Once Upon a Grind

by Cleo Coyle

  “When I think of the men I’ve served up to that girl over the years! Doctors. Lawyers. College professors. Accountants. Even a city planner. And who does she pick? A Brooklyn rapper who bakes bread!”

  “She hasn’t picked him yet,” I pointed out.

  “True. And I hate to admit it, but those two belong together.”

  “I agree.”

  “I’ll work on my sister at this end, try to straighten her out—not that she’s ever taken my advice, mind you. But you better tell Boris to stay away. If he comes up here, she’ll feel pressured and you know what happens to things under pressure. They blow!”

  “I’ll make Boris understand. But I still need to speak with your sister. It’s imperative, and it’s not about Boris.”

  “Esther’s not here. She took my kids to the Cheesecake Factory, something about drowning her sorrows in Oreo cheesecake.”

  I closed my eyes. Do I call the restaurant? “Wait. Your teenage daughter must have a cell phone. Give me her number. I’ll ask her to hand the phone to Esther.”

  “Okay,” Hattie said, “but don’t blame me if my sister hangs up on you!”

  A few minutes later, I was finally speaking with Esther—and yes, like her sister, it took some fast talking to get her to listen.

  “I’m sorry to break this to you over the phone, Esther, but . . .”

  I explained the very bad news about Red. Esther was shocked and promised to come back to the city tomorrow. Unfortunately, nothing she said exonerated Matt or nailed another killer.

  “I left Red a little after midnight. She gave me plenty of money for the trip. I caught a green boro taxi and went to Grand Central. That’s all I know. And BTW, she didn’t sound like she planned on any company . . .”

  I ended the call and turned to Franco. “Esther doesn’t know anything. She can’t help our case, which means I’ve got to go in there.”

  He tapped the phone’s top. “Then you shouldn’t have anything on you that identifies you. Hand it over.”

  “Here.”

  “Now pay attention.” He took my hand and placed the tip of my index finger on the cubic zirconia in the center of the right earring. “That’s the on-off switch. Try it . . .”

  I pressed, and the next voice I heard was coming from inside my head.

  “Say something—nice and low so I can test the amplifier.”

  “I’m hungry. I can’t stop thinking about Oreo cheesecake. And these Spanx are too tight.”

  “Good, it’s working. Now turn the transmitter off and keep it off until you get past front door security.”

  Franco paused, fingers gripping the steering wheel. “You’re really sure you want to go through with this?”

  “What choice do I have? You said yourself, the only theory Endicott will entertain is the one that says Matt’s guilty. The person I need to confront is going to be here tonight, and we both agreed it’s the best source of information we have.”

  Franco met my gaze. “You may be crossing paths with a murderer. And not your run-of-the-mill killer, either. This individual has the means to kill with a pinprick.”

  “I know, but look at it logically. The killer could have struck in a crowded place, but didn’t. Anya was attacked in a secluded area of the park, and Red in the privacy of her apartment. The last place a killer is going to hurt me is in that club.”

  “You could still be opening yourself up as a future target. And if anything happens to you, Mike Quinn would never forgive me. Neither would Joy—and FYI—I wouldn’t be too happy about it, either.”

  “With you watching my back, what could happen?” I smiled.

  Franco blew out air.

  “Try not to worry,” I said, patting his big shoulder. “I can handle myself.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it.”

  “Then wish me luck.”

  “I do. Just be careful in there . . .”

  While I moved to the backseat, Franco slid his listening device under an open New York Daily News. Three minutes later, we were rolling up to the ominous black door.

  “I’ll monitor things in front of that hot dog joint down the block,” Franco said. “If there’s trouble, get the hell out. If we lose communication, get the hell out. The charge on the device only lasts about an hour so when midnight rolls around—”

  “I know, scram before my Spy Shop transmitter turns back into a cheap earring.”

  Franco wished me luck one last time. Then, like a swimmer diving into uncharted waters, I took three deep breaths and exited the Town Car.

  SIXTY-ONE

  THE street was quiet and full of shadows, and the dingy building was as bleak as I remembered. The recessed doorway took me a few feet off the sidewalk, and I automatically looked for a handle on the battered metal door. Then I remembered, there was no handle, only that talking mirror with the ominous male voice—

  “Show me your key . . .”

  Parroting the attitude of Leila’s crowd, I rolled my eyes, as if I’d done this dozens of times and was so very bored with it. Then I pulled up the long chain of silver and gold that Molly had found and revealed Anya’s key.

  A blast of bright red laser light startled me. I let the beam scan the key and (presumably) me. Then it shut off, plunging the recessed area back into blackness.

  For a few seconds, I held my breath, until a loud click sounded and the heavy door cracked open. I nearly shouted, “Thank you!” Instead, I pushed the thick slab of metal.

  “Welcome—” No more threatening male voice. Now a sweet and sultry female was addressing me. “Please step all the way inside . . .”

  The space was dimly lit, and I saw no one. Then the door shut itself behind me, clanging and locking with frightening finality. Bright lights came up to reveal a cinderblock room with all the charm of Sing Sing solitary.

  My heart began beating faster as the voice instructed me to: “Please wait a moment . . .”

  There was no beam this time, but I saw eyes in the sky—twin security cameras in opposite corners of the cell, moving to and fro to check me out.

  “Please step into the elevator . . .”

  Before I could ask, “What elevator?!” one of the stone walls lifted like a Broadway curtain. Elevator doors slid wide and I stepped into a mirrored square. The doors shut (more mirrors) and I watched myself attempting to count how many levels we were descending—five, maybe six floors?

  The doors opened on a darkly paneled lobby with a cloak room window, and I finally saw a human being. A young blonde in a little black dress approached with crisp steps.

  “Good evening,” she said.

  “Good evening,” I replied.

  She stood and waited, blinking at me, as if I were slow on the uptake.

  Great. What am I missing?

  “Your bag, please.”

  “Oh, yes, of course . . .” I handed it over. She held it out and a large olive-skinned man in an evening jacket stepped out of the shadows on my left side. As the well-dressed linebacker pawed through my lipstick, compact, and hairbrush, a hard-faced woman in a pantsuit appeared on my right.

  The woman wanded me with an electronic scanner from top to toe then she receded again. Back to the netherworld—or a passenger terminal at JFK.

  “Free or match tonight?” the blond hostess asked.

  “Free,” I said with a wave of my French manicure.

  “Tips?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” I assured her, “these are my nails.”

  For a tense second, the hostess stared blankly into my face. Then she burst out laughing. “Good one!” She glanced up to see if the towering security guard was laughing, too. He wasn’t. With a shrug, she focused back on me.

  “Diamond can really use some of that life-of-the-party joviality tonight—if you’re up for that.” She smiled, warming to me as she handed
back my bag. “What are your languages?”

  “Italian,” I said because English was obvious, wasn’t it? “And French. Passable French.”

  “Passable is good enough here, as you know.” She glanced at the two guards again and they melted back into the shadows. Then she pulled a smartphone from her pocket, activated an app, and began scanning a text scroll while strolling toward a grand arched doorway trimmed in gold leaf.

  I quickly caught up.

  “We have a Saudi prince in Silver tonight,” she conveyed in quiet conspiracy. “French is one of his languages. As for Italian, there’s a baron in Diamond, he races Formula Ones and summers in Olbia-Tempio. And we have a Venezuelan import-export heir in there, too. He didn’t care for his match tonight, so if you’re up for that, he’s ready . . .”

  Obviously, “tips” here had nothing to do with nails.

  The club’s hostess ran down a few more gentlemen profiles—executives, politicians, aristocrats. None were American. And she never once showed me a photo or used a name. No one had asked me my name, either, and I got the distinct impression that would be a faux pas.

  What I really needed was a tip about how this place worked. The hostess continually referred to Silver, Gold, and Diamond. I had no idea why, but with those guards looming, I feared too many questions would get my Spanx-firmed rear thrown back into that selfie-ready elevator.

  Once I started mingling, I’d look for someone who could tell me more without giving me away as an intruder. (A bartender maybe? Or a conveniently inebriated guest?) Until then, I’d have to smile and nod and keep my mouth shut.

  “Enjoy your evening,” the hostess sang then tapped her smartphone again and swiped it over a scanner in the wall. Double doors slid open, and with a snappy turn of her heel, she left me at the gilded archway.

  Another giant keyhole . . .

  Holding my head high, I steeled my soul and stepped through.

  SIXTY-TWO

  THE space was cavernous and absolutely stunning.

  The archway opened on a railing-rimmed gallery. Thirty feet below me stretched the carpeted main floor of the club, an elegant expanse of marble columns, sumptuous draperies, and live flowering trees. Fifteen feet above me, large stained glass leaves, hundreds of them, were suspended from the ceiling.

  The lighting in here was ingenious. The upper perimeter looked like a pinkish-blue twilight sky, which made it feel more like a piazza in Europe than an underground garage (which was what I suspected it once was). The action on the main floor below, however, was clearly that of a casino, with posh couples laughing and drinking around dozens of gaming tables.

  Now I knew why the club’s owners had hung those colorful glass sculptures. They were attempting to re-create Dale Chihuly’s Fiori di Como, the chandelier of handblown glass blossoms that famously adorned the Bellagio.

  As casually as possible, I touched my earring.

  “Hello?” I quietly said then listened hard.

  “Signal’s good,” Franco buzzed in my ear. “What do you see?”

  Pretending to scratch my nose, I covered my mouth and said: “Las Vegas meets Monte Carlo in an underground parking garage.”

  “Oh, man. Watch your back.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Lowering my hand, I moved toward a grand staircase and noticed men in evening jackets and women in slinky gowns making their way to the very same descent. I scanned the gallery and saw another archway at the far end. Clearly, the street door I’d used was not the most popular entrance to this place. I let Franco know.

  “So where is the other entrance?” he asked. “On the street? Inside a building?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “See if you can find out.”

  “I have a few other things to do first!”

  “Yeah, I know, but—”

  “Fine, when I exit, I’ll go through the other archway.”

  “Copy that.”

  Down on the main floor, I strolled around fragrant flowering potted trees, abstract sculptures, and gaming tables, mostly card games with one crowded roulette wheel and a raucous craps table.

  The far end displayed a wide doorway to a quietly elegant baccarat room, which clearly had much higher stakes. Security guards flanked that entrance, and I steered clear of it. I noticed a billiard room, also flanked by guards, and at least three games of serious poker going on in there. Mostly men—and cigar smoke.

  As I walked along, pretending to mingle, I heard a few different languages—French, Japanese, broken English, and a lot of Russian along with some Mandarin (that or Cantonese, I wasn’t sure). The looks I was getting, however, needed no translation. Men openly raked my curves, some giving me nods and smiles—the kind a chef would give a butcher showing off a fresh cut of meat. Some of the women gave me the once-over, too, but no smiles.

  I continued searching.

  “She’s not on the gaming floor,” I whispered to Franco. “I’m going to check out the lounges.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Three . . .”

  Each was set off by a wide decorative archway with different motifs: one glistening in metallic silver, one sparkling with LED diamonds, and another with gold leaf.

  Eeny, meeny, miny . . .

  I entered the closest one, which was also the loudest and most crowded of the three. Machine-age silver was the clear theme here—everything was Art Deco, including the railings wrapping around the dance floor, the metal sculptures, and mirrored chandeliers.

  As I pushed into the crowded space, another theme stuck me that had nothing to do with art movements.

  “Are you in the lounge?” Franco asked. “What’s it like?”

  “An international frat boy party . . .”

  Amid a deafening pounding of French disco music, shrieks of laughter erupted all over the room. Men of every race were behaving badly with beautiful party girls riotously amused by their shenanigans.

  An Italian soccer star squeezed two young women to him while his forgotten buddy was passed out on his chair. A man I recognized as a deputy police commissioner was groping his female companion, who was most definitely not his wife.

  In one corner two Japanese businessmen had drunkenly stripped down to underwear bunched up to look like Sumo pants. Tables were moved and they wrestled to cheers from the others.

  At a corner booth a girl was dancing suggestively on the table, with a pair of Middle Eastern men puffing on a hookah and politely clapping.

  A long, mirrored bar stretched across one side of the room. Caught in the rocky sea of laughing, dancing, groping men—ouch!—and mostly inebriated women, I lunged for an empty barstool like a lifeline from the Coast Guard.

  Wishing I were back in Queens, sharing Bosnian coffee with a poor but civilized livery driver, I ordered champagne and asked the young male model of a bartender an innocent question—

  “What’s up with these Silver, Gold, and Diamond lounges?”

  His plastic smile fell. “You don’t know?”

  I shrugged. “I’m new here.”

  The frowned deepened into a look of hard suspicion. “Wait right there,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  But when he moved away, so did I—and fast. On my bumpy way to the exit, I downed my expensive champagne (for courage) and set the empty flute on one of the tables ringing the dance floor. Bad move. The man sitting there thought I was making an overture.

  “Ciao, bella!” the red-faced Romeo exclaimed, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me onto his lap. “Dance with me!”

  The crowded dance floor was steps away, but he didn’t bother getting up. The type of dancing he wanted was the kind you do sitting down.

  “No, thanks!” I insisted—in three languages. He pretended not to understand. Then his big hands began moving north of my Mason-Dixon Line, and I threw
civility to the wind, along with the contents of the glass on a passing waiter’s tray.

  Romeo was not pleased to have his martini shaken (not stirred) right into his face, and he let me know it. Jumping to his feet, he called me the most vulgar things in Italian. We were both standing now, but I couldn’t get away. He was gripping my wrist during this tongue-lashing, hard enough for me to prepare a good swift kick when the waiter swept in with a linen napkin.

  “My fault, sir, my fault,” he gallantly insisted as he patted the man down.

  The move was smooth, breaking Romeo’s grip. Now the big man focused his abuse on the poor waiter, a baby-faced Latino man no more than an inch or so taller than I, but head and shoulders above his abuser in dignity.

  After Romeo stormed off, I thanked the waiter sincerely for the rescue.

  He blinked at me, practically in shock. “You are quite welcome,” he said, as if no one had ever bothered to thank him before, at least not in this club.

  As we spoke, a pair of German businessmen traded beer shots while a colleague entertained their dates by juggling cocktail glasses. Then someone’s fedora whizzed by us like a Frisbee.

  The waiter leaned close. “Forgive me, but are you sure Silver is the right room for you?”

  At last, a compadre!

  “Silver is for hookups,” he explained in my ear. “It’s a big party. Men and women here are looking for short-term fun. If they hit it off, they move to Diamond.”

  “And what is Diamond?”

  “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” He shrugged. “Men in the Diamond Room are usually older. They are looking for a longer-term girlfriend experience but not necessarily marriage. You know . . .”

  “Mistresses?”

  He nodded. “And Gold—”

  “Gold bands of marriage?”

  “That’s right. Gold is for matches. Men and women who are wanting a partner in marriage.”

  After thanking the waiter again and asking for directions to the restroom, I moved back onto the main floor and took another look at those handblown glass leaves suspended above me.