"Okay," she said, "and so what the fuck does a European seven mean?"
"That's not a seven," Vince said. He had crowded in behind us and was peering over Deborah's shoulder. We both looked at him. "It's a cursive 'F,' " he said, as if that were an obvious truth.
"How do you know?" Debs demanded.
"I've seen it before," he said. "You know, out clubbing."
"What do you mean, clubbing?" Debs said, and Vince shrugged.
"Hey, you know," he said. "Nightlife out on South Beach. I've seen those things." And he looked back down at the black token and reached in between us, poking the thing with his gloved fingertip. " 'F,' " he said.
"Vince," I said, very politely refraining from putting my hands around his throat and squeezing until his eyes popped out. "If you know what this thing is, please tell us before Deborah shoots you."
He frowned and raised both hands, palms up. "Hey, take it easy. Jeez." He poked it again. "It's an entrance token. 'F,' for Fang." He looked up at us and smiled. "You know, Fang? The club?" Something tickled at the back of my brain as he said that, but before I could scratch it, Vince poked the token again and went on talking. "You can't get in without one of these things, and they're really hard to get. I tried. 'Cuz it's a private club-they're open like all night, after all the other clubs close, and I heard it gets like totally wild in there."
Deborah stared at the token as if she were waiting for it to speak. "What's Deke doing with one of these?" she said.
"Maybe he likes to party," Vince said.
Deborah looked at Vince, and then over to Deke's body. "Yeah," she said. "Looks like he had a real rave." Then she turned to Vince. "How late does this place stay open?"
Vince shrugged. "Pretty much all night, you know," he said. "It's like vampire theme, I mean, 'Fang'? So all night. And it's private, members only. So they can do that."
Deborah nodded and grabbed my arm. "Come on," she said.
"Come on where?"
"Where do you think?" she snarled.
"No, wait a second," I said. This wasn't making any sense. "How did the token get in there with Deke's shirt?" I said.
"What do you mean?" Debs said.
"There's no pocket in the shirt," I said. "And it's not the kind of thing you hold in your hand while you get rid of a body. So somebody put the token in there. On purpose."
Deborah stood absolutely still for a moment, not even breathing. "It could have fallen in, and…" She stopped, hopefully realizing how stupid that sounded.
"It couldn't have," I said. "You don't believe that for a second. Somebody wants us to go into that club."
"All right," she said, "then let's go."
I shook my head. "Debs, that's crazy. This has got to be a trap."
She set her jaw and looked stubborn. "Samantha Aldovar is in that club," she said. "I'm going to get her out."
"You don't know where she is," I said.
"She's in there," Debs said through her teeth. "I know she is."
"Deborah-"
"Fuck it, Dexter," she said. "It's the only lead we've got."
Once again I seemed to be the only one who could see the runaway locomotive hurtling down at us. "For God's sake, Debs, it's way too dangerous. Somebody put that thing in there to get us into the club. It's either a trap or a red herring."
But Deborah just shook her head and pulled on my arm, leading me away toward the perimeter. "I don't give a shit if it's a red herring," she said. "It's the only fish we got."
TWENTY-FIVE
Theclub was on ocean drive in south beach, on the edge of the area that TV programs always show when they want to portray the glittering superhip world of Miami nightlife. Every night of the week, the sidewalks were crowded with people wearing minimal clothing and showing off bodies that made that seem like a good idea. They strolled and rolled past the Deco hotels lit up from the inside with neon, loud music, and throngs of even more people who looked just like them, spilling in and out of the buildings in a kind of ultra-chic Brownian motion. A few years ago those same buildings were all cheap retirement hotels, filled with old people who could barely walk and had come south to die in the sun. Now a room that used to cost fifty dollars a night went for ten times that, and the only difference was that the tenants were prettier and the buildings had been on television.
Even at this hour of the night there were people on the sidewalk, but these were the leftovers, the ones who had partied too hard and couldn't remember how to get home, or those who just didn't want to call it a night and lose the glow, even after all the clubs had closed.
All but one: Fang was at the end of the block in a building that was not as dark and quiet as the others, although the front side was subdued for South Beach. But down the alley on the far end there was a glow of black light and a relatively small sign that said FANG in a sort of nouveau Gothic script, and sure enough, the initial "F" matched the one on the black token we had found with Deke's shirt. The sign hung over a dim door that appeared to be painted black and studded with silver metallic brads, like a teenager's idea of what an old dungeon door should look like.
Deborah didn't bother trying to find a parking spot. She just jammed her car up onto the sidewalk and jumped out into the thinning crowd. I got out quickly, but she was already halfway down the alley before I caught up with her. As we got closer to the door I began to feel a rhythmic thumping deep in the folds of my brain. It was an annoying and insistent sound that seemed to come from inside me and demand that I do something, now, without making any concrete suggestions about what. It pounded relentlessly, at twice the speed of a healthy heartbeat, and turned into actual sound only when we were finally standing in front of the glossy black door.
There was small sign with raised gold letters in the same script as the token and the sign above the door. It said, PRIVATE CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY. Deborah didn't seem impressed. She grabbed at the doorknob and turned; the door stayed closed. She thumped her shoulder into it, but it didn't budge.
I leaned past her. "Excuse me," I said, and I pushed the small button set into the doorframe below the sign. She twitched her lips angrily, but didn't say anything.
After only a few seconds the door opened, and I had a very unsettling moment of disorientation. The man who opened the door and stood looking down at us was very nearly a dead ringer for Lurch, the butler on the old Addams Family TV show. He was close to seven feet tall and wore a classic butler's outfit, complete with morning coat. But happily for my sense of unreality, when he spoke to us it was in a high voice with a thick Cuban accent. "Joo rang?" he said.
Deborah held up her badge; she had to hold it straight up in the air, as high as her arm could reach, to get it anywhere close to Lurch's face. "Police," she said. "Let us in."
Lurch put a long knobby finger on the sign that said PRIVATE CLUB. "Hee's a pribait clope," he said.
Deborah looked up at him, and in spite of the fact that he was almost two feet taller and had a cooler costume, he took a half step backward. "Let me in," she said, "or I will come back with a warrant, and la migra, and you will wish you had never been born." And whether it was the threat of INS or just the magic of Deborah's glare, he stepped to the side and held the door open for us. Debs put away her badge and stormed in past the man, and I followed.
Inside the club, the thumping sound that had been annoying outside turned into a pure agony of overwhelming noise. Riding over the top of the torturous beat was a reedy electronic sound, two notes played together that did not quite harmonize but went through a ten-second pattern that repeated over and over. Every two or three times the pattern repeated, a deep electronically distorted voice would whisper something over the music, low and wicked and suggestive and sounding far too much like the nearly heard voice of the Passenger.