by Matthew Iden
Eddie turned to look at Tuck before he was off the porch. “Hey, what’s her name?”
“Lucy,” Tuck said. “Lucy Rhee.”
CHAPTER FOUR
We were standing inside the foyer of Ultra, a nightclub east of Washington Circle. From the outside, it resembled any other office building in downtown DC with its faux marble columns, darkened double glass doors, planters to either side of the lintel. But the line of fifty at the door—huddling their bodies together for warmth in scant miniskirts and ripped jeans, their breath not so much steaming as crystallizing in the air around them—proclaimed Ultra was the place to be in the city. Tonight, at least.
A flash of Chuck’s badge had gotten us past the bouncers, sparking grumbles and complaints the length of the line. One doorman glared at the hopeful partiers, quieting them down, while the other opened the door, releasing a blast of noise, heat, and humidity. Chuck and I squeezed past the muscle and into the club, blinking and squinting to adjust. Inside, the clientele was hip, young, and diverse. What it wasn’t was old, white, and tired, which meant Chuck fit right in and I looked like I’d driven in from the burbs to pick up my kids.
“I think you should do the talking,” I yelled into Chuck’s ear.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Chuck shouted back, grinning. Then the grin slid off his face as he remembered why we were here. He jerked his head toward the dance floor. “Drinks are upstairs. I know the bartender.”
We pushed and slid our way through the press of flesh, tapping shoulders and guiding sweaty bodies out of the way. The thud and crash of techno dance music was too loud to ask politely. Or rudely, for that matter. Dry ice—that old club favorite—wafted up from vents in the floor and I wondered what Hieronymus Bosch might’ve thought of the place. Guttural bass notes pounded from eight-foot speakers, making me wince at the echo it made in my stuffy head, not to mention the way it plucked at something in my gut south of my stomach. It wasn’t the only hazard, either. More than once, we had to duck as several dancers—zonked out on pills, powders, or sprays—whipped neon glow sticks around like propellers.
Chuck led the way to an industrial-looking spiral staircase of steel and glass that twisted its way to a second-floor catwalk. Dancers, more subdued than their comrades on the first floor, lined the railing, taking a break to grab a drink and watch the seething mass below. Most were teens and twentysomethings, though a few of the voyeurs were men in the throes of midlife crises, doing their best to look half their age. But the clothes and the hair—but most of all, the discomfort on their faces—gave them away. I grimaced. I knew which category I was in.
I trailed Chuck to a bar set back from the catwalk, a block of smoked glass with a dramatic streak of white marble shot through, like a comet going through a night sky. Chuck sauntered up to it and waited until he caught the eye of a young Latina girl behind it. She brightened and came over and he leaned over the bar so they could kiss cheeks. A sparkling name tag on her bosom said “MIXOLOGIST.” She glanced at me, then she looked back at Chuck, tilting her head so she could hear him.
“I’m looking for Lucy,” he yelled. “You seen her around?”
She shook her head. “Not tonight. Her posse’s here, though.”
“Who?”
“Leila and Cupie. In the lounge. Alfredo let them in.”
“Oh, yeah?” Chuck said. Even through the thundering music, I could hear the not-quite-pleased tone, but he gave her hand a squeeze. “Thanks.”
“What’s the lounge?” I asked as Chuck led the way back to the catwalk.
“Special treatment,” he yelled over a shoulder. “Champagne, dope, celebrities. Invitation only.”
“And Alfredo?”
“The owner. He likes to play it big. Says he’s from Buenos Aires or Rio or something, but he probably grew up in Virginia Beach. He invites the girls he spots on the dance floor, especially the underage ones.”
“Sounds like quality material.”
Chuck made a face and nodded. I took out a tissue and blew my nose as we walked to the opposite side from the bar, passing the catwalk we’d climbed. We stopped at a small landing with a frosted-glass door. “V.I.P.” was etched into it in an ultracool sans serif font. I’d have to watch it or my self-esteem was going to take a nosedive. Even the doors here were more hip than I was.
Another walking muscle stood to the left of the entrance to the lounge. He was dressed in the standard, clichéd dance club security wear: black suit, wraparound shades, close-cropped black hair. He was also big enough to have bounced the bouncers at the front door.
“Polo,” Chuck said, nodding to the guard. They bumped fists. Chuck’s looked like a baby rattle next to the other. “You mind asking Alfredo if he can spare a minute?”
“Important?”
“Very.”
“Hold on.” The bouncer opened the frosted door and disappeared.
I waited until the door closed behind him. “Polo?”
Chuck glanced over. “His real name’s Ralph. People weren’t taking him seriously, so he told everybody to start calling him Polo—like Ralph Lauren, you know?—or he’d twist their head off and put it in a can.”
I gave a short nod. “Polo it is.”
The door opened a minute later and Polo leaned out, holding the door and motioning for us to come in. Chuck and I sauntered through and looked around.
It was what I’d expected. Leather couches, a wet bar, low lighting. The far wall was floor-to-ceiling one-way glass so the VIP set could watch the plebes having their fun far below, but the room was nearly soundproofed, so the scene felt oddly disjointed. Only the thud of the bass shaking the glass hinted at the decibel level just a few feet away.
Couches and easy chairs were arranged in intimate groupings of three and four. Most were occupied by curvy, model-worthy women and well-dressed young men laughing too loudly. I spotted more than one local sports celebrity with champagne in one hand and a girl in the other, looking uncomfortable in suits instead of uniforms—the collars too tight, the material straining over chests and thighs. Polo pointed to the back of the lounge and we wound our way through the low glass tables and cushy furniture to a corner of the room. Along the way, Chuck glanced to his left, then did an almost imperceptible double take. He covered it well and we kept moving until we found our target.
Open bottles of Cristal and Cîroc littered a long table already crowded with champagne flutes and lowball glasses. Someone’s drink had spilled and the liquid had formed a clear, kidney-shaped puddle on the glass that shivered in time to the music.
On the couch behind the table reclined a man in his thirties. Tan or dark complexion, clean shaven. Short black hair on his head, a jungle of it on the chest. He wore a white shirt with three buttons open at the top. It seemed a weird throwback to some darker age of fashion, like 1973, which I could’ve told him from personal experience had been more of an accident than a plan. Long arms were spread along the back of the couch, caressing the shoulders of the girls on either side of him. A large white guy, as big as Polo, sprawled at the other end of the couch with a girl half his size on his knee. She looked like a ventriloquist’s doll. The two were in their own little world, giggling at something. Two young girls, looking waifish and annoyed, sat in a leather chair to one side, one in the seat, the other on the arm. They stiffened when they saw Chuck.
“Detective,” Alfredo said, expansively. “What a pleasure.”
“Alfredo,” Chuck said, nodding.
The club owner looked at me, raised an eyebrow. “Who’s the underdressed dude with you checking me out like I’m a piece of meat?”
“This is a friend of mine, Marty Singer.”
“He ever hear of a dress code?”
“He don’t clean up too good,” Chuck said. “He wanted to wear sweatpants.”
Alfredo sniffed a small laugh. “What can I do for you?�
�
“I need to talk to these two,” Chuck said, jerking his head toward the girls on the chair.
“That it? I thought you were after something serious,” Alfredo laughed.
“Nope. Just a talk. Then we’re out of your hair.”
“Well, that sounds easy,” Alfredo said, then his face changed to something coy and he quirked an eyebrow. “Unless you two are looking for something young and exciting?”
“No time, man,” Chuck said. I could almost see his teeth grinding together. It was hard to play patty-cake with some asshole when the clock was ticking.
“That’s not the normal—what do you call it?—MO for Detective Rhee.”
“It is tonight,” Chuck said. “Just the way it has to be.”
Alfredo shrugged, then Don Juan’s attention turned to me. “That’s too bad. What do you say, old man? You on the prowl for some underage pussy?”
“Thank you, no,” I said. “I’m having enough trouble with the middle-aged kind.”
“Nothing a couple of Viagra won’t cure, my friend. Or, in your case, maybe the whole bottle,” he said, getting a laugh out of the entourage. “You ain’t looking so hot, you don’t mind me saying.”
“My problems are more about commitment and sharing. You know, old people stuff.”
“If you say so, man. You sure that’s the only thing going on?”
“Well, maybe if you’d let us talk to these two girls so we could get what we came for, I could get back to working on my flagging relationship.”
“Did you say flagging?” he asked, putting a hand to his ear. “Or fagging? I mean, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, homie, but I think I know what your problem is.”
The sycophants tittered. I looked at him, tired. I’d tried. “Will you please stop being an asshole? You’re not that funny and we don’t have the time for you to learn.”
As comebacks go, it wasn’t much, but Alfredo had wanted to play and didn’t appreciate my businesslike attitude. His heretofore friendly face darkened and he turned toward some kind of intercom thing over his shoulder, probably to summon Polo and have us thrown out on our keisters. Our night would’ve no doubt progressed along familiar lines from that point, but we didn’t have the time to let it unfold normally . . . and I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in the mood to play games.
Chuck took a step to Alfredo’s side and, in one smooth motion, pulled his gun and placed his hand—firearm and all—on the man’s shoulder. Not pointing it at him, not threatening him with it. Just kind of leaving it there. Like a human gun rest. Despite the fact that only a few people could’ve seen Chuck move, it seemed as though everyone in the room knew instantly that something was very wrong. Chatter stopped like a switch had been thrown and suddenly even the sound of a small cough was noticeable. A girl behind us whispered, “Oh my God.” I was quite cognizant of the fact that there were some large, possibly heavily armed, people between us and the exit.
“Alfredo. Alfie. Al. I don’t have time for your bullshit,” Chuck said in a conversational tone. “I need to talk to these girls and I need to talk to them now.”
Keeping his body still, Alfredo said carefully, “It’s like that, huh?”
“Yes,” Chuck said. “It is exactly like that.”
Alfredo paused. The room held its collective breath. “All right, gentlemen. Be my guest. You want a private place to talk?”
“That would be nice,” Chuck said, slipping his gun back in his holster. The room relaxed.
The club owner punched a small button behind the couch and Polo appeared. Alfredo gestured. “Show these two to the office. Give them ten minutes.”
Chuck gestured to the two girls on the chair. One shot him a stubborn look and he said impatiently, “Cupie, come on. I’m not here to ruin your night. I just need to talk to you for a sec and then you can do whatever you want.”
“God,” she said, huffing, but got to her feet. The other one—Leila I deduced—followed her lead and the four of us turned to go. Alfredo tried one parting shot.
“I’m disappointed, Detective,” he called.
Chuck turned. “Yeah?”
“I’m not a fan of being threatened in my own establishment. Don’t expect any more drinks on the house.”
“You keep company with shits like Bobby Carrillo, you won’t have any drinks to serve. Comprende, amigo?” When Alfredo didn’t say anything he followed it with, “That means Understand, asshole?”
“I know what it means,” he said.
“Who’s Bobby Carrillo?” I asked. “He a hockey player or something?”
Chuck, never taking his eyes off Alfredo, said, “No, man. The guy living large there in the lounge. He’s MLA’s top dog ever since Felix Rodriguez took a bullet in the face.”
“Nice,” I said. “I’m surprised no one’s raided the place on a busy Saturday night and hauled everyone in for questioning.”
“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Surprising.”
“You got what you want,” Alfredo said, waving us away. “Get the fuck out of here.”
We trooped out of the quiet corner and into the main body of the lounge. Polo led us around a fluid, curvy bend in the wall that I hadn’t noticed coming in. Another frosted-glass door that I was betting wasn’t simple glass stood in our way. There was a keypad next to it and a camera hovering blatantly above. Shielding the view with his body, Polo punched a number into the pad, opened the door, and showed us into a small but functional office with three desks and wide computer screens, all dark. The four of us squeaked past Polo and into the office as he held the door.
“Boss said ten minutes, Chuck,” Polo said.
“We’ll be out of here in five,” Chuck said.
The bouncer nodded and left, shutting the door behind him.
“They trust you in here?” I asked when we were alone.
“They’re dumb but they ain’t stupid,” Chuck said, pointing his chin toward the ceiling. A tiny red light glowed in the darkened corner, showing where one camera, at least, was trained on us. “Anyway, Alfredo knows I’m Arlington PD.”
“No jurisdiction.”
“Yeah. I mean, he knows it wouldn’t take much to get some cooperation from your old squad and make life suck for him. But as long as I don’t push too hard and he don’t ask for too much, then we can get along.”
“Using his shoulder as a gun rack is pushing pretty hard,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m a little on edge.”
Cupie sighed, loudly and dramatically. Chuck turned to her. “You in some kind of hurry?”
“We just got invited to the lounge tonight. I don’t want to talk to a cop when I could be hanging with ’Fredo.”
“A cop, huh?” Chuck said. “What happened to Lucy’s big brother? The one whose car you puked in this summer? The one who drove you home at three in the morning and didn’t tell your mom?”
The girls didn’t say anything. Leila, a thin blonde with black mascara that had been artfully applied to make it look like she’d been crying, sat down on the edge of one of the desks, hugging her arms to herself.
Chuck made a noise of disgust. “Look, I don’t care—too much—what you’re doing here. You gotta make your own choices, even if some of them are dumb. Party all night, you want to. Drink like a fish, smoke shit in the bathroom, whatever. But use your head, especially around Alfredo. He tells you to sleep with someone or go home with some gangbanger, call me, okay?”
They were quiet. Cupie, mouth pinched, looked at one of the computer screens like there was something interesting there. Leila continued to hug herself. I glanced at Chuck and raised my eyebrows. Chuck nodded, looking tired.
“All right, that was my after-school special. All I wanted to ask is if you know where Lucy is. She supposed to go out with you tonight?”
Cupie, still miffed, sai
d nothing, but Leila shook her head.
“That a no?” Chuck asked sharply.
“No,” Leila said. “She told us she was going to have dinner with you.”
“Then what?”
“She said she was going to go bowling.”
“Bowling?” Chuck asked, nonplussed. “She goes bowling?”
“It’s a joke,” Cupie said, exasperated. “She said that when she was going to see Tuck. He’s got a head like a bowling ball.”
Chuck swore. “That loser? I thought she’d dropped him.”
“She did. But he kept calling and calling and calling. Said all he wanted was to talk. She caved and told him she’d meet.”
“Where?”
Both girls shrugged. Chuck asked, “Where’d they usually go? They have a favorite place?”
They shrugged again. Standing next to him, I could feel Chuck’s frustration begin to mount and stepped in. “Is Tuck this guy’s real name?”
Cupie rolled her eyes. “God, can we go?”
“Is Tuck his real name?” Chuck asked, an edge to his voice that made both girls flinch.
There was a second of silence, then, in a small voice, Cupie said, “I don’t know. Everyone calls him Tuck.”
“You know where he lives?” I asked.
“Woodbridge, I think. Off Route 1, by the Walmart. I’ve never been there, but Lucy went once or twice.”
“You have an address? A building number? Anything?”
Leila shook her head, but Cupie said, “Tuck loves the Raiders. Lucy said he hung this huge banner on his porch.”
Chuck glanced at me. I shrugged. “Better than nothing. And nothing’s all we got, otherwise. We can be there in twenty, thirty minutes, if you put the siren on.”
“All right,” Chuck said. “Thanks. Go back to partying.”
“Is Lucy in trouble?” Leila asked.
“Not with me.”
“With someone else?”