“Let’s go back to those civic groups and religious fanatics,” I said. “Are there any leaders who might have a real grudge? Someone you’ve badly embarrassed in public, maybe? Or somebody so crazed he or she might take you for the devil incarnate?”
Otis started in on “Change Gonna Come” while my host reflected.
“There’s Lesser Weaver,” he said, stubbing the second cigarette in the tray. “He’s a wild-eyed fanatic with a fervent following. His Evangelical Redeemer Church stages protests outside the club maybe once a month, more lately. But I think Weaver has another agenda than doing the Lord’s work.”
“What would that be?”
The faint smile made a comeback. “He knows I’m moving to Germantown.”
“Moving where?”
“It’s a very well-off, very white conservative suburb with a crime rate lower than a rat’s nuts. And the idea of me moving in is driving a lot of them upper-class types bug-fuck.”
“You’re setting up shop there?”
“No! I’m buying a house. A mansion, actually. I have to do something with all this money.”
I gestured around us. “What about all this?”
“It’s been nice. But I’m tired of living where I work, and this apartment will make a lucrative piece of real estate. No, I’m ready for more, a really fancy layout. Anyway, Mavis is a class act and she deserves the best.”
Mavis, of course, was downstairs doing her class act, if by class act you meant letting guys in miner’s helmets point their lamps at your privates.
“You know, Max,” I said, “it’s fun sticking it to people who think they’re better than you are...”
“Stickin’ it right in their fuckin’ faces!”
“...but why borrow trouble? Set your business up in a part of town where you’re appreciated. Buy a home somewhere they’re glad to have you. You’re a smut peddler, my friend, not an agent of social change.”
“Why not be both, Quarry? Another Coke?”
Six
Climer and I decided something approaching the outskirts of the real situation would make the best pretext for my presence in his world.
At ten the next morning, he assembled the staff of his magazine around a conference table off to one side of the big cluttered work area. The employees were an even mix of male and female with the long-haired look of mildly reformed hippies. They were all in t-shirts and jeans, with only two exceptions: Climer in a big-collar blue paisley shirt with a gold chain and dollar-sign symbol; and his cousin Vernon, in a vested light-tan wide-lapel polyester suit with leather buttons and big-collar white shirt, no tie. Vernon looked like he couldn’t decide whether he was going to a boardroom or a disco.
Climer’s cousin was taller than the baby-faced Caesar at the head of the conference table, probably topping six foot, but was so thin he seemed taller yet. He was maybe forty, his face long and lean and sharp-chinned, with sky-blue eyes behind big tortoiseshell-framed glasses. Sunken cheeks made his cheekbones look even more prominent, his hair sandy and thinning, though some skill had been applied to make it seem less so, his too-dark mustache apparently on loan from Harry Reems.
I was not seated at the table, where the positioning of staffers was already set. Climer provided me with a chair just behind him and to his right, a few feet away. After some conversation among little groups within the group, and the fetching of coffee and lighting of cigarettes, the editor and publisher of Climax Magazine lifted a benedictory hand and introduced me.
As I stood, nodding to them like the new kid in class, Climer said, “This is Jack Quarry. He’s our new security consultant.”
Heads bobbed my way, with expressions ranging from skeptical to confused, from interested to don’t-give-a-shit, and I nodded again and sat.
“I brought Jack in,” Climer said, “because I noticed we’ve gotten a little sloppy in the security department, and with all these protests and legal hassles, we really need to batten down the hatches.”
Everybody nodded at that.
“I know we’ve all got a lot on our plate,” Climer said, “with deadline coming up, so we’ll just get a little report from Vernon on distribution, and then see if anybody has anything else the group needs to address... and then get off our fuckin’ asses and go entertain America in the most tasteless way possible.”
That got smiles and grins and one “Fuckin’ A,” but it was clear the enthusiasm level was tamped down by a demanding workload. This was a small group to be putting out a magazine with the success and circulation of Climax. I was witnessing growing pains in real time.
Vernon cast smiles at everyone and got perfunctory ones back from those who bothered. In a similar mid-range voice to his cousin, absent the drawl — he’d worked hard to lose it, I’d wager — the V.P. of Climax Enterprises reported an increased circulation of the magazine, “thanks largely to those nude paparazzi photos of Florence Henderson last issue.” This perked the table up to the tune of some applause and even some hoots and hollers.
The meeting that followed was brief and dealt with ongoing exploration of expansion into XXX-video production and spin-off magazines, which I zoned out on while I studied the various faces at the table. These loyal if harried staffers did not seem likely candidates for paying to have their boss killed. Surely they wanted him dead from time to time, like all employees do their employers, but that was hypothetical homicide and anyway they couldn’t afford it.
So I didn’t bother getting their names straight and had no intention of talking to any of them.
The exception, of course, was Vernon Climer, who as he rose from the table and headed away, I intercepted with an arm on his sleeve.
“Mr. Climer, could I have a few minutes?”
He froze and glanced back, as if this were a game of tag. His smile had the kind of rehearsed look behind which unsmiling thoughts lurk.
“I am a tad busy,” he said.
Neither of us realized how nearby Max Climer was, so we were both startled a bit when his hands were on our respective nearby shoulders.
“Now, Cousin,” Climer said, with his thin-lipped, teeth-stingy smile, “I need you to cooperate with my friend Jack, here. Eminently qualified individual. He’s the little brother of an old navy pal of mine.”
That was the story we’d settled on.
“Jack here is a Bronze Star winner,” Climer said, releasing our shoulders, turning to go, his work done here. “Vietnam vet.”
Vernon’s smile continued and so did whatever thoughts he wasn’t sharing; but he did extend a hand for me to shake, which I did. Clammy.
“Perhaps you would join me in my office, Mr. Quarry?”
“Make it Jack.”
“Make it Vernon.”
We traded insincere grins.
“I didn’t know there were any offices up here,” I said, nodding to the cluttered but open space.
“Oh, there aren’t any. Max works upstairs in his penthouse hidey hole, then comes down as necessary... or when he feels like checking on the troops. My office is on the first floor.”
I followed him down the stairs that opened onto the restroom alcove and then trailed him out into the club. Nothing was sadder or less sexy than a strip club by day during closed hours: the undersides of chairs on tables giving up chewing-gum graveyards, swept-up piles of ashes and worse awaiting further attention, the sickening scent of cheap perfume fighting the heavier smell of smoke while puke stench triumphed, the smears on the runway stage where female bodies had gyrated, their ass smudges like giant thumb prints that weren’t in the police files.