“You sure it’s in there?” said R.T.
“So I heard.”
“Where in there?”
“We’ll find it,” I said. “Beth, why don’t you go around back with the truck. We’ll go in the front.”
Beth nodded, walked over to the tow truck, climbed in the passenger seat. The tow truck pulled out of the lot.
“All right, Buckaroo,” said Deputy Sheriff R.T. Pritchett, again hitching up his pants, rising to his role in the morning’s drama. “Let’s saddle on up and rope this doggy.”
It was a bright day, but you wouldn’t know it from inside the Eager Beaver. The lights were low, the music loud, the joint was practically empty and it smelled like soiled socks. Three men sat scattered at the round tables, drinking beer, all three scruffy as tomcats and evidently well practiced at wasting their days. A girl, no better at hiding her boredom than her breasts, was dancing slowly atop the bar. She was pretty enough and was wearing little enough and her shoes were high enough and her breasts were certainly big enough, but with the emptiness of the place, the smell, the tired pall of smoke, the humid heat, with everything, the scene was about as sexy as a root canal.
R.T.’s uniform drew the attention of a squat hunched man with a battered fleshy face and false black hair, who slipped off the bar and waddled toward us. “Ain’t no cover this afternoon, gentlemen. You want a table close to the action?”
“There’s action?” I said. “Where?”
“We’re looking for a Derek Manley,” said R.T. “You seen him today?”
“Don’t know him. But I’m just a greeter here. Greetings. You want me to shake your hand, I will. You want me to get you a seat close enough to Wanda over there what you can smell her, I can do that too.”
“I can smell her from here,” I said.
“If Mr. Manley’s not around,” said R.T., “we’ll talk to Mr. Rothstein.”
“Rothstein?” The greeter scratched his head. “Don’t know him neither. Maybe he’s coming in for lunch.”
“Cut with the act,” I said, “and tell him he has visitors.”
“He ain’t in,” said the man. “He don’t come in much no more, what with his tax problems.”
“You mind if we go through there?” I said, pointing to an open doorway loosely shielded by a curtain of beads.
He held out his hand. “Patrons ain’t allowed in the back.”
“We’re not patrons,” said R.T., taking a paper out of the file, handing it to the greeter. “Step aside, pilgrim, we got a right to be here. We’re looking for a 2002 Cadillac Eldorado.”
The man laughed. “An Eldorado, huh? Well, if you want, you can look under them tables, behind the bar, wherever, but I don’t see no Eldorado. Who did you say you was again?”
“I’m a lawyer,” I said, pulling a card out of my pocket.
Without so much as a glance, he dropped it to the floor, ground it with his shoe.
“Nice manners,” I said. “In Japan they’d behead you for that. Just be advised I represent Jacopo Financing, which is owed a hundred thousand dollars by Derek Manley.”
“A hundred thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money. And you think it’s here? Hey, Wanda,” he called out to the girl on the stage.
She was bending over now, bending away from us, her legs straight, hands on her ankles, jiggling. With her head upside down between her knees she screeched, “What do you want?”
“This guy’s looking for some money. You got a hundred thousand dollars maybe stuffed in your top?”
Wanda straightened up, turned toward us, pulled her straps forward so she could look down. “I don’t think so,” she said, and then she lowered the straps so that her breasts tumbled out like two soft, red-eyed bunnies. “But my boyfriend says these are worth a million.”
“Can we seize those, R.T.?” I said.
“Sorry, Victor,” said R.T., shaking his head. “Appealing as it sounds, I don’t reckon we can.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. “According to Mr. Manley, he owns a third of this club.”
“I ain’t no corporate lawyer,” said the greeter, “so I can’t tell you who owns what. But there’s no car and the club’s worth squat. You ain’t going to find a dime. Sorry, gentlemen, but it looks like you wasted your time.”
Just then a dark-haired woman in a sheer robe and high heels stepped through the beaded curtain and came up to the greeter. With her hand on her hip and a strong accent she said, “We out of ice in back, Ike. Chou mind? And get the air conditioner fixed, why don’t chou?” The woman looked at us, gave us a smile as quick as a wink, spun around and walked back through the beads.
The greeter raised his eyebrows at us. “Bunch of spoiled brats, all of them.”
“Ike,” I said. “She called you Ike.”
“No she didn’t,” said the man.
“You’re Ike Rothstein.”
“No I’m not. I told you, I just work here.”
“You know what the penalty is for lying to a public official?” said R.T.
“Is that what you are?” said Rothstein. “A public official? I thought you was one of the Village People. Why don’t you both just park your asses here while I call my lawyer.”
He turned and disappeared through the curtain.
R.T., standing beside me, looked around the empty, dreary club. “You sure the car’s here?”
“My man says it’s here, so it’s here. Somewhere. Let’s go in the back.”
We headed toward the doorway where Rothstein had disappeared and pushed through the beaded curtain, walking smack into the woman with the sheer robe.
“What chou want?” she said.
“We’re looking for a car.”
“Not back here chou not. This is private. Does Ike know chou back here?”
“He told us to follow him.”
“Cherk.”
“Who, me?”
“Ike. He knows he’s not supposed to send no one back here. There’s rules. And what about the damn air conditioner. It’s been broke for two week. You can’t dance when it’s hot like this. Everything, it rides up.”
“Tell me about it. And the chafing.”
“Chou got that right.”
“Does a guy named Derek Manley, who owns part of the club, come here much?”
“Asshole.”
“Who, me?”
“Him. Manley. Every time he walk by he think he entitled to squeeze.”
“I guess he’s a hands-on owner. I’m looking for his car.”
“What are you, repo?”
“Of a sort.”
“Well, if it’s that asshole’s car chou looking for, there’s a bunch of locked up sheds in the back.”
“Keys?”
“Hanging in the office.”
“And the back door.”
“Through the office.”
“Thanks. You don’t happen to be Esmerelda, do you?”
“That’s me.”
“The Brazilian Firecracker.”
“Chou know my work?”
“Absolutely. By the way, nice shoes.”
“Really?”
It didn’t take long to find the office, a cheesy little place with thin wood paneling and a cat calendar. What kind of strip joint owner has a cat calendar hanging on his wall? Made me wonder what was hanging at the SPCA. Rothstein was on the phone and he stood up and waved his arms like a traffic cop when we entered, but we ignored him. I walked past Rothstein to the back door, popped a jumble of keys off a hook, tossed them once in my hand, and headed outside.
There was an alleyway behind the club with a bunch of sagging garage sheds on either side. Beth and the tow truck were there, waiting.
Rothstein followed us out. “I’m getting my lawyer on the phone,” he said. “He’s in a meeting right now.”
“You owe him money, right?” I said.
“How’d you know?”
“And you got tax problems?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then take my word, it’s going to be a long meeting.”
I stepped to the shed closest to the club, fiddled with the keys, found one finally that fit, turned the lock. I reached down and pulled up the door: a bunch of old tables, a couple of sagging, stained couches, dented metal beer kegs, a pile of trashed speakers, mops. I didn’t even want to imagine what the mops had mopped. I pulled the door closed.