Screw it. I’d just go as myself. Aside from my height, I was pretty nondescript, or so I’ve been told. One of Gracie’s old college friends was a police sketch artist. He told me that I had such a unique lack of distinguishing features that if I ever robbed a liquor store, I wouldn’t even need a mask.
Although he meant it as a casual barb, I took it well, considering the source. He had a terminally unrequited crush on Gracie and, might I add, a nose you could see from space.
Harmony had an address in Venice Beach, but she didn’t live there alone. The phone, gas, electricity, and cable bills were each registered to a different man. The lease itself was signed to a woman named Tracy Wood. That was quite a lot of inhabitants for a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. Before I left home, I tried calling Harmony but ended up getting one of her male roommates. The rap music on the other end of the line was so loud that I had a hard time telling the speaker apart from the song.
“Lo?”
“Hi. I’m looking for Harmony Prince.”
“Who dis?” he yelled.
“I work for Mean World Records. Is Harmony around?”
“Who dis?”
I had to raise my voice to compete. “My name is Scott. I work at Mean World Records. We’ve talked with Harmony before. Is she around?”
He turned down the music. He took a wary pause, then a few bites of some crunchy legume. “She ain’t here, man.”
“Do you know where I can find her? It’s really important that I get in touch with her.”
“What you want with her?”
“I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
He paused again. “McB.”
“Mick Bee. I like it. You a rapper?”
“Hey, man. Why you wanna know about me now?”
“Just curious. You’ve got a strong voice. And we’re always looking for new talent. By the way, I assume you saw Harmony in Hunta’s video for ‘Chocolate Ho-Ho.’”
He laughed. “Yeah, man. The second time. The first time I sneezed.”
I grinned along. “I know. That’s why I want to get in touch with her. We’ve got a video coming up and we want to put her in it. And I don’t mean put her in the background, man. She’s going to be a key player.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. But it’s important that I find her tonight. Extremely important. You feel me?”
After a moment’s thought, he caved. “She working now.”
“Where?”
“The Flower Club.”
Whoa. That wasn’t part of Eddie’s profile. I suppose it was too much to hope that it was just a fun place for gardeners.
“Uh, where is it? Downtown?”
“Downtown,” he said. “On Sixth and Flower. Shit, wait. Seventh. Yeah, Seventh.”
“That’s okay. I’ll look it up. You know what time she usually gets off?”
“I dunno. She usually get home ‘round one or two. Hey, you really work for Mean World?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Cause, I don’t know, you sound white. Really white. No offense.”
“It’s all right. I get that a lot.”
“Just understand that we all look out for Harmony here, you know what I’m sayin’? You fuck with her, we fuck with you. We clear?”
“We clear,” I said, oddly touched by his concern. “But trust me. She’ll be glad you took this call.”
“Well, go find her then.”
That was the idea. But this Flower Club thing made me nervous. My grand design would hit a major skid if our sweet little angel turned out to be a stripper by night.
________________
Before going downtown, I had to stop and make a cash withdrawal, a moderately fat one. I needed some kind of financial incentive to get Harmony to even listen to me. Unfortunately, I had only seventy-four dollars on me. Then I remembered Ira’s Y2K stash, which he now called his earthquake fund. Whatever. It was ten thousand dollars worth of twenties just taking up space in his safe. Perfect.
En route to Marina del Rey, I called Ira and asked him if I could borrow fifteen hundred of it. Though he was initially hesitant to take some of the stuffing out of his disaster cushion, the money was out and waiting the moment I boarded the Ishtar.
“What’s the matter?” I teased. “Too scared to open the safe when I’m around?”
“I don’t recall being entrusted with your combination.”
Touché. Decked out for comfort in his ratty blue robe, he sat in his leather command chair and clicked away at his PC. He seemed to be building some kind of virtual house. I wanted to inquire but I knew that would trigger a painfully elaborate software demonstration. The important thing was that he enjoyed it.
“So what shady business are you conducting now?” he asked, still focused on his work.
“How do you know this is for business?”
“Because your personal life isn’t that exciting.”
The fact that he could say that while putting up digital drywall was an irony that escaped him.
“Actually, I’m off to the Flower Club,” I replied. “To see the strippers.”
I was hoping that would faze him. He didn’t even bat an eye. “It’s not a strip club, Gomer. It’s a hostess club.”
“What’s the difference between a stripper and a hostess?”
“Hostesses don’t strip. They’re simply paid to look nice and sit with dirty old men on dirty old couches. From what I’m told, there’s groping involved.”
“Terrific.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” Ira said, adding stucco. “For whatever it is you’re up to.”
________________
A brief history of the hostess club, courtesy of the Internet:
Shortly after World War I, a sweeping wave of moral reform washed away America’s bordellos and red-light districts. That put a lot of prostitutes out of work. A few intrepid bar owners — unaware that the bell was about to toll for them — hired many of these ladies as hostesses. Their new task was comparatively chaste: to lure men out onto the dance floor, hold them tight, and squeeze lots of drinks out of them. Eventually, these bars became closed dance halls, their admission restricted to men. The only women to be found inside were the ones who worked there. And their job, as always, was to work the men.
Once Prohibition hit, those same bar owners stopped being subtle and just made the women the business. Instead of paying through drinks, customers would now purchase tickets to dance (read: bump, grind, and grope) with a hostess of their choice. These ladies were soon referred to as “nickel-hoppers” and “dime-a-dance girls.” That may sound marginally sleazy but these were quite respectable establishments at the time. All the men wore suits. The women wore long dresses. It was like a big senior prom, except for all those nickels and dimes changing hands.
It was here in Los Angeles, the land of sexual enterprise, that the dance ticket was phased out for a more sophisticated punch-card system. So instead of charging by the song, the women were metered out on a clock. This led to their newest and most common moniker: the taxi dancer.
All right, now things were getting a little sleazy. I mean, women renting themselves out by the hour? Sounds awfully familiar. And yet as strange as it may seem, these hostess clubs weren’t just flimsy covers for prostitution rings. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure a lot of paid sex did indeed transpire covertly in the bathrooms and dark corners of the establishments. But for the most part, the taxi dancers had a lock on one thing: the lending out of warmth and intimacy. You want to get laid, go see a hooker. You want to get touched, through slow dance or deep conversation, go see a hostess.