“Why am I not surprised? My father always said, ‘Never trust a Russian. The only person worse is a Turk.’ But what is your interest in the fate of my department and the university? Are you a lawyer representing the girls? Someone I haven’t met from the dean’s office who has come to threaten me and take away the last dribble of money we have to run the department?”
“None of those, Dr. Tigranian,” I assured him. And I told him the story, the unwanted jobs at Brazen Babes, the sequestration of their earnings, the horrible car and trailer, not to mention shabby clothes, the demand—although not met—that they have sex with customers and with Vladik, and now their frightened dependence on a Russian friend of Vladik’s. Each new revelation turned Dr. Tigranian’s rosy face darker with congested fury.
Finally he exploded, “And you know this how?”
Oh dear, I thought. What if Dr. Tigranian was getting his cut of the arrangement at Brazen Babes? “I took them to lunch, and they told me,” I replied in a fading voice. Then I took heart. I’d done nothing wrong. “When I look back on the conversation, I think they may believe that all foreign students are turned into slaves in the sex trade in order to win a degree in this country. He kept them quite isolated from the university community. They live away from campus in a trailer park with no university people; they come to school, take classes, bring their lunches, study, go home, study, and go out to take their clothes off at a place that I assume is disgustingly sleazy.” A place to which I was going that night with Luz Vallejo. Maybe she carried a weapon. Not that I approve of firearms, but there are times when one wouldn’t mind being accompanied by an armed companion.
While I was anticipating with dread my evening’s appointment, Dr. Tigranian was roaring curses. His secretary stuck her head in the door and backed out hurriedly. I huddled in my chair. Low-voiced conversations could be heard in the outer office. “Close my door,” he shouted. The secretary did that without ever showing herself. Volatile indeed, I thought. It was hardly considerate of Jason to go off to Austin and leave me to break the bad news to this man, who looked as if he’d either knock my head off or have a stroke in front of my eyes.
“Hush,” I said.
“What?” he shouted.
“S-sh-sh.”
He stopped cursing and gaped at me.
“We have to deal with this, not shout it all over the building. The fewer people who know, the better. If we take care of it before it comes out—”
“How is that possible?” he snapped. “How can this not come out? Accursed Russian! Penis-fixated scum! Son of a whoring mother!”
“Please, Dr. Tigranian, nobody cares if he’s well remembered. In fact, the sooner he’s forgotten, the better, but we have to do something about the girls.”
“What? Buy them a house and a new car? Bribe them with a big settlement held in trust if they’re too stupid to—”
“Getting them out of that strip club would be a good start. I don’t think your other suggestions are necessary. They just want to finish school. If the department can pay for their tuition and books, maybe—”
“We have no money!” he roared. “We can’t buy instruments or music or do performances, other than degree recitals. We don’t have paper for the copy machines.”
“I know. My husband has been saying the same thing.”
“Who is your husband? Someone who wants to get our money, which we don’t have, for his department, by sending his wife to blackmail me.”
“My husband is a chemistry professor who loves opera, as I do. As weird as that performance of
Macbeth
was, the three young women in the witch’s chorus sang beautifully, especially for amateurs. People from Opera at the Pass want to help, but I haven’t told them about Brazen Babes or any of that, just that the girls are now almost destitute and don’t know what to do. Our committee is going to try to find jobs for them that will allow them to continue their studies, unless you can get them university jobs. That would be even better.”
“It’s November. There are no university jobs now. They are all taken.” Then he stopped snarling at me. “But maybe this can be contained. As you say. Can I trust you to keep this story quiet? Ah, that scheming bastard, Gubenko, may the flames of hell devour him for a thousand thousand years. That cunning, soulless—”
“Sssh,” I said, putting a finger to my lips. “I’m not the one who keeps shouting. I just want to help the young women. You need to do the same. Quietly. Without causing even the slightest ripple of interest.”
“Humph!” he said. Then he swung his giant feet back up on the desk and waved his hand at me. “Go. Go. Call me tomorrow. We will consult on what can be done.”
I doubt that anyone was ever gladder to get out of his office than I. Or maybe everyone fled at first opportunity!
19
Brazen Babes
Luz
J
esus Christ! She
looked like she was dressed to attend the meeting of a university alumni group—not the kind gathering to drink beer at a tailgate party, the kind trying to figure out how to fund the museum or the library. Or maybe a group of sorority alumni, meeting to discuss the morals of the active chapter members. I’d been in a sorority. You got to go to more beer parties that way, but you can bet I didn’t make any alumni contributions or attend any meetings once I was out of school. The very idea of hanging out with my old sorority sisters was laughable. It was okay to be a criminal justice major in school, but you weren’t supposed to join the police force and go out on the streets to catch real criminals after graduation.
And then there was her driving. The best thing you could say for it was that Carolyn Blue would never get a ticket. She was one careful driver. You had to tell her a turn was coming up about a half mile in advance because she wouldn’t change lanes if there was anyone in sight on her side of the road. The result was that I’d forget, and we’d have to go back. Of course she wouldn’t make a U-turn. It was eleven before we got to Brazen Babes, and then she decided maybe we shouldn’t go in there after all. Maybe we could meet Ignatenko for lunch somewhere.
Right. Like I was going to be seen in public eating lunch with that
pendejo.
I dragged her in, and when the bouncer tried to tell us ladies didn’t get admitted without escorts, Carolyn said that was discriminatory. I told him to get lost or I’d disable him for life. Then I found us a table. Carolyn didn’t want to order a drink. She thought it wasn’t a good idea for us to be under the influence of alcohol in a place like this. At that point she was taking surreptitious peeks at the dancers and shuddering. I’m guessing at the shuddering. It was so dark in there, except for the spotlights on the girls, that I couldn’t see her very clearly, which was probably just as well. I might have said something more insulting than what I actually said, which she didn’t like.
“Don’t be a baby,” I told her. “Order a drink. It’s that or a cover charge. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to. Hell, I’ll drink it myself.” Muttering to herself, she ordered some frou-frou thing with fruit juice in it. I ordered a shot of tequila, which I shouldn’t have been drinking with my meds, but hell, I wasn’t driving, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I hadn’t told her yet that we’d have to order two drinks.
I informed the waitress that we wanted to talk to Boris, preferably in his office; that was in case I had to pull a gun on him—not that I told the waitress that last. Our drinks arrived, and Carolyn had, by then, actually watched a whole dance—right down to the buff—the dancer’s, not hers. When the drink was set in front of her, she took a gulp and said, “That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, well the men don’t come here for the great drinks,” I said.
“I meant the dance,” she snapped.
“That’s what they come for,” I agreed, and sipped my tequila. I’d ordered by brand, and this wasn’t it, so I called the waitress over and said I was going to call the state licensing commission if she didn’t get her ass over here with what I was paying for. She mumbled that the bartender must have made a mistake.
“Maybe you shouldn’t pick fights with everyone before we ever get to see Mr. Ignatenko,” Carolyn suggested in that oh-so-polite tone that raised my hackles.
Oh boy. Table dance coming up,
I thought.
The proper Mrs. Blue is going to freak. Oh, Christ, she’s waving. If she tries to stop the girl, we’ll get our asses kicked out of here even if I do pull a gun on the bouncer.
No one waved back, and Carolyn settled down for another gulp. The blonde girl, now up on the table with two guys watching avidly, began to do her thing. Carolyn drummed her fingernails on our table loud enough to provide a percussion undercurrent to the music. One of the guys ran his hand up the girl’s leg. She stopped dancing and tried to brush it off. Carolyn got up, stomped over to the table, yanked his hand off, and gave it a slap. “Shame on you. I’m sure that’s against the rules.” Then she said, “Good evening, Polya. Can I help you down?”
“Hey, we paid for a dance,” whined the guy who’d kept his hands to himself.
The bouncer showed up and told us to go back to our table or leave. By that time the blonde girl had climbed down, whispered to Carolyn, given her a hug, and left.
“Maybe it’s about time you took us in to see Boris,” I said, giving the bouncer a killing look. The audience was booing us. “You oughta know that having a proper-type lady in the club during performances is bad for business. What if she goes home and starts calling preachers? Or the cops?”
There was a brief conversation between the bouncer and the floor manager, after which the bouncer, a one-eyed fatty with big arm muscles, told us to follow him. Carolyn insisted on going back for her drink, so I told her to bring mine along too.
“I’m sure I read in the newspaper that the patrons are
not
allowed to touch the performers,” Carolyn said to Boris Stepanovich before they’d even been introduced. “One of them just grabbed the thigh of Polina Mikhailov.”
“Who are you?” he retorted. “Her mama? And what
you
do here, Lieutenant? I hear you retire.”
“We’re here about the late Vladislav Gubenko. This is Carolyn Blue. Carolyn, Boris Stepanovich Ignatenko. He owns this dump.”
Boris is a scary-looking guy. Real tall. Maybe six four or five. Bony with long arms and big spider hands, wide, bony, squared-off shoulders, and a long face out of a ghoul movie—lantern jaw, thin-lipped mouth, long creases from forehead to chin, a jagged scar across his forehead, and these sunken eyes circled in black. He’d be easy to pick out of a lineup. No way you’d get any other guys looking even halfway like him.
“How you know Polya?” he asked Carolyn.
“I’m a committee member of Opera at the Pass and an opera lover,” she replied tartly, “and I don’t like to see her mauled by drunken perverts.”
Boris let out a big, booming laugh. “You calling my customers perverts? So okay, who else you expect to see here? Pillars of community? Well, we got some of them too. I take you see lap dance. A little hand on thigh nothing. Right, Lieutenant?”
“I hear the city council wants six feet between dancers and customers. That ought to screw up business,” I replied.
“Hey, I not near church or school. My girls artists, not whores. City should leave me alone.”
“Wonder why nobody believes that crap you’re putting out. Artists, not whores, huh? Bull shit.”
“Vladik,” Carolyn reminded me. “We understand that you knew Vladik Gubenko,” she said to Boris.
“Sure, I know him.” Boris went to the chair behind his desk, stretched out in it, and smiled widely. “You think man like me wouldn’t know a professor? That right, opera lady? I know Vladik since little boys. We climb trees together, sled in snow, go to school, get in troubles together. Good friends, long time. Then Vladik go to Moscow for study opera things, and I get drafted in army, end up in Afghanistan.” He touched the scar on his forehead. “Bad place. Bad peoples. Now Americans finding out. Think they go home quick? Ha! Still there. Twenty years from now—still there. Or be smart, give up, go home. Who want Afghanistan anyway? Shit-pile place, I say. Maybe Iraq better, but I think that shit-pile place too.”
I smothered a grin. Carolyn was wincing again. “So you and Vladik were boyhood amigos, huh Boris? Where were you the night he was murdered?”
“Vladik murdered? No way. Vladik know how to take care of self. He die from drinking too much tequila. He drink good vodka, he be okay. That’s what I hear.”
“You heard wrong. So where were you?”
“Where I be? Here. Girls come from big opera party, late for work, but I good boss, let them go sing for fancy peoples. They no say Vladik sick. No say that next day. I read in newspaper. American citizen now. Read American newspaper. Better than
Pravda.
Can believe what read. Say Vladik choke on vomit. Girls come in. I say, ‘Why you no tell me?’ They say not hear till that day.”
“And you were doing what the night he was killed?” The man talked a lot and said very little. Typical criminal. Maybe he killed the other Russian because he wanted the free Russian dancers for himself.
“I here all night. Open till four, five in morning. I here. I have apartment.” He gestured behind him. “Sleep after close. Wake up at noon. You think I kill Vladik? Ha! Vladik my friend. Not so many Russians Boris can be friends with. Talk about mother country.” His laughter boomed again. “Hard mother, Russia. America better to us. Don’t draft me, send me to shit-pile Afghanistan. Probably be in Chechnya now; get shot at if I didn’t desert. But I immigrate and get nice business.”
“Really nice,” I agreed sarcastically.
“We were hoping, Mr. Ignatenko,” said Carolyn, “that you, being Vladik’s friend, could give us a name. Other friends. Or enemies. No one seems to know with whom he associated, besides you.”
“Ha! You think I give him something make him sick. He don’t come here at all Saturday night of opera.”