At the prow of the bar is a drum stage four feet in diameter on which a go-go dancer slowly grinds her ass, her tempo in no way associated with the beat of the whining, repetitive rock music provided by a turntable behind the bar. The dancer is not young, and she is fat. Bored and dull-eyed, she undulates mechanically, her great bare breasts sloshing about as she slips her thumbs in and out of the pouch of her G-string, tugging it away from her écu and letting it snap back in a routine ritual of provocation. Blue and orange lights glow dimly through the bottles of the back bar, producing most of the illumination, save for a strong narrow beam at the cash register. Ultraviolet lamps around the dancing drum cause the dancer’s G-string to glow bright green. She has also applied phosphorescent paint to her nipples, and they glow green too. Standing just inside the door, far from the bar, LaPointe looks over the customers until he picks out Guttmann. From that distance, the back-lit figure of the dancer is almost invisible, save for the phosphorescent triangle of her crotch and the circles of her nipples. As she grinds away, she looks like a man with a goatee, chewing and rolling his eyes.
LaPointe climbs up on a stool beside Guttmann and orders an Armagnac. “What are you drinking?” he asks Guttmann.
“Ouzo.”
“Why ouzo?”
Guttmann shrugs. “Because it’s a Greek bar, I guess.”
“Good thing it isn’t an Arab bar. You’d be drinking camel piss.” LaPointe looks along the curve of customers, A couple of young men with nothing to do; a virile-looking woman in a cloth coat sitting directly in front of the dancer, staring up with cold fascination and tickling her upper lip with her finger; two soldiers already a little drunk; an old Greek staring disconsolately into his glass; a neatly dressed man in his fifties, suit and tie, a briefcase up on the bar, watching the play of the thumbs in and out of the G-string, his starched collar picking up the ultraviolet light and glowing greenish. All in all, the typical flotsam of outsiders and losers one finds in this kind of bar in the early evenings, or in rundown movie houses in the afternoons.
The fat dancer turns her head as she jiggles from foot to foot and nods once to LaPointe. He does not nod back.
Sitting behind the bar, at the base of the drum, is a girl who attends to the jury-rigged turntable and amplifier. She is fearful of not doing her job right, so she stares at the turning disc, holding her breath, poised to lift the needle and move it to the next selection when the song runs out. She counts the bands to the one she must hit next, mouthing the numbers to herself. Occasionally she lifts her face to look up at the fat dancer. Her eyes brim with admiration and wonder. The lights, the color, and everyone watching. Show business! She appears to be fifteen or sixteen, but her face has no age. It is the bland oval of a seriously retarded child, and its permanent expression is a calm void over which, from time to time, comes a ripple of confusion and doubt.
The tune is nearing its end, and the girl is straining her concentration in preparation for changing the needle without making that horrible rasping noise. The dancer looks down at her and shakes her head. The girl doesn’t know what this signal means! She is confused and frightened. She freezes! After an undulating hiss, the record goes on to the next band—the wrong band! The girl snatches her hands away from the machine, recoiling from all responsibility. But the dancer is already coming down from the drum, her great breasts flopping with the last awkward step. She growls at the girl and lifts the needle from the record herself. Then she walks along behind the bar to a back room. In a minute she emerges, wearing clacking bedroom slippers and a gossamer tent of a dressing gown through which the brown, pimpled cymbals of her nipples are visible.
She slides onto the stool next to Guttmann, her sweaty cheek squeaking on the plastic. She smells of sweat and cologne.
“Want to buy me a drink, gunner?” she asks Guttmann.
LaPointe leans forward and speaks across the young man. “He’s not a mark. He’s with me.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I mean, how was I to know? You didn’t come in together.”
With a tip of his head, LaPointe orders her to follow as he takes up his Armagnac and walks away from the bar to a table with bentwood chairs inverted on it. He has three chairs down by the time the woman and Guttmann arrive. The table is small, and Guttmann cannot easily move his knee away from hers. She presses her leg against his to let him know she knows.
“What’s the trouble now, Lieutenant?” The tone indicates that she has had run-ins with LaPointe before. She can’t imagine why, but the Lieutenant has never liked her. Not even in the old days, when she was working the streets.
LaPointe wastes no time with her. “There’s a kid who comes in here. Young, Italian, doesn’t have much English. Good-looking. Probably calls himself Tony Green.”
“He’s in trouble?”
LaPointe stares at her dully. He asks questions; he doesn’t answer them.
“Okay, I know the kid you mean,” she says quickly, sensing his no-nonsense mood.
“Well?” he says. He has no specific questions, so he makes her do the talking.
“What can I tell you? I don’t know much about him. He started coming in here a couple of months ago, sort of regular, you know. At first he can’t say diddly shit in English, but now he can talk pretty good. Sometimes he comes alone, sometimes with a couple of pals…” Willing though she is, she runs out of things to say.
“Go on.”
“What can I say? Ah… he usually drinks Strega, if that’s any use. Just another cock hanging out. He ain’t been in for the last few nights.”
“He’s dead.”
“No shit?” she asks, only mildly interested. “Well, that explains it, then.”
“Explains what?”
“Well… we had a little appointment set up for last Thursday night. And he didn’t show.”
“That was the night he was killed.”
“Just my luck. Now I’m out the fifty bucks.”
“He was going to pay you fifty bucks?” LaPointe asks incredulously. “What for? Six months’ worth?”
“No, he didn’t want me. He had me the first night or so he was here. He’s big on back-door stuff. But he didn’t seem interested in a second helping.”
“If not you, who then?”
She lifts her chin toward the bar. “He wanted to screw the kid that helps me with the music.”
Guttmann glances at LaPointe. “Christ,” he says. “A moronic kid?”
“Now wait a minute!” the dancer protests quickly. “You can’t hang anything on me. The kid’s nineteen. She’s got consent. Ask the Lieutenant. She’s nineteen, ain’t she?”
“Yes, she’s nineteen. With the mind of a seven-year-old.”
“There you are! And anyway, she seems to like it. She never complains. Just stares off into space all the time it’s going on. Look, I got to get back to my public. That butch in the front will pull her goddamned lip off if I’m late. Look, I’d tell you if I knew anything about the Italian kid. You know that, Lieutenant. Shit, the last thing I need is more trouble. But like I said, he was just another cock hanging out for a little fonne. Hey, did you notice that civilian in the suit? Now, there’s a weirdo for you. You know what he’s doing under the bar?”
“Sacre le camp,” LaPointe orders.
The dancer tucks down the corners of her mouth and shrugs, making a little farting noise of indifference with her mouth. Then she leaves for the back room, from which she soon appears without the slippers and dressing robe to clamber up onto the drum and stand, bored and impatient, while the retarded girl tries to set the needle down silently. She fails, and there is a screech before the whining music begins. The dancer darts a punitive glance at her, then begins to jiggle from foot to foot, running her thumbs around the belt of her G-string and in and out of the pouch.