LAP DANCE
by
Jack Bludis
Jack Bludis has written dozens of books under a number of pseudonyms. His most notable works, however, have been published under his own name, and feature post-WWII private eyes with names like Rick Page, Ken Sligo, and Brian Kane. He has been nominated for the Shamus and Anthony Awards, and currently lives in Baltimore. His most recent book is Shadow of the Dahlia.
"Where did you go with him?" I asked the pole dancer.
I had just bought her a watered-down drink for twenty-bucks. I was drinking Sam Adams from the bottle.
"I don't know vhat you mean."
Her accent was clipped, East European. She was small and big-boned, but her weight was well distributed.
"Last night, you went someplace with this guy," I said.
I showed her the photo for the third time, and for the third time, she said, "I do not know him." She said it clearly and firmly.
"You have to pay for her time, pal," some guy said.
I figured him for a bouncer, and like the bouncers in most places like the Hooker Club, he had the WWF build and enough tattoos to paper a wall.
"I'm paying for her time," I said, and I gestured to the drink.
"Then don't hassle her."
He looked askance at the girl. I doubted she was twenty-one yet, but fake identification is not hard to put up. The big guy was not on the door when I came in. I showed him the photo.
"Bachelor party. Yeah, he was in here."
The dancer looked surprised.
"Did you see him leave?" I asked the bouncer.
"Can't say I did."
"Somebody tells me he went someplace with this young lady. Her name's Velveeta. Does she know that's a cheese? Or do you guys just grab these names off the shelf to make fun of them?"
"I am cheese?" the girl called Velveeta asked.
The bouncer grinned.
"Finish up in here before I get Vendetta on your ass."
I was surprised that his speech was relatively clean English. If he had an accent at all, it was someplace in town, Bronx or Brooklyn. Hell, maybe Staten Island. The accents all run together when you've lived in Manhattan most of your life.
I wasn't looking for trouble, but I had been looking for Roddy Trobridge since noon, and I had only twenty hours to find him before he embarrassed his bride or—more importantly—her self-made man of a father by not showing up at the wedding.
I had checked Roddy's bachelor-party friends, who all told the same story. They had arrived at Hooker's at about eight last night and left about ten. Velveeta gave Roddy a lap dance then went over in a corner with him for something else. Three of his friends named different sex acts. The fourth, Ambrose Thomas II, also his bride-to-be's brother, said there was no sex involved.
"He wouldn't do that to my sister," he told me.
When I asked each of them separately, the other three said that they left first and together. Ambrose Two said that he and Roddy left immediately after the others.
I repeated a vague version of that story to the bouncer, or doorman, as they preferred being called these days, and asked him what he saw.
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"I've got somebody who says he had sex with Velveeta here."
"Our girls don't have sex with the customers."
"I'm a PI, not a cop."
He tilted his head and grinned. "Any sex, our girls have, they go someplace private, but we don't encourage it. We got nothing to do with it."
"Did you see these guys leave?"
"They all left together," he said.
I hadn't told him anyone's version of the story.
Velveeta was still paying attention. I didn't think she understood very well, but the thing that transcended language was her facial expression. She was confused, and she was afraid of something, most likely, the doorman.
"A hundred dollars for an hour off premises," I said to Velveeta.
She looked to the bouncer, who gave her his eye-ball permission.
"Make sure she's back in an hour and leave that cash here--just to make sure she gets it."
Yeah, to make sure she gets it.
"I go get my coat," she said, and Leon followed her to the dressing room.
* * * * *
She was marching ahead of me wrapped in a trench coat that almost dragged the sidewalk.
"Da Motter-fucker calls me, Velveeta."
It wasn't easy to keep up, but I wasn't going to fall behind and let some cop think I was chasing her.
"Da bastard, he thinks we don't know nothing because we don't speak much of the English."
"Why don't you tell him about it?"
"Let dem make fun of me till I get my money. Then I am gone from this Big Apple to find some little apple where no one will know me. Maybe I find a nice Polish man who will love me."
She swung her ass under the coat, like a parody of what she was.
"You coming wid me?"
"Trying to keep up."
She made an abrupt left-hand turn down Ninth Avenue and another quick turn to a stairway between an electronic store and a tee-shirt store. Over the doorway to the stairs was The White Way Hotel.
Ninth Avenue was not exactly the Great White Way, but it was coming up in the world—what real estate wasn't?
I followed her quickly past the registration desk on the second floor. The clerk looked up, seemed to accept that it was with Velveeta, or whatever her real name was, and he went back to turning the pages of Hustler.
At the end of the hall was a small room. Instead of the by-the-hour that I had expected, it was an actual bedroom, probably hers or one she shared with someone. There was a bed, two chairs, and a crowded clothes rack. There was an alcove, with a sink, a tub, and commode. Not great accomodations, but probably better than Warsaw or wherever she was from.
"Take off your clothes," she said.
"Not necessary. I just want to ask you some questions and get some straight answers."
"You already pay a hundred dollars. You queer or something?" The last word came out like Some-sing.
I was also surprised that she did not use the more current gay. But who knew how they were talking in Eastern Europe. She bounced on the bed and her coat came open. Her thighs showed all the way to the crotch of a thong that went all the way into her crack.
I showed her the picture again.
"I give him a blow job. Yeah. Then he goes away with his friends, he tell me he is getting married on Saturday. Dat's tomorrow."
"Did you leave the club with him?"
She grinned at me before she spoke.
"I see from you pants that you not so queer like I think."
"Tell me about him." I waved the photo.
"He was too much drunk. He does not even do the spit. Lots of guys would not pay if they do not do the spit"
"There's more to it."
"There is nothing more. I tell him no, I won't go with him someplace else, and he leaves with his friends."
"All of them together?"
"Something like that."
"You're not sure, are you?" I said.
"Three of them go, then that one, he goes with another. They keep calling each other 'brud-in-law.' It seems like they are good friends. Look, I see you are interested in me. You have a whole hour. We can do more than talk, don't you think?"
I had been doing private investigation work for twenty years, and I had been working seedy clubs in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey for a lot of that time. I rarely found a hooker who wanted to do something physical for her money when she could get away with just talking. What she wanted was for me to stop asking questions.
"What's the bouncer's name?"
"His name is Leon. Why you ask that?"
"What did Leon tell you to tell me?"
"He did not tell me nothing."
She raised her chin, indignant that I questioned what she said.
"Is he the one who named you Velveeta?"
"Get off of dat Velveeta crap. Is bad enough I have to smile and look stupid when they call me that. My name is Sophie."
"What did Leon tell you to tell me?"
"What I tell you, I tell you from my own free will."
Own free will struck me as a strange choice of words for someone who barely knew the language. It was probably a line that Leon had told her to use.
"You're getting a hundred bucks for just talking to me. How about if I give you another twenty to tell me the truth?"
"Your time is flying, Mister."
"I thought I had plenty of time. Who told you to tell that story?"
"I tell you what I see. This is maybe the third time you call me a liar. I don't like it...You sure you don't want to have a good time?"
She was attractive and she seemed clean, but I have an aversion to prostitutes who are strangers. If you're going to come down with a disease, a prostitute was usually where you were going to get it, unless you're terribly indiscriminant with your sex life. I'd been careful over the years and I hadn't gotten so much as a fever blister.
I didn't feel like standing, so I sat at the edge of the bed.
"Another twenty bucks, that's forty. You tell the truth and I won't bring you into it."
"Into what?"
"I won't tell anybody where I got the information. I have to find this kid so he doesn't miss his wedding."
Kid was a relative term. Roddy Trobridge was in his late twenties, I was in my fifties.
"You like me. I know that."
She was right about that, but I didn't trust her, and I wasn't going to take the chance of getting herpes or AIDS just because I liked her.
"I got the rubbers," she said. She leaned over to the night stand and opened the drawer. One of her breasts popped out of the costume she was still wearing. It was part of the game.
"Put it back." I said
She looked down at her breast, decided the ploy wouldn't work, and she tucked it in.
"How about if you tell me the truth?"
"You give me anudder hundred dollars?"
"Forty. That's it."
"Sixty and it's a deal."
I opened my wallet and pulled out three twenties. I had left another hundred with Leon at the club. She'd be lucky to get another twenty out of that.
She reached and I pulled the bills away.
"You bastard."
"I have to believe your story first."
She clenched her jaw and rolled of her eyes.
"If you make it up, I’m going to know."
The focus of her eyes bounced all over the place: my face, my crotch, the wall behind me, the window to the air-shaft. She wanted to tell the truth, but she didn't know how she could get away with it.
"You don't tell Leon?"
I shook my head. I kept looking at her, until she maintained eye contact.
"Him and his friend, the one he calls 'brud-in-law,' they come back here to the hotel."
I waited and her eyes began to fill with tears.
"Your friend, the one in the picture, he can't do it. He tries but he can't. I do everything I know, but he won't come up."
She waited a long time before she spoke again, and I wondered if she was making it up.
"He falls asleep right here on da bed." She patted the place behind me.
"The other one, the brud-in-law, he wants to take a turn. But I tell him no, not unless he pays me too. The bastard, he grabs my earring...look!"
She showed me where her earlobe was freshly torn. She wore clip-on earrings, but they had pinched away the scab and she was bleeding again.
"He tells me at least I am going to go down on him, so I do. It is because I don't want him to hit me. Dat's the whole story."
"How did you get him out of bed?"
"We call a taxi and dat's it. His friend and the driver, they help him to da taxi. Is the last thing I see from them."
I had been watching her the entire time, looking for tics or stammers or places where I thought she might be lying. Women like her were good at it. She could be better than most, but I thought she was finally telling the truth.
"What time was that?"
"After twelve, I tink."
"What cab company?"
"Cab company?"
"Which one did you call?"
"Billy, da boy at the desk, he calls them for us."
I rose to leave.
"I am going to take a beating from this," she said.
"Nobody will know you talked to me."
Although I believed most of the last story, something still bothered me.
* * * * *
I got the name of the cab company they called and let her walk back to the Hooker Club alone. I drove to the dispatch office of the cab company, and asked about the pickup the night before last. I explained what that I was trying to find a young man who was about to be married, without telling him what I thought was going on.
"Are you kidding? Theater night? I got a couple of dozen cabs picking people up between twelve and twelve thirty."
"This one was phoned in."
"Eh, let me take a look. But most of them don't even get where they're going before somebody grabs 'em...You're not a cop right?"
"Private investigator." I showed my license and my business card, it took him about three minutes to come up with what I needed.
"We got a call eleven fifty-eight, that exact address. Driver says he took somebody to 79th and Riverside Drive."
"What was his next fare?"
"Picked up somebody and 79th and West End, took 'em all the way across town."
"Driver on tonight?"
"He's going off in twenty minutes."
I slid a twenty across the counter at him.
"Not necessary, pal," he said. That wasn't a first, but it was a rarity.
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, the driver came in, Pakistani, I think. I showed him my PI license and asked him to describe the people he picked up at the White Way Hotel.
"Just one fellow," he said.
"Not two?"
"Only one," he said.
"Drunk?"
He shrugged.
"You took him to the yacht basin?"
"Yes," he said, but he was fidgety.
I knew the West Side, and I took a shot at a scenario:
"OK, you took two men to the yacht basin. You drop the blond guy off. Where did you take the other one, the one with red hair?"
The driver looked at the dispatcher, who read off his next pickup and drop-off. Pick up, 79th and West End Avenue, drop-off the Fifth Avenue and 78th, about the same place where Ambrose the First had his apartment. He called himself Ambrose the First as if he had no last name.
I had been in the business long enough to know that I had a serious problem. Papa claimed to be looking for son-in-law-to-be, and son knew where he was.
It would be difficult to clear everything up without pissing off the client, and I wasn't going to do by phone. I grabbed a cab that had come in for gas and went to Ambrose the First's apartment building.
I called from the lobby. Without even a Hello, he snapped at me, "Have you found Roddy?"
"Not yet, but I’d like to talk to you."
"If you haven’t found him--"
"I’d like to come up." I said it firmly.
* * * * *
It wasn't the penthouse, but it was a whole floor. There was no butler, just a pretty maid in French black, white, and ruffles. The outfit was so tasteful it didn’t even show her knees.
I saw through the arch to the living room that the apartment gave a view all the way across the park. Ambrose the First's building was near the base of an almost straight shot by vehicle to the yacht basin. I'd bet my fee against a dollar that Ambrose the First had a yacht there.
The entire apartment was furnished with classic pieces, including statues and bric-a-brac, and oriental carpets that could cover Central Park. The maid took me through to what she called, "the den," where Mr. Thomas sat behind a big desk.
Den, hell, it was an office, with TV screens and computer monitors running various stock market tickers along the bottom. Some architect, interior designer, or both had worked the screens and keyboards into the décor.
"If you didn't find him, why are you wasting my time?" he said, and he gestured to an easy chair in front of his desk. I sank about eight inches into it.
"Do you know where he is?" I asked.
"If I knew where he was, I wouldn't have hired you?"
"If you don't know, your son does."
"What are you talking about?"
I gave him a rundown, and the more I talked, the more his face grew red. Although he might direct his anger at me, I was not the one he was angry with. From time-to-time, he glared, as if he thought that would change my story, but he didn't stop to ask questions, he just listened all the way through to my trip to the cab company.
"Your son lives here, doesn't he?" I said.
He thought about a lie, but decided against it.
"He lives in the building, yes."
When I was finished, he stared, not at me but at something in his imagination.
Finally, he spoke.
"A whore told you this?"
"And a cab driver and a dispatcher. Would you like me to talk to your son?"
He tightened his jaw and narrowed his eyes. "Who else have you told this to?"
"Just you."
"And only you know the whole story?"
"As far as I can piece it together, unless my contacts left out some details."
"She's not only leaving out things, but she's putting things in. My son would never let Roddy do that."
"Don't you think we should ask him?"
"Why should we?"
"It's less than fifteen hours from the wedding—that is, if you want the wedding to happen."
"Did you cash my check?"
"Yes, sir."
He pulled open a top drawer, and took out a check register. The figure he filled in was $5,000. The company on the check was one I had never heard of, with an upstate address. The signature was not quite the same as on the other.
"This is for your discretion. It includes your expenses. You can keep the advance."
Ten thousand dollars buys a lot of discretion for less than a day's work. It wasn't the first time something like this happened, and it wouldn't be the last.
* * * * *
Because I'm a private investigator, I turn all the pages in the Times, the Daily News, and the Post. I read all the caps and many of the articles. The wedding went off without a hitch, with the Times making a big deal of it. There were some nice pictures of a sober Roddy Trobridge and his happy bride.
They were only happy for about a week.
I read in the back pages of the Times that the bridegroom drowned off his father-in-law's 90-foot yacht near Bermuda on the honeymoon. The Times noted his death by drowning. Both the News and the Post mentioned that he was drunk, something that both papers also said his new wife denied.
I told the story to a detective friend in the NYPD, but Bermuda was far out of their jurisdiction, and proof of anything, even the initial story, was problematic.
For the hell of it, I went back to the Hooker Club and asked for Velveeta.
"That's a cheese," Leon said.
"Is she around?"
"Don't know what you're talking about."
I thanked him and I was gone.
It would be nice to think that my extra hundred bucks put Sophie over the hump so she could find her Polish bridegroom in that little apple she was looking for, but that kind of thing only happens in the...hell, they don't make movies that schmaltzy anymore.
The five thousand weighed on me like thirty pieces of silver. For a while, I watched my back more closely than ever.
It's been a couple of years and I've loosened up some, but in my end of the business, the big money end, you always watch your back.
END
Copyright © 2008 by Jack Bludis