The Fixer

18

In the mid-1970s, the mayor of Boston, seeking to contain the spread of prostitution and “adult entertainment,” declared a four-square-block area of downtown Boston next to Chinatown the red-light district. Teeming with peep shows and strip clubs, adult bookstores and prostitutes, it became known as the Combat Zone, probably because of all the sailors and soldiers it attracted. It looked like a miniature version of the old Times Square in New York City before it was pasteurized and homogenized.

But as Boston’s downtown became more desirable, the big real estate developers moved in and began buying up property, and the next mayor campaigned to shut the Combat Zone down. He succeeded.

Now all that remained of the Combat Zone was one adult bookstore and a couple of strip clubs. The oldest and best known of them was Jugs. Jugs had a big pink sign outside that proclaimed WHERE EVERY MAN IS A VIP. He wondered how Jugs and the other place were able to survive the eradication of the Zone, the way cockroaches are supposed to be able to survive a nuclear war. He wondered if it was under the same ownership now as it was in 1996. Back then the owner was an entity called LaGrange Entertainment. No names. But he needed a name. Sometimes the easiest way to find something out was just to ask.

It was late afternoon and the sun was shining bright. A sign on Jugs’s front door said PROPER ATTIRE REQUESTED. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANY CUSTOMER. NO PHOTOS ALLOWED.

Inside it was dark. It took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the light. Behind the long bar he saw a stage where a young black woman in a G-string gyrated around the pole. She was wearing the proper attire. Mounted high on the wall were three flat-screen TV sets, one tuned to a basketball game, one to Access Hollywood, one to something else, the sound off. Music was thumping, a Lil Wayne hip-hop song.

Rick was one of maybe five patrons, two at the bar and three in booths. Each of them was sitting next to a dancer wearing only a G-string. He sat down at the bar. A sour-looking Asian man with large bags under his eyes asked him what he wanted.

“I’ll have a beer,” Rick said. He noticed the refrigerators under the stage filled with Bud Light and Blue Moon and Sam Adams. “A Blue Moon.”

The bartender slapped a coaster down in front of Rick. “Ten dollar,” he grunted. He sounded almost defiant. Ten dollars for a beer-that was probably more than they charged at the Ritz-Carlton, only a block away. But that was the price of admission, and it was also the price of information. Rick shrugged. The bartender took a bottle from the refrigerator and thumped it down in front of him. Rick watched the dancer. She was doing what looked like isometric exercises with her butt cheeks, which were firm and round. Probably because of all the isometric exercises. She was wearing only a G-string and sparkly platform heels.

Someone came up and sat at the stool next to his. It was one of the dancers, clad in a skimpy thong and black leatherette bra with tens and twenties sticking out of her right cup. “Hi,” she said, extending her hand with her elbow crooked, mock-formally. “I’m Emerald.” She was cute and small, with a diamond stud in her lower lip. Her skin was mocha and her tits were small. She looked Hispanic. Her eyebrows looked as if they’d been painted on.

“Hi, Emerald, I’m Rick.”

A pause, then she said, “Is this your first time here?”

“Yep. You been dancing here a while?”

A woman behind the bar, with black hair cut into bangs high on her forehead and very red lipstick, interrupted them. “You want to talk to Emerald,” she said in what sounded like a Russian accent, “is thirty dollars.”

Rick nodded and took a twenty and a ten out of his wallet and set it down on the bar. The price of admission had gone up.

“I’ll have a Dirty Shirley,” Emerald told the bartender. He went to work filling a tall glass with ice and some kind of soda from the bar and vodka from a Grey Goose bottle and grenadine. Rick assumed the vodka was water. They weren’t going to waste Grey Goose on a dancer. Probably not even alcohol.

“I’ve been dancing here for a year,” Emerald said, taking a sip of her drink. “But I’ve been dancing since I was eighteen.”

“They treat you well here?”

“Uh-huh. Where’re you from, Rick?”

“New York. She doesn’t own the place, that woman?” he asked, pointing with his chin at the black-haired woman.

“No, she’s the manager.”

The music segued bizarrely from Lil Wayne to Nickelback doing “Photograph.” The dancer left the stage and another one, white with bleached blond hair, took her place. She had a spray bottle in one hand and a white rag in the other, and she was cleaning the pole while undulating to the rhythm.

“Is the boss around, or does he come in later?”

Emerald smiled uncomfortably. “There’s a couple of bosses. Why you asking all that?”

Rick shrugged. “Just making conversation.” He’d come on too hard with the questions. He was out of practice; his investigative skills were rusty. But that was okay; he didn’t seriously expect to learn much if anything from her. She might know the name of the owner or owners, sure, but he hadn’t been counting on it. He mostly wanted to get the lay of the land. When the right moment presented itself, he’d be ready to ask questions of the manager or the owner, under the guise of being an undercover city inspector. “Maybe I’m looking to buy the place.”

She laughed, not sure whether to take him seriously.

Rick looked around. The sour Asian man was taking glasses out of a dishwasher built into the end of the stage. The black-haired Russian woman was talking with a man in a black fleece at the far side of the bar. He didn’t look like a patron. They were speaking with an easy, joking familiarity. Maybe he was an owner or one of the owners. The man nodded at someone in back. Rick turned to see who he was nodding at. It was another man, tall and wide, with a blond buzz cut, emerging from the dimly lit recesses at the back of the bar. He looked like a bouncer type.

At the back of the bar he saw a restroom sign. Maybe the bouncer was coming from the restroom, or maybe that’s where the employees’ entrance was.

“I’ll be back,” he told Emerald, getting up from the stool. He went toward the back. He passed the women’s restroom, then the men’s. He glanced down the narrow hallway and saw a couple more doors. One was painted steel with a push bar on it and looked as if it led outside. Another was ajar. Light from the room flooded out into the hall. Probably an office of some kind.

He looked around, didn’t see anyone coming, then shouldered the door open. It was indeed an office, a metal desk piled with papers and mail, a framed poster of a stripper, signed with a Sharpie in flowery script. The I was dotted with a heart. On top of a dented black steel file cabinet was an old Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and a few reams of printer paper.

No one here. He scanned the heap on top of the desk, saw a Comcast bill in a window envelope. So maybe he’d get lucky, find a letter or a magazine addressed to the owner, by name. He took the Comcast bill and saw it was addressed to “Jugs DBA Citadel LaGrange Entertainment.” That wasn’t a name, but it was something. He shoved it into his back pocket.

Something or someone slammed him up against the wall. He turned just in time to see the crew cut bouncer, his right hand pincered on Rick’s throat, choking him. With his other hand the bouncer pinioned Rick’s right hand against the door.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said.

Rick gagged. He looked down at the bouncer’s left hand, saw a green blob on the inside of his wrist. It was familiar. Then he remembered: He’d seen a similar tattoo on the wrist of one of his abductors in the Charles Hotel parking garage. It was actually a clover leaf, not a blob. A three-leaved shamrock. On each leaf was the number 6, making it 666. The number of the antichrist.

Rick kneed the man in the groin, thrusting hard. The man groaned and doubled up and Rick was able to break free of his grip. He lunged into the hallway, spun around, then slammed a hip against the push bar on the steel door. The door made a bleeping sound, and Rick could feel a rush of cold air. He stumbled, scraping a knee against the asphalt ground. The bouncer lurched through the door after him, shouting something, but Rick was already out of the alley and down the street and racing as fast as he’d ever run in his life.