Winning Texas

by Nancy Stancill

  The crowd, mostly young blue-collar workers in jeans and T-shirts and a sprinkling of better-dressed older men, was mildly appreciative, but not bowled over, by the dancer, he deduced from the paltry amount of bills left on the catwalk or tucked into her bikini bottom. The band’s guitar player, a tall, muscular guy with a pirate-like black beard, announced a fifteen-minute break.

  Nate ordered his fourth Dos Equis of the night and took stock of the increasingly ebullient crowd. To his surprise, he honed in on the unmistakable widow’s peak and cold eyes of Kyle Krause, talking intently to a young blonde at an unobtrusive corner table. Nate had spotted Krause with his girlfriend, Juliana Souza, from a distance over the last few weeks and he knew that the woman at the table wasn’t her. The blonde had on heavy eye makeup, tight jeans and a clingy red top, but somehow she still looked awfully young to be inside a strip club. Nate saw that she was tall and solidly put together, with large breasts that looked real – instead of the enhanced bosoms he mostly saw on the clubs’ catwalks. Who was she? Juliana’s replacement or was Krause interviewing new topless talent?

  He decided he’d better take advantage of his luck at finding the mogul. He walked casually over to Krause’s table and caught his eye. The blonde’s big blue eyes widened in surprise – and something like fear.

  “Good evening, Mr. Krause,” he said, putting out his hand. “Nate Hardin from the Houston Times. I’ve been trying to catch up with you.”

  Krause’s stare flicked over him dismissively. He ignored Nate’s outstretched hand and Nate saw a menacingly large bouncer headed their way. The employee had a shaved head, long scraggly beard and a snake tattoo crawling up his neck.

  “It’s all right, Bobo,” he told the bouncer. “I’ll handle this.”

  Bobo walked away, but stood at the black curtain watching.

  “I know who you are,” Krause said. “Seen you at a few of my clubs and I’m tired of you stalking me.”

  “I’m just another curious customer,” Nate said. “I want to interview you about your clubs and their place in Houston’s topless industry. I’ve left three messages…”

  “Why would I talk to you? The Times hates me and my clubs.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Nate said. “The paper’s written about a couple of police actions involving your clubs. But that’s just normal police beat coverage.”

  The girl hastily got up from the table, avoiding their eyes. She murmured an excuse and headed off in the direction of the restroom. Nate thought she looked like she was about to throw up.

  “That’s not Juliana, your girlfriend,” Nate said. “Seems a little young to be in a strip club. Who is she?”

  Krause stood up. His muscled body loomed over Nate, who held his ground.

  “Listen up, Hardin,” Krause said. “You’re welcome to look around all you want, but don’t bother my friends or employees. If you still have questions, you can call me during office hours. Understand?”

  “Yeah. I still want to interview you,” Nate said. “We’re writing a story about your clubs and you’ll be in it – one way or another.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Krause said. He handed Nate a business card and sat down again.

  “Hey, just call me,” Nate said. “I’ll make sure you’re treated fairly.”

  He walked out of the crowded room, back through the dark curtain, and into the foyer. The club had a glassed-in store and he decided to duck in for a while to think about his next move. He pretended to study the penis-shaped vibrators in pink and black, the metal handcuffs and other ridiculous-looking sex toys under the glass counter, and slowly sifted through racks of flashy lingerie.

  “Girls really like those red teddies,” the middle-aged, chunky woman behind the counter said. “Looking for something for your sweetie pie?”

  “No, ma’am. Just browsing. What does Kyle Krause buy?”

  “I’ve never seen him buy anything,” she smiled. “But you’d better believe his girlfriend is the one who decides what to order.”

  He chatted with the friendly woman for a while, trying to learn something more about Kyle and Juliana, but although she was eager to talk, she didn’t have much to reveal. He looked at his watch: it was getting close to 1 a.m. Might as well go home.

  Outside, the strip center parking lot had mostly emptied. Should he hang around and hope Krause and his mystery girl would come out in a friendlier mood? Probably not, he thought. It wouldn’t do to press his luck. He’d call him on Monday.

  He walked behind the strip center toward his car parked in the shadowy overflow lot. He leaned over his car door as he searched his pockets for his keys. As he fumbled, a hand came up noiselessly behind him brandishing a long metal tool. The tool struck the back of his head a few times, its metal flashing in the dim light. Nate felt the first blow, but couldn’t do anything before the second one came. He went down heavily and knew nothing more.

  CHAPTER 19

  Annie was lost in a dream, or so she thought. She heard a buzzing and a rackety clattering that wouldn’t stop. She opened her eyes cautiously and spotted her cell phone vibrating on top of her antique cherry bureau. She sprang up quickly and winced as she rushed to catch the phone. Her head was vibrating too, from too many glasses of chardonnay she’d drunk with Matt last night. He’d come over for dinner, but it had turned into an extended cocktail hour that had led to her bedroom. He’d left around midnight because he was on duty early today.

  “Hello. Hello?” She said into the phone, hearing breathing and what sounded like a suppressed sob. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Travis,” said a voice so low that she hardly recognized the Times’ police reporter.

  Wide awake now and alarmed, she said, “Travis, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m calling about Nate,” he said in a quavering voice. “He’s dead. He was found in a parking lot at a Texas Girls club on the Gulf Freeway.”

  “No, that can’t be true,” she said, her mind reeling. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know much yet, but Matt Sharpe is headed out there. Can you come?”

  “I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  She put down her phone, sat on the bed unsteadily and burst into tears. She’d loved the energy, intelligence and go-for-broke enthusiasm of the skinny reporter with the wild curly hair. He was only twenty-five. How could this have happened? Was she to blame for assigning him to investigate topless clubs? How would she ever tell his parents?

  She swallowed three aspirins, her signature cure for a bad hangover, and got into the shower. She didn’t bother to wash her hair, just toweled off quickly and threw on jeans, a black T-shirt and sandals. As promised, she got to the club’s parking lot in twenty minutes. Since it was barely 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, there were no customers around, just a few blue-and-white police cars. She’d tried Matt on his mobile before leaving the house, but it was busy.

  Travis, disheveled in shorts and a wrinkled shirt, was waiting when she opened the car door. He hugged her closely for a moment and she could feel his body trembling. At twenty-seven, she thought, he’d never experienced death, especially of a beloved friend. Unfortunately, she had.

  “The cops are in the back parking lot,” he said.

  They walked behind the building and ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. Matt was at the scene, as she expected. He stood in front of the covered gurney writing on a notepad. Several other officers and technicians were talking and writing. They looked askance at Annie and Travis until Sharpe acknowledged them with a solemn nod. Annie saw Nate’s mud-spattered blue pickup parked in the lot and had to blink back tears. The young reporter always said he’d never seen the purpose of a carwash, arguing that because o
f Houston’s weather and pollution, his pickup always would be dusty or caked with mud.

  While technicians strapped the gurney into the hearse for transport to the county’s morgue, Matt stepped away. He hugged Annie and clapped Travis on the shoulder. His professional behavior gave no indication that he and Annie had spent most of the previous evening together.

  “Terrible,” he said. “Met him a few times when he subbed for you, Travis. Seemed like a decent reporter and a real good kid.”

  “What can you tell us?” Travis said, flicking on his IPhone’s tape recorder.

  “We think he died early this morning, maybe about 1 a.m. Clobbered in the back of the head two or three times with something heavy, maybe a lug wrench. Probably looking for his car key when somebody sneaked up behind him.”

  Annie, queasy and weak, could barely get the words out. But she had to know.

  “Do you think he suffered?”

  “Doubt if he knew what hit him,” he said. “Don’t dwell on that, just focus on what we can do to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Of course, Matt.”

  “What was he doing here, other than the obvious?”

  “We’d eaten at Ninfa’s on Navigation and he said he wanted to check out this club,” Travis said. “He was investigating the topless industry, especially Kyle Krause’s clubs.”

  Matt knew that, of course, but he didn’t let on. He nodded and took notes.

  “Nate wanted to profile Krause, but hadn’t been able to pin him down for an interview,” Annie said. “He’d been leaving him messages, but also hoped to run into him at one of the clubs.”

  “A janitor who came in an hour ago called us when he found the body,” Matt said. “Said he’d also called Krause. He let it slip that the big man was here last night.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Travis said.

  “He’s coming down to headquarters in a few hours to talk to us,” Matt said. “Of course, he denies knowing anything about it.”

  He flipped through his notes quickly as Annie and Travis waited. She looked around, taking in the tawdry setting of Nate’s killing. The back parking lot was separated from a neighborhood of dilapidated, one-story houses built in the 1950s by a wooden privacy fence with some slats missing. The fence stretched across several of the strip center’s businesses with room for about fifty cars. Banana trees grew above the fence and several large trash bins behind the club overflowed with beer cans and kitchen garbage. A morning breeze rippled through the air and she nearly gagged from the combined odor of rotting food and refinery gases, making her sick headache more miserable.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Matt said. “We found his wallet beside him with his ID intact, but no cash. Maybe he was jumped by a drunk, or someone hanging around looking for easy money.”

  Annie could feel him looking at her.

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  “I don’t think so,” Annie said, tears welling up again. “He was so young and he’d barely lived here a year. I don’t think he had any serious attachments, do you, Travis?”

  “No,” Travis replied in a wavering voice. “He went to some of the gay bars occasionally to meet people, but he rarely went home with anyone. He was really serious about his work. Wanted to do big stories. He was one of the most dedicated reporters I’ve ever met.”

  “Anything else?” Matt said, closing his notebook. “Got to get back to the office.”

  “Can I call you later?” Travis asked. “I’d like to hear what Kyle Krause says for himself.”

  “May not be able to tell you much, but sure. Call me.”

  “Travis, I’ll see you back in the newsroom,” Annie said. Matt took her aside, squeezed her hand and said he’d call later.

  She stopped on her way to the newspaper office to get a sausage biscuit and coffee at a drive-in restaurant, hoping that a full stomach would make her head feel better. But she couldn’t keep the food down, vomiting in the grass beside her car in the parking lot. She wiped her mouth and gargled some ice water from a plastic cup. That awful day when she found out her friend Maddy had been killed the night before in a car wreck came back to her in a rush. They’d thought briefly that it was a terrible accident, but soon suspected that she’d been murdered. In Nate’s case, there was no doubt. A promising young reporter’s life had been snuffed out in the back of a tawdry strip center. She had no idea why.

  She shuffled disconsolately into the office. In the cavernous newsroom, it was mercifully quiet, as it usually was on a Saturday morning. She was able to unearth a personnel file on Nate. She looked through it for a few minutes, stopping in the middle of reading his personal essay to go to the ladies room and wash her tear-stained face. He’d had such great potential as a reporter and the right kind of ambition, to do stories that would change lives.

  She picked up the phone with a trembling hand, willing herself to remain calm. Then she dialed the number she’d found for his parents in Waco. It rang three times and a female voice came on. She swallowed hard.

  “Is this Mrs. Hardin?” She asked. “This is Annie Price, Nate’s supervisor at the Houston Times. I’m very sorry to have to call you. Can you put Mr. Hardin on, too?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Kyle Krause sat in a glassed-in interrogation room at the downtown police station waiting for Matt Sharpe, the detective he’d been told was assigned to the case. With him at the table was his high-priced lawyer, Ben Bauer. Despite charging what Krause considered exorbitant fees and a glib slickness that irritated him, Bauer had helped him out of plenty of messy situations, and he appreciated that Bauer, like him, was of German-Texas stock.

  Krause couldn’t believe his bad luck. Why had he picked last night to go to the Gulf Freeway club after successfully avoiding Nate Hardin for two weeks? He hated reporters and tried to dodge them, though Juliana had nagged him about learning to use the media. He was convinced that the newspaper was out to destroy his clubs, always picking at some niggling violation, like the bouncers being too rough, or the dancers not always wearing pasties to cover their nipples. The night that the cops closed down Carla Carmine’s show at the North Freeway club was the latest outrage. He’d probably have to pay a $10,000 fine for that clear case of police overreaction. He believed that some prohibitions in the strip club world were necessary, but he rarely passed up a chance to flout what he considered the stupid rules. The state’s Alcohol Beverage Control officers had it in for him, he was sure. Rick’s Cabaret never seemed to get bad press – his swaggering competitor was regarded as a hometown hero just because it was listed on the NASDAQ.

  The recent explosion at his San Antonio gas emporium was another piece of rotten luck. His friend Sam Wurzbach was convinced it was payback from the secessionists for giving money to the German-Texas movement. Sam was probably right, though he tended to overreact at times. Luckily the two of them had managed to hush up key details of the explosion, with the local authorities blaming the significant damage on a simple gas leak. His insurance would cover most of it, but it was still a setback. Business would suffer while the building was being repaired. And he wondered whether the loony secessionists would attack his clubs next, or his home. Who knew what they were capable of? But he wasn’t backing off his support of German Texas. As his mother used to say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  Still he was nervous, jiggling one foot as he and Bauer waited for the tardy detective. His restlessness wasn’t lost on his disapproving lawyer, sitting beside him in a fresh-looking seersucker suit.

  “Kyle, do yourself a favor,” Bauer said. “Don’t act hostile when Sharpe questions you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Krause said. “I can’t believe I’m even here. Why do I have to put up with this?”
/>
  “A kid died in the parking lot behind your building. You’d better come across as cooperative. Think about acting like you’re sorry.”

  Krause opened his mouth to say something, saw a big man in a well-worn navy sports jacket and khakis striding toward the glass door, and lapsed into quiet. He thought he recognized the cop from the night Carla’s show was busted. Damn, he just couldn’t catch a break.

  Matt Sharpe settled himself across the table from Krause, stared at him for a few measured beats, then took out a folder containing a fresh legal pad and starting writing. He switched on a tape recorder.

  “Mr. Krause, we appreciate you coming in. I’m taping this interview for clarity. Understand you were at the Gulf Freeway club last night?”

  “Yeah, I visit all my clubs at least once a week,” Krause said, trying but failing to sound friendly.

  “Several people saw you talking to Nate Hardin, the young reporter found dead early this morning.”

  “He stopped by my table and we talked a little.”

  “Was this the first time you’d met him?”

  “Uh, I guess. He’d left me some phone messages.”

  “Did you call him back?” The cop’s eyebrows had flown up a notch.

  “No, I didn’t know what he wanted,” Krause said, regretting he’d let slip about the messages. “I don’t talk to reporters much.”

  “Can you describe your conversation last night?”

  “He wanted to interview me about my clubs. I told him I didn’t see the point.”

  “Several people we talked to from the club said it looked like a tense conversation.”