Strip Tease (30 page)

Darrell Grant, weepy, slurring: “I lost my baby girl.”

“That’s not true,” Erin said.

“All because of you.”

“Darrell, it’s not too late.”

He turned the knife in his fingers, closed his palm around the handle. “Don’t you understand? I escaped from jail. That means I got no future to speak of.”

Erin said, “Everyone fucks up occasionally.”

“My plan was me and Angie hittin” the road. Not anymore. Is that a fair statement?”

One of his eyelids had closed. Erin prayed that it would affect his accuracy with the knife. “If you kill me,” she said, “you’ll never see her again.”

“And if I don’t kill you,” he said, “I’ll hate myself for not tryin’.”

Erin had always believed that her ex-husband was incapable of homicide, except by accident. Now, watching Darrell Grant fondle the cheap cutlery, she realized she might’ve misjudged him. What if he stabbed her? Erin thought, ludicrously, of how disappointed her mother would be. When one’s only daughter is hacked to death wearing a sequined bra top and a G-string—well, there’s really no way to explain it to one’s friends at the orchid club.

“Darrell,” Erin began.

“Shut your eyes. I can’t manage if you’re lookin’ at me.”

But Erin wouldn’t close her eyes. She scorched him with a glare. “I won’t let you do this to Angela.”

“Hush up,” he cried. “Who’s got the knife, huh?”

“I won’t let you.”

“Shut your goddamn green eyes!”

“Why?” Erin said. “They remind you of somebody?”

“Oh, Lord Christ.” He raised the knife with both hands.

Erin said, “Put it down, Darrell.” A breathless whisper.

“No way.”

“Darrell, please. For Angie’s sake.”

“I said, shut your eyes.”

“Drop the fucking knife!” A man’s voice at the door. Erin felt Darrell Grant go rigid. He cocked his head, waiting. He did not drop the fucking knife.

“Junior,” said the voice, Shad’s voice. “I’m counting to three.”

Erin watched her ex-husband mouthing to himself: One Mississippi, two Mississippi… and then a branch snapped. That’s what it sounded like.

Darrell flew off Erin as if launched by a spring. A plangent wailing now accompanied the melodies of Gloria Estefan. Erin sat up, covering her breasts with her hands. There was Shad with his tire iron, Mr. Orly clutching a can of Dr. Pepper, and Darrell Grant screaming.

Darrell—his arm hanging crooked and splintered at the elbow, a blond spike of a bone poking through the gray skin, dripping darkness down the front of his jeans.

Shad said, “Junior, you count too slow.” He whipped off the beret and bowed his shiny dome in Darrell Grant’s direction. “You remember carving this punkin? I’ll bet you do.”

“Take him outside,” Orly muttered, and disappeared down the hall.

Erin got to her feet, wobbling. The faces in the mirror were a blur. She pointed at the reflection that most closely resembled her ex-husband. “Darrell,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t do it.”

Then: “God, I don’t feel so good.”

Shad caught her in one arm as she sagged. The whimpering Darrell Grant somehow lurched to his feet and stumbled from the dressing room. Shad placed Erin on a small divan and tucked a musty pillow under her head.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her. “Junior forgot his knife.”

Erin was surprisingly calm. She borrowed Orly’s phone and dialed the Martin County Sheriffs Office to report the sighting of her fugitive ex-husband. She described his gruesome injury, and hinted that Darrell might soon surface at a local emergency room. The cop on the other end was no Al Garcia. He took the information haltingly, and asked numerous vague questions. Erin had to spell her name three times because he kept asking her if it was “Aaron—like the baseball player.”

When she got off the phone, Orly said, “We got a policy against husbands and boyfriends at this club.”

“Darrell is neither,” Erin said, “and I didn’t invite him.”

“He crazy enough to come back?”

“That’s hard to say, Mr. Orly. The police are after him.”

“Lovely. Maybe we’ll have a shootout in the pasta pit.”

Shad said, “The boy’s in no shape to fight. I busted his ulna to smithereens.”

Orly frowned. “His what?”

Erin announced that she was going home to take a hot shower. Shad got the.38 Special and followed in his car. There was no sign of a lurking green Pontiac. He parked by Erin’s apartment until the lights went out. Then he circled the complex four times and drove back to the club. Orly was waiting at the front bar.

“Those fucking Lings,” he fumed, “they’re trying to steal Urbana. A thousand bucks they offered her!”

Shad said nothing. He had a feeling there was more.

Orly, dropping his voice: “Plus they ratted me to the Health Department.”

“You mean Beverage.”

“No, Health.” Orly unfolded a yellow paper and smoothed it violently with the heels of his hands. He pushed it down the bar toward Shad. “Read it,” he said.

The complaint charged Orly with using “contaminated food products in a manner that poses a direct and compelling threat to the public safety.” Shad assumed it referred to the topless pasta wrestling.

Orly said, “It’s a damn lie.”

“I know,” Shad said. “The stuff is always fresh. I check the packaging dates myself.”

“That’s exactly what I told the little creep.”

“And?”

“He claims he got a sample of bad vermicelli from the wrestling pit—I forgot when, last Tuesday or something. It says right there on the paper. He put it in a jar and hauled it to some goddamn lab in Miami.”

Three types of nasty-sounding bacteria—Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteriae and Staphylococcus—were listed on the health inspector’s complaint. “This is bullshit,” Shad said. “We been set up.”

“Keep reading,” Orly told him.

“Hey, what’s this about orifices?”

The report stated: “During the so-called wrestling matches, several male customers were observed attempting to insert said contaminated food product into the mouths and other body orifices of the female performers.”

Shad pushed the paper back at Orly. “It doesn’t happen every night. Guys get drunk, you know how it goes.”

Orly turned away from the bar. “They make it sound so disgusting. Bottom line, it’s just fucking noodles.”

The two men sat wordlessly. Sabrina was on the main stage, Monique Jr. was in the cage and a new girl named Suzette was dancing tables in the front row. Suzette’s claim to fame was a cameo in a recent George Michael video. Orly said she had played a nun in bicycle pants.

Every song Kevin put on was by Prince or Madonna or Marky Mark; the severity of Shad’s headache made him wonder if the music had caused his brain to swell. He removed the beret and balanced a bag of ice cubes on his twitching scalp.

“Where’s Urbana?” he asked.

Orly said she went to the Flesh Farm to negotiate with the Lings. “So much for loyalty.” He paused. “They got a wind machine over there? Because Urbana won’t dance near a wind machine.”

“That’s right,” Shad said.

“What’m I saying? A grand is a grand.”

Shad told him not to worry. “She won’t do friction. Not for a million bucks.”

“You ever think,” said Orly, “that maybe they don’t want her for friction?”

Shad signaled the bartender to bring the boss a fresh Dr. Pepper. Orly continued: “The Ling brothers aren’t stupid. They know a liability potential when they see one. With those tits, she could kill a man easy.” He tongued the rim of the soda can. “Here’s my theory: They’re getting out of friction dancing and aiming upscale. They’re trying to buy some class, you know? Be respectable like us.”

“Respectable,” Shad said. Mr. Orly could be very amusing at times. Shad adjusted the ice bag to fit the contour of his skull. “You sure it was them who ratted?”

“Who else. They’re still pissed about the snake dancer, what’s-her-name.”

Kevin approached the bar and buoyantly asked for a Perrier. His expression darkened when he felt Shad’s glare. Quickly the disc jockey backed away. Shad lunged for him, but missed. Kevin scurried back to the sound booth.

Orly was saying: “That damn health inspector, he went through the whole joint. I mean brick by brick.”

“Yeah?”

“The thing is, I panicked slightly. I dumped your cottage cheese in the toilet.”

Shad shut his eyes. “Damn,” he said.

“I had to,” said Orly. “The guy was relentless. He finds that goddamn scorpion and then what? Already he’s threatening to shut us down.”

“So you flushed it.”

“Get yourself another one. Send me the bill.”

Shad was downhearted. “I’m fucking jinxed. That’s all.”

Orly motioned for the bouncer to follow him outside. Shad couldn’t have been more pleased. The traffic noise was a Brahms lullaby compared to the mindless shit that Kevin was blasting on the sound system.

In the parking lot, Orly selected a Volvo sedan and centered himself heavily on the hood. “So—what do we do about these Lings? I’m open to ideas.”

Shad said, “My brain hurts.”

“You’re the only one I can trust.”

“I ain’t no arsonist, Mr. Orly. I can’t light a fuckin’ barbecue.”

“Well, then, let’s you and me think.”

A charcoal Acura pulled in and parked near the front awning. Urbana Sprawl got out. She was dressed for a Palm Beach cancer ball. Orly and Shad had never seen her in such sumptuous clothes.

“So, how’d it go?” Orly’s voice was tight.

The dancer said, “I’m here, right? So let it drop.”

Shad glanced at Orly. “I told you.”

With a squeak, Orly slid his butt off the hood. “Wait a minute, girl. You turned down a thousand dollars to stay here and work for me?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Urbana said, irritably.

Shad squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“He wanted to play ‘windshield wiper’ with my boobs.”

“Who?” Orly said.

“Ling. He tried to pull down my straps and—”

“Which Ling?” asked Shad.

“The little one. I broke two nails on his face.” Urbana displayed her damaged manicure. “I wouldn’t work for those bastards in a zillion years.” She slipped between Orly and Shad and hurried into the club.

Orly said, “One of us should’ve got the door.”

Shad gazed down the street, toward the distant winking neon of the Flesh Farm. “Mr. Orly,” he said, “which Ling is the little one?”

“Does it matter now?”

“Nope. It truly doesn’t.”

The Princess Pia began attracting fish the day it settled in seventy-nine feet of water off Fort Lauderdale beach. Dive-boat captains such as Abe Cochran scouted the junked freighter regularly, particularly on those mornings when they were low on fuel and energy, and didn’t wish to travel far from port. Where in the Atlantic they took their customers depended on the customers themselves. Well-traveled scuba divers wouldn’t settle for exploring such an obvious tourist scam as a newly sunken banana boat. Tourists, however, were suckers for it. They were delighted merely to be blowing bubbles, and vastly enthralled by any fleeting glimpse of marine life. Many of them didn’t know a queen angelfish from a sturgeon, leaving Captain Abe Cochran free to embellish the underwater sights.

On the morning of October sixth, Kate Esposito and her boyfriend climbed aboard Abe Cochran’s thirty-five-foot charter boat, the Alimony III. They were joined by four young travel agents who were visiting Fort Lauderdale for a convention. Abe Cochran recognized the group for what it was, and set a true course for the wreck of the Princess Pia. The seas were calm, and the anchor held on the first drop. The travel agents were badly hung over, so Abe Cochran handed out snorkels and instructed them to swim close to the stern, where he could keep an eye on them. This left Kate Esposito and her boyfriend to dive the freighter alone.

Kate had learned to scuba dive as a teenager in a YWCA swimming pool in Boston, but her lifelong dream was to visit the tropics. She was greatly anticipating her first moray eel; her boyfriend had purchased an inexpensive underwater camera for the occasion.

As they rumbled backward off Abe Cochran’s boat, Kate Esposito noticed that the water was murkier than she expected. “Gin-clear” is what the tourist brochures had advertised, but Kate could barely see ten feet in front of her face. Her disappointment ebbed as she approached the wreck of the Princess Pia, which lay unbroken on its starboard side. To Kate, it seemed as awesome and eerie as the Titanic. Together she and her boyfriend swam the length of the bare freighter. Clouds of small aqua-striped fish swam in and out of the dynamite gashes, and once a pair of leopard rays winged gracefully out of the wheelhouse. Each sighting brought bubbles of excitement from Kate and her boyfriend, who attempted to snap pictures of every sea creature they encountered.

Kate was the better diver, and it was she who decided to investigate the ulterior of the hull. She knew, from documentaries on the Discovery Channel, that moray eels preferred dark and remote crevices; perhaps one had taken up residence inside the scuttled Princess Pia. Kate tapped on her boyfriend’s tank and signaled her intentions. He waved lamely and handed her the camera. Through the dive mask, Kate’s eyes flickered in annoyance. Alone she swam through an open hatch cover on the aft deck. Her boyfriend watched the orange flippers disappear into the ship. He checked his wristwatch: ten minutes, then he was going after her.

Milky shafts of pale light broke the darkness of the cargo hold. Kate Esposito moved slowly, feeling her way. The surface of the metal was smooth and unencrusted because the wreck was so new. Seaweed hung in cinnamon tendrils from the braces, and schools of small fish were abundant, shards of glitter in the fuzzy penumbra. As Kate worked her way deeper into the hold, the water felt cooler and heavier against her legs. A saucer-shaped object shone against the freighter’s dull iron skin. Kate reached for the shining disc, knowing that it couldn’t be anything precious or valuable, but still not expecting a wire-spoked hubcap. Laughing into her regulator, she let the hubcap fall from her hands.

A long gray form took shape in front of her. Swimming closer, Kate Esposito discerned sharp angles of chrome and glass—a car, chained to the spine of the hull! Not a clunker, either, but a late-model American sedan.

Very weird, Kate thought. On a fender panel, she located a plastic nameplate: Lincoln Continental. Why would someone sink a brand new Lincoln? Maybe it was a gag, she thought, a publicity stunt by one of the radio stations. With one finger, she wrote her first name in the algae film growing on the puckered vinyl roof. Then she snapped a picture of it for her boyfriend.

Except for a cracked driver’s window, the Continental was in remarkably good shape. Even the bumper sticker was intact:

HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR LAWYER TODAY?

Kate Esposito saw that the trunk of the car was slightly ajar: Now there’s an ideal place for a moray eel. From a mesh dive-bag she retrieved a handful of frozen pilchards, which Abe Cochran had given her to feed the marine life, such as it was. Kate picked up one of the stiff minnows and dangled it gingerly above the crack of the Lincoln’s trunk. No sinewy green eel emerged to gobble it. After a minute or so, the pilchard came apart in her fingers. Kate got another one and tried again, wiggling the dead fish as enticement. Nothing moved for it.

No one home, Kate thought. With the toe of a flipper she nudged the lid of the car trunk. It opened in slow motion.

Kate Esposito’s boyfriend was trying to catch a baby sea turtle when Kate rifled out of the freighter’s hatch and kicked frenetically for the surface. Kate’s boyfriend followed the trail of bubbles to Abe Cochran’s boat, where Kate had crawled up on the teak dive platform. Now she was on all fours, coughing up breakfast. The travel agents, treading water near the bow, warbled excitedly through their snorkels.

Abe Cochran laconically ordered all hands into the boat. Kate’s boyfriend yanked off his mask and asked her what she’d seen inside the Princess Pia.

“Crabs,” she sobbed, “eating a dead lawyer.” It took the Broward sheriff’s divers four hours to recover the bodies of Mordecai and his cousin Joyce. Preserving an underwater crime scene proved too much of a challenge, especially when a school of aggressive lemon sharks arrived. The Lincoln Continental was left for another day.