02. The Shadow Dancers (21 page)

Still, I managed to pick up a decent and in-style wardrobe. Seemed most skirts was at or above the knee, and worn with stockings and real high high-heeled leather boots with fur trim. While they hadn't thought of pantyhose yet, they did have nylons. Tops were mostly blouses, although you could get leather open vests to match the boots and stuff. Bras were real old-fashioned and real stiff, but all "decent" women wore 'em. My biggest problem used to be fit. I needed a lot of half-sizes and I got real wide feet, and it's always been a problem to get a good fit, which was why I dressed so casual and cheap most times even after I had money, but in Lindy's world they actually would measure and tailor stuff for you and have you pick it up-in twenty-four hours! There was something to be said for this world. Guys came out and pumped your gas and cleaned your car windows and checked your oil all automatically, for example.

I admit I had trouble gettin' cabs and the attention of salesclerks and waitresses, and I knew why, but white folks almost never did-even if the waitresses or cab drivers or clerks themselves was black, which some were. I ain't sure it was the color itself so much as in this place bein' black signaled "poor."

Once I started to feel comfortable gettin' around here- learnin' the rules, you might say-and got all the briefings I could, it was time to go to work. Lindy had a service where you could call collect from most any phone anyplace and either get hold of her or leave detailed messages, even information, that would be taken and passed on in strict confidence. She also had contracts with local agencies in Philadelphia and New Jersey who'd come runnin' if I called with the right code words. I also had a driver's license, passport and other documents, and a bank account as Beth
Louise Parker in an Atlantic City bank. I needed to have some ready cash around, since they didn't get around to inventin' the MasterCard there yet and I wasn't a likely candidate for individual store accounts. I did like the fact that all my IDs listed my right birth date but the wrong year. It was nice to be so suddenly under thirty again, even if only on paper and only by half a year.

Atlantic City was never much in early November, and here it didn't have the casinos. The boardwalk was mostly deserted, most of its businesses shut down till summer, and the place was left to the permanent residents. The rest of the city didn't look no better than it did in my world; the whole place looked and smelled like the worst of Camden. I took a small apartment in the black section of the city that was no great shakes as a furnished apartment but wasn't no roach motel, neither. I also hired a small car-no problem parkin' on the streets in November-that was old and sad-lookin' but ran okay, but it took a little time for me to make a turn and wind up on the left side of the road.

The general agreement was that I would call Lindy's special number once a week without fail, even if I had nothin' to report. Of course, I could use it sooner to get information and the like if I needed. If she didn't hear from me for two straight weeks, she would assume that I was taken and check up on me. If she couldn't find me or I didn't report for a full six weeks, she would communicate with Aldrath to send in the Marines.

I spent a couple of weeks gettin' to know the city and its haunts and own special rules, and checkin' out Mr. Siegel and his operation. He had a real nice house right on the ocean down near Ocean City, with high fences and a gate and gate guard. The land around there is so flat that there was no way to really see inside except by air or by boat. Since I knew what kind of crates these people flew and a balloon would be a little obvious, that left boat and I was no sailor, particularly in fall's rough seas and changing weather. They said that Siegel tried to buy here a few years before and was told it was "restricted"-no Jews allowed. So all of a sudden a lot of houses down here started catchin' fire, and there was a real crime wave, and lots of businesses them WASP folks had suddenly went bad or had troubles, and
then this strictly blonde and blue-eyed bank came in and made nice offers and bought a lot of the property-and that's how Siegel came not only to have the place, but privacy, too.

But Siegel wasn't no prisoner. He liked goin' down to the lowlife sections, to the bars and clubs he owned and the projects he controlled, and he spent some time in the Oceanside Tea and Spice Company, Ltd., offices, which was just a big warehouse and a small, stucco office in front. He drove a fancy-lookin' red Daimler sports car and was pretty easy to spot or find.

He turned out to be young, fairly good-lookin', thin and trim with a thick, bushy moustache. He was said to be somethin' of a health nut, and drank little if at all, didn't smoke, and swung both ways. He'd go to bed with women, yeah, but he didn't have much other use for 'em, 'cept to wait on him maybe. You had to know your place around him. I took one look at him and knew that if he hadn't been Jewish he and Vogel's blackshirts woulda gotten along just fine.

He didn't manage nothin' personally, of course, and particularly not illegal stuff like prostitutes, since the law would just love to get him on most any technicality. That didn't stop him from visitin' the worst districts and payin' calls on the little fish who worked for him. They was just old friends, see, and what they done for a livin' was no bother to him. Their boss? Heaven forbid! He was in the tea and spice business and that paid just fine . . .

I needed to get closer in to get a real look at things, and that was one thing I'd done many times before. After you cruise a district for a while you get a feel for it, and this one wasn't much different than most. I got to admit I didn't exactly get excited over dressin' down to it, since them streetwalkers wanted to advertise and I was still havin' trouble with a November chill and a brisk wind from the ocean just with a short skirt, but it was part of the job. The' uniform of the place wasn't that much different. Real high spiked heels, fishnet stockings, a real short leather skirt and top that left little to the imagination, real heavy makeup with some sparkles mixed in, and the only concession to cold weather allowed, a fur coat, usually rabbit, that was
never
buttoned. There was always new girls comin' on and old ones vanishin', so that wasn't no big thing, but it took some outside detective work to give the right answers if questions came up, and they always did.

Armed with all that, I had no trouble fittin' right in and almost vanishin' into the scenery. This was the kind of neighborhood I grew up in, and these were the same kind of people I always knew. There were, however, some problems I knew I'd have to face. I'd used an identity as a whore many times, but only for a day or two, on stakeouts and like that. Now I had to blend in and stay in for some time, till folks got used to me and talked relaxed and felt I was one of them. That meant movin' into a flophouse room right in the district with only the stuff I'd be expected to have-stuff that could fit in a handbag, mostly-and very little money. I could stay independent for a while, but there was no question I'd have to turn a few tricks to be completely accepted. Gettin' a barmaid's job or somethin' like that was out of the question; November was the off season and there was only so much of anything, even tricks, to go around.

So, in a way, I finally completed my destiny and it was anything but glamorous or even particularly pleasant, but I actually took money for sex. Not bad money, either, considerin' my expenses and the fact I didn't have to split with no pimp. Not that several didn't try to move in, but I managed to put 'em off without them gettin' too riled. That wouldn't last forever, but I didn't plan on this bein' forever.

Still and all, doin' a few tricks and scorin' a little pot did just what I hoped. In under two weeks' time, I was a part of the scenery and I had enough credibility to sit around a burger joint or places like that and just talk friendly to people. I started learnin' one hell of a lot, and I even got some warnings about Siegel. They bought my story-ex-stripper from Philadelphia who got married to a real stud and took a hike the second time he beat me up. It was familiar.

My best friend and source turned out to be a guy named Harley who ran the only porn shop I ever seen with a sandwich thing on the side. Harley was fat and fiftyish and only about five feet tall and as flaming swishy as a three-pound note, but he liked to talk to "the girls." I think he
wished he was one of us. One night we got to talkin' 'bout the odd types even for the district.

"You seen a shadow dancer yet? Now
there's
one to give you the creeps!" he said, shiverin'.

"Huh? I heard that name used by some folks talkin' to other folks. What's it mean?"

"That's what we call 'em on the street. A string of half a dozen girls run by Fast Eddie Small-one of Arnie's pimps. All real young, real pretty. They work the streets like bitches in heat, sometimes do real
vulgar
strip shows-it's an art form, you know, or should be. You know-you were one."

I nodded. "Yeah, but where's the name come from?"

"They got hooked on something new, some new drug we think they're making in a lab someplace and it's
scary!
Not like dope-hell, half the streetwalkers here have fifty-pound-a-day habits. They're like, well,
slaves,
damn it. They wash his car, they clean his house, they do everything he tells 'em. He has fun showin' them off to people, making them do
disgusting
things just to show what a big man he is. I mean, I look in your eyes and I see a
person
there. You look in their eyes and you get a chill. Nothin' there. Not even hope. Shadows of pretty girls dancin' to Fast Eddie's tune. I hear there are others around, in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, all over. You watch out and stay away from them. I don't want to ever look in your eyes and see only a shadow dancer there."

Well, of course, to stay away I had to know how to find one, and where, and where they sometimes did their simply
vulgar
shows, too. Fast Eddie and his girls worked out of a joint called the Purple Pussycat about three blocks over diagonally from the bright lights, on the edge of the district. I'd been warned more than once not to work that area, that no freelancers were allowed. I decided to check it out first, so I went back to the original apartment where most of my things were. I put my hair up and put a blonde wig on over it. It looked good, but it was pretty obviously a wig and not a dye job.

One thing I learned on the street was that Lindy had been right. Any girl who put on long, tight pants, and went braless under a shirt or sweater, was automatically a lesbian to just about everybody. I didn't want to get roughed up or
raped or anything bad by workin' in an exclusive territory, and respectable women just didn't go into them neighborhoods or places alone. Some butch girls, though, got a real charge out of strip shows, although they usually went in pairs or more. Still, this was a more repressed society than mine, and I'd already seen a couple of women come down to the district, usually under wigs, glasses, and the like, alone to see a show and even pay a female hooker for a good time they didn't dare have or try in their ordinary lives. Lots of closeted gay men did it with male hookers, after all.

So it might not be unusual for a black lesbian, whose culture was real macho, to come over in disguise and see a show and maybe try for a good time. My eyes ain't great, like I said, but I used contact lenses I brought with me when I was on the streets and regular glasses off-hours. Now I got my tinted sunglasses, even though it was night. It was the right added touch. I did have to go out and buy a butch leather jacket, to make it just right, but while the saleswoman looked at me real odd she sold me the coat and took the money.

About nine-thirty that night, I took a taxi up to the Purple Pussycat. The driver hardly said a word to me. I got out a block or so before the club, so I could kinda cruise the area. It wasn't a lot of joints and shit like the main street of the district, just real run-down old houses and a mission and the one club near the end of the block with a garish neon sign and blinkin' lights, but I could see why Arnie wanted it. The corner near the club was one of the main drags in or out of Atlantic City, and it was on a main feeder street to there. The lights at the intersection was maybe five minutes long one way and three the other. In season, you could probably proposition or check out a hundred cars, and a John lookin' for it would be able to find it and set somethin' up without ever bein' obvious. There was even a big arrow sign on both streets for the club sayin', free car park in rear!

There wasn't much traffic now, particularly on a Wednesday, and nobody seemed to be workin' that intersection.

Now, undercover work's like method actin' only more so-you really got to get into and live the part, 'cause if an actor bombs she maybe gets tomatoes or boos, but if
somebody undercover makes a slip, just one, they can wind up floatin' in the ocean. That's why when I moved into the district I had to take some tricks, like it or not. If I didn't, they'd smell cop or narc or somethin' and it was bye-bye Brandy. I'd played a few dykes in my time, too-sometimes it was the only way to get information-and I had it down pretty good. Like back home, this only had to be a one-night stand, but I would be pretty damned conspicuous.

I stuck a cigarette in the side of my mouth, lit it, and walked into the Purple Pussycat.

As expected, it wasn't exactly New Year's Eve in there. Maybe a dozen customers, all men in suits and ties, one barmaid and one cocktail waitress. They all gave me a look when I came in, but I could see right away that their first impression was exactly what I wanted. The juke box, which was piped into the whole place, was playin' some jazzy French song with naughty lyrics. I sat down at an empty table and the mere fact that not one of them guys in there made a move was nice.

The waitress had on a sort of bikini, though they didn't call 'em that in this world, the fishnet stockings, and spiked heels, all with purple glitter stuff in them. She came up to me. "What'cha havin', honey?" She looked like she should be out findin' Johns, but she didn't look like no shadow dancer.