She stubbed her half-finished smoke out in the glass ashtray and took a strong pull on her glass of scotch.
“I guess I should be going, then,” she said.
She stood up.
“Do you need a ride anywhere?”
“No, I actually have a car, thank you.”
She started out of the bar in the direction of the front doors but after a few yards stopped and came back to the table.
“You’re right, you know.”
“About what?”
“About it not doing me any good now.”
With that she left. Bosch watched her push through the revolving doors and disappear into the night.
Following the directions he had written down when he spoke with Rhonda over the phone in Tony Aliso’s office, Bosch found Dolly’s on Madison in North Las Vegas. It was strictly an upper-crust club: twenty-dollar cover, two- drink minimum and you were escorted to your seat by a large man in a tuxedo with a starched collar that cut into his neck like a garrote. The dancers were upper-crust, too. Young and beautiful, they probably were just shy of having enough coordination and talent to work the big room shows on the Strip.
Bosch was led by the tuxedo to a table the size of a dinner plate about eight feet from the main stage, which was empty at the moment.
“A new dancer will be on stage in a couple minutes,” the man in the tuxedo told Bosch. “Enjoy the show.”
Bosch didn’t know if he was supposed to tip the guy for seating him at such a close-up location as well as putting up with the tuxedo, but he let it go and the man didn’t hang around with his hand out. Bosch had barely gotten his cigarettes out when a waitress in a red silk negligee, high heels and black fishnet stockings floated over and reminded him of the two-drink minimum. Bosch ordered beer.
While he waited for his two beers, Bosch took a look around. Business seemed slow, it being the Monday night tail-end of a holiday weekend. There were maybe twenty men in the place. Most of them were sitting by themselves and not looking at each other while they waited for the next nude woman to entertain them.
There were full-length mirrors on the side and rear walls. A bar ran along the left side of the room, and cut into the wall in the back was an arched entrance above which a red neon sign that glowed in the darkness announced PRIVATE DANCERS. The front wall was largely taken up by a shimmering curtain and the stage. A runway projected from the stage through the center of the room. The runway was the focus of several bright lights attached to a metal gridwork on the ceiling. Their brightness made the runway almost glow in contrast to the dark and smoky atmosphere of the seating area.
A disk jockey in a sound booth at the left side of the stage announced the next dancer would be Randy. An old Eddie Money song, “Two Tickets to Paradise,” started blaring over the sound system as a tall brunette wearing blue jeans cut off to expose the lower half of her bottom and a neon pink bikini top charged through the shimmering curtain and started moving to the beat of the music.
Bosch was immediately mesmerized. The woman was beautiful and the first thought he had was to question why she was doing this. He had always believed that beauty helped women get away from many of the hardships of life. This woman, this girl, was beautiful and yet here she was. Maybe that was the real draw for these men, he thought. Not the glimpse of a naked woman, but the knowledge of submission, the thrill of knowing another one had been broken. Bosch began to think he had been wrong about beautiful women.
The waitress put down two beers on the little table and told Bosch he owed fifteen dollars. He almost asked her to repeat the price but then figured it came with the territory. He handed her a twenty, and when she started digging through the stack of bills on her tray for his change he waved it off.
She clutched his shoulder and bent down to his ear, making sure that she was at an angle that afforded him a look at her full cleavage.
“Thank you, darlin’. I ’preciate that. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“There is one thing. Is Layla here tonight?”
“No, she’s not here.”
Bosch nodded. And the waitress straightened up.
“How about Rhonda then?” Bosch asked.
“That’s Randy up there.”
She pointed to the stage and Bosch shook his head and signaled her to come closer.
“No, Rhonda, like help, help me Rhonda. She working tonight? She was here last night.”
“Oh, that Rhonda. Yeah, she’s around. You just missed her set. She’s probably in the back changing.”
Bosch reached into his pocket for his money and put a five on her bar tray.
“Will you go back and tell her the friend of Tony’s she talked to last night wants to buy her a drink?”
“Sure”
She squeezed his shoulder again and went off. Bosch’s attention was drawn to the stage, where Randy’s first song had just ended. The next song was “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon. Bosch hadn’t heard it in a while and he remembered how it had been an anthem among the uniforms back when he had worked patrol.
The dancer named Randy soon slipped out of her outfit and was nude except for a garter stretched tightly around her left thigh. Many of the men got up and met her as she danced her way slowly down the runway. They slid dollar bills under the garter. And when a man put a five under the strap, Randy bent down over him, using his shoulder to steady herself, and did an extra wiggle and kissed his ear.
Bosch watched this and was thinking that he now had a pretty good idea how Tony Aliso ended up with the small handprint on his shoulder, when a petite blond woman slid into the seat next to him.
“Hi. I’m Rhonda. You missed my show!”
“I heard that. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I go back on in a half hour and do it all over again. I hope you’ll stay. Yvonne said you wanted to buy me a drink?”
As if on cue Bosch saw the waitress heading their way. Bosch leaned over to Rhonda.
“Listen, Rhonda, I’d rather take care of you than give my money to the bar. So do me a favor and don’t go exorbitant on me.”
“Exorbitant…?”
She crinkled her face up in a question.
“Don’t go ordering champagne.”
“Oh, I gotcha.”
She ordered a martini and Yvonne floated back into the darkness.
“So, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Harry.”
“And you’re a friend of Tony’s from L.A. You make movies, too?”
“No, not really.”
“How do you know Tony?”
“I just met him recently. Listen, I’m trying to find Layla to get a message to her. Yvonne tells me she’s not on tonight. You know where I can find her?”
Bosch noticed her stiffen. She knew something wasn’t right.
“First of all, Layla doesn’t work here anymore. I didn’t know that when I talked to you last night, but she’s gone and won’t be back. And secondly, if you’re a friend of Tony’s, then how come you’re asking me how to find her?”
She wasn’t as dumb as Bosch had thought. He decided to go direct.
“Because Tony got himself killed, so I can’t ask him. I want to find Layla to tell her and maybe warn her.”
“What?” she shrieked.
Her voice cut through the loud music like a bullet through a slice of bread. Everybody in the place, including the naked Randy on the stage, looked in their direction. Bosch had no doubt that everyone in the place must think he had just propositioned her, offering an insulting fee for an equally insulting act.
“Keep it down, Randy,” he quickly said.
“It’s Rhonda.”
“Rhonda then.”
