Last Girl Dancing

by Kate Aeon

  She wanted to say no. It would be the smart thing to do. It would demonstrate that she had developed a reassuring instinct for self-preservation in the last few years.

  Instead, she said, “All right. Bring on the clown. I’d work with Bozo himself to be a part of this case.”

  “Thanks, Gracie. That’s all I ask. I have to make a phone call,” Jim said. “Go ahead and look over the files; pay special attention to our interviews.”

  Charlie stood, too. “I’ll leave you to read, Jess. And thanks from me, too. If you have any questions, I’ll do what I can to answer them.”

  Twin six-year-old girls, blond and blue-eyed, sat breathlessly beside their mother as the curtain went up on Firebird and the dark, low notes from Stravinski’s score shivered out over the audience. The Prince crept onto the stage, into the evil ogre’s forest, and discovered the glorious Firebird, and the little girls sat silent, enraptured, won over by dancers who — weightless, glorious, gaudy and beautiful — flew and spun and leapt across a stage transformed into a bewitching universe. The fairy tales unfolded one by one, lovely and magical, and as they watched, the sisters’ hands met and fingers intertwined, and the two of them breathed as one.

  When it was over, Ginny, the elder twin by eight minutes, turned to her sister, Jess, and said, “We have to do that.”

  And Jess said only, “I know.”

  Chapter Two

  Jess looked over the murder books. Stared at the pictures, read the interviews, studied the forensics reports, the crime-scene diagrams, the previous detectives’ notes, and Jim’s and Charlie’s notes — not much of their stuff, yet, of course, because they hadn’t had these cases for long.

  I don’t want this case, she thought. I don’t.

  A hand dropped on her shoulder, and she jumped.

  Jim said, “You managed to miss all the strip-club action when you were in Vice, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I only did the hooker walk,” she said.

  “Okay. Well.” Jim put a scrawled address on the table in front of her. “You and Hank are going to go to a couple of strip clubs tonight so that you can watch how things work. I want you to go over now and get to know him. Tonight, get out, watch the dancers, watch the club scene. See what you’ll be doing, get a feel for the atmosphere in these places, and start figuring out how you’re going to work together.”

  “All right. I’ll go look.”

  “Hank will be in Goldcastle posing as a friend of yours whenever you’re working. We want you to get to know the girls who dance there as well as the other employees. And the customers. You’ll be wired, and we’ll get everything anyone tells you via the wire. Aside from talking everyone up, you’ll be providing materials for Hank to read. He’ll let you know what sort of things to look for, and how to obtain samples. Tomorrow we’ll decide your name, fit you for your wire, create your fake driver’s license and Social Security card and concealed-carry permit and all your other goodies, and work out your backstory. The day after, you’ll go in and apply for a job at Goldcastle. If you don’t get it first try, we have backup plans — but the club is short on dancers right now. Rumors have evidently started to spread, and Goldcastle is running great big ads in every help-wanted section in town. Odds are good they’ll give you a shot.”

  Jess started to ask Jim another question, but Jim said, “Go meet Hank first.”

  She looked down at the address he’d given her, mentally placed it, and raised an eyebrow. “Cheshire Bridge Road? Not a great neighborhood.”

  “Good place for a dojo, though. He lives above his business.”

  She started to make a smart-ass comment and stopped herself before the words escaped. “On my way,” she said instead.

  Jim said, “Seriously — find a way to get along with him. He’s a good man. Get to know him, get past your problem with psychics. We need to break this case quickly — get you into Goldcastle, solve this, and get you back out before any of us get caught — and both you and Hank are going to be in a position to help that happen.” He walked her to the door and said, “This thing is only a loser if we let it be a loser. You and I have turned other losers around. We can do this. You shine on this, Gracie, and you’ll be one of the Grand Old Men before you know what hit you.”

  Jess tucked the slip of paper into her jacket and said, “Thanks for giving me the shot, Jim. I won’t let you down.”

  The dojo was a converted storefront in a seedy strip mall, stuck between a Korean restaurant and a store selling adult clothes and novelties. It had the usual yin-yang sign painted on the center of the glass, and above it, KAMIAN MARTIAL ARTS painted in red and black block letters. No teaching style mentioned, which Jess found odd. Generally, martial-arts places would announce that they taught judo or karate or whatever with a giant illuminated sign that sprawled across the storefront. Maybe he couldn’t afford one of those signs, she thought, and got out of the car and strolled up to the door.

  Hank Kamian had a list of classes and times posted there. Beginner. Intermediate. Women’s self-defense. Advanced. Law enforcement. Translucent white rice-paper screens fitted inside the windows provided privacy to those inside. A few cars were scattered through the parking lot — mostly old. None of the stores in the strip mall seemed to be doing a brisk business. In that parking lot, Jess’s shiny white Crown Victoria sedan looked exactly like what it was. She was going to have to make a point of driving her personal car anytime she went to Kamian’s in the future. Good covers had been broken by way less. Time to start thinking like an undercover cop again.

  Kamian didn’t look to Jess like a breathtakingly successful businessman, but first impressions could be deceptive. And no matter what Jim said, the dojo probably fronted for some mystic psychic-crap-of-the-Orient shtick anyway.

  Jess walked through the door into a makeshift lobby. She saw a small desk, phone, signup book, a rack full of Japanese-style uniforms in black, and two cabinets with different kinds of gear and belts of various colors. Nobody at the desk, though. Behind the lobby, a solid wall and the sounds of thudding and grunting, and a deep voice issuing curt, quick commands.

  A little shiver uncoiled low in Jess’s belly. God, that was a good voice. She had always noticed two things about men first: their voices and their hands. This was one of those voices that rippled through her like the low notes of a well-played cello. She felt her skin prickle, and stared down at her arms. Goose bumps.

  She waited in the lobby, but no bell had rung when she came through the door, and no one seemed to be interested in heading out to see what she wanted. After a few minutes, she kicked off her shoes and put them in one box of the shoe rack beside the door, then walked back toward the sounds of bodies whooshing through the air and crashing back to earth.

  Six men and three women occupied the room. They wore black uniforms, black belts, no patches or badges. One man had his back to her — he was the one with the voice, and he was issuing commands. The others were throwing one another and attacking one another with amazing precision. There were some big guys, and some small women. But everybody was doing the throwing, and everybody was doing the flying. It looked rough and painful. And impressive.

  She didn’t recognize the style.

  She stood quietly, and the people facing her ignored her completely. The man with his back to her ignored her, too. She was okay with that, actually. She didn’t have anywhere else to be, and she was impressed enough by what she saw to think that she might be interested in adding some of the moves to her regular workout.

  Besides, some of the men made for nice scenery, including the one in front of her, who along with his excellent voice had very good hands. Muscular, nicely veined, sturdy, with squarish fingertips. He had a nice set of shoulders, too, and hints of a great ass, though in baggy black judo jammies, it was hard to tell.

  She wasn’t shopping, but it was always fun to look.

  Since he was the one in charge of the class full of black-belts, she guessed the man leading the class was Han
k Kamian, the person she had come to meet.

  The class went for a good ten minutes before he said, “Break,” and everyone stopped and bowed.

  Then, and only then, did one of the men say, “You have a guest, sensei.”

  And the man in front of her turned, and she had two impressions of him, one right after the other. The first was a stupid little thrill as his face came around and she caught a quick profile of a chiseled jaw, Roman nose, and gorgeous dark eye, and the second was shock as he came the rest of the way around and she saw that something horrible had once happened to the other half of his face.

  And she thought, Meet the eyes. Don’t stare.

  It was like looking at two people. He’d had a lot of very good reconstructive surgery, but it had been good surgery on massive damage. He still bore scars from it. The scars weren’t as visible, though, as the immobility of the right side of his face when contrasted with the mobile, vital left side.

  She bowed — force of habit from too many years in too many dojos — then held out her hand and said, “Jess Brubaker. Jim sent me over,” and felt his hand clasp hers. Warm. Strong. A good, good hand. A good voice. A great body. And that face. She couldn’t help but wonder what his story was, and at the same time, she didn’t want to know what his story was. Because the story might make him someone she could like, and she didn’t want to like him.

  She gave him a polite smile and thought, He’s a psychic. Concentrate on that.

  She’d seen a flicker of surprise in his eyes. That vanished quickly, though, as he looked her up and down as if he were a food critic presented with a bad meal. “Hank Kamian,” he said, in the voice that gave her goose bumps. He released her hand. “I have another twenty minutes on this class. I’d like to finish it out, if you don’t mind, and then you will have my full attention.” His voice was polite. Cool. Distant. All-the-way-to-the-moon distant.

  “Not at all,” she said, feeling irrationally hurt by his dismissal. “You mind if I watch?”

  “No, ma’am. Not as long as you keep off the mats.” And he led his students back into hand-to-hand techniques, then two-on-one defenses, and then a flurry of stick fighting. And then into a cooldown.

  Jess had recognized some jujitsu in the fighting style, and some Kempo, and maybe some karate. But it was an odd style that looked to her like something Kamian might have developed on his own. It looked efficient. And fierce. Nice combination of offensive and defensive moves, of upright and grappling styles.

  Kamian turned to her once the class filed out, and said, “How much did Jim tell you?”

  “I know what I’ll be doing. And that I’m way out on a ledge with this. Not a lot of assets, whole lot of liabilities. All he told me about you, though? That you teach martial arts, which I could have figured out on my own, and that you’re a psychic.”

  And that you hate pretty women, she thought. But she didn’t throw that in.

  She had to make a concerted effort not to reach out and touch the scars along his right cheek and jaw. Time had silvered them to the point where they were less noticeable than the stillness beneath and around them. She would guess Kamian had had some of his jawbone rebuilt. Probably his right cheekbone. The right side of his mouth didn’t move much when he spoke, and the muscles on the right side of his face seemed almost frozen.

  Kamian sighed. “Shrapnel,” he said. “From a grenade. Quite some time ago now.”

  Jess jumped and met his gaze. “What?”

  “My face. You were wondering.”

  “I apologize, Mr. Kamian. I hadn’t meant to stare.”

  “You weren’t staring. But your focus was on the left side of my face, which is what polite people do rather than stare at the right side.”

  Yeah. He probably did get a lot of that. “What happened?” she asked, deciding she might as well get it over with.

  “Beyond the fact that it was military and classified and I don’t do that sort of work anymore — nothing I can talk about.”

  Jess nodded. Which meant that he could have been Special Forces of some sort, or black ops, or regular service, or God only knew what else.

  So why was he teaching martial arts and sidelining as a psychic consultant for the cops?

  Jess said, “I’m here so that we can get to know each other. This will be an initial give-and-take, an opportunity for each of us to feel that we’re on solid footing working with the other.” She withheld a sigh; she didn’t think she was good enough at mind games to pretend she was happy about what was coming, but she could at least be polite. “So that we have something to work with when you take me around to strip clubs tonight—”

  “When I what?”

  Jess stopped. “Jim told me that was the plan.”

  “Then that will be fine, Detective.” Hank looked annoyed, but it was the sort of annoyance that expressed itself in chilly politeness.

  Jess frowned. “Mr. Kamian, clearly you dislike me. That’s fine. I have to admit that I don’t like... psychics. So we’re both starting with a disadvantage in working with each other. But I don’t see why that has to be obvious. Do a little acting. Pretend you like me. I’ll do the same.”

  His mouth twitched at the left corner. “Pretend. Sure. Guess I’ll go buy a sugar-daddy suit for tonight.”

  “Sugar-daddy suit?”

  “Some rich-stiff silk crap that will make everyone think they know why you’d be willing to be seen with me.”

  Jess tipped her head to study him. “You have a great body. Good hands. A terrific voice. A face with... character. The fact that you’re a flake isn’t visible, so why couldn’t I be your girlfriend?”

  “Flake?” He laughed, but it wasn’t a friendly laugh. “Nice line otherwise. Very smooth.”

  Jess shrugged. “Jim told me he needed both of us on this case — not that we had to like each other. But you know why we’re doing this, right?”

  “Jim was very clear about why we’re doing this.”

  “Then dress like a normal guy and pretend you like me. Or don’t. You want to treat me like shit, I’ll pretend I’m the sort of woman who gets off on that, and we’ll do our jobs that way.” She suppressed an unprofessional burst of anger. “I can’t imagine how Jim thinks a psychic will help us, but he does. And I trust Jim. He and I go back a lot of years. So I’ll work with you, and I’ll get along with you to the extent you get along with me.” She kept her body relaxed, though her hands wanted to clench into fists. She was angry, but she was also a professional in a line of work that didn’t tolerate emotional outbursts. “But you remember why we’re doing this, and then you remember that, whatever job you’re doing for Jim, your other job is to not fuck up our case. Because we get only one shot to put this case together and prosecute it; if the case is ruined by anything, including things I do or things you do, the killers will walk, and no one can touch them on any of these murders again. Ever. What we’re doing here matters, Mr. Kamian. And we won’t get a second chance to do it right.”

  “I’m not going to screw up your chances of catching these guys,” he told her. “And I’m not going to turn this series of crimes into some sort of self-promoting media circus, either, which is what you’re worried about, right? Jim and Charlie are the only people who know that I do the... ah... psychic thing, and I only do it for them, to give them a little extra edge from time to time. Jim knows about me because he’s been a friend of mine for quite a few years, and when I fell across the psychic talent I had to tell someone. He was the guy I trusted.”

  Jess maintained her appearance of composure. “Well, now I know, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now you know. But you’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

  “Not a chance.”

  She wouldn’t either. She had no intention of admitting to anyone that she was partnering up, however temporarily, with a self-designated psychic.

  Hank sighed. “So I’m supposed to take you to strip clubs tonight.”

  “So says Jim.”

  “I�
�m not a frequenter of the strip-club scene. There are some in this neighborhood, though.”

  Jess rolled her eyes, which she knew wasn’t terribly professional. But... please. “Some? Close your eyes and throw a rock. And nothing personal, but this is a crap-ass neighborhood. The strip clubs here are going to be shit-holes.”

  Hank looked startled, but only for a second. “Darlin’,” he drawled, “I’m guessing you didn’t spend much time in Vice.”

  “As little as I could manage.”

  “Right. From my days in the army, I can state categorically that all strip clubs are shitholes,” he told her. “Some of them just have prettier furniture.”

  She grinned a little. And then she cocked her head to one side and said, “Army, huh? I still have a couple of friends in the army. What was your MOS?”

  “Eleven-BV.” And when she raised an eyebrow, he translated, “Ranger infantryman.”

  “Rangers. Wow,” she said, and for a long moment she didn’t say anything else. She was impressed. She tried fitting the Rangers thing with the psychic thing, wanting to figure out which part of him would be the part she would be dealing with — the part she admired or the part she detested. At last she said, “Well, I’ll take your word for it on the strip clubs, then. The one I walked into back when I was in school was awful, but I figured it was a bad example.”

  The second it was out of her mouth, she wanted to take it back. He was staring at her like she’d just said the most fascinating thing in the world. “You? Went into a strip club in college?” He chuckled and touched the back of her hand with his fingertips again and asked her, “Why?”

  She almost couldn’t breathe. She pulled away from him, feeling her muscles locking up, feeling her heart starting to race. She glanced down at her watch and said, “Look at the time,” and with that pulled her keys out of the hidden pocket in her suit jacket. “I’ll meet you back here, shall I? Since your last class for the day is at seven, why don’t we say eight tonight? And I’ll be dressed appropriately for going to sleazy places.” She knew she sounded exactly like a society matron being panhandled by a bum. But she couldn’t stop herself.