots for my amusement? Am I the pitiable misfit who has to pay to get this close to a woman’s bare flesh? Am I the bored husband who spends my nights getting angry at my life as I stare at the type of woman I should have married? Or, worst of all, am I the romantic sap who thinks that the dancer, there, that one, with the sweet eyes and full rack, really really likes me? No, really, she does. Really.
While I was having my existential strip-club crisis, Skink was having none of it. He knew exactly who he was and what he was doing there as he leaned back in his
chair, a beer in one hand, his cigar in the other, and a dancer’s wriggling J.Lo smack in his face.
“Oh, that’s nice,” said Skink, his gap-toothed grin broad and gleaming. “Just like that. Yes. Oh, that’s just terrific.”
“Anything else you want?” said the dancer, who had introduced herself as Scarlet.
“Why don’t you turn around, sweetheart, and I’ll slip in a little something just for you.”
Scarlet did a spin, leaned forward with her back arched dramatically, pulled down the bikini top with her thumbs, and shimmied. It was all so festive, even her pasties glistened brightly, like twin disco balls.
“Is Chantal in tonight?” said Skink as he slipped a bill into the side of her G-string.
“She’s in back,” said Scarlet. While she talked, she worked her shimmy as efficiently as a bank clerk counting bills.
“Can you send her over?”
“What, this isn’t good enough for you?”
“Too good,” said Skink. “You stick around much longer, my head is going to burst into flame.” He slipped in another bill. “Be a honey and send over Chantal.”
As Scarlet gathered up the cash and sauntered off toward the curtain beside the bar, Skink turned to me, his grin still in place. “This is why I became a PI.”
“It’s nice for you that you found your calling.”
“You recognize anyone?”
I looked around at the women wandering the floor, talking to strange men or dancing on the stages in shifts, some good-looking, some great, all nearly naked, the sight of their bodies as available as the channels on a television set.
“Not a one,” I said.
“How about her?” said Skink, gesturing toward a tall brunette who was walking toward us.
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Her, I’d have remembered.”
And I would have, too. She was like Fantasy Woman Version 2.0, new and improved, now with even longer legs and less clothing than before. What with her red heels, her thin hips, her high firm breasts, pale skin, green G-string, blue eyes, a mouth just irregular enough to trap your eye and get you thinking, it actually hurt to gaze upon her. It was as if she embodied in the flesh all the possibilities of your life that had never come true. No matter what doubts I might have had before about my role in that club, her very beauty defined it with utter definitiveness: She was what I could never have, I was the pathetic loser who had paid to stare.
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