Since I wasn’t on the prowl at the moment for a rival team of killers, I’d left the nine millimeter Browning in my room at the stakeout. That was a tricky call, since the job this time hinged on locating targets rather than being pointed to one; but going into the Climax Club with an automatic in my back waistband could be troublesome. Brushing up against the wrong person who recognized the feel of such steel could get me looked at the wrong way.
But with what I had in mind, I couldn’t go over there naked. In anticipation of such a situation, I had bought (back at a Lake Geneva sporting goods shop) a little pocket gun, a walnut-grip Colt .25 with a six-shot clip. This I dropped into my right-hand windbreaker pocket, the jacket’s pockets deeper than usual for a garment like that. The little piece would not slip out and go clunking to the floor when I sat down or shifted around or something.
I was at an age now where I didn’t often get taken for a college kid anymore, but what the hell — maybe I was a grad student. At any rate, as I entered the Climax Club, I was just a shortish-haired guy in a t-shirt, windbreaker and jeans. Some kind of working stiff. Nicely anonymous. About as suspicious in a joint like this as whoever was sitting next to you at the bar.
But the bar was not where I deposited myself. I took one of the many round tables facing the stage, so I could get a feel for the place. Took a while for my eyes to get used to the cigarette smoke, which was no thicker than if a bonfire had been going.
A stacked redheaded waitress in a green bikini came over and took my order for a Coors, which was on tap; she was cute and friendly with freckles everywhere and frizzed hair like she’d been pleasantly electrocuted. No Bunny outfits in the Climax, no set costume beyond every waitress wearing a bikini and strappy sandals and looking good in one.
The bikinis were about the most distinctive thing about the joint. The only hint that this was the birthplace of a controversial and successful new nationally distributed magazine was an array of framed Climax centerfolds that were spotted around the brick walls like a museum devoted to labia. I guess the pink curtains on the windows might be suggestive of what made the mag so popular, too, but that would have required some rather deep and metaphorical thinking from the working stiffs (get it?) in attendance.
Otherwise, the Climax was fairly standard strip club fare — hanging pseudo-Tiffany shades over the pool tables off to the left, a central stage with silver tinsel curtain and a runway along which was the prime seating for those who wanted a good look at where babies come from. To give you the idea of the sleaze level, just as my Coors arrived, a long-legged dark-tanned brunette with fake boobs came strutting out on the stage wearing a red bikini, which was the start of her strip act. Waitresses were renting coal-miner helmets for ten bucks a pop to guys seated along the runway, the lights on the helmets bringing the miracle of life into brighter focus, when a dancer crouched before them in pursuit of crumpled cash.
This was a mixed crowd — not racially, as I didn’t spot a single black face other than a bartender and a waitress; but in social class, white-and blue-collar, longhairs in jean jackets, a few bikers at the bar, group of Marines in uniform at the little round tables. The music was loud, the DJ in the front right corner keeping things light, cracking jokes (“Make Ginger feel at home, fellas... it’s her first time... tonight”), and the highceilinged chamber — not much larger than your average neighborhood bar — was anything but rowdy.
Strip bars where the girls get down to their birthday suits often fall into an almost uncomfortable silence, down under the raucous music, a church-like hush, a collective fugue state. Right now a naked little blonde going by Brandi Wyne (I’d seen her poster on my way in — she was a featured dancer who’d been a centerfold in Climax) was doing a backward push-up, feet straddling the edge of the stage, sharing a well-trimmed secret with a coal miner staring at her while pretending to be unimpressed.
Security was present but not obnoxious — half a dozen bouncers were positioned at key spots around the room, black slacks, white dress shirts, black bow ties, a lot of muscle, arms folded genie-like so tight their sleeves might burst, their biker hair ponytailed back, their tiny black eyes missing not much.
I watched the show a while. The girls were good-looking and not scary the way they could be in a strip club this raunchy. There was something good-natured about it all, from the goofy miner’s caps (surely a Max Climer idea) to the jokey DJ. And, like the waitresses, the dancers were all smiles, not bored and dead-eyed. That was clearly a house policy, although swimming in dollars and fivers could get a girl in a good mood, I’d bet.
Her set finished, Brandi Wyne — in the blue bikini and a filmy negligee wrap — came over and sat at my table. She had Goldie Hawn’s hair but more curves, her heart-shaped face not hard yet with a perfect little nose, big brown eyes with blue eye shadow, and a small, provocative mouth painted glistening pink. She also wore musky, flowery perfume, strong enough to cut through the smoke.
“Having fun yet?” she asked chirpily, quoting Zippy the Pinhead though probably not on purpose. Her pupils were big. Cocaine?
“You’re a good dancer,” I told her, working to be heard over “Tush” on the sound system.
She had been good, keeping time anyway, which when you’re face up bouncing on your hands and feet with your legs spread, is a real trick. I’d imagine.
“You from here?” she asked.
“No. Want a beer?”
“We only drink champagne.”
“Why don’t I just give you five dollars and you buy your own champagne, when you get around to it.”
She liked that idea, tucking the five in her bikini bottom.
We talked a while. I was a lingerie salesman, which she found interesting, and she was a student at the University of Memphis, which was no surprise. I was pretty sure we were both lying.
“You’re nice,” she said. “You want to do something later? I’m off at midnight.”
“Check back with me,” I said.
She smiled, squeezed my hand, and vaporized.
I knew, from info I’d been provided, that next to the restrooms was a door that led to the publishing floor. Up there, I knew, another stairway rose to the penthouse. What I wanted to know was how hard — or easy — it would be for someone uninvited to get up there.
A bow-tie bouncer was positioned outside the restroom alcove with his back to the wall. I headed past him to the heads and used the one labeled with a rooster silhouette (the other had a pussycat). Upon emerging, I tried the knob on the door to my right, marked employees only, and found it unlocked.
Could it be that easy?
It was.
Up a narrow flight I was suddenly in a space the size of the club below, illuminated only by a few security lights, but instead of a strip club, this was indeed a place where a magazine might be assembled. The sprawling office area had no cubicles and no sectioned-off smaller offices for managers. This was just a big, formerly empty area where a bunch of people who never put a magazine together before assembled to do so. Untidy desks with typewriters were at skewed angles everywhere, as were light tables and artist work stations. Brick walls wore bulletin boards thick with tacked-up photos and photo proof sheets, and book-filled board-and-block shelving straight out of a dorm room huddled under windows with blinds, not pink curtains — a sea of clutter that spoke of hard, energetic, even desperate work.