The unmanned bar loomed on my left, but Vernon cut sharper left, past the DJ booth, and led me down a small hallway. Behind the stage, a door announced the strippers’ collective dressing room (EMPLOYEES ONLY, with Fuckwad! added in marker) while one opposite labeled PRIVATE (“Fuckwad!” understood) was obviously Vernon’s office.
He opened the door for me to enter. Neither spacious nor cramped, this was as surprising in its way as Climer’s penthouse: cherrywood-paneled walls with ebony-framed prints — a Nagel nude, a Lichtenstein pop art panel, a Warhol “Marilyn”; matching mahogany desk, button-tufted black leather chair, captain’s chairs for visitors, file cabinets; three-seater chocolate leather couch along one side wall; and well-stocked liquor cart along the other.
I took one of the captain’s chairs as Vernon settled behind the big desk, which, like his cousin’s, had many piles of papers, if more neatly arranged, as well as a phone and the usual paraphernalia. An antique wooden box revealed itself as a humidor when he opened it and helped himself to a formidable cigar, then offered me one. I declined.
He used a naked-girl lighter, the twin of the one upstairs, to fire up the Cuban, or anyway that’s what I bet it was.
“If you’d like a drink,” he said, between getting-it-going puffs of the cigar, “help yourself.”
The liquor cart was at my left.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, with a wave of a hand bearing the cigar as well as two gold-nugget rings, “but it’s the least of the vices you’re likely to run into around here.”
The cigar smoke smelled fine. Or maybe it was just better than the cheap perfume/cigarette-smoke/beer-puke bouquet on the other side of the door.
“I appreciate you giving me some time,” I said. “Sounds like you have a lot on your hands.”
He nodded. “The price of success. Max is a great big kid and talented as hell, a genius in his way. But he’s got a tiger by the tail here.”
“You mean Climax Magazine and its offshoots are expanding exponentially.”
His eyebrows lifted above the big-framed glasses. He hadn’t expected a five-dollar word from the likes of me. We were even — I hadn’t expected an executive office in the back of a strip club.
“That’s exactly the problem, so many opportunities,” he said, grinning around the cigar. “Though as problems go, it’s a sweet one. This club here, it’s nothing special, wouldn’t you agree?”
I shrugged. “It’s all right. If a guy wants a beer and a look at an actual vagina, he could do worse.”
He laughed, rested the big smoke in a glass Climax Club ashtray. “I’m not going to bother remodeling — we’ll be putting this building on the market as soon as Max and his girlfriend move out of here.”
“Yeah. Movin’ on up, like the Jeffersons.”
“More like the Beverly Hillbillies,” Vernon said, chortling. “Max is buying an honest-to-God mansion over there in Germantown.”
“Capone had one. Why shouldn’t Max Climer?”
“No argument on that score. Max is like Capone in that he knows what people want. Well, what men want, anyway. Some people think it’s strictly sex that sells our magazine, but really it’s a combination of things — raunchy cartoons like dirty jokes come to life, sex advice, political rants.”
“It’s a winning cocktail. What were you saying about not remodeling?”
He resumed smoking the cigar, puffed while he spoke, as if a steam engine were fueling his thoughts.
“What Hefner did with the Playboy Clubs, for the white-collar set and wealthy,” he said, “we’re going to do for the blue-collar crowd and middle-class. Our Climax Lounges will have lots of chrome and shiny surfaces and good-looking waitresses, and we’ll keep the stripping aspect, but clean it up some. A real gentleman’s club for those who aren’t really gentlemen.”
“Sounds surefire. This was your cousin’s idea?”
He grinned around the cigar again. “Well... as much mine as his. Really, mine. But he’s on board, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“I’m still working on the projected financials.”
How was that for a vague term that sounded specific?
“And of course,” he went on, “the magazine is going great guns. All in under two years. Having nude photos of a former First Lady is what built this company, you know.”
“The Florence Henderson ones didn’t hurt.”
“No they didn’t. Of course, she’s suing us, says they’re fakes, but we’ve got a good case.” He sighed cigar smoke. “That’s another thing dragging us down — so many legal matters. Lawsuits, obscenity busts... just keeping Max’s ass out of jail is a full-time job.”
“Well, you have lawyers to do that.”
“We do, a local firm, but increasingly they’re in over their heads. I have to spend a shitload of time just keeping up with them, not to mention keeping them up with me... Right now I’m exploring shifting to a firm out of Chicago, used to handling our kind of problems. And that’s all tied in with distribution, because often it’s our distributors who get hit with local and state obscenity charges, and we try to stand behind them.”
“You need a pair of roller skates.”
He lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “All part of our growing pains. And Max hates to see this thing get away from us, wants to keep it small... no, not small, but manageable, with a payroll chiefly of friends who’ve been with us from the start. But it’s not manageable, with the scale of what’s coming.”
“What’s coming, besides the clubs you envision?”
He adjusted the big-framed glasses. “Max wants to move into video production — home video is the next big thing, he says — and to create more magazines outside the sex genre. Both ideas I admit I’m not yet keen on, especially since he’s reluctant to take on new people. Still, I’ve learned not to underestimate him. He’s a handful, our Max, so much talent and enthusiasm... but he needs a guiding hand.”
“Sounds like he’s lucky to have you.”
A smile blossomed around the cigar. “Kind of you to say, Jack. And I’m pleased that you’re on board.”
“Really? Why?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “Security really has been terribly lax around here. Having a consultant who can analyze the weaknesses and shore up our defenses is just what we need right now. We’ve been inundated by protesters, from the religious right to women’s libbers, which to a degree is a positive, in that it generates attention. No such thing as bad publicity, as they say. But there are nuts out there who really would like to hang Max Climer on the cross.”
“To die for his sins?”
“No, Jack — for their own sins. Their own smug satisfaction. Max is the linchpin of our success. Keep him safe, would you?”
“Do my best.”
A knock at the door behind me was followed by the caller coming in without waiting to be asked.
I didn’t recognize her at first.
She might been one of the strippers, certainly attractive enough, but a shade old and maybe a little heavy for that, her clothes — black blouse with red necklace, red skirt, black wedgies — not slutty enough for a stripper... a housewife out to meet her girlfriends for lunch, maybe. Her straight, shoulder-brushing hair split the difference between brunette and blonde, and her lip gloss was the same bright red as her blouse and skirt, eye shadow light blue, eyes big and brown. Pretty in a harsh way, like Hot Lips on M
ASH.
Thing was... I’d seen her in the nude. Hell, I’d seen her with her red-nailed fingers spreading open the pink petals between her thighs. And between the staples.