Right as Rain

9

The bar was on the end of a strip of bars off M Street in Southeast, surrounded by fenced parking lots, auto repair and body shops, and patches of dead grass. Strange parked and nodded toward the corner business, a brick, two-story, windowless structure. The sign over the door read, 'Toot Sweet: Live Girls.'

'Sign says they got live girls in there,' said Quinn.

'That's so the fellas who like dead ones don't get disappointed once they get inside,' said Strange. 'Should've known from the address Ron gave me it was gonna be a titty bar.'

'They got the bathhouses down here, too, I remember right.'

'They got everything down here for every kind. This particular place, guys come to look at women. Wait out here, you want to.'

'I like to look at women.'

'Suit yourself.' Strange replaced his sunglasses atop the visor. 'Let me do my job, though. And stay out of my way.'

Strange got some papers out of the trunk. As he turned, Quinn noticed the Leatherman, the Buck knife, and the beeper, all affixed in some way to Strange's waist.

'You got purple tights,' said Quinn, 'to go with that utility belt?'

'Funny,' said Strange.

At the door of the club, Strange paid the cover and asked for a receipt. The doorman, a black guy who looked to Quinn like he had some Hawaiian or maybe Samoan in him, said, 'We don't have receipts.'

'Go ahead and create one for me,' said Strange.

'Create one?'

'You know, use your imagination. We'll be over by the bar. When you get it done, drop it by.'

They walked through the crowd. At first Quinn pegged it as all black, but on closer inspection he saw that it was a mix of African Americans and other nonwhites: dark-skinned Arabs and Pakis, taxi-driving types. His partner, Gene, used to call them Punjabis, and sometimes 'pooncabbies,' when they rode together as cops.

The dancers, black and mixed race as well, were up on several stages around the club and stroking the steel floor-to-ceiling poles that were their props. They weren't beautiful, but they were nude above the waist, and that was enough. Men stood around the stages, beers in one hand, dollar bills in the other, and there were men drinking at tables, talking and tipping the waitresses who would soon be dancing up onstage themselves, and there were other men with their heads down, sleeping, dead drunk.

Strange and Quinn stepped up to the unkempt bar, damp and strewn with wet bev-naps and dirty ashtrays. Smoke rose off a live cherry in the ashtray before them, and Strange butted the dying cigarette out. The bar was unventilated and smelled of nicotine and spilled beer.

'Filthy,' said Strange, taking a napkin off a stack and wiping his hands. 'They got a kitchen in this joint, I expect, but damn if I'd ever eat the food.' He glanced over his shoulder. He was searching for one face, Quinn could tell.

Some of the black men down along the bar were looking at the two of them, not bothering to look away when Quinn eye-shot them back. Quinn knew it was unusual, and suspect, to see a black and a white together in a place like this. To the men at the bar, they were either cops or friends, maybe even faggots, the kind of friends who 'played for the other team.' Any way those men looked at it, the two of them together wasn't natural, or right.

The bartender was approaching, and Strange said to Quinn, 'You want a beer?'

'Too early for me,' said Quinn.

'Give me a ginger ale,' said Strange to the bartender, who sported a damp toothpick behind his ear. 'From a bottle.'

'I'll have a Coke the same way.'

Quinn turned and put his back against the bar. He found a dancer he could look at. He was studying her breasts, the color of them and their shape, and wondering if Juana's would look the same. He'd made out with black women but had never had one in bed, not all the way. He was going to see Juana tonight, over at her place. That would give him time to cool down; God help her if he was to run into her right now…

'Your soda's up,' said Strange. 'Gonna ruin your eyes like that, you stare too hard. Get like your boy Lewis, have to wear those glasses like he does. What kind of girl you gonna find to give you a second look then?'

Quinn turned back and faced the bar. He had a long swig from his glass. The sound system was pumping out a Prince tune from the eighties, and Quinn tapped his fingers on the glass.

'Remember this one?' said Quinn.

'Sure. Had that little Scottish freak in the video. That girl was delicious, man.'

'You like Prince? Just curious, seeing as how it's not your era and all that.'

'He's all right. But he's got a little too much bitch in him, you want to know the truth.'

'Hate to break it to you, but I think the little guy gets a whole lot of play.'

'Maybe so, but I listen to his music, I picture the way he's licking his fingers to smooth down his eyebrows, crawling across the floor, wearing that makeup and shit… can't get past it, I guess.'

'Racism's bad, but that kind of ism is all right.'

'Just being honest with you. You get to know me better, you'll see; I tell it straight, whether you're gonna like what I'm saying or not. All I'm saying is, your generation, y'all can deal with that homosexuality thing better than mine can.'

'It's black men in general who can't deal with that homosexuality thing, you ask me. If you were really honest, you'd admit it.'

'Now you're gonna tell me, in general, what black men can and cannot deal with.' Strange looked over his shoulder again, did a double take, and said, 'There's my boy. Be back in a few.'

Strange found his snitch back in the hall that led to the kitchen and bathrooms, and returned ten minutes later. He told Quinn that the subject of the skip, Sherman Coles, had gone upstairs an hour earlier.

'What's upstairs?'

'Private lap dances, shit like that.'

'I'll come with you. Don't worry, I'm not going to get in your way.'

'Look, I'm just checking out the situation. Might not be the right time and place to try and bring him in.'

'Understood.' Quinn picked a piece of paper up off the bar and handed it to Strange.

'What's that?'

'Your receipt.'

Strange inspected it: a playing card showing a photograph of a bare-breasted woman on its face. Across her breasts was written, 'In receipt of seven-dollar cover charge, for strip bar, Toot Sweet.'

'Funny boy,' said Strange.

'You told him to be creative.'

'My accountant's gonna like it, anyway.' Strange slipped the card into his jacket. 'Come April, all those hours he puts in, he needs a little something to pick up his day.'

They walked up a red-carpeted set of stairs. A guy was coming down, and he moved aside to let them pass, not looking them in the eye. There was an oval spot of wetness high on the front of the man's jeans, just below the crotch.

'You see that?' said Strange, as they hit the top of the stairs. 'Man must have spilled something on his self.'

'Yeah,' said Quinn. 'His seed.'

'Bible says you're not supposed to do that.'

'Probably on his way to confession right now.'

'I was him, I wouldn't be wearing those blue jeans into church.'

Up on the second floor, the lamps were conical and dimmed, and smoke hung in their light. Another bar ran along the wall, and there were tables spread around the bulk of the room, some in darkness, some barely lit. At the tables, a few guys were getting lap-danced by girls wearing G-strings, nothing else. The girls used their crotches, breasts, and backsides to rub one off for the customers, who were sitting low in chrome-armed chairs, languid smiles on their faces. The music up here was slow and funky, heavy on the wa-wa pedal, with a deep, silky male vocal in the mix.

Strange and Quinn had a seat at an empty deuce near the bar. Strange settled into his chair and patted the table in rhythm to the music.

'This here's more like it,' said Strange. 'Joy, by Isaac Hayes. I had the vinyl on this one, too. You could hear the champagne bubbles rising when you listened to the record on a nice box. But on the CD the sound quality just doesn't make it.' He nodded to a light-skinned girl, on the thin side with a man's shirt worn open over panties, who was walking toward them with a drink tray balanced on her palm. 'Speaking of champagne, check this out. She's fixin' to sell us some now.'

'Can I get you gentlemen a drink?' asked the girl as she arrived.

'Waitin' on a third party to join us,' said Strange, who was squinting, not looking directly at the girl, looking around the room. He pulled the Coles photograph from his jacket pocket, along with the Coles papers he had taken from the file box in the trunk. He studied the photograph until the girl spoke again.

'How about a private dance?'

'Maybe later, baby.'

'We've got a special on champagne.'

'Later, hear?'

She gave him a look, then gave Quinn one for good measure, and walked away.

Strange said, 'They're selling some bullshit off-brand, two steps down from cold duck, for fifty dollars a bottle to these poor suckers in here. Guys making minimum wage, taking home one hundred and sixty a week, come in here on a Friday night and spend it all in an hour. Walk out of here after a hard week of work with nothin' to show for it but a headache and a big old stain on the front of their drawers.'

'You some kind of expert?'

Strange looked over Quinn's shoulder. 'Listen, you want to pay for a lady's time, I'll take you someplace you're gonna get your money's worth. This ain't nothing but a cheap hustle they got going on right here.' He stood abruptly from his chair. 'Excuse me for a minute while I do my job. Looks like I located Coles.'

'Need some company?'

'Been doin' this for a long time. I think I'll just go ahead and handle it myself.'

'Fine. I'll be back in the bathroom, taking a leak.'

Quinn watched Strange cross the room, moving around the tables, walking toward a four-top at the edge of the darkness, where a little man in a suit and open collar sat, a long cigarette in one hand, his other hand wrapped around a snifter of something brown.

The man wants to be left alone, thought Quinn, I'll leave him alone. He got up and moved toward a dark hall, where the head was always located in a place like this.

Strange was walking toward the table where Sherman Coles was sitting, and had gotten to within a few yards of it, when another man emerged from out of the shadows. He was a very big man, with wide shoulders and hard, chiseled features. The cut of his biceps showed beneath his shiny shirt.

Strange stopped walking just as the man flanked Coles. He could have averted his eyes, kept going past the table, but they had watched his approach all the way and would say something or stop him if he tried the dodge. He knew his shot at Coles was over for today. Any way he looked at it, he was burned. It made no sense for him to turn his back on them, though, or walk past them, anything else. He had to stop and let it play out. And he was curious to know what Coles had to say.

'You lookin' for someone, man?'

'I was,' said Strange, forcing a friendly smile. 'From across the room there, I thought you were this fella I knew, from back in the neighborhood where I came up.'

'Oh, yeah?' Coles's tone was high and theatrical. 'You got to have twenty years on me, though. So how could we have come up together? Huh?'

Strange shook his head. 'We couldn't have, you're right. Now that I'm up close… the thing of it is, I can't see too good in this low light. And don't even get me started about my failing eyes.'

Coles took a sip from the snifter before him and tapped ash off his cigarette. He glanced over his shoulder to the man behind him and said, 'You hear that, Richard?'

A crescent scar semicircled Richard's left eye. 'Man can't see too good in this light.'

'Or maybe he thinks we can't see too good,' said Coles. "Cause we did see you, sittin' over there with your Caucasian partner, lookin' at whatever it is you put back in your pocket, tryin' to make me.'

'Trying to make you as what?' Strange chuckled and spread his hands. 'Brother, I told you, I just mistook you for someone else.'

'Oh, you mistook all right.' Coles smiled, then dragged on his cigarette.

'Whatever you're thinking,' said Strange, his voice steady, 'you are wrong.'

'Tell you what,' said Coles, looking past Strange. 'I'll just go ahead and ask the white boy. Here he comes now.'

Quinn had been turned away by a sign on the men's room door that told him it was closed for repair. He was coming back down the hall when he stopped briefly to look through the crack of a partially opened door. In the candlelit room, a young man in a chair was being fellated by the waitress who'd been talking to them minutes earlier. Her head was between the guy's legs, her knees sunk into orange shag carpet, and there was a bottle of bad champagne and two glasses on a small table beside them, the hustle just as Strange had described. A sculpture candle of a black couple standing up, intertwined and making love, burned on the table next to the glasses. Quinn walked on.

He came out of the hall and along the bar and saw Strange in a dark corner of the room, standing in front of the table where Coles sat. A big man stood behind the table, cracking the knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other. Quinn walked toward them.

Quinn knew Strange had warned him to stay off, and he considered this while he continued on, and then he was standing next to Strange, thinking, I'm here, I can't change that now. He spread his stance close to the table, looked down on Sherman Coles, and affected his cop posture. It was the way he used to dominate, standing outside the driver's-side window of a car he'd stopped out on the street.

'Here go your backup,' said Coles. 'What you think, Richard? This salt-and-pepper team we got here, they cops?'

'Look more like the Orkin army,' said Richard. 'What's with those jackets, huh? Those y'all's uniforms?'

Strange realized for the first time that he and Quinn were both wearing black leather. Another thing for these jokers to crack on, but he didn't care. Now that Quinn had made the mistake of joining him, he was focusing on how the two of them were going to walk away. And then he began to think about Quinn's short fuse. And Strange thought, Maybe we ought to stay.

'I don't think they're cops,' said Coles.

'White boy's too short to be a cop,' offered Richard.

No, I'm not, thought Quinn.

'Look more like bounty hunters to me,' said Richard. His voice was soft in a dangerous kind of way, and it was difficult to hear him over the wa-wa and bass pumping through the house system.

'Kind of what I was thinking, too, Richard.' Coles looked at Strange. 'That what you are, old man? A bounty hunter?'

'Like I said,' said Strange, keeping his voice on the amiable side. 'I thought you were someone else. I made a mistake.'

'Now, why you want to lie?' said Coles.

"Cause he scared?' said Richard. 'He does look a little scared. And white boy looks like he's about to dirty his drawers. How about it, white boy, that so?'

'How about what?' said Quinn.

'You gonna soil your laundry, or you gonna walk away right now before you do?'

'What'd you say?' said Quinn.

'Was I stutterin'?' said Richard, his eyes bright and hard.

'Let's go,' said Strange.

'Don't you know,' said Richard, smiling at Quinn, 'white man just afraid of the black man.'

'Not this white man,' said Quinn.

'Oh, ho-ho,' said Richard, 'now Little Man Tate gonna give us some of that fire-in-the-belly stuff. That's what you gonna do now, bitch?'

Strange tugged on Quinn's sleeve. Quinn held his ground and stared at Richard. Richard laughed.

'We're leaving now,' said Strange.

'What's a matter?' said Coles, holding his wrists out and together, as if he were waiting for cuffs. 'Ain't you gonna take me in?'

'Maybe next time,' said Strange, his tone jocular. 'See you fellas later, hear?'

Coles broke the imaginary chains on his wrists, raised the snifter in a mock toast. He drank and placed the glass back down on the table.

'When your bosses or whoever ask you why you came back empty handed,' said Coles, 'tell 'em you ran into Sherman Coles and his kid brother. Tell him it was us who punked you out.'

Strange nodded, the light draining from his eyes.

'We told you our names, white boy,' said Richard, his gaze on Quinn. 'Ain't you got one?'

Strange pulled harder on Quinn's jacket. 'Come on, man, let's go.'

This time Quinn complied. They walked toward the stairs, the Coles brothers' laughter on Quinn's back like the stab of a knife.

At the downstairs bar, Strange signaled the bartender for his unpaid tab and yelled out over the music for the tender to bring back a receipt. Strange turned to Quinn, who stood with his back against the bar, looking out into the crowd.

'Stupid, man. What'd I tell you about interfering with my shit?'

'I wasn't thinking,' said Quinn. It was the first thing he'd said since their conversation with the Coles brothers on the second floor. 'What do you do now? You ever gonna take him in?'

'Oh, I'll take him in. Didn't figure on Sammy Davis Jr. havin' a baby brother looked like Dexter Manley. Gonna be real calm about it, though, and wait for the moment. It's just work, got nothin' to do with emotion. I had the situation under control until you stepped in, tried to get all Joe Kidd on their asses. You got to learn to eat a little humble pie now and again.'

'Yeah,' said Quinn, watching Richard Coles come down the stairs and sidle-up next to a waitress. Richard was bending forward to whisper in the girl's ear. 'I've got to work on that, I guess.'

'Damn right you do,' said Strange, glancing back to see the subject of Quinn's attention.

Strange saw Quinn watch Richard Coles as he headed off down the hall past the end of the bar.

'Here you go, man,' said Strange, paying the bartender, taking his receipt.

'Appreciate it,' said the bartender, and Quinn turned and read the man's name, Dante, which was printed on a tag he wore pinned to his white shirt.

'You ready?' said Strange to Quinn.

'Gotta take a leak.'

'Another one? You just ran some water through it five minutes ago.'

'The upstairs head was out of order. I'll see you out at the car.'

Strange said, 'Right,' and walked from the bar. Quinn waited until he was gone and then headed down the hall.

On his way out, Strange told the doorman he'd be right back. He walked quickly to his car and pulled a set of handcuffs and a sap from the trunk, sliding the sap in to the breast pocket of his jacket, then went back into the club. He took the steps up to the second floor two at a time and moved through the table area to the four-top where Sherman Coles still sat.

Coles's eyes widened, watching Strange moving in his direction, purpose in his step. Coles's neck jerked, birdlike, as he looked around the bar, searching frantically for a familiar face.

'Right here, Sherman,' said Strange, and he kicked the table into Coles, sending him to the floor in a shower of drink and live ashes.

Strange got Coles up to his feet, turned him, and yanked his arms up, forcing Coles to his knees. Strange put his own knee to Coles's back while he cuffed him, and then he pulled Coles to his feet.

Strange drew his wallet, flipped it open, and showed his license to the room in general.

'Investigator!' shouted Strange. 'Don't no one interfere and everything's gonna be all right!'

He did this in situations like this one, and nearly every time it worked. It wasn't a lie and to most people, 'investigator' meant cop. The waitresses and patrons and the men who were being lap-danced all stopped what they were doing, but no one came near him and no one interfered.

Strange kept his wallet open, holding it out for all to see, as he pushed Coles along towards the stairs.

'Where my brother at, man?' said Coles.

'That white man I was with, he's talking to him, I expect.'

'Richard'll kill him.'

'Keep walkin', man.'

On the stairs, Coles lost his footing. Strange pulled him back upright with a jerk to his arms.

Coles looked over his shoulder and said, 'Bounty hunter, like I thought.'

'They call us bail agents now, Sherman.'

'Knew you'd be back,' mumbled Coles. 'You had that look in your eye.'

'Yeah,' said Strange. 'But you didn't know I'd be back so soon.'

Quinn walked down the hall, shakily singing along under his breath to another Prince tune that was playing now in the main portion of the club. There were small speakers hung in the hall, but their sound was trebly, not bass heavy like out near the stages, and this thin, shrill tone made his blood jump, as did the thought of what he was about to do.

'Gonna be a beautiful night, gonna be a beautiful night…'

Quinn went straight back to the end of the hall, pushed on a swinging door, and went through the frame into a fluorescent-lit, dirty kitchen. The light came up bright off the steel prep tables that were spread about the room.

'Amigo,' said Quinn to a small Salvadorian with a thin mustache, wearing a stained white apron, leaning against a prep table near the back of the kitchen and smoking a cigarette.

The man said nothing and his eyes said nothing. The kitchen radio blared in the room.

'Dante sent me back here,' said Quinn, shouting so the man could hear. Quinn scanned the kitchen quickly and went to where a steel tenderizing mallet lay atop an industrial microwave oven. He picked up the mallet, measured its weight in his hand, waved it stupidly, and said, 'Dante needs one of these out at the bar.'

The man shrugged and dragged on his cigarette, dropping the butt on the Formica at his feet and crushing it under a worn black shoe.

'I'll bring it right back,' said Quinn, but he knew the man didn't care. He was only talking now to hear his own voice and to keep the adrenalin going, and he was out of the kitchen just as quickly as he'd come in.

Now he was back in the hall and walking toward the men's room. Now he was pushing on the men's room door, walking through it and into the men's room, looking at Richard Coles taking a piss at one of the stand-up urinals against the wall.

Quinn kept moving. He said, 'Hey, Richard,' and when Richard Coles turned his head to the side, Quinn swung the mallet fast and hard and connected its ridged surface to the bridge of Richard's nose. Richard's nose shifted to the right, and blood sprayed off in the same direction. A stream of urine swung out and splashed at Quinn's feet. Richard's legs gave out from under him, and Quinn kicked him in the groin as he hit the tiles. He kicked him in the cheekbone, and blood splattered onto the porcelain face of the urinal. Quinn heard his own grunt as he kicked Richard in the side and was about to kick him again when he saw Richard's eyes roll up into his head.

Quinn's hands were shaking. He waited for the rise and fall of Richard's chest. He said, 'Terry Quinn,' and he dropped the mallet to the floor.

Out in the bar there was a buzz, a sense that something had gone down. The dancers were moving on the various stages, but the patrons were turned away from them, talking among themselves.

Men moved out of Quinn's path as he walked through the club. He felt the power, and it was a familiar feeling, though he hadn't felt it for a while. It was like he was wearing the uniform again, and he knew now that this was what he had been missing for a long time. He felt good.

Quinn got into the passenger side of Strange's car and looked over the lip of the bench. Sherman Coles was stretched out and cuffed, lying on the backseat.

Strange nodded at the blood on Quinn's boots. 'You all right?'

'Yeah.'

'Where my brother at?' said Sherman from the backseat.

Neither Quinn nor Strange answered Coles.

'How'd you know I'd walk out of there?' said Quinn.

'I didn't know,' said Strange. 'What I did know, you'd give me enough time.'

'Where's my brother!' yelled Sherman.

Quinn said to Strange, 'You always go for the light work?'

'When I can.' Strange ignitioned the Chevy. 'I got to get little Sherman over to Fifth Street, process the paperwork. I know you don't want to stick around for that.'

'Drop me at the first Metro station you see,' said Quinn. 'I need to get home. I'm seein' a lady tonight.'

'Yeah,' said Strange, thinking of his mother. 'I'm seein' one, too.'

Strange pulled off the curb and drove toward M Street. He looked over at Quinn, still intense, sitting straight up in his seat, his knuckles rapping at the window.

'Gonna split the agent's fee with you on this one, Terry. How's that sound?'

'How's this sound: You and me work together on that other thing.'

'Together? You're the subject of my investigation, you forget about that?'

'I didn't forget.'

'Look, you got nothin' to worry about. The review committee said you were right as rain on that shooting. I got no reason to doubt it.'

'Right as rain. Yeah, I remember, that's exactly what they said.'

'And you couldn't get with me on this, anyway. You don't have the license to be doing the kind of work I do.'

'If you're going to stay on it, I want to be involved.'

Strange goosed the gas, coming out of the turn.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'You and me, we're not through.'