“I get blonde nineteen-year-old girls in here like they’re going out of style,” McCafferty said. “All of them full of piss and vinegar. So what else is new?”
“What’s new is I already told you,” Rawles said. “She’s dead.”
“And I already told you I’m sorry,” McCafferty said. “You want me to do an elegy?”
“Eulogy,” Bloom corrected.
“Whatever,” McCafferty said. “I don’t remember her. End of story.”
“Beginning of story,” Rawles said. “Who’s been working here since last May?”
“Now that’s another story,” McCafferty said. “They don’t last too long here. Most of them — I’m sure I don’t have to tell you gentlemen — they graduate into hundred-dollar call girls working in Miami.” McCafferty paused. “Or San Juan. San Juan, they get more than a hundred.”
“Anybody here working since last May?” Rawles asked again.
“I’ll have to ask. I can hardly keep track of them.”
“Ask,” Bloom said.
“Be back in a minute,” McCafferty said. “Don’t let nobody touch my bourbon, huh?”
The detectives sat watching the porn flick. On the stage, the girl kept grinding away to the guitar beat of a heavy-metal band. The girl was smiling.
“Likes her work,” Rawles said.
“Six to five we strike out here,” Bloom said.
“I shouldn’ta mentioned she was dead, huh?” Rawles said.
“No, no, that’s okay.”
“Make them all run for the hills.”
“Better to lay it out from go sometimes,” Bloom said. “That way everybody knows You’re not kidding around.”
“Still, I think I made a mistake.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Bloom said.
He liked Rawles. Rawles was one of the two or three cops on the Calusa PD to whom Bloom would have entrusted his life — and had, in fact, on more than one occasion. Rawles took a lot of crap from the other detectives in the division. In Calusa it was rare for a black cop to attain the rank of detective; Rawles was an oddity, and oddities attracted comment. The redneck detectives down here all told themselves how tolerant they were and made it sound like a joke when they called Rawles “boy.” Hey, boy, you crack any good murders lately? You all duded up today, boy, you goan to a party or sump’in? Rawles let them clown their way through. He knew he could lay any one of them on his ass in a minute, and he knew none of them was foolish enough to invite a real hassle. Sometimes he put on a watermelon dialect for them and flashed a big nigger grin — Yassuh, boss, I’se typed up de report in t’ipiclate, boss, same like you tole me. The bottom line was that any of those jiving rednecks would have preferred being partnered with Rawles than with anyone else in the division. Rawles had been cited for bravery three times. On the last occasion he had single-handedly taken a cleaver out of the hands of a butcher who’d gone berserk after chopping his wife into little pieces. In an odd way, whenever they “jokingly” called Rawles “boy,” they were acknowledging the fact that he was more man than any of them. He was watching the dancer now.
“She looks familiar,” he said.
“She looks hypnotized, is what she looks,” Bloom said.
“Mighta run across her in Houston,” Rawles said. “These girls, they get started on the topless circuit, it’s the only thing they know. They drift to another town, first thing they do is look for a topless joint. Bread on the table, man.”
“Talking up a storm there,” Bloom said, indicating the corner of the room where McCafferty was sitting at the table with the three idle dancers. The one holding the oversize teddy bear was leaning over the table, listening avidly. The one with the orange luminescent belt had taken it from her waist and was idly twirling it in the air.
“We strike out here ’cause of my big mouth,” Rawles said, “I’ll go shoot myself.”
“You handled it right,” Bloom said. “Relax.”
McCafferty got up from the table, rested his hand on the shoulder of the girl sipping beer, nodded, laughed, and then came back to where the detectives were waiting.
“No luck,” he said.
“How about the other girls?” Bloom said.
“They’re earning a buck,” McCafferty said. “I don’t want to interrupt them.”
“Interrupt them,” Rawles said.
“Have a heart, They’re working hard.”
“Ain’t we all?” Rawles said. “This is a homicide here.”
“This dead girl,” McCafferty said, “she’s in a hurry to go someplace?”
“Talk to the others, okay?” Bloom said gently, but McCafferty caught the undertone of warning in his words. All of a sudden, visions of a hundred citations for violations swam through his head. Faulty plumbing, frayed electrical wiring, maybe even a big padlock on the door for employing a couple of girls who were underage. Like Cindy with the teddy bear, who he knew was only sixteen.
“Sure,” he said, “be happy to help you.”
He left the table. The detectives watched as he talked to each girl in turn. None of the girls skipped a beat. Kept grinding away as they listened to him. Their customers listened, too, glassy-eyed. From across the room, Bloom and Rawles saw nothing but a lot of rotating hips and buttocks and a lot of shaking heads. McCafferty came back to the table.
“Negative,” he said. “None of them remembers anybody named Tracy Kilbourne. Most of these girls, They’re new. You’re talking last May, none of them would remember.”
“How about Smiley up there?” Rawles asked.
McCafferty glanced at the stage.
“Yeah, she’s been here awhile.”
“Then talk to her.”
McCafferty looked at his watch.
“She’ll be off in three minutes flat,” he said, “you can talk to her yourself. I got some girls to interview in the office. Nice seeing you,” he said, “I wish you luck,” and walked off.
For one brief, shining moment, there were two girls on the stage. The smiling girl had been joined by the girl who’d been holding the teddy bear and now both of them were facing each other and rotating their hips and jiggling their breasts, both of them smiling as the first girl segued toward the steps at the side of the stage, and then turned gracefully and started down the steps, leaving the teddy-bear girl gyrating all by herself. On the movie screen behind her, a tall and very pretty blonde was unzipping a man’s fly.
The girl came down the steps, picked up a glass of water from a table near the wall, drank it, and then looked around the place. The only unoccupied men she saw were Bloom and Rawles. She started for their table at once, swinging her hips in the exaggerated style of a hooker. A blue klieg light bathed her blonde hair in glare ice as she passed under it, freezing the smile on her face. She hitched the G-string a bit higher on her hips. An amber light caught her. There were sequins sprinkled on her breasts and nipples. She was still smiling when she reached the table.
“Hello, boys,” she said. “Want me to dance privately for you?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions, miss,” Bloom said, and showed her his shield. “Detective Bloom, my partner, Detective Rawles.”
“Uh-oh,” the girl said. “Was I obscene or something?”
“No, you were fine,” Bloom said. “Sit down, won’t you?”
The girl sat, crossing her arms over her breasts. “I feel naked, talking to cops,” she explained.
“What’s your name, miss?” Rawles asked.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked. “I wasn’t flashing, I know that for sure. If the G-string moved, it wasn’t me made it move.”