As Rick Scarlett stepped out of the shower he put these thoughts aside. He wiped off the steamed-up mirror and stood examining his body. This was one of his favorite pastimes. He was proud of the fact that he could not find the slightest sign of fat, just a firm sheath of tight muscles, his shoulders strong, his stomach and pectorals flat, his thighs well-developed. And he was well-hung.
Yep, Scarlett thought smiling. If I were a woman I'd cream myself over a man like that.
He did a few muscle flexes, watching himself in the mirror, and then an image of Kathy without her clothes intruded into his mind.
Damn her,Scarlett thought. I must take back control.
And with that concern in his mind, he dismissed his several theories about the Headhunter investigation.
And that was too bad.
If only he'd taken them further.
He would never know just how close he had come to touching on the truth.
And yet how very far away.
It was as Rick Scarlett walked out of the bathroom that a light came on in the windows of the apartment across the street. His heart jumped. Swiftly he killed his own lights. Then he went into the bedroom to retrieve his binoculars.
A few years ago when Scarlett had first rented this apartment he had a view of Stanley Park. But that view had not lasted long. Within the year a developer had built on the land next door and this new structure contained residences stacked up as tall as his own building. Scarlett had been thoroughly pissed off until Miss Torso moved in.
Scarlett had never met her. But he had called her Miss Torso since last seeing Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's movie Rear Window. Miss Torso was a dancer who practiced regularly late at night. She was blond. She was young. She had a stunning figure. And lately she had taken to dancing in the nude.
It had not always been that way. When she first moved in, the lady used to pirouette about in a rainbow of different-colored Danskins. During that first summer she had switched to a bikini. And then one very hot August night she had shed that too. The next day Scarlett had gone out and bought his binoculars.
Of late it had occurred to him that perhaps Miss Torso knew that he was watching. Perhaps she's a show-off, he thought. Aren't we all. Scarlett was not a modest individual within his own home: and if he could see her, surely she could see him. Why else would she dance naked within the full view of all those other apartments? Mind you, it was true that she danced very late at night.
Scarlett wanted to wander over and ask her the reason why. But that might kill the golden goose and make her pull the curtains.
So, as always, tonight he sat down behind his darkened window and peered across the road. He adjusted the binoculars to get the proper focus. Then he held them in his left hand, keeping his other hand free.
If you want to show it, woman, he thought, I'll oblige you and look.
Miss Torso appeared on stage.
Looking for Jack the Lad
12:55 a.m.
Monica Macdonald had seen more than enough.
For the past two days she and Rusty Lewis had been moving from one strip club to another across the map of the city. She found the trip a bore. There had once been a time when Macdonald had seriously considered a career in art, and to that end she had studied Fine Arts in college. Even today she was still proficient at the charcoal sketching of nudes. But that was the human body in its classic form. This was something different.
It was almost 1:00 a.m. but Phantoms was going strong.
Macdonald and Lewis were both dressed in civilian clothes and they were sitting at a small table ten feet from the raised dance floor. Both were sipping beers. The woman up on the stage in front of them was not wearing civilian clothes. She was maybe eighteen years of age and had long black hair. All she had on were satin-covered, high-heeled, ankle-strapped pumps and a sequined G-string. Her breasts were bare.
There were several speakers situated about the club and two above the stage, all of them playing canned soft rock — Olivia Newton-John growling about wanting to get physical.
While Macdonald and Lewis scanned the customers' faces looking for Matthew Paul Pitt or any of the other illustrious members in their memorized Rogues' Gallery, the stripper danced to the edge of the stage and squatted down in front of a solitary British sailor dressed in Navy blues. Spreading her legs wide, she pulled aside the G-string to expose herself completely. There were catcalls around the room. As the sailor stared at her genitals with his Adam's apple bobbing, the woman licked her lips. The sailor reached for a pair of glasses to get a better look, but the moment he put them on the stripper removed them from his nose. She began to wipe them slowly across her exposed crotch, pursing her lips and pouting an expression of innocence. Then she replaced the spectacles on the sailor's face and arched her back like a gymnast. Supporting her weight with her arms and her feet, she began thrusting her pelvis toward the man's face, pumping and rocking her hips as he continued to stare wide-eyed.
The hooting and laughing and whistling rose as the crowd in the room went wild. Then one drunk shouted above the din: "Hey, lady, I'll sniff your bicycle seat anytime!"
Monica Macdonald sighed. How does any woman end up in a place like this? she thought.
"Seen enough?" Macdonald asked, leaning over to Lewis. Rusty Lewis nodded. He knocked back the rest of his beer, then the two of them left the table just as the woman on the stage ripped off the G-string.
Monica Macdonald liked to think that hers was an open mind. So she had started out on this strip-club crawl with a clinical attitude. Not once in her life had she had a Lesbian experience, unless of course you counted the time that her Uncle Harold while babysitting had tried to get both her and her fourteen-year-old sister into bed at once. At the age of eleven (even then destined to be a cop) Monica had turned Uncle Harold in to her mother. After that Uncle Harold stopped coming for Christmas dinner.
After watching thirty-two strippers expose themselves, Monica Macdonald was now convinced irrevocably that her DC had no AC to trot along beside it. So to keep from getting bored on this trip she had turned her attention to Lewis.
The man was entertaining.
For to start with, it was hard to believe that any man in his late twenties could possibly be this shy. When the first stripper had exposed her crotch Rusty Lewis had blushed as scarlet as his red serge dress uniform.
"Is that why they call you Rusty?" Monica had chided.
Lewis had turned a deeper scarlet and averted his eyes from the woman.
To be honest, Rusty Lewis was a rather pleasant change. Most of the men within the Force were closer in their attitude towards women to the views of Rabidowski and Scarlett. Most males liked both the authority and the power that came with the uniform. In the RCMP a shy man was a bit of a rarity.
"Let's check the barman," Macdonald said, "then let's get out of here."
The liquor supply in Phantoms English Pub was thirty feet
from the dance floor. The barman was out of Yorkshire by way of London, large and beefy with a bulbous, red-veined nose. As they approached the counter he looked them up and down and said: "I'm betting you two are fuzz."
Lewis flashed the Regimental Shield.
Fishing out the picture of Matthew Paul Pitt, Macdonald placed it on the counter. "Seen this one?" she asked.
The Englishman glanced at the photograph, then looked up. "You looking for Jack the Lad?" he inquired.