by Mike Markel
I smiled. “He’s a city boy.”
“Yeah, it was all bullshit. I’m from Chicago. I don’t know how to do any of that cowboy stuff. If he’d tried anything,” she said, “I’d’ve just shot him.”
“So you’re good with Mr. Vinson,” I said.
She nodded. “Yeah, we’re fine.”
“So the girls don’t hook here in the bar.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“If they do?”
“Couple times a year he catches a girl. She’s gone.”
“But hooking outside the bar?”
She exhaled and looked down at her hands on the Formica table. “That’s kinda tough to call. A town this small, all of us have gone out with guys who’re customers.”
“I didn’t say going out. I said hooking.”
“I don’t know that any of the girls are working. Do some of them have nice apartments, good clothes, you know? Better than their salary could pay for?” She raised her eyebrows.
“All right, Alison, thanks a lot,” I said. “You mind sending Natalya over here?”
She nodded, took off her glasses, and put them back in her purse. She slid out of the booth and walked over to the group of employees. She said something to Natalya and pointed in my direction with her thumb.
Natalya started walking over to me. She was a thin woman, maybe a hundred pounds, with a model’s gait. She was wearing blue jeans and a bone-colored knit turtleneck over what looked like a dark bra.
“Sit down, Natalya,” I said when she made it over to my booth. “I only need a couple minutes.”
She slid into the booth, no expression on her face. She had pale skin, dark brown eyes, and dark eyebrows. If she hadn’t dyed her hair platinum, she would have been a really good-looking young woman. I hoped the platinum was a business decision.
“My name is Detective Seagate,” I said. No response, so I kept going. “Do you know this man?” I showed her the photo of Lee Rossman.
She looked at it for a few seconds, then shook her head and slid back on the plastic seat, like that was all she was going to offer.
“Do you ever meet guys in the alley over there?”
“Why I meet them there?” she said with a thin, girlish voice. She had a thick accent.
“So sometimes you do meet guys outside the bar?”
She tapped the table twice with her index finger. “Dancer. No hooker.”
Which I interpreted as dancer/hooker. “Can you tell me anything about last night? Anything about how a man was attacked in the alley?”
“A man attacked in alley?” Somewhere along the line, this girl had learned that the best way to deal with the authorities was to know nothing and deny everything.
“You didn’t hear about that?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, thanks, Natalya,” I said. “Would you mind asking Donna to come over here?”
“I go home?”
“Yeah, you go home,” I said.
She nodded slightly, got up, and walked over to the group and said something to Donna.
Donna turned toward me and started walking over, with big loping strides. She was close to six feet, and right up against two-hundred pounds. I looked at her neck to check for an Adam’s apple, but I concluded she was born female. She was wearing some kind of lime-green suit, which was a serious fashion mistake. It was a cheap poly, with a low-cut black blouse and a three-inch silver crucifix nestled in her cleavage. When she walked, each boob bounced separately, the flesh rippling in waves up toward her neck.
I glanced over at the guys leaning on the bar. All of them were looking at Donna walk, even though they must have seen her tits often enough.
“Thanks for coming in, Donna.” I gestured for her to sit.
She squeezed in, her chest bumping up against the table, making it jump a couple inches toward me.
“You okay?” she said, giving me a concerned little smile. “I don’t know how some of the guys fit in these little bitsy booths.”
“I’m fine,” I said, returning her smile. I introduced myself and started to run through my questions with her.
As I was talking to Donna, a woman rushed in, looking at her watch. She went over to the other employees at the bar, then hurried over to Philip Vinson at the booth in the corner of the room.
Big Donna leaned in, listening to my questions. I tried to ignore the two big boobs resting on the tabletop, like she’d just come back from the market with a couple cantaloupes. But I caught myself glancing down there when I realized they had swallowed up the crucifix. Donna answered my questions directly. She might have seen Lee Rossman before, but not last night. When she dances, she gets pretty caught up in the music and the guys whooping and hollering, so, no, she didn’t notice him last night. Didn’t know anything about why he might have been out in the alley.
When I was done, she smiled again. “Sorry I couldn’t help you. And sorry about the old man.”
“That woman who just came in?” I looked down at my list. “That’s Susan Warnock?”
Donna shifted around, jostling the table again. “Yeah, that’s her. Want me to send her over?”
“Yeah, thanks a lot. You’ve been a big help.” Which wasn’t even close to true.
Susan Warnock came over. She was wearing running shoes, baggy sweatpants, and a sweatshirt under a thick down jacket. No makeup. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “You know how sometimes things can get a little out of control at home?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I remember one or two times,” I said. “I’m Detective Seagate—”
“You’re here about Lee Rossman,” she said.
She was the first one to admit knowing the vic’s name. It must have made the news shows at noon. “Yeah, that’s why we’re here. See if anyone working last night remembers anything that can help us with his murder.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see him here last night.”
“You would have recognized him?”
“I think so. Very distinguished, you know.”
I hadn’t shown her his photo. They probably put it on the screen at noon. “Did he come in a lot?”
“I wouldn’t say a lot. Every few weeks or so,” she said.
“He sit at the bar when you danced?” I pointed to the separate bar ringing the stage with the poles.
She looked like she was thinking. She was a good-looking woman. Light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Big green eyes, slender nose. Thin lips. “No, that wasn’t his style. He’d be in a booth, talking with other guys.” She looked tired, grey bags starting under her eyes, and the beginnings of crow’s feet.
“Were these young guys roughnecks? Older guys like himself?”
“Both, I’d say.”
I looked at her. “You’re a couple of years older than the other dancers …” I just let it hang out there.
She smiled. “I do all right. Dancing, that is.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” I said. “Just wondering if some of the young guys, you know …”
“I can dance,” she said. “I put on makeup, the boys don’t see how old I am. Besides, they’re not looking at my face. I think my tits’ve got another couple years. I hope so, anyway.”
“You ever go out with Lee Rossman?”
The question startled her. It took her a second to process it. She frowned. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“Money. I can make five times what I used to get ringing up groceries.”
I nodded. “Okay, Susan,” I put my palms on the table and she started to slide out of the booth. “I appreciate the information.” I reached into my bag, pulled a card out of a little pocket, and slid it across the table. “In case you think of anything.” I looked at her directly and held my gaze. “Anything.”
She nodded and picked up the card. “Am I free to go?”
“Sure.”
I looked over at the booth where Ryan was doing his interv
iews. He was still talking with one of the bouncers. Everyone else had already left.
I sat there and closed my eyes for a moment. I don’t remember drifting off, but next thing I knew Ryan was standing in front of me. “You in there, Karen?”
I shook myself out of my sleep. “Yeah,” I said. “Must’ve drifted off for a second.”
“Learn anything?” he said to me as he slid into the booth.
“Let’s see,” I said, tapping my upper lip. “That Philip Vinson lets his female employees know that they don’t have to sleep with him.”
“But that it’s okay if they’re willing to?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably accurate.”
“Anything about who killed Lee Rossman?”
“Uh, no. One of the three strippers knew his name and was willing to admit she’d seen him before in the bar. The other two didn’t know who he was, didn’t know if he was ever in the bar, didn’t know if anything happened to him last night. Didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know.” I sighed. “What’d you get?”
“The boys didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know. Well, that’s not exactly true. They were absolutely sure that they didn’t break up any fights involving any old guys, including Lee Rossman.”
“But nothing rules out Lee Rossman being in the alley getting his dick sucked by a freelance whore or one of the strippers.”
“Got a particular one in mind?” Ryan said.
“I’d put my money on the platinum Russian girl.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she made a big deal about how she was a dancer, not a hooker.”
“Did she make a big deal about how she wasn’t a murderer?”
“Shit,” I said. “I knew there was something else I meant to ask her.”
“I’ll go thank Mr. Vinson for getting his people in here.”
“Let me come along with you.”
When he noticed us walking over toward him, Vinson squirmed out of the booth and put on a concerned face. “Did you get everything you needed, Detectives?”
Ryan said, “Yes, Mr. Vinson, thanks for bringing your people in.”
“Absolutely,” he said, with a bow. “Anything I can do to help.”
“One other thing,” I said. “Be careful when you explain the job requirements to your female employees.”
He put out his hands to show his confusion. “I’m sorry, Detective?”
“When you tell the girls they don’t have to fuck you, you want to make sure they don’t misunderstand what you’re saying—”
He was shaking his head in denial. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective.”
“Because that would be a crime: coercing them into giving you favors like that. And if we heard about that going on, we’d be down here in ten minutes with a warrant. You’d be in a shitload of trouble, Mr. Vinson,” I said.
His forehead was getting shiny. “I would never say that to any of my girls.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. “So we understand each other.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “That would never happen.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Vinson.” And I sincerely hoped we’d never meet again.
Chapter 6
“You want to pursue it—what he says to his employees?” Ryan said as we got into the Charger.
I turned to him. “We get even a whiff of him running girls out of that bar, I’m gonna make it a personal mission to shut him down and arrest him for … what’s that called?”
“Quid pro quo sexual harassment,” Ryan said. “But I get the feeling he knows just how far he can go. Telling the girls they don’t have to sleep with him—he’s sending two messages at once.”
I shook my head and pointed to the crime tape sealing off the alley next to Johnny’s Lounge. “You think of anything else you want to do here?”
“Not until we hear from Robin or Harold.”
I nodded. “Want to see what’s going on at Rossman Mining?”
“Let me take a look around their site for a minute or two,” he said, swiveling the computer to face him.
“I’m gonna grab a cup of coffee.” I pointed at a small shop a few doors down from the bar. “You want something?”
“No, thanks.” Ryan was already on the Rossman Mining site. “You go ahead.”
Steel-grey clouds were settling in and the temperature was falling. I walked toward the little coffee shop with my head down, holding my coat tight against my body. We hadn’t yet had any serious snow, but it was only a matter of time. Days or a week at most. It had hit zero every night the last couple of weeks. It was enough to remind me I was in for a good six months of hooking up the block warmer on my Honda at night, parking real careful so I didn’t take out a parking meter under a snow drift, and sorting through how I would feel if I learned the planet had finally broken free of its orbit and was drifting off into black space, where it would ice over and die.
Inside the shop, I grabbed an insulated cup, pumped a black coffee out of the tall black carafe, put the lid on, and left a dollar bill on the counter. The cup was so hot I had to shift it from hand to hand. By the time I made it back to the Charger the coffee was cool enough for me to take a sip.
“They got anything on the site about Lee Rossman dying?” I said.
“No, not yet.” Ryan shook his head. “Can’t tell whether they’ve heard.”
“I bet the chief contacted them.”
“Or Rossman’s wife.”
“Who should we be talking to?” I sipped some more caffeine.
“I’d go with this woman.” Ryan swiveled the computer to face me.
I read the caption on the photo. “Cheryl Garrity.”
“She’s the director of operations for the company. Plus, she oversees the wells here in Montana.”
“They’ve got other wells?”
“Bunch down in Texas,” Ryan said. “They’re in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, and they’re starting up in California, too.”
“What do we need to know about Cheryl Garrity?”
“According to her bio, she’s been with Rossman more than twenty years, since the early days in Texas.”
“She’s a techie?”
“No,” Ryan said. “Her bio says she ‘attended’ Texas Tech.”
“What’s that mean?” I took a long sip of the coffee.
“Means she didn’t get a degree. Anything from taking a single course to doing everything except getting a degree. Her bio says she runs all the operations in the Bakken Formation, which ‘extends from eastern Montana, most of North Dakota, up into Saskatchewan and Manitoba.’ For Rossman Mining, that’s four-thousand employees, plus more than that many contractors.”
“And she’s based here at headquarters?”
“About a quarter mile away,” Ryan said. “It’s 7500 Montana Street. Suite 1450.”
Montana Street was a main east-west artery through downtown, home to most of our business towers. At fifteen stories, the granite and glass tower at 7500 Montana was the tallest in town.
We parked in the basement garage and took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Suite 1450 was at the end of the main hallway. Ryan held open the big glass door with Rossman Mining painted on it in fancy script. I fished into my shoulder bag for my shield and hung it around my neck.
Inside the reception area were a few leather couches and side chairs with end tables and tall, shiny brass lamps. There was a curved wooden reception desk with the company name painted on it in the same script as on the glass doors. There was nobody sitting at the reception desk.
Off to the side I counted seven employees huddled together in small groups. The women were hugging and crying. The men, hands in their pockets, were looking down at their shoes. Judging by the scene, I’d say Rossman’s death was announced during the lunch hour.
A young woman, model-thin and wearing lots of makeup, separated from one of the groups and came up to me and Ryan. Drying her eyes with a tissue, she sai
d, “Can I help you?”
“Detectives Seagate and Miner, Rawlings Police Department. Is Cheryl Garrity available?”
The woman took a breath and straightened up. “Let me see if Ms. Garrity is available.” She folded her tissue and put it into the pocket of her cranberry wool jacket. “Won’t you please take a seat?” She pointed to the couch near the door. “I’ll just be a moment.”
Ryan remained standing, but I sat down. Our presence in the reception area seemed to throw the employees off. After the women finished up their hugging and the men tugged at their belts, looked at their watches, and in general did the meaningless gestures that men do, the employees started to disperse and wander toward the hallways on either side of the reception desk. They seemed confused. They weren’t going to dive back into their spreadsheets, but they weren’t able to stand around in the reception area, not with outsiders there. Not with cops there.
The receptionist appeared from the interior offices. “This way, please, Detectives.” We followed her down a short hall with thick, blue-grey carpet and framed sepia-toned photographs of oil wells. At the bottom of each frame was a brass plate with a year from the 1930s and 1940s and the name of a Texas city.
In the doorway of one of the two large offices at the end of the hall stood Cheryl Garrity. She was a sturdy-looking woman in her fifties, with wavy salt-and-pepper hair carefully coiffed and plastic-framed half-glasses. She wore a loden-green wool skirt, below the knees, and a navy blazer over a cream silk blouse. No jewelry, no makeup except a little lip gloss. “This way,” she said, without expression, without small talk. She led me and Ryan to a small conference room with a round table in the center. The lights came on automatically when the three of us entered the room.
“Tell me your names, please,” she said.
“I’m Detective Karen Seagate. This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner.”
“I’m Cheryl Garrity. Director of Operations, Rossman Mining.” She paused, still without showing us any expression. “Sit, please.” She gestured toward the table and sat down. “This is about Lee,” she said, as if she was announcing the topic for today’s meeting.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” I said. “Let me begin by expressing our condolences, Ms. Garrity. You and Mr. Rossman went back a long time.”