Rubdown (21 page)

‘No way, I know my rights. Less than three grams, personal—’

Sean smacked the wall next to Damien’s head. ‘You think I can’t bump this up with shit from the evidence locker? You think I wouldn’t do that? You think I’m a nice freaking guy, dirtbag?

Couple of years in Port Phillip.’ He hissed in his ear, ‘Think your virgin arse can take it, pretty boy?’

‘Oh man,’ Damien whined.

‘Talk to us,’ Tony said softly.

I jumped off the bonnet and walked over. ‘Tell us everything you know about Tamara Wade and we’ll leave you alone. Where did you meet her?’

‘At, at the Good Times Club. I thought she was a bit of a glamour so I didn’t let her pull my dick.’ His eyes darted to Tony then Sean. ‘That’s how you pick up a working girl, you know, act like you’re not interested in having sex with her. I spun some shit about how I’d never been to one of those places before, you know, just broke up with my girlfriend and a mate made me go.

Gets them interested and you can see them outside work and fuck ’em for free.’

‘Charming,’ said Tony. Sean narrowed his eyes and spat on the ground.

I said, ‘While you were fucking her for free did she ever talk about her father?’

‘All the time. She was trying to get money off him so she could move up to Surfers. Reckoned her folks owed her since they’d spent more than half a mill on Blaine over the years. Course he never coughed up. Dad’s loaded but tighter than a fish’s arsehole. At first she wanted to knock him off but reckoned she probably wasn’t even in the will. Then she told me she had something on him.

Something he’d pay to keep quiet.’

‘What?’ we all said in unison.

Damien realised he had us. His shoulders loosened and he hitched up his pants. He leaned back on the wall like we were all mates, shooting the breeze. ‘Shit, I asked the same question but she wouldn’t tell me. Didn’t want anyone else cutting in on her scam.

I reckoned the old bastard was a rock spider, fiddled around with her when she was young. Lot of those bigwigs can be pretty twisted underneath. I’m telling you, it’s the straight ones you gotta watch out for.’

Tony was driving us back to the hotel, down the steep hill on Punt Road just before the Hoddle Street Bridge crosses the river.

The clock on the Nylex sign told us it was nine fifteen and twelve degrees.

I was leaning between the front seats, trying to get hot air from the heater on my mottled, goose pimpled legs. ‘At least we know Emery had a motive for killing Tammy.’

‘But how do we prove it?’ asked Sean. As we crossed the bridge I saw rowers slice narrow boats through the river, mist rising up from the water.

‘Lulu. I know she’s got hard evidence. Why else would they have torn her place apart?’

‘Has she called you again?’ Tony asked.

‘No.’ I’d checked my answer machine remotely.

‘Maybe she’s dead.’

I’d been trying not to think that. ‘We can try Carlisle Street, or her friend Geisha’s place.’

Tony’s car phone rang and he put on a headpiece and answered. I slipped my palm onto Sean’s leg and he rested his hand on mine. Outside a man in a beanie and Richmond footy scarf was walking a dog through Olympic Park. The trees were spindly and had lost almost all their leaves.

Tony hung up the phone. ‘That was Dahlia, the girl I know from Daily Planet. She has some information on Wade.’

‘What?’

‘Won’t say over the phone.’

‘When are you going to see her?’

‘I’m not. She wants to see you. Read about you in the paper last year.’

‘Where do I meet her?’

Tony was silent for a second. I leaned between the seats and saw he was smiling. ‘She’ll only meet you at work. You’ll have to make an hour booking and go up to the room.’

‘Can I come too?’ asked Sean.

When Tony dropped us at the hotel the family next door were checking out, packing up their station wagon. The husband’s eyes opened wide and his wife’s mouth pursed as she hurriedly strapped the two kids into the car. At our room I reached into my bag for the key.

‘See her face?’ I asked.

‘She can obviously tell I’m a hard-arse cop who doesn’t play by the rules and you’re the filthy little crack-whore I screw on the side.’

‘I love it when you talk dirty.’

Still method acting, Sean spun me about and pushed me against the door, lifted my leg around his waist and put his hand up my top. When he bit my neck the smell of his cologne induced a sort of Pavlov’s dog reaction and my knees went weak. I looked over his shoulder and saw the wife hitting her husband, screaming at him to drive. Grabbing Sean’s butt to freak her out a bit more, I felt something metallic in his back pocket, slid my fingers in and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. The wagon took off in a shower of gravel.

I dangled the cuffs between us. ‘What are these for?’

‘Thought I might have had to restrain the suspect.’

‘Be a shame for them to go to waste.’

He snatched the handcuffs off me and clamped one round my wrist. The cold steel squeezing my skin brought a lump to my throat and a moistness to my silver hotpants.

I said, ‘You know how the symbol for Virgo is the virgin?’

‘Uh-huh.’ His voice was throaty and he had his knee between my legs.

‘Kind of false advertising, don’t you think?’

The Daily Planet was opposite Elsternwick railway station, across the road from the shiny new apartments and shops that had sprouted out of the old station car park.

The big blue building had a globe of the world stuck to its façade, with a radio antenna and a couple of lightning bolts, just like in the Superman comics. I’d had a few champagnes at the Elsternwick Hotel and left a disappointed Sean in the public bar while I clopped up the road in my spike heeled boots. Not knowing quite what a girl wore to a brothel if she wasn’t in fact working there, I’d eventually settled on the tight knee length snakeskin skirt, black top and my beloved brown suede coat.

I actually looked forward to Melbourne winters just so I could swan around in it.

I rubbed my wrist where the handcuffs had left a small purple bruise. Just thinking about being chained to the bed while Sean had his evil way got me worked up again. I could go without rooting, if I had to, but once I started getting it I could think of little else. I shook my head. I had an appointment in a brothel.

This was no time to be thinking about sex.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door and walked into a small marble reception area. The front desk sat behind a glass wall and the receptionist smiled when she saw me. She looked part Indian, with close cropped black hair, a pixie face and large brown eyes.

‘Can I help you?’

‘My name’s Simone. I have an appointment with Dahlia for seven.’

‘Certainly.’ She asked me for a hundred and twenty dollars to cover the house fee and gave me a yellow receipt. I wondered if I could claim it on tax and made a mental note to ask Tony. ‘Dahlia won’t be long. I’ll get Jessica to show you through.’

A door to the right of the desk clicked open and a girl with a black bob and a fringed blue dress said hello. I followed her down a hallway lined with pictures of models in bodypainted AFL uniforms and wondered if there was a shop somewhere in Melbourne that specialised in ‘brothel art’.

We turned left at an old fashioned red phone box next to a fake tree with small white leaves, and entered a lounge area. Through an archway I saw a room with pool tables, computer games and a jukebox. We turned right and went down a few steps into a sunken bar. Round tables dotted the room, surrounded by low armchairs upholstered in red and blue fabric. The walls were decorated with plaster columns and painted in trompe l’oeil style, creating the illusion of a formal garden in a French country manor. A few men sat around talking to women in evening wear.

On one wall a huge screen played a porn movie that seemed to have been inspired by
Gladiator
, although I couldn’t recall the scene where Russell Crowe had group sex in the Coliseum with a bunch of surgically enhanced wenches in vine leaves and gold sandals.

The lighting was low, reddish and the music Dido. I sat at the black and white marble bar next to an Italian coffee machine and Jessica offered me a drink.

‘What’s the strongest thing you’ve got?’

‘Light beer.’

‘Bring it on.’ I drank quickly, hoping it would have some effect.

Not that I had anything to be nervous about. I was just going to go into the room, ask a bunch of questions and leave. Still, when a cultured voice said my name and I swivelled around, I felt like a clammy eighteen year old about to get his cherry popped.

‘I’m Dahlia.’ She wore a fire-engine red dress split on one side to reveal a pale, curvy thigh. Long auburn hair highlighted with gold framed her heart shaped face. She had the most enormous blue eyes I’d ever seen, with long curved lashes.

‘Nice to meet you.’ The skin on her small white hand was cool and soft. I guessed she was five four but her clear Perspex heels bought her an extra three inches and we stood face to face.

‘Just this way.’

I followed her down a hallway, up some stairs and down another hall.

‘What a rabbit warren. How many rooms?’ I asked.

‘Eighteen.’

‘Why so many when most brothels are only allowed six?’

‘Daily Planet was around before prostitution was legalised and I think they got some sort of special dispensation to operate.’

Sue showed me into a room with Xanadu marked on the door and collected a further hundred and twenty dollars off me. A large round spa was flanked by columns and she turned on the taps, said she’d be back shortly and left the room. I nicked into the en suite rubdown bathroom, peed, and came out and sat on the bed. It was a four poster number covered in red fabric brocaded with gold, matching pillows at the head. Mirrors lined the walls and ceiling and a pyramid of yellow towels balanced on a chair.

Dahlia came back and checked the water level in the spa. She let the taps run, leaned on the marble edge and smiled at me. ‘I’ve always been curious to meet you.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘I read about you in the paper when you saved your friend.

Stripper turned private investigator. You took on that cop and the gangster. Very brave.’

‘Not brave, just desperate, kind of like now. Tony said you could tell me about Emery Wade.’

‘Let’s have a spa first.’ She kicked off her shoes, stood in front of me and peeled off her dress. She unclipped a red lace bra, slid down a matching G-string and laid the lot over the back of a chair.

She had lush, womanly breasts and, judging by her pubes, the auburn hair was natural. She padded over to the table by the bed, picked up one of those clips that look like two curved chopsticks and secured her mane on top of her head.

When she’d climbed the marble steps, slipped into the steaming water and rested her arms out along the edge of the spa, she cocked her head. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Think I’ll pass. Don’t want to get my hair wet.’

‘Hair elastic. Top drawer. You have to come in. It’s the only way I can tell you’re not gigged up.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Wearing a wire. Girl can’t be too careful these days.’ She was smiling and gazing at me steadily.

I couldn’t tell if she was serious or just fucking with me, but what I did know was I really needed this information. And it wasn’t like going naked was going to freak me out. I mean, half of Melbourne had seen my box—one more wasn’t going to make much difference.

I opened the drawer, found a hair band next to some condoms and sachets of Wetstuff and tied my hair in a high ponytail.

She watched as I undressed and laid my clothes on the bed, her eyes glinting in the low light. ‘Where do you get your triple X?’

‘Grace at Airs and Graces, North Melbourne.’ I’d slutted around in the past but always came back to her. Couldn’t entrust your pussy wax to just anyone. ‘You?’

‘Vanity, Chapel Street.’

‘Oh.’ I slipped into the water. Dahlia hit a button and jets of air shot out from the sides and bubbled up to the surface. I wriggled around and positioned a powerful blast on the base of my spine.

Heaven, as long as you didn’t visualise the kind of action this spa had probably seen over the years.

As if reading my mind she said. ‘Sex isn’t allowed in the spas.

So, do you still strip?’

‘No.’ I wished she’d get around to Emery Wade.

‘Why not?’

‘I’m an inquiry agent now. Sometimes I have to give evidence in court. They’ll tear you to pieces if they find out you’re on the wrong side of the law.’

‘Stripping’s not illegal.’

‘Ha. If you do the shows the punters want to watch it is. What about you? Worked here long?’ I decided to go along with it and play the conversation game—though I’d thought if you paid for it you didn’t have to bother with foreplay.

‘Four years.’

‘Get sick of it?’

‘Not really. I only work one night a week.’

‘What do you do the rest of the time?’

‘I’m finishing my PhD.’

I wasn’t surprised. Most girls in the industry were studying something. ‘Impressive. What you studying?’

‘Neurogenetics. I usually get round in a lab coat and glasses.’

I wiped sweat from my brow. The heat from the spa seemed to be intensifying the mild champagne buzz I’d had on arrival.

‘This may seem like a naff question, and I hate it when guys ask me, but do you ever get turned on when you…’

‘Fuck clients?’ The swearword didn’t match her plummy accent.

I nodded.

‘If they’re hot and have the sort of personality I click with, then I do. You’d be surprised how many good looking guys we get in here. If they’re not then the money turns me on sufficiently.

I like doing couples best, or doubles with another girl. That’s fun.

Very occasionally we get women coming in on their own.’

‘Lesbians?’

‘Mostly curious straight girls.’

The mirrors had steamed up and sweat beaded on my upper lip. I tipped my head from side to side, trying to straighten out the kinks in my neck.

‘Tension?’ she asked.