The Drop Zone

by Bob Kroll

Peterson waved to the counter girl on his way by. A thirty-something he had once fixed a ticket for. He slid into the booth. The waitress with a pot of coffee was not far behind. Overton ordered eggs and bacon. Peterson asked for toast.

  “Your partner lined this up for me,” Overton said. “I gather on your say-so.”

  Peterson sipped the coffee. “The job works out, everybody’s happy.”

  Overton spread his elbows on the table. “A twenty-year-old at the Rendezvous wants out. One of the Posse’s. Dancing one night. Turning tricks at the Port City Motor Inn the next. Three months in the game, and she’s pregnant. She wants to keep the baby.”

  “Catholic?”

  “Love. She knows the father, or thinks she does. A lover boy, the only one she lets ride bareback. They’re making plans.”

  “Testify?”

  “Who knows? But she’s a source. String her out for as long as you can, at least until her belly shows. But talking won’t be easy. Dribs and drabs. Five minutes at a time with her on your lap. Unless you want a half-hour at the Motor Inn, but that gets real chancy. Her dance name is Honey. I don’t think even her boyfriend knows her real one.”

  Breakfast arrived. Overton dug in. Peterson nibbled.

  “It’s none of my business,” Overton said, pointing his fork at Peterson’s order of toast, “but I know the signs.”

  Peterson looked over his coffee. “It helps me sleep.”

  “And then you wake up and wish you hadn’t,” Overton said.

  “I haven’t reached that yet.”

  “Keep pounding the bottle and you will.”

  Overton wiped egg yolk with his toast. Peterson held down what he had eaten.

  “Take a few days or a week to become a regular,” Overton said. “Don’t stand out, but don’t avoid people. Make a move when you feel it’s right.”

  Chapter

  THIRTY

  The Rendezvous was a knot of shadow splayed around a stage dripping in coloured lights. A stand-up bar lined the back wall, and behind it was a blonde bartender who might as well have gone topless for all she wore. She mixed drinks with an eye to the house, never a full shot, not even for the regulars, and she knew the trick of floating a drop of booze on top for the drunks so liquored-up the smell of alcohol was enough to fool them.

  The servers were all skimpily dressed women, some middle-aged and past caring who touched what and where. Others were barely drinking age, unloved, unschooled, and locked into service by hard times or a habit they couldn’t shake.

  The bouncer at the door was a bruiser with a Captain Hook moustache and smile, and the two thugs guarding the stage wore their rap sheets on their slung-jawed faces.

  Peterson squeezed his big frame past a dozen tables to sit in the anonymous middle. He wore a dark blue suit, light blue shirt, and no tie, like many of the other out-of-towners here to get their nuts off without bringing something home to mama. Three of these men had brought dates. Peterson figured they must be girlfriends or wives, tag-alongs on a business trip. From the way they were egging their men to drop forty bucks on a lap dance in the backroom, they were probably hoping to horny up their men for a good time back at the Holiday Inn.

  This was Peterson’s fifth night in a row at the Rendezvous. He could nod to the regulars, the beer-nursers hardening under the tables, watching one dancer after another without changing the intensity of their gaze. They came in sport shirts and golf shirts, and all seemed to wear their hair gelled and uncombed.

  On the first night, Peterson had tried to pick out Lover Boy, the guy who had gotten Honey pregnant, and narrowed the choice to three: a twenty-something with spiky hair and a hangdog face sitting alone near the stage; another of the same age with curly blond hair standing at the back and holding up the bar; and a third in his thirties, a wimpy-looking guy who wore a tortured face whenever Honey took to the stage to strip.

  One of them didn’t show on the second night, the night Honey was over at the Port City Motor Inn turning tricks. But he was back the third night, curly blond hair and standing at the bar.

  Curly Hair was at the bar now, and Peterson was about to relocate from the anonymous middle to stand beside him for a chat when he overheard one of the three men with dates say something about a local hockey star. Peterson sensed an opening that would cover off his first visit to the lap-dance room, in case anyone was giving him even the slightest bit of attention. And that had him making a move, leaning in with his own two cents on the local hockey star. He and the guy went back and forth about hockey and then the guy, seeing Peterson was alone, invited him to join their party. Peterson did. Introducing themselves, first names only. Tom, Dick, and Harry for all Peterson cared. And he cared just as little about the names of the women. He called himself Fred and said he had just moved down from Chatham, Ontario. Divorced.

  The conversation turned to the dancer on stage, and Peterson let them talk, their voices rising above the heavy beat from a stack of woofers. He told the group he was waiting for a particular dancer, a petite brunette with thick ankles and no sense of rhythm. She was young, awkward, and almost embarrassed at stripping in front of a house full of men.

  When she finally walked on stage, Peterson got antsy, saying out loud that this one turned his crank. The group immediately got on his case about liking them young, and then two of the women, one with big earrings and the other with a big mouth, goaded him into taking the young dancer to the backroom for a lap dance. Peterson protested for a while and then gave in, as though happy to be forced into doing what he really wanted to do.

  When the young dancer dropped her thong with a half-hearted wiggle, he turned off his cell phone and, like a teen on his first date, went to the Jezebel cashier beside the bar and laid down two twenties for a five-minute lap dance with Honey.

  The rules were simple: arms straight down at his sides, no touching, and no kissing.

  Peterson entered the tiny backroom and swept his eyes through the deep shadows for cameras. No camera, but that had him figuring someone had an ear to the door. A lava lamp on a small table was the only light, and this bubbled a red glow over the kitchen chair placed dead centre. He pulled a photo from his pocket, then sat and waited for Honey to appear.

  Music with a pulsing beat started from two tinny-sounding ceiling speakers. Then Honey came through the door with a lopsided smile. She straddled his lap and stared at him. Glassy eyes. Brain geared down. Hips that revved without pleasure. Arms held above her head and waving. The skid lines in her arms were easy for him to see. Her gaze drifted off his face and into the shadows that played along the back wall.

  He hardened against his will. Shamed himself.

  “It’s not why I’m here,” he whispered. “I want to talk.”

  “Talk?”

  Honey kept grinding, her rhythm set on automatic.

  He raised the photo of the girl from the Broken Promise into her line of sight. She stopped mid-grind. Her eyes went to the door.

  “You know her, don’t you?” he whispered.

  Honey just stared at the door. Swallowed hard. Didn’t answer. He could see cracks in the heavy makeup on her face.

  He had planned how he would play his cards, and now he played what he thought was an ace.

  “I can help you. I can get you out of here. Contact your parents if you want me to.”

  Fear clipped a breath and started her eyes darting.

  Peterson realized he had moved too fast and set off the alarm bells the pimps had drilled into her head. “It’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right.”

  She slowly looked back at the photo. Nodded. She knew the girl.

  He sensed the clock ticking down the time he had left. He took a chance. “Tell me about her. Please.”

  “Who are you?” Honey’s voice was strained. Her body trembled.

  “Someone that cares about her.”


  “Her father?”

  Peterson nodded, and the gesture tore a strip off his heart. His eyes welled, and Honey saw it.

  “She didn’t dance. She was too young, and they wouldn’t risk it,” she said.

  “What did they do with her?” He returned the photo to his jacket pocket.

  Honey didn’t answer. She looked again at the closed door and her face tightened. Then she gave Peterson a nervous nod. “I knew her name. We weren’t supposed to tell. Just numbers, that’s what we are. She talked crazy sometimes, but we all do.”

  Peterson nodded as though he too knew the girl’s name. “Her mother named her,” he said. That was another ace he hoped would make a difference. It did.

  “Molly was different, but I liked her. She was so young, and they whored her out with a few other young ones.” She suddenly realized what she was saying, and her head swivelled back to the door. “Oh my god, they’ll hurt me!”

  She started off his lap and Peterson pulled her back. “You have to sit right here!”

  She settled back on his lap, trembling. Looked at him. He smiled warmly, and she tried for one but failed.

  “I can help you,” he said, pressing a piece of paper into her hand. It had his personal cell number and nothing else. “I can get you out of here. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  Honey shook her head, her eyes wide in fear. The lava lamp bubbled its grim red glow over her face. The shadows stirred, tightening the space around them.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right. Just tell me what happened to Molly.”

  Honey covered her mouth. Then she lowered her hand to her chin. “Her friend didn’t come, and she went nuts. Climbing the walls.”

  Peterson was about to ask what friend, when his cop sense warned him to get it done. “Grind on me!” he ordered.

  Honey also sensed the time. She looked at the door again.

  “She never came back,” she said and rotated her hips slowly, pressing herself onto him. As the Jezebel opened the door, she leaned forward and whispered, “My name’s Debbie Wilson, Mississauga.”

  Peterson returned to his seat in the anonymous middle, forcing a smile for the sake of the couples, who were grinning at the pleasure they thought he was feeling. He ordered a beer from a server who had the wild look of having just done a line. The woman on his right, the one with the big mouth, gripped his bicep and asked in a voice even the bouncer could hear, “Still hard?”

  He nursed the beer, waiting until Honey was back on stage. Then he leaned forward in his chair as though he knew more about her dance routine than anyone else in the place. When she left the stage, he excused himself from the group and split.

  The following night Peterson staked out a corner in the hospital district. By one o’clock Sylvester was a no-show. He then swung over to the Port City Motor Inn and took up a vantage point across the street in the parking lot of a strip mall. It took him less than a couple of hours to read the operation the Posse had going at the motel: three rooms, two girls to a room, taking turns, a half-hour in the sack and a half-hour to wash up, needle up, or smoke a joint. Steady traffic. Each room turning over a hundred, maybe two hundred bucks an hour.

  He used binoculars to ID the johns and pegged the boyfriend as the guy Honey saw out the door and kissed goodbye. Same guy as in the bar: Curly Hair. Slouchy in checked shirt and jeans, he crossed the parking lot to a black Ford pickup. Peterson got the licence number as it drove off.

  He saw something else: A dark blue SUV with two dudes in front and one in back fired up and followed the Ford out of the motel parking lot. Less than an hour later Curly Hair returned, but not for a second helping. This time he drove behind the motel and nosed the pickup out from the far side, just enough for him to watch the three doors to the sugar shack. The SUV slipped back into the same parking space near the front office and killed the engine. The threesome remained in the SUV.

  Peterson hung in there for another hour and a half, then went home, where he sat outdoors in a lawn chair, staring at the stars, not wanting to go inside.

  The following night, Peterson looked for Curly Hair at the Rendezvous. He was standing at the bar. This time Peterson had a name to go with the hair: Darryl Palmer, son of an eastern shore fisherman. He had two arrests: drunk driving and a bar fight that caught him a charge of aggravated assault.

  Peterson watched Palmer look around the room, peeking into the shadows as though he was looking for someone. Peterson figured Honey had told Palmer about the man who had refused the lap dance and had promised to get her out of this business, and Palmer was now searching the Rendezvous for him.

  Honey came on stage and Palmer turned his attention to her. She was wobbly as she danced, or tried, holding the pole for support and grinding on it as part of her routine. Her eyes were empty and her face bleak. She slid down the pole to her knees and struggled to get up. Stoned out of her mind. Awkwardly peeling off what little she had on.

  She would be twenty years old in two weeks, according to the background check Danny had run on her. Stripping and screwing and getting high, and now she was pregnant by a john she loved and desperate to get out. How? She was already in too deep to do anything on her own.

  Peterson watched her, wondering why he still wanted to help her. He doubted she could tell him more about Molly than she already had. So why did he feel he had to stick around and chance blowing his cover and wind up no closer to the Posse than before he had started? Why throw a rope to someone who may already be drowned?

  He knew why. He had silent cell phone calls to remind him.

  He knew how he could do it. He just had to flash his badge in here or at Port City Motor Inn and take her into custody. That would be the easy part. The hard part would be what to do with her once he had her out. Bring her home to her parents in Mississauga, and the Posse would find her. Help her run off with her boyfriend, if he really wanted her, and the Posse would track her down, not to bring her back but to shut her mouth.

  Peterson looked up from toying with a coaster to see her naked now and just standing on stage, staring into the coloured lights, unblinking, and making no attempt to dance. Her mind lost between a morning’s promise and no tomorrow. A little girl on a backyard swing, Debbie Wilson, the girl someone had flensed of innocence and turned into a whore. It cracked his spirit to think of it.

  Honey backed off stage as another girl danced into the pulsating lights and to a different beat, one that groaned with a sleazy horniness that she intensified with flashy moves across the stage and up the pole. She hung there for a moment then slid down.

  Then someone was at Peterson’s shoulder, talking in his ear. “She won’t be lap dancing tonight. Too much gas in the tank.”

  Peterson turned to a forty-something server leaning over, giving him a free show down her blouse.

  “Might as well horny up on someone else,” she said.

  “You have someone in mind?”

  She winked at him.

  Peterson cracked a smile. “I don’t do much more than look, and I already got an eyeful.” He got up to leave. “Besides, I’m a one-woman man.”

  “You must be the one and only,” she replied, lifting her tray of beer and turning to serve a nearby table.

  Peterson navigated through a full house to the exit, scanning the place. Darryl Palmer was not at the bar.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-ONE

  Palmer stood beside the black F-150 and came on hard as Peterson exited the Rendezvous. His hands hung at his sides, fingers opening and closing, shoulders hunched.

  Peterson sized him up in a second — a village punk on the muscle, the kind of guy that gets his balls from a bottle. Ten feet from Peterson’s Jetta, the punk had words.

  “You hustling my girl?” The question came out like a challenge.

  Peterson reached his car and turned. He shifted his
weight to his back foot. “Who’s asking?”

  A dumb look filled Palmer’s face, as though the question had introduced a new idea into a head that only had room for one. Peterson took it back. “Don’t answer. I know who you are. Darryl Palmer, a half-ass from the eastern shore. Can’t fish, can’t cut bait. So what lie you stringing her?”

  Palmer stopped three feet away and raised his fists. This question had him perplexed and his brain in overdrive.

  Peterson smiled, egging him on. “It must get crowded in that little brain of yours.”

  Palmer lunged forward, off balance just long enough for Peterson to pivot out of the way and brace his hands against Palmer’s shoulder and the small of his back. Then Peterson drove his weight forward and slammed Palmer into the Jetta and held him there. He kicked Palmer’s legs wide apart.

  “You good at anything?” Peterson asked, angling his head so Palmer could see the smile on his face. “If you’re done fighting, we can talk.”

  Palmer ground his teeth.

  “Or I could rabbit you in the kidneys,” Peterson said, “and leave you for the bouncer to find. It’s up to you, kid. One way or the other, I’m home before bedtime.”

  Palmer struggled a bit more then settled down.

  “We talking yet?” Peterson asked.

  Palmer nodded.

  “Good. Talking’s always the better part of valour.”

  Peterson guided Palmer to the black pickup and they both climbed in.

  “I’ll answer your questions,” Peterson said. “No hustle. Not on my part. How about you?”

  Palmer didn’t answer.

  Peterson shrugged. “All right, let’s try this on. You park out of sight at the Port City Motor Inn and count johns through the swinging door. Adding up the take. A hundred bills an hour. Six to eight hours a night. Beats the hell out of fishing. Price of fish falls, her value goes up. And what’s your cost? Sweet nothings and a belly full of little Daryll. Am I getting some of it right?”