Sneak and Rescue

by Shirl Henke

  “You lookin’ for somebody special, baby?” His tongue could have polished his shoes and he wouldn’t even have to lean over to do it.

  “Yeah, the boss,” Sam replied, pretty sure he wasn’t it.

  A look of disappointment crossed his face before he yelled over the blasting music, “Hey, Louie, some floozy here to see ya.”

  A little man who resembled Danny DeVito wearing a cheap rug shambled out of a door at the end of the bar with a bunch of papers in one meaty fist. He gave her the once-over and motioned with a tip of his head for her to follow him into his lair. Sam sashayed behind him, swinging a beaded bag by its drawstrings. She’d taken the precaution of weighting it with a plastic sack of quarters. There was nowhere on her outfit to hide her gun except a purse and in a pinch she knew there wasn’t usually enough time for a woman to reach for it anyway.

  “So, you want a job? Got any references?” he asked, taking a seat behind a cluttered old desk.

  Sam pushed out her chest and cocked one hip. “You’re lookin’ at ’em, Louie.”

  He laughed, revealing surprisingly even white teeth. Must have a good dental plan.

  “Uh, my name’s not really Louie. It’s Ralph,” he said. “Everybody just calls me that because they say I look like some dago actor.” He shrugged. “Whatda they call you?”

  She almost said Rhea Pearlman, but stifled the impulse. “Jinx. Jinx Cavanaugh,” which was an alias she’d used on various jobs, but she’d never worked a strip joint before.

  “Can you dance?”

  “Better than whoever was on when I walked in the joint.”

  “Okay, you’re hired, Jinx. Start tonight. Pay’s fifty a day in cash, plus tips. If you’re any good, you’ll make a bundle.”

  So much for the dental plan. Sam nodded. “Do I have to supply my own costumes?” she asked, knowing that had been an issue for several strippers when Matt had interviewed them for his story.

  Louie-Ralph waved his hand. “Nah, we got plenty. Root through the dressing room in back and find something that fits.”

  Since there wasn’t more than a good-size handkerchief to anything she’d seen on the girls out front, Sam figured finding something that fit wouldn’t be a big issue. “What time do I start?”

  “You’re on at eleven. Play your cards right and you can headline for me. I just lost my best girl last week. She really blew ’em away.”

  Until someone blew her away. “Cash up front every night?” Sam reiterated. When he nodded, she sauntered to the door.

  His parting question gave her a chill. “Say, Jinx, you wouldn’t mind wearing a long blond wig, wouldja?”

  Sam had the rest of the day to kill before she reported to “work.” Maybe she could put the time to good use. Captain Montoya and his family had spent the day settling Farley in to his new surroundings. If the kid was halfway coherent, maybe she could get more information about Leila’s “transpondence” or whatever the hell it was. Poor Leila. Replaceable with a blond wig.

  She punched in the number jotted on the back of the business card Montoya had given her and spoke to his wife Josefina. Yes, Farley was doing well and they would be pleased to have her pay a visit. Sam stopped at the condo to change into more conventional clothes. Matt wasn’t home. Probably at the newspaper. He did have a day job, she reminded herself. But damn, she was sure happy he’d been willing to spend the morning playing hooky before he headed out.

  Feeling refreshed after shedding her smoke-enshrouded costume, showering and changing, she drove to a quiet residential neighborhood in south Coral Gables. The Montoya family had a large white stucco house trimmed with light green shutters. It looked homey and inviting. She walked past a kid’s bicycle lying beside the flagstone walk and rang the doorbell.

  A gray-haired woman with a megawatt smile answered. She was short and plump. Sam judged her to be in her late sixties, probably the captain’s mother-in-law. “You must be Ms. Ballanger. Please come in,” she said with a gracious wave of her hand, holding the heavy door wide. “I’m Rosario Velasquez, Jo’s mother, but please call me Rose.”

  “A pleasure, Rose. I’m Sam. We really appreciate your family taking Farley in this way.”

  “De nada,” the older woman said, leading her down the terracotta tile hallway to the back of the house where a large sunroom revealed an oversize backyard filled with a profusion of tropical shrubbery. “My husband’s the one with the green thumb in the family. Me, I couldn’t keep weeds alive.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Sam looked outside to where an old man was showing Farley how to wield a small shovel. They were planting a crimson rosebush.

  “How’s he doing?” Sam asked.

  “It’s strange. One minute he’s normal, just like my grandchildren. He and Billy—the oldest—really made friends this morning. Billy loves Space Quest, so they had a lot to talk about. But then, Farley would start talking loco stuff, you know? As if a television show was real and aliens were trying to take over the world. My son-in-law said he’d been given some terrible drugs. I can’t imagine a doctor doing such a thing to a boy!”

  “We can’t be sure the doctor gave him the injections,” Sam replied, thinking of Scruggs. “But the doc did prescribe the other medication, which wasn’t good, either.”

  “Wait here while I ask him to come inside. You timed it just right. Billy and Steve won’t be home from baseball practice for an hour and Sara’s at her piano lesson.”

  Sam did as her hostess invited and took a seat in the sunroom, watching as the patient elderly couple talked with Farley, who then walked to the house to see his visitor.

  “Hi, Sam,” he said, but didn’t smile. He flopped into an overstuffed lounge chair, his slight frame dwarfed by the floral print upholstery.

  “Hi, yourself.” An iced pitcher of what looked like fresh lemonade and several glasses were arranged on the coffee table in front of them. Sam suddenly realized she was thirsty. “Want a drink? You’ve been working in the sun.”

  “I guess,” he answered, staring out to where Rose, who couldn’t grow flowers, was helping her husband, who could.

  Sam poured two tall glasses and handed him one. He still had that fuzzy vagueness drawn around him like a fog—or a protective shield? She wondered if the drugs could be incidental to some deeper trauma. Farley had scarcely had a happy childhood by anyone’s definition.

  After he’d taken a couple of swallows, she said, “I’d like to talk about your friend Leila. You said you saw her transponding up to a Pandorian ship. How do you know it was the Pandorians?”

  He shrugged and wiggled around in the big seat nervously. “It had to be. The glass…the glass…” His voice faded away as he stared at the drinking glass in his hand, then quickly set it on the table.

  “What about the glass? Was it a glass ship?” This is nuts, Ballanger. Think. “Where was it? I mean, where did you see her disappear?”

  “You don’t believe me. She’s in trouble.”

  Not anymore. “I know, Farley. That’s why I need for you to tell me everything you saw so we can find the guys who took her.” When he didn’t answer, just stared out the window, she persisted. “Was it a man or another woman? Who was with her the last time you saw her?”

  Still no answer.

  “This is really important, Farley,” she said gently, reaching across to where his thin hand dangled over the edge of the chair arm. Hard to believe such a scrawny kid could turn into a wildcat that even she and Matt had difficulty restraining. “When was the last time you saw Leila?”

  “I—I don’t remember d-days, you know? T-time gets sort of messed up in my head. I think El was right. They’re using fotowaves on my brain.”

  “Just make a guess,” she coaxed, ignoring the mention of Scruggs and fotowaves, whatever the hell they were. “A week ago? Two weeks?”

  “M-maybe a week, I guess, or a little more.”

  Good start. “Where were you when you saw her?”

  His eyes narrowed and he combed h
is fingers through his hair, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands. “The S-seascape B-building,” he mumbled.

  She couldn’t see his face, but knew that had to trigger unpleasant thoughts. His father’s office was in the building. So was Dr. Reicht’s. Then an idea came to her. “Farley, describe how a transponder works, will you?”

  He looked up. “Boy, you sure aren’t Spacefleet, are you.”

  “Nope, but I want to help you. How did you know Leila was being transponded?”

  He gave her one of the looks teenagers reserve for not-very-bright adults, which means just about everyone over twenty-two. “She was going up in a transponder beam.”

  “What does a beam look like? Is it glass?” All of a sudden an image was coming clear in her mind.

  He shook his head as if trying to clear it, too. “Yes, glass. All around her glass. They were moving fast. I watched until they disappeared at the roof.”

  “The roof of the Seascape—you mean the top floor where the elevator stops?” The atrium elevator in the posh building was one of those glass tube jobbers that gave everyone with a fear of heights the equal opportunity of tossing their cookies while looking down on the plant-filled atrium below.

  He nodded. “It m-might’ve been.”

  “You said ‘they.’ Who was with Leila in the elevator, Farley?” She wasn’t leading the witness, your honor. No mention of Roman Numeral or the shrink. She waited until she was almost certain the boy would not or could not answer.

  Then his eyes seemed to clear and he whispered, “I—I t-think it was D-Dr. R-Reicht.”

  Chapter 17

  “It all fits, Matt. The time frame, the location, that damned all-glass tube elevator that whooshes you into the stratosphere. And now Reicht ID’d with Satterwaite,” Sam said, talking on her cell as she drove from Coral Gables back to Miami Beach.

  On the other end of the line, Matt talked over the noise in the newsroom. “I have a much better chance of winning a Pulitzer than Farley does of convincing Patowski he can ID Reicht. Who’d believe him?”

  “You mean because he’s a spacie?” she asked, unable to resist the cheap shot. “Well, I believe him. I checked with the servants at the Winchester family manse and they verified that he’d been driven to a 5:00 p.m. session with Reicht on the seventeenth.”

  “I thought when you interviewed the housekeeper right after Winchester hired you, she practically slammed the door in your face.”

  “She did, but Rogers, he’s the chauffeur, was friendlier.” In fact he was an old letch, but sometimes that helped. “I called him and he backs up Farley’s story. He dropped the kid in front of the Seascape, then headed to the nearest bar. He said the kid was late coming back. He was ticked he had to wait until nearly seven for Farley to show.”

  “And he never considered parking the damned car and going inside to look for the kid?” Matt asked.

  “He did call Reicht’s office. When the secretary told him Farley’s appointment had to be rescheduled because the doc had an emergency—” she paused for emphasis “—old Rogers finally got worried and asked the concierge to check the building. Discreetly, you understand.”

  “He didn’t want to ’fess up to the kid’s daddy he’d lost his charge, huh?” Matt surmised.

  “That’s what I figure. All came out just swell for Rogers, though. His pal on the desk found Farley hiding behind a potted plant in the back of the lobby.”

  “Okay, that’s pretty good, Sammie,” he conceded.

  “It gets better. I stopped at the Seascape and verified the story with Joe Waltman, Rogers’s friend.”

  “Did he see Satterwaite and Reicht?”

  “Don’t I wish. If you stand out in the center of the atrium you can watch the elevator go all the way to the top, but not from where his desk is located. However, he remembers how upset the kid was when he found him, mumbling about Pandorians and transponders. He thinks Farley’s bonkers. But apparently the kid had just gone through something really traumatic. When I questioned Farley, I asked if Reicht and Leila struggled on the ‘transponder.’”

  “And?”

  Sam sighed. “He wasn’t sure but he thinks so. I bet it scared him so much he blocked it. As soon as he saw them, all he does remember is popping another one of those swell pills Reicht prescribed. Then the next morning he had another session with Reicht to make up for the one the doc canceled. Farley insisted he couldn’t remember what they talked about, but Rogers told me when he picked up the kid, he was rubbing his arm.”

  “The shots.”

  “Yeah. I think we have enough nails to seal the coffin—if we can find a credible witness to Leila’s abduction.”

  “Not to mention Reicht’s motive for killing a Spacer moonlighting as a stripper.”

  “I’m working on that angle tonight.”

  “Sam,” he growled.

  “I’ll be fine. All I need is a little time backstage with the other women working there, see what they know about Leila’s life.”

  “You got a job as a stripper, didn’t you?”

  “You knew I could pass the physical,” she purred into the phone. “Besides, you gave me the idea.”

  “I gave you the idea! That’s absurd, even for you.”

  “You wrote that series of articles on strip clubs and how the women in them bond, tell each other their darkest secrets, all that jazz, so see? You have nobody to blame but yourself.”

  With that she hung up and switched off the phone. Then a thought occurred to her. She switched it back on and punched in his number again. Before he could get out any more than, “Granger here,” she said, “And if you show up at the Pussycat, the next time I catch you sleeping I’ll shoot some of my nighty-night spray up your nose and shave you bald, got it?”

  Sam drove to her first—and she hoped her last—night at the Pink Pussycat, humming tunelessly, thinking about how she was going to approach “the girls.” The back parking lot fit the current condition of her van. At least stripped of paint and bullet-pocked as it was, no sane car thief would consider stealing it. Stepping around puddles of afternoon rain that filled the canyon-size potholes in the asphalt, she walked to the stage door.

  Not so much as a guard to keep any drunk or stalker from shoving his way in and messing with the women who worked here. She felt the weight of her drawstring bag filled with quarters and drew a deep breath, trying to assure herself she’d been in far worse places than this, which was true. But she’d never had to strip, even during her brief stint working stroll. In spite of wearing a skimpy hooker’s outfit, it had been satisfying busting johns as an undercover cop.

  Confidence restored, she walked down a dimly lit hall littered with everything from glitter and sequins to chewing gum wrappers and ground-out cigarette butts. The music from out front wasn’t quite as loud back here but the miasma of smoke and sweat filtered back like scum from an oil slick. Sam could hear female voices from the door directly ahead. She opened it.

  A long counter made of Formica ran the length of one wall in the narrow room. Its chipped surface was Pepto-Bismol pink as were the cushions on the chairs bleeding their gray-brown stuffing through rips. Three women perched on various seats were peering into the bulb-lined individual mirrors on the wall at their dressing stations. No one seemed to notice her at first. One was busy gluing on false eyelashes that resembled tarantulas climbing down her cheeks, another applying foundation as if it were spar varnish while a third was attaching tasseled pasties to her nipples.

  “So I says to him, Herbie, you gotta get a life, you know? Peddling knockoff Rolex watches on Flagler Boulevard’s got no future. Get a real job,” the big redhead said, giving her surgically enhanced breasts a heft to check the balance of the tassels.

  “He ain’t gonna change, Shel,” the spider woman said, batting her lashes into the mirror. “Dump the jerk. You’ve gone his bail how many times now?”

  “Hey, we got company,” the third woman said, looking up at Sam. Her pancake makeup
crinkled as she squinted against the harsh lights. “You takin’ Leila’s place?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Louie—Ralph, whatever his name, hired me this afternoon. I just got to town. Long bus ride from Boston.”

  The redhead grinned. “Yeah, everybody wants to live in sunny Florida, get away from the cold. My name’s Shelly,” she said, walking over to Sam, tassels swishing in rhythm with her stride. She spoke with a broad Oklahoma drawl and smiled with her eyes, not just her lips.

  “I’m Chiquita,” the spider lady said, shoving aside a long strand of hair so black the only other place it could be found was on an Aztec priest. “Everybody calls me Quita.” She studied Sam with hard dark eyes that didn’t smile any more than her mouth did.

  “My name’s Della.” The third woman had frizzy light brown hair and needed caulk rather than pancake to cover the lines worn into her face.

  “I’m Jinx Cavanaugh. Pleased to meet you.”

  “You might as well take poor Leila’s chair. She ain’t gonna need it no more,” Shelly said, motioning to the seat next to hers.

  “I heard on the news she was murdered,” Sam said with a worried frown. “You don’t think it was anybody from here?” she asked ingenuously. “That Louie guy kinda creeped me out, but nothing like the bartender…” She gave a little shiver.

  Shelly and Della laughed. Quita’s expression remained sour, ignoring the camaraderie of the others.

  “Louie’s a cheapskate but he’d never mess with Leila. She brought in too many customers,” Della said.

  “But Max, he’s another ball of wax. I dunno.” Shelly turned and checked out her appearance in the mirror as she talked.

  “You mean ball of dirt,” Della said. “He tried to put the make on her a few times.”