Double Shot (15 page)

“But?” I prompted. Behind me, a gaggle of guys was protesting and telling me to hurry it up.
Lana glanced at the rowdy fellows and lowered her voice. “I guess I was surprised to hear Ted Vikarios give a speech, since he and Albert Kerr had that big falling-out all those years ago.”
“ ‘That big falling-out’?” I repeated, before the crowd jostled one of the guys into my side.
“Come visit us at our table!” Marla offered, tugging me into the club’s interior.
“Why did you do that?” I shouted to Marla over the pulse of rock music. “I was just about to find out something!”
“You were just about to get trampled!” Marla replied as she pulled me down a dark hallway past a cloakroom.
I said, “Lana must have thought highly of the Jerk if she referred to him as Dr. Korman! Maybe she fixed him up with Sandee.”
Marla raised an eyebrow at me. “More likely our ex came here. Water seeking its own level, that kind of thing. Let’s sit down at one of these little tables.”
The club’s spacious interior encompassed six black-mirrored, raised hexagonal platforms. On top of each mirrored surface, a naked-except-for-a-thong young woman danced. Well, you couldn’t really call it dancing. It was more like stepping-in-place-while-wiggling-hips-and boobs.
And what boobs they were. I wondered how they’d phrased their requests to their surgeons. Maybe using fruit analogies? I’ve got tangerines now, but could you give me oranges? Grapefruit? And melons! The dancers were shaking everything from cantaloupes to pumpkins. I would have sworn a red-haired woman in front of us had asked for honeydews. I didn’t know if docs would ever be able to bestow watermelons, but science was always advancing.
Around each of the black-mirrored mini-stages, men sat watching the naked lady in front of them. Electrified chandeliers flashed red, blue, green, and yellow along with the beat of the music. There was a bag on the far side of the space, plus a sprinkling of small tables ringing the place. We sat at one of these. After watching the goings-on for a bit, I noticed that the men seated around the large mirrored tables were expected, at regular intervals, to put a greenback into each dancer’s proffered thong. Then the dancer dropped the greenback into a small hole in the center of the black table.
“There was a young woman who graduated from Elk Park Prep a few years back,” Marla leaned over to tell me. “Her parents were strict — fundamentalists, I think. The girl turned eighteen two days after graduation. She announced, ‘Forget it, I’m not going to college, I’m gonna be a dancer.’ She works here.”
“These girls are all so young!” I exclaimed.
“What did you expect?” Marla asked. “Forty-year-olds?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” I said, suddenly dizzy.
I had not expected to see a group of young women — only a couple of whom looked a day over twenty-five — parading in front of men who appeared to be between forty-five and sixty, with the preponderance of them in their fifties. Uh-oh, now they were doing something new. When they weren’t doing the half wiggle, the dancers leaned their ponderous breasts over first one, then another of the faces of the men sitting around the tables. The men were expected to come up with more bucks for the boobs-in-the-face routine. But how they could breathe in that narrow space, much less rummage for their wallets? It would be like trying to do a nighttime sail through the Strait of Magellan.
We looked for Sandee but couldn’t spot her. At the nearest table the red-haired woman-with-the-honeydews was dancing in a more animated way than the other strippers. Who looked as if they might be on drugs. A ruby-red light focused on the redhead, revealing that she was a bit older than her compatriots. The light made her hair glow almost purple, and also highlighted what I thought was a desperate look in her eyes. Each bill she received made her gyrate even faster. When her shift was over, she stepped down and approached us.
“Uh, what’s happening?” I asked Marla as Big Red made a beeline for our table.
“I don’t know,” Marla replied, “but I hope she puts on a bra before she gets here. This table won’t support both of those.”
Thankfully, the red-haired lady did put something on, a black wrap shift that she fluffed out and tied before arriving beside us.
“Ladies?” she said. “May I sit? I’m Ruby Drake. I think we have something in common.” As I opened my mouth in protest, she said, “I knew your ex-husband, John Richard Korman.”
“Ruby Drake,” Marla repeated. She frowned, as if trying to remember something. “You were his fifty-second girlfriend.”
“I was never Korman’s girlfriend,” Ruby Drake replied, her tone icy. “Far from it. In fact — “
Before Ruby could finish, Lana sashayed over to our table and interrupted her. “Ruby, you’ve got some men asking for you on the far side of the room.” Lana pointed a lacquered nail at one of the Rainbow’s dark corners, and Ruby slunk away.
“Dammit to hell,” I said under my breath. “We try to find stuff out here, and all we get is interrupted. Don’t folks come here to relax?”
“I don’t know,” Marla replied as she waggled her fingers at one of the platforms. “But check it out. There’s Sandee.”
Sandee Blue was wriggling seductively at one of the far mirrored tables. Through the cloud of cigarette smoke, I could make out a substantial crowd of men gawking at her. And what was she covered with, shortening? Her skin had a bright sheen, and I wondered if she’d learned that trick from her Elvis-impersonating boyfriend. A neat trick, if it was true.
“Why would John Richard,” I asked Marla, “who could have any wealthy tennis-playing socialite he wanted, go for a young stripper who has no money, no brains, and a pair of breasts that could be mistaken for Crenshaw melons?”
“The Crenshaws, silly.”
“But look at those guys ogling her. Don’t you suppose the Jerk got jealous of all the male attention Sandee received?”
“Nah,” Marla muttered. “It probably turned him on. C’mon. While we’re waiting, let’s eat. Gotta warn you, though, I doubt people come here for the buffet.”
“Sort of like buying porn magazines for the articles.”
Ten minutes later, I was trying to cut a fatty piece of what had been labeled “Prime Rib au Jus.” Marla had ordered us each two glasses of dry sherry, which the waitress had never heard of. Not wanting to cause a scene — for once — Marla settled for five-dollar soft drinks, which we sipped as we watched Sandee fling herself around. Finally, still wearing the high heels that were de rigueur for the dancers, she reached into the hole in the middle of the table, gathered up her cash, and stepped into a black shift similar table, gathered up her cash, and stepped into a black shift similar to Ruby’s. Sandee wobbled down a set of steps beside the hexagonal table, but was stopped at the bottom by a short, bald, acne-faced young man who whispered in her ear. Whatever he said to her, it made her giggle, which made all the other parts of her jiggle. The man whispered some more. Sandee acted attentive, then nodded. She finally saw us waving to her and took her leave of the bald fellow.
“Hi-yi,” Sandee said when she arrived at our table. “I didn’t expect to see you two here.” She looked over her shoulder, scanning the club.
Marla said, “The golf shop sent us over. They said you found higher-paying work elsewhere.”
Sandee flinched. “Well, uh, John Richard told me to say I worked there. You know, in case people asked? He thought it would look better, you know, with him sponsoring the golf tournament. Anyway, I hated that shop! Who would buy those sucky old-lady clothes?” She shuddered as her eyes flicked around the club again.
I put down my fork. Was she looking for someone? “Sit down, Sandee,” I urged, and flashed Marla a warning look. “We just want to talk for a bit.”
Marla, unheeding, plunged onward as soon as Sandee had snuggled her thinly clad rear end onto one of the chairs. “You know John Richard is dead? Shot and killed?”
Sandee’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “I heard,” she whispered. “Two detectives asked me a bunch of questions. They said they’d be coming back today.” Again there was the scared glimpse in all directions.
“Any ideas about who could have killed John Richard?” Marla asked.
“No way,” Sandee croaked. She reached for a paper napkin, then dabbed her eyes. She cried for a minute, making a sound that was halfway between a cat mewing and a human choking. Then she honked into the napkin. “The detectives wanted me to think some more about who John Richard’s enemies were. You know, if anyone argued with him at the lunch? Stuff like that.”
Marla gestured to me with a bejeweled hand. “Speaking of the lunch, Goldy’s making a list of the guests. We know most of the people from Southwest Hospital, but there are some people” — she nodded in Lana’s direction — “who we’re not sure about.”
Although I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in Sandee’s memory, I obligingly reached for the pad I’d stashed in my purse.
“Oh, I totally don’t remember anybody.” Sandee frowned at the empty pad. She made another furtive scan of the club interior. Could Marla not be noticing? Was Sandee not allowed to be talking to us? Was she looking for Ruby, Lana, the bald guy? “The only person I knew at the lunch was John Richard,” Sandee said, her voice halting. “I mean, besides Lana, you know, and Dannyboy. You know, and some other Rainbow people.”
“What did you do after you left the lunch?” I asked gently.
“We went back to his house and, you know, messed around in the car for a while. But not for long, I mean, I had to go back to work.” She raised mournful eyes. “Later, you know? He was taking Arch to the club. The golf club.” Her chin trembled, her eyes filled, and she again began mewing into the napkin. Marla rolled her eyes. I was thankful for the clink of glasses and pound of music around us.
“Sandee,” I said, as calmly as I could over the cacophony, “what are you worried about? Lana told us it was okay to talk to you.”
“She did?” Sandee seemed surprised, but looked around again, as if to confirm that Lana was not hovering.
“We just need to ask you about his money,” I continued. “John Richard’s money.”
At that moment, we were interrupted again. This time it was the bald guy, who leaned his pimply-faced, hunchback-of-Notre-Dame body over the table, nuzzled in next to Sandee’s neck, and whispered more words in her ear. Then he handed her some cash which she thrust into an unseen pocket of the black dress. She smiled up at him, gently turned his wrist to see what time his watch said, then whispered something back.
Marla raised her voice. “Sandee!” The bald guy jumped, then trundled off. “Remember that day,” Marla continued, “when we came over to John Richard’s house and you asked us if we’d brought money? What was that about?”
“Uh, let’s see.” Sandee dabbed at her smeared mascara. “I asked you for money?”
“Yes, you did,” Marla replied evenly. “And then when Goldy showed up at John Richard’s house yesterday, a tall guy driving a blue sedan was parked out front. He asked Goldy if she had his money. Now, John Richard had no job, but he was living a fancy lifestyle that included a house, an Audi, and a cute . . . how old are you?”
“Twenty-eighty,” Sandee replied, blushing.
“Twenty-eight-year-old,” Marla continued, giving me a raised eyebrow. “He also forked over major bucks to sponsor a golf tournament. We are his ex-wives, Sandee. His expensive ex-wives. We know his money situation coming out of incarceration was not good.”
“Incarceration?”
“Jail,” we ex-wives said in unison.
“You were living there, Sandee,” Marla went on. “How did he have an income? Was he borrowing money? Were people demanding that he repay it? Do you think that’s why he got killed?”
“I don’t know,” Sandee insisted. She crumpled the napkin with fingernails painted a glittery green. “You know, his cash? He just had lots of it. That’s all.” Her tone turned morose. She glanced in the direction of the front door. “Know what? I don’t care what Lana told you. Club policy is, I can only stay at one table for two minutes. Besides, I gotta go fix my makeup.” With that, she took a deep breath, pushed out her chair, and clattered away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Marla said abruptly. She looked down with distaste at our barely touched plates. “We can stop for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home. Think, prosciutto and arugula. Think, butter-roasted pecan ice cream. Think, no one making a declarative statement and posing it as
 
question. Think, fudge sauce.”
But for once I wasn’t pondering food. I was mentally totting up the lies I was sure Sandee had told: She was closer to twenty-one than twenty-eight, and she had asked Marla for money. Did this prevarication mean that Sandee knew more than she was letting on? Or was she just a flake who lied about her age and couldn’t remember anything? And where had Ruby Drake disappeared to?
The sudden appearance of Lana Della Robbia distracted me from these questions.
“Lana!” I said. I could see now that she, too, was wearing the clingy black signature dress of the women who worked at the Rainbow. “Tell us more about the Kerr-Vikarios conflict.”
“It was a long time ago, after I had my babies. I heard they had some kind of falling-out, right around the time Dr. Kerr and Holly left for England. I don’t know what it was about,” Lana concluded dramatically.
Marla and I exchanged a glance.
“That’s interesting, Lana, really,” Marla said. “Just out of curiosity,” she plowed on, “how did John Richard come to get hooked up with Sandee? He came over to receive your thanks for saving him? Then he picked a nubile filly from you little stable? I mean, she did have a gun-toting boyfriend, right? The singer? Am I wrong?”
“Dr. Korman was a good customer,” replied Lana, her tone diffident. And yet now it was her turn to scan the club, looking nervous. “Anyway, that’s not why I came over to your table.”
A young woman running the cash register called to Lana for help. Lana, who was clearly the boss, turned and beckoned with that formidable-looking, scarlet-painted acrylic nail for us to follow. Did everybody in this place have killer nails?
Marla sighed audibly, but we obliged. Once she was at the front counter, Lana dealt with the crisis — a group of twenty handsomely dressed guys in their forties were arriving for a late lunch. The adding machine had frozen up and Lana needed to count the cash and hand the guys their tickets.
“They look like lawyers,” Marla said in disbelief, eyeing the suits.
“They are lawyers,” Lana muttered under her breath, frantically counting bills.
“So what happened to American Express?” Marla asked. “Visa?”
“We take ‘em,” the young woman who’d called Lana over said mournfully. “But the guys don’t want their wives checking the statements. I mean, how would you feel if you husband ate lunch at a strip club?”