Strip Tease

Paul’s friends carried on with rowdy humor, baying witlessly and spritzing champagne at the stage. At first the dancers were annoyed about being sprayed, but eventually they fell into the spirit of the celebration. Slick with Korbel, they formed a laughing chorus line and high-kicked their way through an old Bob Seger tune. Bubbles sparkled innocently in their pubic hair. Paul Guber and his pals cheered themselves hoarse with lust.

At half-past two, a fearsome-looking bouncer announced the last call. While Paul’s buddies pooled their cash to pay the exorbitant tab, Paul quietly crawled on stage and attached himself to one of the performers. Too drunk to stand, he balanced on his knees and threw a passionate hug around the woman’s bare waist. She smiled good-naturedly and kept moving to the music. Paul hung on like a drowning sailor. He pressed his cheek to the woman’s tan belly and closed his eyes. The dancer, whose name was Erin, stroked Paul’s hair and told him to go home, sugar, get some rest before the big day.

A man yelled for Paul to get off the stage, and Paul’s friends assumed it was the bouncer. The club had a strict rule against touching the dancers for free. Paul Guber himself heard no warning—he appeared comatose with bliss. His best friend Richard, with whom Paul shared a cubicle at the brokerage house, produced a camera and began taking photographs of Paul and the naked woman. Blackmail, he announced playfully. Pay up, or I mail these snapshots to your future mother-in-law! Everyone in the club seemed to be enjoying themselves. That’s why Paul’s friends were so shocked to see a stranger jump on stage and begin beating him with an empty champagne bottle.

Three, four, five hard blows to the head, and still Paul Guber would not release the dancer, who was trying her best to avoid being struck. The bottle-wielding man was tall and paunchy, and wore an expensive suit. His hair was silver, although his bushy mustache was black and crooked. No one in Paul Guber’s bachelor party recognized him.

Raw sucking noises came from the man’s throat as he pounded on the stockbroker’s skull. The bouncer got there just as the champagne bottle shattered. He grabbed the silver-haired man under the arms and prepared to throw him off the stage in a manner that would have fractured large bones. But the bouncer alertly noticed that the silver-haired man had a companion, and the companion had a gun that might or might not be loaded. Having the utmost respect for Colt Industries, the bouncer carefully released the silver-haired man and allowed him to flee the club with his armed friend.

Amazingly, Paul Guber never fell down. The paramedics had to pry his fingers off the dancer’s buttocks before hauling him to the hospital. In the emergency room, his worried buddies gulped coffee and cooked up a story to tell Paul’s fiancée.

By the time the police arrived, the Eager Beaver lounge was empty. The bouncer, who was mopping blood off the stage, insisted he hadn’t seen a thing. The cops clearly were disappointed that the nude women had gone home, and showed little enthusiasm for investigating a drunken assault with no victim present. All that remained of the alleged weapon was a pile of sparkling green shards. The bouncer asked if it was okay to toss them in the dumpster, and the cops said sure.

Paul Guber’s wedding was postponed indefinitely. His friends told Paul’s bride-to-be that he had been mugged in the parking lot of a synagogue. In the car, speeding south on Federal Highway, Congressman David Lane Dilbeck rubbed his temples and said: “Was it a bad one, Erb?”

And Erb Crandall, the congressman’s loyal executive assistant and longtime bagman, said: “One of the worst.”

“I don’t know what came over me.”

“You assaulted a man.”

“Democrat or Republican?”

Crandall said, “I have no earthly idea.”

Congressman Dilbeck gasped when he noticed the pistol on his friend’s lap. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don’t tell me.”

Without emotion, Crandall said, “I had no choice. You were about to be maimed.”

Five minutes passed before the congressman spoke again. “Erb,” he said, “I love naked women, I truly do.”

Erb Crandall nodded neutrally. He wondered about the congressman’s driver. Dilbeck had assured him that the man understood no English, only French and Creole. Still, Crandall studied the back of the driver’s black head and wondered if the man was listening. These days, anyone could be a spy.

“All men have weaknesses,” Dilbeck was saying. “Mine is of the fleshly nature.” He peeled off the phony mustache. “Let’s have it, Erb. What exactly did I do?”

“You jumped on stage and assaulted a young man.”

Dilbeck winced. “In what manner?”

“A bottle over the head,” Crandall said. “Repeatedly.”

“And you didn’t stop me! That’s your goddamn job, Erb, to get me out of those situations. Keep my name out of the papers.”

Crandall explained that he was in the john when it happened.

“Did I touch the girl?” asked the congressman.

“Not this time.”

In French, Crandall asked the Haitian driver to stop the car and wait. Crandall motioned for Dilbeck to get out. They walked to an empty bus bench and sat down.

The congressman said, “What’s all this nonsense? You can talk freely in front of Pierre.”

“We’ve got a problem.” Crandall steepled his hands. “I think we should call Moldy.”

Dilbeck said no way, absolutely not.

“Somebody recognized you tonight,” said Crandall. “Somebody in that strip joint.”

“God.” Dilbeck shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s an election year, Erb.”

“Some little twerp, I didn’t get the name. He was standing by the back door when we ran out. Some skinny jerk-off with Coke-bottle glasses.”

“What’d he say?”

” ‘Attaboy, Davey.’ He was looking right at you.”

“But the mustache—”

“Then he said, ‘Chivalry ain’t dead.’ ” Crandall looked very grim.

Congressman Dilbeck said, “Did he seem like the type to stir up trouble?”

It was all Crandall could do to keep from laughing. “Looks are deceiving, David. I’ll be calling Moldy in the morning.” Back in the car, heading south again, Dilbeck asked about the condition of the man he’d attacked.

“I have no earthly idea,” Crandall said. He would phone the hospital later.

“Did he seem dead?”

“Couldn’t tell,” replied Crandall. “Too much blood.”

“Lord,” said the congressman. “Lord, I’ve got to get a grip on this. Erb, let’s you and me pray. Give me your hands.” He reached across the seat for Crandall, who shook free of the congressman’s clammy fervent paws.

“Knock it off,” Crandall snapped.

“Please, Erb, let’s join hands.” Dilbeck flexed his fingers beseechingly. “Join together and pray with me now.”

“No fucking way,” said the bagman. “You pray for both of us, David. Pray like hell.”

The next night, Erin was taking off her clothes, getting ready, when she told Shad that she’d checked with the hospital. “They said he’s out of intensive care—the man who got hurt.”

Shad’s eyes never looked up from the card table. “Thank God,” he said. “Now I can sleep nights.”

“The gun frightened me.” Erin was changing into her show bra. “He sure didn’t look like a bodyguard, did he? The one with the gun?”

Shad was deeply absorbed. Using a surgical hemostat, he was trying to peel the aluminum safety seal from a four-ounce container of low-fat blueberry yogurt. The light was poor in the dressing room, and Shad’s eyesight wasn’t too sharp. He hunched over the yogurt like a watchmaker.

“I gotta concentrate,” he said gruffly to Erin.

By now she’d seen the dead cockroach, a hefty one even by Florida standards. Legs in the air, the roach lay on the table near Shad’s left elbow.

Erin said, “Let me guess. You’ve had another brainstorm.”

Shad paused, rolling a cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. He sucked hard, then blew the smoke in twin plumes from his nostrils.

“The hell does it look like?” he said.

“Fraud,” said Erin. She stepped behind a door and slipped out of her skirt. “Fraud is what it looks like to me.”

Triumphantly, Shad lifted the foil (intact!) from the yogurt container. Carefully he placed it on the table. Then, with the hemostat, he lifted the dead cockroach by one of its brittle brown legs.

“Isn’t that your music?” he said to Erin. “Van Morrison. You better get your ass out there.”

“In a minute,” Erin said. She put on her G-string, the red one with seahorses. When Erin first bought it, she’d thought the design was paisley. One of the other dancers had noticed that the pattern was actually seahorses. Laughing seahorses.

Erin came out from behind the door. Shad didn’t look up.

“Have the police been around?” she asked.

“Nope.” Shad smiled to himself. Cops—they usually got about as far as the front bar and then forgot why they’d come. They’d wander through the Eager Beaver bug-eyed and silly, like little kids at Disney World. Cops were absolute saps when it came to bare titties.

Erin said she’d never seen a man get hit so hard with anything as the bachelor who got clobbered with the champagne bottle. “It’s a miracle there wasn’t brain damage,” she said.

Shad took this as criticism of his response time. “I got up there as quick as I could.” His tone was mildly defensive.

“Don’t worry about it,” Erin told him.

“He didn’t look the type. Of all the ones to go batshit.”

Erin agreed. The man wielding the Korbel bottle was not your typical strip-show creep. He wore a silk tie and passed out twenties like gumdrops.

Erin checked her stiletto pumps for bloodstains. “This is a lousy business,” she remarked.

“No shit. Why’d you think I’m sitting here fucking with a dead roach? This little bugger is my ticket out.”

As steady as a surgeon, Shad positioned the cockroach in the low-fat blueberry yogurt. With the beak of the hemostat, he pressed lightly. Slowly the insect sank beneath the creamy surface, leaving no trace.

Erin said, “You big crazy dreamer.”

Shad absorbed the sarcasm passively. “Do you get the Wall Street Journal!”

“No.” She wondered where he was heading now.

“According to the Journal” Shad said, “the Delicato Dairy Company is worth one hundred eighty-two million dollars, on account of Delicato Fruity Low-Fat Yogurt being the fastest-selling brand in the country. The stock’s at an all-time high.”

Erin said, “Shad, they won’t fall for this.” She couldn’t believe he was trying it again.

“You’re late, babe.” Shad jerked a thumb toward the stage. “Your fans are waiting.”

“I’ve got time. It’s a long number.” Erin slipped into her teddy (which would come off after the first number) and her heels (which would stay on all night).

Shad said, “That song, how come you like it so much? You don’t even got brown eyes.”

“Nobody looks at my eyes,” Erin said. “It’s a good dancing song, don’t you think?”

Shad was scrutinizing the yogurt. A hairy copper-colored leg had emerged from the creamy bog. Was it moving?

Shad said to Erin: “You ever see Deliverance! The movie, not the book. That last scene, where the shriveled dead hand comes out from the water? Well, come here and look at this fucking roach.”

“No thanks.” Erin asked if Mr. Peepers was in the audience tonight. That was the nickname for one of her regulars, a bony bookish man with odd rectangular eyeglasses. He usually sat at table three.

Shad said, “What, all of a sudden I’m supposed to take roll?”

“He called and left a message,” Erin said. “Said he had a big surprise for me, which is just what I need.” She dabbed on some perfume—why, she had no idea. Nobody got close enough to smell it. Unlike the other strippers, Erin refused to do table dances. Ten bucks was ridiculous, she thought, to let some drunk breathe on your knees. Shad said, “You want me to, I’ll throw his ass out.”

“No, if you could just hang close,” said Erin, “especially after what happened last night.”

“No sweat.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Erin said. Next came the lipstick. The boss preferred candy-apple red but Erin went with a burgundy rose. She’d hear about it from the other dancers, but what the hell.

Shad sat back from the yogurt project and said, “Hey, come and see. It’s just like new!”

“They could put you in jail. It’s called product tampering.”

“It’s called genius,” Shad said, “and for your information, I already got a lawyer can’t wait to take the case. And a Palm Beach shrink who swears I’m totally fucking traumatized since I opened a yogurt and found this damn cockroach—”