Medusa (10 page)

“Ya’ll will like this,” she hissed. “This act killed my momma.” She threw back her head and laughed like someone gone completely mad. It was then that I noticed the snakes. A pair of large pythons, one black, and one albino. Someone had dropped the snakes behind her, and they had come forth of their own accord. Trained snakes. I didn’t know you could train a snake.
 

Obviously thinking the same thoughts, Tiller said quietly, “That’s impossible,” more to himself than anyone else.
 

The snakes came forward, one entwining itself on either of the dancer’s flawless legs, and wound themselves up, up, swirling upward in unison, writhing around first her calves, then her olive-white and perfect thighs, ever up, up, entwining in unison around her torso, then her neck and arms, broad muscular bands of black and white writhing and embracing that perfect body, like the arms of many lovers—an impression that the image was surely meant to convey.
 

I suddenly became aware of eyes boring into me. It was a feeling long experience had taught me never to ignore. A sense that I did not understand, but accepted, like any good cop plays his hunch. I looked to my left. There was a buxom brunette sitting at a table with several other people. She was giving me a look of bald appraisal. She was wearing a shirt, unbuttoned and tied off in a thick knot below her breasts, and ragged, cutoff blue jean shorts. She looked like a poor man’s Daisy Duke. I gave her a polite nod and turned my attention back to the stage.
 

I watched the stripper’s strange snake act for several minutes, then suddenly I became aware of a presence beside me. It was Daisy Duke, and she was now standing over me, her body weaving, in a little dance that was a faint drunken echo of the voluptuous and rhythmic churning of the dancer on the stage.
 

“Hey, big black guy. I like you, you’re handsome.” Her voice was slurred and it came out yuhrr hahnsumm, but I got the idea.
 

“Thanks.” I nodded and turned away.
 

“Hey, hey, look at me, not her.” And now the girl was reaching up, her fingers clumsily grasping the ends of the bowknot that held her shirt together. She tugged the shirt open, and shrugged out of it.

“My name’s Rhonda. I’m the biggest whore in here,” she said, and now she was fumbling with the shorts, too. Men appeared from all the cardinal directions, and some not so cardinal, big men, and two grabbed the girl and thrust her clothes at her, while three more confronted me.
 

“Hey, mister, your girlfriend can’t be stripping in here.”
 

“She’s not my girlfriend. I don’t know even this woman,” I replied. The two men who had grabbed the brunette hustled her away, and enlisted the aid of a waitress in putting her back into her clothes. The waitress scowled but complied, leading the woman away to the lady’s room. I glanced up, and the other men were still standing over me.
 

“You can’t be causing trouble in here,” the one who seemed to be in charge said.
 

“Like I told you, I never saw that woman before.”
 

“So she just came over here and started taking off her clothes, huh?” one asked. His head was shaven and his ears dripped with multiple earrings. He had a lot of tattoos. He probably thought he was cool. Maybe his friends thought so, too.
 

“That’s right,” I said. “She seemed pretty drunk.”
 

“Y’all didn’t encourage her none?” Now there was a grin on his face. “Aw, come on, we’re all men here.”
 

“We didn’t even speak to the floozy, mister.” Tiller said in his best you kids get off my lawn voice. “You heard the man. We don’t want any trouble.”
 

The bouncer furrowed his eyebrows, frowned, and muttered, “Well, just don’t cause any more trouble.” And with that, he drifted away.
 

“Good job, Tiller.” I leaned over and slapped him on the arm. “You grumpy old goat. That kid must still be afraid of his grandpa.”
 

“Oh, screw you, Longville. You just have to show these fake macho types that they can’t scare you.”
 

“No grumpy grandpa vibe, you figure?”
 

“Just shut up and watch the stripper, why don’t you,” Tiller said, perhaps involuntarily using the same tone on me that he had used on the bouncer. I turned and watched the stripper.
 

The tension in the place eased, and the energy returned to something approximating a normal bar. One on Mars, maybe.
 

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I told Tiller and Corsack. “Got to take a pause for the cause. Too much excitement.”
 

As I headed off to the men’s room, I glanced up at the stage. There stood the Medusa herself, the snake act over, wearing nothing but her serpents, wrapped around her shoulders like a living mink stole. Her eyes met mine for just a second, and then she glanced away.
 

Oh come on, Roland, every guy in here wishes she was looking his way.
 

I headed off to the men’s room, still trying to understand what Corsack, and the trip to this strange place was all about. None of it was making sense, at the moment.
 

Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Longville.
 

My imagination wasn’t running away with me. The dancer was actually sitting at the table when I returned. She had put her snakes away, and her long legs were crossed in front of her, although I didn’t think that it was for the sake of modesty. She was still quite nude. I saw that Corsack was chatting animatedly with her. Tiller was already glaring at me as I crossed the room. He supposed that Corsack had invited her to the table.
 

Medusa indeed. Up close, there wasn’t anything the least threatening about her. She looked rather young, and fragile. She appeared to be chatting with Corsack, although her eyes found me as soon as I re-entered the room, and stayed with me as I approached the table. Her expression was quite different from Tiller’s, though just as intense.
 

Corsack rose from his seat as I approached, and gestured grandiosely toward the seated woman.
 

“Roland Longville, may I present Miss Mafalda, The Medusa, the best and most beautiful dancer in all of New Orleans, indeed, in all of Louisiana.”
 

I bowed slightly, not knowing what else to do, as the woman did not extend her hand; she just sat there and fixed me with her cool green stare. I lowered myself into a chair.
 

Mafalda smiled. There was no artifice in her manner, none of the fake friendliness I expected. “You aren’t from Louisiana,” she stated in a soft voice. I wondered if she was going to tell my fortune, too. I might just let her.
 

“No. Just visiting.”
 

“You don’t seem like you’re on vacation. And you don’t look like a salesman. You some kind of a cop?”
 

“I have to say you’re the one who sounds like a cop. Do I put you on edge?”
 

She gave a surprisingly girlish laugh. A woman in her line of work seldom had a girlish laugh. “Oh, no, honey. But up there on that stage, you know what I do most of the time? I look out at people who are sitting down here and try to figure them out. Most people, they take me less than a minute. Let me show you. See that guy over there?”
 

She nodded toward a man in his late thirties, wearing a rumpled dark blue suit. He was holding a drink and staring with a dull gaze at the girl who was giving him a nude lap dance.
 

“I would never want to talk to him, because I already know all about him, and none of it is very interesting. I have met him before. Not him, but a thousand like him. He graduated from college, married his girlfriend after the second or third experimental breakup—what college kids do so they can screw other people—he’s been in his job for six or seven years, the good one he landed after he’d been out in the workforce for a while. He’s got kids at home who are a pain in the ass, and probably spoiled. He drinks a little too much, maybe his wife does too, because she has a very good idea what he’s doing right now, and who knows, maybe she’s doing worse.”
 

“Come on. You took one look at the guy and just assumed the worst. Maybe he’s divorced.”
 

“See that little white place where his wedding ring usually is? That says he’s married but saying, ‘I’m open to any offers.’ Say, maybe you aren’t a cop, after all. So just what are you?”
 

“You’re the one with the penetrating insight. You tell me.”
 

“That’s why I came over here. I can’t make you. You carry some kind of weight around with you, but it doesn’t destroy you . . . you have some kind of noble purpose to you. It’s very intriguing. I don’t see much in this world that is noble.”
 

“Believe me, Mafalda, neither do I. Neither do I.”
 

Tiller sat across the table fuming at Corsack, in between admiring glances at Mafalda. He shot me an impatient glare. As I was about to say something to him, Mafalda leaned across the table and whispered into my ear, “So tell me how you met Corsack.”
 

I looked into those pale green eyes and thought for a second. There were an awful lot of unknowns circling right now, I realized. I decided to be cautious.
 

“We just met tonight.”
 

Mafalda smiled her knowing smile. Her face was still quite close to mine.
 

“So he brought you here. I swear, Corsack would live here if they’d let him.”
 

She leaned back, slowly, apparently pleased with my answer. She suddenly grabbed my hand and said, “Come with me.”
 

“Where?”
 

“Outside. There’s something I need to show you.”
 

“Outside?” My eyes went reflexively down to Mafalda’s nude body, and then up to meet her eyes. There not a lot I haven’t seen, I thought to myself.
 

“Shouldn’t you—”
 

Mafalda laughed then, and this time her laughter wasn’t girlish at all. It was a raw and throaty sound, with a very worldly edge to it. “I suppose that I’d better. When you’re naked as much as I am, honey, sometimes you just plain forget.”
 

She led me to the bar where she made a sign to the bartender, a lithe redhead who was herself half-naked, clad only in a burgundy lace bra and panties, and who smiled and winked at me as she handed Mafalda a pink robe from behind the bar. Mafalda beckoned for me to follow as she walked through a curtained doorway. A sign reading No Admittance hung over the door, though there seemed to be no one around to enforce the edict.
 

Sweeping aside the curtain, I found myself in a hallway where the waitresses and dancers mingled. I caught sight of Mafalda walking toward the other end of the hallway, and the rear door. I followed her down the hall, dodging scantily clad and nude girls, who smiled and laughed as I pressed by. I reached the back door, almost intoxicated by various perfumes. Mafalda opened the door and we stepped out into the cool night air, and onto a large porch, one that sat over water. There were citronella torches burning to keep the eternal clouds of mosquitoes at bay.
 

There were several couches out there, too, and the whole affair was covered by a tin roof. The porch was vacant except for the two of us at the moment. I had the feeling there were probably lots of tawdry goings on out on that porch at other times.
 

Mafalda opened her robe and spread her arms, and let the cool night air run over her body. “One gets hot in there, dancing and all.”
 

“I see.”
 

She slowly wrapped the robe back around her body and tied the belt in a loose knot.
 

“Now,” she said with a girlish exhale and a shrug, “that’s better.”
 

I marveled at how quickly she switched back and forth between the throaty stripper and the girlish nymphet. I wasn’t sure that I was buying either one as her real personality. Maybe she didn’t really have one, and just vacillated back and forth between those two pretended extremes.
 

“So tell me how you know Corsack,” she repeated, and her bright green eyes were all playful now. Nothing serious, just a question from a pretty girl, her look seemed to say. I suddenly felt like I was standing on the edge of a precipice. I was here for a reason, to find a missing girl, but somehow first Corsack, and now Mafalda, had entered the picture. It was all hidden at the moment, but Fain and the case that brought me to New Orleans was apparently mixed up with these two very different, but equally strange, people.
 

“I told you, I just met him tonight.”

The woman called Mafalda, or the Medusa, depending upon what she happened to be doing at the time, crinkled her nose in a girlish smile and shrugged a little shrug.
 

“Oh, never mind, it’s just that he’s always here. He brings me flowers and other little gifts. He’s sweet. I think he’s in love with me, or at least he thinks he is.”