The Blackmail Club (17 page)

“I’m not a whore. I don’t … not with just anybody. It started with Harkin, then the mayor, then Tyson. There’s been no one else.”

She tapped the cup with her red fingernails, then extended her fingers, frowning when she saw the chipped polish. “I never gave a lap dance to anyone before Harkin. The girls keep telling me Donny’s is a great place to meet wealthy, important men. One night the bartender gave me a typed note that had been left for me at the bar: ‘When Harkin comes in tonight,’ the note said, ‘give him anything he wants.’ Folded inside the note was a thousand in cash! That night I did the deed for money for the first time.”

“When was that?” Jack asked.

“A long time ago.”

Nora asked, “How long?”

“Well, I’d only been at Donny’s about two months—no, less than that. I’d guess twenty months back, around that.”

“Who left the note with the thousand dollars?”

“Donny swears he didn’t, but I still believe he did. I mean, like, who else? Right? After that first night, Harkin became what the girls called a monther and he paid me. Toward the end he was paying twelve hundred each time.”

Jack held up his hand like a traffic cop. “What do you mean ‘toward the end?’”

“About two months ago Harkin stopped coming in the club, mid-February, I think.”

Jack moved around and sat on the edge of the coffee table close to Phoebe.

“When all this comes out,” he said, “the mayor and Tyson have the power and connections to leave you holding the bag. It’s time to tell what you know. Why did Donny push you to have sex with Harkin?”

“I don’t know what made Harkin special,” she said, punctuating each syllable with short, jerky shakes of her head. She wiped her eyes with the end of the dirty robe tie. “I should never have left home.”

“Are your folks still alive?” Nora asked. “Are you okay with them?”

“Yeah … It would just kill my mom if she knew what I was doing.” Phoebe sat still. Her eyes fixed on the brown carpet. A truck went by. A fly landed on top the wet cloth over what Jack now realized had to be a sculpture in progress. Then Phoebe continued as if she had not paused. “Mom thinks I work in the office at Donny’s. They don’t even know what kind of club it is. I love the money, but I hate myself for being weak.” She interlaced her fingers and hung her hands over the crown of her head.

“Life is really weird, you know? I used to think of my hometown as dull, now my memories of it seem, I don’t know … safe, I guess.” She gave a glimpse of a quirky smile. “In another year I should have enough money to go home and then go through school without having to work part time.”

“May I look?” Nora gestured toward the towel-shrouded figurine on the sculpting table.

Phoebe nodded and blushed. “Let me remove the cloth.”

Nora gasped and moved aside so Jack could see. The lump turned out to be a clay sculpture of a woman in a ragged dress, gazing heavenward. The face was Phoebe’s.

“Oh,” Nora breathed, “this is beautiful. Do you have more?”

“I have some at a friend’s house. She’s a photographer. Do you really like it?”

“You stay with this, girl. You’ve got talent.” Nora glanced at Jack, who retook the lead.

“Phoebe, did you keep the note the bartender gave you?”

“Yes. I’m probably silly, but somehow I figured it might prove something if I ever got … I don't know. In trouble, I guess.” She shrugged. “Do you want to see it?”

“No,” Jack said. “I want it. If you ever need me to return it, I will.”

“What are you gonna do with it?”

“For starters, I’ll find out whether or not the note was from Donny. I’ll let you know.”

“I guess it won’t hurt and I would like to know for real if he sent it. I’ll get it.”

Phoebe came back into her living room and handed Jack the note. She also brought Polaroids she had taken of several of her other sculpted pieces, the ones she had dropped off to have professionally photographed.

Jack looked at one picture, the sculpted painful expression on the face of dead actor James Dean, and another of a picador driving a lance into the shoulder of a bull. He handed them to Nora. After they complimented her work, Jack startled her back to the present.

“Tell me about Troy Engels.”

“Donny says he’s a V.I.P. He hoots and ogles the girls. He always comes in alone. We give him verbal foreplay because he sticks twenties in our G’s. He’s no big deal.”

She doesn’t know who he is
.

Jack took the cup from her hand and set it on the table. “Are you ready to quit? Right now.” He tapped the table with the tip of his index finger. “Today.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. Walk away. Don’t go in today. Quit. Go home. See your folks. Return to school. Become a sculptor. If you’re ever going to do it, why not today?”

Nora scooted down the couch so Phoebe could see her face.

The young lap dancer sat as still as one of her sculpted figurines, then said, “Maybe in another six months.”

Nora reached over and put her hand on Phoebe’s arm. “This will blow up before six months; we’d like to see you clear of the explosion. You’re in a bad life with a bad end. First, you hustled drinks. Then you started stage dancing, next came lap dancing. The number of men you’ve had sex with for money has grown from one to three. Soon there’ll be a fourth, then why not a fourteenth? It’s a slippery slope. Get off, or you’ll slide lower.”

Phoebe’s hands were shaking. “You’re right. I need to stop what I’m doing. I’ll tell Donny no more sex with the mayor. And I’ll gladly cut off that pig, Tyson. And if Harkin comes back, him too.”

“Phoebe, I meant quit totally. Cold turkey. Leave and go home, then back to school.”

If greed could be seen in the eyes, Jack saw it in hers.

“I want to, Mr. McCall, but I don’t have enough money. Not yet,” her sizeable bosom rose and fell with her animated speech. “I’ll only wait tables, stage dance, and do laps. There’s good money in lap dancing and most guys don’t take that long. I promise you, no more full sex. I will become a sculptor.”

They tried to persuade her for another ten minutes; then Phoebe arched her back. “Mr. McCall. Ms. Burke. I appreciate your interest in me and my art, but this is my decision. I’ll leave Donny’s by the end of this year and I’ll stop fucking for money immediately.”

The young lady was correct. It was her decision. Jack and Nora exchanged niceties with Phoebe Ziegler and left.

After three blocks, Nora looked at Jack. “The limping, rumpled old man Max saw visiting Donny’s club, that was you.”

They both laughed.

“That’s when you got Phoebe’s identity and set Donny up to tell her to cooperate.”

Jack nodded.

“Excuse me,” Nora said, after removing the grin from her face, “but, well,
dumb
is the word that comes to mind. You went to Donny’s from the hospital. In your condition you couldn’t have punched your way out of a paper bag.”

“I had the angles covered.”

“Oh? You had the angles covered? I’ll tell you what you had. You had a concussion. What if you’d passed out? What about that angle, Mr. 007?”

He stopped at the light.

“Well? What if you had passed out?”

“How long you know’d me, missy?”

“Damn it. Drop the cute cowboy crap.” She put a stern look on her face and crossed her arms, elevating her cleavage, a bra strap teasing his eye. “I’ve known you the better part of two years,” she said. “Now answer my question.”

He curled his hand around his wrapped steering wheel and squeezed. “If I could walk, I had to go. Donny didn’t expect me.”

Jack drove on in silence, figuring she knew he was right.

He knew she was right, too.

Chapter 26

After another mostly sleepless night watching old movies, and a late call to Nora, Jack didn’t call Clark’s Janitorial Service until ten in the morning. He gave his name as Walter Bartholomew.

“I’ve recently acquired two local office buildings,” he said, “for which I need a new janitorial service.” Gladys Clark quickly agreed that she and her husband Alan would meet Mr. Bartholomew for lunch in two hours.

Jack arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early and, after arranging for a quiet rear booth, he called Nora at the office. “I’m sorry I called you so late last night. I didn’t realize it was nearly two. You should have told me to take a flying jump and hung up.”

“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. I’ve had those nights. What old movie did you watch?”

“The only one I remember was
The Big Sleep
, with Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe. It’s a classic.”

“Sort of ironic, watching that movie when you couldn’t sleep?”

“You got that right. Anything happening there?”

“The typewriter expert should be here any minute. These days he rarely gets calls on typewriters, but the police have used him several times. You know, even if Donny’s confession for beating you up and the note Phoebe Ziegler gave us were typed on the same machine, it won’t tell us why Donny paid her to get it on with Randolph Harkin.”

“After you get the expert’s confirmation, I plan to ask Donny that very question.”

“I should know in an hour or so.”

Jack looked up to see the host coming toward him, menus in hand, with Alan and Gladys Clark trailing close behind.

“They’re here, Nora. I’ll get back to you.”

Gladys, a very large woman, wore an orange sack dress, and moved as if well-chewed caramel had replaced the fluid in her joints. Alan had thin shoulders and a fringe of hair circling his head. He wore black tennis shoes like Bennie Haviland had worn to climb into the dumpster.

Mr. Clark slid in first and moved to the closed end of the booth. His wife sat on the open end and removed a dark leather portfolio that had been substantially hidden under her gigantic arm.

They ordered and, as soon as the waiter had left the table, Jack stepped off the edge of his deception. “You two don’t look at all like your pictures.”

Mrs. Clark turned toward her husband, her tight brown curls swinging freely around her dumpling shaped face. Alan put his hand on top of his wife’s hand and they exchanged glances before he said, “What pictures, Mr. Bartholomew?”

Jack opened a folder and pushed copies of the photos of fugitives Anson and Jensen across the table.

Alan held up the pictures, angled for Gladys to see, and then shoved them back in Jack’s direction. “Just who are you, Mr. Bartholomew? And what do you want?”

Jack put his hands flat on the table. “For starters, my name isn’t Bartholomew. It’s Jack McCall of McCall Investigations. Thank you for not wasting time with a fruitless attempt at denial.” He put the photos back inside the folder.

The fat fingers of Ms. Jensen’s hand gathered part of the tablecloth as she crabbed her flat hand back into a fist. She spoke through thin lips, “My husband asked what you wanted, Mr. McCall.”

“I’ll answer that in a moment. Let’s start with what we know. You both are long-sought federal fugitives. The murdered body of your partner in the National Armory job, Benjamin Haviland, got left in a dumpster not far from my office.”

She eased out her thick tongue, circled her lips and drew it back.

“I’m not with the police or the FBI,” Jack said. “Your cooperation will decide whether I’ll benefit most from your help or from the headline: Local PI nabs Federal Fugitives.”

Lunch came, Jack had ordered for them, but the Clarks were in no mood to eat. Jack squeezed a lemon wedge into his iced tea and sipped. Then spoke. “Mrs. Clark, I see you brought your portfolio. Open it and prepare a list of every building to which you’ve had keys within the past three years. Just the names of the buildings will be fine.”

She rose from the booth, her doughy feet oozing around the velcro-straps of her sandals. “What if we just tell you to go to hell and walk right out?”

“Your choice, Mrs. Clark, I’ve got a winner no matter what you decide. Do you prefer I call you Joan or Gladys?”

“Gladys has been my name for a very long time now.” She sat back down, the fat rings of her neck and arms clustering like groups of soap bubbles.

Jack gestured toward Carl Anson, “how ‘bout you?”

He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Alan is now my name. Listen, Mr. McCall, what we did, well, we were ignorant. The Vietnamese War was wrong and racial discrimination was running amuck in America. In the foolish impatience of youth, we felt patriotic. What we did was criminal. We know that now.”

“Who killed Benjamin Haviland?”

The married fugitives shared a stolen glance. Alan spoke. “Ben had been a nervous wreck for months before his death.”

“We don’t know who killed him,” Gladys blurted, “or why. It’s been driving us crazy. We’ve hardly slept since Benny was murdered.” She put her head on Alan’s shoulder. “I think I’m going to be sick, honey.” Her face went pale. She closed her eyes.

These two were leftovers from an earlier age, matured hippies who had outgrown their civil disobedience.

“Benny was an equal partner in your crime,” Jack said. “Why wasn’t he an equal owner in your business?”

Alan Clark laid his glasses on the table. “Benny was a follower. Truth is he would never have gotten involved with the Armory job in ‘72 if we hadn’t pushed him. When Bennie’s money ran out he came back to us for a job. Gladys and I had gotten married. We had each other. Ben had no one. He worked hard but had no life. Every Saturday night he would sit, drink, and watch the girls at Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club. Once a month he would stay after they closed to shampoo their carpets. He did it off the books. We knew he used our equipment. We looked the other way. He traded the shampoo job for free drinks and, every so often, Donny would comp Bennie a lap dance.”

Gladys came out of her stupor. “Benny had a pathetic life, and we are partly responsible.”

The waiter came over to ask if the food was okay. Neither of them had taken a bite. Jack told him they had experienced a mutual loss and really didn’t have an appetite. The lemon slices were still wedged onto the rims of Alan’s and Gladys’s untouched glasses when the waiter cleared the table.