One day until the next full moon.
In my blood and under my skin I could already feel the moon pulling at me. Tearing, clawing.
Screaming at me.
Howling at me.
When you don’t have a clue you start at the beginning and see if you can pick up the scent. For most guys in my line of work that’s a metaphor. Guess I’m a little different.
The case file for Bambi — Denise Sturbridge — said that she worked four shifts a week at a strip club called ViXXXens in Northeast Philly. A quick Google search told me that the place was owned by Dante Entertainment and managed by one George Palakas.
I live in Old City near Front and South, so it was an easy trip up I-95. I got off at Grant Avenue, cut across to Bustleton Avenue and followed that to within half a block of the northeastern-most city limits. Couldn’t miss the club. The sign was massive, with a neon silhouette of an improbably endowed woman winking on and off in blue and pink. Beneath the sign squatted an ugly three-story building that looked like it might have been built in Colonial times. Who knows, maybe Washington even slept there. But that was then. Now it crouched in embarrassment. Whitewashed plank siding, smoked windows blocked by beer signs, twenty or thirty cars in the parking lot, and bass notes shuddering along the ground from speakers that were way too powerful for the size of the building.
I parked near a pair of Harleys and got out.
I’ve been in a hundred places like this. As a cop, as a P.I. Once, when I was in high school, as a patron. Sure, I’m a healthy straight guy, but I’m not the demographic for joints like this. It’s not an economic thing or a class thing or even an education thing. I think it comes down to personal awareness. It’s hard to sit on a stool, drinking beer after beer, watching a woman you don’t know and can’t touch gyrate and take off her clothes to bad dance pop, when everyone else is doing the same thing. None of it’s really for you. It’s for your beer money and tip money. It’s about you bringing your friends so they can spend their money. It’s about you becoming a regular so you contribute to the profit of both dancer and club. But it lacks anything of true human connection. You aren’t friends with the friendly bartenders and you won’t have sex with the sexy dancers. You’re an open wallet.
So who goes to places like these? Like I said, it’s not a class of men. Even before I entered I knew that there would be guys in construction worker boots and denims, and guys in good business suits. There would be married guys and single guys. There would be college grads and high school dropouts. There would be white, black, Asian and Latino guys. What there wouldn’t be would be very many guys who were genuinely happy in their lives. The ones who were, probably only came here with buddies. More for their friends than for the silicone tits and painted mouths up on stage. Or guys coming here for their first legal drinks, surrounded by fathers, uncles, friends; a big shit-eating grin stapled onto their faces to hide their actual embarrassment.
The rest?
You couldn’t even call them lost and lonely. A lot of them aren’t. But they’re missing something. Some connection, or maybe some optimism. Whatever it is, they either came here looking for a thread of it, or because they gave up looking and the music here was too loud for introspection and self-evaluation.
I drew in a breath through my nostrils, held it, let it out, and went inside.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the place was already three-quarters full. Too early for a bouncer, so there was no cover and no hassle. The bar was a big oblong with seats all the way around it and two small square stages inside, intercut by a bank of cash registers and liquor shelves. A dozen beer taps, but none of them were for good beers. The two brands were Heineken, which was a short step up from dog piss, and Budweiser, which was a full step down. No Yuengling, no good local microbrews. You didn’t come here to sample a good beer. You came here to drink a lot of beers quickly and cheaply so that you didn’t feel weird tucking part of your paycheck into a girl’s g-string for no god damn good reason at all.
There were two dancers working the afternoon shift. The one closest to the door was probably pushing forty but she’d had a lot of work done and kept her muscles toned. My guess was that she was a single mother with no college and shaking her ass earned her more cash — particularly unreportable cash — than asking drive-through customers if they wanted their Happy Meal giant-sized. Her eyes flicked around, looking for the kind of guy who would pony up a buck just to have her come closer, or the kind of guy who would toss her a buck to make her go away. There were plenty of both. When her eyes briefly met mine she got no signal that she could use and her gaze swept on. A rotating spot swept across her face and I could see some old acne scars that were nearly buried under lots of pancake. Not a pretty woman, but probably not a junkie or a hooker. Someone willing to do this to put food in her kids’ mouths and make as good a life for them as she could.
I moved on and took a seat between the two stages.
The second dancer was half the age of the first. She’d be skinny if it wasn’t for plastic boobs and a decent ass. Sticks for arms and legs that had shape only because of high heels and patterned stockings. She wore a red thong and flesh-colored pasties over her nipples. And although she had a pretty face, she was about as sexy as a root canal. At least to me, but like I said, I’m not the demographic.
The bartender drifted up and used a single uptic of his chin to ask what I wanted.
I ordered a vodka martini with three olives just to see what kind of expression it put on his face. His face turned to wood.
“Bud,” I said, and he curled just enough of his lip to let me know that he appreciated the joke. He drew a Budweiser and slid a mug in front of me. I put a twenty on the bar and tapped it to let him know I was starting a tab on it. He nodded and moved away.
The song that was playing was so gratingly loud that it could sterilize an elk. The lyrics were meaningless pap. Something about ‘high school charms’, which gave it all a pedophile vibe.
The other patrons were staring at the dancers. The music was too loud for conversation. One guy was playing video poker and eating fistfuls of beer nuts without looking at them. Two guys in dark suits sat at the far end drinking dark mixed drinks that I’m pretty sure were actually Coke in highball glasses. I marked them in my mind. Strip clubs don’t let you sit there and drink soda, which means that these guys were either part of the staff — off-shift bouncers, maybe; or they were friends of the house. I saw them watching me as I watched them. One of them gave me a nod and I nodded back. That’s not a friendly exchange, not in places like this. It’s one player letting the other player know that they’re all in the game.
When the record changed, I left the beer and the twenty as placeholders, turned slowly on my stool until I spotted the entrance to the back rooms. I headed that way, and a short hall took me past employee restrooms, a store room, a fire door, all the way to a door marked OFFICE.
I knocked.
The man who opened the door was a burly forty-something, probably Greek face with a bald head, Popeye forearms, a thick mustache and wary eyes. He gave me a quick up and down and apparently decided I wasn’t a cop or someone from L and I. I was dressed in jeans and a Vikings windbreaker over an Everlast tank top. Cops and license inspectors all dress better than me.
“George Palakas?” I asked.
“What if I am?” he demanded, unimpressed.
“Need to talk to you.”
Palakas narrowed his eyes. “About what?”
“I’m looking for Denise Sturbridge.”
The manager gave me a slow three-count of silent appraisal, then he said, “No.” He turned away and started to close his door.