by Peter Manus
And thus I approach the killing of Rocco Petrianni, owner of Rocco’s – A Gentlemen’s Club, with some trepidation. It is not that Elliot Becker had caused me to question my resolve. But I come to my second kill looking for some confirming gesture. As you will see, I was in luck to have selected Rocco for this moment of affirmation.
For two weeks, even as I set my plans in place for Elliot and my other targets, I spend some of these choice evenings observing Rocco from the shadows of his bar, my wig askew, fingers palsying against my cigarette as I affect the persona of the self-loathing female lush. During this time I fourrage into his mind multiple times, but there is only one message Rocco emits—he is an unequivocal man, all told. A misogynist, certainly, and akin to Elliot in that way, but in this instance it is not borne of insecurity and yearning; Rocco is au fond distinct from his predecessor in that he yearns for nothing. He is exactly what he wants to be, and, more amazingly, he is aware of this. He thrives on cruelty, which he recognizes as the essence of masculinity and thus his birthright. His life, as such, is at once content and restless, his psyche at peace yet violent. But he is not devoid of wile, and in his aversion to those different from he, he is naturally both predatory and wary at all times. I wonder, slipping into his club through the employee entrance on the afternoon following Elliot’s final flirtation, exactly how the dispatch of Rocco will proceed. A killer must stay loose, you see—the need to improvise will arise without question. I harbor no doubt, however, that I will accomplish my goal within the hour.
Emerging silently into the near-deserted bar, I find myself standing only yards behind Rocco himself. He sits sipping a blanc cassis. I settle an elbow against the bar and slip into Rocco’s mind as he takes in the room. He has recently redone the place, I learn. Purple lighting. Sculptured carpet. Bucket-style chairs with an ox-blood leather finish. There are six glittering poles on the stage, which itself has been widened and can easily accommodate eight girls. Strings of minuscule lights rim the dance area, which is backed by a coruscating curtain of ruby and silver. And everything—stage, bar, all the furnishings—is trimmed in glossy mahogany. “A spectacle of excess.” That was the phrase Rocco had kept in mind for the redesign, and he has achieved it. Last night some of the Cs had been in from Boston; one of them began tossing dollars at the stage and then others joined, their massive brown hands throwing bills until money was churning in the air like confetti. Rocco had six of his best girls out there, slipping on the bills, cramming them into their G-strings and bras. No fights, no injuries. Just a damned good time. Making a regional name for Rocco’s.
He observes a group of young men just entering across the expanse. College softies, Rocco thinks, their jeans drooping, visors crested just so. Douchebags groping for some manhood. Rocco feels his spirits lift. Been a grind of a week for everyone. He taps a couple of fingers on the bar to get Pauly’s attention.
Late afternoon, he has just the new girl on. He suspects she might be underage, although the broads are putting braces on their teeth at all ages these days. She amuses herself and the couple of barflies watching her by languidly swinging her dimpled legs around one of the poles, rolling her head so that her yellow corkscrew locks cover her face, and throwing in the occasional squat to show how far her thong cuts into her cheeks. She is part of the decor. The frat boys are settled along one of the banquettes now, if puds like them can “settle” anywhere. They call out for a “rub and tug” and “some tail.” Rocco throws a glance over at Lenny, who flashes a quick grin. Lenny is a mixed martial artist with professional fighting experience. He enjoys the opportunity to flex.
One of the waitresses, a henna-haired tramp well past her lap dance years, heads over to take an order and maybe hint that it might be a good idea to tone it the hell down. Whatever she says, it does not do the trick. One of them starts yelling: “Tell me that I’m pretty, honey! Tell me I’m pretty!” Much cackling from the others. The boys order, then a couple approach the stage, pulling out their wallets. Rocco hears one of them giggle something about “all that slutty goodness up there.” Encouraged, Goldilocks puts a little hip into her gyrations. Some of the regulars smirk in anticipation as Lenny saunters closer.
Party begins when one pretty boy goes to stick a twenty in Goldilocks’s thong. Although this is commonly done, and without fail by newcomers to strip joints, the house rule is that patrons do not touch the girls. Sure enough, Pretty Boy flicks the twenty and Goldilocks swivels her way over, then squats so that he can shove the thing under her elastic. Pretty Boy does not quite make contact when Len gets his attention, moving behind him with his arms crossed. A conversation follows which ends with Pretty Boy tossing the bill onto the stage, where Goldilocks snatches it like a dog at a cookie. Pretty Boy heads back to his table, shouldering past Lenny with just enough contact to bump the other man sideways. Or so Lenny makes it appear.
As Rocco watches, he feels my presence behind him. He glances around and is surprised to see that I am a woman. Rocco usually notices when a woman enters the place. He nudges forward, assuming that I am seeking to pass by him.
Lenny has sauntered over to the rowdies. Rocco watches as Pretty Boy gestures with his beer glass. What’s coming is predictable.
“Mr. Petrianni?” I say from behind him. I lay some Eastern Europe into my accent.
He tilts his head my way, then turns when I speak no further. I wait, my eyes without expression. Rocco is not fond of women with attitude. He hitches himself up a notch on his stool, letting me know that I have as much of his attention as I am going to get.
“I am from Tuscany Champagnes,” I say. “You were expecting me, I trust?”
Rocco hears rattling glass and turns his head. Lenny’s got one of the dope’s heads pressed against a table. A bottle has toppled, and beer pools against the kid’s face. Rocco snaps his fingers and Pauly throws a bar towel over.
Rocco swings round on his barstool. He absorbs what there is to see: my turtleneck sweater tucked into tight pants, cinched at the waist by a thick suede belt. Tits rather inauspicious, hips round, but long legs that make up for whatever my flaws may be. The pants disappear into a pair of boots. When he raises his eyes to my face, he reads something other than what he expects. I look, for lack of a better word, patient. Eyeballing women is what men do, my expression says, and so we will begin conversing when the inventory has been concluded. My lips are painted a deep brown. My hair is auburn, pulled back smoothly and rolled into a French twist. Quite the fucking get-up, Rocco thinks.
“Excuse me,” he says. He walks across the carpet. “Look, son,” he says, gripping the kid’s shoulder. “You want to stay, have a few drinks, watch the girls, sit your ass down and enjoy. If that doesn’t suit you, you’ll need to leave.”
“What are you, funny?” Pretty Boy stands, and Rocco’s hand on his shoulder is now reaching upward. The kid’s got arms, too, which apparently has bred him some confidence.
“I’m a regular riot, most days,” Rocco says tersely in answer. “But right now I advise you to take me very seriously.”
Pretty Boy does not look scared, Rocco gives him that, as he casts about for how to salvage some of his self-esteem. Rocco does not wait for it. He drag-flips the clown over the table to land flat on his back on the carpet. It’s loud and messy and takes about five seconds. Rocco straddles him, his feet spaced wide across the other man’s chest. Action’s over—Rocco actually heard his shoulder dislocate—but Rocco leans forward and looks him in the eye.
“Know your place,” he says in a tight, quiet voice.
The guy’s cap has fallen off, and Rocco is slightly surprised to see floppy curls where he would have expected a buzz. Rocco stands up and steps off him in one tight motion. All this happens so quickly that the guy’s friends are only starting in with predictable shrills of “What the fuck?” Pauly and Lenny take over as Rocco heads to the exit, then holds it open as the twits get tumbled into the evening. Just before reentering, Rocco scans the parking lot. His eye grazes
a car where a man with a goatee sits smoking behind the wheel, watching the scene with an affect of detachment as he taps cigarette ash across the rim of his open window. The car is an old model Mercedes, maroon in color. Rocco goes eye-to-eye with the man and gets an unpleasant vibe. He does not dwell on that fact. Lots of types visit strip clubs.
He reenters the club and walks toward the stairs to his office. He is not a man to gloat. Problem solved, he moves on. Someone, however, is standing in his path as he makes his way toward the dark end of the bar—oh, yeah, it’s the chick in the Zsa Zsa Gabor getup who says she’s selling champagne.
“Excuse the wait,” he says.
“No matter. I am a representative of Tuscany Champagnes, as I stated earlier. We would like to add our newest malt beverages to your inventory, along with our signature champagnes. These fine new products are all offered at introductory prices.” I extend my hand, a business card between my index and third fingers. My nails are thickly lacquered in a rich brown polish, whimsically dubbed Deathwish.
Rocco eyes me, ignoring the card. He thinks he knows what this is about and that I am no saleswoman, but he decides to string me along. “You got promos with you, I suppose?”
I smile briefly and lift my bulky sky-blue case, but I do not rest it on the bar. “Perhaps you will allow me to describe as you sample? Somewhere quiet? I would very much appreciate an opportunity to get to know your particular tastes, Mr. Petrianni,” I say. “I am most certain that I can deliver whatsoever it shall take to satisfy you.”
Rocco almost smiles. Why do women with shit English always talk like they are in a porno, he wonders? Do they not get what they are saying, or do they get it exactly, and is this simply the way they've learned to deal with men where they come from? He suspects it’s the latter.
He leads me behind the bar and along the backstage corridor. Goldilocks is sitting on a folding chair, peering listlessly into the smudged reflection she casts in a little music player she has got balanced on her thighs while she uses two fingernails to pry at a pimple on her forehead. We can hear the whispery beat of a pop tune. When she sees Rocco she stands up quick, then throws back her hair so as to smile down her cheeks at him. Her face is brushed heavily with makeup, which contrasts oddly with the soft plump of untouched flesh under her chin. Her lips are thick with cherry gloss, a bit of which has smeared. That and the braces make her look about sixteen. Sweat trickles from her pits, staining her spangly bra.
“Afternoon, Mr. Petrianni,” she slurs.
He tilts an eye at her. “What’s your name again?”
She flushes. “Donnalinda. Donnalinda Tonite. But I can change it if—”
He reaches out and cups her face with his hand, pressing a thumb into one soft cheek and his fingers into the other. “How old are you, Donnalinda?”
She pauses, blinking. It occurs to Rocco that there is a possibility that she honestly does not know the answer to his question.
“I want you to leave, Donnalinda,” he says. “I don’t want to see you again until you can show Mr. Lenny some proof you’re twenty-one.” He squeezes her face. “Understand?”
He does not glance at me as we climb a narrow pack of stairs to his office. Rocco walks round behind his desk. Fishing out his cigarettes, he watches as I carefully close the door behind me. It is a large room, its walls covered in flimsy paneling, the floor laid with carpet that looks a decade past expiration. The single sash window overlooks a stretch of flat roof. My eyes rest momentarily on the doors to the closet, sliders that reveal some cases of liquor piled atop a safe. My eye does not pause again, as he watches me, until my gaze reaches the bathroom door. It is partially open, making it clear from where I stand that there is nothing in there but toilet and sink. We are alone. He sees that this satisfies me, but does not guess why.
“One of these?” he says, offering a pack of Chesterfields when my eyes return to him.
“Not for me, but I hope you will indulge,” I say in my accent.
He laughs. “Thanks for the permission. So what you got for me, Miss, uh…” Here he makes a show of examining my card, “Nightingale. What’s the F for?” He winks across at me, making it clear that he is onto me.
“The F is for Flora,” I tell him, then smile. “A pretty name, yes?”
“Why don’t we get started, Flora?” he interrupts. “I’m running a business.”
My smile tightens. I heft my case onto his desk, then pop the latches. “I thought we would try a champagne. You seem like a champagne man.”
“So where you from?” he says. “Russia or something?”
I polish a glass with a handkerchief. “Not Russia, no. My people were originally from Turkmenistan, but I have been in the States for quite some years. I speak well?”
“Sure, sure. Figured you for a local,” he taunts me.
I place the two glasses on his desk and begin twisting the wire off a small bottle of champagne. I pop the cork and cast a critical eye at the waft of gas that drifts from the bottle’s lip. “This one is my favorite of the three. Sells briskly everywhere it is carried.”
He sips the champagne, his eyes on me.
“You see?” I encourage him. “Attractive undertones.”
“Beautiful,” he says. “So how’s the poppy trade back home?”
I stop momentarily, then move my hand over to a thin liquor bottle made of frosted white glass, busying myself with its stopper. “There is much opium coming out of Afghanistan. I know a girl who carried product into the States for a certain Boston businessman. Very risky, but she received good money.” I present the uncorked bottle. “Speaking of smuggled pleasures, this is Arak. In my country we call it ‘milk of lions.’ Mostly it is drunk by men, but here your women do as they like.” I nod encouragingly. “Can I pour…?”
He sniffs and touches at his moustache. “Let’s get to the point. You peddling dope?”
I stop, my hand holding a couple of chunky snifters. The Arak sways and shimmers in its bottle. “You flatter me, Mr. Petrianni.”
“How so?”
“The girls who do this, they are quite young—eighteen, twenty, no more.”
He continues to stare me down. “Are you offering trade or not?”
I hesitate, then tilt the Arak bottle over one of the glasses. “Let us enjoy what I have brought and speak of it only, shall we?”
Rocco stands up, reaches across the desk, and grabs me by the wrist, hard. “Damned straight you’re not offering trade,” he says in a calm, dead voice. “Because if an undercover cop offers drug trade, that’s enticement, and you can’t make the charge stick.”
I look down at his hand gripping my wrist for a drawn-out moment. I do not try to free myself. I think about his interesting misinterpretation of my drop-dead perfect Jeanne Moreau—so I am a cop, now? Well, as I always say, you never can tell what you will stir up when you fourrage in a man’s head. I raise my eyes to his. “In truth, Mr. Petrianni, I was a courier for two years, while in my twenties. I did not like it then. I would not go back to that life now.”
He studies me for a moment, then, quite suddenly, yanks me closer, half across the desk, in fact. I cry out softly even as my free hand shoots out to prevent the Arak bottle from toppling.
“Your accent’s slipping,” he says. “Time to come clean.”
I think about it, my breathing audible, then swallow hard and nod. Without bringing attention to it, I cork the Arak bottle. “Whatevah,” I say in my best Southie accent. “But let go the arm, huh? I’m not a cop, but if you fuck with me I know a few ain’t gonna like it much.”
He shakes his head and pulls my arm even closer, so that I am dragged fully onto his desk, my feet off the floor, my shoulders awkwardly twisted. I cry out involuntarily from the pain. It is all I can do to keep from knocking the precious bottle of Arak to the floor. “Look, shithead, what is this getting you?” I manage to gasp out. “You made me, I admitted it. Game over. Now get your fucking mitts off of me.”
“What’s
the scam?” He spits the word directly into my face, then shows me a raised finger of warning. “If you say you sell fancy booze for a living I’ll break your wrist, then ask again.” He pauses to let me get used to the idea that I am about to tell the truth. Then he proceeds in a calm, friendly tone. “Now, who are you and why are you here?”
I nod at him, eye to eye as if I am truly frightened. “Name’s Nightingale, like I said. Flo Nightingale. I’m a private detective, right? Not a cop. Not working with no cops. I don’t know about no drug trade or why you think the cops are into you. I swear t’Gad, right? Swear t’Gad.”
Rocco narrows his eyes. He believes me. Still, he enjoys holding me there, against my will, off balance and under his control. “You wearing a wire, Flo Nightingale?”
I shake my head. “It’s just you and me, lover.”
Again, he believes me, but he decides to check for himself. Adjusting his grip on my arm, he leans across the desk and feels around at my sweater, gripping each of my breasts, poking his fingers into my armpits, then running his palm down my side and directly to my crotch, which he grips harder than necessary. I utter a muffled cry and twist my face away, as if humiliated. Satisfied, he reaches up and feels around my ears, then notices that my hair, still in its elegant bun, is askew. He yanks off the wig and I grimace as the pins pull at my actual hair. He laughs at the idea of a PI wearing a wig, then leans back to assess the real me. He likes my hair, which is parted on the side in a classic boy cut, dyed in streaks. He softens his grip, just a touch, without realizing it. I am not some snotty European after all. I'm a scrappy local tomboy. He almost likes me. Still, that will not stop him from kicking my teeth in if the conversation goes sour.