The Butcher's Granddaughter (26 page)

“Ask him where a guy with money would go to get some sex in Honolulu. A guy who maybe wanted to be discrete, and had a taste for the best stuff around.”

“All right. I’ll get some coffee and wait. What if he doesn’t believe me?”

“Just tell him you’re a friend of mine, and that I’m in trouble. I’d call him, but I’m sure the cops are on him as a hobby, and I don’t have his number anyway. Don’t tell him more than that.”

“OK.”

“And you’re sure you’re all right? Do you have enough money?”

“Yeah.”

Her answers were flat, and it worried me. “Tanya? Did something happen?” I asked sternly, my grip on the receiver tightening. “Did you see someone?”

“Yeah.”

My legs got weak. “Shit. Who? When?”

“I’m sorry, Bird. I didn’t really see anyone. But...I know you said not to...but I went to my place last night, you know, to get a few things.” Her voice quivered just the tiniest bit.

“Oh, Christ. Who saw you?”

“No one, I swear. There was no one there.” She couldn’t stop her voice from quivering, so she just forged ahead. “But there had been. Jesus, my place was wrecked, Bird. It was torn to fucking pieces. Everything was turned over and torn up, a bunch of my clothes were slashed. Some of my underwear...where they slashed it...” She took a loud, long breath and recovered a little. “They wrote things on my walls in Chinese. I don’t know what they meant. They used my lipstick and nail polish...Jesus, it looked like blood. I thought it was blood.” She sniffled and then went suddenly silent.

I sat, helpless on the other end, hating myself.

When she spoke again, her voice was solid and strong. “
FUCK
, I’m scared.”

“I know. Me too. Hang in there, Tanya. Just get me what I need, OK?”

“OK,” she said evenly. “I’ll call you in a little while.”

“All right.”

There was a pause. It seemed like I needed to say something other than ‘bye.’ I never got the chance. I held the phone until the dial tone buzzed. Then I hung up and wandered back to the hotel and some sleep. When Cain called, it was night again.

Pure Platinum.

It was a strip joint on Kalakaua Avenue that called itself a “gentleman’s club.” I bribed my way past the dress code, and inside it was all white neon and silver glitter and streamers—some of that on the girls. With one exception, all were medium height, curvy, blond in some form, and caucasian. The exception was a rangy Asian girl dancing in a far corner with nobody watching her. I sat down at the bar so Cassandra could give me a drink.

She had straight, platinum hair that was obviously a wig, large breasts she wasn’t born with, and was the kind of attractive that happens if the lighting is right. She was also naked from the waist up, except for silver glitter on her chest and shoulders. She had a twin sister working the other end of the bar. Forty bucks and twenty minutes later she introduced me to my mark.

She said her name was Beverly, which was about as honest as the glass chips in her ears trying to pass for diamonds. She pronounced it “Bebuli” in a strong Filipina accent. Beverly, it seemed, didn’t feel that military guys throwing twenties at her for hours on end was a fulfilling career, so she pulled some sheet action on the side. According to Cassandra, a little action with Beverly cost a lot of money. There was a rumor she’d had three men die under her—two heart attacks, one brain aneurysm. Thus the high price. Cassandra said that Filipinas knew stuff about pleasing men that other girls didn’t. I told her if it was so good it killed you, I wasn’t all that interested.

Beverly slunk over after finishing a table dance and gave me a look I had only seen on the faces of some animals. She was the only female in the place who wasn’t at least partially naked, but she didn’t look like she made a lot of dough—everything about her was cheap cover-up. She had on a clingy white mini-dress a size too small, a black belt cinched tightly around a tiny waist, and black pumps with stiletto heels so high they bent her foot at a right angle to the floor. Her nails were two inches long. Bright red lipstick was mashed into her heavy lips, and dark brown hair dyed blond at the ends was teased out around her face in a hair-sprayed mane. She and Cassandra looked like they both shopped for breasts at the same place.

Cassandra finished the amenities and Beverly said, “You don’t look like much.”

“I’m not,” I said, lighting her cigarette. She smoked those long skinny things and held them between her nails, not her fingers, like a piece of spaghetti in a pair of forceps. “But I’m looking for somebody who is.”

“And you think I know them?”

“Maybe. He likes what you sell. And I hear you’re the best, which he also likes.” I finished my drink and pushed it at Cassandra, who instantly produced another one like she had been waiting for a cue.

Beverly said, “Buy me a drink and we’ll talk.” She glanced at Cassandra and they exchanged a look that could have meant anything. Then she turned her back to me and said, “You will come with me.”

Men stared at me like I was the anointed one as she cut a swath through the tables toward a curtained doorway in the middle of the wall opposite the bar. Through the curtains was another room with more dancers that, unlike their underwear-clad associates out front, were completely nude. Some of them had special talents that more men were laying out more money to witness. One girl near the front was bent in half backwards, on her hands and feet, slowly rotating on a small turntable. She had a lit cigarette that she was puffing with her vagina. Another girl was slowly stuffing ping-pong balls inside herself. Beverly caught me staring. “She’s going to shoot them across the room,” she said.

Everything in the room was red. Velvet drapes bathed in maroon light spilled from the ceiling in every direction. All the dancers had red spotlights on them. Color was sucked from all clothing, so the room was full of red-faced men wearing black suits. There was none of the fevered jeering and money throwing that went on in the front room—not so much as a smile to be seen among the patrons or the dancers. Men quietly laid out their money and stared. It was a funeral for morals. The men were paying their respects in crudity.

She chose a black enamel-topped table snuggled against a far wall. It had a small copper lamp and an ashtray and an atmosphere all its own, far removed from the desperation only a few feet away. Cassandra appeared with two more drinks and I gave her another ten-spot. When she left she looked at me as if I were special, or interesting, or maybe just wondering why Beverly was giving me the time of day. Beverly wrapped cheap lips around her straw and looked at me obscurely while she drank. I sat and smoked and matched her silence. I finally said, “So what, you bored or something?”

She didn’t know quite how to take that, so she didn’t. “How’d you get in?” This with a motion toward my clothing.

“Same way I got to meet you,” I said, pulling a rolled up bunch of bills from my pocket. She looked at it dully. Something told me it was the same facial expression she wore during sex. With her boyfriend.

“Ooohhhh, big spender,” she cooed obscenely. “Throw enough around and you will get noticed by Beverly.”

“Good.”

She laughed lightly. It was a shrill, bothersome sound that wouldn’t leave my mind for several hours. “So how did you hear of Beverly?”

“A friend of mine in Los Angeles. Old guy named Cain. Said you were good and discreet.” I tried not to smile. The way she was dressed, ‘discreet’ wasn’t the first word that jumped to mind.

“This Mr. Cain...what does he do?”

“He’s a pimp.”

She crinkled her nose. “Beverly has no pimp. She does not need one.”

“Yeah, he told me that, too. Says you pretty much get around by word of mouth.”

She leaned back and pushed her breasts out, watching me for a reaction. She didn’t get one, and her eyes clouded over. She pushed her glass around in front of her, leaving little moisture prints. It was empty. She put another smoke in her pincers and lit up and smiled at me through the cloud. “You’re fun,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Before I could get wary she was up and walking to the rear of the room. Eyes in dark suits followed me through red and smoke. I thought she was taking me to a changing room or something, but a final door emptied out into an alley and that onto a side street lined with apartments. “Where are we going?”

She turned on the stoop and said, “Dancing. I like to go dancing after my shift, especially with good-looking men who don’t want to fuck me. But I have a man-problem, you might notice, and if I leave by a back door, nobody follows me.” She looked at me meaningfully. “You’re very privileged.” She traced the outline of my jaw with the tip of a two-inch fingernail. It was the only time a woman’s touch has made my skin crawl. “Now, you buy me drinks. Then I dance. Then maybe we talk some more.” She swished down the stairs and said over her shoulder, “Later, you will change your mind about fucking me.”

The Pink Cadillac is set up as a place for tourists to ditch their bored and worthless offspring while they go to watch Don Ho and Danny Kaleikini sing “Pearly Shells” in lavender-lit hotel lounges. The tiny, fiercely dedicated alternative music movement in Honolulu hovers around it in a swarm. Inside, the Cadillac is like any gothic bar in L.A., with black lights and smoke machines and an in-your-face effort not to look like any gothic bar in L.A. Everyone in the place looks like they see club photos in the groupie mags and emulate them, wearing black and smoking like industrial chimneys.

The doorman saw Beverly and waved us past the cashier without a second look at me. The cashier, a waif wearing black and red lipstick in a harlequin pattern, gave me a glance that said she knew I must have to pay for it. The joint was air-conditioned to the point that, even stuffed to the gills, it felt like a meat locker. I bought Beverly drinks and let her dance and think she was dominating me. She finally sank into a booth downstairs and said, “OK, haole, talk.” As I sat down she drew a red lacquered nail along her cleavage, then licked the perspiration from it with a smile.

I ignored it and said, “Let’s say a guy rolls into town with some money, wants a little action. How hard would it be to find you?”

“Not very.” She was struggling with the fact that her coyness was rolling off me. She scooted around in the booth. “I am known.”

At the edge of my vision I watched a wiry Asian guy get attentive. Beverly’s hand slid up my thigh and across my stomach, and my skin started to crawl again. Even over the cigarette and sweat and booze stink in the place, I could smell her as she got close. I let her fumble around in my lap and watched the guy at the bar.

“What are you known for?” I asked, smiling woodenly. Another Asian man, this one shorter and stockier, stepped up behind the first and joined in the observation.

With a sickening purr Beverly said, “I will show you.” She dropped her hand down into my crotch and started rubbing, frustration wrinkling her face when I wasn’t hard.

She had her breasts squished against my arm, and I had to kink my neck to talk to her and keep an eye on the heavies. She squirmed to remind me that her breasts were big and I said, “How much?”

She grabbed my crotch so it hurt. Both men were standing now. “A thousand dollars.”

I reached down and wrapped my hand over hers, crimping her thumb-knuckle between my palm and fingers. She let out a squeak. People glanced, then stared. The two goons paused, waiting. I brought her arm up between us and pushed her away with it. She was biting her bottom lip and trying not to glance at the staring people. Her face was crushed with anger and embarrassment. “Being with women is not something I pay for,” I said too loudly, releasing her thumb.

Her eyes flashed and her hand went to the shot glass in front of me. Alcohol burned my eyes and stained my shirt. People moved on. I slowly reached a cocktail napkin and sponged my face. When my vision cleared she was still there, looking confused. Her two big brothers had backed off a little, unsure of what to do. “You’re a son of a bitch,” she growled.

“Yeah. That makes you my mother.” I pushed the table away and took two long steps over to the two watchful Asians. They were caught off guard and shuffled back against each other as I stepped up to the bar. I gave the bartender a fifty and said, “Anything else that little whore drinks tonight is on me.” He took the fifty slowly, nervous glances at the two goons next to me. He nodded. I followed his gaze and turned to face the two thugs, as if I hadn’t noticed them until now.

As soon as we locked eyes Beverly started spitting, “Why you not take him, Tuan? Huh? You see what he did? You see how he treat me! What, you not a man?” Her voice was filled with venom, her accent suddenly deeper, and Tuan stood there wondering whether to try it or not. I had him and his friend by eight inches and forty pounds.

I leaned into them and said, “Who are you, the juice? You been following me?” I flipped my head at Beverly, still taunting them. “You protect that little bitch?”

They nodded in unison. The chunky one leaned over and I could see the butt of an automatic behind the lapel of his coat. My feet went cold, but I played it out. “Why you treat her like that?” said the skinny one.

I kept half an eye on the gun and said, “Look, little man, I’ll treat whores any goddamn way I please. And tell your buddy that if he goes for the piece, he’ll be shitting through a tube for the rest of his life.” I got a little more in his face. “I am Big Fucking Trouble, Tuan. Remember that.” Then I pushed past them and left Beverly under the watchful eyes of three hundred vampires.

On the way out I winked at the bouncer. He knew he was looking at a lunatic, and let me by.

I figured it would take a day, maybe two, for word to get around that there was a crazy haole in town looking for trouble. Eventually it would get to ears that would know it could only be one person.

And they would come looking.

Chapter 18