Blood on Their Hands

by Lawrence Block

  Reclining in the swivel chair till it creaked, he said, “So, Aun-dray, what does a tennis-bum private eye want from me?”

  I assumed Cascadden meant “Andre Agassi,” but I was in no position to take offense at the “bum” part. “Monica Lewin tried to retain me yesterday.”

  “‘Tried to,’ huh? Good thing, otherwise her hanging herself last night woulda meant you got fired.”

  Cascadden laughed, a grating, guttural sound, and I seriously thought about walking out right then. But that wouldn’t have eased my conscience any. “Suicide for sure?”

  “Plain and simple. Tied one end of her bathrobe sash to the kitchen doorknob—living room side—and tossed it over the top. Then got up on a stepladder—kitchen side, now—and tied the other end of the sash around her neck. One leg kick—” Cascadden sent his foot into the air behind his desk, “—and old Monica ‘exotic-danced’ down the big runway in the sky.” Another laugh.

  I said, “No evidence of anybody else being involved?”

  “Just the manager from her strip club, finding the body.” Cascadden darkened. “Why would you think there might be?”

  “Seems kind of odd, the woman comes to see me for help mid-morning, then kills herself by midnight.”

  He cocked his head. “How’d you know what time she got found?”

  “Newspaper.”

  Cascadden hunched forward a little, and actually seemed concerned for a moment. “Look, Aun-dray, the city don’t need this kind of publicity. Bad enough that first one, Tara, gets strangled. Twenty years ago, the college boys and girls on spring break wouldn’ta given a flying fuck, but now that Lauderdale’s all yuppie respectable, Chamber of Commerce just as soon see this case closed. Which Homicide says it is.”

  “Any other indications of suicide?”

  A third laugh. “You could say that. Woman had enough tracks on her arms to start a railroad.”

  With Lewin’s long-sleeved top, I hadn’t seen any needle marks.

  “Not to mention an empty bottle of Wild Turkey on the kitchen counter, reaching distance from where she lynched herself.”

  Which I couldn’t argue against, either. “How about a note?”

  “No.” Cascadden leaned back again, the chair creaking the only sound in the room. “But then, not many leave one. Plus, you got to figure Monica’s all fucked up in the boyfriend department, account of I never run across a stripper yet who wasn’t.”

  “Lewin had a boyfriend?”

  Kyle Cascadden clenched his jaw. “Time for you to go, Aun-dray. I got other cases to work.”

  “Especially since this one’s ‘closed,’ right?”

  “Out!”

  Cottontail’s fronted on a side street within sight of Route 1 North. Given the time of day, I wasn’t surprised there were only a few cars in the parking lot to the side of the building, where Tara Tate had been strangled.

  Leaving my Chrysler Sebring convertible—purchased with my last tournament check—in as much shade as I could find, I walked up to the entrance, a white, fuzzy tail as big as a basketball over it. The tail appeared to be on a pendulum mount, so I imagined at night it would “twitch” over anybody going into the club.

  The door opened to my tug on one of the handles, shaped like bunny ears. Inside, the canned music was loud, but the lighting low, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust.

  Except, that is, for seeing the very young woman on a slightly raised platform, half out of her minimal clothing and showing babyfat at most junctions, caught briefly in the light from the door’s being open like a deer in high beams.

  Out of the darkness, a female voice—raspy from cigarettes, booze, or both—yelled, “Shut the fucking door!” Then, in a more coaxing tone, “Go ahead, Hon. Finish your routine.”

  Maybe I’d spoiled the mood, but I got the impression it was more the young woman’s overall nervousness that made her seem shy, even scared, as she did a stiff bump/grind/strip that was all corners instead of curves.

  When the “song”—some techno, bass-dominated dirge—finally ended, the raspy voice said, “Okay, Hon. You start Friday. Be here by six, and stop at that store I told you about, pick up three outfits a size too small for you.”

  The young woman nodded, then crossed her hands over her breasts before she realized at least a couple of fingers were needed to pick up her clothes.

  I now could make out the silhouette of a petite woman sitting at the bar, a plume of smoke also backlit to the point of inspiring romance. As I drew near her, I was aware of the younger one from the stage shuffling off into the shadows, clothes now clutched over her rump.

  “Who the fuck are you?” from the barstool.

  “My name’s Rory Calhoun.”

  The kind of laugh that told me the petite woman was old enough to recognize the actor. Up close, though, she surprised me. Her hair was conservatively permed, and her dress looked more Laura Ashley than Victoria’s Secret.

  “So, guy, what do you want?”

  “I’d like to see the manager.”

  “You are.”

  Maybe she meant, “You do?” I said, “Rocky.”

  Extending the hand without the cigarette, the woman said, “That’s me, Roxanne Devereaux, only I don’t do boy-shows. And even if I did, you got the face, maybe, but that one arm is way-too-much bigger than the other for—’’

  “It’s from tennis. Your serving side gets disproportionate.”

  Tennis?” Devereaux stubbed out the cigarette. “The fuck are you doing here?”

  After showing her my investigator’s license, I told her.

  “Oh, Jesus. Better come on back to the office.”

  We went past a couple of padlocked doors before reaching one that stood ajar. If there was anybody else in the place, I didn’t see or hear them.

  The office proved another surprise: sectional furniture with upholstery like oatmeal, oriental rug, cherry desk.

  Devereaux said, “You expected a fucking dump, right?”

  Another woman in the trade who could read my mind.

  She waggled nicotine-stained fingers around the stale air. “Well, this is where I spend a lot of hours, so why shouldn’t it be comfortable?” Devereaux motioned to one of the sectional pieces. “Sit, we’ll talk.”

  After we both were settled, I said, “Why would Monica Lewin come to see me about Tara Tate’s murder, then kill herself?”

  “You’re the detective, guy.”

  I tried a different approach. “I understand you found Ms. Lewin’s body.”

  “Yeah.” Subdued now. “Monica was supposed to dance a shift last night. When she didn’t show, I went apeshit, drove over to her place. “Jesus, I need a drink more than a smoke.”

  Devereaux opened the lower drawer of her desk, came out with a single-malt scotch and one tumbler. “Join me?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She poured a generous couple of ounces into the glass, then downed it, shot-style. “Okay,” in a raspier voice, “let’s have your questions.”

  “Ms. Lewin told—”

  “Look, let’s drop the formality, huh? She was ‘Monica,’ I’m ‘Rocky,’ and that poor heifer you saw out front is gonna be whatever I can think of to call her to try and drum up a little business.”

  Since the young woman was already hired, I said, “She seemed kind of self-conscious.”

  “She seemed kind of awful, but losing Tara and even Monica inside thirty days is a little tough on the stable, you know?”

  So much for “subdued,” too, though Lewin had told me Rocky was “as tough as they come.” I said, “You don’t seem too emotionally involved.”

  “Emotionally...?” I expected a raspy laugh, but Devereaux kept surprising me, coughing and swiping a hand across her eyes before reaching for a pack of cigarettes and what turned out to be a lighter in the form of—what else?— a rabbit bending over to touch its toes. “Look, that poor thing out there? She’s two, maybe three months gone, and needs for the baby whatever money
the animals out front will stuff wherever on her they can reach.”

  Devereaux used the same catchphrase Lewin had for Cottontail’s customers. “I meant more about Monica.”

  “I know what you meant, guy. Monica, now she had it once.” Devereaux took a deep drag, sent it out in another artsy plume. “When she first got started, Monica was just a kid—younger than the heifer, even. Had to lie about her age to get a job.” Now the raspy laugh. “And Monica was stupid enough to last long enough to come full circle.”

  “Meaning, lying about her age?”

  “You saw the girl. How old?”

  “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight.”

  “Try forty-three. But Monica wouldn’t go under the knife, so her ass was puckering from the cellulite, and without the suspension bridge she wore up top, those tits would sag low enough you wouldn’t want her carrying your cafeteria tray.”

  Lovely image. ‘‘Rocky—”

  “And the track marks on her arms? Jesus, why couldn’t she shoot the shit between her toes like a normal person?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that one.

  Devereaux took another long puff. “No, once you’re over the hill, it shows. And not just in the goods. When Monica danced the last few years, it was only shake-and-jiggle, like she was floating on drugs, though she swore she wasn’t, at least for the shows. But there was no choreography anymore, not even any...eroticism with the exoticism, if you get my drift.”

  I thought back to the jaded green eyes. “But I understand this Tara was different?”

  “Tara? Oh, guy, you never saw her, now, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Tara—‘TNT’ for short, which fit her like a glove. Original Sin with a cheerleader’s face, and just the right amount of...surgical enhancement. Not those volleyballs some of the girls go for.”

  “So who’d kill her?”

  Devereaux flicked some ashes. “I didn’t know Monica so well, I’d’ve said she’d be the one.”

  “Because Tara had replaced her as the star act?”

  “Yeah, but Monica was on the slide, and she knew it, between the heckling getting worse and the tips getting smaller. So I never saw her as the killer, even if that idiot cop did.”

  No need to ask Devereaux who she meant. “Other candidates?”

  “Tara’s husband. He wasn’t real happy about her dancing, period, and the time she spent on the road made it rough on both of them.”

  I had the husband’s name from the Sun-Sentinel article, and remembered Lewin mentioning his mother. “On Barry Cardiff and...?”

  “And Tara. Who the hell we talking about here, guy?” Devereaux stubbed out the second cigarette. “She’d call me once in a while, from East Bugfuck, Alabama, or wherever, crying about how life traveling alone from club to club really sucked.”

  “Tara called you?”

  “I gave the girl her first boost, back when I was house mom at one of the nicer joints in Lauderdale. Showed her how to do makeup, some of the moves—though, truth to tell, Tara was a natural in the dance department. And not just on a stage: She could fly across the room like a ballerina, or twist herself into a pretzel, give even guys with lousy eyesight the best beave in the Southeast.”

  “But when Tara came home, her husband Barry must have been happy?”

  “Or relieved,” said Devereaux. “Or even more suspicious, if he figured Tara earned her money other than from Polaroids.”

  “Polaroids?”

  “The camera, guy. On the road, a lot of the girls will let any customer with ten bucks have his picture taken with her hanging out and hanging all over him. Something to show the boys back on the chicken ranch, you know?”

  “So, by ‘other than Polaroids,’ you mean—”

  “The dirty deed. But I’ve never tolerated any of that in Cottontail.”

  I nodded like I believed her.

  Devereaux said, “I’ll give Tara this, though. She had a brain, and she had a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “To retire. Or move on. Lots of the girls—Monica’s a prime example—stay too long at the fair. But Tara, now she had it worked out. So many shifts a week here, so many weeks a year, less operating expenses like costumes and capital improvements—’’

  “Capital...?”

  “The boob job, guy. Then, after so many years, out of the life and back to her real one.”

  “And Tara was well on her way with this plan?”

  “So she said.”

  Felt like a dead end. “Monica mentioned somebody named Jason. A professor?”

  A closed look now. “I don’t like for anybody to be bothering my customers.”

  I named his college for her. “Would you rather have that stupid cop do it?”

  A sigh as Devereaux snagged a third cigarette. “So talk to the Professor. I can’t stop you.”

  “You have a last name for him?”

  Another sigh, or maybe just the expulsion of smoke. “Nolan. But I don’t know what he teaches.”

  “Monica have a boyfriend?”

  “Not that I ever saw, though a lot of the girls play that hand close to the vest, least around the club.”

  “Anybody here close to Tara or Monica? Besides you, of course.”

  Devereaux stopped her cigarette on the way to her lips. “Lacey, maybe?”

  “L—A—C…”

  “E—Y. ‘Missy Lacey,’ though ‘Lacey’s’ her real first name, just like Monica’s was. Lacey Peevers, so you can see why we didn’t go with the last one.”

  “This Lacey works here, too, then?”

  “Couple nights a week. She’s got a kid, but no man, so she does lap dancing, table dancing. Not in Tara’s league, though, looks-wise. Not even Monica’s, till the last few years.”

  “Can I speak to Lacey?”

  “Long as it’s not on my time, okay?”

  “Then I’ll need a home address.”

  Sticking the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, Devereaux went to her Rolodex. “Only be careful of your dick, now. Lacey’s kind of a barracuda.”

  “And here I was hoping for a blowfish.”

  Roxanne Devereaux first hacked, then sputtered a little on her smoke. “I’ll say this for you, guy.... You’re an optimist.”

  Given the driving distance to the college, I called ahead. After being shunted around, a receptionist in the English Department finally told me that Professor (or “Doctor”) Nolan was “working at home today.” She wouldn’t tell me where “home” was, but 411 got me Nolan’s number, and the reverse telephone directory I keep in my car trunk came up with his address.

  After going some miles west, I started to think college teaching must be paying better than when I attended, because Jason Nolan’s place turned out to be hidden behind what seemed like nearly an acre of trees and shrubs. I pulled into the marl-graveled driveway and wound around two privacy curves before reaching a modest, gray-planked house that looked a hundred years old.

  I left the Sebring as a man came around a comer from the backyard. The first thing to strike me was that he had too much hair. Not just long, but like a mane rather than a ‘do. The top also showed a darker brown than the surrounding fringe, and I was torn between a bad rug and a thick transplant. He was maybe five-ten and slim, with prominent cheekbones and a receding chin. Dressed in a denim shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up, and khaki hiking shorts over old running shoes, the man seemed wary.

  “Can I help you?” in a modulated voice that implied he was sure he couldn’t.

  “Jason Nolan?”

  “Yes?”

  I introduced myself, flashing the ID. He insisted on reading the fine print. For an English professor, Nolan seemed to take a long time doing it.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Tara Tate and Monica Lewin.”

  “Who?”

  “Professor—or ‘Doctor,’ if it’s more comfortable—I just spent an hour with Rocky at Cottontail’s, so let’s save both of us some ti
me, all right?”

  Nolan pursed his lips, then nodded once, resignedly. “Speaking of comfortable, perhaps in the back?”

  “Lead the way.”

  If the front yard was a jungle, the back one rivaled Flamingo Botanical Gardens for flowers. I said as much.

  “Thank you. It’s my one vice.” Then a sheepish grin, which I had the feeling he didn’t use very often. “Very well, my only other vice.”

  Figuring this couldn’t be easy for Nolan, I followed him to an arrangement of wrought-iron patio furniture. The cushions appeared bright and new, but like the house, the metal gave off an older look.

  As we sat, I said, “Don’t see chairs and tables like this much anymore.”

  “No. They came with the house. I bought it twenty years ago, when this was still ‘the Land Beyond Lauderhill.’”

  I knew just enough local geography to get the “middle-of-nowhere” aspect. “I don’t suppose that kept the police from finding you?”

  “Actually, they didn’t.”

  Could even Kyle Cascadden miss somebody at Cottontail’s as obvious as Nolan must have been? “How come?”

  “I went to them, you see. Given my position at the college, thought it best to steal a march, so to speak.”

  “Beat them to the punch.”

  “Exactly. This was after Tara was killed—strangled. I thought the woman she was ‘bumping’—forgive the pun— might have been her killer.”

  “Monica Lewin.”

  “Ah, no. Actually, a woman named...” Nolan blushed. “Missy Lacey.”

  I needed to get my signals straight. “Wait a minute. I thought Tara came back to Lauderdale—”

  “And began dancing at the club, yes. But Monica was already...well, past her prime, so to speak. Therefore, I thought Lacey was the more likely suspect, and I told this Neanderthal police detective as much.”

  “And Lacey was more likely because...?”

  “Well, Tara simply put her to shame. Tell me—Rory, if I may?”

  “Fine, Jason.”

  That made him stop, but only for a moment. “Rory, are you a devotee?”