by Tracy Sharp
“I heard you got a way about you. You know the streets. I thought maybe you could look into it.”
“Chloe’s a prostitute?” I was already gathering information.
He nodded. “She doesn’t stand on a corner or anything. She’s a stripper. Sometimes she does a little something special for the customers if the price is right. They’ve got a back room for that.” He paused, looking at the ground and pulling at a blade of grass.
“And that’s why the police aren’t looking very hard for her.”
“Yeah.” He shook his head, incredulous. “Just because she’s a stripper she doesn’t deserve the same kind of attention any other missing woman gets? It’s so screwed up.”
I nodded slowly, stabbing a piece of chicken. “I know how it works.”
“Some rich college girl goes missing and it’s all the news. They have media campaigns, search parties, websites, her picture plastered all over the place. A hooker or a dancer vanishes and so what? Who cares? Don’t want them dirtying up the streets anyway, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I don’t want those other girls found. It’s just ... it’s not right, you know? If there weren’t Johns out there paying for the services they get from prostitutes, there wouldn’t be any prostitutes, right? And lots of times it’s those same, squeaky clean, rich bastards preaching about cleaning up the streets who are payin’. You know what I’m sayin’?”
I’d lost my appetite. Still, that chicken was just too good to throw into the garbage can. “You hungry?”
“Naw. I ate. Thanks anyway.”
I placed the container of chicken on the grass and signaled to Buddy that he could have it. He dove in.
“I know what you’re saying, Phil. I know.”
And I also knew that there was no way in hell that I wouldn’t do my best to help find Chloe Nolan.
* * *
How the hell am I going to bring this up? I thought, keeping my eyes on the screen ahead of me. We were at the drive-in, one of my favorite places to be, in the middle of the first of two action-type thrillers. Callahan was blissfully oblivious that I was about to drop a bomb on him and ruin his evening. The last time I had the urge to “look into something”, that urge had gotten him shot and me almost killed. I’d also endangered my brother’s life and the lives of a few friends of mine I’d taken along for the ride.
He startled me by looking over at me and saying, “What’s on your mind, Leah?”
“Huh?”
“You’re all tensed up over there. What’s bugging you?”
“I’m not all tensed up.”
“Okay, whatever.” He went back to watching the movie.
I watched him for a moment. Finally I sighed. “Okay. I’m a bit tensed up.”
He looked over at me again, waiting for the rest.
“I was approached today by a young guy whose girlfriend disappeared about a week ago. I guess word gets around on the street. He’d heard about me, wondered if I’d take a quick look into it.” I was watering it down and knew that he knew it.
He stared at me, quiet for a long moment. “A quick look into it.”
“Yeah. You know, ask around a little. Stuff like that.”
He nodded slowly. “Stuff like that.”
“Cal, come on. It won’t hurt just to ask a few questions.”
“Not going to hurt?” His voice rose and his eyebrows were raised in mock naivety.
“You sound like a friggin’ parrot. Say something original for Christ’s sake.” I’d done a pretty good job of not swearing for a while. I’d had a whole bag-full of substitutes for my favorite swear words, but for the most part these days, I just didn’t feel the need.
Besides, when a recent scuffle I had with a bad guy ended in him laughing his ass off at one of my particularly shining string of faux obscenities, I was pretty much cured. Turns out that using ‘dump truck’ in place of ‘dumb ‘F’ word’, and ‘melon farmer’ in place of ‘mother ‘F’ word’, doen’t really have the same impact as the originals.
“Okay. How about this one? Are you a sucker for punishment or just insane?”
“She has nobody but him. She’s a stripper, so the cops aren’t looking that hard for her.” I cringed at the plea in my voice. “She has nobody, Cal.”
He looked up at the sky and sighed. He slapped a mosquito before going back to looking pissed off. We were in my Jeep with the soft-top pulled down. It had been really humid for days and had rained earlier, so the mosquitoes were out in droves. I let him brood while I got out of the Jeep and began pulling the top back on. When I got back in he was staring at the screen, jaw set.
“Cal, say something.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter what I tell you.” His tone was quiet. Devoid of emotion. He was pouting. It’s the way he gets when he’s pissed and doesn’t want to talk about it.
It was my turn to sigh. I was already kind of in the doghouse with him. We’d been dating for almost a year, and he’d made the grave error of mentioning the possibility of moving into my house with me. I rarely even allowed him to stay over. I don’t know what in hell he was thinking and had told him so. It hadn’t gone over well.
I climbed out and walked around to the passenger seat where Cal was still brooding. I opened the door and carefully climbed on top of him so that I was straddling him, and kissed him softly. His lips were stiff. He wasn’t about to give in easily.
“Callahan,” I whispered. “Don’t be mad.”
He looked past me, his face hard.
I leaned in and kissed his neck, took his earlobe into my mouth and sucked slowly. I could feel his body responding despite his valiant efforts to snub me.
He sighed.
We were doing a lot of sighing.
His voice softened. “Leah, you’re a pain in the ass, you know it?”
“Mmhmm.”
This time when I kissed him he kissed me back, long and deep. His breathing quickened and I tasted cinnamon as he pulled his tongue from my mouth and took my lower lip between his teeth
I loved sex with Callahan. He felt familiar. Like home.
He gave a little groan of frustration and I grinned down at him. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“I am mad at you.” He kissed me again, long and deep.
His hazel eyes were dreamy in the flickering light from the movie. He had a sensitive mouth, almost feminine. In that moment I felt ashamed that I couldn’t commit more to him. He tilted his head a little as he looked up at me. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
When he looked up at me I saw the thing in his eyes that sent panic through me. I tried to lift myself from him, but he held me there and looked into my face, his emotion clearly written there. “Leah...”
I shook my head quickly. “I know.”
* * *
I woke up alone. That was how I wanted it. Although Callahan had come in for about an hour, he was aware of my need to sleep by myself. I don’t like sharing my bed. I need my space. This was a point of contention between us, but I didn’t see why our situation had to change. We got along just fine the way things were. Well, we’d gotten along fine until he decided that we needed to take the relationship to the next level. That I needed to be more committed to the relationship.
I was committed. I didn’t think it was necessary to move in together to show how committed a person is to someone. And once they start sleeping over, before you know it they’re leaving their toothbrush at your place, and an extra set of clothes, and shaving gear, and then it just snowballs from there. It just gets way out of hand.
I lay there for a moment, petting Frank, who felt me moving and gently padded up from his regular spot at the foot of the bed to greet me, all soft orange fur, his motor running. I don’t mind Frank sharing my bed. He’s independent like I am. We don’t cramp each other’s style.
“Hey, handsome.” I scratched him behind an ear. “How are you doing t
his morning?”
Hearing my voice, Buddy lifted his head from his bed in the corner of the room. He got up and stretched his back legs, then made his way over to me, laying his huge head down on the bedspread.
“Hey, baby.” I scratched him behind an ear, much as I’d done with Frank, but applied a bit more pressure. “You hungry?”
Buddy lifted his ears and ran his tongue around the side of his mouth. Thinking of eating always makes him do that. He actually has a fairly extensive vocabulary. In fact, he’s so smart it freaks me out sometimes.
I’d rescued him from a bad situation during one of my repo jobs the previous summer, and he’d been a dream of a dog ever since. I swear he knows what I’m saying when I talk to him. Either that or he’s just humoring me, watching me with those big, chocolate brown eyes as I assault him with a long string of chatter. His version of nodding and smiling, I guess. He’s more intelligent than a lot of people I’ve come across.
It was Sunday morning. I got up and stretched, then climbed into a pair of jeans and pulled on a T-shirt. I’d taken the weekend off from my job as a vehicle recovery agent. So far I hadn’t really enjoyed the weekend much. It was okay, though. I thought I’d want some quiet time just to walk the beach and hang out with Buddy.
As nice as those things had been, minus the strange man watching me, I was feeling like a fish out of water. The truth was, before Phil Moreau had even finished telling me his story, I was feeling a familiar thrill racing through my blood. I had something worthwhile to sink my teeth into again. And I couldn’t wait to begin.
I started with Chloe’s last place of work. It was called The Klassy Kitty and sat in one of the seedier sections of downtown Albany. Phil didn’t have a picture of Chloe, but said that her stage name had been Ember. I headed into the lounge and instantly got an appraising look from a smarmy looking man sitting at a table by himself.
He stood up and walked toward me. “Can I help you?” Hope glinted in his dark, beady eyes. He wore a cheap suit left over from the early eighties and a comb-over, which apparently is fashionable in any era.
“I hope so. I’m looking for a dancer who goes by the name Ember.”
“She ain’t been here in about two weeks. Didn’t give no notice, either. Just didn’t show back up.”
“She never picked up her last paycheck?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t you find that strange?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Nope. Guess she didn’t need it that bad.”
I felt eyes on me and glanced at the woman tending the bar. She threw me nervous glances as she loaded the glass washer.
“Do you know anything about her? Like who her friends were?”
“Lady, who the hell are you?”
“I’m a worried friend, okay?”
“Don’t sound to me like you know enough about her to be her friend.”
“I haven’t seen her in a really long time.” I looked over at the bartender again and pushed out a breath. “Damn. I guess I’m out of luck.”
He gave me a shrug and lifted his hands. “Sorry. These girls, they come and they go. It’s hard to keep track of them, and I don’t ask questions, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I understand.” I looked around. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Thanks. I just had it painted.” His chest seemed to puff up.
I smiled. “Yeah. I can see that. It really looks sharp.”
He watched me for a moment, and I could see the wheels turning in his mind. “Is there anything else you need? You looking for work?”
“Actually, I just blew into town. I might be thinking of staying for a little while. What’s the pay like here?”
“Five hundred a week and you keep your tips.”
“Not bad.” I nodded, pursing my lips.
“You ever do any dancing?”
“Here and there.” If you included the dancing I’d done was at a friend’s wedding. It was a night I’d done my best to forget.
“Of course, I’d need you to audition.”
“Of course.” I gave him a bright smile. “I’m just going to sit down and have a drink, if it’s okay with you. Think it over.”
“Sure. By all means. Terry will fix you right up.” He walked over to the bar. “Terry, this is a friend of Ember’s.” He turned his bowling ball of a head toward me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name, hon.”
“Candy. Candace. I go by Candy.” Then I smiled and added, “With an ‘i’.”
“Perfect! Her drink is on the house.”
Terry nodded. She looked like she’d been pretty once. Too many long nights in places just like this one had all but stolen her beauty. Her auburn hair was long and layered, and she wore far too much make-up. She had probably been a dancer in her younger years. Now at the ripe old age of about twenty-seven, she was all washed up. Her raccoon lined eyes were cautious. “What can I get you?”
“Just a beer.”
She was silent as she grabbed a bottle from the cooler. She reached for a glass.
“No, just the bottle is fine.”
She placed the bottle in front of me and gave me another wary glance before turning away.
“Look,” I told her. “I’m not a cop.”
She turned her face to me but continued loading ashtrays into the washer. “You sure seem like one.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m just looking for Chloe. A friend of hers is really scared something’s happened to her. Do you know anything at all that might help us find her?”
“Who is this friend?”
I sensed that the only way to get any information from Terry was to be straight with her. She’d smell a lie from a mile away. “A guy named Phil Moreau. He went into a facility to dry out and when he came out she’d disappeared. He just wants to know that she’s okay. That’s all.”
She stared at me for a moment, then let out a long breath. “I don’t know a whole lot about her. The last I heard she was at Shanahan’s. I know that she’d been fired from her previous job because some guy kept showing up and making a scene. They said it was bad for business.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Did this guy ever show up here?”
“She was only here for about a week. She was hiding from him but let’s face it, when you’re a dancer, where else are you gonna go but another strip club? She was pulling in about fifteen hundred a week just in tips.”
Finishing the thought, I said, “And how long would it take for an obsessed guy to go through all the strip clubs in the area until he found her?”
She stopped working and turned to me, placing both hands on the bar and leaning toward me. Those black lined eyes trapped mine in a hard gaze. “Not long.”
Chapter Two
Shanahan’s. This was apparently the classiest strip joint in the area. There was a ten-dollar cover charge, and the place was fairly large and decked out in lots of red velvet. Instead of a stage, the dancers did their moves on a catwalk of sorts, built very similar to the runways fashion models use. When the dancers weren’t dancing, they served seven-dollar drinks topless and collected fives in their g-strings, or gave lap-dances in a back room.
I told the guy at the door that I was a new dancer and he let me in. So I just walked through to the back like I was supposed to be there, and found the area where the dancers changed into their costumes and make-up. Many of them glanced at me but didn’t pay me much attention. They were obviously used to girls coming and going.
I sat in an empty chair next to a slender woman with large dark eyes set beneath a mane of jet-black hair and razor straight bangs.
“That’s Mocha’s chair,” she said without looking at me. “She gets really pissy about other girls sitting in her chair.”
“I won’t be long. I just need to ask a few questions.”
This earned me a hard glare. “Who the hell are you?”
“A friend of mine used to work here, but she’s vanished. Did you know Chloe Nol
an? She might’ve gone by the name Ember.”
“Yeah. I knew her.” She applied what looked like the fourth coat of mascara to her lashes.
“Do you know where she might’ve gone?”
“Are you really her friend or are you a friend of Shanahan’s? Cuz if you’re a friend of his, you can walk out of here right now.”
“I’m not a friend of his.” I’d heard of Darcy Shanahan. Most people in the capital region have.
She twisted the wand back onto the mascara tube. “You know about him?”
“A little.”
“Not only does he own most of the strip-clubs in town, he’s head of the Irish mob.” She began applying ruby red lipstick, making her words come out somewhat garbled. “He has far too much money and he likes to wave it around in front of our faces a lot. Has a driver and the whole bit.” She placed the lipstick on the counter and regarded me with enormous, brown eyes. “He’s always trying to get the girls to go out with him. Most of us don’t want to mix business with pleasure. Too messy. And that driver of his.” She shuddered. “The man is creepy. He has this weird wide-eyed stare. Doesn’t matter what he’s lookin’ at.” She shrugged. “For some reason Chloe took Shanahan up on it.”
“She dated him?”
“Yeah, for a little while. He promised her he’d get her a screen test in New York. I think she was looking for somebody to take care of her. After a few weeks she got scared and tried to break it off. He couldn’t let her go after that. Thought she was his possession.” She thought for a moment. “She didn’t have much luck when it came to men.”
“What do you mean? Was there somebody else?”
“There was this weirdo who took a liking to her. He thought she was his soul mate or some shit like that. Said they were tied together for life.”
This had to be the same guy Terry had told me about. “Was he menacing? Did he threaten her in any way?”