“Could be.”
“I don’t recall ever seeing one this young in my shop. Not that I knew of, anyway.”
“Do me a favor. Put this up in the back room, by the toilet, whatever.” Quinn handed Antoine his card. “You or your coworkers, they see her, even if she’s walking down the street, you give me a call.”
Antoine dropped the cigarette, ground it out. He reached for his wallet, slipped Quinn’s card inside, and retrieved a card of his own, handing it to Quinn.
“Now you do me a favor, officer. You need a pair of boots or somethin’, get you out of those New Balances you got on, somethin’ a little more stylin’, you give me a call, hear? Antoine. You walk in here, don’t be askin’ for anyone else.”
“I got a wide foot.”
“Oh, I’ll fit you, now. Antoine can stretch some shoes.”
“All right,” said Quinn. “I’ll see you around.”
“The name is Antoine.”
Quinn walked north to a strip club up the hill on Wisconsin, stopping at an ATM along the way. He entered without paying a cover and was seated by a bouncer at a table in the middle of a series of tables set tightly in a row throughout the depth of the narrow club, facing one of several stages. Three men wearing ties, their shirtsleeves rolled back off their wrists, occupied the table. The men did not acknowledge Quinn. A nice-looking young woman in a sleeveless dress quickly arrived and took his order. She cupped her ear to hear him over the Limp Bizkit, their cover of “Faith,” booming through the speakers.
Quinn checked out the dancers, working the poles on their stages, into the music, smiling politely at the audience but with their eyes someplace else. Thin, young, toned, and generally pleasant to look at. One of them was straight-up attractive, with a cheerleader’s bright face and ruby red nipples. Connoisseurs claimed this place had the finest, cleanest-looking dancers in town. It was all perception and taste; Quinn knew men who swore by that joint near Connecticut and Florida Avenues. Quinn had been there once and judged it to be a skank-house.
The woman returned with a bottle of Bud, for which he paid dearly. He showed her the flyer. She barely looked at it and shook her head. Quinn paid her, tipped her, and asked for a receipt.
There were several bouncers working the room, all wearing radio headsets. The customers could go to the stages and tip the dancers, but they couldn’t linger in the aisle, and if they did, one of the bouncers told them to get back to their seats. Patrons judged to be nursing their beers were encouraged to drink up and reorder or leave. This was the New World Order of strip clubs. To Quinn, it was all too bloodless and it didn’t seem to be much fun.
Quinn recognized one of the bouncers, a black Asian-featured guy now standing by the front door, as a moonlighting cop. He didn’t know the cop personally and didn’t know his name. Quinn waited for his receipt, left his beer untouched, and walked over to the bouncer. He introduced himself, shook the guy’s hand, and showed him the flyer.
“I don’t know her,” said the cop. He looked closely at Quinn. “Where’d you say you were at?”
“In the end, I rode Three-D.”
The cop got that look of recognition then, the clouding over of the eyes, that Quinn had seen many times.
“Keep the flyer,” said Quinn, handing the cop his business card as well. “You see her, do me a favor and give me a call.”
Quinn walked out, Kid Rock screaming at his back. He knew the bouncer would throw the flyer and his card in the trash. He was one of those guys, once he figured out who Quinn was, he didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He’d never get past the fact that Quinn had killed a fellow cop.
Quinn returned to his car and drove east, over the P Street Bridge and onto the edge of Dupont Circle. He found a spot on 23rd Street, walked past a gay nightclub that had been there since disco’s first wave, and stopped at a coffeehouse at the next intersection. It was near P Street Beach, a stretch of Rock Creek Park that in years past had been known for sunbathing, cruising, and open-air sexual activity. Quinn remembered from his patrol days that this was also an area where ecstasy could be easily scored, as the 18th Street clubs were in the vicinity. It was a perimeter that young hustlers worked as well.
He bought a cup of regular and took it out to where tables were set on the sidewalk. He found a seat and checked out the crowd. Teenagers were interspersed in the mostly adult customer base of coffee drinkers and smokers. Some of the teenagers sat with friends; others, both boys and girls, sat with older men. Quinn guessed that some of these kids were cutting school, just slumming, and some were runaways who crashed wherever they could around town. That left the few who had gone professional and were working the crowd.
Quinn had the feeling, from the eye contact he was getting, that a couple of the kids had marked him as a cop. Strange claimed you never lost the look. Quinn was way too old to be one of them, too young to be a john, and, he told himself, too attractive to look like the type who would pay for it. He was mulling over all of this, sitting there trying to decide how to approach one of these kids.
Fuck it, he thought, getting up and crossing the sidewalk patio to a table where two teenage girls sat, empty cups in front of them, ashing the pavement with their cigarettes.
“Hey,” said Quinn, “how you ladies doing?”
Both of the girls looked up, but only one of them kept her eyes on him.
“We’re fine, thanks.” The girl, who had the look of hard money, someone who had been taught never to thank the waitress, said, “Something we can help you with?”
Quinn had obviously made a mistake. “I was wondering, can I snag a cigarette from you?”
She rolled her eyes and gave him one from her handbag without looking at him further. He thanked her and returned to his table, noticing a boy and his female friend laughing at him, feeling a flush of anger and trying to stifle it as he adjusted himself in his seat. Holding a cigarette and without even a match to complete the ruse.
He retrieved his cell from his pack and phoned the office. Janine switched him over to Ron Lattimer.
“Any luck?” said Ron.
“Nothing yet. Our girl got a sheet?”
“Jennifer Marshall. Got it right here.”
“Solicitation?”
“Man wins the Kewpie doll.”
“What about an address?”
“Listed as five seventeen J Street, Northwest. You might have a little trouble finding it, unless someone went and built a J Street in the last week or so—”
“There is no J Street in D.C.”
“No shit.”
“She’s got a sense of humor, anyway.”
“Or the one who told her to write it like that does.”
“Thanks, Ron. I’ll look over the rest of it when I come in. Derek around?”
“Uh-uh, he’s out doing a background check.”
“Tell him I was looking for him, hear?”
“Call him on his cell.”
“He doesn’t keep it on most of the time.”
“You can leave a message on it, man.”
“True.”
“I see him, I’ll tell him.”
Quinn was replacing his cell in his bag when he noticed a girl standing before him. She wore boot-cut jeans and a spaghetti-string pink shirt with a cartoon illustration of a Japanese girl holding a guitar slung low, à la Keith. Her shoulder bag was white, oval, and plastic. Her dirty-blond hair fell to her shoulders. Her hips were narrow, her breasts small, mostly nipple and visible through the shirt. She was pale, with bland brown eyes and a tan birthmark, shaped like a strawberry, on her neck. She wore wire-rim prescription eyeglasses, granny style. She was barely cute, and not even close to pretty. Quinn put her in her midteens, maybe knocking on the door of seventeen, if that.