Pursuit: A Novel

25

Prescott began to work on his identity the day after he arrived in St. Louis. He rented an apartment in a building that was a new imitation of an old-style residence, designed by an architect who had not been able to resist adding ugly embellishments. He threw away his generic suitcase and began shopping. He bought an eight-year-old Corvette that had been badly rebuilt after an accident. He bought clothes from thrift stores, everything originally on the expensive side, but just a bit out-of-date. Then he went to a store that sold surplus military gear.

He wandered up and down the aisles looking for precisely the right items. He bought a navy watch cap and a black turtleneck sweater, then found a navy blue hooded sweatshirt. He found an olive-drab tool bag, and a pair of thin black leather gloves that were labeled “police-style.” He went next to a big hardware store and picked out a selection of tools that looked convincing: a battery-operated drill, a few punches and picks, a long, thin screwdriver, a pry bar. He bought a glass cutter and a suction cup with a handle on it made for carrying sheets of glass. By then the tool bag was full, so he stopped.

The second day, he drove the three hundred miles to Chicago, checked into a hotel, and slept. When he woke, he began to shop in earnest. He went to camera shops, computer stores, electronics stores, buying any item that appealed to his eye. Always, he searched for good deals on high-end merchandise that was used, but sometimes he had to settle for new. He spent most of his time looking at estate jewelry. He bought several watches—a couple of Rolexes, a Cartier tank watch, some women’s watches with diamonds, and a variety of others that had some resale value. He bought a wide assortment of women’s jewelry, being sure to include some spectacular finds and some junk. He picked up some men’s items too—a couple of sets of cuff links and studs that contained a lot of gold and semiprecious stones but weren’t in style, a stopwatch, fancy lighters, money clips, rings.

He went to a numismatics show and assembled a collection of gold coins. He went to antique shops and bought a set of ivory carvings and a silver tea set. He spent a day on the South Side searching secondhand stores, buying similar items that might be as old and didn’t look any worse but cost practically nothing. For three days, Prescott shopped. He walked through the stores pretending they were houses. If he could imagine an item as the one that would catch the eye of a thief, he bought it. He packed all of his purchases in boxes, shipped them to his apartment in St. Louis, and drove back to meet them.

He spent the next few days refining his identity by rehearsing his anecdotes, inventing and memorizing names, places, and dates, and compiling documents using the computer scanners and printers he had picked up in Chicago.

He spent a few evenings establishing himself as a regular at the Paddock Club. He would arrive there at around eight, go in, and sit at the bar. The man with glasses who had met with the two traveling couriers from Cincinnati returned from his dinner break between eight-thirty and nine, and presided at the bar.

Prescott watched him for an evening and confirmed his theory about him. There were two younger bartenders who did the heavy lifting and all the routine fetching of the endless bottles of beer. This man seldom waited on a customer except during the frantically busy period from nine to one, when all three were pouring drinks with both hands, shoving them onto the wet surface of the bar, snatching up money, and dispensing change on the way to the next customer. The rest of the time, he leaned on the wooden surface behind the bar, usually with his arms folded across his chest. Prescott could see that his eyes flitted to the cash register whenever one of the bartenders approached it, then surveyed the customers ranged around the room at small, round tables and along the bar, then focused for a moment on the front door, where he seemed to be counting the ones leaving and the ones coming in, and finally, went to the woman on the stage.

The women were the constant—hypothetically, the center of attention. But they existed on the edge of the huge room, in the world of the bar but not part of it. The place was like a water hole on a veldt, where two different species were side by side but had very little to do with each other.

The men drank and talked, sometimes laughing and then suddenly tense with anger, the sinews in their necks standing out and their faces acquiring the blank stare that wasn’t really seeing. About once a night, two of them would go outside, each accompanied by a companion or two, and then one set of men would return and the other vanish into the night. But the rest of the time, the men slouched in their chairs, now and then staring wistfully at the woman on the stage for a time, but then returning their attention to their friends, or going to join the crowd waiting at the bar for another drink.

Each of the women was alone. A number of the women seemed to have been doing this for a long time. The music would begin, and from behind a small black curtain at the side, a woman in her late thirties or early forties would appear, and she would dance. She would be preoccupied, her thoughts not on the men. When Prescott studied the faces of these women for thoughts, he imagined a compendium of the mundane. This one seemed to be thinking about the things she was going to buy on the way home: milk and bread, of course, and she was almost out of shampoo—had forgotten it the last two trips—plus some Ziploc bags, laundry detergent. Was she out of dishwashing detergent, too? Might as well get some just in case.

The woman Prescott was watching danced, completing the turns and gyrations far below the level of conscious thought, and when the music reached the point where she had taken off her top the last hundred times, her hands performed the practiced gesture, and that was done. She stripped without interest in the process, having thoroughly explored it for implications and possibilities so long ago that it could no longer hold her attention.

She already knew that it wasn’t a personal communication, or a step in a career, or a way to start a relationship with a man. The men didn’t know who she was, or have any curiosity about her. They looked at her breasts, her buttocks, the space between her legs, in that order, as she bared her body, but what they saw was not she. It was all female bodies, of which this happened to be the one example that was here at the moment, a symbol. What had been advertised as seduction had descended to the level of art.

The weekends were amateur nights. For the young women who competed, this had not yet worn down into a job that was a whole lot duller than checking out groceries at a cashier’s stand. They were still up there actually stripping in front of men—not a man, but a whole bunch of them at once—and they couldn’t get over it. This was wild, risky behavior, and they did it as though on a dare, took the money slipped into the waistbands of their G-strings like love notes from billionaires.

The customers on the weekend nights were perfectly suited to them. They were boys in their twenties who’d had too much liquor before the shows started, and subscribed to the same illusion that this was a form of communication between this woman and themselves about sex, and that the edge of the stage just might not be an impossible boundary—not for them.

Prescott spent his evenings here, becoming familiar. He always sat at the bar or at a table near it, and gave the bartender a five-dollar tip for each five-dollar drink. He always kept away from the customers who he could see were probably going to cause trouble. He spoke little, and when he’d had two drinks, he left. He kept this up for nine nights, then left town to search for the perfect piece of real estate.

He had a fairly clear idea of where such a place could be found, so he took a flight there. Once he had arrived in the right region, finding the exact spot and obtaining a lease took him only a few days. He spent three weeks getting the place ready, and then returned to St. Louis prepared to change his hours at the Paddock Club. He found that the effect he had anticipated had taken place. His presence, beginning over a month ago, had been noticed, and his absence for the past three weeks had been noticed too.

Prescott walked into the bar at eleven-thirty in the morning, as the proprietor was busy supervising the unloading of supplies. There were two men from a liquor distributor bringing cases into the building with two-wheeled carts, and two bartenders opening them to restock shelves behind the bar while the proprietor counted boxes and checked them off an invoice on a clipboard. Now and then the swinging door to the left of the bar would open, and Prescott would see waitresses hurrying back and forth to prepare the small round tables for the businessmen’s lunch.

The proprietor saw Prescott come in, smiled at him, and nodded. “How you been?”

“Fine,” said Prescott. He stepped closer as the proprietor signed the sheet and handed it to one of the deliverymen. “How about you?” He glanced at the pyramid of liquor cases. “Looks like you haven’t done too badly.”

“Nope,” said the proprietor. “Been pretty fair.” He went around the bar. “What are you drinking?”

“How about a beer and a shot?” said Prescott. He got out his wallet.

The proprietor put the draft beer and shot glass on the bar, and held his free hand up as he poured the whiskey from the silver spout on the bottle. “It’s on me,” he said.

“Well, thanks,” said Prescott. He held out his hand. “I’m Bob Greene, with an e. Three of them, come to think of it. You’re Mr. Nolan?”

The proprietor took his hand and shook it. “They call me that.” He smiled. “It’s because of the sign outside. Real name is Dick Hobart. When I bought this place twelve years ago, the sign said ‘Nolan’s Paddock Club.’ I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, so I left the sign for whatever good will it was worth. Wasn’t much, I can tell you. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone under. But by the time I knew things were going to work out for me, I was stuck with the name.”

Prescott nodded. “I’ve seen it happen that way before.”

“What about you? What business are you in?”

Prescott said, in an affable, confident tone, “I’m kind of between things right now. I’ve been out in California for a few years. Had a couple of car washes, and did pretty well. I sold out a few months back, and I’m looking around here for the right opportunity.”

He could tell that Hobart had instantly evaluated the story and taken it as Prescott had hoped. He knew Bob Greene was a liar. Greene had some money to spend, but he probably had not come into it a few dollars at a time operating car washes in California. Hobart said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find something you like. This is a good place to do business.” His own words seemed to remind him that he had to keep an eye on his men. He turned toward them.

“It sure seems to be,” said Prescott. “Thanks for the drink.”

At one o’clock, when Prescott heard the distinctive change in the music, as though someone had turned the bass all the way up to vibrate so he could feel it, he left the bar and sat at a table. The noon crowd consisted of men who looked older and more settled than the evening crowd. About half of them were wearing coats and ties, having come from offices. Two of them had been reading newspapers in the dim light while they ate lunch, but when the music changed, they folded them and set them aside.

The woman who came from behind the curtain was announced only as “Jean.” She had her dark brown hair pinned up, and she was dressed in a business suit and wearing glasses to begin with. She looked very convincing. She took off the glasses and undid her hairpin so her dark hair came down in a cascade, shook it out, and went into her routine. The theatrical lacy garter belt and push-up bra she had beneath the suit were not what the female business executives Prescott had known well usually wore to work, but he judged it didn’t destroy the effect.

It was not until she was wearing only her tiny G-string that she did one of her turns, looked over her shoulder, and seemed to notice that Prescott had returned from his trip. She looked directly at him, let her fixed, professional smile relax for a second, then resumed the mask again. He stepped to the stage and slipped a fifty into her G-string, then returned to his table. He drank through the next two women’s performances to see whether Hobart had told them all to notice him. They were women he had not seen before, and they went through their tasks without enthusiasm, largely ignored by most of the customers and ignoring them in return.

When Prescott went out to the parking lot to get into his car, he realized that his experiment had made him drink more than he had intended. The sun was impossibly bright, bouncing off the chrome of the cars into his eyes in little semaphores. The red surface of his Corvette seemed to have an aura around it, and the gravel on the ground was like a photograph of the surface of Mars, each tiny pebble bright on top with its own black shadow behind it. But as he carefully steered the car across the lot toward the street, he looked into the rearview mirror and saw Jean and Hobart beside the delivery door outside the building, watching his departure.

Over the next few days, he confirmed his impression that noon was the time to go to Nolan’s. The nights in a strip club were businesslike and concentrated. The customers crowded in, and the men behind the bar were frantic, pushing glasses onto the bar and snatching money as quickly as they could move, working like fishermen in a tuna run, making the most of their catch in a three-hour period.

During daylight, the atmosphere was calm and sleepy. The volume of the recorded music was so low that people could speak in normal voices except when a dancer was on the stage. The bartenders had time to talk with customers. Prescott exchanged greetings with Dick Hobart when he came in for lunch each day, and sometimes when he left. He was always good-natured and friendly, always careful to give the impression that he had no desire for a longer conversation but had no reason to avoid one, either. There was an odd easiness to the atmosphere, and Prescott insinuated himself into it subtly and patiently, until he suspected that several of the employees were not sure just how long he had been around—maybe for years, coming in during some other shift. Hobart met with the couriers from Cincinnati once every three weeks, and met with other men more frequently, always during the day.

Prescott waited two more weeks before he decided he was ready to ease himself in further. He was in the bar before the businessmen’s lunch when Hobart came past him, checking the tables to see whether they had been positioned and set properly. When he came to Prescott’s, he said, “Hey, Bob. Didn’t anybody come to take your order yet?”

“Thanks for thinking about it, Dick, but I just sat down,” said Prescott. “While you’re here, though, there was something I wanted to talk to you about. Got a second?”

Hobart studied his face, as though deciding whether he really wanted to hear this, then said, “Sure. Let’s go over to the bar so I can take care of some chores while we talk.” Prescott went to the bar and watched Hobart taking inventory of bar supplies: olives, cherries, swizzle sticks, bitters. He emptied old bottles, moved new ones in. “What’s on your mind?”

Prescott said, “I was just wondering what your policy was on employees going out with customers.”

Hobart put his elbows on the bar and blew out a breath wearily. “Who did you have in mind?”

“Jean,” said Prescott. “I was considering trying to talk to her, but I won’t if it’ll get her fired or something.”

Hobart clamped his lips together and nodded sagely, as though it had been obvious. “You were right to ask me first. That’s sensible, and I appreciate it. We do have a rule against fraternizing. You start having that kind of thing going on, and the authorities get on you. As it is, every time there’s a city council election, everybody in the entertainment business has got to fear for his livelihood. But the truth is, I wouldn’t have that rule if the girls didn’t want it. This way they can say no, and it isn’t their fault. The guy who’s been a big tipper doesn’t get hurt feelings and go away.”

Prescott shrugged. “Okay. I can understand that. No hurt feelings. I’ll forget the idea.”

Hobart said, “I didn’t say that. This is a little different. You’re a good customer, and you’re not a kid. You seem like a serious man, and the fact that you asked me means you’re sensitive to other people’s problems.” He let a mysterious little smile play about his mouth and disappear. “Jean happened to ask me about you a week or two ago. She’s not married at the moment, so it could mean she’s interested. Of course, it could mean nothing, too.”

“So you think it might be okay if I had a talk with her?”

“I’ll tell you what. I have a couple of conditions. You talk to her in private, where the other customers don’t get the idea this is a regular thing here. And if she wants to go out, pick her up at her place, not mine, and stay the hell away from here.”

“That’s not much to ask,” said Prescott.

Hobart leaned closer. “There’s only one more unpleasant thing to say, and I apologize in advance for having to say it. Jean is a grown woman, and she’s free to decide. But if you should happen to be one of those guys who’s carrying around some weird fantasy in his head that he’s planning on working out on Jeanie, then it had better be one that she likes.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Prescott began, looking surprised.

But Hobart continued. “Because if you were to harm her, you would find that this place works kind of like a family. There are some relatives—distant cousins, you might say—that you haven’t met, and that you don’t ever want to meet.”

“I understand,” said Prescott. “I know you’ve got to be able to protect your workers.”

Hobart stared at him in silence for a second, his eyes never blinking. “I’ve got to say this clearly so we both know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s not just getting a couple of ribs kicked in, and losing some teeth. The cops wouldn’t find anything as big as the sole of your boot.”

“I’m not some kind of pervert, Dick,” said Prescott comfortably. “So neither of us has got anything to worry about.”

“I was pretty sure that was true,” said Hobart. “And I don’t mean to insult you. She came in a while ago because she goes on at one. I’ll take you back, and you can ask her yourself.”

Prescott followed Hobart through the door where he had seen him go with the two couriers a few times. The door led into a hallway of bare cinder blocks and a concrete floor with drains in it, lit by hanging bulbs with green metal shades. The only decorations were fire extinguishers at ten-foot intervals, and a four-foot-high, too expert drawing of a penis with Hobart’s face at the top and the words “Dick Hobart, Capitalist Tool” written across the testicles.

Along the outer wall were several doors. One was an office, two were staff rest rooms with posters on them giving dire warnings about washing hands before returning to work. There was one on the right that Prescott could tell led to the kitchen area, and then a short stretch of hallway that ended in a door with a star on it. Hobart didn’t knock. He said, “Wait here,” then opened the door and entered.

After a few seconds, he came out again, repeated, “Wait here,” and went back the way he had come. Prescott called, “Thanks, Dick,” before he had gone too far, and heard Hobart say, “Happy to help.”

A moment later, the door opened and Jean came out wearing an old, soft chenille bathrobe. She looked at him shyly. “Hi.”

“Hello, Jeanie,” said Prescott. “My name is Bob Greene, with an e at the end.”

She nodded, and her shy look tentatively grew into a small smile. “Nolan told me.” Then she said, “I noticed you watching me sometimes, and wondered who you were.”

Prescott said, “Now you know. I wanted to ask you if you might be willing to go out to dinner with me sometime.”

She put her head down, but her eyes were on him from beneath the glittering eye shadow. “You might be disappointed. When I’m not on stage, I’m really a pretty ordinary person.”

He grinned. “That’s what I was hoping. Ordinary people like to eat regular dinners in nice places, and don’t expect the rest of us to be too scintillating.”

She let his grin shift to her face. “I think I’d like to. When would it be?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to limit it to tonight, tomorrow night, or any other night in the future,” he said. “Last night is out.”

“How about tonight, then?” she asked. “I’m only working until three, and I could be ready around seven-thirty.”

“Wonderful,” said Prescott. “Terrific. I’ll get a reservation for Cavender’s.”

“Cavender’s?” she repeated, her expression apologetic and maybe a bit regretful. “I’m flattered. I really am. But you’ll never get a reservation for Cavender’s at noon the same day.”

He looked down at his feet, then back at her and shrugged. “I already have the reservation,” he admitted. “I made it just in case you said yes.”

Her sad look disappeared, and a look came over her that was partly gratification that he would make a reservation at a famous restaurant just in case, partly pleasure that she was going to get to go, and partly an amused sympathy that he’d had to admit to being so eager. The sympathy made her response excessive, as though to protect him. “I’m so glad. I’d love to go there. What time is your reservation?”

“Eight-thirty, but I could try to change—”

“Perfect.”

“Where can I pick you up?”

She frowned. “My apartment, I guess. I’ll write down the address.” She disappeared behind the door, then came back with an address written on a Nolan’s Paddock Club napkin. She held it in her hand, but she didn’t hold it out to him.

He detected a tension in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“This is embarrassing,” she said. “But I hope you’ll understand. Can I see your driver’s license?”

He reached for his wallet and retrieved the Robert E. Greene license he had brought from home. “It’s a California license, but it’s got my picture on it.”

She glanced at it, pushed her napkin into his hand, and closed his fingers over it. “I’m sorry. It’s just something you have to do if you’re—”

“No problem,” he said, making his smile return. “If I were you, I’d do the same.” He glanced at the address, and saw that there was a telephone number too. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty, then.”

But he could see there was still something on her mind. He waited. “Would you do me one more favor?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Would you mind . . . I go on at one. Would you mind not watching me work today? You can watch the other girls, I don’t mind. And it’s just for today. It would be kind of . . . distracting for me, and—”

“Say no more,” he said. “I’m on my way.” He gave her a warm smile and started down the hallway.

She called, “I heard the lunch is better down the street anyway.”

“I’ll let you know,” he said. On his way out, he passed the bar, smiled at Hobart, and gave a quick thumbs-up sign. Hobart nodded gravely, then looked down to spray soda into a customer’s scotch and slide the glass across the bar on a cocktail napkin.

As Prescott walked out into the sunlight, he assessed his progress and felt pleased. He was halfway in now, and the resistance was beginning to soften. The next part had to be done carefully.