Ryan’s News and Video looked exactly as I’d pictured it: an adult bookstore set up in an old gas station. The owner had painted over the windows and bricked in the service door. A single island standing before the building hadn’t sheltered gas pumps in many years, but the overhead lights still worked and these threw a sickly yellow light over the storefront. It provided enough illumination by which to see and avoid tripping over the many places where the ancient asphalt had buckled, but not so much that the casual observer could ascertain one’s identity. Five or six cars and pickup trucks stood parked outside, all but one—probably the clerk’s car—backed into their spaces. Despite the poverty of the surrounding area, none of the vehicles looked more than five years old, and when I backed the BMW into the last remaining space, it didn’t look out of place. The business attracted a certain clientele from outside the neighborhood.
“Here we go,” I muttered to no one. I got out. The headlights blinked and the horn hiccupped, the locks clicked shut and I walked into the store.
If I expected the inside to dovetail with the seedy exterior, a shock awaited me upon entry. Bright fluorescents lit row after row of neatly arranged erotica, a surprisingly professional cornucopia of pornographic videos, magazines and adult toys. The linoleum tile floor showed signs of age but also glowed from the recent attention of a mop. I had anticipated the scent of cigarettes and old motor oil but my nose detected neither of these; a man could have spent hours in here and walked out with no telltale smells clinging to his clothes, nothing to raise concern in the sensitive olfactory receptors of a wife or girlfriend. What sounded like the Top 40 station out of Raleigh drifted from speakers set into the acoustic tile overhead. It could have been any Blockbuster Video store in the country.
But for the inventory. When the door closed behind me, I found myself looking at a stack of small boxes with a photo of a strange lump of plastic and a young blond woman licking cherry red lips.
LARA LOVITT FUCKABLE VAGINA, the box proclaimed. The lip licker, I presumed, being Lara. REALISTIC FEEL! E-Z CLEANING!
“Welcome to Ryan’s,” called a young man seated behind a cash register on the far end of the store, reading a magazine. He didn’t look up. “Holler if you need help.”
“I will,” I said, clearing my throat. “Thanks.”
I moved past the adult toy aisle and through a section marked ASIAN, which offered a plethora of DVDs with covers showing small women of Asian descent finding creative ways to get boned. There stood another section marked INTERRACIAL, another for GAY/LESBIAN/TRANSSEXUAL, another for S&M and yet another labeled HETEROANAL. The last section before the register promised ALTERNATIVE. Apparently, all the other material was just too mainstream for some people.
“Help you find something?” Asked the young man.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Are you Ryan?”
“I’m Cory.”
He was younger than me, twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but taller, broader in the shoulders. He wore a hooded sweatshirt with HOLLISTER printed on the chest, but the long sleeves didn’t quite disguise the flames tattooed on the undersides of his arms. Another look and I saw more tattoos on the topsides; with his shirt off, this guy would have resembled a New York City subway car. He had shaved his head, like Dr. Koenig. He had a gold tooth, unlike Dr. Koenig.
Behind him, a red curtain covered the doorway to another room in the building. A dim light turned red by the gauzy material glowed inside it, and I felt suddenly certain that I was looking at the entrance to the VIP section. Just in case the stuff in the ALTERNATIVE section wasn’t donkeyshow weird enough for some patrons.
I reached inside my London Fog overcoat and pulled out a sheet of paper—a photocopy of the membership card to Ryan’s—which I unfolded and displayed for the clerk. “You guys issue cards like this?”
“Yeah. That’s… who are you?”
“I’m Kevin Swanson,” I said. “I’m an attorney from Alamance County.” Seeing his face tighten up, I quickly added, “Nobody’s in trouble. I’m just looking for information on two guys who might have a connection to this card right here.”
“What two guys?”
“Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur. Ring a bell?”
Cory shook his head.
“There’s two of them,” I said. “Cards, I mean. One for Pinnix and one for Ramseur. You mind checking your records and seeing if you have an address?”
“We don’t keep records,” he said. “People that come here don’t necessarily want a paper trail, you know? And even if we had records, I probably couldn’t show them to you. Privacy laws. Know what I’m saying?”
“I do,” I said. My face remained impassive, but inside I felt myself flailing. This was my one and only lead. This was the part of the show where I threatened to subpoena him to a deposition and threatened to force him to produce business records. But it had become very obvious to me—since I wasn’t dealing with Ryan himself here, or anybody else with skin in the game—that Cory wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I subpoenaed the entire world. In fact, he might enjoy collecting his eight dollars an hour to come sit at a deposition.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’d they do? I mean, what’s a lawyer from Alamance doing sniffing around a porn store?”
I folded the paper and slipped it back into my coat along with my hands.
“Last year, they tried to break into my house,” I said, maintaining my expression. “They tried to kill me but didn’t do a great job. So I shot and killed them.”
Cory’s thick eyebrows raised and brought the corners of his mouth up with them in a slight smile. “I thought you looked familiar. I saw you on the news, dude.”
“They didn’t have any ID,” I continued. “In fact, but for these cards to your store I don’t think the cops would have even known their names. I’m just trying to get more information. So I can get some… closure.”
“Closure,” he echoed.
“Closure,” I repeated.
His eyes moved over my overcoat, the suit visible beneath it. White shirt, dark tie. I read his mind; this guy killed somebody? You got to be fucking kidding me.
“The nature of the attack,” I said, “suggests that if they held memberships to a place like this—no offense—they would have come here a lot. They’d be regulars.”
“We have a lot of regulars.”
“Two black males, early to mid thirties.”
“Dude, this is Durham. You’re going to need more than that.”
“They would have been into alternative.”
Up climbed the eyebrows, slight but noticeable. “How alternative?”
“The cops found handcuffs and duct tape. Theory is, these guys were getting ready to act something out.”
Cory’s mouth transformed into an O and his eyebrows raised all the way. He whistled. “I see. That’s pretty alternative.”
“It is. Anyway, do these guys ring any kind of a bell? They wouldn’t necessarily have been coming in together—I’m looking for two black guys about my age who consistently rent… very alternative material. The most alternative material you have.”
He looked down at my hand, which still held the photocopies of the membership cards. He motioned for me to hand it over, which I did. He studied it for a moment and handed it back.
“That’s a VIP card,” he said. “Gives the customer access to certain collections. Material we don’t just put out there for everybody. Hey, are you a cop?”