“Tereus work down at one of them titty bars off Meeting,” he said, grinning. “Don’t take off his clothes, though.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“He cleans up,” he continued. “Man’s a jizzmopper.”
He cackled and slapped his thigh, then gave me the name of the club: LapLand. I thanked him.
“Can’t help but notice that you still suckin’ on that goober,” he said, as I was about to leave him.
“To be honest, I don’t like peanuts,” I confessed.
“I knowed that,” he said. “I just wanted to see if you had the good manners to accept what was offered you.”
I discreetly spit the peanut into my hand and tossed it in the nearest trash can, then left him laughing to himself.
The city of Charleston ’s sporting fraternity had been out celebrating since the day I had arrived in the city. That weekend, the South Carolina Gamecocks had ended a twenty-one-game losing streak by beating New Mexico State 31-0 in front of almost eighty-one thousand victory-starved supporters who hadn’t had a reason to cheer for more than two years, not since the Gamecocks beat Ball State 38-20. Even quarterback Phil Petty, who for the whole of last season hadn’t looked like he could lead a group of old people in a conga line, headed two touchdown drives and completed 10 of 18 for 87 yards. The sad cluster of strip joints and gentlemen’s clubs on Pittsburg Avenue had probably made a real killing from the celebrants over the last few days. One of the clubs offered a nude car wash (hey, practical and fun!) while another made a hopeful play for class customers by denying access to anyone in jeans or sneakers. It didn’t look like LapLand had any such scruples. Its parking lot was pitted with water-filled holes around which a handful of cars had conspired to arrange themselves without losing a wheel in the mire. The club itself was a single-story concrete slab painted in varying shades of blue-porn blue, sad stripper blue, cold skin blue-with a black steel door at its center. From inside came the muffled sound of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” BTO in a strip joint had to be a sign that the place was in trouble.
Inside it was dark as a Republican donor’s motives, apart from a strip of pink light along the bar and the flashing bulbs that illuminated the small central stage, where a girl with chicken legs and orange-peel thighs waved her small breasts at a handful of rapt drunks. One of them slipped a dollar bill into her stocking then took the opportunity to press his hand between her legs. The girl moved away from him but nobody tried to drag him outside and kick him in the head for touching the dancer. LapLand clearly encouraged a more than average amount of customer-artiste interaction.
Over by the bar, two women dressed in lace bras and G-strings sat drinking sodas through straws. As I tried to avoid tripping over a table in the gloom, the elder of the two, a black woman with heavy breasts and long legs, moved toward me.
“I’m Lorelei. Get you somethin,’ sugar?”
“Soda is fine. And something for yourself.”
I handed her a ten and she wiggled her hips at me as she walked away. “I be right back,” she assured me.
True to her word, she materialized a minute later with a warm soda, her own drink and no change.
“Expensive here,” I said. “Who’d have thought it?”
Lorelei reached across and laid her hand on the inside of my thigh, then moved her fingers across it, allowing the back of her hand to glance against my crotch.
“You get what you pay for,” she said. “And then some.”
“I’m looking for somebody,” I said.
“Sugar, you found her,” she breathed, in what passed for an approximation of sexy if you were paying for it by the hour, and paying cheap. It seemed like LapLand was flirting perilously with prostitution. She leaned in closer, allowing me to peer at her breasts if I chose. Like a good Boy Scout, I looked away and counted the bottles of cheap, watery liquor above the bar.
“You ain’t watchin’ the show,” she said.
“High blood pressure. My doctor warned me not to get overexcited.”
She smiled and dragged a fingernail across my hand. It left a white mark. I glanced up at the stage and found myself looking at the girl from an angle even her gynecologist probably hadn’t explored. I left her to it.
“You like her?” Lorelei asked, indicating the dancer.
“She seems like a fun girl.”
“I can be a fun girl. You lookin’ for fun, sugar?” The back of her hand pressed harder against me. I coughed and discreetly moved her hand back onto her own chair.
“No, I’m good.”
“Well, I’m baaaad…”
This was getting kind of monotonous. Lorelei seemed to be some kind of double entendre machine.
“I’m not really a fun kind of guy,” I told her. “If you catch my drift.”
It was as if a pair of transparent shutters had descended over her eyes. There was intelligence in those eyes too: not merely the low cunning of a woman turning tricks in a dying strip joint but something clever and alive. I wondered how she kept the two sides of her character apart without one seeping into the other and poisoning it forever.
“I catch it. What are you? You’re not a cop. Process server, maybe, or a debt collector. You got that look about you. I should know, I’ve seen it enough.”
“What look would that be?”
“The look that says you’re bad news for poor folks.” She paused and reappraised me for a second. “No, on second thoughts, I reckon you’re bad news for just about everybody.”
“Like I said, I’m looking for somebody.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I’m a private detective.”
“Oooh, look at the bad man. Can’t help you, sugar.”
She began to move away, but I gripped her wrist gently and placed two more tens on the table. She stopped and waved to the bartender, who had begun to sense trouble and was moving to alert the gorilla at the door. He went back to polishing glasses but kept a discreet eye on our table.
“Wow, two dimes,” said Lorelei. “I be able to buy me a whole new outfit.”
“Two, if you stick with the kind you’re wearing.”
I said it without sarcasm and a small smile broke through the ice pack on her face. I showed her my license. She picked it up and examined it closely before tossing it back on the table.
“Maine. Looks like you the real deal. Congratulations.” She made a move for the bills but my hand was quicker.
“Uh-uh. Talk first, then the money.”
She glanced back at the bar then slid reluctantly into the chair. Her eyes bored a hole through the back of my hand to the notes beneath.
“I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to ask some questions. I’m looking for a man named Tereus. You know if he’s here?”
“What you lookin’ him for?”
“He helped a client of mine. I wanted to thank him.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right. You got a reward, you give it to me. I’ll pass it on. Don’t fuck with me, mister. I may be sittin’ here with my titties hangin’ out, but don’t mistake me for no fool.”
I leaned back. “I don’t think you’re a fool, and Tereus did help a client of mine. He spoke to him in jail. I just want to know why.”
“He found the Lord, that’s why. He even tried to convert some of the johns who come in here, till Handy Andy threatened to beat him upside the head.”
“Handy Andy?”
“He runs this place.” She made a gesture with her hand as of a man slapping someone across the back of the head. “You get me?”
“I get you.”
“You gonna cause that man more trouble? He done had his share. He don’t need no more.”
“No trouble. I just want to talk.”
“Then give me the twenty. Go outside and wait around back. He’ll be out soon enough.”
For a moment I held her eyes and tried to find out if she was lying. I couldn’t be sure but I still released the bills. She grabbed them, slipped them into her bra and walked away. I saw her exchange a few words with the bartender then pass through a door marked DANCERS AND GUESTS ONLY. I knew what was behind it: a dingy dressing room, a bathroom with a busted lock, and a couple of rooms equipped with nothing more than chairs, some rubbers, and a box of tissues. Maybe she wasn’t so intelligent after all.