PERFECT GENTLEMAN
By
Brett Battles
Slam Bang Stories
Copyright © 2011 by Brett Battles
Cover art copyright © 2011 by Robert Gregory Browne
All rights reserved.
PERFECT GENTLEMAN is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A version of this story previously appeared in the Anthology KILLER YEAR: STORIES TO DIE FOR edited by Lee Child
For more information about the author, please visit www.brettbattles.com.
For more information about the artist, please visit www.robertgregorybrowne.com.
You won’t like me.
Whatever. I’ve stopped caring.
I’m not a bad guy, but you’re not going to believe that. People like you never do. You hear about what I do. You see how I live. You think, sleaze or deviant or something like that. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m all those things. I certainly don’t think God’s waiting for me to show up at his front gate.
Again, it doesn’t matter. This isn’t really about me, is it? It’s about Joseph Perdue.
Now there was a guy you should really hate. A real asshole. But you people only choose to see one side of him. You made him out the hero. Someday you’ll probably call him a martyr for the cause. For the American way. That’s what happens to the dead, isn’t it? No one cares about the truth.
I remember the first time he came into the bar.
That’s not really surprising. I remember every time someone new comes in. It’s part of my job. First I need to make sure the guy (they’re always guys) doesn’t look like an obvious problem. If he’s too drunk or too belligerent or has got a bad rep, I point him to another bar and say they got a special show that night and he shouldn’t miss it. Works every time. If he doesn’t seem like he’ll be a problem then I size him up, figure out how much we can expect to get out of him and what he might be looking for.
On the evening Perdue came in, the usual pop crap was blaring out of our far too expensive sound system. Occasionally, I’ve been known to sneak in an old Skynyrd album or The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. God, I love that record. But the girls always protest and I seldom make it through “Speak to Me” before I have to flip back to Lady Gaga or Gwen Stefani or the Black Eyed Peas. When Perdue walked in, I’m pretty sure the song playing was “Perfect Gentleman” by Wyclef Jean.
Perhaps I should have taken that as a sign.
It was a slow night, a Tuesday. Our big nights are Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays—the first two because around here everyone is ready to start the weekend a little early, and Mondays because that’s when we hold our weekly body-painting contest. Nothing like some fluorescent paint, some beautiful young women, and a few black-light tubes to fill up the place and bring in the cash.
Event evening or not, we still had a full complement of girls, somewhere between twenty and thirty at the beginning of the shift. That number would depend on how many girls were sick, how many had found someone for an extended absence, and how many just didn’t show up.
No idea what our exact total was that night. I do know that Ellie was there. She was up on the stage with five or six others grinding away. But I’ve gotta say, whenever Ellie was on stage, it was as if she were dancing alone. That was her power. She was a superstar. The killer body and the killer personality and that killer something that wouldn’t allow you to take your eyes off of her.
You don’t see a lot of superstars. Maybe one or two per bar. Ellie was our one.
In strip bars in the States, the girls had routines, elaborate moves choreographed to the latest hip-hop favorite. But not here.
Of course, my place really isn’t a strip bar. And it’s nowhere near the States. It’s in Angeles City in the Philippines. Perhaps you remember Clark Air Base? Used to be the biggest U.S. base outside of the States. The old main gate is only a couple miles from the door of my bar. But then there was Mt. Pinatubo erupting ash over everything, and the Filipino people threatening to erupt in anger if the U.S. didn’t withdraw.
We withdrew.
Well, the government did. Us ex-pats, we stayed. And over the years we’ve been joined by more.
This is the part where you realize you hate me. Yeah, my bar is one of those kinds of bars. A go-go bar. At my place, you can watch them dance, buy them a drink, talk to them, and then take them out for the night or for a week if you want. You just gotta pay the bar fine, and it would be nice—but not necessary—if you tipped the girl after.
And this is the part where I tell you I take care of my girls. I try not to let them go out with jerks. It happens, but not as much as it does at other bars. I do what I can to protect them. I try to keep them out of too much trouble. I know it won’t matter, but there are a hell of a lot worse Papasans around than me.
So go ahead and hate me, but the business will still be here. The guys will still come. And so will the girls. Because for them the money’s better here, and there’s always a chance they might get taken out of the life to live in Australia or the UK or the States.
Perdue, if I remember correctly, glanced at the narrow stage—more like a runway down the center of the room back before I remodeled—then took a seat in an empty booth on the far side.
He wasn’t alone for long. That’s not why people come to the bars in Angeles City. They come for the laughs, for the cold bottles of San Miguel beer, but most of all they come for the brown-skinned girls so willing and available.
A couple of my waitresses in their uniforms of tight pink hot pants and white bikini tops approached him together. Only half interested, I watched the encounter, still unsure if the guy was one of those who was only gauging the talent and would soon be leaving, or was someone we could milk a few pesos out of, maybe even hook him up for the night.
One of the waitresses, Anna, giggled while the other one, Margaret, I think, looked over in my direction and said something to our new guest. Perdue looked at me, then removed a wad of bills from his pocket and handed a couple of notes to each of the girls.
Now I was intrigued. Guys usually didn’t pay for anything the moment they arrived. What happened next surprised me even more. Perdue got up from his booth and walked around the stage to where I sat at the bar.
He nodded at the stool next to the one I was sitting on. “May I?”
“Please,” I said.
“Thanks. I think the view’s better from over here.”
Indeed it was. Superstar Ellie with the do-me-now looks was swaying back and forth less than ten feet away.
“Joseph Perdue.” He held out a thin, rough hand.
“Wade Norris,” I said.
His grip was stronger than I expected. Whoever Perdue was, he was more powerful than he let on.
“You American, too?” he asked.
I nodded. “Ohio. Columbus.”
“Never been there. I’m from Wyoming, myself.”
“Yellowstone?” I asked. It was the only place I knew in Wyoming.
He smiled at me. “Nah. Laramie. Cowboy country.”
Anna walked over and handed Perdue a San Miguel, then set a cup on the bar behind him with a slip of paper inside noting the beer.
He held his bottle out toward me. “Cheers, Wade.”
I obliged by clinking the bottom of my bottle against the bottom of his. We both took drinks, his deeper than mine.
“I hear you’re the Papasan. You run things.”
Run would be a good word for it, I thought. I wasn’t the owner; he was thousands of miles away in the Netherland
s. But I was the decision-maker. And gatekeeper.
I shrugged, then said, “You enjoying Angeles?”
“It’s not bad. But, you know, all these bars around here seem pretty much the same. You all got the neon, the mirrors with all the names painted on them, the big bells. The only difference I can see is the girls. Some places have a better group than others.”
I couldn’t argue with his assessment. There are over a hundred go-go bars in Angeles City, all offering pretty much the same thing: pre-recorded music and liquor and women.
“So how does ours rank?”
“About average.” He nodded toward Ellie. “Except for her. She brings your score way up.”
I couldn’t help but smile. The fish was circling the bait. Now all I had to do was hook him.
While Perdue took another drink, I caught the attention of Kat, the bartender. With a quick, almost undetectable motion, I indicated our new customer’s interest in our superstar. Less than a minute later, Ellie made her way off the stage and walked across the room to where we were sitting.
“Hey, Ellie,” I said. “How you doing?”
“I was getting hot,” she said. She pulled at her bikini top, like she needed to get air between the flimsy fabric and her C-cup breasts. She looked at Perdue and smiled. “Who’s this?”
“Another Yank,” I said. “Joseph Perdue.”
She held out her hand and gave him a look even the most disinterested man would be hard pressed to resist. “Nice to meet you. I’m Ellie.”
“Hi, Ellie,” Perdue said. Instead of shaking her hand, he kissed it, the whole time his eyes never leaving her face.
I knew the deal was done then, and twenty minutes later I was proved correct.
“He wants to pay bar fine, Papa. What do you think?” Ellie asked me. She and Perdue had moved to the booth he’d occupied when he’d first arrived. Now she had walked back over to me alone while her potential boyfriend for the night waited.
“He seems all right,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I think he has money,” she said.
“Then, by all means, have a great night.”
It didn’t surprise me when Perdue came in the next night and bar-fined her again. And I wasn’t particularly shocked that he’d decided to bar-fine her not just for that evening but for the rest of the week. The fish had not just swallowed the hook, but the hook and the line and the rod. Ellie was a hard one to resist.
Of course, the deal was good for everyone. I was happy to collect the cash. Ellie was happy to be out of the bar for more than just a few hours, and was definitely happy about her cut of the bar fine. And Perdue, presumably, was happy to be spending time with a beautiful girl at least twenty years younger than he was.
Honestly, after that night, I thought I wouldn’t see the guy again. I figured he’d probably bar-fine her for the remainder of his trip and when she came back to work, it would mean he was on the long flight home to the U.S. But two days later, he showed up in the middle of the afternoon.
It was Friday, but we wouldn’t get really busy until after dark. At the time, we only had two customers so the day-shift girls—about half as many as I’d have on that night—were huddled together in clicks talking or sitting alone texting their boyfriends, both foreign and Filipino, on their mobiles.
I had only been there thirty minutes, but as usual, my ass was glued to my favorite stool at the bar. If anyone else ever tried to sit there, Kat or one of the other bartenders made them move. “Papa Wade’s chair,” they’d say.
When Perdue came in, he took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine outside to the dim interior, then spotted me and walked over.
“Alone?” I asked.
“Ellie said she had to run home to take care of something. I’m meeting her at Mac’s in an hour.”
Mac’s was the main restaurant in the district, and where most everyone ended up at one time or another. But Perdue didn’t sound happy about it. In fact, I’d say he was pretty annoyed. But I didn’t push. My job was to make the customer feel as good as possible about his time in Angeles. Getting into the middle of a relationship between one of my girls and her honey ko was never a good idea. Unless, of course, it was because he was treating her badly.
Whether you believe it or not, we’re a family. And a hell of a lot better one than those most of my girls had grown up in back in the provinces. We watch out for each other. We’re there when times are good or times are bad. We know enough to give each other room when we need it, when to let hope simmer and not discourage it, and when to snap each other back into reality—albeit our reality—when we have to.
But what we really have to do is be careful not to crush the dream. In this make-believe world of faux love and real sex, it’s the dream that keeps a lot of the girls going. It’s the chance that maybe, just maybe, the guy they’ve got temporarily wrapped around their finger might fall for them hard. Maybe they can get him to spend his entire vacation with them. Maybe they can get him to call them, and email them, and send them money after he’s returned home. Maybe—and this is the big one—maybe he’ll even marry them and take them away from the islands.
It happens all the time. Only with thousands of girls working the business, a few a month leaving for better lives is a small percentage. Still, the dream is there. And I have always been careful not to get in the way of even that narrow chance.
“So you having a good time?” I asked.
I figured the only answer could be yes. He would have sent Ellie back by now if he wasn’t.
“Took her down to Manila yesterday. Had a little business to deal with. Thought she might like to do some shopping.” Perdue cracked a smile. “I guess I was right.”
I laughed. Take one of the girls shopping and she’d stay with you for free. It was their religion, but one they seldom indulged in unless it was on someone else’s dime. “So I’ll take that as a yes.”
The smile slipped again. “For the most part.”
We drank in relative silence as the perpetual soundtrack of Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams and even vintage Spice Girls played on, only at slightly reduced, afternoon levels.
“Can I trust you?” Perdue asked.
I looked over at him, a knowing grin on my face. “Of course.”
It was my standard answer. Truth was, I already knew what he was going to tell me. It was going to be some variation of “Ellie’s not like the other girls,” or “I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time since I took her home,” or “Do you think you can meet someone special at a place like this?” They were all a prelude, a set-up to talking oneself into believing he’d fallen in love. Perhaps Ellie had actually found her ticket out of town.
But even as the thought came to me, I questioned whether it would really pan out. After you’ve worked here as many years as I have, you get a sense of the guys. And my sense of Perdue was that he wasn’t looking for a wife.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Can I trust you?”
I lifted up my beer. “You can tell me whatever you want. It’ll just be between us.”
For a few seconds, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. He leaned toward me. “I’m Homeland Security,” he finally said, his voice barely audible above the music. In fact, it was so low, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“What?” I asked.
“Homeland Security. You know what that is, right?”
I’d been living in the Philippines since the late nineties and hadn’t actually set foot Stateside since before 9/11. But with CNN International and the large American ex-pat community—most of whom were former military—you couldn’t help knowing a little bit about what was happening back home.
“That’s, like, anti-terrorism, right?”
“That’s just part of it. But, yeah, that’s our main focus.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I mean, we get all types in the bar. Maybe he was trying to impress me. Homeland Security—it did sound important
. Maybe I should have been impressed. But I wasn’t.
“I’m here looking into a few potential rumors. We want to neutralize any problems before they develop.”
“Neutralize?” I repeated. I think it might have been the first time I’d ever heard it used like that in conversation. “That’s why you’re in Angeles? Or why you’re at my bar?”
“The Philippines,” he said. “Mainly in the south. Two months now. I came up here for a little relaxation.”
Now we were back on familiar territory. “Glad we could help you with that.”
The corners of his mouth went up and down in what I could only describe as a quick smile. “When I was in Manila yesterday…” He let the words hang as he took a sip of his San Miguel.
“On your business,” I offered.
He nodded. “On my business. I heard something disturbing. It came to us through a very dependable source. But you know how these things are.”
No, actually, I didn’t. And I had no idea why he was even telling me any of this. But he was the customer, so I wasn’t about to stop him. Besides, it wasn’t just the girls who fell into a routine. Someday, I could tell this story to my other Papasan friends. They’d love it. “The secret agent confesses all to Papa Wade.”
“Seems there might be trouble here in Angeles,” Perdue finally said.
I almost laughed out loud. Terrorism? Here in Angeles? Gangs, yes. But terrorists? Something that would concern the government of the United States of America? Not possible.
“I think maybe your source is screwing with you,” I said.
“That’s what I thought, too,” Perdue said. “But I did a little checking this morning, and now I’m not so sure.”
“We’ve never had any of that kind of trouble. And I’m sure we’re not about to, either.” I suddenly had no desire to continue talking about this. I didn’t want to know. I was happy with my beer and my girls and my life. Terrorists were problems for someone and somewhere else.
“Yeah, well, they didn’t have that kind of trouble in Bali before, but we all know what happened there.”
Perfect Gentleman Page 1