family can make you crazy like that.” I nodded. “He’s your client?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I can’t-”
Clare held up her hand. “It doesn’t matter. I was just going to say that, whatever it is you’re doing, the work agrees with you.” She saw my surprise, and smiled. “Dents and dings aside, you look better than you have in a while. You’re eating better and sleeping better, and that cloud above your head is not so dark.” She went back to her dinner and looked startled when I kissed her goodbye.
There were no taxis or Town Cars in front of the 9:3 °Club, and if there was a velvet rope, it was buried under a foot of snow. I leaned on the bar and drank my cranberry juice and surveyed the room. It was a big, rectangular space, dimly lit and done up like a seraglio in a pumpkin patch. Acres of green and orange silk covered the walls, and leafy green pennants twisted down from the high ceiling. A dance floor dominated the center of the room, flanked by round green tables on one side, and on the other by curtained alcoves with fat orange sofas. A wide stairway with translucent green risers climbed up a wall in back and emptied into more alcoves and the VIP rooms. The bar was opposite the stairs, an orange crescent topped in green frosted glass. There was a row of flat- panel monitors above it, just then looping footage of Copacabana Beach. The sound system was pumping out a low-key techno rhythm, and there were a dozen bodies on the dance floor, doing all they could with it.
I counted fifty people scattered around the place, dancers and staff included- nothing close to a typical Friday night, I was sure, but not bad for a blizzard. The shared disaster of the storm made everyone a friendly castaway, happy to be alive and happy to be there, and it lent a faintly manic tang to the proceedings. The kitchen was serving what food there was without charge, though the drinks were still ringing at full price.
Babyface- Jamie- wasn’t in the house, but the reedy-voiced man I’d spoken to on the phone was. His name was J.T., and I’d found him at the end of the bar, looking dolefully over the room. He was a skinny thirtysomething, with a tangle of peroxide hair, three days of dark beard, and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt. He was the manager, more or less, and he hadn’t been happy to see me.
“Fuckin’ A, you’re the guy who called,” he’d said. I’d nodded, and he’d frowned. “I told you, the only Jamie working here is a girl.”
“So if I ask your staff, none of them will know another Jamie?”
The frown deepened. “What are you, some kind of cop?”
“Not a cop, and not from the State Liquor Authority, either.” J.T.’s eyes darted away, and he ran a nicotine- stained hand down his narrow face. “What’s that mean?” he asked.
“It means I don’t give a shit about your hiring practices. Martians, felons, it’s all the same to me.”
He shook his head and grimaced. “No good deed, man, no fuckin’ good deed.”
“I’m not looking to make trouble, J.T. Not for you, or Jamie.”
“Then go away.”
“Talk to me about Jamie, and I will.”
J.T. fished a cigarette from his pocket and dangled it, unlit, from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know what I can tell you. It’s not like we’re running buddies.”
“You know his last name?”
“Coyle,” he said, and he spelled it for me.
“How long has he worked here?”
“About ten months.”
“Off the books?” J.T. nodded. “Because he was inside?” Another nod.
“You know what for?”
He shook his head. “I don’t press.”
“What does he do here?”
“Mostly he works the door, but he helps out with other stuff too.”
“Like?”
“Like behind the bar sometimes, or security in the VIP lounge.”
“He work every night?”
“Two, three nights a week, usually, until he started this no-show crap.”
“No-show?”
“He hasn’t been around for going on three weeks. He hasn’t called, either.”
“That’s not like him?”
“Nope. Before this he was Mr. Dependable- on time, on top of things, never any bullshit.”
“And his work was good?”
“I had no complaints,” J.T. said. “He knew when to be cool and when to be scary, and he knew how to keep the messes out of sight.”
“You didn’t worry about his…prior experience?” J.T. squinted at me. “I put him behind the bar, and that’s all cash back there. I wouldn’t do that if he worried me.”
“You know his girlfriend?”
“Nope.”
“You have an address for him, or a phone number?” J.T. pulled out a multifunction digital doohickey, and had at it with his thumbs. He read me a phone number and a P.O. box, and I copied them down. “Kind of a risk for you, taking on a guy like that,” I’d said.
He’d shrugged. “My wife’s kid brother was up in Coxsackie,” he’d said. “Jamie looked out for him.” Then J.T. had wandered off, in the direction of the deejay’s booth.
I looked up and saw him still there, smoking by an open window and sorting through stacks of CDs. I finished my drink and put the glass on the bar. There was a waitress doing nothing near the passage to the kitchen, so I went over.
Her name was Lia. She was young, not much over drinking age, and nearly my height, and her unruly, strawberry-blond mop went well enough with her freckles and blue eyes to be natural. Her mouth was wide and her chin was pointed, and I imagined her agent described her as a well-scrubbed waif. She scanned the crowd lazily as we spoke.
“I haven’t seen Jamie in, what, a couple of weeks, which is weird for him.”
“You friendly with him?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“He a nice guy?”
“Sure. I mean, he’s a little scary at first, but once you get to know him, what’s not to like?”
“Scary how?”
“You know, he’s all big and broody, and he doesn’t say much at first. But really he’s a teddy bear, and he looks out for all the girls.”
“Looks out for what?”
“Like, for when a customer gets too touchy, and thinks the tips buy something more than thanks.”
“That happen a lot?” Lia smiled regretfully and nodded. “What does Jamie do about it?”
Her smile broadened. “Basically he scares the piss out of them.”
“Just scares them?”
“You mean does he actually like beat them up?” I nodded and Lia thought about it. “There was one guy, a few months back, a real big guy, and a real groper- legs, asses, tits, anything he could grab or rub up against. This one night he was all over Sheri, who was brand new then, and really freaking out. She’d been avoiding him the whole shift, when finally he corners her on her way to take a piss. Now Sheri’ll blow away in a strong wind, and this guy’s like six two and double-wide, and he’s got her by the arm in the hallway when Jamie comes along.
“Sheri told me he said something in the guy’s ear- she didn’t know what- and the guy lets go of her and turns around and throws a punch at Jamie. And Jamie catches it- just like that, Sheri said.” Lia made a fist with one hand and covered it with her other. “And then she tells me the guy just starts turning red and kind of crying, and he falls down on his knees with Jamie still holding his fist.”
“And then what?”
“And then Jamie makes him apologize to Sheri, and he picks the guy up by his belt and throws him out the back door.” She grinned. “That part I saw for myself. It was cool.”
