Brick smiled politely and nodded, as if this cleared everything up in his mind. I had no idea what the woman was talking about and I assumed neither did Brick, but I had learned a long time ago you could never be too sure with Brick Callahan.
“I see. And what matter would that be?” Phew. My uncle was as confused as I was; he was just better at hiding it. I hoped that once I developed a little experience in this mystifying world of private investigations, I would be better able to roll with the punches, too. At least these punches were figurative ones rather than literal. So far.
“It’s my daughter, Phoebe,” she said to Brick. “You see, she’s only fifteen and she’s turned into quite a handful. She’s a good girl, really, but she’s at such a difficult age. Anyway, Phoebe and I have been fighting recently and, well, she ran away a couple of weeks ago. I recently discovered she has been hired as a dancer at one of those… those awful… adult entertainment places.”
“Your fifteen year old daughter is a stripper?”
I couldn’t help it; I blurted it out before my brain even realized what my traitorous mouth was saying. I mean, in fairness to me, that was the last thing I had expected to hear. Brick shot me a look like I had just set my hair on fire and he couldn’t wait to douse it with gasoline.
He apologized to the woman before I could even react while I made a mental note not to say another word until we were back in the safety of the office. Judging from the look on Brick’s face I thought even that might be pushing my luck.
“What my nephew was trying in his unique way to say, Mrs. Simpson, is that there are laws in place to prevent such things from happening to an underage girl. I believe you said you informed the police?”
“Yes, of course, that was the first thing I did! But like I told you before, that was a total waste of time. They conducted what they called an “investigation” in just a few hours, claiming she was completely unknown to the management of the club. But I know a lot of people in this town, Mr. Callahan, I grew up here and have lived here my whole life, and I have it on very reliable information that she is in fact working there. I just want my daughter back…”
It looked as though we were going to be dealing with a weeping woman for the second time in a matter of a couple of hours, but to her credit, Mrs. Simpson somehow pulled herself together at the last moment and managed to continue the conversation. “The name of the club is—“
“The Little Devilz.”
“Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”
Brick ignored the question. “So following the inaction of the police you went to Mr. Saunders and asked him to threaten legal action?”
“Well, yes and no. I don’t care about taking legal action; I just want my little girl back. I asked him to make it clear to the vultures running that… that snakepit that if they continued to employ underage dancers—Phoebe in particular—we would take them to court, file lawsuits, basically make their lives miserable until they came to their senses.”
Once again Brick nodded like it was all starting to fall into place. I had a feeling it really was for him this time, because I was starting to get the picture, too. It was a dirty and frightening picture, involving an aging real estate lawyer in over his head against some very, very dangerous people. After my little performance of a few minutes ago, though, I decided now would not be the time to inject myself into the conversation, so I put what I hoped was a look of sage wisdom on my face and waited for my uncle to continue.
Instead, he rose to his feet, clasping Madge Simpson’s hands in his own and smiling warmly at her. “Please try not to feel guilty about what happened to Mr. Saunders,” he told her. “No mother can be faulted for wanting to rescue her child from the clutches of these people. You were not responsible for the death of your employer; the people who killed him were responsible.”
She breathed in sharply. “So you really believe he was murdered?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, I do.”
“You must have had trouble retaining clients in your accounting business if you were as reckless with your mouth after inspecting their financial records as you were back there inside Mrs. Simpson’s home.” I had known Uncle Brick was going to bring up my little misstep, and I didn’t have to wait long. We hadn’t even gotten as far as the Sumner Tunnel yet. My uncle raised his voice to make himself heard above the angry honks of frustrated drivers and the accompanying squeals of their protesting brakes as Brick forced himself into the line of cars moving sluggishly through the toll booths.
“I’m sorry about that, Uncle Brick. It’s just that of all the things I thought might come out of that poor woman’s mouth, her fifteen year old daughter stripping for money was pretty much last on the list. How is that even possible? Why would a club risk being shut down by the authorities for hiring such a young girl in the first place?”
“Excellent question, my boy. And I accept your apology, by the way. I was taken a bit by surprise myself. But to answer your question, The Little Devilz isn’t risking anything. Or at least they weren’t until they graduated from sleazy hiring practices to premeditated murder.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You would have no way of knowing this, having spent the last decade-plus on the West Coast laundering the finances of the rich and famous, but the management of The Little Devilz has had the local authorities in their pocket practically since the first day they opened their doors.”
A middle-aged man in a battered green Toyota pickup screamed an impressive—not to mention creative—string of profanities through his driver’s side window at Brick, who ignored him as though he didn’t exist. The guy seemed to forget in his fury that his window was closed, smacking his forehead and raising a red welt, which, unsurprisingly, seemed to further anger him. “They’ve been permitted to operate with impunity,” Brick continued. “If I had to venture a guess, I would say Phoebe Simpson is not the first underage dancer to have taken their stage. It’s going to be up to us to make sure she is the last.”
“But how can we possibly manage that if even the police refuse to take action?”
We burst out of the Sumner Tunnel and into the steamy afternoon sun, Brick traveling much too fast as usual. He made the right and left turns toward Government Center with one hand on the wheel as he turned to face me, seemingly paying no attention to the traffic, of which there was a lot. I was suddenly sorry I had not waited until we were back at the office to ask my question.
“It’s one thing,” Brick said, “to grease a few palms and convince the authorities to look the other way regarding your hiring practices—as repugnant as they are—or the ages of the customers you allow through your door. It’s another issue entirely, though, to take a man to the top of an apartment building and toss him off simply because he is asking too many questions. This the police cannot ignore.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. So what do we do?”
“Simple. We convince the responsible party to admit he’s a murderer.”
Sure, it sounded simple when Brick said it. What self-respecting scumbag wouldn’t want to admit to a private investigator that he had committed an act of cold-blooded murder this past week?
We were lounging in the office eating a late lunch and planning strategy, which is another way of saying that I was eating and waiting for Brick to tell me what we were going to do. He had been quiet for a while now, thinking hard, and I could see he had pretty much settled upon a course of action. What that course of action might be, I couldn’t guess.
Finally I could no longer stand the suspense and got up the nerve to ask. “I realize it’s probably patently obvious to anyone who’s not a trained accountant, but how in the world are we going to convince the killer to implicate himself in front of us?”