Hidden Moon

5

The stairs down to Club Blue were dark, but the treads were supremely quiet. Concrete stairs don’t make a lot of noise. There’s no give to them, either. They crumble sooner or later and break off in ugly chunks, but for stealth, nothing is better. Metal stairs are probably the worst. They clang when you stumble, which happens in the dark. In absolute darkness, wooden stairs are best. They may creak a little, but if you know enough to walk where they have support, you can minimize the sound. And the stairs near the top and the bottom have a different feel to them. With concrete, you never know for sure where you are, which might be why I missed a step and grabbed for the handrail.

At the bottom of the stairs, I kept close to the wall, found the door to the club, and then, as I rounded the corner, could finally see from a thin streak on the floor that the light was turned on in the office. The office door was shut, but I could hear voices from the inside. One of them was the owner, anxious but still with a polish to it. The other, high-pitched, insistent, and full of fear, was the bartender. Nothing else; the place was silent, no clinking of glasses, no laughter, no customers.

I could have tried the handle, but if for some reason the door was locked, it would have given them time to react. So I just kicked it in. It was a cheap door, but the hinges were even cheaper, put in with screws that must have been made of tinfoil. The hinges came out of the frame, and the door sailed across the room.

“Anyone home?” I strolled in as if I were paying a friendly call. The bartender had been hit on the back by the door. It probably hurt a little, but from the look on his face, it scared him more than anything. The owner stood up, and as he did so he reached to open the top drawer.

“If that’s a gun in there,” I said, “leave it. Right now, you’re not in any trouble, nothing you can’t get out of, anyway. But if you pull a gun on me, I’ll make sure you regret it.” I don’t know why I kept imagining the owner had a gun. He looked like someone who knew how to use one, or had used one.

“If you’re still around.” The bartender looked at me balefully.

“I’ll be around, don’t worry your ugly face about it. I’ve got news for you, if you’re in the room when he pulls a gun on me, you’re in it, too. Only you probably don’t have the money to bribe the camp guards, so they’ll work you until you drop, if they don’t rape you first.”

“What?”

“Don’t listen to him.” The club owner still had his hand on the drawer handle, but I could tell he had already decided not to open it. He just didn’t want me to think I’d scared him. “No one’s going anywhere, isn’t that right, Inspector? This is just a friendly call to collect that drink I promised you. If you wait around a little, the girls will start showing up. Might be there’s one that likes cops.”

“Yeah.” The bartender smiled, so that the scar across his jaw writhed like a snake. “She probably likes all sorts of barnyard animals.”

I walked up close to him and bent down until my eyes were drilled into his. “Get out of my sight, now.”

“Go get ready for the first customers.” The club owner nodded his head toward the bar. “I’ll handle this.”

The bartender turned and walked into the dark barroom. He clicked a single light on and, from the sound of it, started sweeping.

“Inspector, what is this? Surely it’s not the license causing you to break in here. That’s not what you boys care about. But I can see I do need some protection-look at how that door came off the hinges. Let’s say a hundred euros a week, and drinks anytime.” He had his wallet out and was thumbing through some bills. “We can make the first payment a little higher, just to get things started on a good note.”

“You always open up so late? Hard to make money, if you don’t have any customers. Or are you running something else on the side?”

The manager counted out a few more bills. “You really are a bold one, aren’t you, Inspector? A real shakedown artist.”

“There was a body found in the alley next to your club.”

“You don’t say.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Everyone is my friend, Inspector, but since I don’t know what body you’re talking about, I’m not prepared to say whether I knew him.”

“Him?”

“What was this, er, body wearing? No identification papers? Now, that would be strange. In the alley next to the club, you said? There were no fights in here. Maybe it was a robbery.” He held out the bills.

“Put away your wallet. Wait, on second thought, let me see it.”

The club owner smiled. “Why settle for some when you can have it all, that’s the game now?”

“Sit down and keep quiet, would you?” I flipped open the wallet and looked at the money. All small euro bills, all in order, from highest to lowest, back to front. “Pretty meticulous, aren’t you?” I threw the wallet back at him. “The body had a knife in the back. I just thought I’d warn you. Maybe you want to get some extra security out front.”

“You volunteering?”

“Me? No, I don’t stand in front of rat holes.”