The Day Trader (22 page)

“Come on,” Vincent says, his voice turning testy. “Live a little. What your wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” He chuckles. “I saw you trying to make time with those girls sitting behind us at the baseball game. I know what you wanted.” He gestures toward the door. “I guarantee you the girls inside here are way better looking than those girls at the game, and you won’t have to work anywhere near as hard to get their attention.”

“I don’t have much cash,” Roger complains.

“That’s all taken care of,” Vincent explains smoothly. “You don’t need any money tonight. We’ll be in the Champagne Room, away from the riffraff. Everything in the Champagne Room is comped.”

“No.” Roger shakes his head like a child at the dinner table refusing to eat his vegetables. “I’m not going in.”

Vincent shrugs. “Fine. You can wait in the damn limo for all I care.” He looks at me. “Come on, Augustus, let’s go.”

I don’t know if it’s the grinding music or the blue light or the momentary glimpse of a naked woman, but something draws me toward the door. I’ve never been to a strip club before. Vincent has invited me to join him several times. But I’ve always turned down the invitations, which is probably why he made tonight a surprise. He didn’t want me to have the chance to back out.

I take a step toward the door, then stop as Melanie’s image looms in my mind. Am I betraying her memory by going into a place like this so soon after her death? I can only imagine what her parents would say.

“Come on, Augustus,” Vincent urges.

I’ve always wanted to go inside a club like this. I should probably turn away like Roger and go home, but suddenly I really want to find out about what goes on behind this door.

I feel Vincent’s hand on my shoulder, tugging me along. “What about Roger?” I ask.

“Screw him.”

“I’m catching a cab,” Roger mutters, turning and walking away.

“Roger,” I call after him.

“I’ll be fine,” he yells back, breaking into a trot as if he’s afraid we’ll chase after him.

I watch until he moves beneath the glow of an overhead streetlight and disappears around the corner of the building. I’m surprised that he reacted the way he did. I thought he would have been leading the charge inside.

“It’s just you and me now, pal,” Vincent says, pulling me toward the door again, “and I’m kind of glad about that.”

The Two O’Clock Club is incredible. The women are wearing almost nothing, and they’re all gorgeous. I mean
gorgeous
. And they all have these kind of bored expressions on their faces, like it’s no big deal to be walking around nude in front of all these men.

The large main room is furnished with plush chairs and tables and has watercolors of nude women on the walls. There’s a long bar on one side of the place, and a wide stage on the other with several silver poles a couple of inches in diameter rising twenty feet from the stage’s shiny black tiles all the way to the ceiling. There must be fifty men seated at the tables watching three women in various states of undress writhe around up there. As I’m watching, one of the women onstage jumps up and swings herself around and around on the pole to the far left, balancing herself with one foot and one hand while her long blond hair flows behind her.

The blue light makes everything white seem very bright. There’s a guy standing at the long bar wearing a white shirt, dark pants, and white sneakers. When he picks up his drink and saunters back to his table I can’t see his legs very well, but his shirt and shoes glow like neon.

When he sits down at his table there’s a woman waiting for him and she’s dressed in nothing but a skimpy bikini. She grabs the glass from him, takes a long drink, then raises the glass to his lips. Then she places the glass down on the table, drops to her knees, spreads his legs, moves in between them, and seductively removes the bikini top so her breasts spill out on his lap. She grinds them into him for a few moments, then stands, turns around, and sits back on his lap, grinding some more and steadying herself by clasping his thighs. When my eyes become accustomed to the dim light, I see that there are twenty or thirty girls giving these same kinds of private performances all around the place.

“This way,” Vincent calls above the music, distracting me from what’s going on in the main room. He waves toward a dark corridor. “We don’t want to waste time out here. This is nothing. Wait ’til you see what goes on in the Champagne Room.”

As I follow Vincent, I notice rows of pictures on the hallway wall—photographs of women performing onstage or at the tables, as well as signed black-and-white head shots of the dancers. They’re all incredibly beautiful. There isn’t an average-looking girl on the wall, and it’s amazing to me. Why would they choose to do this? Isn’t there a way to make a decent living without them having to compromise themselves in front of a pack of animals? It has to be about more than money.

Suddenly I stop short, and it’s as if every ounce of breath has been sucked from my lungs. I stumble back, away from the wall of photographs, until I can go no farther because I hit the opposite wall. For a few moments I bend over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, praying that this is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up. I shut my eyes tightly, hoping the grinding music and the catcalls from down the corridor will fade to nothing—but they don’t.

Slowly I rise up and lurch toward one specific picture hanging on the wall. It’s a woman onstage. She’s grabbing one of the silver poles with both hands, nothing on her body but a gold chain belt that doesn’t even hide her navel. I take another look and there can be no denying it. The woman in the photograph is Melanie.

In the picture, men around the stage are cheering and she’s smiling that same gorgeous smile she gave me at our wedding right after college and said good-bye to only a few weeks ago. Melanie up on the stage for the animals to enjoy. This is where the crumpled tens and twenties on her bureau came from. And the rolls of bills in the basement. This is where she was at night when I thought she was working in Frank Taylor’s law office.

I look slowly to my left and Vincent is staring at me, an anxious expression on his face. He must know what I’ve seen.

CHAPTER 13

Vincent and I sit next to each other in the back of the limousine, staring straight ahead into the darkness. He told the driver to get out and stay out until otherwise instructed, so we’re alone. Through the tinted window I can see the guy leaning back against the brick wall next to the back entrance of the Two O’Clock Club, puffing on a cigarette, oblivious to the cesspool of emotion I’m drowning in. I thought I had been able to come to grips with Melanie’s death. I thought I had been able to accept what had happened and go on with my life. But the despair is back, and it’s worse than before.

“You all right, Augustus?”

We’ve been sitting here for five minutes in total silence. “No.”

“I’m sorry you saw that photograph.
Really
sorry. I swear I didn’t know it was there. I wouldn’t have brought you here tonight if I had. You know that.”

I don’t respond. I don’t know how to respond. For some period of time Melanie led a double life. She was an exotic dancer. A stripper. All along I thought it was Frank Taylor distracting her, but now I find out there was more. Much more. How am I
supposed
to respond?

“Talk to me, Augustus,” Vincent pleads. “You’ve got to talk to me.”

The worst part is that I’ll never be able to ask Melanie about it. I’ll never be able to find out why she’d want to hurt me like this. Maybe Vincent and the women Melanie worked with at the club will be able to shed some light on what was going on, but anything they tell me will be secondhand. I’ll never know if they’re telling me the truth, or just giving me some sugar-coated version they think will be less painful.

“You can’t just sit there and say noth—”

“What do you know about all of this?” I snap, my voice shaking. It’s Vincent’s turn to go silent. “You’re obviously a regular at this place.”

“I don’t come here that often. Once a month maybe.”

“When those two guys opened the back door, they all but saluted you.”

“I know the owner. They’ve been told to treat me right when I show up.”

“So what else do you know?”

“I really don’t—”

“Vincent!” If Melanie was willing to take her clothes off in front of men at a place like the Two O’Clock Club, she might have been willing to do other things. Worse things. “Tell me what you know!” The driver glances toward the limousine—he must have heard me yell even though all the windows are closed—but I don’t give a rat’s ass. “Tell me, dammit!”

It hits me that the Two O’Clock Club could somehow be related to Melanie’s death. It isn’t that far from the alley where her body was found. Maybe one of the club’s regulars developed a fatal attraction to her as he watched her dance. The kind of monster you hear about on television. Maybe he finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a date after he paid her for a private dance, and when she turned him down he was so bitter he tracked her down and murdered her. I let my face fall into my hands. Or maybe she accepted the offer and when they were alone things got out of hand. Maybe being rough excited him, and he couldn’t stop himself. When he was finished he dumped her body in the alley and disappeared into the night. It’s horrible to have to consider these things.

“It’s not what you think,” Vincent says.

“How do you know what I think?”

“You think Melanie and I were having an affair,” he says. “I know you do.”

“Were you?”

“No,” he answers firmly. “Melanie and I never slept together. That’s the truth.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because for twenty years I’ve always been loyal to you. I’ve always tried to help. What about the loan? What about the ten million you’re gonna be managing soon? I’ve always had your best interests at heart. Down deep, you know that. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

I swallow hard. Reggie wanted to know if Melanie had ever performed for me. I thought it was an odd question but now I wonder. Reggie seemed to know a lot of things. Like my father’s true story. He knew where I worked and I’m convinced he already knew about the insurance policy. Maybe somehow he knew she was working here too.

And maybe Vincent’s more involved in everything than he’s let-ting on.

“How did Melanie come to start working at the Two O’Clock Club?” I ask, my voice dropping to a whisper. “When did it happen?” I’m not convinced by Vincent’s denial of anything. His sexual appetite is enormous, especially when he’s been drinking, and I don’t believe for a second he would have been able to resist Melanie if she had come on to him. No matter how much he tells me he’d never do anything to hurt me. “Tell me.”

Vincent takes a deep breath. “One afternoon last fall, Melanie and I ran into each other on the Mall. She was taking a walk at lunch, and we bumped into each other in front of the Smithsonian.”

“And?”

“And we got a bite to eat at an outdoor café on Seventeenth Street. It was all very innocent.”

“Go on.”

“We talked about normal stuff. You know, the weather, my job, her job. Then all of a sudden she starts telling me about how you guys are broke. How you’re scraping to make ends meet, but it isn’t working and you’re falling further and further behind each month. But I already know that, right? I’ve already gotten the five grand for you, but I don’t say anything to her about that because I know you don’t want me to tell her.” Vincent rubs his eyes, like he’s got a headache and he wishes he could be anywhere else. “Then Mel says she’s thinking about taking a second job at night. She’s going to do word processing for a big law firm downtown to make nine bucks an hour. She says her boss knows a partner at the big firm and is arranging the whole thing.” Vincent rubs his eyes again, harder, then exhales loudly.

I turn on the seat toward him. “And?”

He leans back and stretches his neck, as if it’s stiff. He’s stalling.

“Vincent.”

“I told her I knew of a place where a woman with a body like hers could make a helluva lot more than nine bucks an hour.”

“What? Jesus Christ!”

Vincent clenches his fists. “I was joking, for God’s sake,” he says quickly. “How could I have been so stupid?”

“Exactly.”

“I didn’t think she’d take me seriously, Augustus. I was just kidding with her because I could see how much she hated the thought of sitting at a desk, word processing until midnight. But she asked me what I meant. She wouldn’t let it go.”

“And?”

“And I told her.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. That some of the girls at this club make three to four hundred dollars on weekend nights. All cash.”

“I can’t believe you did this.”

“She wanted me to bring her down here that night, but I wouldn’t,” Vincent continues, as if that initial refusal somehow absolves him of any major guilt. “I mean, she wanted to do it right away. There was no hesitation on her part. In fact, she told me she’d always had a fantasy about being an exotic dancer.” Vincent’s chin drops slowly to his chest. “Like I said, I told her I was joking about the whole thing. She pestered me about it all through the rest of lunch, but I still wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t tell her the name of the place so she couldn’t come down here on her own.”

“Then how the hell did she end up here?”

“She kept calling me, Augustus. She begged me. She said Christmas was coming and she wanted to be able to buy nice things for her family and something very special for you, but she didn’t have the money. She said it was tearing her apart. She swore to me that she’d only do it until she had the money she needed, and that would be it.”

My “very special” gift from Melanie last Christmas was a plain sweater from JCPenney that was too small. She said she was going to return it when it didn’t fit, but she never did. “So you brought her here?”

Vincent nods, regretfully. “Yes,” he admits, his voice barely audible. “Like I told you, I know the guy who owns the club pretty well and he agreed to let her go onstage. He was skeptical when I told him she had no experience, but he owed me a favor.” Vincent’s eyes take on a distant look, and he shakes his head slowly. “It was a Tuesday night so there weren’t many people here. They always start new girls on weeknights in case they get stage fright or aren’t very good. But she had the guys drooling right away. I mean, they were in awe. She made two hundred bucks that night and she knew she could do even better.” He clears his throat. “She enjoyed it. You could tell. She was a natural.”