Silent Victim (24 page)

The Jack Hammer was loud and crowded, smelling of stale beer and semen. Smoke swirled from dozens of cigarettes, sucked upward toward the bare blue lightbulbs hanging from the low ceiling. The sight that greeted Elena Krieger was like a Brueghel painting of hell. Writhing bodies twisted and snaked around each other on the dance floor, glistening with sweat and hormones, oozing desire into the close, fetid air. Into this atmosphere she strolled, her feather boa wrapped nonchalantly around her elegant neck. She tried to walk with a bored, world-weary saunter, but her left hand clutching the tiny leather purse hanging from her shoulder and the tightness around her eyes gave her away. Much as she tried to pretend otherwise, she was new to this scene.

She picked her way across the room, sidestepping the cluster of bodies, hugging the wall until she reached the bar. She slid onto a stool and surveyed the people around her. At the far end of the bar, a pair of young thugs with tattooed biceps had their tongues down each other’s throats while their hands caressed each other’s crotches. Elena swallowed hard and took a deep breath. She had been prepared for a raw scene, but this was a rough crowd—she fought back a creeping panic and fear that she might, for once, be out of her depth. Her forehead tingled as she forced her face to remain expressionless, calling on her acting training to keep her cool.

“Hey there—what are you drinking?”

She turned to see a strapping young man standing next to her. He leered at her, his eyes cloudy with booze and, she thought, drugs. He wore a white muscle shirt over ironed blue jeans, and a leather thong necklace with a single seashell hung around his bronzed neck. He was a good-looking blond with sensual, pouty lips and deep-set blue eyes—in fact, he reminded her of a cruder version of Captain Morton. His voice was high and light, with a pronounced outer-borough accent—Queens, maybe—but no trace of a lisp. There was nothing remotely feminine about him—on the street, she thought, he could pass for straight. She just hoped she could pass for a tranny—this would be her first test.

“I’ll have what you’re having,” she said in her deepest voice, which was half an octave lower than his. She made no attempt to cover her German accent—she hoped it would be a turn-on to some of these guys.

“Good choice,” he said, and signaled the bartender without taking his eyes off her. “I never seen you here before. This your first time?”

“Yes,” she said as he handed her a sweating bottle of Brooklyn Brown.

“Bottoms up,” he said, clinking bottles with her.

“Here’s to anything else that comes up,” she said.

He laughed and took a drink, wiping his mouth with a bare, muscular forearm. “So, where are you from? Austria or someplace?”

“Germany, actually.”

He laughed again and took another drink.

“That’s cool, that’s cool. They got places like this over there?”

“Oh, sure, plenty—in Berlin,” she guessed. She had never been to Berlin.

“Cool,” he said, gulping down some more beer.

Even in the dim light, she could see that his eyes were bloodshot, the pupils contracted, and there was a noticeable tremor in his hands. She considered what drugs he might be on, and guessed cocaine—and maybe something else as well. She swallowed some beer and looked around the room. Elena didn’t like drugs—she had seen too many people flip out on them.

“So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, draining the remainder of his beer in one long swallow. He tossed the bottle into a trash can behind the bar and flicked his hand toward the bartender, a gigantic black man with a shaved head, a tiny gold earring, and a swirl of colorful tattoos on his powerful arms. Elena wondered if they were prison tattoos. He wore an expression of grim stoicism as he tended to his increasingly rowdy clientele.

“Thanks,” her companion said with a grin when the stony-faced bartender placed another round in front of him. Ignoring the young man’s attempt to ingratiate himself, he collected the money and tip without making eye contact.

“By the way, my name’s Matthew,” the young man said, holding out his hand. “You can call me Matt—everyone does.”

“Hi, Matt,” Elena said, shaking his hand, which was warm and dry and unexpectedly grainy. She guessed maybe he did manual labor of some kind, based on the coarseness of his skin—she could see calluses on the palms of both hands. He looked at her expectantly, head cocked to one side, and she suddenly realized she had forgotten to come up with an alias.

“I’m … Lenny,” she said, thinking fast.

“Lenny,” he answered. “Like in
Of Mice and Men?”
“Or I
was
Lenny, before,” she continued. “Now I’m—Lottie.”

“Hey, I like that!” he chuckled. “Lottie Lenny, like Lotte Lenya. I love her—not as much as my ex-boyfriend, though. He has all her records.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “She is good, isn’t she?” But she was trying to figure out why a man with rough calluses on his hands would be familiar with John Steinbeck and Lotte Lenya.

“Drink up,” he said, sliding the second bottle toward her.

She gulped down the rest of her beer, tossed the bottle into the container behind the bar, and lifted the sweating bottle of Brooklyn Brown in a toast.

“Here’s to meeting new friends.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, taking a swig and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, Lottie, what do you like to do for fun?”

“Oh, that depends on who I’m doing it with,” she answered, batting her false eyelashes at him. The trick was to overdo it enough so that she didn’t look like a woman, but like a man trying to pass as a woman. The key was overstatement—but not too much so that it veered into camp.

“Are you—a full-service playmate?” he asked, with a glance at her crotch.

She understood what he meant. He was expecting her to have a penis, as an actual transvestite would. She had chosen the miniskirt to avoid the issue—it effectively covered her crotch area. This was the moment of truth, where she had to convince him of the lie.

“What do you suppose?” she said, pressing her well-muscled thigh against his.

“Hmm, let’s see,” he replied, reaching out a hand to grab her crotch.

She turned away, and deftly grasping him by the wrist, she placed it on her chest. “You’ll just have to wait and see,” she said. “Meanwhile, try this.”

“Hey, these are good,” he answered, squeezing her breast. “Where did you get them done?”

“That’s a secret,” she responded. Guiding his hand to her face, she placed two fingers inside her mouth and sucked on them.

He closed his eyes and moaned, letting his head loll back. “Mmm, baby, you’re a red-hot mama.”

“You haven’t seen anything,” she answered, but at that moment her left ear exploded with pain, and everything went dark.

When she came to she was lying on the floor of the bar, looking up at Matt. He was struggling with a tall, thin woman—no, a tranny—with long, dark hair (a wig?), a tight black jumpsuit, and wicked stiletto heels. A few of the other patrons at the bar were looking at them, but the dancing on the dance floor continued as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, baby, what are you doing?” Matt was saying, holding tightly onto her wrists as the transvestite tried to claw his face with her long crimson nails.

“You—pig—how
—could
—you?” she responded, out of breath from the effort of struggling.

“Hey, we was just flirting,” Matt said, still grasping her arms tightly.

“You call that
just flirting?”
the tranny hissed. Wrenching one hand free, she swiped at his face, nails clawing the air. But he ducked and pulled away from her, releasing his hold on her other arm.

“Whoa! You’re too intense for me, baby,” he said. Holding his hands up in surrender, he backed away from her. It was only then he seemed to notice Elena lying where she was on the floor. “Hey, sorry about that,” he said, reaching down to help her up.

The tranny in the stilettos roared and lunged toward him. Matt raised his hands once again and continued to back away, keeping his eyes on his adversary as he sidled toward the door. Eyes blazing, she followed, her lean body coiled like a lioness about to spring, teetering on her stilettos. Elena noticed she moved with surprisingly agility on such high, thin heels.

Elena was about to pick herself up off the floor when she felt a strong hand seize her by the shoulder and lift her to her feet. She turned to see the bartender towering over her. Up close, he looked huge—easily six and a half feet tall, at least 250 pounds of muscle. He moved with the oiled grace of a ballet dancer.

“You okay?” he asked, his stern face softening as he wiped the grime from his hands. The floor was filthy, and Elena shuddered at the thought of the disgusting organisms now crawling over her skin. Her one weakness was an intense squeamishness regarding germs and dirt—a fear she had never shared with anyone. Excessive cleanliness was a stereotypical German trait, so she kept her phobia to herself.

Now, however, she had to fight panic as she brushed the dirt from her clothing. “Don’t you have a bouncer in this place?” she asked the bartender.

“Yeah—me,” he said. “Violet’s a newcomer,” he added with a glance in her direction. There was no sight of her or Matt—they had already been swallowed up in the perspiring press of bodies. “She’ll get over it,” he continued. “She and Matt were an item last week, but he’s always on the lookout for fresh talent. Tough titties, but that’s the way it goes.” He lit a cigarette and held out the pack. “Want one?”

Elena stared at it. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in over ten years, since before she left Germany. It was all the rage in the Hamburg cafés—when she was a young actress she took up the habit to appear more sophisticated, even smoking one during a song in her nightclub act. But then her favorite uncle got throat cancer and she gave it up overnight.

“Sure, why not?” she said. Her hands trembled as she plucked a long, thin white cigarette from its cellophane wrapper. Holding it under her nose, she slid it slowly from one end to the other, inhaling deeply. The smell of raw tobacco brought back memories of her Hamburg days with unexpected vividness. Suddenly she was lounging against a shiny grand piano in a shimmery gold lamé dress, slit all the way up her thigh, a cigarette in one hand, a microphone in the other, crooning cabaret songs to an audience sitting in the darkness on the other side of the spotlight.

She slid the cigarette between her lips and leaned forward as the bartender held up a silver lighter and flicked the flame into life. She sucked in the smoke, held it in her lungs for a moment, and exhaled. Then she coughed violently, her head spinning as she grabbed his arm to steady herself.

“Been a while?” he said.

“Yeah,” she acknowledged. When the coughing subsided she took another drag, this time not taking in so much smoke. Her head continued to spin, but she managed not to cough. As the nicotine flowed through her bloodstream, she felt her body relax.
Some things you never forget.

She looked at the bartender, who was headed back to his post behind the bar. An impatient-looking man in tight black pants was waving a fistful of dollar bills at him.

“Hey,” she called out to him. “What’s your name?”

He glanced back at her as he ducked under the counter.

“Everyone calls me Diesel.”

She thought that was a strange name, but she just nodded. “I’m Lottie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lottie.”

“And you.” She gazed at him with admiration. Now here was a man you’d want on your side in a tight spot, she thought. Calm, intelligent, and so powerful looking that she guessed he could take on three men at once without flinching.

“I’ll have another beer, please,” she said. He pulled out a bottle and snapped off the cap in one fluid motion.

“It’s on the house,” he said, smiling for the first time that night.

By the time Elena left the Jack Hammer it was after three a.m. The party was by no means wrapping up inside, but she had had enough. Her eyes were burning from the cigarette smoke, and her mouth felt like sandpaper. She had downed more beer in this one evening than she was used to drinking in a week—not because she didn’t enjoy alcohol, but because maintaining a figure like hers took discipline.

She had her admirers at the bar. Several young men bought her drinks, but after the encounter with Matt’s jealous girlfriend, they seemed wary of getting too close to her. She kept her eye out for Matt or his girl—Diesel said her name was Violet—but they had faded into the evening, along with Elena’s makeup. Whatever mascara she hadn’t sweated off had gathered in cakes at the tips of her eyelashes. Her lipstick had long since been rubbed away, and her hair had wilted from the heat and humidity.

Yellow cabs streamed up Sixth Avenue, all taken. She stood on the corner for a while, then headed for the subway in her pointed heels, her feet protesting at every step. She felt light-headed and bone tired, and was looking forward to a long, hot bath before crawling into bed.

She was aware there was plenty of drug use in the bathrooms—people would disappear in groups of two or three and come back with red eyes, wiping their running noses. She heard the sound of sniffing coming from one of the stalls during her own trip to the restroom, and on the dance floor people smoked weed almost as much as cigarettes. Still, she wasn’t here on a drug bust. It was a more serious mission, and she would just have to overlook the illegal narcotics. The last thing she wanted to do was call attention to herself in a way that made anyone suspicious. She planned on returning again later in the week—maybe even tomorrow night, if she could stand it.

The walk to the subway felt endless. It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile, but with each step her feet cried out with pain. She longed to tear off her spiked heels and walk barefoot. The streets were fairly quiet, and she could even hear the wind rustling the leaves of the trees in the little pocket park on Sixth Avenue.

As she approached the entrance to the IRT on Waverly Place, she saw a black limousine with Jersey plates pull up to the curb. The automatic window slid down smoothly on the driver’s side, and a young man leaned out.

“Need a lift?”

“Thank God!” she answered, grateful for her good luck. The private car service would no doubt cost twice what a cab would be, but Elena didn’t care. The subway ride would have been long and ugly, and she was willing to pay triple fare just to get home.

When he asked her politely where she was headed and offered her a bottle of Evian water, she vowed to give him an extra-large tip. The automatic window whooshed back up as she settled back into the plush seat. Sipping the bottled water, she stared out at the buildings rushing by as the car glided uptown.