Kersh leaned over and whispered something to a passing dancer who whispered something back and pointed across the room with her chin. Kersh chuckled—he sounded so out of place doing that—and then the girl laughed once, sharply, with her head craned back. Before she disappeared into the crowd, Kersh tipped the girl a dollar.
“Follow me,” he told John, and they began snaking their way toward the rear of the club. Smells intensified: lilac and bourbon and sweat—lots and lots of sweat—and something very close to rotting fruit. A few couples were tangled together within the cover of shadow, their bodies propped on tattered couches or smashed against wood-paneled walls. They were oblivious to passersby.
John and Kersh stopped before a small table occupied by a number of young men wearing ski coats and knitted caps and smoking cigarettes. Two men had girls perched in their laps while their friends cheered them on with drunken catcalls and the pounding of beer bottles against their thighs. One of the women, a young black girl, was nibbling on one man’s ear.
“Heidi Carlson?” Kersh said.
A few of the men looked up, as did the half-naked nibbler. She was young and attractive, her skin the color of motor oil beneath the neon lights. She wore a sheer bra and a multicolored sarong around her waist, her black hair in loose coils around her face. In the dark, she was mostly eyes.
“Miss Carlson?” Kersh repeated.
“Yes?” The woman pulled herself from the man’s lap, straightened her sarong. “Oh—you’re the—with—”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Kersh went on, “but we’d like to speak with you. Could you give us a few minutes, please?”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
Her eyes darted between John and Kersh. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “All right.”
The young guy whose lap Heidi had been previously occupying reached out and grabbed Heidi by the wrist, startling her. “Hey!” he shouted. He stood from the chair and glowered at Kersh. He was an ugly bastard, with eyes set too closely together and a row of upper teeth that resembled fence pickets the day after a tornado. “Wait your goddamn turn, buddy.”
“Sit down, son,” Kersh said, unaffected.
“You think you’re my father now?”
John took a step toward the table.
“Let go,” Heidi Carlson said, trying to shake her wrist free. “You’re hurting me …”
“Sit the hell back down,” the man told her, his eyes never leaving Kersh’s face.
She continued to struggle. “Stop—”
“Listen, Snaggletooth,” Kersh said, and casually reached into his jacket pocket to produce his badge. At the sight of Kersh’s gold shield, the man frowned and dropped his grip on Heidi Carlson’s wrist. Free, the stripper brought her hand up quickly between her breasts. “I can postpone your fun for a few minutes or ruin your next few days. How do you want it?”
The man did not move for perhaps a full ten seconds—he just stood there, his eyes pinned to Kersh, his pockmarked cheeks quivering like thinly sliced slabs of mozzarella cheese, the fingers of his right hand slowly working themselves open and closed.
The waitress Kersh had tipped only moments ago appeared beside the table. Kersh caught her eye and smiled, moving his head slightly to turn his smile on the men as well. He looked like a mechanical clown on rotation outside a candy store. “Sorry about this, fellas,” he said. “How ‘bout a round of drinks?” Turning back to the waitress, he said, “You wanna load this table up, give ‘em whatever they want?”
Some of the guys at the table applauded. Even the frown on Snaggletooth faltered.
The waitress smiled and winked at Kersh. “You got it,” she said, and moved around the table to bump Kersh playfully with her hip. She even managed to snake an arm around his stubby neck. Some of the guys at the table started cheering and laughing.
Kersh smiled wider and leaned over as if to peck the waitress on the cheek. “Put it on their bill,” he told her under his breath before turning away.
His hand on Heidi’s back, Kersh led the stripper away from the table. “Come on. Is there a place we can talk?”
“In the back,” Heidi said, and they followed her to a small door in the wall beside the center stage. She knocked on it once, twice—waited. “Okay,” she said, and pushed it open.
It was a dressing room with a wall-length mirror papered with Polaroid pictures on one side opposite a row of lockers and stools. The countertop beneath the mirror was littered with undergarments and makeup cases and countless pairs of high-heeled shoes, all laid out like fresh kills. A twisted nylon stocking sat beside a toothbrush, rolled into a ball. On a rack beside the door hung a number of colorful feathered boas. John saw Kersh eye them ruefully and poke one with his finger. The whole place was thick with the smell of baby powder and cinnamon and more sweat.
“Okay, okay …” Heidi said to no one in particular. She crept over to a stool and sat on it, pulling her legs up to her chest like someone suddenly afraid to touch the floor. In this light, she looked much older. Her skin was now the color of ash, but moist with sweat and lanolin, and her body—as tight and well-kept as it had initially appeared—now looked tired and worn from years of misuse. The skin just beneath her chin was black and puckered into scar tissue—something noticeable only in unflattering light.
“You’re the police,” she said. Her tone suggested she needed to say the words aloud to actually believe them.
“Secret Service,” Kersh corrected.
“Again?” She looked disinterested in the whole conversation and only glanced at the agents. “I thought you guys just hung around the president.”
“Hmmm,” Kersh said, humoring John with a glance. He fished out a plastic bag containing a counterfeit note. “You recognize this?”
“Christ,” she muttered. “I already talked to some guys about that.”
“Well, now you’re talking to us. Where’d you get it?”
“Like I told the other two, probably with my pay.”
“Or maybe an admirer handed it to you?” John said.
“Are you serious? You think one of these losers would pop a hundred in my panties? I get tips … but not like that. I’d remember.”
Kersh placed the counterfeit bill on a stool next to her. “I believe you. I believe you would definitely remember a customer who’d give you a hundred dollar bill. And what else you did besides dance for that hundred, I don’t care about.”
She rolled her bony shoulders, her eyes on the plastic bag and the fake hundred. “Don’t know,” she said.
Kersh shook his head. “Wrong answer. Get up. Let’s go.”
Heidi’s cavalier attitude quickly fell away. “Shit, you’re bustin’ me?”
“That’s gonna be up to you,” John added, “but we’re definitely leaving this place now. With you.”
“This is bullshit!” She was beginning to get either nervous or annoyed, her eyes again bouncing between John and Kersh. In her agitation, she began picking at the stuffing in the stool cushion beneath her with long, manicured fingernails. “You know that? This is bullshit!”
“Let’s go,” Kersh repeated, stuffing the counterfeit hundred back into his jacket.
Frustrated, her lower lip working, she stood and grabbed a gaudy red purse from the counter. Reaching out, John intercepted the bag, pulled it open, searched it for weapons.
“Come on,” she practically whined.
“Get a coat,” John told her without looking up.
She moved to an open locker and pulled out a short leather coat, cut off at the midriff. She proceeded to put it on, but Kersh held up one finger and took the coat from her, searched the pockets.
“Christ,” she moaned.
Satisfied, they returned her belongings, and she stood there holding her coat and purse like someone waiting for a bus. Kersh took her by the forearm and led her back out into the club and across the floor to the front doors. John followed close behind, his hands stuffed in his pocke
ts, his eyes darting around the dark room. Outside, the bouncer gave them a questioning look but did not say anything. Apparently, it wasn’t unusual for girls to follow men out to their cars.
They moved across the street to Kersh’s sedan. His fingers still around Heidi’s arm, Kersh tossed John the keys. John stepped around to the driver’s side and hopped in behind the wheel while Kersh opened the rear door and ushered Heidi inside. He slid in beside her, slamming the door.
“You don’t have to do this,” Heidi started in. Her voice was strained, like a violin string about to break. “I was cooperating. Can’t help it if I know nothing.”
Kersh looked out his window and not at the girl’s face. John watched them in the rearview mirror. He had seen Kersh interrogate people many times before but did not understand the reasoning behind such an evasion.
“Sweetheart,” Kersh said, “you’re bullshitting us. I have five other bills in my office right now that were passed at a few fancy boutiques, a restaurant, a shoe store. You passed them all.” It was not a question. And although his tone was deliberate, it was not quite forceful. He could have been reading from the wine list in an expensive restaurant. “Your fingerprints are all over them.” This was a lie—the fingerprints had not yet come back from the lab on the newer bills—but the confidence in Kersh’s voice could not be contested. “I know you didn’t get these bills from your boss at the end of the night. These were given directly to you.”
She pushed out her jaw, her eyes narrowing, and noticed John staring at her in the rearview. “Now who’s shitting who?” she said.
“All right.” Kersh reached back into his jacket pocket and again brought forward the counterfeit hundred. This time, he carefully removed it from the plastic bag and folded it along its creases. He was like an aging magician performing a trick. “All your bills—they all fold like this,” he said. “They all have your prints on them, and they all fold like this.” He tapped the bill with an extended finger. “Who’s been putting them in your pants, Heidi?”
“No.” To John’s amusement, the girl actually chuckled. Shaking her head, black coils of hair bouncing, she rearranged her purse on her lap as if she were angry with it. “No,” she said again. “You ain’t puttin’ all this shit on me. I ain’t the only dancer in this club or in this goddamn city. Folded? Goddamn! A lot of people fold money for all kinds of reasons—don’t mean nothing. A lot of fucking people—”
“And your prints,” Kersh reminded her. His voice remained smooth and serene, the feathered back of a great bird.
She didn’t answer. Her head tilted slightly toward the floor, and she stared at Kersh from beneath her brow. At this moment, she wouldn’t have surprised John if she either tried to attack Kersh or simply broke down sobbing.
“I touch money all the time,” she said finally. “Everybody does. You just tryin’ to jack somebody for this, and I’m easy. Shit, if I knew it was fake, you think I’d put it in my bank? Bullshit!”
John watched her from behind the wheel, his eyes never leaving the rearview mirror. He respected Kersh and had no doubts about the man’s approach, but he could not sit here like this any longer. For one abrupt and tormenting moment, the image of Katie sitting alone at home surfaced in his head. His hands ached to touch the swell of her belly, to cup a breast, to nestle his face in the soft gossamer of her hair.
The car was suddenly too hot. He slipped the key into the ignition, cranked the engine over, and leaned around the seat to face the back. He must have looked the part, for Heidi Carlson’s expression became an out-of-control elevator crashing to the ground, floor after floor. “Listen, you stupid bitch, we got you. Five minutes ago you were shakin’ your ass on stage; twenty minutes from now you’ll be dancing in the can. They don’t tip very fucking good in prison.”
She could invoke no response, nor did he expect her to. He was done listening to her warble and whine in the back seat of Kersh’s car. Downtown, she’d be a lot more willing to cooperate.
He punched the car into drive and pulled out into the narrow street. He caught Kersh’s look in the rearview. Looking away quickly, he said, “Bill, I’m bookin’ her. She’s done. I’m not playing these silly goddamn games …”
“John …” Kersh started, and John couldn’t help but glance again at Kersh’s face in the rearview. Surprisingly, Kersh did not look annoyed or even slightly ruffled. In fact, there was an almost comforting look of satisfaction on the man’s face.
“Wait!” Heidi shouted. She pushed herself to the edge of the seat. “Stop! Wait a minute! Wait! Wait! Okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t want no problems.” The stripper reached out and tugged at John’s arm. In silence, he turned the wheel and pulled the car to a stop in the middle of the empty street.
“All right, all right,” she conceded. “I got the bills. But I swear I didn’t know they were fake. Even when I passed them. Not until the bank thing. And I passed no more after that.”
John shut the car off.
“Who’s the guy, Heidi?” Kersh said. There was something oddly tender in his voice, almost soothing. To John, he suddenly sounded more like a therapist than an agent.
“Who’s the guy,” she parroted under her breath. Her large eyes were scaling the sedan’s windows, the upholstery. She blinked several times; large clumps of mascara were caught in her lashes, visible even in the darkness. “I can’t … I don’t know his name. Saw him a few times before the … the night he … he hit on me.” She was careful with her words. “I’m dancin’ and he’s watchin’, slips a bill in my string. When I’m done, I start takin’ out the money and that’s when I, you know, realize he gave me a hundred. I was, like, really shocked, you know?” She was talking fast now, not from fear but from anger, and anger made Heidi Carlson unattractive. “I looked around for him after,” she continued, “and he was still there, but not by the stage anymore. By himself, sitting at the bar. He was watchin’ me from across the room, watchin’ me even before I saw him there, and so I went over to him. Bought me a few drinks. We talked for a while. Then we went to his car.”
“And no name?” Kersh asked.
Heidi shook her head. “Nothing.”
“What type of car?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I’m not a car person. Some big, older car, like a dark red color. Like blood. The inside was white and real dirty, cigarette burns all over the seats …”
“You ain’t saying too much here,” John said, “which makes me think you’re still playing with us.”
“Hey, sugar, I can only tell you what I know.” There was a spark of resilience in her voice. “I seen him a few more times—each time the same gig. I dance, he pops me a hundred, a few drinks, and we’re horizontal in his car.”
“If no name,” Kersh said, “what did you call him?”
She laughed at this, and it was a bittersweet sound. She patted the side of her face with one hand, her enormous nails painted red. “Call him? Shit—’Honey,’ ‘Baby,’ ‘Sugar,’ whatever. The usual crap.”
John frowned at Kersh. “She’s full of shit. I say we book her ass and try this again tomorrow.”
Frantic, Heidi pushed herself in front of Kersh and against the back of John’s seat. “Look, that’s it, man! I didn’t know those bills were fake. I didn’t spend time humping that fool for toilet paper. I said—I said—” She took a much needed breath. “Listen—I said I realized it when I got stopped at the bank. Okay? Goddamn it! That’s when I knew he beat me, I swear. I had no fucking idea, no fucking clue, all right? When your guys came, I panicked. I knew I passed around a few of the bills, but I wasn’t gonna take a bust on something I wasn’t even in on. I was set up … So maybe I wasn’t truthful. But, shit, I really wasn’t involved—and I don’t know this guy.”
Still able to maintain a tone of compassion, Kersh asked when she had seen him last.
Catching her breath, her chest hitching, she said, “Three nights ago.” She ran those curled, red fingernails across the exposed flesh of her chest, le
aving behind white streaks on her tanned skin.
“Did you hit him up about the bills?”
“No.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “I mean, I was gonna. He gave me one in the club. I took it but figured I’d hit him up when we went outside. I’ll be straight—I was gonna shake him down. Real money for putting me on Front Street. But when we got outside, his car was towed.”
The words struck both John and Kersh like a whipcrack across the calves. John looked from Heidi to Kersh and back to Heidi again. “What?”
“Yeah. Why?” She had no idea. “First he thought it was clipped, then the fool realized he parked in one of the taxi zones outside the club. The cops hooked it.”
Kersh looked beside himself. He was a man unaccustomed to emotions of extravagance, but in the dim light of the car, his face had immediately changed, had brightened somehow.
She doesn’t even realize what she just said, John thought.
“Where, exactly?” John asked. “The car?”
“Uh …” She turned and peered through the sedan’s rear window and back toward the club. The window was fogged and she jogged her head side to side, as if such movement would clear the view. She looked momentarily lost, out of place. “Somewhere,” she said. “On the corner by the front of the club, across the street on the other side.”
“You’re sure it was towed?” Kersh asked. He was still looking at John.
Heidi faced her lap, adjusted her bag. “Positive. He called the precinct, then the pound. He was madder than all hell. Told me it was towed, cursin’ his head off, and grabbed a cab and took off. And that was it—that was the last time I saw him. Three days ago.” Looking at her captors’ faces, the stripper was able to realize she was no longer important. A look of relief overtook her, and she began lightly dragging her exaggerated fingernails across the bronze terrain of her chest again. “Three days ago,” she repeated.
“Okay, okay,” Kersh said finally, pulling his eyes from John and digging into his jacket. “You see this guy again, call us and stall him. Keep him here in the club. You don’t see him in a week, we come back and take you. You got that?” But there was no threat in his voice, and Heidi was no longer buying it.
Shamrock Alley Page 9