Immoral (35 page)

Serena started with the girls who were getting ready to leave the club. One was already dressed; the second wore a black bra and jeans; the third, a natural redhead, was stark naked. She was reaching for a camisole on a hanger inside her locker.

“We’d like to ask you girls a few questions,” Serena said.

The girls, who were chatting and laughing loudly together, clammed up. One of them shrugged indifferently. The redhead, seeing Cordy, twisted so her nude body was on display, right down to the trimmed auburn mound between her legs. She looked him right in the eyes and grinned, daring him to look down. Cordy resisted, although Serena knew it was killing him.

Serena explained why they were there and described the dead girl in general terms, mentioning the heart tattoo on her breast. When they heard about the murder, the girls’ attitude changed. They were in a business that attracted more than a few sick freaks, and when one of their own got killed, they all immediately wondered who did it and whether they might be next on a killer’s hit list.

“What about it?” Serena asked. “Do you know her?”

The girls glanced at each other.

“Girls come and go,” the redhead said, idly stroking one of her breasts. “I mean, that description could fit a hundred girls who work in various clubs.”

“How about the tattoo?” Cordy asked.

They all shook their heads.

It had been the same story all day. Girls come and go. Who notices if they’re here one day and gone the next? And so many of them are young and half-blonde.

They quickly interviewed the other girls in the dressing area and got the same response from each one. They were about to leave and head for the next club on their list when Cordy pointed at the stage lift, which was now revolving slowly back to the floor, with Lavender on it, carefully balancing so she didn’t tumble off. The black stripper stepped off onto the floor, and the lift returned upward to the circular stage.

She was naked except for a tiny G-string, fringed with cash stuffed inside. Her breasts jiggled as she crossed the tile floor, her high heels clicking. She stopped in front of a Coke machine and extracted a dollar from her waist. She bought herself a diet soda, popped it, and took a long swig. Then her eyes settled on Serena and Cordy.

“What do the two of you want?” Lavender demanded.

“They’re police,” the redhead called out helpfully. She was now dressed in the camisole and leather pants. “Looking for a missing girl.”

“We’re all missing,” Lavender said.

Cordy made no pretense of keeping his eyes off this girl’s body. He made eye contact, then slowly let his gaze drop down her long expanse of nude skin, pausing in all of the interesting places. Lavender had an amused smile on her face.

“Guys pay good money to see that,” she said. “What makes you think cops get it for free?”

“If we go to dinner, that wouldn’t be free,” Cordy said. “What do you say?”

Serena rolled her eyes.

Lavender laughed. “Is your dick as big as your balls?”

“Only one way to find out,” Cordy said.

Lavender glanced at Serena. “I take it you and he are not an item? I don’t get into this three-way stuff.”

“We’re barely partners,” Serena said, giving Cordy a sharp elbow to the side. “After today, maybe not at all.”

“What’s your name?” Lavender asked, looking at Cordy again. Serena knew the girl was interested. It was strange, watching Cordy’s magnetism at work. She herself didn’t feel it, but a lot of girls did.

“You can call me Cordy.”

“I’ve got a few niches on you, Cordy. I wouldn’t want to hurt you accidentally.” Her lips twitched into a grin.

“You can’t hurt anyone when you’re tied up,” Cordy teased her.

“Okay, that’s enough, boys and girls,” Serena said. “
No mas
, Cordy, you hear me?”

“Friday night?” Cordy continued, smiling at Lavender.

Lavender shrugged, but it was an acquiescence. “Okay, slick. You got it. Pick me up here at eight o’clock. We’ll have six hours until my next shift.”

Serena sighed. “That’s great. Real romantic. Meanwhile, we’ve got a dead girl, and we’re trying to find out who she is.”

“Girls come and go around here,” Lavender said.

“I know. This one came and went. Five-foot-seven, black hair dyed blonde, somewhere between seventeen and twenty-five, or that’s what we’re guessing. She’s probably been missing at least two or three days.”

“Could be anybody,” Lavender said.

Cordy reached out and brushed his index finger below Lavender’s left nipple. “She had a heart tattoo right about here.”

Damn, the guy was good. Sometimes Serena felt like a robot, watching all the sex in this town and feeling no emotion about any of it.

She knew what the other cops called her. Barb. Not for Barbara—it was short for Barbed Wire. The girl with the high fence and the
NO TRESPASSING
sign. That was her own fault. Even when she liked a man, she usually found a way to leave him bleeding on the other side, instead of letting him in. Sometimes she envied Cordy that he could make it look so easy.

“A heart?” Lavender said slowly.

Serena saw it in Lavender’s eyes. For the first time that day, she felt her pulse quicken.

“You knew her?” Serena asked.

Lavender bit her lower lip. “Maybe. There was a girl at the last club where I worked, had a tattoo like that, matched that description.”

“What was her name?”

“Christi. Christi Katt. I mean, I figure it was a fake name, okay? Like I’m not really Lavender, and if I ever tell you my real name, I know you too well.”

“What was the club?” Cordy asked.

“The Thrill Palace. On the Boulder Strip.”

Serena knew it. “You know where this girl lived?”

“She had a dump of an apartment over near the airport. Oh, shit, what was the place called again? Vagabond, I think. Yeah, the Vagabond Apartments. Fits, huh? Most of the rentals there are weekly, I bet. Maybe daily.”

“You remember much about her?”

“Not a lot. She wasn’t a talker. Came in, did her thing. Most of the girls, we pal around, but she didn’t do that.”

“When did you last see her?” Serena asked.

“When I left the club,” Lavender said. “About a month ago.”

Cordy reluctantly slid the photo out of his coat pocket. “Could this be her?”

Lavender glanced at the photo and immediately shut her eyes, looking away. She opened them again and took another quick look. “Shit That really sucks. No one deserves to look like that, I mean no one.”

“Could that be her?”

Lavender squinted. “Could be. I don’t know. Who can tell from that? Christi was really pretty, not like that thing. Hell, she was almost as sexy as I am. If that’s her—well, shit”

She shook her head and handed the photo back upside down.

“Thanks, Lavender,” Serena told her. “You’ve been a big help.”

Cordy winked. “
Gracias
. See you Friday.”

“Hey, you’ve already seen me, slick,” Lavender said. “Friday I get to see you.”

They got off I-15 at Tropicana Avenue and waited impatiently at the light at Las Vegas Boulevard. On their right was the fake Arthurian castle of the Excalibur Hotel and, on then-left, the fake Manhattan skyline of New York-New York. Fountains sprayed from miniature fire boats surrounding a fake Statue of Liberty.

Some of the spray blew out in the street, and Serena felt dampness on her cheek. The cool water felt good. She glanced at the hordes of tourists milling outside in the stale early evening air, taking a break from losing their money inside. They looked hot, wiping their brows and tugging at their shirt collars. Even with the sun hidden behind the mountains, it was still ninety degrees.

The light changed. They headed past the MGM Grand and turned left at Koval Lane. Serena turned right again, and almost immediately, they exited the glitzy world of the Strip and found themselves in a seedy neighborhood, populated with two-bedroom houses with bars on the windows. The Vegas melting pot lived here, blacks, Mexicans, Indians, and immigrants from a dozen other countries who held down low-paying jobs in the service sectors of the casinos. It wasn’t a high-crime area, not compared to the Naked City near the Stratosphere, where most of the city’s murders took place. Old women still walked alone on the streets, pushing carts with groceries back to their homes. Children played in the yards, poking scorpions with sticks.

Half a mile down, they found the Vagabond Apartments, a two-level building with cracked white stucco, laid out like a motel. The ground-floor apartments opened onto the parking lot, and one flight up, the second-story units opened onto a narrow corridor with a rusty railing. All of the windows had thick curtains pulled shut, and the peeling navy doors had deadbolt locks.

For a moment, staring at the building, Serena was a teenager again, back in the apartment in Phoenix. She felt a chill break through the stifling heat. Images popped like flashbulbs. Her mother’s dead eyes, watching her. The tattoo of a lizard on the man’s chest, wiggling its pink tongue at her. Afterward, brown water dripping from the shower head.

Serena took a labored breath and pushed the past away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I pictured this girl for a higher-class kind of joint. You’d think she could have afforded better than this, working at the Thrill Palace.”
Unless she was an alcoholic
, Serena thought
Or an addict
.

“Maybe she was hiding out,” Cordy said.

Serena shrugged. “Let’s find the manager.”

The nearest apartment on the ground floor had an open door that led into a small foyer filled with mailboxes. They passed a short, balding man of about fifty, wearing shorts and no shirt, flipping through his mail as he strolled out of the office. He didn’t look up. Serena noticed him thumbing through a copy of
Penthouse
in the stack. They entered the apartment office, which was compact, with the mailboxes on one wall and vending machines for soda and snacks on the other.

At the rear of the office was a counter with a buzzer on it, and behind the counter was a closed door decorated with a nudie calendar. Several sections of the morning newspaper lay on the counter, one section open to the want ads, another to the comics. A paper plate with a few doughnut crumbs sat on top of the paper, gathering flies. Cordy pushed the call button, and they heard the muffled buzzer sounding behind the wall. No one came to greet them. Cordy pushed the button again, holding it down, until they heard footsteps inside.

The door flew open. A kid of about twenty, with earrings in both ears, long mousy hair, and sideburns, stared at them. He was tall and thin, with a narrow pimply face and protruding chin. Like the tenant they had passed, he was wearing shorts and no shirt.

“Yeah?”

He didn’t sound happy to be interrupted. Serena could hear noises inside the apartment and figured the kid wasn’t alone.

“We want an apartment,
muchacho
,” Cordy said. “How about you show us the hot tub and the tennis courts?”

“What the fuck?” the kid said.

Serena smiled. “Are you the manager?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“We’re cops. Does a woman named Christi Katt live here?”

“Yeah, so what?” he repeated.

“So you’re going to lose the attitude and give us her key. Okay?”

Cordy grinned. “You can show us the pool later.”

The kid shook his head. “Fucking cops, you guys are really something. Yeah, okay, apartment 204. She’s been here about a year. Hot number, you get me? She’s a lot nicer than the other trash we get around here.”

He looked nervously over his shoulder, obviously wondering if his guest had heard him.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Serena asked.

“Don’t know,” the kid said. “A few days ago, I guess.”

“But not in the last couple days.”

“No, it’s been a while, okay?”

Cordy wandered over to the wall of mailboxes and found the box labeled 204. “There’s a lot of mail in here.”

“Ain’t that what I said? Maybe she’s shacking up somewhere else.”

“You see her around with anyone lately? Boyfriend, girlfriend, anybody like that?” Serena watched his eyes, trying to see a flicker of a lie.

“She kept to herself,” the kid said.

“Nobody asking about her?” Serena asked.

“Just you.”

“What kind of car does she drive?”

“It’s an old beater. Red Chevy Cavalier.”

Serena glanced at Cordy, who took a few steps out of the office. He came back a moment later and nodded. “It’s in the lot.”

“Have you noticed if the car has come and gone lately?” Serena asked.

“Who knows? I don’t pay attention.”

“Okay, let’s have the key.”

The kid hesitated. “Don’t you need a warrant or something like that? Christi’s going to be mad if I just let you in there.”

Christi won’t be mad at anyone anymore
, Serena thought. She smiled at the young manager. “Just give me the key.”

He shrugged and disappeared back inside his apartment. Serena heard a whiny female voice, and then the kid hissed, “Shut up.” He reappeared a few seconds later with a key tied with a rubber band to a paint-stirring stick.

“You’ll make sure I get this back, right?” The kid scowled at them, men retreated inside his apartment and slammed the door.

“Let’s take a look at the car,” Serena said.

They returned outside and wandered past the ground-floor apartments toward the end of the parking lot. The red Cavalier was parked on the street side of the lot. They walked over to it and peered inside, cupping their hands next to their eyes to block the glare. The car was locked and empty. Serena looked in the front and back seats for papers or trash, but if Christi Katt was the owner, she kept a clean car.

Serena noticed an Indian girl, about eight years old, walking toward the office with her hands folded behind her back. She wore a plain white dress with blue fringe on the collar. The dress fell to her calves. She wore sandals that clip-clopped on the pavement. Her straight black hair fell below her shoulders.