Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 43

Scotch and Soda

It was one of those theatrically self-indulgent places with an obligatory mirror behind the bar, so everybody who bellied up to the faux-leather bumper rail formed an informal police lineup.

Most of them belonged in one. Including himself, according to some.

Max studied his fellow swiggers, an unsavory and ragged chorus line of high and low, narrow and fat. haired and less-so. He fit right in.

Temple would not be enamored of his revised appearance.

Since the Strip bullet had put a crimp in his ponytail anyway, he'd had his hair chopped off to normal street-length, left an inch too long in the back and cut short enough at front and sides to emulate the hedgehog look so popular among media boy-wonders and aging actors with thinning hair alike.

The effect was punk Elvis, but it went with the black velour jogging suit and the heavy gold chain hanging like snarled fourteen-karat spaghetti around his neck. A crude mass of ten-karat gold and diamond chips on one knuckle completed the transformation. He had used enough hair gel to paste down Alfalfa's cowlick. Add to that a heavy dose of the most noxious men's cologne he could find at the drugstore mingling with a lingering whiff of the joint he'd puffed on before entering.

He fit right in.

Secrets was a dump for all seasons. Part strip joint, part pool hall, it served as a crossroads for every loose-ends lowlife in Las Vegas. Nadir had worked as a bouncer here since arriving from Los Angeles four months ago.

Max lit a cigarette. took a puff, had a fourth belt of the cheap watered-down whiskey in its cheaper low-ball glass, then hoisted it to signal a refill.

Behind him, in the mirror, a virtually naked girl tried to leave her DNA on a chrome pole on the bar across the way, which came with hot-and-cold-running strippers. The bartender swiped a damp tag over the water-spotted faux-black marble Formica before reclaiming Max's smudged glass.

"Looks like this place sees a lot of action," Max commented, still looking around.

"Oh, yeah. Why? You looking for anything in particular?"

If the bartender hadn't been in the navy, he ought to have been. The way he braced his thick, hairy arms on his side of the bar implied more tattoos that you could wipe out with a laser beneath his muscle shirt. He reminded Max of a Mexican hairless bulldog, all bulk and undershot jaw, with so much fat piled on his muscle that the hairs were stretched miles apart, especially on his fat head.

"I'm always looking for something," Max said. "I don't particularly need anything."

The bartender waved the empty glass. "Except another shot." Max nodded, and watched him lumber away.

Not exactly suspicious, but not a good source of information. Max turned to face the room and the carefully spaced tables. The girls who had finished performing on the small stage at one end of the vast, unimaginatively shaped room now undulated among the tables, performing lap dances and more--most of it illegal, even here.

Strip bars reminded him of medieval masters' visions of Hell. Music so loud even your fingernails vibrated, and bad music on top of it, raunchy and tinny at the same time. Predatory people playing out their prescribed roles of users and losers in equal turn. Crinkled bills pushed toward convenient crotches; alcohol and drugs tossed up and down the usual socially acceptable orifices. Victims who masqueraded as vamps; marks who played at appearing to be masters.

A messily drunk stripper wove over to him. Young, with tumbling long curls and a mouth as slack as her eyes. Blown. Pretty in a way that wouldn't last long at a place like this. A lot of strippers were former high-school cheerleaders who had been sexually abused children.

"Hi." She leaned on him as if he were a chrome pole in need of a good polishing. "I can do barstool dances." Her fingers twined around the god-awful neck chain, then pulled tight for balance.

He could feel the metal-burn on the back of his neck, and reached out to support her. She took it for acquiescence.

Max guided her bare rear onto the edge of the neighboring barstool.

The guy sitting there turned angrily at the invasion, then looked into Max's eyes. Grumbling, he took his tall beer glass and moved down the bar; far down the bar.

"Jush a drink," the girl was saying. "Jush a drink. I dance for jush another drink."

"What kind of drink?" They had to shout mouth-to-ear to hear.

Her eyes focused for a moment. "Anything. Anything you want. What's you drinkin'?" He signaled the bartender. Harder to say who of the two of them the barman viewed with deeper contempt. No moral judgment there, except that of weakness versus strength. Any man who put up with this lush was a fool; any woman too drunk to make the most of the fools around her was a bigger fool.

"Water," Max told the barman when he returned. The bad drinks were obscenely overpriced, but Max added a five and got his plain glass of water.

"I don' remember seein' you here before." She tried to sound coy, but her sloppy pronunciation only made the remark seem phony.

"You haven't." Max diluted her drink with water while she toyed with his clothes, jewelry, hair. She'd stay blown, but maybe she'd be a trace more understandable with an ounce less liquor in her.

"Oh, new. Like I am."

"Is that why you're drunk?"

"I am not!" She tried to pull away in mock indignity, but tripped and wobbled back down on the stool instead. She reached for the glass, chugalugged a quartet ounce of booze and three ounces of city water. She made a face.

"You don't like my looks?"

"Oh, you look jush fine. Everythin' looks just fine." She gazed blankly at the hectic scene.

"I'm supposed to be getting more money."

"Here." He pulled out some tens and jammed them into one hand.

She gazed at the phenomenon as if she didn't know what to do with the bills.

"I think you're out of pockets," he said.

She looked down at her naked body and the teeny-tiny thong bikini bottom. Her hands went to either side of her mouth, a Shirley Temple gesture if there ever was one. "Oh. I'll just have to remember to hold on, I guess." She studied her fist with the wad of bills in it.

Her fist clenched the money. but she didn't even look to check the denominations. She might have lost it all if she had loosened her grip to look. Poor baby.

Max sighed. "So how new are you here?"

"Three months. I think."

His interest quickened. "Does it ever get rough? l used to be a bouncer; maybe I could get a job here."

She frowned. "It always gets rough. Ruff!" She barked at him, giggled. Barked against his lips with her own slack ones. She pulled away. grabbed the glass, swallowed hard. "We don' need a bouncer. We got Raf."

"Pretty good, is he?"

"Pretty bad. He'd like to hit us as much as them." Her baby-doll eyes grew bleaker.

"He doesn't like women?"

She pushed close, pouring, as much for safety as for sex, but the sex was always there, like an obsequious gift. "l don' know. He doesn't like us women. Me. Nobody likes me."

"That's not true. I like you."

"But . . . you're paying to like me." She lapsed into silence, into the deep, dark well of depression beneath the surface oil-slick-of alcohol.

She was a big girl, maybe five-eight; slim and firm for now, despite everything. But Max couldn't lose the feeling that he was holding a very fragile, undernourished seven year old.

"No, I'm paying to get you out of here."

She reared away, eye-whites showing like a panicked horse's. "I'm not supposed to leave with the clientele." A bit of shocked sobriety leaked through. "I'm not that kind of a girl. We're strippers, not hookers."

"l know. l know the rules."

She relaxed against him. Just tell her it was all right, and you could do anything with her, because it had been all wrong for so long.

"But l think," Max said carefully, "that you really need to go home. You do have a crash pad?"

She nodded.

"Why don't you get your things, and I'll drive you there."

She sobered enough to pull back and look him over, some self-defensive reaction kicking in.

She frowned again. "I'm not supposed to leave with the customers."

"Leave by the rear. I'll meet you outside."

She clutched the black velour of his jogging jacket in both hands, never losing custody of the bills. "You like me, don't you?"

"l like you."

She pushed herself upright, standing under her own power. Glanced at the watered-down glass on the bar, looked at him, then wobbled away across the floor in her go-go boots.

"That'll be all?" The bartender was standing there, smirking.

"All except the tip." Max tossed a twenty to the water-dewed surface and walked away without a backward look.

Secrets was the usual featureless box on the outside, as if ashamed to have windows to what went on inside.

He found his current car, a vintage Mustang "borrowed" off a fly-by-night used-car lot, and idled it to the building's rear. The chances of the girl managing to hang onto the money, find and change into some street clothes, and remember to leave by the rear door were three to one.

The chances that she would prove a useful source of information at this point were zero.

But at this point, Max was no longer working. He was. . . being the kind of idiot the bartender took him for.

After twenty minutes, the single door in the building's bunker like rear cracked open, revealing a razor-slash of light.

Max checked the parking lot: a lot of dead metal with an insufficient number of overhead lights pouring clown on it.

He got out of the car, moved toward the building.

The lone woman who came out hesitated like a doe expecting the paralyzing onslaught of headlights any minute.

Max came closer to encourage her.

He wasn't surprised when a powerful forearm clamped around his neck. Sweat and breath mints assaulted his nostrils. The force of the grip bent him backward. His attacker was shorter.

So what was new?

Max relaxed into the controlled posture. You could always learn more when you were trapped than when you were on top.

"What the--? I don't have any money . . ."

A deep voice laughed. "I know. She's got it all. What an asshole! Now you can just get outa here. Customers don't run off with the hired help, got it?"

A knee in the kidneys made the point.

Max gave with the blow, had expected it. Raf Nadir, he presumed. Better than he had hoped for.

"I was just--"

"You're outa line, bud." Max heard the rage, felt the bullying sadism beneath the blaster.

"And you. Girlie. Give me the money. You know the rules. Who are you anyway, asshole?" The punishing grip tightened.

"I'm her brother."

"Oh, yeah. And what's her real name?"

"Shirley," Max said.

"Shir-ley?" Sheer incongruity made the attacker pause.

The girl, whatever her real name, came nearer, hypnotized, helpless. Her fist was still clenched around the hills Max had thrust into it nearly thirty minutes earlier. She slowly, shakily, held it out to the bouncer.

Greed will get 'em every time.

Max spun from Nadir's grip as he reached for the money. He dropped the guy with a double kick to the kneecaps. When Nadir tried to lumber up to an attack, Max returned the courtesy to his kidneys twofold.

Nadir was groaning on the ground, but surprise worked on a seasoned thug like him for only so long.

Max grabbed the girl's outstretched, clenched fist. "Come on! "

"But . . . he'll be mad."

"That's why you don't want to be here."

"But."

He pulled her toward the Mustang, opened the passenger door, shoved her in. The damn car was too cramped for a man of his height, but he jackknifed himself into the driver's seat, revved the engine, and roared off into the night.

In his rearview mirror, Nadir was starting to get up.

"Where do you live?" he asked her.

"With Ginger and Reno."

"They got a street address?"

She mumbled numbers and a street name, then sat hunched, the money fist clamped to her mouth. "Oh. Jesus. Sweet Jesus. Raf's a bad guy to cross. He's a bad guy even if you don't cross him."

Under the strobe-like effect of passing streetlights, she was looking at him, sober enough to be worried.

"We'll talk about that later."

"Later?"

"When you're home."

"Home. The girls are nice."

"But the guys are hell."

"No. Some of them are nice. Really. Just sad little guys. Normal. But then we're supposed to get them to buy drinks and table dances, and they're like lost puppies, they always want to come home with you. . . . You're not a lost puppy. Why am I letting you come home with me? I'll be in trouble--"

"Anybody going to be there in the next twelve hours?"

"Reno and Ginger have gigs all night. No . . ."

"Good."

"How do you know how to get there?"

"I know Las Vegas."

"I guess you do, if you knocked out Raf like that. He's a tiger. He's been at Secrets since I came. He's scary. Ooooh, I feel sick with all these fast turns."

"Let me know if you're going to puke, and I'll pull over."

"I'm a Harlington High Harlette. We don't puke."

"Glad to hear it. Still, if you feel like saying hello to the pavement, let me know."

She just moaned and wrapped her arms around her narrow midriff. Her street clothes were a pale mint-colored miniskirt and a shrunken T-top. The look should have been alluring, but to Max it was just pathetic. As was her tiny, doll-size purse on a long strap. She was still dressing like Shirley, like a little girl in her Easter best, while the world did its worst with her.

The apartment building was three stories, no elevator; the girls' apartment was on the top floor. Junker automobiles littered the parking lot. No curtain hung straight, and a lot of darkened windows didn't have curtains, or even blinds.

The exterior stairs were cluttered with kiddie toys. Shirley lurched up with him, clinging to him, just a sick, scared girl, that's all.

"Got a key?"

Her false nails scrabbled through the baby-doll purse. "l can't find it."

Max took the small box and probed its tight mirror pocket.

"One key."

"Oh, how'd you do that?'

"Magic." He opened the apartment door, assaulted by the odor of must and cheap face powder and baby formula.

"Maybe I would visit the bathroom now," she suggested, delicately.

He let her go, watched her stumble over the furniture and clutter to a hallway. Then he checked the window. Mini-blinds, some metal slats askew. He straightened the crooked and closed them tight. The kitchen reeked of open cans not thrown out. He found a bottle of hardened instant coffee crystals in a cupboard and a mug to heat up in the spaghetti-sauce-spattered microwave oven.

She finally came out, clinging to the hall wall, the ridiculous shoulder-hung purse swinging at her hip.

"That doesn't work," she told him as he pulled the coffee mug from the microwave. "Coffee, I mean."

"The effect is psychological."

"It's supposed to make me think I'm sobering up?"

"No, it's supposed to make me think l can help you sober up."

She laughed at that, and reached into the tiny purse. "Here's your money. I never lost it. I may have lost my lunch, but I never lost the money."

"Better you had lost the money and kept your lunch. Sit down."

She gazed at the cheap stools pulled up to the room-divider lunch bar between kitchen and living room. "l guess l can still do stool dances."

"Not with me you can't."

"You don't like me?"

"I do like you, so you can forget that crap."

"What do you want? I don't get it."

"I want you to drink this really foul coffee so I can think I'm doing you some good, then l want you to go to bed--"

"Oho!"

"Oho. Oh no. l want to you go to bed and sleep it off, and we'll talk in the morning."

"Talk?"

"Talk."

She rolled her eyes and sipped the brew, rearing back because its heat seared even her numb lips. "Raf is gonna kill me."

"Not if you never go back."

"But l gotta go back!"

"No one's 'gotta' do anything. Ever. Remember that. Here.

Take your cup with you."

He guided her to a bedroom--he wasn't sure if it was hers, but that didn't seem to matter around here from the haphazard arrangement of the place.

When she was settled, sitting on the edge of a lumpy unmade bed with her knees together and the purse at her hip and both hands on the coffee mug like it was a very fragile teacup, Max went back into the living room and threw himself down on the couch, also lumpy and way too short for him.

He hadn't learned a darm thing, except that Raf Nadir was an angry man and he would be formidable if not caught by surprise.