We hadn’t even reached the main room yet when my head began to pound to the same beat as the music. I didn’t think I was going to last long at the Neptune. If possible, it was even darker upstairs in the main room. I saw clusters of light in the dark as my eyes struggled to focus. The only lights in the place came from strategically placed high hats on the ceiling.
“God’d get the day!” Leo yelled at me, his mouth close to my ear. The music was far too loud to know what he was saying.
“What?” I yelled back.
“Gunner diss a drake!” he screamed.
“What?”
Then I got it: he was offering to get us some drinks. I gave him the thumbs-up. Leo left me standing against the wall, watching the scene in front of me. The main room was cavernous, filled with young men mostly in their twenties and thirties. Some wore T-shirts, others were bare-chested. Most wore jeans. All looked amazingly toned and physically fit. I noticed that a few had drinks in their hands, although far more common was the sight of water bottles tucked into the jeans’ back pockets.
I was the only woman in the whole place, as far as I could tell, but no one looked at me strangely or made me feel unwelcome. I was pretty much ignored, in fact, which was fine with me.
Just about all the men in the room were dancing — some alone, some with partners. The place was freezing cold from air-conditioning, but they were all sweating copiously. I hadn’t seen any bullets or vials, but I saw on many faces the spaced-out, blissed-out expression of someone on drugs. Those looks — not to mention the excessive sweating and the water bottles — were pretty broad clues to indicate what was going on.
I watched these young, attractive men, swaying to the tribal beat of the music, and couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for them, what would follow after the allure of the clubbing lifestyle wore off. But then I told myself that I was sounding like an old lady.
Leo returned with our drinks: a Manhattan for him and a red wine for me. Both were served in identical plastic cups. I felt as though I were at a frat party. We crossed the room and found a smaller room off the main dance floor, where mercifully there was an empty table by the north wall. Once we were seated, I had a look around at the tables nearest us. Although I spotted some makeup and cleavage, I was still pretty sure that I was the only biological female in the place.
There were three bars in the Neptune. Each one was three deep with young men waiting to buy drinks — bottles of water, it turned out, were as popular as alcoholic beverages.
Because these young men knew better than to mix booze with GHB. They dissolved it in juice to get high. The guys who were drinking hadn’t had any GHB.
At least, they’d better hope they hadn’t.
We had been there less than fifteen minutes, but I had seen what I needed.
“What do you think?” Leo yelled at me, straining his vocal cords.
“We can skip the next two clubs, Leo,” I told him. “I just realized something. I think I have an idea what happened.”
“So what’d you think about the Neptune?” Jimmy asked me. He had come to Solano Investigations in the early afternoon the next day, as I’d requested. “You really should have told me you were coming. I could have arranged the real VIP treatment for you and Leo.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “We had a nice time.”
Jimmy was back to his regular casual mode of dress, in dark pants and a white, open-necked polo shirt stitched on the shoulder with de la Vega Security. Unlike me, he looked none the worse for the late hours he was keeping. One night on the Beach, and I was ready for a week off.
I escorted Jimmy from the reception area toward my office. Leonardo was at his desk, looking over a report before sending it out with a bill. He didn’t glance up from his work, nor did he offer to make coffee for the first time in my memory. Once inside my office, I motioned toward the chair in front of my desk.
“You want to close the door?” Jimmy said.
“No, I keep no secrets from my cousin.”
Jimmy peered over his shoulder, then back at me. His chair was arranged perfectly so that he couldn’t look out the open doorway without turning in his seat. I gave him an are you comfortable? look, then hit him with it.
“So, Jimmy, tell me something. Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?” he said, his eyes widening. “What are you talking about?”
I waited a long moment; we stared into each other’s eyes, each waiting for the other to break.
“All I want to know is why,” I said.
Jimmy looked at me as though I were a lunatic. For an instant, one tiny moment, I doubted myself. But no, it all fit together too well.
“When you patted down customers at the door searching for drugs, you substituted their bullets of Special K with GHB that you had boiled down into a powder,” I told him.
“You’re crazy,” Jimmy said.
But I saw a look in his eyes — a look that told me I was right.
“You had access to GHB — you confiscated it from a few clubgoers,” I told him. “And as door security, no one was going to say much if you were rummaging around in their pockets long enough to switch vials. They’re carrying an illegal substance, and they’re not in a position to complain.”
Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t have to listen to—”
“You worked security at a few clubs that night, right?” I said. “You had plenty of opportunity to make your mark at three different places.”
Jimmy’s lip curled into a sneer, but he didn’t get up and leave. I knew that he wasn’t going to, either.
“You found six guys who had already been drinking,” I said. “You got close enough to smell their breath when you were patting them down. Even if they didn’t continue drinking that night, the amount of alcohol in their system would make sure they went into a G hole when they took the GHB.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s been taking junk,” Jimmy said, trying to laugh. “It’s made you lose your mind.”
“As security chief, you had full access to the clubs at any time. No one would suspect you had anything to do with the deaths,” I said. “You took them out into the alley and no one suspected a thing. Even at the Majestic — where you had to take a body out in view of people — your clout and position on the Beach probably made people think you were just taking a drunk guy to a taxicab. And then, like you said, you went through the guys’ pockets to take away anything that might link them to the clubs. How perfect was that?”
“I guess I’m a real criminal mastermind,” Jimmy said sarcastically.
“And, to top it all off, you were the one who called for help,” I went on. “And you certainly wanted me to think you were cooperating with my investigation.”
Jimmy put his hands on the chair arms, as though to leave. “Why would I do something like that, Lupe? Why?”
I walked to the side of my desk and perched on the edge. “Jimmy, I know you. Something’s wrong. I saw you the other night patting down those guys. Leonardo saw it too. And after he saw you at the club he said you were setting off his ‘gaydar.’”
Jimmy sputtered. “He said what?”
“You’re in the middle of all this, Jimmy,” I said. “And you’re giving off signals. Why’d you do it, Jimmy? Please, tell me.”
Jimmy amazed me just then by getting up and closing the door. Before he could turn around to face me again, I pressed the open intercom button on my speakerphone.
“Can I really talk to you?” Jimmy asked me. I could see that he had started sweating, and there was a haunted look in his eyes.