"Are you kidding?"
"Not so you'd notice."
"I didn't think so. Of course I have an idea. In fact, I know the address."
A thin smile split Stone's face. "I thought you might. Let's hear about it."
Carol matched his smile, tapped the keys in front of her. An address scrolled up, along with a name.
Hog leaned over her shoulder. "The Black Pussy Cat," he read slowly. "Is that the kind of place I hope it is?"
"Oh lord, I hope not," Loughlin said.
"A place with maybe
nekkid
women
waitin
' on tables and
servin
' the drinks?" There was a distinctly hopeful note in Hog's voice now.
"Say it isn't so," Loughlin muttered behind him.
"I'm afraid it's so, all right," Carol said. "More or less, anyway. It's just about the kind of place you'd expect two men with egos bigger than their brains to hang out. It's a strip joint."
"All
ri-i-i-i-ght
!" Hog yelled enthusiastically.
The Brit sighed loudly. "The things I do in the line of duty. I tell you."
"Suffering for the cause," Stone said, and his smile broadened. "I think we'll have to pay the Black Pussy Cat a little visit. Let's stow our gear and see what presents Carol managed to bring down for us."
Carol showed them to their rooms, then took them all into the room that she and Stone would share. There were two wooden crates on the carpet.
"Open them up, Hog," Stone ordered.
Hog put his immense hands on the boards nailed to the top of one crate and pulled upward. The veins on his arms stood out, and sweat popped out on his forehead.
Then there was a squealing of nails pulling out of wood, and the boards came up.
"Better than a crowbar," Stone said.
"Damn
betcha
," Hog agreed.
"What's in there?"
Stone pulled away a few handfuls of packing. "Weapons," he growled.
Hog smiled. "
Lemme
get that other box open."
T
hey got lost twice on the way to the Black Pussy Cat.
"It ain't my fault," Hog bitched. "Half the streets in this part of town don't even have signs. I bet the chamber of commerce don't give any guided tours down around these parts."
Hog was probably right. They had passed through parts of Miami that no one likes to talk about.
By the time they had cleaned and readied their weapons, it was nearly dark, and then they had to take time for supper. By the time they had gotten rolling, much of the town looked like a war zone.
Store windows were barred.
Doorways had chain links or wrought iron pulled down in front of them.
Hardly anyone walked the streets.
The area around the Black Pussy Cat was made up of tumble-down shacks, cheap cafés covered in shingles or old tin signs, junkyards, and empty warehouses.
The strip joint itself was the only evidence of life in its block, and it looked sort of like a strip joint might look on the moon. Its garish neon provided the only light, and the only sounds came from within, a mixture of loud talk, louder laughter, and an inept house band. The joint's door was open to the street, but the smoky haze within was so dense that the figures inside looked as if they were moving under ten feet of sea water.
Loughlin leaned into the front seat. "Your kind of place, Hog."
Hog nodded. "Don't you know it. I sure wish I was here on vacation instead of on a job."
There were several cars parked on the street, so Stone decided to take a chance that the Toyota would be there when they got back. It was only a rental, after all. And he hadn't rented it under his own name.
Hog sighed with relief when he got out and stood on the cracked walk. "I don't think I
coulda
stood much more of that. Next time, let's rent a Lincoln Town Car."
They started toward the Black Pussy Cat.
The building was constructed of cheap concrete blocks and had a tin roof. The roof seemed almost to be vibrating from the noise within.
They stepped inside.
Hog immediately began to cough. "Might as well be
smokin
' three packs a day.
Jesús
, this air is thick."
"It's not all your basic over-the-counter smoke, either," Loughlin observed.
Stone was scanning the crowd, which was predominantly Latin, probably Cuban, he guessed. But there were a few Anglos here and there, so he and his team didn't stand out too much. Except for their clothes.
Most of the others were wearing bright clothes, loud Hawaiian shirts in vivid colors or solids that seemed to shimmer in the smoky light. Stone and his men looked pallid in comparison.
There was a bar to their left, with a few glowing beer signs behind it. In the middle of the room was a crude raised platform for the dancers, and tables were scattered all around in a random pattern.
Stone led Loughlin and Hog to a vacant table and sat down. The chairs were rickety, and one of the table's legs was shorter than the others.
"A first-class club," Loughlin remarked as they sat. "Do you suppose they have imported beer on tap?"
Almost as soon as they were seated, a waitress sauntered over to take their order. She was young and sultry, with long dark hair and black eyes. Her red-painted mouth pouted at them. She wore a very short skirt and a very low-cut blouse that revealed tawny mounds of flesh.
Hog hardly knew whether to look at her or at the girl on the stage. She was also young, but her hair was red. She was stripping slowly to a lazy, unrecognizable melody being
droned
out by the four-piece house band located beside the stage. As she peeled, she chewed gum in a tempo appropriate to her work.
Stone ordered, and the waitress departed, returning shortly with three domestic beers in the bottles. No glasses.
Stone drank slowly, looking over the clientele in the strip joint. Most of the men walked animatedly, gesturing and laughing, hardly watching the stripper at all.
By now she was down to pasties and a G-string, and Hog was hoping that she would go all the way. He wanted to know if she was a true redhead.
There was little encouragement from the other patrons, however, most of whom probably already knew the answer from past evenings spent in the same place. There were a few halfhearted yells of encouragement, a catcall or two, and then the drum cranked out a final flourish and the dancer grabbed up the pieces of her costume that littered the stage. She jumped down from the platform and walked casually through the tables toward an open door in the back of the club, twitching her shapely rear as she walked, still chewing her gum.
"What do you think?" Hog said. "Great, huh? Boy, I'd like to meet that one."
"You would like to meet all of them," Loughlin sighed. "Any sign of the two we're looking for?" he asked Stone. Instead of answering, Stone signaled the waitress.
She came over with three more beers on her tray. Stone had tipped her well the first time.
As she set the beers on the table, Stone said, "We're looking for a couple of friends of ours that like to hang around here.
Tomás
Castillo and Jos
é
Rodriguez. Have they come in yet?"
The waitress scanned the room, not seeing anything odd in the fact that Stone didn't seem to know what his friends looked like or if they were already there. He was such a good tipper, she probably didn't care.
"
Si
," she answered, pointing with the very red-tipped finger of her right hand. "They are at that table over there."
Stone looked where she was pointing. Two men sat drinking and laughing. One of them was tall and solidly built, and sported a bandage under his chin. The other man was shorter and stouter. As Stone watched, they were joined by the redheaded stripper, who sat in the shorter one's lap and twined her arms around his body.
"Thanks," Stone told the waitress, adding even more to her tip.
He turned to Hog and Loughlin. "Let's go talk to those boys."
Hog stood up. "Good idea. Maybe if they like us, they'll give us an introduction."
Loughlin pushed back his chair. "Somehow I don't think that's the idea of this visit."
"That's the trouble with this job," Hog said ruefully.
Stone was already halfway to the table where Rodriguez and Castillo sat. The band had struck up another tune, and another stripper, this one a bottle blonde, was going into the routine.
Hardly anyone in the room seemed to care. Most of them were watching the three big Anglos moving through the crowd. The noise level dropped considerably, and the talking aloud became whispering. There was the sound of feet shuffling under tables.
Stone appeared not to notice. He stopped about three feet from the table. "Which one's Rodriguez?" he demanded.
"Who's asking?" the shorter man said, pushing the redhead aside.
She got off his lap and sat in a vacant chair, as Hog admired her attributes. Even with clothes on, she was a looker.
Stone didn't answer Rodriguez's question. Instead, he said, "We're looking for a friend of ours."
"It's not me, then," Rodriguez sneered. "I am not your friend."
"Nor I, either," Castillo said. "It might be better if you went back to your own table, or perhaps left the club. We are men of influence here. We do not wish to be bothered."
Hog stopped looking at the woman and looked at Castillo. "Well fancy that," he growled. "Men of influence. I always like to meet men with a lot of influence."
The noise level around them had dropped even further, and Hog's voice seemed to echo in the room. Even the band almost missed a beat.
Castillo pushed back his chair and stood up slowly. "You have a very big mouth, gringo."
Stone could see the club's bouncers, two burly gorillas who looked as if they were dragging their knuckles on the floor, moving toward the table. Other patrons were beginning to shift nervously in their seats.
Stone concentrated on Rodriguez. "All we want to do is find our friend. We're not looking for trouble. We've been told that you might have some word about him."
"That seems very doubtful to me," Rodriguez said. He tapped a finger on the table. "We do not know many gringos."
Stone ignored the insult, as Hog had earlier from Castillo. He didn't want a fight. He wanted information.
"My friend's name is Jack
Wofford
."
Something changed in Rodriguez's eyes.
"I never heard that name," he said, but Stone knew he was lying. He would have pushed it, but then Castillo spoke up.
"I know it," he spat. "
Wofford
was a filthy Anglo shit. A dirty motherfucker."
He dived at Hog, both arms swinging.
R
azors, knives, and cheap .22 pistols suddenly appeared all over the room.
Hog threw a straight, hard right between Castillo's flailing fists and smeared the dealer's nose all over his face.
Stone grabbed a handful of Rodriguez's shirtfront, pulled him out of his chair, and chopped his neck with the edge of his hand. Rodriguez fell like a chain-sawed log.
Then the bouncers were on top of them.
Literally.
Loughlin grabbed the long arm of the first one as it wrapped around his shoulder and flipped the man right on over his back. The bouncer landed in the middle of Rodriguez's table, which split right down the middle with a loud crack, dumping the bouncer to the floor on his back.
He tried to rise, and Loughlin calmly kicked him on the point of the chin. His head hit the floor with a dull thud, bounced up an inch or two, and then fell back.
Fights were breaking out all over the club, and Stone could hear the crack of a .22 pistol occasionally. He didn't let things like that bother him, however. He had other things on his mind.