Chapter 7
Her hands were shaking. I fought the urge to reach across the table and cover them with my own.
“It’s not like we knew each other,” she said. “We didn’t. I’d just come from three weeks at a club in Jersey called Carson’s. Right on the other side of the bridge?”
I nodded.
“So who am I to her? Just the new girl, right?” She swallowed some of her drink, stirred the rest with the little red straw. “We’d never talked before. Not one word. But we were changing after the last set, it was just the two of us in the dressing room, and I guess she just needed to talk to someone. God. I wish I’d said something to someone, but I didn’t think she was serious. No, that’s not it – she was serious. I just didn’t believe it was true.”
“What did she say?”
Rachel closed her eyes tight. I’ve noticed that some people do that when they’re trying hard to remember, though for others it seems to be a matter of not wanting to look you in the eyes while they tell a whopper. “She said, ‘There are bad things going on at this club,’ and I said something like, ‘You’re saying it’s a high-mileage place?’ and she said no, that it was much worse.”
“High mileage?”
“You know, lots of touching.” She looked at me, and I got the feeling that she was suddenly noticing how young I looked – nice and clean-cut, as my friend at the bar had said – and maybe wondering how much I knew about the ways of the world. “Some clubs, there’s a strict hands-off policy, look but don’t touch – that’s no mileage. Some places, the dancers are expected to grind a little during a lap dance, but the guys have to keep their pants on and their hands to themselves. That’s low mileage. Then there are places where the whole point is to make the guy come. Basically they can touch you anywhere except inside your g-string, and you can do anything to get them off short of actually having sex with them.”
“And that’s high mileage.”
She nodded. “Only thing higher’s full service. Most girls won’t work for a high-mileage club, but sometimes you don’t know going in, because the high-mileage stuff is going on in the champagne rooms, not out front. So girls will warn each other, especially when you’re new to a club, and I figured that’s what Randy was doing.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. She said, ‘Believe me, you’ll be glad when someone comes in and all he wants is a hand job.’ And I said, ‘What? What is it? Is it S amp;M?’ Because some of these places, that’s the big secret, they’ve got a dungeon in the basement and guys come in to get whipped. I’ve never understood that stuff myself, but it doesn’t bother me – I’d rather smack someone with a riding crop than jerk him off. But she said, ‘No, it isn’t sex. It’s drugs.’ “
“Drugs?”
“That’s what she said. She had this whole story about how the guy who owns the club is a dealer and is using the girls to move his merchandise, and if you don’t go along with it or you talk to anyone about it, you wind up in a ditch in Jersey City.”
“But here she was talking to you about it.”
“Right, exactly,” Rachel said, “and I was thinking, this girl’s watched one too many re-runs of The Sopranos. Because that’s the vibe she was giving off. Real drama queen. The people you meet in this business are not exactly the most stable-” A look of embarrassment washed over her face. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“But you used to date her.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
We didn’t say anything for a bit. Rachel brushed her hair out of her eyes, and for a moment I was reminded of Miranda. They didn’t look anything alike, but something about the gesture brought her to mind – that and the fact that I’d seen this woman dancing naked on a stage the night before, and here she was now, looking completely normal, completely ordinary. It was like a photographic negative of my experience with Miranda.
I also found myself noticing how, without the stage makeup and the gel in her hair and all the other trappings of her trade, Rachel was a very beautiful woman. Maybe this shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. Dancing on stage she’d been just another pin-up, another pair of high heels and long legs and bare breasts, and I’d found nothing very erotic about the sight. But across a table in a pub at twilight, dressed in faded jeans and a sweater the color of ginger ale, she was an ordinary woman, and infinitely more appealing.
“What did Miranda say she was afraid of?”
“She told me she’d found out about the drugs and somehow had gotten on the wrong side of the owner, this Khachadurian, and now she was sure he was going to kill her. She really sounded scared. But you know, lots of girls talk themselves into getting scared or angry or ashamed over all sorts of things, and maybe one tenth of it is real. So I just tried to make her feel better. I remember saying, ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad. You haven’t told anyone, right? So what reason would he have to do anything to you?’ And then a day later, she’s dead.”
“It may not be related,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew how foolish it sounded.
“The terrible thing,” Rachel said, “is when I heard what had happened, the first thing I thought about wasn’t her, it was, ‘She told me, and now they’re going to come after me, too.’ “
“And?”
She shook her head. “Nothing’s happened. So far, anyway. I’ve got six nights left and then I can move on, and you’d better believe I’m not coming back. I thought about quitting early, but I don’t want to do anything to rock the boat.”
“Do you know if it’s true, what Miranda said about the owner? Are the dancers moving drugs for him?” An image from the prior night came back to me, the businessmen in suits, coming and going, when you’d normally expect a more downscale crowd at a club like the Sin Factory. The addition of drugs to the picture went a long way toward explaining what guys with money in their wallets might be doing there.
“I haven’t seen it. Of course, maybe they stopped after the murder because there were police all over the place. I wasn’t there long enough before it happened, I wouldn’t necessarily have seen it.”
“Have you seen anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Anything that made you uneasy.”
She laughed, but the laugh itself was an uneasy one. “Nothing worse than at Carson’s.”
“That bad?”
“They’re all the same. Unless you look like Jennifer Lopez or a Playboy centerfold – maybe then the places you get to work at are different. Although actually I doubt it. I’m sure the money’s better, but the management and the customers, I don’t know.”
“Better quality leather in the whips,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Have you ever met Khachadurian?”
“I only saw him once, on my first day,” she said. “Lenz was walking with this huge guy, took up half the hallway. One of the other girls said that’s who it was.”
“And Lenz? What’s he like in private?”
“The same. In private, in public, he’s a prick. He’s the same with everyone as he was with you last night.” I heard a muted beeping from under the table, the sound of a cell phone picking out the notes to Ravel’s Bolero. She picked up her handbag, dropped it on the table, and rooted around in it until she found her phone.
“Go ahead, take it,” I said. “I’ll step over there.”
“No, it’s not a call. I just set the alarm.” She pressed a button on the side of the phone and the melody stopped. “I need to go. I’m sorry. I’ve got to get changed and get ready.” Her hands were shaking again. Or maybe they’d never stopped.
“How can I contact you if I need to?” I said
She still had her cell phone in her hand, so I would have thought the answer was obvious; but then again, I also remembered her saying in her voicemail that there was no good number where I could reach her.
