Strip Search

by Rex Burns

  “The Cache La Poudre’s up that way, isn’t it?” Axton asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a nice canyon. One of the prettiest.”

  It was. He hoped it stayed that way: free of dams and wild enough to worry people every spring with its runoff. But a lot of things never stayed the way they should. Maybe nothing did. Maybe when things stayed, they were dead. Still, he wondered why change so often seemed to be for the worse.

  Turning into an ill-lit alley, he cut behind one of the newer housing projects for the evening’s first routine sweep. These buildings were among the better offered by the city, and a hell of a lot finer than some of the places he had lived in as a kid. Two-story brown-brick townhouses, they had grassy lawns trimmed by the state and fenced playgrounds and a subsidized daycare center. It reminded him of the married housing provided for the NCOs at some of the military bases where he had been stationed. But Wager did not want to live here. Despite its surface placidity, maybe nobody wanted to live here. It was as if the place dammed the people up into a reservoir and they, without knowing why, rose with periodic restlessness against the barriers that held them. Especially the kids. The variety and type of crime the kids of this project committed were far more savage than anything Wager and his various street gangs had ever gotten mixed up in. When he was a restless kid who roamed the barrio with his buddies looking for excitement, people still laughed at the old ladies who locked their doors at night. Now, if you didn’t, you were knifed. It was another of those changes.

  Axton leaned forward to peer against the square shadows of the dark buildings. They were nearing the home of Pepe the Pistol, the kid who pumped all those .25-caliber bullets into his amigos. A call had come in saying that he was still in town and had sneaked back to his mother’s house regularly for a home-cooked meal and condolences.

  Wager flipped on the spotlight and swung it across the lawns, catching a gray cat whose eyes flashed green before its head and tail dropped into a quick trot. Nothing else moved in the roving finger of light. He clicked it off and turned out of the alley. If things stayed quiet, they’d sweep the area just before dawn. Then the next shift would cruise past a couple times. And the one after that. And so on. If Pepe didn’t skip town, they’d get him sooner or later; when every officer in Denver knew who to look for, it was only a matter of time. Persistence, patience, time. The suspects you didn’t know—the increasing number of stranger-to-stranger killings—those were the ones you measured your skill against. Like Annette Sheldon and now Angela Williams. At least that’s how the rest of the Homicide team classified them—stranger-to-stranger. Calling them that made it easier to accept the fact that they were still unsolved. Some—Munn—accepted the fact that they would never be solved. Which, Wager had to admit, might turn out to be true; when you had a whole team assigned to an unsolved case, no single detective could be blamed.

  Wager turned onto the bumpy and eroded Speer overpass; ahead of them and across the swirl of traffic filling the Valley Highway below, downtown Denver gave off a hollow glow from streetlamps and traffic lights that bounced across vacant sidewalks and office towers empty for the night.

  “You wouldn’t be headed over to Foxy Dick’s?” Axton asked.

  Angela Williams wasn’t their case, but Foxy Dick’s was in their jurisdiction. “Maybe we can help Lee out.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be grateful.”

  Wager didn’t give a damn what Lee thought. “It’s a slow night. You got any better suggestions?”

  Axton said mildly, “I’m with you, partner.”

  Foxy Dick’s was farther out on Colfax and its marquee said Girls Girls Girls. It flashed on and off in a series of three short winks and then stayed on for a long count in case someone hadn’t been able to read it the first time. Beneath that, a steadily glowing sign said LADIES NITE EVERY THURSDAY Men Men Men, and it was warming to see this small evidence of equality between the sexes. Like the Cinnamon Club, this entry was well lit, so a customer had to pause a moment before groping deeper into the darkness. Here, the bouncer was dressed casually in a dark turtleneck shirt and slacks and waited just inside the doorway, where a row of vending machines glowed coldly through their tiny windows. He smelled cop as soon as Wager and Axton stepped in.

  “Can I help you men?”

  Wager flashed his badge. “We’d like to talk to some of your people about Angela Williams.”

  “Again? I thought you got all you needed last time.”

  “We still need the killer,” said Wager.

  The bouncer frowned as he searched for any insult in Wager’s words. “Oh.” Then, “Come on. I’ll take you back to the office.”

  He led them around the panel of opaque plastic sheets whose moving ripples of light teased passersby. The oval stage was at the far end of the main room and lit by the rapid flicker of a blue strobe light that froze the dancer into a series of still shots against the solid black background. Jammed all around was a crowd of chairs where a scattering of men and women sat and stared up at the girl. Wearing only cutoff designer jeans, she stood over one of the gaping men and bent from the waist, swaying her heavy breasts back and forth in time to the music’s pulse. The man reached to slip a bill into her waistband and the girl swung a bit harder.

  “Like putting a nickel in the slot,” said Wager.

  “What?” said the bouncer.

  “He said you don’t have a lot of people,” said Axton.

  “Yeah, well, it’s Wednesday. It’s not bad for a Wednesday.”

  The office cubicle was filled by a typewriter stand and an adding machine, a pair of filing cabinets and, in the middle, a small desk littered with celebrity magazines and newspapers. The magazines promised the true stories and asked penetrating questions. The newspapers were small in size and worn in print, and had mastheads like The Singles’ Trumpet and The Rocky Mountain Oyster.

  The man behind the desk was in his mid-thirties and had straight, sand-colored hair that was blow-dried into a shaggy cut. His baggy eyes lifted irritably toward them from an accounting sheet. “What?”

  “Cops—ah—police, Charlie. It’s about Angela again.”

  “Shit! We been through all this once. I told you everything I know.”

  “You told some other people,” said Wager.

  “So you can’t talk to each other? You got to keep coming back here? Crapping business is bad enough without Angela getting herself killed and bringing you people around all the time!”

  Axton closed the door behind the bouncer as he left. “Has business been that slow?”

  “Everything’s slow. Except the goddamn bills. They’re quick enough.”

  “Are you the manager?” asked Wager.

  “Owner. One thing I’m grateful for, I’m not the manager. Business doesn’t get any better, he’s the next to go.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Working the music. We take turns.”

  “What’s your name, please?” asked Max.

  The man sighed with exaggerated patience and ran his fingers through his stiff hair, then patted it back in place over a high forehead. “Thomas. Charles Thomas. I’ve had this place for three years. I was here the last night Angela was. I saw her make her split with the bartender, and I didn’t see her after that. She missed a few days, which is par for the course in this line of work. Next thing I hear from the cops, she’s been killed. I don’t know who did it.” He flapped a hand at the music thumping against the closed door. “Somebody out there. That’s my guess.”

  “Why?”

  “Who else?”

  “Maybe a boyfriend,” said Wager. “Or her ex-husband.”

  “Maybe. That’s your job to find out, right? All I know is, it wasn’t me.” Thomas leaned back and stared at the ceiling a moment. “I hear her husband—ex-husband—moved away. California or somewhere. Boyfriends. … She had a couple, I guess. Nobody she met here,” he added quickly. “No hustling the customers—that’s a house rule. Some nights I got mo
re Vice cops here than I do legitimate customers. And the cops,” he added, “don’t buy worth shit.”

  “But you know she had boyfriends?”

  “Sometimes a guy might pick her up after work.”

  “Did you ever see him? His car?”

  The man thought a moment. “Not him, no. I saw his car once. A Chevy, I think. Dark green, maybe. Or blue.”

  “License number?”

  “Give me a break, man! This was a month, six weeks ago.”

  “Did you tell the other officers about it?” asked Max.

  “I only just remembered it.”

  “Did you know Annette Sheldon?” asked Wager.

  “Who?”

  “Annette Sheldon. Shelly. She danced over at the Cinnamon Club.”

  “That dump?” Thomas frowned with thought. “No. But a lot of the girls move from club to club and some change their names. They’re so bad they got to. You got a picture?”

  Wager just happened to. He handed Thomas the copy of her publicity shot.

  “No. … She’s got nice boobs, but I don’t recognize them.” He looked up. “This is the other one that got killed, what, a couple weeks ago?”

  “That’s right. You never heard Angela mention her name?”

  “No. Jesus, we got somebody killing the merchandise now. Business is that bad, and now we got this maniac.”

  “We’d like to talk to your girls.”

  “Shake them up a little more? That’s what you want to do?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s what I figured.” His hand waved over the stack of newspapers. “You know how hard it is to find a good dancer even when they’re not scared?” Neither Wager nor Axton did, and Thomas sighed. “Come on.”

  He led them through the half-empty club to a tiny, filthy room. The smell was close with strong perfume riding on the odor of a stopped-up toilet half-glimpsed through a doorless frame. A lone girl sat at the smeared mirror and quickly pulled on her barmaid’s costume. She was the same one who had been onstage when Axton and Wager came in.

  “Silhouette, these guys are cops. They want to ask some more questions about poor Angela. I’ll tell the other girls what they’re after. Help them out, right? And then it’s back on the floor as soon as you can—oh, yeah, you got an extra set tonight.” He explained to Axton, “We’re short. Two of the girls didn’t show up.” He left, shaking his head, “The help these days, Jesus!”

  Silhouette looked better in the flashing lights; up close you noticed her face and the heavy flesh that was barely held taut by still young skin. She was, officially, twenty-one. But Wager suspected she was a couple years younger than that. This was her first dancing job; she never knew Angela Williams very well; she had never heard of Annette Sheldon; she was a little nervous at the idea of a murderer who specialized in exotic dancers.

  “It sounds like, you know, Jack the Ripper or something. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for the money. Some of those guys…” She gave a little shudder. “They’re real creeps.”

  “Does anyone in particular bother you?”

  “No. There’s a rule: no touching the girls. It’s just some of them, they say things … you know … like they want you to do kinky things.”

  “Do you?”

  “No! But some of the girls do—if it’s a big house and things are rolling, there’s a couple who do those things. They laugh about it.” She added, “They get the big tips, too.”

  “What’s the owner, Thomas, say about that?”

  “What the hell does he care? One of the first things he told me was that I’m a piece of meat to him. A ‘marketable commodity’ he called me, and as long as I bring in the cash I’m on the payroll.” She shrugged. “But that’s show biz, right?”

  “And you make good money in tips?”

  “Wages. We get hourly wages—six-fifty—and ten percent of the tips. We turn it over to the bartender every night.”

  The girls at the Cinnamon Club did a lot better. “But you still make good money?”

  Her head went back with a little gesture of defiance. “A lot of times I make seventy, eighty dollars a night. I couldn’t make that nowhere else—I quit high school. It was for creeps. Now I got a car and my own place and I do what I want with my life.”

  Which, if it was true, was what a lot of people hungered to say. Wager watched her go out to do her stint at the tables, and Axton gave a half-shake of his head, his blue eyes heavy with a vision of the girl’s future. Wager, too, could guess what would happen to her in a couple years. But he didn’t worry about it; he’d seen too much of it already, and he bet she had a good idea of what was coming herself. Like she said: it was her life and her choices, and that kind of freedom was worth a lot. And many times it was only found at the edge of the law.

  Silhouette sent the next girl back from the floor; Sugar Plum was a tall girl with negroid features and pale yellow skin. She wore the tight shorts and thin blouse of the barmaid, and spoke aggressively. “They told me you wanted to ask some questions about Angela.”

  He did, and got the familiar answers. Then he asked what Lee had not: “Did you know Annette Sheldon? She danced over at the Cinnamon Club.”

  Sugar Plum looked at the photograph. “Yeah. I knew her. I used to work at that dump.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Seven or eight months ago. But my agent got me a better deal here.”

  “Your ‘agent’?” asked Wager.

  Her face darkened slightly. “I’m in the entertainment business. I have an agent.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Axton. “A lot of these girls don’t and they get taken advantage of.”

  “It’s their own fault, then. There’s always a demand for good dancers. Like me.”

  “How well did you know Shelly?”

  “Enough to say hello to and goodbye to.” Her lips twisted slightly in one of those grins that shattered a pretty face and Wager understood why she smiled so seldom. “In show business, you don’t make many friends.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Everybody’s after something, and nobody’s in it for their health.”

  “Was Annette Sheldon—Shelly—after something?”

  “Like a shark. She’d go after your regulars if you didn’t watch her. She tried that shit on me once.”

  Axton asked, “What’d you do?”

  “I told her to cut that shit out. I saw what she was doing—she kept her eye out for any big tipper, anybody’s regular, and then she’d play up to him, you know. Thought she could dance!”

  “But she did pretty well?” Wager asked.

  Sugar Plum’s smooth shoulders bobbed. “Everybody wants more, and she wanted more than most.”

  “Did she go after it off the dance floor maybe?”

  “What’s that mean? What’re you trying to say?”

  “Did she do any hustling?” Wager asked. “Did she peddle her tail to anybody after work?”

  “She might have—I don’t know. If there was money in it, I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Did you ever see her with anyone in particular? Any favorite customer?”

  “Sure, her regulars. Listen, a lot of men won’t buy drinks from anybody but their favorite girl.” She started to smile but caught it. “Real fans—they come in three or four times a week and order drinks from one girl.”

  “Is that all they want?” insisted Wager. “To buy drinks?”

  “No. But most of them don’t come on. Real gentlemen, right? I think they want you to give it to them for free—not just a screw, but real love, you know? Very polite and smooth when they’re here, and then they go home and dream up all sorts of weirdo things they’re doing to you.”

  This time the crooked smile broke through. “Go home and make love to old lady five fingers!”

  “Did Angela have many steady customers like that?”

  “Not so many she didn’t want more.”

  “What about the same man?” asked Wager
intently. “Did you ever see the same man talking to both Angela and Shelly?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I remember. Maybe … I just don’t remember. Unless they’re tipping me, I don’t even see them. I don’t go after nobody else’s regulars.”

  Axton handed her a business card. “If you do remember, miss—think it over carefully—if you do remember, please give us a call. Any time of day or night. It could be very important.”

  Her tongue, round and pink, slid across her lower lip. “You think the same john might have killed them both?”

  “We don’t know what to think. But it’s a good possibility.” Wager added, “If so, he might join another girl’s fan club.”

  “Well, it’s not like working in a church, that’s for sure.”

  “Has anyone ever followed you or threatened you, miss?”

  “I don’t give them a chance.” She ran a hand down the sides of the sheer blouse that revealed her nipples as dark, pert shadows. “A lot of men follow me, mister. But the only ones that catch me are the ones I want to.”

  “But you didn’t see anyone following Angela or Shelly.”

  “No. But I know this much: it was their own fault if they let somebody rape them. A woman doesn’t have to put up with that shit. In this business, you learn what to do.”

  Three other girls were called off the floor, one by one, and Axton and Wager went through the same questions with them, urging them to call the number on the business card if they remembered anything else. It didn’t seem likely. Their answers all boiled down to the same familiar response: they did not know Angela well; they saw no one with her; they never heard of Annette Sheldon. And they weren’t very eager to call the cops about anything. One other theme emerged—business was bad and getting worse, and four or five girls worked only on weekends now. Wager and Axton would have to come back if they wanted to interview them.

  They sat for a few minutes in the unmarked car and watched the thinning traffic beneath the line of marquees. Even the radio transmissions from normally busy District Two were slow; scattered reports told of accidents, of domestic disturbances, of frightened women listening to a prowler snip at their window screens. Now and then an officer replied to the dispatcher, his microphone catching the pulsing wail of a siren, and a slight tightness in his voice the only indication that his car was hurtling down some dark street guided by one white-knuckled fist. But most of the radio traffic was the dispatcher’s periodic status requests from the fleet of silent uniformed officers cruising the alleys and byways of the city.