‘It can’t wait until then,’ I said.
I buzzed firmly again, twice in succession, a sort of double cop buzz.
Loud breathing during a pause. ‘You the fuzz?’
My finger was back on the buzzer. Soon, a couple of locks were keyed and a few door chains were unlatched.
She had the look of a semi-painted clown, with partly applied mascara and rouge not quite masking stubble on her chin, all framed by a neck-length blond wig. Her protuberant chest would be construed as a hazard to shipping on the nearby Detroit River.
She was nervous. ‘You the law?’
I gave her my Miami business card.
‘I’m Milo – he’s Jonah,’ I said. ‘We’re private investigators.’
She studied the card for while. ‘I’m Nancy,’ she said.
She was standing between the half opened door and its frame, looking uncertainly at us both. She looked at the card again. It was almost obscured by her lime green talons.
‘You don’t sound like you’re from Miami.’
‘I’m not. I’m English. I just work some of the time out of Florida.’
‘What do you want? I’m just helping out here today as someone’s sick. I don’t normally do this.’
She’d obviously had difficulty dressing down for the occasion.
‘We’re interested in finding someone who used to come here in the eighties,’ I said.
Jonah said, ‘When you were still at junior high.’
Nancy smiled, her head to one side as she opened the door. ‘Hon, you just made a big improvement to my rotten day. Come in.’
We followed her past a reception area and through heavy velvet drapes into the club.
The room was about fifty feet long. In one corner was a raised area for live music. On it were a couple of microphones and karaoke equipment, in front of a large video screen.
A highly mirrored bar ran along one wall, well stooled. It was stacked with exotic-looking liqueur bottles, the sort undreamt of in the tough neighbourhood bars; places where imported beers were considered to be only ordered by gays and other degenerates.
On another wall were snug horseshoe-shaped booths with the same velvet covering as the entrance curtains. The cushioning on the back of each was shaped as a large crimson heart. Small tables were between the booths and the bar, with matching Naugahyde chairs with curved wrought iron backs. There was an area reserved for dancing at the rear, near the stage. Covering half of the ceiling was a large neon sign of red Mae West lips. The bar stools were heart-shaped in pink as were the overhead fans, challenging their aerodynamics.
Warhol’s Marilyn was on one wall together with black and white headshots; Dorothy Lamour, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr and Doris Day. Lots of Doris Day. Dusty Springfield was singing You don’t have to say you love me. It was Liberace in Dali-land.
I said, ‘Nice club. Is it yours?’
‘Heavens no. It belongs to my friend Pandora.’
‘How long she had it?’
‘She started it back in the late seventies, I think. That’s right – 1979. We recently had a birthday party. Say. I’m forgetting my manners. You handsome fellas like a drink?’
I said, ‘Sure.’ Jonah nodded.
We followed her to the bar. She took deliberately short quick steps, like a geisha girl in a hurry to get to the washroom.
I looked at the bar list and decided against the specials of the day, The Sissy Maid’s Milky Way or a Genderquake. We settled instead for Stroh’s.
I took a long draught from the neck and said, ‘Cheers.’
‘I prefer my boys to be breastfed,’ she said. ‘But bottle feeding sort of suits you two, so go ahead.’
She sipped her beer delicately from a fluted wine glass.
I said, ‘The guy I need to know about used to come here in ‘80… ‘85. Maybe since then, I’m not sure.’
A shrug. ‘I know everybody who comes here now, but I wasn’t here in the eighties. You have a photo?’
I showed her Vittorio’s photo. She camped a flinch, holding her hand to her wide-open mouth.
‘Oh no. Not my sort, darling. I would certainly remember someone like that.’
‘Well. He certainly used to come here. Pandora might remember him. Can we go see her?’
‘Absolutely not, sweetheart. She doesn’t let herself be disturbed before seven in the afternoon.’
Long afternoon. ‘When does she come here, then?’
‘Around 8.30. You should come then. I’ll let her know you’ve been.’
I said, ‘Thank you Nancy. I hope you’ll be here as well.’
‘I’ll be counting the minutes,’ she said, fluttering her blackened lashes like a pantomime dame.
She stretched out her legs, the long pointy heels of her black satin sling-backs resting on the floor.
Jonah said, ‘Nice treads.’
‘Manolos darling. Never seen without them. Don’t you just love the toe cleavage they give,’ she said. ‘And they’re an eleven narrow. The same size as Jackie O.’
What else. ‘Where’s the name of your club from?’ said Jonah.
‘Pandora once had a Russian Blue pussy cat she was very fond of. So she named the club after him.’
Jonah said, ‘Don’t you mean it was a pussyless Tom?’
‘My. You English boys catch on fast,’ Nancy said.
Jonah went to use the washroom before we left the club for lunch. I innuendoed with Nancy until he returned. In his absence she licked around the top of his empty beer bottle.
Nancy said, ‘Until later then sweethearts.’ She held the door open for us as we left, blowing us both kisses. She waved demurely, before closing the door.
I said to Jonah, ‘So. They have a men’s and a women’s?’
‘Sure. Shemales and hemales.’
‘Sit and stand?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Which did you use?’
He said, ‘Some things are just too personal – even for you Milo.’
We were in the rental. ‘This Vittorio guy dangling in that place. Not a wiseguy kinda hangout,’ I said.
‘A wiseguy hung it out there, his crew’d cut it off.’
It was time for lunch. We detoured across to Hamtramck, the best place to eat Polish food this side of Warsaw. The Polish Village Cafe on Joseph Campeau and Yehmans was still in business. We ordered the day’s special: stuffed cabbage, pork goulash and pierogi washed down with Okocim premium Polish lager. The food was good and cheap, in that order.
After lunch we went back to the hotel where Jonah went off to the gym. I returned calls to Dooley, Tomas and Jay but they were all out, so I left messages. I called Anne and she said Jonah had already been in touch with Ann and had arranged for us to meet later.
She said, ‘What have you been up to today you can tell me about? I’ve been waiting for the call to arrange bail.’
‘To the Russian Blue Boy Club, off Woodward. But I forgot my padded bra.’
She laughed. ‘My lip gloss runs at the mere thought. And you’re going to have to tell me all about it.’
‘After my cat nap. See you later.’
I asked the hotel operator to hold my calls until seven. My long afternoon.
There were a few cars in the club’s park when we arrived at 8.30. At the front door was a wiry smiley Samoan who knew how to take care of himself, and whose kindly smile you would still notice as you picked your bloodied teeth off the sidewalk after messing with him. He wore a dinner jacket over a tight fitting white silk T-shirt, forming a perfect vee down to his waist.
‘You must be Milo and Jonah,’ he said, after giving us a seasoned appraisal. His right hand cupped his left fist as he and Jonah respectfully eyeballed each other.
I said, ‘You got it.’
He opened the door. ‘Cannon. Pandora’s inside, waiting for you.’ We went into the reception area. He followed close behind.
A statuesque brunette with a shoulder-length wig and putty-knifed make-up was behind th
e counter. She offered her hand which was more nails than fingers. ‘Welcome to The Russian Blue. I’m Samantha. But you can call me Samo.’
Cannon showed us through the heavy curtains and motioned us to a booth at the end of the room. There were three people behind the bar, all with pre-wigged semi-shaven heads and their make-up only at the undercoat stage. A gender-bender I took to be Pandora was reclining on a chaise longue against the wall in the rear corner.
She arose to greet us as we approached, and Cannon took a seat at the end of the bar. She held out her arms. ‘Welcome to my club. You must be Mister Milo and Mister Jonah. She turned motioning us to sit with her at a nearby table into a major theatrical work.
We waited until she had orchestrated herself back into her chair before taking our seats. A long black gold-tipped Sobranie appeared in her fingers, which I lit with her heavy onyx lighter.
‘Nancy told me what gentlemen you are. So rare in these parts.’ Her deep voice was caused by years of tobacco abuse rather than her masculinity. I could see why Pandora didn’t want to be disturbed before the seven o’clock afternoon hour. She needed the time to construct herself.
The neckline of her black lamé, body-hugging strapless blouse plunged deeper than an Acapulco cliff diver. Her black raw silk skirt had a take-no-prisoners high-thigh cut above black-seamed silk stockings and stilettos with silver heels. ‘Jimmys darling,’ she said, as she looked at me looking at them. Her long dark hair looked almost natural and her lips and eye make-up was heavily accentuated with liner pencil or indelible felt-tip pen. Prominent lips had been surgically defined and heavily lacquered in a cochineal shade, like food colouring.
I guessed Pandora’s age to be in the mid-sixties. A braver man than me might ask.
Cannon came to the table with two Stroh’s and no glasses. Word gets around.
She said, ‘You are looking for someone, I believe.’
I passed her a photograph. ‘He used to come here quite a while ago.’
She looked at it awhile and smiled, her head to one side.
She passed it back to me. ‘I guessed it was him. Johnny Steaknife, he liked to be called. I doubted his soubriquet was from his dining habits.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘But you gentlemen are a lot nicer than the others who’ve been here looking for him. That was before we had sweet darling Cannon to take care of us of course.’ She nodded to her minder who was drinking mineral water at the bar.
I said, ‘Who else has been here?’ slipping the photo into my pocket.
‘No one – for a while. But there’ve been several over the years.’
‘When was he last here?’
‘Four… five years. His appearance had changed but I recognised him immediately. Those… eyes of his gave him away.’
‘Was he, is he -?’ I said.
She smiled broadly.
‘Oh you simply sweet young man. One of us, you mean? An Italian John Transvolta? Not that he’d admit to it. No. He was a gender illusionist taking his time to illuse. Locked in a very deep and dark wardrobe whose door he was terrified to open.’
I chewed on that awhile. Chronicles of Narnia it weren’t.
‘He was in trouble with the law here. What was that?’
‘My. You are well informed.’
I nodded.
‘Well. When we first started we had to mess with some of the locals. Guys that hung out in some downtown Italian restaurant. They wanted us to pay a weekly amount to them. It was protection money but they called it a tax. He found out about it.’
‘And?’
‘The next time they came he was here. He followed the guys out and we never saw them again. So I never asked.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Well. We used to get a few trouble makers here. BC. Before Cannon, I mean. Johnny would take care of them for us. Or the boys in blue would occasionally come. They wanted their little bit as well. Don’t look surprised – money, I mean, darling. They were all on the take. Nothing’s changed really. We got raided a bit when we missed a few payments to the cops. He was here during a couple of the raids. The cops would ask questions about him. They took him away a couple of times. The last time they did, we didn’t see him again. It was good riddance.’
‘What did he look like when you last saw him? When he revisited?’
‘Like he’d had a bit of a nip and a tuck. A collagen job. Botox. Maybe silicon as well. You name it. Expensively done. He just came and had a drink, looked around and left. But I knew it was him.’
‘Was he…?’ I paused, looking sheepish.
‘Wearing a latex vagina? Possibly. There was a definite touch of femme about him. More CD than tranny. But he was dressed as a man.’
Ask a silly question. ‘CD?’
‘Cross-dresser darling. Don’t you know anything?’
Jonah said, ‘He don’t.’
I said, ‘You have any idea where he might be now?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t care. But he talked of Florida a lot. He used to call it America’s America.’
Patrons were starting to arrive and we stood out like penguins in Ray-Bans. I stood up. ‘Call me if you think of anything else. And it’s been our pleasure. You’ve been most helpful.’
She put her hand on Jonah’s thigh and squeezed it gently.
‘Come back and see us sometime, you gorgeous boys. I’m going to tell everyone here you’re my new playthings.’
Cannon was at the door and shook our hands as we left. I showed him Johnny Steaknife’s photo just in case. He didn’t know him. Lucky for Johnny.
Ann and Anne were waiting for us at Joe Patti’s where they’d been watching the Cardinals play the Tigers. Anne was originally from St Louis and was cheering for her hometown team. Storm and Al’s friends were in the bar again, and they sent us a couple of beers plus a measured handclap when we acknowledged them.
St Louis beat the Tigers 3-2 so we left, and I carried Anne’s large shoulder bag for her from her car.
‘Homework?’ I said.
‘Sort of. I’ve got a fresh outfit for the morning just in case I got lucky in the bar tonight.’
We walked across Big Beaver to the Marriott.
As we showered, she said, ‘Now tell me about your day at The Russian Blue Boy.’
‘If you tell me how a latex vagina works.’
‘Simple,’ she said. It’s a V-string, not a G-string.’
‘That’s too complicated for me.’
‘Why don’t I just show you how a real one works then. I think I just got lucky.’
21
We drove past the MCP office in the morning and there was no sign of activity. We pulled around so we could see the back of the building. There was no one at their rear entrance, just someone wheeling a container of trash to one of the nearby dumpsters. We drove down past the line of rear doors and saw the locks on the MCP door had been replaced.
Back at the hotel I did an internet track and trace on the FedEx package and found it had been diverted at the consignee’s request to a Mr Les Cargill at a Bloomfield Hills address on Telegraph Road, just north of Sixteen Mile Road.
I called the MCP office from a pay-phone and the call went to an answer service. I didn’t leave a message. Then I called Tomas and gave him the Cargill details and asked him to call about the IPO ‘as another interested party’. Tomas confirmed testily that he’d received the courier package which he was in the process of reading. He didn’t sound fully appreciative of our creative endeavours on his behalf.
We waited back at the hotel for Tomas’ reply. Jonah was busy reading The Detroit News. I read again my copy of the documents from MCP’s office, then tore them into shreds. I put the pieces in a plastic carrier bag and soaked them with the remnants of a half finished pot of coffee before putting them into another bag. I walked across Big Beaver to the dumpsters at the rear of Joe Patti’s and dumped the sodden evidence.
Jay called to tell me she would be back in Miami soon after Jonah and I arrived
back. She would send us the flight details. She was full of Broadway and Soho and The Village and Joe Allen and sounded like she was having fun. I told her about my meeting with Pandora. She wanted to know what that had to do with T-Bone, but I decided that it was too complicated to answer. I left out the latex bits.
Dooley had found out that Sayers and Irish were booked to leave Miami for London in seven days’ time. They had left Miami at eight that morning, driving north with Rafe on their tail. There were several messages for me and Jay to call them at The Delano Hotel. Quaranto had also called, and he was told I was out of town. I wondered what he wanted but it would have to wait until I got back. I told Dooley we would fly back to Miami that evening.
I waited in the foyer of the Marriott and watched the suits and ties doing their Motor City thing. They were interspersed occasionally by equally busy looking suitettes whose masculine outfits made them look as sexy as tits on a National Geographic cover. No one seemed to be over forty or wore anything other than white shirts, except for occasional hints of colour from those I took to be the heretics.
Tomas called me on my cell to tell me Cargill had talked to him, only after finding out they both knew someone in Chicago who worked for one of the legit companies originally taking MCP public. He asked Tomas to call back after he had checked with his Windy City friend that Tomas was reputable.
I said, ‘He forthcoming about the deal?’
‘A little. He asked about my involvement to date and I explained as much as I could.’
I said, ‘I think I should see him.’
‘Yeah. I told him I have an associate in the Detroit area on some other business, and that he’s a PI and will be in touch. I gave him Dooley’s office details and suggested that he check up on you guys if he wants. I’ll give him an hour and call him back and suggest he meet with you.’
‘OK. I’ll wait to hear.’
I left Jonah in the hotel gym and drove west down Quarton then looped my way north on Telegraph. Lee Cargill lived in a townhouse development called Sandalwood, which backed onto the expensive real estate of Gilbert Lake, just north of Sixteen Mile Road. Set back from Telegraph, it was a mixture of one and two-storey homes arranged in horseshoe rings around driveways, with no sandalwood in sight.
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