The Corpse Wore Pasties

by Jonny Porkpie

  Eva sat me down. As a new song started, she untied her top, dropped it on the seat, and began to grind her hips in my direction. With each thrust, my head banged into the vinyl behind me.

  “I told him, let the bitch have the name,” Eva said. “Let the bitch have the show. Let the bitch have the entire city of brotherly love, for all I care. I got the hell out of town. Had to go into debt to make the move, but I get to New York, score some bookings, start rebuilding my rep, and everything’s going pretty well...and then...” Eva’s voice trailed off. She took a deep breath, and when she looked at me again there was a fire in her eyes that made me nervous. “Then she walks into that goddamn bar last night. I got out of her life, she could at least have the decency to stay out of mine. But no. She can’t just let it go.”

  “And when you saw her walk in, you were ready to kill her?”

  Eva dropped to the bench, straddling my lap. She pressed her chest against mine, and leaned in close. Her lips brushed my cheek, and I could feel her breath in my ear.

  “Porky, honey, baby, sweetheart, be careful what you accuse me of, especially in here,” she whispered. “You could be on the sidewalk and bleeding in five seconds. All I have to do is nod...”

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS

  YOU WILL ENJOY:

  DEAD STREET by Mickey Spillane

  DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins

  A DIET OF TREACLE by Lawrence Block

  MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

  ZERO COOL by John Lange

  SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

  THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY

  by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  GUN WORK by David J. Schow

  FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

  KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

  THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

  THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

  HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

  CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

  FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

  PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

  STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

  LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

  HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

  QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

  The CORPSE

  Wore PASTIES

  by Jonny Porkpie

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-062)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: December 2009

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 OUP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2009 by Jonny Porkpie

  Cover painting copyright © 2009 by Ricky Mujica

  Cover models: GiGi La Femme and Nasty Canasta

  Author photograph copyright © 2009 by Don Spiro

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print Edition ISBN 978-0-85768-361-8

  E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-797-5

  Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  For Nasty, without whom I’d still have my clothes on.

  And for Lolly, who wouldn’t have read it, but would have liked that I wrote it.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Dear Charles,

  Well, here it is, as requested, in all its obscene glory: a complete and mostly accurate account of the events that led to the closing of a certain bar on Eleventh Street. I’ve played it as close to the truth as I can, but you know me; I might have thrown in some slight exaggerations, the odd embellishment or two, and several completely fabricated erotic scenes. I just couldn’t resist.

  In other words, it’s all true except for the stuff I lied about.

  Best regards,

  Porkpie

  CHAPTER 1

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT

  The heel of the stiletto caught on the strap of the black lace bra she had dropped a few moments earlier. She kicked it out of the way without looking. It skittered across the stage.

  She held the bottle next to her breasts, so the audience could see that the pasties covering her nipples matched the skull-and-crossbones on the label. Then she lifted it to her face, and licked the large yellow letters on the label that spelled out the word poison. She tilted her hand. Bright green liquid flowed out of the bottle and down across her chest. Green dripped between her breasts, over her ribcage, around her navel, and soaked into the cloth of her panties.

  She threw her head back, and lifted the bottle to her mouth. A strange look crossed her face as the liquid flowed past her lips. A trickle of green dripped out of the corner of her mouth, down her cheek, and along the sinews of her neck.

  Cherries whispered something.

  The woman on stage seemed to swallow, then suddenly stopped moving. Her eyes widened. She grabbed her throat, and spit the liquid all over the front row of the audience. The bottle fell from her hand, hit the stage with a dull thunk, and rolled in a lazy circle around her feet, liquid pooling in its wake.

  Great. Forget paper towels, I was going to need a mop to clean up after this act.

  She made a strangling sound, as if trying to scream, but instead started gagging.

  I looked at Cherries Jubilee, standing next to me as I watched the act from the wings. She shook her head. “Not this part,” she said. “At least, not exactly. She drinks from the bottle, but...” The sentence trailed off.

  The woman on stage stuck out her tongue and scraped at it with her fingernails, her mouth stretched in a convincing grimace of terror. Judging it purely on the basis of the performance—and I can’t tell you how much I hated to admit it, even to myself—this bit was actually quite good.

  The music ended, but the number didn’t end with it. She kept going, flailing about the stage, pounding her chest, reaching out to the audience with a pleadin
g look in her eyes. She jammed a finger into her mouth, two fingers, three fingers, and gagged again. She smeared the green across her face. Then her body went stiff and she fell to the stage, landing with her face in the cup of the brassiere she had just removed for our entertainment.

  Great finale.

  The audience thought so too. They clapped, cheered, whistled, hooted and hollered. A couple people were actually standing up.

  But she wasn’t done. Throughout the ovation, she stayed where she had fallen on the stage.

  Not completely immobile; every few seconds, she would toss in a death spasm, which would set the audience clapping again, even louder.

  Finally, having milked the bit for all it was worth, she lay still. The applause died down. She stayed where she was.

  It took us all a minute to realize that it wasn’t part of the act.

  By the time we did, she was dead.

  Half an hour earlier, I was completely surrounded by naked women, wearing only my boxers and porkpie hat.

  It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

  In the first place, I was at work—we’ll get back to that in a minute—and second, there was a distinctly chilly atmosphere in the room. An atmosphere that had nothing to do with the air conditioning, mostly because the air conditioning (as usual) wasn’t working. This was the sort of chill that comes from a cold shoulder, and even though I wasn’t personally on the receiving end—

  Oh, right. Me. I should probably introduce myself. I’m Jonny Porkpie, known to audiences as the Burlesque Mayor of New York City. It’s not an elected position—I’m self-appointed—but I do take my duties very seriously. I try to spend as much time as possible pressing the flesh and polling the electorate—

  Sorry about that. Habit. That sort of gag usually gets a laugh when I’m onstage, hosting a show. But you’re probably hoping for a more literate tone in your lurid paperback novel, so I’ll do my best to keep the double entendre to a minimum.

  But I’m not making any promises.

  See, I’m a burlesque performer. And when I say “burlesque performer,” I’m not talking baggy-pants comedian. Some have called me a no-pants comedian, but that’s not entirely accurate either. My acts tend toward the humorous, sure, but when push comes to shove, and bump comes to grind, I’m the same sort of burlesque performer that Sally Rand was, or Gypsy Rose Lee—though they had certain assets that I lack. And that particular pair of assets might, to an audience, be the ones more likely to inspire lust than laughter.

  Still, bottom line, I get paid to take off my clothes.

  And so do all the women who were in that room with me.

  The room, if you want to get technical about it, was a dressing room—although since we were in the back of an East Village bar perhaps “dressing room” is a bit of an exaggeration. “Oversized supply closet with mirrors” might be closer to the mark. The reason we were all in the aforementioned state of undress is that we were getting ready for a show. A burlesque show. Dreamland Burlesque, to be specific, which—though not the show I usually front for—is one of my favorite places to perform. It’s been running for years and so manages to be both professional and relaxed at the same time, which makes it an enjoyable night for performers and audiences alike. In general, burlesque in New York City is a pretty friendly enterprise—most everybody gets along with everybody else, most of the time. It’s nothing like you hear about in the old days, with one dancer putting ground glass in another’s face powder—but like anything else, there are better and worse shows to perform in, and Dreamland was one of the better ones. Which made the current chill all the more unusual.

  But not exactly unexpected. Because I knew the reason for it. And that reason was, much to my chagrin, talking at me as I attempted to get dressed.

  “I know the setlist is already done,” said the reason, as she emptied half a can of spray-tan over her ass. “It’s just that I have another gig after this, honey. So if you can move me earlier in the lineup?” The inflection made it resemble a question, but her tone of voice made it clear that she wasn’t expecting any answer that wasn’t affirmative.

  I told her I would check with the other performers to see if anyone was willing to switch. Given the rancorous looks being thrown her way by the five other women in that dressing room, I wasn’t optimistic, but I figured it was worth a try; anything to get her spraytanned ass out of that venue more quickly.

  The reason’s stage name was Victoria Vice, and she was the rare performer that absolutely nobody liked, including me. And for good reason. But unlike everyone else in the room, I was obligated to talk to her. Because I was running the show. It wasn’t my usual gig, as I’ve mentioned (that one’s called Pinchbottom, you can look it up online, and that’s the last shameless plug for it I’ll throw in), but Dreamland’s producer and regular host, LuLu LaRue, was out of town and had asked me to handle things for her.

  And when a beautiful woman asks you to handle her things—

  Right, right, sorry.

  At any rate, this Wednesday’s performance of the Dreamland Burlesque had been entrusted to my tender care, which meant I couldn’t join the rest of the dressing room in giving this woman the silent treatment she so richly deserved.

  I pulled up my pants and, in my most innocent of innocent voices, asked her what number she was planning to do tonight. I used the innocent tone because the question was more loaded than the maid-of-honor in hour six of a bachelorette party. Because Victoria Vice was a thief.

  I’m not talking about the exciting, sexy type of thief, the kind who dresses up in skintight black outfits and goes running around on rooftops, sliding into bedrooms while people are sleeping, reaching into their nightstands and... But I should stop before I write an entirely different book. No, Victoria was a plagiarist, which in our line of work is the worst kind of thief you can be. Maybe it doesn’t sound as bad as stealing, say, a pair of Swarovski crystal-encrusted pasties, but to a burlesque performer it’s much worse. “She who steals my purse steals trash,” the performer getting dressed next to us had said, paraphrasing Shakespeare, after she had fallen victim to Victoria’s creative larceny, “but steal my burlesque numbers and I’m gonna cut a bitch.” Now, Cherries Jubilee was attempting to appear as if she were focused on avoiding a run in the nylon as she put on her stockings, but I could tell she had an ear cocked in our direction. No foot covering requires quite the level of attention Cherries was giving it.

  Victoria replied: “It’s a brand new act, actually. Everyone will love it.” Which didn’t tell me anything about it, of course. A nice dodge. I would have pressed further, but she didn’t give me a chance. “Which way is the little girl’s room, honey?” she asked.

  Little girl’s room. What was she, eight? But I gave her the directions: out the door into the main room, follow the curtain that hides the backstage area from the audience (more or less), when you hit a door, that’s the bathroom.

  “Oh, no! Really? Out there? That’s kind of unprofessional, isn’t it? The audience will see me if I go out there.”

  I plastered an unconvincing smile on my face, bit my tongue, and explained through clenched teeth that since the house wasn’t open yet, there would be no audience to see her.

  “Hmph. Well, just in case,” she said, and reached into her gig bag. It was a standard black suitcase, a “drag bag”—you know, the kind with wheels on one end and a telescoping handle at the other, the sort that stewardesses use to drag around their street clothes and burlesque performers use to drag around their stewardess costumes. Since walking into the dressing room Victoria had been clutching it between her knees like a reluctant lover. She pulled out a cape of the most obnoxious purple—that’s not fair, the purple was fine, it was the woman who was obnoxious—and threw it over her shoulders.

  “Thanks oodles,” she said and, dragging the suitcase behind her, headed for the door, where she ran into the show’s tech guy, an 80s-throwback named DJ Casey, on his way in. Casey stepped aside to let her pass. I
nstead, she blocked the doorway and pointed a finger at him.

  “You. What was your name again? Charlie?”

  “Casey,” said Casey.

  “You handle the music for this show?” Victoria said.

  “Um, yeah...I’m the DJ, yeah,” Casey replied.

  “Right,” she said. “Look, play my music loud, okay? No matter how many times I tell you guys, you always play it too soft. Got that? Loud.”

  Casey nodded.

  “Sorry, what?” Victoria said. “I didn’t hear you. How did I just ask you to play my music?”

  Casey looked puzzled, his standard defense mechanism when dealing with difficult people. He wasn’t dumb, but he played dumb for special occasions.

  “Um, loud?” he said.

  “Louuuuud,” Victoria repeated, making it a three syllable word. Then she pushed past him and out the door. Some of the tension left the dressing room with Victoria, but not much. After all, we all knew she was coming back.

  “Wow,” Casey said as he walked in. She must really have pissed him off—from Casey, that one word was the equivalent of an obscenity-filled diatribe by anyone else. He announced to the room that he was opening the doors to let the audience in, which meant the show would start in fifteen minutes. Then he pulled me aside and reminded me that I needed to gather the performers’ music for him before that could happen. As he left the dressing room, he glanced toward the bathroom. His brow furrowed, briefly. Then he pushed the backstage curtain aside and walked down the aisle to open the house. As I swung the dressing room door shut, the first few audience members were making their way in and handing him their money.

  I finished getting dressed (ruffled shirt, rigged with snaps for quick removal; bow tie; tuxedo jacket), grabbed the clipboard with the setlist on it, and took a deep breath. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking forward to talking to a room full of naked women.