“You really believe Lizzie is going to help us get her super-rich lover?” I said.
“It’s worth a try,” Monk said.
I knew what was really going on, and I told him so. “You’re desperate to try anything that could help you avoid rummaging through mountains of trash tomorrow.”
Monk gave me a look. “Hell, yes.”
The interior of Flaxx was industrial chic—lots of exposed beams, air ducts, and water pipes against sheets of brushed aluminum, corrugated metal, and scored steel. The spinning, multicolored lights in the ceiling reflected wildly off the silver surfaces, creating a kind of retro psychedelic effect.
Lots of twentysomething men and women, trying their best to look disaffected and cool, lounged on deeply cushioned, brightly colored divans the size of king-size beds. They’d come here straight from their offices and cubicles, dressed for success but with their garments loosened to show off the cleavage, piercings, or tattoos that proved they were still bad boys and girls. They came to escape one grind by indulging in another; that much was clear by the way some of them danced and made energetic use of the divans.
Monk tried to avert his gaze from the grinders and the gropers, but it wasn’t easy. If he looked away from the dance floor, he saw the divans. If he looked away from the divans, he saw the flat-screen monitors on the walls, which showed music videos that featured a lot of coy, soft-core, girl-girl action. I didn’t find it very shocking. Lesbian sexuality has become a very stylish and hip marketing tool to sell everything from lingerie to underarm deodorant. In the process, it has lost its shock value and edgy eroticism. Well, at least to me. Certainly not to Monk.
The music was loud and percussive and pummeled my body and ears. I liked it and found myself swaying instinctively with the rhythm, but Monk winced as if each beat were a beating.
“This is a bad, bad place,” Monk said.
“It seems pretty tame to me,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? Take a look at that.” He motioned to a bowl in the middle of one of the tables.
“What?”
“Mixed nuts,” he said gravely, implying all manner of danger.
“So?”
“Cashews, walnuts, peanuts, almonds, all in one bowl. It’s a crime against nature.”
“We can call the Sierra Club on our way out.”
“That’s bad enough, but to put them out in a bowl for people to share . . .” He shivered. “Think how many hands have been in that bowl, strange hands that have been”—that’s when his gaze fell on one of the couples on a divan—“God knows where.”
Monk quickly looked away from that shocking sight and back to the bowl. He gasped and staggered back.
“What?” I said.
He couldn’t bring himself to gaze again at whatever had offended him. All he could do was jerk his head in the general direction of the table.
“The bowl,” he said, whispering as if it might hear him and take offense.
“I know, mixed nuts,” I said. “A crime against nature.”
He shook his head. “Look again. Tell me I didn’t see crackers and pretzels in that bowl,” he said, adding with dire significance, “with the mixed nuts.”
I glanced at the bowl, knowing even before I did that he was right. Nut and crackers cohabitating.
“It’s a trick of the light,” I said.
He started to look again but I stopped him. “Don’t torture yourself. Remember what we’re here for. Focus.”
Monk nodded. “Right. Focus. Wet Ones.”
I handed him several packets of wipes, and we made our way toward the bar, which snaked along the back of the room and looked more like a stripper’s catwalk than a place to elbow up for a brew. The gleaming poles at either end of the curving bar, and the men pressed up against it, tongues barely in their mouths, added to the effect.
We managed to find a space at the bar, though it meant we were shoulder-to-shoulder with the people beside us. Monk squirmed and crossed his hands in front of his chest so they didn’t touch anything or anyone.
I didn’t have his phobias, but I did the same thing. The way the guy beside me was bumping into me, his arm brushing against my breast, I was certain he was doing it on purpose to cop a quasi-feel. One more time, and he was going to feel my elbow in his kidney.
Three bartenders, all women, all enormously endowed, all wearing bikini tops and short skirts, danced to and fro as they prepared drinks. One of the bartenders was Lizzie. At least Monk wouldn’t have any buttons to fixate on this time. Name tags on the other two women identified them as LaTisha and Cindy.
Lizzie stopped in front of us, still swaying to the beat. “You again,” she said to Monk. “The button man.”
“I need to talk to you about Esther Stoval’s murder,” Monk said.
“I already told you,” she said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“You know the murderer,” Monk said.
LaTisha rang a big bell on the wall, jacked up the volume on the music, and suddenly jumped up on the bar. The crowd of men roared with approval. All except for Monk.
“Does she have any idea how unsanitary that is?” Monk yelled into my ear. “People eat and drink on the bar.”
“They don’t seem to care,” I said, gesturing to the men around us, who were whooping and hollering.
“What do they know?” Monk said. “They eat mixed nuts.”
Lizzie jumped on the bar right in front of us and, along with LaTisha, began dancing, thrusting her pelvis into Monk’s face.
“It’s Lucas Breen,” Monk said to her feet.
“Can’t you see I’m working?” she said.
“I’m trying not to,” Monk said.
Cindy tossed a long-necked bottle of tequila up to Lizzie, who caught it and spun it around like a baton. LaTisha also caught a bottle and matched her move for move. This number was choreographed and was probably repeated a dozen times every night.
“We know you’re having an affair with him,” Monk said.
“If you want to talk to me, get up here,” Lizzie said.
“What?” Monk said.
“You heard me.” She gyrated in front of him a few more times, her huge breasts swaying. The men around us scrambled forward to shove dollars under the waistband of her skirt, jamming us against the bar.
“Do that again,” a guy yelled to her. He was on the other side of the man who kept brushing against me.
She put a foot on the yeller’s shoulder, leaned down, and poured tequila on his head. He lifted his face up to her and opened his mouth to receive the liquor like a chick in a nest eager to be fed.
Faced with the prospect of getting splashed with tequila, Monk quickly climbed up on the bar and then stood there stock-still, with Lizzie dancing in front of him and LaTisha dancing behind him.
“Shake your groove thing,” Lizzie said.
“I don’t have one,” Monk said.
“Everybody has a groove thing,” LaTisha said.
“Then I’m fairly certain mine was removed at birth,” Monk said. “Or when I had my tonsils taken out.”
The bartenders started flinging their bottles to each other on either side of Monk. He drew his arms in against himself and closed his eyes. I don’t know whether he was afraid of getting hit with a bottle or a drop of tequila.
“Dance or I won’t talk to you,” Lizzie said as she juggled the bottles back and forth to LaTisha. “Do you know how much any of those guys would pay to be up here instead of you with me?”
“I’d pay them.”
“Dance,” she said.
Monk tapped a foot and snapped his fingers and rolled his shoulders.
“That’s dancing?” Lizzie said.
“If it’s too hot for you, get out of the kitchen,” Monk said. “We know Esther Stoval was blackmailing Lucas Breen about your relationship. That’s why he killed her.”