“How does he know that?”
“I told you, they all talk to each other in this business. Word gets around.”
“Okay. So you called Levy?”
She nodded. “Matt gave me his number. I asked him about Miranda and Jocelyn, described the act, and he knew exactly who I meant. Said they’d worked for him for almost a year starting in 1999, going from one of his clubs to another. They’d been a popular act, brought in a lot of business. So I asked if he had a tape of them.”
“You just asked?”
“I told him about the murder first. I explained I was working with your firm on the investigation. He sounded honestly upset about the whole thing. Maybe he was just frightened, I don’t know. I told him it was important that he share with us anything he knew, and when he was done telling me what he remembered, I asked him whether he had any pictures or videos that would show either of the women. He said no.”
“So he didn’t have anything.”
“Hold on,” she said. “I told him that we knew about his history with the videotapes, we had evidence that he’d continued to make them, and now he had two choices: show us anything he had with Miranda and Jocelyn on it, or wake up tomorrow morning to the cops knocking on his door.”
“Jesus.”
“I also said we’d contact every dancer who’d worked in one of his clubs and by next week he’d be buried in law- suits. While if he sent us what he had, we’d leave him alone.”
“Jesus Christ. Leo would love you. What did he say?”
She sipped her coffee. “He said I was a ball-buster. That was the nicest thing he called me, actually. It went on for a while. But in the end there wasn’t much he could do. He swore he didn’t have anything of the bathroom or dressing room variety, but he finally admitted he had a tape of their performance itself. You should be getting a package at your office tomorrow by express mail.”
“He’s sending the tape?”
“A copy of it,” she said. “I don’t know if it will help in any way, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
It couldn’t hurt? The case, maybe. I tried to imagine what it would be like to watch Miranda perform this popular act of hers, this tandem striptease that had all the strip club patrons from New Mexico to Florida talking. Susan reached across the table to put a hand on my arm.
“You don’t have to watch it,” she said. “I can watch it for you, tell you if there’s anything on it you need to know about.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s just a different type of bruising I’ve got to take. Leo warned me when this all started that I wouldn’t like what I learned. Doesn’t change what I’ve got to do, though.”
She took her hand back, folded the papers. “I’ve got some more calls out from yesterday and another twenty or so places to call today. We’ve still got three years to fill in and they’re nowhere near New York.”
“And they’re still dancing together.”
“Right. So there’s plenty of work left. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it, Susan.”
“I like it, actually. It’s interesting work, and it keeps my mind occupied. Keeps me from thinking too much about how I’m going to get by with no job, and probably no one willing to hire me.”
“You could always go to work as a detective,” I said. “You seem to have a knack for it.”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“Murco told me she recruited the burglars at a club in the Bronx. I figured I’d pay it a visit.”
“Be careful,” Susan said.
I squeezed her hand.
“If you need anything, you can give me a call,” she said. “If I’m on the phone here, you can try me on my cell. I programmed the number into your phone while you were in the shower.”
“You think that’s safe? Trusting me with your number?”
“I decided to take the chance,” she said.
Chapter 17
The Wildman was about as different from the Sin Factory as two places could get. The building was only one story tall but it sprawled over what in Manhattan would have been the footprint of a skyscraper. The parking lot out back could have fit four brownstones.
The walls looked like they’d been made from stacked cinderblocks and the roof was just slanted enough to let the snow slide off in the winter. There was a lighted billboard out front, but no doorman or bouncer, and even standing right under the front awning you couldn’t hear a thing from inside.
Down the block and across the avenue were car lots and a mini-mall featuring a food court, a karate studio, and a combination Carvel ice cream store and video rental place. None of these establishments seemed to be doing much business.
Neither was the Wildman, but that wasn’t a surprise given that it wasn’t even noon yet. Only hardcore alcoholics crack their first pint in the morning, and the same was true of strip club devotees. At noon or one you might see some local businessmen taking in the sights over lunch, but in the morning the clientele was limited to the addicted, the unemployed, and a few bleary-eyed night shift workers just getting off the job.
But “24-Hour Action!” was one of the things the Wildman advertised on its sign, so it had to be open for business. I pushed through the door, paid the twentydollar cover to the man behind the barred bank teller window, and stepped through the curtain of heavy plastic strips that separated the front room from the back.
My eyes took a moment to adjust. This room took up most of the rest of the building’s space, with five platform stages and a long wooden walkway snaking from one to the next. At the far end there was a full-sized stage with a red curtain and no one in front of it. Two of the five platforms were occupied, one by a tall woman with a Grace Jones flattop and small, natural breasts, the other by a woman closer to my height, chunkier, wearing silver hoops through her nipples and an ankh tattoo at the base of her throat. Her breasts looked natural, too. I hadn’t realized you could still find strippers with natural breasts in New York, even if you went to the Bronx at eleven in the morning.
A few of the stools were occupied, though most were still stacked upside down on their tables. In one corner of the room a bartender was setting up, ripping open boxes of beer bottles and packing them into a cooler. There was a wooden bowl full of nuts and pretzels, and I grabbed a handful, popped them one by one while I waited for the bartender to come over.
“Not open yet, champ,” he said. “Another half hour.”
“Danny Matin around?”
“This early? You’re joking, man.”
“So who’s here?”
“You and me, man.” He finished the box of Budweiser, started in on a box of Coors. “What you want Danny for anyway?”
I flashed my wallet open and shut, giving him a glimpse of something that might have been a badge. “Girl who used to dance here was involved in a robbery, later turned up dead downtown. We’re investigating the connection.”
“You talking about Jessie? That girl was bad news.
Everybody knew it.”
“What do you mean?”
He came over, rested his forearms on the bar. “She was always asking for trouble. Guys you wouldn’t want to run into on the street, she’d take them in the V.I.P. room two at a time. Nice little white girl like her and she takes these guys twice her size in the back. More prison tats they got, more she likes them.”
“And what would she do back there?”
“I don’t know, man, but whatever it was it must have been good, since most of the time they came back for more. Wasn’t the type of repeat business Danny really wanted. He was glad, I’ll tell you, when she stopped showing up. Although we was worried maybe she’d got herself hurt or killed. Which I guess she did.”
