“Vic tells me you’re a policeman. My daddy was a policeman. Center Springs, Arkansas. It’s not on most maps.”
“How long have you been here in San Diego?” I asked.
“Almost a year. I was waitressing but now I’m doing this. Better pay.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four years old.” She had a way of holding your eyes with her own, a direct but uncritical stare. “Vic told me all about what happened. It’s good that you’ve become a friend of his. We all of us need at least one good friend … Well, guys, I should be going. I’d ask you in and buy you a drink, but it’s supposed to work the other way around.”
I glanced at Vic and saw the adoration in his eyes. It lit up his face, made it smarter and softer and better. Farrel smiled at him and put her hand on his sleeve.
“It’s okay, Vic.”
“Just so good to see you, Farrel.”
“Vic walks me in and out, every night. And any other of the dancers who want him to. You’re a cop so you know there’s always someone coming around places like this, making trouble for the girls. But not when Vic Primeval is in the barnyard.”
“I don’t really like that name,” said Vic.
“I mean it in a good way.”
“It means primitive.”
“It’s only a show name, Vic. Like, well, like for a dancer it would be Chastity or Desire.”
I watched the inner conflict ruffle Vic’s expression. Then his mind made some kind of override and the light came back to his eyes. He smiled and peered down at the ground.
A hard look came over Farrel’s face as a black BMW 750i bounced through the open exit gate and into the employees-only lot. It rolled to a stop beside us. The driver’s window went down.
“Yo. Sweetie. I been looking for you.” He was thirty maybe and tricked out in style—sharp haircut, pricey- looking shirt and jacket. Slender face, a Jersey voice and delivery. He looked from Farrel to Vic, then at me. “What’s your problem, fuckface?”
I swung open my jacket to give him a look at my .45.
He held up his hands like I should cuff him. “Christ. Farrel? You want I should run these meatballs off? They’re nothing to do with me and you, baby.”
“I want them to run
“But you’re not gone, baby. You’re right here. So get in. Whatever you’ll make in a month in there, I’ll pay you that right out of my pocket. Right here and now.”
“Get off this property,” said Vic. “Or I’ll drag you out of your cute little car and throw you over that fence.”
Vic glanced at me and winced right after he said this. When he gets mad at things he throws them far. People too.
Sal clucked his tongue like a hayseed then smiled at Vic as if he was an amusing moron.
“No more us, Sal,” said Farrel. “We’re over.”
“You still owe me eight thousand dollars, girl. Nothing’s over till I get that back.”
I saw black rhombuses wobbling in the air between us. Black rhombuses mean anger.
“I’ll pay you back as soon as I can. You think I’m dancing in a place like this just for the fun of it all?”
“Move out of here,” I said. “Do it now.”
“Or you’ll arrest me.”
“Quickly. It’ll cost you forty-eight long cheap hours or two expensive short ones. Your pick.”
“I want what’s mine,” Sal said to Farrel. “I want what I paid for.”
“Them’s two different things.”
“Maybe it is in that redneck slop hole you come from.”
The window went up and the car swung around and out of the lot, the big tires leaving a rubbery low-speed squeal on the asphalt.
“I’m coming in for a while,” I said.
I had a beer and watched Farrel and the other dancers do their shows. They were uninhibited and rhythmic to say the least. Some were pretty and some were plain. Some acted flirtatious and others lustful and others aloof. Farrel seemed almost shy and she never once looked at either me or Vic from what I could tell. She had a small attractive body. Vic stood in the back of the room, lost in the lush plum-colored curtains, his feet spread wide and arms crossed, stone still.
After an hour passed and Sal had not come back, I nodded a goodnight to Vic and went home.
Two days later Vic left a message for me and I met him outside the Convention Center. There was a reptile show in progress and many of the people were entering and leaving the building with constrictors around their necks and leashed iguanas in their arms and stacks of clear plastic food containers filled with brightly colored
