I considered flashing my badge, but thought better of it. Instead, I found myself a seat at a lonely little two-top set back from the stage. As ineffectual as Adonis at the door might be, he couldn’t afford to get caught accepting a bribe. Besides, he seemed to have trouble counting past twenty. A cocktail waitress at a table in a dark room was more likely to be accommodating.
“Dewar’s rocks,” I shouted just to be heard.
The waitress had no trouble filling out her black lace blouse, velveteen hot pants, and nosebleed heels, but she was a little long in the tooth to be up onstage, and the shade of her blonde hair wasn’t on God’s original color palette.
“Eight bucks,” she screamed back, a come-and-get-it smile painted permanently across her face.
“Here.” I threw a ten and a twenty on her tray. “The ten’s for the drink and a tip. The twenty’s for an introduction to John Heaton.”
She sucked up the ten like a sleight-of-hand artist, but put the twenty back on the table. “Listen, mister, my job’s to get you to buy as many drinks as your wallet can stand. My only concern around this place is me, myself, and me. See on the stage up there? For all I care, Marilyn Monroe could be playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ on JFK’s dick. You catch my meaning?”
She was talking a lot and not saying anything.
“Okay,” I said, placing a business card and the twenty back on her tray. “Keep the twenty as a gesture of goodwill. If you should happen to make some room in there between me, myself, and me for John Heaton, give me a call.”
“I’ll be back with your scotch in a minute.” This time, she didn’t return the twenty.
A different waitress brought me my scotch. I asked her about Heaton just to be consistent. Though equally unforthcoming, she wasn’t quite as chatty about it.
I finished my drink, moved over to the bar, and switched to beer.
“I dated a guy named John Healy once, but he’s dead now,” one of the barmaids said. “He had to lay down his Harley and wound up under a semi. I don’t remember where he’s buried. Why you lookin’ for him, anyways?”
That was the closest thing I got to an answer at the bar. Luckily, the men’s room was downstairs and not too far away from the dancer’s dressing room. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and worm my way in. In the movies it’s all just a lighthearted romp, sneaking into the women’s dressing room. In real life you get the shit kicked out of you. I was nearly two years removed from my last ass-kicking. Call me crazy, but I just wasn’t quite up for another.
I waited to catch one of the dancers at the end of her shift. First, I hung out just inside the lavatory door, holding it open far enough to give myself a reasonable view down the hall. Above my head, the ceiling literally moved with the thump thump thumping of the only kind of music that made me rue the evolution of rock and roll. Then I made believe I was on the pay phone for ten minutes. Too bad nobody was on the other end of the line. I was funny as hell.
A woman I recognized from the stage upstairs slipped out of the dressing room and walked past the pay phone. They called her Domino, and she had done this dominatrix shtick to Devo’s “Whip It.” She’d worn a shiny black latex getup, thigh-high boots, and a leather mask and strutted about with a riding crop. Now she was dressed in a halter, jeans, and sandals.
“You’re Domino, right?” I said like some goofy stage-door Johnny. “You were great.”
She yawned. “Thanks, buddy, but I’m tired, and it’s against house rules to mix with the gentlemen.”
House rules! Who was she kidding? This wasn’t exactly the Lonesome Piper Country Club. For a fistful of fifties and a nice smile, you could get anything you wanted in a place like this.
While I figured out what to say next, I took a careful look at Domino. She had been pretty once, maybe very pretty. At close quarters, however, the wear and tear showed. She was on the wrong side of thirty-five, and the fluorescent light wasn’t doing her any favors. I was on that same side of thirty-five myself, but I wasn’t trading on my boyish good looks for room and board and who knows what else. The whites of her eyes weren’t. Yellow was more like it. She had a touch of drippy junkie nose, or maybe she’d done a few lines too many. She’d get older faster than I, much faster if she didn’t get clean. Women like Domino can have short, violent careers, and when things start to go, they go quickly. There’s no safety net to catch you and no ladder back up.
“Look, I need to talk to John Heaton,” I admitted, unwilling to spin too much of a tale. “I know he works here and it’s pretty obvious he’s a hard man to see.” I gave her my card. “Just tell him it’s about his daughter, all right?”
She didn’t answer, but took the card. Her eyes got big as she looked past me. Before I could turn around, a powerful hand clamped down on my left shoulder.
“This asshole bothering you, darlin'?” a gravelly voice wanted to know.
“It’s okay, Rocky. He’s just a fan,” she said to the man standing behind me, then refocused on my face. “Thanks for the compliment, mister. Come back again soon.”
I bowed slightly. “You’re welcome.”
She walked past me, her sandals clickity-clacking on the stairs. The vise loosened its grip on my shoulder, and I turned around to have a look at Rocky. So this was the extra muscle. He was definitely an ex-pug. Gee, a boxer named Rocky, what a concept. Though a light heavyweight now, he’d probably fought as a middleweight. By the look of his face, he’d no doubt been a world-class bleeder. His brow and the bridge of his flattened nose were thick with scar tissue. That and the fleshy reminders of a thousand unblocked left jabs made him look like he was wearing a pair of skin-tone goggles.
“You’re a real fuckin’ pest, chief,” he growled. “Everybody from the doorman to the girls behind the bar say you been givin’ ‘em a hard time.”
I considered arguing the point, but I wasn’t willing to risk even a playful tap from this guy. He may well have been a bleeder, but the thing about bleeders is they’re usually big punchers. It’s how they survive. I’m sure more than a few of his opponents left the ring in a lot worse shape than he. It’s better to stand and bleed than lie glassy-eyed on the mat. I showed him my badge.
“What precinct you from?” he asked.
“Not this one. Listen, I’ll get outta your hair in a minute. I just want a word with John Heaton and I’m gone.”
Rocky gave it some thought. “He ain’t in today.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Rocky, okay?”
“I swear, he ain’t in today.”
I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote “Moe” plus a seven-digit number on the wall.
“Tell him to call me when he does get in. I want to talk to him about Moira.”
“All right,” Rocky said, “I’ll pass word along.”
I shook his hand and left. After an hour in Glitters, the air on Eighth Avenue seemed almost fresh. Darkness should have been in full bloom, but all the gaudy neon and street lighting fooled the eye. I headed back to the outdoor lot on Tenth and Forty-fourth where I’d stashed my car. The crowds had thinned by the time I got to Ninth, and here the artificial lighting at least gave the fallen night a fighting chance. As I stepped down off the curb onto the crumbled blacktop of Ninth Avenue, I noticed the footfalls of a man walking right up behind me.
“He won’t talk to you, you know.”
I turned. “Are you talking to me?”
“I am indeed, Mr. Prager.”
His short, slight stature was unimposing if not exactly unthreatening. He was impeccably dressed in a gold-buttoned blue blazer, khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, a superbly knotted red silk tie, and loafers. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but his gray-blue eyes beneath stylish tortoiseshell glasses were still very young and fiery. His head was tan and bald, and his chin was adorned with a rich gray goatee.