Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “Hey, babe,” I murmured, kneeling by his side, looking for the source of the wound and finding it. Blood was gushing from the right side of his chest. He was pale and beginning to shake.

  “Get a fucking ambulance!” Eugene yelled.

  “Sierra,” Bruno whispered. “Come here.”

  I leaned closer. “Baby, I’m right here.” I stroked the side of his face, my fingers brushing against the sandpaper finish of his beard.

  “I can’t see you, honey,” he whispered. “Sierra, why can’t I see you?” He was panicking, his face drawing up into a tight knot.

  “Baby,” I said, “it’s my tits. Nobody can see my face when I’m up this close.” I was trying to keep it light, but I was watching Eugene and our eyes met. His hands were pressed firmly against Bruno’s chest, but it wasn’t helping. The blood seeped through his fingers like red water.

  “Hey, hurry those EMTs, will ya?” I yelled.

  I was aware of the cops moving around me, but I kept my eyes on Bruno. “Stay with me, baby,” I cooed, but it was no use. I was losing him. My throat squeezed shut as I tried to keep a sob from leaping up and out. I had to be calm. I couldn’t let Bruno see what I knew: that he was in desperate trouble.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “Got another victim here!” I whipped around to look and saw a cop down on one knee by a body. There was a pause as he leaned forward. “This one don’t need no help,” he said, the slight quiver in his voice giving him away. “He’s gone.”

  As the words hung in the air, EMTs rushed into the room, past the cop and the body and over to us.

  “Move,” one said, pushing me aside.

  “We’ll take it,” the other one said to Eugene. But Eugene didn’t move until he was pushed aside. Even then he stuck close, his eyes never leaving Bruno’s face.

  I turned back to the other side of the room. The cop stood up and I could see the victim. Denny the Whiner lay on his back, a bullet dead center through the middle of his forehead.

  I looked at Bruno again and saw his eyes fixed on my face. I smiled, the same big smile I gave him every day. The smile that said everything’s fine, don’t worry, you’re bleeding to death, Bruno, but don’t worry. I felt like a total idiot, grinning in the face of the Grim Reaper.

  The EMTs put an oxygen mask on his face and started hooking up IVs. They were barking terse orders to each other and conferring by cell phone with the hospital. They were rushing, the intensity and strain showing on their faces and in the muscles of their legs and backs as they worked to save my friend.

  Cops were streaming into and out of the room. Joe from Kokomo stood talking to one of them, the cigar still dangling, unlit, from his lips. Joe didn’t look like such an amateur anymore. The jacket was gone and he stood in his shirtsleeves, the shoulder holster fitted tight against his torso. Joe from Kokomo was a cop, and our collective asses were fried if he was working Vice.

  I looked around for Vincent and saw him across the room, eyeing Joe with the same intensity I’d been giving him. The lights were slowly coming on for Vincent, and I could see get-me-a-lawyer written all over his face.

  I was so busy looking that I missed seeing Detective John Nailor’s entrance, but I felt it. That man couldn’t be in a room five minutes without me feeling the heat radiating from him, entering my body, and pulling me toward him like an invisible magnet. So I looked away from Vincent and did a visual scan around the room until I homed in on him. He was bending over the body of Denny the Whiner, but when he felt me watching him, he looked up.

  There were a thousand questions in his eyes. The kind between two lovers when one is in trouble, the are-you-all-rights, the I-want-to-hold-you-but-I-can’ts that come with the territory of him doing his job and me doing mine. You put a cop and an exotic dancer together and there’s a set of professional issues that immediately cloud the reality of the relationship. This bloodbath made it no different, and I didn’t want it to. John’s a pro and he needed to be about doing his job, not taking care of me. That would come later, and we both knew it. Right now I wanted him to catch the scum that hurt Bruno. He couldn’t fix it. Nobody could do that. But he could catch the sorry bastards who hurt my friend.

  Three

  Bruno’s eyes were closed and his skin was an unnatural shade of gray when the EMTs loaded him up into the ambulance. I tried to speak to him, but if he heard me, he made no move to acknowledge it. How could he have heard me? There were tubes and wires hooked up all over him. The EMTs talked a mile a minute, now and then calling out his name as if he were only sleeping. I felt John’s hand on my shoulder as the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, and realized that I was attempting to follow them on foot wearing only a silk kimono.

  “Hey, let’s go inside,” he said, like maybe it was an ordinary night and we were taking in the stars.

  I shook off his hand and looked at him. “I need to get to the hospital.”

  John nodded but stretched out his hand again, this time touching my arm. “You need some clothes. It’s cold out here.”

  I was shivering, but I hadn’t felt the cold. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Sierra, Bruno’s in really good hands. They won’t let you be with him yet. You’ve got time, honey. Put on some clothes, all right? I’ll take you there later.”

  I knew what that meant. Nailor was blowing me off, slowly. By the time I dressed, he’d be otherwise occupied with the investigation. He wouldn’t be able to drive me anywhere for hours. Besides, I didn’t need him. I was capable of driving to the hospital all by myself. What was with him, anyway? What was with the caretaking routine? And why was I letting it bother me? Maybe he was just worried about me. This whole relationship thing was starting to bug me. A month ago it had been different. We were still new to it all, nosing around each other, flirting and tempting. Then the whole mess hit the fan, and before I knew it, we were a couple. I hadn’t been a part of a “we” for so long, I’d forgotten how it felt. And this felt like a real relationship, not one where I did ninety percent and the guy gave maybe minus ten. With Nailor, he was either in it or out of it. I didn’t know what to do with that. It was freaking me out.

  I looked back at him again and saw concern mingled with cop-on-duty. Maybe he meant what he said, or maybe he knew he should say it because of our relationship. He looked at me now, like maybe I was acting funny.

  “What?” I asked. “I’m fine and I’m gonna drive to the hospital with Vincent. We need to get over there.”

  But Vincent wasn’t going anywhere with me. Joe from Kokomo, along with another detective type, was in his face asking questions. Vincent’s jaw twitched and his face was turned purple with the effort not to go ballistic. Around him, cops took pictures and gathered up spent shell casings.

  “Okay,” Nailor said to me, his voice stiffening, “this is how it’s gonna run. Vincent Gambuzzo has some explaining to do. We need a statement from you and everyone else here. I can get with you later, but Gambuzzo’s gonna be tied up for the evening.”

  “I can take her, Detective.”

  The two of us whipped around. Rusty stood there, his red hair standing straight out from his head where he’d run his fingers through it over and over.

  “Eugene just took off,” he said to me. “Them cops told him to stick around, but I don’t think he even heard them, honest I don’t.” Rusty looked ten years old trying to act grown up.

  Nailor nodded. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll stop by the hospital later and talk with him. I appreciate your seeing to it that Sierra gets over there. I’m going to be awhile here.” His eyes were on me now. “Do you think you can try to go back over what happened, try to get a description of the gunmen?”

  “There isn’t much to describe. They all wore body armor and helmets or something over their heads.”

  He nodded patiently. “That’s what pops into your head first,” he said. “While you’re at the hospital waiting, close your eyes and think back over it. What did they wear? What did the guns
look like? What were their voices like? How tall were they? Anything at all that might help us find these guys, all right?”

  Then he leaned over and touched my arm. It wasn’t at all what he wanted to do, I could see that, but it was the only thing he could do given our public circumstances.

  “You think, too,” he told Rusty. “You never know what small detail will turn the trick.”

  Nope, you never knew.

  I looked around at the crime-scene team. They were gathered by Denny’s body, taking pictures like a pack of tourists. The medical examiner arrived, walked straight up to the body, bent over slightly from the waist, and sighed. He was an older man, maybe seventy, with thick white hair and clear blue eyes that seemed watery when you looked into his glasses. He paused, straightened back up, and looked around the room.

  “I thought you said there were two,” he boomed.

  Nailor looked at me, registered the pain in my eyes, and turned to answer him.

  “They told you wrong,” he answered. “We’ve got one in critical condition.”

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I walked down the hallway, rounding the corner to the dressing room. If I’d stayed behind to listen to the standard impersonal cop talk that was sure to follow, there would’ve been two bodies.

  I dressed in the empty room. I didn’t know where the others had gone, but I was grateful for the silence, the time to pull my act together and be larger than I felt. When I rejoined Rusty, I was the old Sierra, ready to hit the hospital and deal with whatever came our way.

  Rusty’s good about sensing a mood. He didn’t talk. He didn’t question my decision to drive us in my IROC Camaro. He went along. That’s what Rusty does. It’s his job to figure out what you need and see that you get it. That’s why the Tiffany’s acts go seamlessly on, one right after the other, without a hitch.

  When we pulled into the parking lot and I started to get out of the car, Rusty did the unexpected. He grabbed my arm, his eyes huge with sincerity, and started a nonstop stream of words that came quickly as if he were afraid I’d cut him off.

  “Sierra, I don’t know how you feel about religion and all. Some folks don’t appreciate it if you push it on them and all. And I know a lot of dancers ain’t exactly, well, religious types and, well …” He drew a deep breath. “I want to say a prayer for Bruno before we go in there. You know, like talk to God before we walk in on whatever’s happened. You know, like not waiting to find out he’s okay or not okay and making our requests after the fact. I’m wanting to pray now, you know, kind of like we’re not cheating by knowing the outcome and praying accordingly.”

  I stared at him, not knowing what to say. Growing up Catholic, you get a warped view of who God is and how it all works. Life gets tied up in eternal sin and damnation, and before you know it, you’re walking down the sidewalk afraid to step on the cracks on account of you might break your mother’s back. Praying was something I did, and did regularly, but not like in-church praying. More like a conversation with Her. I know God’s gotta be a woman because the more I think about it, the more I figure only a mother could put up with humanity and still have a shred of hope.

  Eventually, I felt my head nod, and I reached over and took Rusty’s hand in mine. “That would be nice, babe. Why don’t you kick it off and I’ll just stick the ‘amen’ in at the right point. Like, you do the talking and I’ll back you up.”

  Rusty’s eyes closed and I shut mine, figuring it wouldn’t do to challenge Rusty’s ritual sense of propriety at this tender moment.

  “Heavenly Father,” he began.

  “Or Mother,” I whispered, unable to stop myself.

  “Please be with our dear brother, Bruno. It’s up to you to decide how it goes, but however it ends up, don’t let him hurt. Hold him close to you. Hold all of us close to you, because, God …” Here Rusty’s voice cracked and tears began streaming down both of our faces. “We just don’t know what we’d do without old Bruno around to kick ass—I mean, to watch over us. I mean, you should’ve seen him the time …” I squeezed Rusty’s hand, and he seemed to snap out of the reminiscence and continue. “Well, you saw it. You probably helped him do it, but what I’m saying is, please take care of Bruno. We’ll try not to question your decision in the matter, but I just thought we’d let you know how we feel and what we hope. In Jesus’ name we pray …”

  And we both chimed, “Amen.”

  We blew our noses, dried our eyes, and smiled across the console at each other.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s go see about Bruno.”

  Four

  It would turn out to be maybe the longest night of my life. Bruno was in surgery when we arrived, and he was expected to be on the table until well after sunrise. Rusty and I walked into the waiting room just in time to hear Eugene form his posse.

  He was standing in the middle of the dimly lit room, right underneath the soundless TV that no one was watching. It was playing an old rerun of Lassie. The room was gray, with uncomfortable blue vinyl chairs and loveseats rimming the walls. A wilting fake silver Christmas tree leaned in a corner, tacky red balls hanging from its tired limbs. The staff of the Tiffany Gentleman’s Club, most of them dancers still in costume with thick makeup and false eyelashes, sat in the chairs, their attention riveted on Eugene.

  In the middle of this lineup, as obvious as two bumps on a log, sat the only outsiders, an elderly man and woman. They seemed too traumatized to move. The woman, gray-haired and anxious, sat clutching a red purse in her lap, as if fearing assault at any moment. Her husband sat beside her, wearing a ball cap that read U.S.S. FREEDOM. He wore the senior uniform: black socks, white loafers, madras shorts and a golf shirt that clashed. He was leaning forward, listening intently as Eugene spoke, now and then adjusting the volume on his hearing aid.

  “Here’s the situation,” Eugene announced. “People come into the house and messed with the brother. You don’t mess with the brother in the house of Eugene. You don’t run and you don’t hide from Eu-fucking-gene, see what I’m saying, y’all?”

  Nods and “That’s rights” came from all around, even from the old man.

  “Among all of us, there’s information. You don’t just bust down the door, cap two folks, and walk out and ain’t nobody hears a word about it on the street, see what I mean? Motherfucker’s shit is gonna be in the street sometime. Somebody gonna know something, and when they do, it’s gonna get back to Eugene. You know why?”

  The old guy, failing to sense it was a rhetorical question, played straight into Eugene’s hands.

  “Why?” His wife’s eyes closed and she leaned farther back in her seat, as if willing invisibility.

  Eugene didn’t miss a beat. “On account of we’re gonna put the word out that if anybody, anywhere hears a word and don’t tell one of y’all or me, they ass is mine. Got that?”

  Everyone agreed, but Eugene wasn’t finished.

  “Them po-lice can do what they want, but we gonna find them motherfuckers first. And you know what we gonna do?”

  There were catcalls and shouts but only one “No, what?” from Mrs. U.S.S. Freedom.

  Eugene grinned like a rage-crazed banshee. “We gonna bust a cap up they asses the size of New Jersey, and stretch ’em out on the highway like roadkill!”

  The room went wild with approval and Captain U.S.S. Freedom jumped to his feet with a mighty roar. “I got twenty live grenades and a torpedo that ain’t seen action since the Big One. Let’s kick some damn ass!”

  At this point, his wife keeled over into the lap of Tonya the Barbarian, out cold.

  Whipped into a frenzy of potential, no longer the victims of unspeakable violence, Eugene’s followers yelled while Eugene stood like a colonel, his hands clasped behind his back, surveying his troops.

  “First we gotta find the assholes, sir,” he said to Captain Freedom, “but then we would be most obliged to relieve you of any extra munitions you could spare.”

  “Damn straight,” Freedom replied. “I set o
nly one condition.”

  Eugene’s eyes narrowed warily. “What?”

  “I get to come along on the raid.” The old guy’s face was suffused with color, and his eyes glittered at some memory of unfinished business and partially reaped glory.

  Eugene didn’t hesitate. “My brother, give me your number, and we will be in touch. We would be honored to have some military guidance and expertise.”

  Mrs. U.S.S. Freedom sighed, fluttered her eyes, and seemed to sleep peacefully in the arms of Tonya the Barbarian. Tonya looked down at her lapful and attempted to adjust her leopard-skin toga.

  “She’s sleeping right on the chicken bone I use to hold my G-string,” she explained to me. “Ever get a bone stuck in your hip? It ain’t comfortable.”

  Captain Freedom reached over and tugged his wife upright, shifting his position until she slept peacefully on his shoulder.

  “Women!” he muttered.

  No news emerged about Bruno as the night wore on. We all sat in relative silence, waiting and praying. Eugene now and then paced to the door of the surgical suites and looked through the tiny windowpane. Each time he’d turn away and my heart would break at the agonized expression on his face. He blamed himself for not reaching Bruno in time; I could see it all over him.

  Around five A.M., Nailor arrived, tired and grim.

  I went to him, questions crowding out anxiety for a moment. “Did you get them?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. We gathered up every shell casing. Dusted all the surfaces. Interviewed anyone who was even in the neighborhood. It’s as if they were beamed down from nowhere, Sierra. It was well-planned and almost flawlessly executed. The only reason they didn’t make it was that Bruno just happened to be in the back room with his gun drawn when they came. I think they figured to take the game quickly and disappear. They counted on the bouncers being in the front of the house, where they usually are.”