The Asian man had settled himself in a prime watching position next to the stage, but all his attention was on his mobile which he thumbed intently. I scratched at the door of my memory for anything Niki might have told me about this guy. Gordon? Gordy? Something like that. I think she said he’d inherited the club from his uncle. He glanced up as a group of young men entered. They formed a huddle on the far side of the catwalk, their movements jerky and nervous, their laughter loud and forced. The girl on stage didn’t seem to register them. Gordon went back to his texting.
Chloe leaned over, tits swinging like udders, and placed my wine on the low table, then she dropped on to the adjacent sofa. She was holding what looked like a club soda that had probably cost me twenty bucks of feline protection.
She held out thin pale fingers for me to shake. ‘I’m Chloe, but I think I might have already told you that.’
I squeezed her fingers in what I presumed was a girly version of a handshake. They were surprisingly cold given the heat of the room.
Chloe started right in. ‘If you want a lap dance that’ll cost a hundred bucks and a VIP lap dance — that’s touching and stuff — costs a hundred and fifty. Or you can just buy ‘pussy dollars’ for the stage dancing, but it’s, you know, better for us if you want a lap dance. I’m really good at it but you don’t have to have me. You can pick any of the girls.’ Chloe smiled, her teeth and tiny panties flashing luridly.
‘Look, I’m sorry.’ I was feeling out of my depth. ‘I just want to talk to you. About a girl who used to work here. Her name was Niki. Niki Rowe.’
Chloe shrugged. ‘Okay. Whatever. That’ll cost fifty bucks for ten minutes and I won’t do more than ten minutes, okay?’ She crossed her legs, swinging one long limb over the other, and took a sip of her drink. She smiled again, apparently waiting for me to start.
‘Do you remember Niki? She worked here for about six months. She left about a year ago,’ I prompted her. ‘She was your age, maybe a bit older, and she looked, well, a bit like me only younger and prettier. Definitely smilier.’
Chloe’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. ‘Oh my gosh! You’re for real!’
Actually, right then, in that place, having that conversation, I was having serious doubts about that.
She giggled. ‘I thought you wanted me to talk dirty,’ she explained cheerfully. ‘You really want to talk, as in talk talk? Like conversation?’ She uncrossed her legs and leaned for her drink.
‘Ah, yeah. That would be good. Is that a problem?’
She took a sip, eyeing me across the top of her glass with those heavily made-up eyes. Her mascaraed lashes stuck together at the far corner of each eye. In an attempt to separate them she would squeeze her eyes shut and then open them wide. It gave her a peculiar, animated look. The things we women do …
‘No, that’s cool, but it still costs the same. I mean, I have to earn, okay?’
I nodded my agreement and took a sip of the red wine which immediately paint-stripped the roof off my mouth. I replaced the glass carefully, worried for the table.
‘I just want to find out about my sister Niki. She worked here until a year ago. She was killed. I want to find out about her — who she spent time with before she died.’
I kept my eyes on Chloe’s, doing my best to ignore the video on the wall behind her head where a girl wearing nothing but high heels was doing an act which involved flaming torches being passed between her legs. Either she’d had a Brazilian, or at some point she’d misjudged the flame action. Whatever the cause, she seemed intent on making sure the camera paid close attention to her hairlessness.
Chloe released tendrils of hair caught beneath her Alice band.
‘Oh, you mean Bonnie,’ she said. ‘We only ever use stage names here. It’s kind of like acting, you know?’ Chloe’s attention was wavering. Her finger twirled a strand of hair as her gaze drifted towards the dancer now swaying listlessly in front of a mirror at the end of the stage, her dreamlike absorption with her own image somehow touching and more intimate than anything else she’d done.
‘You knew Niki as Bonnie?’ I prompted, forcing Chloe’s attention back to me.
‘Yeah. She was a really cool chick. We got on great. And she was an excellent dancer. She made shit-loads on a good night. She liked to dance on stage, you know? Most of us don’t. The money’s not in it. I mean, look at those guys.’ She glowered at a row of men leaning against the stage.
The tableau of guys stood close together, shouldering each other in companionable aggression. They reminded me of cattle stamping and peering through the slats in an abattoir truck. I watched the dancer separate herself with reluctance from her own mirror image and turn back towards the herd of men. Leaning over to grasp her ankles she obligingly presented herself to them.
‘They pay their twenty bucks at the door then just perve at the girls,’ Chloe added with disdain.
It seemed an unreasonable complaint given what the dancer was doing right then, but before I could say anything in the guys’ defence, the music changed and a new dancer climbed on stage. This one wore a nipped-waist, soft cotton blouse and long, layered skirt that fell in feminine folds to below her knees. She was the only female in the room, apart from me, who had any actual clothes on. As she reached up to clasp the pole I noticed her feet were bare. In a room of women wearing nothing much more than shoes, those wriggling toes looked extremely naked. Instead of gyrating against the pole, she clasped it and climbed those little bare feet right up between her hands, her bronze ponytail falling back towards the stage, her skirt rucked up to reveal bikini pants.
She flipped and landed, giggling shyly towards the men who, as one, had reached to catch her fall. Caught in these beseeching gestures, they shuffled self-consciously and shoved hands in pockets or grabbed at their drinks. The drowning men drank deeply, their shoulders drooped in defeat. The dancer smiled at them and modestly rearranged her skirt.
‘Vex is brilliant, isn’t she?’ Chloe whispered, echoing a version of my thoughts. ‘She’s got quite a fan club. She only dances Tuesdays and Thursdays and those guys are here both nights.’
I noted a young man sitting alone near the far end of the stage. Unlike the others who might all have been contenders for Young Businessman of the Year, he was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, a suit jacket thrown on top, no doubt to get him past the dress-code police at the door. He was hunched over his beer glass and unlike every other punter seemed more interested in his drink than in the dancer.
‘What about him? Is he a regular?’
Chloe followed the direction of my gaze. ‘Oh, that’s Stoke. Funny you should ask about him actually because he was really close to Bonnie. Bonnie, Niki, whatever — your sister, I mean. He was totally into her.’
I studied his face, sure I’d seen him somewhere before. Now he too was watching the ponytailed dancer who’d abandoned the pole and was dancing to her own reflection in the mirror at the end of the stage. The buttons on her blouse had come undone as if by accident. Captured as she was by her own image, she seemed oblivious to her audience. The dazzling LED lights caught the copper and bronze highlights in her swinging ponytail. She looked like a young girl practising dance moves in the privacy of her bedroom. Somehow in this very public place she had managed to turn us all into secret voyeurs. This girl’s dance routine made me feel dirty.
I angled myself back towards Chloe. ‘How does it work here? Do you get paid by the dance or by the hour or what?’
‘Oh, no way. We have to pay to dance here. That’s why we hate it when punters just pay the door charge and then spend the night perving at us.’ She saw my look of confusion. ‘Gavin gets the door fee, except girl customers don’t pay a cover charge on ladies’ night, that’s tonight. We don’t get any of the door money.’
Gavin. That was right. The owner of the club was called Gavin.
Chloe counted the facts out on her fingers as if I was a slow learner. ‘And we have to pay Gavin two hundred bucks a
week to dance here.’ She lifted her eyebrows at me, possibly as a gesture of bewilderment or perhaps it was the mascara problem.
‘So how do you earn?’ Even as I heard myself ask the question I knew I sounded stupidly naive.
‘Well, the guys buy pussy dollars and they put that money in the dancer’s garter. Well, except Vex. The guys don’t get to touch her when she’s dancing. They have to put the money on the stage and she collects it at the end.’
At the mention of her we both turned back to the dancer now doing up the buttons on her blouse and giggling. Chloe took a sip of her drink and eyed me flatly before continuing.
‘But mostly, you know, we earn our money by lap dancing. Like I said before, there’s the ten, fifteen or twenty-minute no-touch lap dances. Most guys pay upfront for twenty minutes but only last five, if they’re lucky.’ She grinned. ‘Only two minutes if we’re lucky. There’s no refunds,’ she added, flicking the fringe from her eyes. ‘And then there’s the VIP lap dances that involve, like, touching, and we charge heaps for those, though Gavin gets a cut too, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed. I was totally out of my depth.
Chloe was warming to her role of teacher as she filled me in on the finer details of the commerce of sex. ‘I can make seven or eight hundred bucks a week, easy. That’s nearly all from lap dances though. The deal is we have to dance on the stage even though it doesn’t earn us much, because it’s kind of what the place is known for, and it brings the paying customers in. Then it’s up to us to get the punters to buy lap dances. It’s mostly regulars here, and they’re, you know, easy, really.’
This burst of animated discourse seemed to take it out of Chloe and she slumped back against the vinyl, peering at a lock of her hair for split ends. I sat back too, feigning casualness. The club was filling up with groups of men dressed in their best, their jaws shiny and abraded from recent shaves. It seemed touching that they wanted to make a good impression on these girls who were working the room now, leaning close, whispering, brushing against the men, touching them, and then withdrawing again.
‘And my sister — did she have regulars?’ I asked.
Seeing the real trade under way, Chloe was losing interest in me. ‘Sure. Like I said, she was real popular.’ She knocked back the last of her drink.
‘And would any of these regulars be pissed off if she told them she wasn’t going to do this any more? Like Gavin, the guy who owns this place. Would he have tried to stop Niki leaving?’
Chloe stood and adjusted her tiny panties with a snap. ‘Gavin? No way. He’s useless.’ She waved dismissively in his direction. ‘There was one guy,’ she added, tapping the nipple ring to bring it back to life. ‘Loads of money but, you know, a bit of an arsewipe, actually. He got totally obsessed with Bonnie. Wanted her all to himself, that kind of bullshit. She was a bit freaked by him, I think.’
My palms went sweaty and it wasn’t the heat. I stood but even my height was no match for Chloe’s heels.
‘Any idea of his name? How I could find him?’ I asked.
‘Richard … Browning? Brownlee? Something like that. He was into buildings but I don’t know in what way.’ Chloe held out those long, cool fingers for me to squeeze again. ‘He was a nutcase if you want my opinion,’ she said and smiled. I squeezed the offered fingers, resisting the urge to blow warm breath on them.
‘You’ve been a great help, Chloe. Thanks.’ I scrabbled in my wallet and handed her three twenty-dollar notes. She palmed the money and with a little finger wave, tottered off on her heels towards a man who’d just entered. He appeared to be saluting but was more likely shielding his eyes from the riddles of pulsing LED lights.
I made my way past the stage to where the guy Chloe had called Stoke still leaned. I was sure I recognised him, but still couldn’t figure out where from. He had a narrow canine face framed by shaggy auburn hair — maybe it was just his resemblance to Wolf that made him look familiar. He was hunched over, but he straightened as I drew near. I saw his jaw slacken in recognition. So he recognised me too. I was about to speak to him when someone tapped me on the arm. I turned and was handed my coat by a completely naked girl with a radiant smile. I had to fight the urge to wrap the coat around her. By the time I’d turned back, Stoke was gone.
Standing this close to the stage, I could see fine blonde hairs on the legs of ponytail girl who was still dancing on the catwalk. Actually she was skipping with a wooden-handled skipping rope. The smell of male sweat and aftershave swamped me and suddenly I needed to leave. Quickly. I pushed through the stamping, jostling males towards the exit.
At the door I glanced back; the punters all wore the tragic expressions of drowning men surfacing for their final breath. They were real sirens these girls, luring the guys to the depths. I caught one last glimpse of the ponytailed girl on stage. She seemed to be looking in my direction, her lips parted in a china doll’s smile.
CHAPTER 5
The cool night air hit me like an avalanche. I hunkered into my coat, grateful for the excuse to hug myself. I’d finally had a glimpse into Niki’s world and what I’d seen didn’t make me feel that great. The Bookends were still there, filling the entranceway, shoulder to shoulder now, stamping their feet and puffing their breaths into the cold air. Separated from the herd, they looked bored and adrift. Politely, they made room for me to pass between them.
Tall though I am, their shared bulk dwarfed me. Feeling dwarfed doesn’t happen to me a lot. Obviously, standing eye to eye with a woman didn’t happen to them a lot either. I plucked out the little notepad I always carry with me and flipped it open.
‘I’m investigating the death of James Patrick Wilson,’ I said, consulting my notepad. ‘Also known as Snow.’ What I read was not Snow’s alias but a shopping list I’d been meaning to do something about for days, but they couldn’t see that. ‘What can you tell me about the guy? He spent a lot of time here?’ I gave the ballpoint an authoritative click, keeping my manner relaxed and confident, just like every cop I’d ever known. The Bookends glanced their suspicion at each other but my height and demeanour seemed to convince them I was the real thing. Or maybe it was my ballpoint pen action. The bigger of the two hunched his shoulders towards me.
‘Yeah, Snow spent time here. He hung out with the girls a bit.’
‘Any girls in particular?’ I kept my eyes on the pad.
The talkative Bookend shrugged, making his neck disappear like a turtle’s. ‘Vex, maybe,’ he said, his eyes darting to his partner for confirmation. The partner was eyeing me closely. I wrote ‘Snow’ and drew an arrow towards ‘Vex’. From the look of the big guy it was just a matter of time before he told the chatty one to shut up. I got straight to the point.
‘What about …’ I flipped through pages of domestic lists and GST workings, pretending to look for my own sister’s name. ‘Niki … Niki Rowe. Working name Bonnie. You see Snow with her a lot?’
The Bookends looked at each other. The talkative one tapped his forehead and chest in a sketchy attempt at crossing himself. ‘She’s dead. Bonnie died about a year ago.’
‘Yeah, we got that,’ I said, sounding as much like a cynical cop as I could.
‘You look like her,’ the silent one said. ‘Like Bonnie. You’re her sister, eh?’
I smiled weakly, feeling pretty dumb now.
‘She talked about you a lot. She was real proud,’ the quieter one said and he put a hand the size of a dinner plate on my arm. My guess is, in another place, another time, he was one of those guys who could lumber up the sideline with a footy clapped in one hand like it was a tennis ball. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to Bonnie. She was a real nice girl,’ he added. He may have been a well brought up, polite, Christian boy, but the wet eyes were for real. I felt mine well up in response.
Before I could say anything, the glass doors behind us slid open and the small Asian man, Gavin, the club owner, stepped out, surrounded by a miasma of smoke. I shoved the notepad back in my pocket. The Booken
d took his paw from my arm, first giving it a friendly squeeze, increasing the size of the bruise Gemma had inflicted. Gavin walked right up to me, which, given the height difference, wasn’t a good idea on his part.
When he tilted his head to speak, he seemed to recognise his disadvantage and took a step back, flapping his hands in a histrionic gesture.
‘What you want? This business. Dancing business, not talking business. You go away now. I don’t want trouble.’
I would have moved off without a fight but he made a shooing gesture, and being shooed is not something I like. I closed the space between us, towering over him.
‘Well, you’ve got trouble, mate,’ I said, ‘because my little sister worked here and she was murdered by one of your heavies. Now that heavy’s been killed too.’
‘Not my heavy. Snow not my heavy. I only hire Asian heavy,’ he informed me with surprising candour. He indicated the Bookends who had resumed their default positions either side of the door. ‘These guys big. They look good to punters. They stop fight before it happen.’ The Bookends straightened their shoulders in pride. ‘But they’re no good for real jobs. I use Asian heavies for real jobs.’
I may not be a fabulous judge of character, but I was pretty sure Gavin was telling me the truth.
‘Snow not Asian,’ he added helpfully and then made that shooing gesture again. ‘You go away now. You’re no good for business. You scare off punters.’
With that he turned, the doors slid open, and like a magician in a tacky stage show he disappeared into the smoke. Despite him, despite the place, despite the realisation that this had been Niki’s life, I laughed.
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