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Death of a Cure

Page 24

by Steven H Jackson


  This day was definitely getting better and better. Marilena had just been told that the best way to find April was to send me to a strip joint, albeit an upscale strip joint, but a strip joint all the same. O’Dale winked at her, and Marilena answered his challenge head on.

  “Jim, I was thinking exactly the same thing with one small enhancement,” she said. “I am sure that the ladies who work there would be even more relaxed and forthcoming if I went with Thomas, as well. I’m sure that Thomas knows where it is. He can escort me there this evening.”

  The day had just stopped getting better and better.

  *

  We had dinner at a small Italian restaurant on the East side in the 50s that I liked and that Ricardo approved of. I had invited O’Dale, but he had another engagement so he declined.

  After getting settled at a table, I said, “Do you really want to go with me tonight? It’s not your kind of place.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Listen, it’s not the kind of place I would choose to take you.”

  “I will be fine. We are just going find out if any of her coworkers have seen April.”

  “That’s not all you are going to see.”

  She smiled, “Thomas, I have seen naked women before. I see one in the mirror every morning. I will survive. Besides, I think that it will be highly entertaining because of how awkward it will be for you to see me, seeing you see all the naked ladies. See what I mean?”

  “What?”

  *

  Playoffs wasn’t far from the restaurant. Marilena saved me some grief by telling Ricardo our destination and asking him to take us there. She didn’t tell him why we were going, leaving him hanging, and the obvious question unasked. After he helped her into the car, he looked at me still standing on the curb.

  He leaned over, now a fellow male conspirator, and said quietly but with obvious enthusiasm, “Colonel, you are a lucky man! Dinner with the lovely Signora, and then she takes you to the rich-man’s stripper club!”

  Oh, boy.

  We walked up to the front door at Playoffs. Two bouncers in tuxedos quickly opened the door for us. They were both impressed with my date more than they were with me. Coming back to Earth, the one closer to me said, “Sir. Don’t forget that there is no cover when you bring a lady in with you!”

  “Do you see, Thomas? I am already being beneficial to our visit.”

  The cover charge could have been any amount, and I would have paid it to avoid this. Stay focused, Tommy. Just get in, get the intel, and get out as fast as you can.

  We entered the club and walked past the cashier who, without Marilena, would have clipped me for a twenty. The cashier was dressed in a slinky sequined affair with a considerable plunge to the neckline. She appraised Marilena and called another bouncer over, giving him instructions to help us find a seat.

  The room we entered was about one hundred feet long by seventy-five feet wide and was dimly lit except for the stages. There was a center stage and another behind the bar with tables and booths throughout the room. The chairs at the tables were high-backed with wings providing a lot of tableside privacy. Both stages were occupied by young women in various stages of undress moving haphazardly to the music. The room was about two-thirds occupied. I told the bouncer to put us in one of the round booths along the back wall.

  There were about thirty dancers who were working the room, their turns on stage either having come and gone or yet to come. By working the room, I mean that they were moving casually from table to table trying to get a patron to buy a dance from them. They made their real money on the floor, not from tips while up on the stage. About ten of the ladies had managed this and were performing solo acts of stripping and then draping themselves on top of the customer for the duration of one song played by the DJ. There was a lot of body-to-body and hand-to-body contact going on, and like my palimony agreement, it was bilateral. O’Dale was right, with a uniform in the room the uninhibited environment would have changed — bilaterally.

  A provocatively dressed waitress appeared at our booth and placed paper napkins on the small round table in front of us. She took our order and left. I made sure that we had both ordered alcoholic beverages so that the word would pass that we were not cops. I explained this to Marilena.

  “Thomas, your understanding of the subtleties here is impressive.”

  I had decided that the way to handle this was denial, basic, and broad-spectrum denial, denial by absurdity, in spite of the fact that both parties knew better.

  “I was in a place just like this once.”

  “Just once?”

  “Yeah, I was eighteen and my buddies forced me to go. I really didn’t want to. To make a long story short, a stripper promised to marry me. She broke my heart, and I have never been back to one since. Honest.” I gave her my best innocent puppy dog look.

  “Of course you haven’t. Even though it has been decades since your last and only visit, your memory of the correct protocols is very impressive.” She had a hard time getting this out while laughing at the same time.

  “Well, given my still-working memory for how these places work, why don’t you let me take the lead?” If I stayed in control, I could make this short and sweet, and we could get out quick.

  “If you believe that your memory is good enough, given how long it has been since you have been in a strip club, excuse me, adult artistic theater, then I, and probably soon, one of the dancers will be in your hands. Lead on, McDuff.”

  My objective was twofold: Get any info on April as quickly as possible and get out without providing Marilena any ammunition for future tormenting sessions. Looking at her, I could see that we were operating at cross-purposes. She had leaned back against the couch, was in no hurry at all, and was casually collecting as much blackmail material as she could. I was definitely in the danger zone. Still, if she knew everything that had ever happened in the seat she now occupied, she would have thought of our booth as a biological danger zone and not been quite so comfortable.

  Pushing ahead, my objectives at the forefront of my mind, I got busy. In a men’s club you can get more real intelligence from the drink pushers than from the strippers. Our drinks arrived, and my twenty-dollar tip got our waitress’s attention. The servers, though usually just as cute and as provocatively dressed as the dancers, are generally ignored while the guys leer at the stage. Any customer who focuses on his waitress and not the entertainment is welcome.

  I began with an earnest approach, “Hi, I’m Tom, and this is Marilena.”

  “I’m Sindy with an Ess,” she said. “You guys been here before?”

  “First time.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll like it here. A lot of couples come in. They always have a good time!”

  I motioned to the one chair at our table and said, “Can we buy you a drink?”

  “That would be great! Let me go get it and come back. Is a Jager OK? Maybe a double?”

  “Whatever you want,” I agreed.

  She left to get her drink, a new bounce to her step, which had until now been lethargic. Another night schlepping drinks to guys there to see the girls who took off their clothes. While she was gone, Marilena was taking in the room and the various activities happening around us like side shows at an adult circus.

  “Thomas, can she drink while working?” Marilena asked.

  “I’ve never been in, I mean, I’ve never heard of one of these places where they couldn’t.”

  Sindy with an Ess returned with her drink, dropped into the chair, offered her thanks, and then drained the double in one gulp. It was not the first drink of her life.

  “Thanks, man. I needed that!”

  “Sure. How long have you worked here?” I asked.

  “About two years.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Well, the money’s good enough so I can share a place in the city. I mean, it’s not as good as what the dan
cers make, but I get by.”

  “Thought about dancing?” My question got me a not-so-nice look from Marilena that was unnoticed by Sindy.

  “Yeah. Once, on my birthday, I got on stage. I was drunk and don’t remember much. The dancers were nice to me and made sure all the guys tipped me. I woke up the next morning at home but in someone else’s clothes. I think I’ll stick to being a waitress.”

  “Do you know many of the other girls here?”

  “Oh, yeah. Almost all of them. Are you looking for someone to play with?”

  “Not yet. Maybe later,” I said. Marilena’s eyebrows headed toward her hairline.

  “Just let me know. I can tell you who the good ones are so you don’t waste your money on some cock-tease, or worse, a dyke. You know, I’ll get you one of the good ones who, uh, well, someone a little more adventurous, especially with a couple.”

  “Actually, I do know one of the ladies who works here. She is a friend of my brother’s.”

  Between the double Jagermeister and putting her at ease with the small talk, she wasn’t suspicious. “Who is that? Maybe she’s here, and I can get her for you?”

  “Her real name is April, but I don’t know her stage name.” This got me another look from Marilena as I revealed more of what I knew — this time about stripper naming practices. I described April until Sindy made the connection.

  “Oh, April May June! Her dancer name is Mercedes.”

  “You know her?”

  “Sure, everyone here does. She is so nice and has it together. You know, going to college and everything, but not acting all superior. I haven’t seen her tonight. Let me go check the schedule in the DJ booth and see if she’s coming in.”

  Off she went. Marilena looked at me and said, “I am going to tell everyone at the FBI to call you first if an undercover operation is required at a gentlemen’s club.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Sindy came back. “She’s not coming in tonight. I asked Mikey, the DJ, and he said that she was on the schedule last night and didn’t show. She’s never done that before. He was real surprised.”

  “Does she have any close friends here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Katrina, I mean Porsche. They hang out together sometimes. Let me go find her. I know she’s here tonight. I saw her a little while ago.”

  “Thomas — Mercedes and Porsche? Is it customary for the girls to assume automobile names?”

  “The automobile model name association is one that is currently popular,” I said with professorial diction. “Recently published studies indicate that current dancer names tend to come from a small number of categories. There are the exotic car girls like April, there are those named after primitive emotions like ‘Passion’ and ‘Fury,’ there are some named after gemstones like ‘Diamond,’ ‘Ruby’ and ‘Sapphire,’ there are the small animal girls like ‘Bambi’ and ‘Thumper,’ and so it goes. Some future anthropologist will, no doubt, be able to provide a complete taxonomy of stripper naming conventions.” Then, dropping the fake college lecturer voice, I added defensively, “Of course, that’s just what the guys in the office tell me. I really wouldn’t know personally.”

  “Of course. Still, you are a wealth of information!”

  Sindy returned with a tall, very attractive young blonde with Slavic features. She was wearing a tiny “G” string on the bottom and a miniscule piece of lingerie, completely transparent on top. Sindy pushed the new girl towards me. As was the custom here, without any warning and catching me completely off guard even though I should have been expecting it — she sat in my lap. OK, I’ll admit that this had happened to me before, maybe several times. I just wasn’t expecting it tonight. I had brought along my own date and foolishly thought that this would certainly deter any of the girls from just dropping into my lap.

  Before I could object, slip out from under her, or do anything to extricate myself, Sindy said, “This is Porsche. K, these are friends of April’s.”

  “Hi.” Even the one syllable, though spoken shyly, was accented but accompanied with a small smile.

  “Dear, where are you from?” Marilena asked, pretending to ignore the fact that the voluptuous, ninety-eight percent naked blonde was sitting on my lap.

  “The Czech Republic. I am two years here.”

  Marilena immediately broke into a language entirely unknown to me. I guessed that it was whatever they spoke where Katrina was from. Whatever it was, Katrina lit up like a Roman candle. She responded in her country’s language, both of them speaking rapidly, starting to laugh, leaning toward each other almost not noticing that I was in the way. Marilena’s hand reached out to rest on Katrina’s wrist. I was still trying to think of a way to escape, maybe slide Katrina between Marilena and me, except that Marilena had closed that off by sliding next to me in order to be closer to Katrina. This was not going according to my plan.

  Sindy leaned over and whispered to me, “I’ll be back. I have to check on some of my other tables. Remember, don’t pick out a dancer for a lap dance unless you check with me first!”

  I promised not to. I had no plans to pick out a dancer, approved or not, for anything. Sindy left, Marilena and Katrina didn’t notice her departure. I had no idea what they were talking about, and although there were a couple of what seemed to be serious moments, Katrina was fully engaged and obviously pleased to meet someone who spoke the mother tongue.

  Eventually, and only after repeated prayers to my very own personal God, Katrina smiled at me as if noticing me for the first time, got up, and left. My particular lap was vacated at last, obviously just another in a long night of laps.

  Marilena continued, but now with a more serious tone, “She knows where April is and is getting the address for us now. Katrina has spoken to her today, and April is safe. Katrina also said that April was not feeling well and just taking some time off.”

  “Then let’s get the address and get going.” This was a plan I could get behind.

  “Don’t worry, Thomas. There does not seem to be any reason to hurry. Katrina will be right back, and I will have her sit on your lap again.” She was having way too much fun. This was not going well. Not well at all.

  FRUSTRATIONS, LIMITATIONS,

  COMPLICATIONS

  When Katrina returned I made sure that she sat in the booth seat between Marilena and me and not in my lap. Marilena continued to smile at my discomfort but said nothing to Katrina who would have been amazed that I had any problem with her seat selection. After all, she was doing her part as expected, and if I were uncomfortable with it, why had I come in? After collecting the note with the address and phone number where April was hiding out, I got up, pulling Marilena to her feet. This little circus would soon be behind me. I pushed three one hundred dollar bills into Katrina’s hand, and we headed for the door. Along the way, we were stopped by the manager.

  “Are you folk’s leaving us?” he asked, disappointment in his voice.

  “Yeah. Afraid so. We have an early morning,” I answered back looking for a quick and affable way around him.

  He shifted his focus from me to Marilena and said, “You know, if you ever want to work at a club, we’re the best, and I’ll always have a place for you here, sweet thing. I don’t know what you do now, but the money here would be absolutely amazing for a gal with your looks.”

  “What do you think, Thomas?” she asked me while lifting an eyebrow and cocking her head to one side. Falling for her act, the sleaze ball manager immediately looked at me as if only my permission stood between him and his ability to land this incredibly sexy woman as a new and serious moneymaker. His expression was very hopeful. If I waited ten seconds, actual drooling would commence.

  I moved forward, glared down at him while speaking in a calm yet unmistakably displeased voice, “She would need a different boyfriend. The one she’s with now is prone to violence — especially when other guys get too close to what’s his.” A path to the door magically opened up.

  I had sent Ricardo home be
cause we hadn’t known how long it was going to take us to find someone who knew where April might be. The club had a limo, and the manager directed someone to give us a ride. Not my first choice, but better than hailing a cab. The manager was keeping the door open for Marilena in case her personal situation changed.

  I gave the driver a Central Park West intersection about two blocks from the condo. I was not at all interested in having them report back our home address to Sleaze Ball, Inc. On the way, our very friendly and talkative driver shared stories with us about famous people who had been at the club and then in the limo and what they were like. As we got close to our destination, he also told us that many of the dancers were available for entertainment outside of the club, entertainment of a very personal nature. He could set it up, and it was really not that expensive. I declined.

  Upstairs and again behind the door with all of the locks, Marilena asked me, “Thomas, was the driver offering the dancers out for sex?”

  “Yep. I’m sure that several of them have let it be known that they wouldn’t mind making a little more cash after their shift ends.”

  “Well, I am proud of you for not engaging a private dancer for entertainment of a very personal nature!” she said with mock seriousness.

  “As much as I was tempted, I’m fairly certain that it would have been a violation of part one of the bilateral agreement that you proposed and I accepted. That exclusivity thing, remember? And, as far as your employment in a strip joint is concerned, fantasy or otherwise, that same part one of our arrangement has reduced the number of laps that you may sit upon and squirm around on to just one. Besides, I brought home the only woman I saw tonight who lights me up.”

  She laughed and moved into my arms, “Although I doubt that I am unique in having the ability to excite you, thank you for saying it. In fact, kind sir, your endearing words and your earlier revelation of jealousy, buys you enough credit with me, while on the only lap that I am now allowed to sit upon and squirm around on, to entertain you for a long time.”

 

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