Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (37 page)

“Uh-uh. This side. You thirsty?”

“Actually I came in to see her.” I indicated the free bird up on the stage.

“You can see her just fine from here, can’t you?”

“Sure.”

“But you can see me better.” Her fingers started massaging.

“I believe I can feel you too,” I said.

“What say you buy me a drink.”

I removed her hand and set it onto the bar. “What say I don’t much like the going price of flat ginger ale in this place.”

“Are you going to be nasty? Is that it?”

“Will that cost extra?”

She gave me an ugly smile. “Usually does.” She signaled the bartender to get us started. Uh-oh. Here goes the college tuition for my dog. I put a fistful of money on the bar and told the bartender—a mean looking bald guy in a muscle shirt—“Can you turn this into a couple of beers?” To the woman at my side I said, “I really did come in to see Misty. No offense.”

The movement on my right was the sound of the woman with the cellophane hair quitting the barstool and heading for greener pastures. “I didn’t catch your name,” I said as she crossed behind me.

“Fuck off.”

Hmmm. Catchy.

Lady Dew spotted me during her big toe-touching finale. This time she wasn’t mooning her audience, she was facing us and mooning the mirrored wall behind us. In a sense, we still got the message. She was snaking her arms down in front of her, reaching for her toes, when she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye. I waved; she winked. Some guy thrust a fistful of cash in her direction. She snatched it, leaned impossibly farther forward—I suspected a yoga regimen—and kissed the horny fool on the top of his head. Right. Great investment. The “Freebird” anthem finally wrapped up (“Woah, woah, woah, woah, whoaaaaa …”), and Misty quit the stage.

“Quite a number,” I said to her a moment later as she alighted on the stool to my left. Her hands remained in plain sight. Such a lady. She was again wearing her transparent robe.

“ ‘Freebird,’ ” Misty said, in case I had been deaf during the past five minutes. “I’m trying different things.”

“Have you considered Brahms?”

“What’s he do?”

“A lot of strings. It’s probably not on the jukebox though.”

“Yeah, can you believe they make us use our own quarters? It’s so humiliating.”

I decided not to put Misty through my flat ginger ale routine. I needed to talk with her. I made the same offer that I had before, that I could simply give my cash directly to her rather than siphon it off to the cash register for that lousy swill.

“You promise to leave the bartender a tip anyway?” she asked.

“Scout’s honor.”

“Tell you what. Let’s go to a booth.”

I put a hand on her arm. “I just want to talk. I mean that.”

“Look, what you do with your money is your business. I got to generate cash flow, all right? That’s
my
business. If you keep it flowing, you can do whatever you want.”

We retired to a scrungy booth. I made a mental note to take a dozen showers as soon as I got home. “Let me slide in next to you,” Misty said. When I started to protest she said, “Come on, just let me. What are people going to think if they look over here and see me sitting across from you? Like we’re having a conversation?”

“You’re right. God forbid.”

I slid over and Misty came down next to me. She led with her hips and pressed me against the wall.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s good. You?”

“Nifty.”

“So, what do you want to talk about?” she asked. “Sports? Weather?”

“Popeye.”

“Oh. Yeah. How about that, huh? Somebody shot him in the foot.”

“Yeah, well they also shot him in the heart.”

“Pretty good shooting, I’d say. It couldn’t have been very big.”

“So, I take it you’re pretty devastated by all this, huh?”

“You mean him getting killed? Sure, that sucked. But I mean, nobody here really liked him much. Some old men are nice and fatherly and all that shit. But Popeye was a Grade A prick. He was just an old man with an old man attitude. He could care less for the dancers. He never even looked at us when we were up there dancing. An old man like that who can’t even get interested in a stripper anymore? I don’t know, I think I’d shoot myself if I got that way. That’s half dead anyway.”

“Well, it looks like someone decided to do the shooting for him.”

“Yeah, isn’t that something. You were on your way up there too. I remember. It was that same day, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“You weren’t going over there to shoot him yourself, were you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t think it, I’m just wondering.”

“What? Do you think a bunch of us were starting to line up and whoever got there first won?”

“I don’t know. You just all of a sudden were more interested in talking to him than you were to me. That’s the part I remember.”

“I didn’t mean for you to take it personally. I was hoping that Popeye could give me some information.”

“On that porn guy?”

“Terry Haden. Yes.”

“I guess you didn’t get any information, did you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got something new I’m trying to figure out. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

She gave me a funny look. “You’re not going to shoot
me
are you?”

“Misty, why in the world would I do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a fucked-up world is all. You never know what anyone is going to do.”

“Well, I’m not going to shoot you.” Hell, I wasn’t even going to touch her. Or ask
her
to touch
me
. Didn’t the stripper know a saint when she was squeezed into a dark booth with one? “I want to know if you can give me some information.”

She laughed. “Shoot.”

“You’re a card,” I said. I set a handful of cash on the table. It disappeared in a heartbeat. “About two weeks ago, this would be a Wednesday night. Do you work on Wednesdays?”

“Every day but Sunday.”

“So, you would have been working here that night. It wasn’t this past Wednesday, but the one before that. The night of the big blizzard.”

“Sure. I was here.”

“Was Popeye here that night? Do you remember?”

“Popeye was here every night. Except for lunch, he spent all his time here. Nice life, huh?”

“So then he was here that night. Now here’s what I want to ask you. Do you have any memory of a man coming in that night. A man in a suit.”

“You have no idea how many suits we get in here.”

I pulled a newspaper clipping from my pocket. The previous week’s blizzard had snaffued the weekly recycling schedule. Piece of luck. I handed her the clipping.

“This guy. Do you recall seeing him in here?”

Misty took the newspaper clipping and squinted at it. There was just enough light seeping into the booth for pulling down zippers and groping in the dark, but not a hell of lot for looking at newspapers. But Misty seemed to have decent night vision. She held the clipping nearly to her nose, then handed it back to me.

“Maybe. I think so. Yes.”

My heart—which had not even blipped an extra beat when I was groped by the android—jumped now.

“Misty. Which of those three answers is it? Maybe? You think so? Or yes?”

“Let me see it again.”

She took the clipping from me again and again held it up to her nose. “Sure,” she declared. “That’s the guy.”

“
The
guy? What do you mean, Misty? The guy what?”

“The guy who came in. It was one of those nights. Crazy night. Poor Popeye. I almost felt sorry for him. I mean, I really didn’t like him, but still, he was getting jerked around all over the place that night.”

“Jerked around. By this guy? Did this guy come in and jerk the old man around?”

“Well, wait. Hold on to your big horse. One thing at a time, okay? I was dancing. We weren’t all that full yet. You know how it is. Like the last time you were here. A few guys at the bar, a couple tables. Not a real fast night. And in comes this guy.”

“The man in the picture?”

“No. I told you, hang on. He was later. You got to listen. It was this other guy. I’ve seen him coming in and out of here a bunch of times. Kind of like that other guy you were asking about the last time. The porn jerk.”

“Haden.”

“Yeah. Like him. Coming around like he owned the place. This guy was kind of like that. Except he didn’t hit up on us or anything. I mean, he wasn’t trying to get us to star in porn flicks or anything. He had some sort of business with Popeye. He never paid any attention to us. I thought he was a creep. None of the girls like him. There’s just something nasty about him. You know the type.”

“Do you know his name?”

“We just call him Bob. I don’t think that’s his name. Someone just came up with that. You know, like a nickname. Bob. It’s the same forward as backward.”

“So, what was ‘Bob’ up to that night?”

“He was pissed off. That’s why I remember it. He came storming in here like he was ready to take someone’s head off. Like I said, I was up on the stage, so I could see it pretty good. He went right over to Popeye, who’s always over there at the corner of the bar, and he started yelling at him. I couldn’t hear about what, because of the music. And it wasn’t too long. He and Popeye went into the back office and shut the door. And you could still hear the guy yelling at him back in there. Even with the door closed and the music going. You could also hear something hitting the wall.”

“Like maybe Popeye?”

“Like maybe him, yeah. The guy was definitely roughing the old man up.”

“How long were they back there?”

“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes? Maybe more. I don’t wear a watch onstage.”

I didn’t bother to note that if she did it would be her biggest piece of clothing.

“So then what else, Misty? Did anything else happen?”

“Nah. The guy finally left. He practically knocked over a couple of customers on his way out. He was pissed off, I mean
really
pissed off. Popeye stayed in the back for awhile, and when he came out no one said a word to him about it. He had a cut on his chin. It looked like he was moving even slower than normal. But no one said a word. Hell, he doesn’t care about us, what are we going to do, start caring about him?”

“So, what happened next?”

“What happened next was later on the same night this guy in the newspaper, this guy here,
he
came in. I don’t know when it was. Maybe like a couple of hours later? I couldn’t tell you for sure. It was a lot later. I was sitting at the bar. I had a customer. So, I was, you know, busy. But I saw Popeye’s face when this guy came in. I’d seen him before, by the way. This guy you showed me in the picture. I’d seen a couple of times before, over in the corner, talking with Popeye about something or other. I just figured Popeye was mixed up in something illegal, you know. It’s none of my business.”

“Why would you think that?”

Misty took hold of my chin and ticktocked my head to look around the club. “Look around. A guy in a big-deal suit comes in to talk to Popeye? What do they have to talk about? The guy sure isn’t Popeye’s stockbroker, you know what I’m saying? I’m just guessing. Running this joint was probably about the most legal thing Popeye ever did. And I know for a fact he had to grease some palms here and there to keep us going. They can bust you for just about anything these days, you know?”

“Go on. What happened?”

“Well, Popeye saw this guy come in and I swear, if the old man knew how to look scared, that’s how he looked. It was like he expected this guy to come over and rough him up too. But he didn’t. I mean this guy with the suit, he’s not a tough guy or anything. Besides, he had his arm in a sling. I remember that. How good can you beat up an old man when you got one arm in a sling, you know?”

“Good point.”

“Well, he and Popeye go back into the office too. This time there isn’t any roughhousing. And like a half hour later, out comes this guy, and he storms right out of the club too. It was funny. Both these guys going into the office and then storming out. I don’t know what Popeye was telling them back there, but it wasn’t making either of them too happy.”

I wasn’t sure of the specifics either. And I wasn’t real certain that I would ever uncover them. Killers don’t like to talk. And dead men can’t. And if I was reading things correctly, that’s what I was dealing with here. A killer and a dead man.

“How about something to remember me by?” Misty said as I motioned her to let me out of the booth. She slid out first and turned to face me. The light from the bar and the stage behind her filtered in through her transparent gown and outlined the dancer’s body in an amber silhouette.

“I’ll remember you.” She didn’t give me much room to pass as I squeezed out of the booth and stood up. She looked up at me and tapped a finger against my chest.

“I still got your card,” she said. “If I die I’ll call you.”

It was too late to be calling on people unannounced. But there was nothing I could do about that. The clock was running. I was now holding on to way more information than I should. Kruk would want to know what I now knew. What I should have done when I left The Kitten Club was to walk down two blocks to police headquarters and leave Detective Kruk one hell of a message. An early Christmas gift.

That’s not what I did. I found a pay phone and called Jimmy’s Cabs. The dispatcher told me that she had a couple of cabs idling down at the harbor and that she’d send one up to me. Several minutes later a powder blue car pulled up to the curb. I got in.

“Homeland,” I said to the driver. I gave him Ann Kingman’s address.

It was too late to be calling on people unannounced, but there was nothing I could do about that. I’m aware that I’m repeating myself, but the thought occurred to me twice; once when I gave the cabby the address and again when he pulled up in front of the darkened house. We had passed midnight on the way over.

“Wait until you actually see me go inside,” I instructed the cabby. “Then you can go.” I gave him enough money to cover an extra ten minutes past what the meter was reading. I figured it could take that long to wake Ann Kingman and to convince her to let me inside for a little chat.