“Do you know what’s a few blocks from here?”
“No.”
“One of the first Holiday Inns anywhere. It’s historic. Pay for lunch, and I’ll take you over there and give you a tour.”
She was a little heavier, but it was fine by me. Her breasts were breathtakingly full, her rib cage sweeping to a narrow waist, her ass two lush handfuls. She must have had access to a pool somewhere because she had a bikini tan that served to make the dark tips and only slightly darker areolae stand out on the pale mounds and the jungle growth of her loins scream against the surrounding white. She lay naked on the bed in the nothing room and propped a pillow under her. I was getting out of my clothes like I was trying to break a record.
“Don’t use anything,” she said in her throaty way. “I’m on the pill and I’ve been wasting it. Nobody’s had me for months. Are you clean?”
“As a whistle.”
“Good. Then just stick it in me. I’ll show you where.”
She parted her pussy lips just like in the magazine. Was it unethical, I wondered, fucking Max Climer’s wife or whatever him dumping her made her? Hell, the way I saw it, I was helping her self-esteem.
And me screwing her wasn’t going to kill him.
Seven
For the next two days, Boyd and I shared walking the immediate area around the Climax Club, looking for signs of surveillance either by parked car or apartment. He took days while I took evenings, though some of my time was spent inside the club, where Climer had introduced me around to bartenders, bouncers and waitresses as a security guy who was to be cooperated with, and comped on drinks.
The head bartender, Leon, was the only black guy on staff, big, broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and an easy, broad grin. His manner was friendly but something about his eyes wasn’t.
That first evening Climer — who rarely came down to the club — went out of his way to introduce me only to one of the strippers... not surprisingly, his fiancée Mavis, who turned out to be the lanky fake-boobs brunette I’d seen dancing the night before.
We sat at a small round table, the three of us, with her in the red bikini and a sheer red lingerie item that hid as much of her as Saran Wrap does a sandwich. She had the high, prominent cheekbones of a fashion model, only her face had a long, horsey look. Her eyes were big and dark brown in their light-brown eye-shadow setting, living a little too close to her long narrow nose; they were also sleepy.
For somebody who insisted on continuing dancing despite her engagement to her multi-millionaire boss, Mavis Crosby didn’t have a whole lot of energy. When she went on, later, her dancing seemed languid, too, though at least she stayed on beat to a selection of tunes (“Lean On Me,” “Killing Me Softly”) that were perhaps chosen for their dreamily undemanding tempos.
Right now she was listening to Climer, who was saying, “You’re going to see a lot of Jack around here, for a while. He’s our new security guy.”
Mavis tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, looking from Climer to me and back again. “Who was our old one?”
Climer’s tiny smile in the rarely blinking baby face only made him seem more childlike. “We never really had one, honey, and that’s the problem.”
“But what about Freddie and Lou and them?” She meant the half dozen bouncers on staff.
“Well, they do security at the club. But we need more — for the magazine, and our pad upstairs, and better locks and an alarm system. We have enemies.”
She shrugged. “Stupid people maybe.”
“I don’t disagree, honey, but Jack here’s one of us. If he needs help, give it to him. And if you see something suspicious, you tell him.”
“Suspicious how?”
I said, “Guys who come in who you’ve never seen before, scoping out the room, paying more attention to how things are done around here than watching you dance.”
The big eyes narrowed. “Sorta like... casing the place.”
I gave her a smile because she seemed to need one. “That’s right. Or if you see somebody who might be dealing.”
The big eyes widened. “Nobody’s dealing shit in here.”
“Well, if somebody did, it might be to get the club, and Max here, in a jam. A drug bust could shut this place down, and plenty of people would like to see that happen.”
Climer was nodding. “Jack’s right. We pay good money for beautiful ladies like you to work bottomless, but the cops won’t tolerate dealing. The Strip is still workin’ its way back from its old junkie-heaven rep.”
“Okay,” she said indifferently.
He took her hand and whispered, with an urgency that didn’t show on the bland baby face: “A drug bust down here means a search warrant for the whole building. That includes upstairs. Our upstairs.”
Now she got it. She nodded.
Pretty soon she’d gone back to get ready for her set.
I asked him, “What is she on?”
Climer pawed the air. “Nothing hard. Like a lot of these kids, she smokes and does a few lines. She knows I won’t tolerate the hard stuff. A good pal of mine O.D.’d on smack. I’ve seen what it can do. You must’ve seen that in the service.”
“Too much of it.”
I wasn’t sure about Mavis. No tracks showed on her arms or inner thighs or anything, when she was dancing bare-ass, and with this miner-helmet crowd the bruises and needle marks would show up. Maybe she was just alternating between weed mellow and cocaine high. You go shake your naked pussy or your cock-and-balls at strangers and see if you don’t need something.
Climer watched her set, and she showed more energy than the night before; even danced to a ZZ Top tune. A few lines backstage? Then Climer got up from the table and worked the room, moving through the smoke like a ship through fog, shaking hands on his way back to the door in the restroom alcove, to disappear.
Two days later, I’d inhaled a lot of cigarette smoke, nursed beers an hour at a time, and watched a lot of naked girls mime a visit to the gynecologist using pretend stirrups. I did keep an eye on things, such as timing my trips to the john around long-haired patrons making visits there, types who might be doing deals; but when I joined them, nobody seemed to be doing anything but pissing.
On the other hand, I’d noted that Mavis often stopped at the bar to lean across and speak to Leon with some uncharacteristic urgency. Leon gave her apparent queries nothing more than a head shake or nodding response. Nothing suspicious about it, except perhaps the lack of smiles from the professionally friendly Leon.
On the other hand, other dancers stopped to chat with Leon, too, including little Brandi Wyne, AKA Wanda Roux.
The night before I’d had an interesting if brief conversation with Brandi. After her set, in blue bikini and invisible lingerie wrap, she had dropped by my table, all smiles and curves and big pupils.
“So you work here now?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows up and down like we shared a deep dark secret.
“For a week or two, I’ll be around.”
“Security, huh?”
“Right.”
“So the other night... you were upstairs checking out the club’s shit for security, huh?”
“I was.”
“Didn’t really go up there hoping I’d come find you.”
“Frankly, no. Glad you did, though.”
“So am I. You’re different.”
A stripper liked me. I was special.
She was saying, “Mostly I’m not into doing things with guys for money.”
“Then don’t charge them.”
She thought about that, then decided to laugh, a little too hard. She touched my hand. “Anyway, welcome to the monkey house. And, uh... if you want to get together some night, maybe we could. You know, not in a money way.”