A traveling stripper, “on the circuit,” would have a perfect built-in cover, should she be in the same business as Boyd and me. She could have taken this gig and was acting as an on-site surveillance person, and those third-floor lights across the street might mean it was the shooter who’d shown up.
Or she might be the shooter herself — it’d been chauvinistic of me, downright sexist to assume the one handling the gun had to be a man. Again, she was perfectly positioned to...
Was I fucking nuts?
Did I really believe that little airhead was capable of making it in the murder business? Then I thought about how she’d followed me up to the magazine offices, that first night, and how she checked me out in her own special way. Maybe that bouncer, who I had just seen her whispering to, was her partner in crime. Maybe he was a new employee, too.
Then Vernon Climer was making his way through the remains of the Climax Club crowd; he looked mildly disheveled, particularly for a guy who usually seemed to have every hair in place. That hair right now had the look of having been mussed, then quickly combed, his denim suit a little rumpled, blue-and-white paisley shirt wrinkled. Yup. He’d been in conference all right.
Vernon said, “You’re wondering where Max and Mavis got themselves off to.”
I didn’t hide my irritation. “More like, where did they go to get themselves off.”
His palms pressed the air, signaling that I should settle down. “Max has a rustic little cabin near Shelby State Park. He has had since before he got rich and famous — a quiet little getaway for times when things get a little too heavy for him.”
“And he didn’t think to mention this to me?”
Vernon shrugged. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It always is for Max. He grew up in moonshine country, you know, and sometimes he just needs to get next to nature.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake...”
“Mr. Quarry, you weren’t around to be informed. And, well, we have no way to reach you, do we? Which I have to say strikes me as strange — generally a consultant is somebody you should be able to... consult.”
Couldn’t defend myself by saying stakeout pads didn’t come with phones.
I said, “I want you to take me to this hillbilly haven. Right fucking now.”
His eyes tightened. “Mr. Quarry, first of all, I have other business to conduct.”
What’s her name?
“And second of all, Max is in perfectly good hands. He took two of those new security guards with him, as well as his armed chauffeur.”
“How did they travel?”
“In Max’s pink Cadillac.”
“So, keeping a low profile then.”
His expression and voice softened. “Mr. Quarry, thanks to your own commendable efforts, my cousin is perfectly safe. Those bodyguards are armed, and bigger than grizzlies. He will be back by late morning.”
“I assume the Cadillac picked him up in the alley behind the building.”
“Yes. Down the stairs and right into the vehicle.”
Apparently Vernon didn’t know how quick and precise a bullet from a high place could be.
I said, “I want detailed directions to that cabin.”
“You mean... now?”
“Right now. I’m not local, remember. Keep them simple and clear.”
Vernon drew in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “I will humor you, Mr. Quarry. For one reason only — because you have done a remarkable job of convincing my cousin of the need for some twentieth-century security measures.”
“Not a good enough job, apparently.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll write out those instructions.”
He went off to do that.
Over near the restrooms, Brandi was again conferring with Bruno, her bouncer friend. But this time they weren’t leaning in so close, and both were sneaking looks my way. I was pretending to watch a frosted-haired dancer named Kimberly as she shed her burgundy bikini.
I didn’t get much of what they were saying, but what I did get was choice, as Brandi told Bruno: “Don’t worry — I can keep him busy all night.”
That told me everything I needed to know, and what I needed to do.
After Vernon delivered a folded-in-two typed sheet of directions, I ducked out and went across to our stakeout above the dead café, going in the cross-street side way as usual. In Boyd’s bedroom, I flipped the light switch. He awoke instantly and his .38 long-nosed revolver, snatched from below the unused pillow to one side, pointed my way, but just briefly.
“Quarry,” he said, lowering the gun. “What the fuck?”
I told him what the fuck. That Max Climer and his lady friend Mavis had slipped off for a night away at a cozy cabin in the boonies, and that the hit — or some other screwed-up thing — was going down tonight, while Climer and his main squeeze were isolated in the sticks. Two bodyguards and their driver were with them, either a first line of defense or conspirators. If the latter proved the case, the man we were here to protect might already be dead.
“But I don’t think so,” I said. “I think a bouncer named Bruno will be one of the attackers, and possibly somebody else from the club. That little stripper Brandi is in on it and plans to keep me away and busy. She and Bruno may even be the hit team we’ve been waiting for. As for how that might relate to the activity above the pawnshop, I haven’t the slightest damn clue.”
He was already out of bed and getting into a thin black long-sleeve t-shirt and black slacks. “Shit,” he said. “We should be leaving now.”
“No. Unless those biker bodyguards and Max’s longtime driver really are conspirators, whatever’s been planned won’t go down for several hours.”
“How do you figure?”
“The club closes at two. Bruno will be on for at least another hour after that, helping clean up. It’s only ten till one now. I’m going to deal with little Brandi and see what I can get out of her. She’s off at one. When I’m finished with her, I’ll pick you up out front before two. Be out there waiting at a quarter till.”
Boyd’s eyes were slits under the shaggy brows. “We don’t have a hell of a lot of firepower. I mean, for not knowing what we’ll be up against.”
“I have a spare nine mil, and the .25.”
“I have a spare S & W .38, the short-barrel one.”
“They’ll have to do. You bring any handcuffs?”
Shortly after one, Brandi headed from the behind-the-stage dressing room toward me where I waited at the bar. She was in a dark-blue-and-pink-and-white floral mini-dress with navy suede Oxfords and gray stockings that went up over her knees, giving her a college-girl look. Actually, the look of a girl who’d never been to college fulfilling her non-collegiate boyfriend’s fantasy.
She found my hand and the pink-glossed kiss of a mouth smiled up at me, aided and abetted by the big brown eyes, pupils large again.
“Let’s go to my place,” she said. “You have a car, lover? It’s a few blocks.”
As directed, I drove to the Highland Motel, a two-story number that had seen better days, its neon letters burned down to high motel, which even with the Strip reforming its druggie ways was probably accurate.
She led me up cement stairs to the second-floor walkway and used her key to let us in to 209. The room smelled like her, or anyway her musky, floral perfume. The decor was Early Nothing, the walls pale pink. The smallish double bed was made and the open suitcase on a stand was the only sign of occupancy, though a glance into the bathroom showed a counter lined with beauty products and other toiletries. This was indeed her room, not somewhere I was being led into ambush.