Something else was becoming painfully clear to me. Moira Heaton had been almost as difficult to know before she disappeared as she was after. Though the office staff were all quick to point out that she had been head and shoulders the best intern they’d ever been associated with, a woman willing to overcome her lack of political savvy with hard work and tenacity, Moira apparently didn’t inspire much affection. They all used the same phrase: “She was a very private person.”
“Not shy, exactly,” said Sandra Sotomayor, Brightman’s most experienced staffer. “Very good with the people who come in off the street. She don’t take no bullshit from city agencies or nobody when people need help, but with us, she keep her distance.”
I thanked them all very much for their cooperation and left numbers I could be reached at in case they remembered anything, even if it seemed stupid, that might help. What the visit did more than anything else was convince me that my first instinct had been the right one. I had to talk to John Heaton, whether Wit liked it or not.
Glitters was far more sedate than during my first visit. In fact, everyone from the doorman to the cocktail waitresses seemed to be in a bit of a stupor. The thump of the drumbeat sounded a bit less insistent. The dancers were nearly sleepwalking, the expressions on their faces devoid of either passion or pain. Maybe the heat and humidity of the first oppressive day of the year had infected the place, seeping in through cracks in the windows and beneath the doors. The air-conditioning was rendered helpless against the drowsy atmosphere.
In spite of the general malaise, my reappearance seemed to inject a bit of a spark back into things. Adonis at the door scowled at me even as he took my ten bucks. I was potential trouble, that’s all he cared about. I waved hello to one of the bartenders I recognized from my last visit, the one who had wondered why I was looking for her old dead boyfriend. She smiled back before quickly retreating to the far end of the bar. It’s nice to be popular. I found that lonesome little two-top I had sat at previously and bided my time until the stupor set back in.
Luckily, the waitress from my first visit, the woman with the otherworldly blonde hair, had my station. It took her a second, but the flash of recognition rippled across her face. I’d seen happier expressions on morticians.
“You again,” she hissed.
“Yeah, but you can call me Typhoid Mary.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“Dewar’s rocks, right?”
“Right. You didn’t call. I’m hurt.”
“Only a cop would think twenty bucks would buy him anything but a smile around here. You guys are the cheapest motherfuckers on the planet.”
I smiled, doffed an invisible hat. “And a pleasant day to you, too, ma’am.”
“I’ll be right back with your scotch.”
So, word had spread after I flashed my badge. Though it clearly hurt my chances of being elected homecoming queen, it was too early to tell whether it had improved my chances of talking to John Heaton.
The waitress dropped my drink, sticking around just long enough to get paid. The first chords of “Whip It” blasted over the PA. It was time for Domino’s black rubber romp across the stage, and the club, which only minutes before had seemed empty and tomblike, was abuzz. She was good, so good I found I was watching her in spite of myself. She was so good that when she got around to removing her mask, she almost appeared to be enjoying herself. In a dive like this that was no mean feat.
After Domino left the stage, Glitters quieted back down some, but not all the way back. No, she had revved things up considerably. The stupor would not return this evening. I sat, drank my Dewar’s at a leisurely pace, and rehearsed the words I thought I might use. My plan was to try and see Domino again. During my last trip in I thought I had spotted a drop of sympathy in her yellowy eyes. Of course, I might have wanted to see it.
It hadn’t been my intention to ask directly about John Heaton. I was thoroughly aware how little that approach had brought me. No, this time someone else would do the pleading for me. If I had to spend several hundred dollars of Thomas Geary’s money to convince Domino it was in her best interest to act on my behalf, so be it. I couldn’t afford to count on her phantom sympathies. I had a second scotch before heading downstairs.
I didn’t have to wait very long for her to pop out of the dressing room, and she saved herself the embarrassment of fending me off with that lame bullshit about the house rules. Today she was wearing denim shorts and a tube top.
“Whaddya want?”
“To buy you a drink and talk some business.”
She laughed. “Shit, I never heard that line before, especially not from a cop.”
“We must not know the same cops,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, that must be it, ‘cause the cops I know never use the words ‘buy’ and ‘business.’ Their vocabulary only includes words like ‘free’ and ‘on the house.’”
“I was wrong. I guess we do know the same cops, but that’s not the kinda business I’m interested in.”
“You’re a man, right?”
“The last time I checked, yeah.”
“Then you’re interested in that kinda business.”
She wasn’t wrong. She was a commodity. That’s what Glitters was, a kind of commodities exchange. Only here, no one traded on their futures, just their yesterdays and todays. Though I wasn’t interested in using her body, I guess I was hoping that John Heaton might be. Wit had it right: using people was what made the world go round.
“Yeah, okay, maybe I am,” I confessed. “Can I buy you that drink?”
“Sure, stud, why not?” She shrugged her shoulders. I turned to go up the stairs, but she stopped me, slipping her arm through mine. “Screw the stairs, we’ll go out the side door.”
She led me the opposite way down the hall, through a door marked PRIVATE, through a storage room, and out a steel door that fed us into an alley that stank of cat piss and garbage. In other words, it smelled like any other alleyway in the city. As soon as the door clicked shut behind us, Domino pressed herself against me, but I ducked out of the way. If she was offended by my reluctance, she didn’t show it. Once again, she looped her arm through mine and started us toward the street. We didn’t quite make it.
As we passed several steel Dumpsters, Domino unhitched herself from me. A strong hand reached out of the shadows, yanking hard on my left wrist. I was thrown completely off balance. Domino was running down the alley toward the street, her sandals clickity-clacking against the grimy cobblestones. A steel fist drove itself so hard into my gut that you could have seen the knuckles on the skin of my back.
“Oh, fuck!” I gasped with the breath the punch forced out of my lungs, the words tasting like regurgitated scotch.
When I tried to recover, a bat struck me across the backs of my knees and I collapsed into a bag of bruised flesh and bone. Knowing, experienced hands patted me down. My.38 was pulled out of the holster I kept clipped to my belt. Its cylinder was opened. The falling bullets pinged off my forehead and face. The cylinder was snapped shut. Metal creaked as the lid to a Dumpster was lifted. Something clanged against the metal. My gun, most likely. A shoe pressed down on my cheek, squeezing my jaw against the paving stones.