“To a car?” Tom asked.
The wino shrugged. “One pulled out a couple seconds later, in a hurry. Could have been her.”
“Did you get a make on it?
“I didn’t see. Hell, I wasn’t gonna hang around till she spotted me. Pistol packing Mama? I could be laying there same as him. I ducked into a doorway till she disappeared, then I lit out for the club, told ‘em to call the cops, there was a dead man out here.”
§ § § § §
“Had to be our girl,” Stanley said.
“Jesus, we must have just missed her,” Tom said. “This couldn’t have happened more than ten, fifteen minutes after we left.”
He paused on their way into the club. The dyke was still at the front table, the Little House on the Prairie standing with her, an uncomfortable looking uniform keeping an eye on them.
“This is the manager,” the uniform said, indicating the ruffles.
“We want the surveillance tapes,” Tom said, glancing at the camera overhead. “For the last week, too.
And we want to talk to your hostess, Lola.”
She sent the door dyke for the tapes. “And tell Lola she’s got visitors,” she added.
Lola was waiting for them at a table. The only occupied one by this time. She gave them a wary look as they walked up.
“I knew you two were cops,” she said first thing.
“Yeah, well, if you were so sure of that, why’d you lie to us about the picture, the drag queen.”
“Transgender, to you.”
“Yeah, whatever. You knew her, right?” Tom said.
“Tanya? I wasn’t sure,” Lola said. “It looked like her, kind of. I wanted to talk to her first.”
“And?” Tom prompted him.
“And, she swore it wasn’t her. She said she hadn’t done anything to the John.”
“So you recognized the guy, too?” Stanley said.
Lola gave him a look both resentful and embarrassed. “I wasn’t sure,” she said again. “Do you know how many people you see in this place on an average night? It looked like someone she’d picked up, a few nights ago. But I didn’t pay him that much attention, you know. It was just another transaction. Not to mention, it’s dark in here, unless you’re standing toe to toe with someone, it’s hard to see them real clear. Some of these guys, that’s a blessing, but he wasn’t too bad. Kind of cute, actually.”
“The girls aren’t supposed to be hustling here,” the manager said, giving her a grim frown. “That’s one of the rules.”
“Oh, sure,” Lola said, her voice dripping. “Did you look around when you were in here?” she asked Stanley. “If a guy was stag, one of the entertainers was trying to sit on his lap. That’s how we spent our time between numbers, hustling the customers. So, sure, sometimes people made dates. I mean, do you have any idea what the lousy pay is in this dump? If you can pick up a few bucks on the side, well, what’s the harm?”
“You won’t have to worry about the lousy pay in the future,” the manager said. Lola shot her a furious look.
“Was Tanya on the payroll?” Stanley asked. He wasn’t interested in their private quarrel.
“No. She was just hanging around,” the manager said.
“You let people just hang around? Freelancers?” Stanley asked. “Doesn’t that kind of get in the way of the regulars?”
“I had no clue she was picking customers up,” the manager said.
Lola snorted her disdain. “Right.”
“If she did, it was nothing to do with us. If I’d caught her at it, I’d have kicked her ass out for it. We run a legitimate night club.”
Lola snorted again.”Anyway,” she said, “Tanya told me she hadn’t even charged the guy. She said it was a freebie.”
“Probably was, the way it played out.” Tom said. “The poor sucker was dead before his credit card went through.”
In the end, though, there wasn’t much more that Lola could tell them about Tanya. “She just showed up,”
she said. “One night I’d never seen her and the next night here she was. She got friendly with a couple of the girls. She was a good mixer, you know what I mean? I thought she’d probably do okay here. I mean, she could talk to guys. She looked a little cheap, a little over done, but there’s guys that like that, you know?”
“Why do you suppose that is?” Tom wondered aloud.
“Oh, get real.” She lifted an eyebrow at him and smirked in Stanley’s direction. “He is straight, isn’t he?”
“Too,” Stanley said, smiling back.
“He didn’t do that, did he?” She nodded toward the arm in the sling.
Stanley shook his head. “He’s a gentle giant.”
Lola looked at him a minute longer, like she was about to ask him something more, but she thought better of it. She said to Tom, in a tediously patient voice, “The guys who come here know the score. I mean, they know it’s a drag club, right? For them, that’s part of the thrill. It doesn’t matter if a girl doesn’t look exactly like a real woman, because they know from the git-go that she isn’t. Sometimes, it’s better if that’s obvious right up front.”
“Somebody to feel superior to,” Stanley said.
Lola nodded. “You said it. Everybody likes to think they’re better than somebody else. With these Johns, it made it easier for them if a guy was wearing a dress and makeup, but the bottom line for a lot of them was that, hey, it’s still just a queer.”
“Which they aren’t,” Stanley said.
“Exactly. That’s their excuse. If it was a guy, in a shirt and trousers, and they picked him up for a blow job, well, that would be homo stuff. Not that they wouldn’t let him do it, or enjoy it, these dudes are queer enough for that—but the chances are, they’d want to beat the shit out of him afterward. You hear about queers getting killed, ninety percent of the time, it’s after someone got his rocks off, not before. Closet cases have a lot of shit locked up inside them, like dynamite. You can never be sure when it’s going to explode.
Most of the girls carry protection, you know. A knife, or a gun, some pepper spray, at least. You’d be surprised how often that kind of thing happens.”
“But, put a skirt on the queen, and the John is doing it with a woman, sort of. And if she actually looks more like a drag queen than a real woman, well, they get to have it both ways, don’t they? They’re not queer, and the guy lapping their balls is.”
“Did this Tanya ever talk about herself?” Tom asked.
“Not really. We don’t exchange a lot of personal information here. It’s better that way. You start talking about how you’ve really got a wife and two kids to support, you lose the illusion. That’s what this is all about, for everybody—illusion. Otherwise, what would be the point?”
“A wife and two kids? These guys are straight?” Tom asked.
Everyone looked surprised at him. “I’ve got a wife at home,” Lola said. “And two kids.”
“Drag and gay are two different things,” Stanley said. “Some straight guys like to dress up. Some gays don’t.”
“Oh,” Tom said. He was thinking yet again that it was a good thing after all that Stanley was working this case with him. There was a lot he didn’t know about shit like this.
§ § § § §
“So, what do you think?” Tom asked when they were outside again. He was beginning to regard Stanley as a real partner and not as an unfair burden he’d been saddled with.
If Stanley noticed the difference in his attitude, he took no note of it. “I think it’s time we visited the Boom Boom Room. I want to talk to Acheson again. And Gaye Dawn. There’s something… I don’t know what, something I can’t put my finger on.”
Tom thought of the blonde waiting at home. By now she’d be asleep. If she was still there. He hadn’t even gotten his load off. Thinking about her, thinking about finishing what he’d started earlier, his balls kind of ached. At the moment, he’d probably have let Tanya swing on his rod if she was handy.
; It was kind of pathetic, what hot nuts could do to a guy.
“Right,” he said, with no great enthusiasm.
§ § § § §
It was late, though. Gaye Dawn, they were informed, was already in her dressing room, her performances over for the night.
“And she doesn’t like to be bothered,” the hostess told them.
Tom flashed his badge. “Tell her we’d like to bother her all the same.”
She gave him the once over. “You probably will,” she said.
“Where’s Acheson?” Stanley said.
She nodded her head toward the rear. “He’s at the bar.”
They found him washing glasses and talking across the bar to a woman. A damned attractive woman, Tom thought: dark hair with a funky white stripe down the middle, bangs spilling over her brow. And big tits, obviously braless. He was partial to big tits. And women who went braless. He was especially partial to the combination.
“You remember Moira,” Acheson introduced her. “My wife.”
“I don’t think,” Tom started to say.
“Ex-wife,” she said, studying them. “You’re the cops. At the apartment building. That’s new, though.”
She indicated the sling. Stanley was beginning to wish he’d left the sling at home.
“You’re the sunglasses,” he said.
“Ah.” Tom nodded. The first time, when they’d met her outside Acheson’s apartment, it had been hard to tell much about her—an enormous hat, he remembered, that had shaded her face, loose, kind of floppy clothes, and the sunglasses Stanley had mentioned, that he saw now had hidden a pair of large, smoldering dark eyes, checking him out in frank appraisal, the way a woman looks a man over when she’s considering the possibilities. He remembered the voice, though: throaty, seductive. A blow job kind of voice. King Kong took note of it, too.
Stanley observed all this with an odd sense of alarm. He saw a little light turn on in Tom’s eyes, like someone inside had struck a match, and he realized Tom was attracted to her. More than just attracted. He looked like he wanted to jump her right there. He was almost leering. Stanley half expected him to do a Groucho Marx roll of his eyes and flick some ashes off an imaginary cigar.
What could cause a man to make such a fool of himself, he wondered in some annoyance? He looked at Moira himself with new interest, trying to see her the way Tom did.
She was beautiful, he supposed, or had the look that could easily enough pass for beautiful, when she meant for it to. The hair, maybe styled just a little young for her, emphasized feline eyes. Her whole face was cat-like, oval, small mouthed—and just as predatory, he thought. She wore a bit too much makeup and managed somehow to make it exotic rather than tacky, and she wore a loose tunic of oyster colored silk that didn’t interfere in any way with the jiggle of her breasts.
He thought, really, that, as much as he despised her, Gaye Dawn was prettier. Tom didn’t look at Gaye that way, though. Knowing what was underneath the trimmings made a difference, apparently. For Tom, anyway. Stanley decided that he liked Moira even less than Gaye. Which was going some.
Tom was having no such conflict, obviously. He had moved unconsciously closer, claiming space. He stopped chewing on his gum and smiled, one of those rare smiles of his that made Stanley think of the sun breaking through on an overcast day. For once Stanley was not happy to see Old Mister Sun.
“How could I forget you?” Tom said.
“Brain damage?” Stanley suggested, feeling none too pleased with the way this was going, and kind of sorry he didn’t have a cast on his arm. He could imagine cracking Tom in the head with it.
Oddly, Moira looked hardly any more pleased by Tom’s compliment. “Excuse me,” she said, frowning, no longer looking Tom up and down. She got off her bar stool. “I’ve got an engagement.”
“I thought you wanted to talk,” Acheson said, holding up a pair of soapy glasses.
“Some other time,” she said, and moved away from them, elbowing her way through the still thick crowd.
“Nice walk,” Tom said, watching her silk clad rear sway provocatively. At a guess, he’d bet she didn’t wear any panties, either. Interesting woman.
“Not once her legs are broken,” Stanley muttered. Neither of them seemed to hear him, they were both still watching Moira disappear into the crowd.
“So what can I do for you guys?” Acheson asked, bringing his attention back to them.
Stanley thought about how Peter had described him: Jake the Fake. He had looked at his ex-wife as if he were still in love with her. Or in lust. Not so different from the way Tom had stared after her swinging butt.
The difference was, Acheson looked at Gaye Dawn the same way too, a lot. A man conflicted in his desires, obviously.
Conflicted enough to kill someone?
“We thought maybe you might have remembered something,” Stanley said. Tom was still staring after Moira. Stanley poked him with his elbow, none too gently, to get his attention.
“Such as?” Acheson asked.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. Something about the murderer, or about Hartman. Maybe something came up while you were in bed later.”
“Something did come up in bed later,” Acheson said with a lewd sort of chuckle. It came across forced and artificial, like a man shadow boxing. “But you probably don’t want to hear about that.”
“You didn’t know Hartman, right?” Tom said. “Except to watch him perform?”
“Right,” Acheson said, his expression wary. He concentrated on washing the bar glasses, dipping two of them into soapy water, into more-or-less clean rinse water, onto a rack. Two more, soapy water, rinse...
“Never visited him at his apartment?” Stanley said. “Say, to borrow some cream? For your coffee, I mean?”
Acheson sighed and stopped dipping, wiped his hands on a funky towel. “Okay, I knew you’d find out about that sooner or later.”
“It’s what we do,” Stanley said. “We’re detectives. Well, he’s the detective, I’m just the little Missus.” Tom scowled at him but Stanley pretended he didn’t see. He figured he owed him for Moira. “So, you want to tell us about you and Hartman?”
“There isn’t much to tell. Honest. It wasn’t like we had a hot romance going.”
“But you had something going? How would you describe it?”
“I sucked his dick. One time.”
“That’s romantic enough for me,” Stanley said. “Just one time?”
“I saw him come in late one night. For once, he was alone. Gaye was working, and I was at home, and it occurred to me, Hartman might be horny. I mean, he got it pretty regular, so I knew he had a really strong sex drive, and there was that Super Chief, you know. So, I caught him before he got inside, asked him straight out if he wanted it taken care of. He wasn’t all that enthusiastic—I saw him look at my door and I thought probably he’d have preferred Gaye, but he said okay. You know what it’s like when you’re wanting something and there’s nobody else around, even the mailman starts looking good. So we went inside and we did it.
That’s all it was, though, no kisses, no sweet nothings. We didn’t even go into the bedroom. We stayed in the front hall, just inside the door. He whipped it out and stood there while I got on my knees and got him off.
We didn’t even hardly talk. He said, thanks, I think, when it was over, and that was it, not even good night.
That’s all there was, honest. I didn’t say anything before when you guys were there because I knew Gaye would have a fit.”
“We heard you were there more than once,” Tom said.
Acheson reddened a little and cleared his throat. “It’s kind of embarrassing. I went over another time when I knew he was home by himself, offered a repeat, but he turned me down, said I wasn’t his type. Said why didn’t I send my girlfriend over some time. The prick.”
“I think that’s an appropriate word,” Stanley said.
“Okay, what about him?” Tom said. “What about
Gaylord. Maybe he can tell us something.”
Acheson’s eyes widened and his expression turned angry. “You think Gaye was fooling around with Hartman?”
“Jesus, don’t act so huffy,” Stanley said. “You never heard of sauce for the goose?”
“Gaye swears to me there hasn’t been anyone else since we got together.”
“What do you swear to her?” Stanley asked.
He studied Acheson hard. Peter had said Acheson was attractive. He couldn’t see it, though. He was probably, when he was in his teens, what people might have called “pretty,” but he was too far past his teens now. His hair was just starting to thin. He’d used one of those thickeners on it, which just made it look artificial. At a glance, you could have mistaken it for a hairpiece. A wide slash of a mouth had grown too thin, like he’d frowned too much, and deep set dark eyes were surely harder, more cynical, now than they had been when he was young. He looked like a man disappointed with the world. Or angry at it.
Or was it only the timing that was off, Stanley wondered? His eyes flicked briefly in Tom’s direction. His good looks were so robust, so powerful, they tended to eclipse other men. Maybe, Stanley thought, if I had met Acheson before Tom… he looked at Acheson again. But, no, not really, he didn’t think so.
“Gaye’s in her dressing room,” Acheson said in a sullen voice. “She doesn’t like being disturbed there.”
“So we’ve heard,” Stanley said, “but she lets you in, right? Why don’t you take us back there?”
Acheson looked at him for a moment, uncertain. He gave them a shrug and walked down the bar to talk to another man there. They chatted for a moment and both of them looked at Stanley and Tom. The other man nodded, and Acheson came back to them and motioned toward the end of the bar.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He led them to a doorway curtained with cheap plastic beads that glittered in the shifting light. Beyond it, a corridor led past closed doors and one open on a communal dressing room where a dozen or more men in various stages of undress chatted and giggled. Someone whistled as they went by.
Gaye Dawn’s dressing room was at the end of the hall, with a red sequined star on it. Acheson rapped on it with his knuckles
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