'Coupla' months,' Shelburne said.
'She have any other men friends?'
'She had her admirers, sure. All our dancers do. But she wasn't here long enough to pick up any steadies, because Paz moved in on her the first week she opened at the club. And there were no others after she took up with him. He liked to show her off, as arm candy. So everybody could see what a big shot he was, keeping company with a hottie like that. He liked to be seen with her, but he didn't want anyone else getting close to her. He's the jealous type.
'Besides, with the money and jewelry he was throwing at her, she didn't need no other sugar daddy. Why spoil a good thing?'
Shelburne was opening up. Jack soon learned the following:
Paz first started coming to the club in the spring. He'd gone out with several of the other dancers, including, most notably, Dorinda. In Shelburne's lexicon, 'gone out' and 'dating' were euphemisms for the same thing: having sex. Vikki started working at the club in late June. She was booked into the venue for the entire summer. When she hit the stage of the Golden Pole to do her star turn, Paz liked what he saw. He was smitten. He gave her the big rush, the full-court press, courting her with flowers and gifts of expensive jewelry, lingerie and the like. She and Paz hooked up in late June and had been an item ever since.
'It was a sweet deal for me,' Shelburne said. 'Paz spent a lot of money in the club, a bundle! He brought back the good times, money wise. He brought in a lot of other business, too, friends of his.'
Jack said, 'Who? We'll want their names.'
Shelburne made a face. 'Names? Who knows names? Every night we're packed to the rafters with customers, hundreds of 'em. Does a theater manager know the names of everybody who buys a ticket to a show?'
'Try.'
Shelburne frowned heavily, as if to show that for him, remembering was hard work. 'They were Latino dudes, that's all I know. Maybe they were from Venezuela, like him. I don't know, I don't speak the lingo. What I do know is that they were dough-heavy, too, and didn't mind spreading it around.'
Jack said, 'What about the other dancers? Any friends there that she might have contacted, gone to for help?'
'I don't mix in the dancers' personal lives, so I wouldn't know,' Shelburne said. 'But remember, Vikki was a headliner. A star. A real prima donna. She kept to herself, not buddying up much. Paz liked it that way.'
Jack questioned Dorinda next, while in another corner of the club, Pete went to work on Shelburne, grilling him to see what else might be pried loose from the manager.
Dorinda was second-billed on the club roster, right below Vikki.
She was restless, fidgety, in constant motion. Not out of anxiety about the massacre, or at being questioned, but mostly because she was the type who couldn't sit still for a minute and always had to be doing something. That's how Jack read it. She might have had a drug habit of some kind, too, that was affecting her.
She kept running her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face, only to have the same strands keep falling back over her eyes whenever she moved her head.
She wore lots of gold bracelets that clinked and jingled as she moved. She chain-smoked filtered cigarettes and sipped from a plastic bottle of water throughout the interview.
Jack said, 'What do you know about the shooting this morning?'
'Nothing. Not a thing,' she said. 'I was asleep when it happened. The shots woke me up. I got out of bed and lay on the floor until the shooting stopped.
I waited a couple of minutes before looking out the window and saw a bunch of dead guys in the street. I waited in my room for the cops to show up. That's all I know.'
'So you didn't see Vikki Valence run away?'
'No, but I'm not surprised she's in the middle of this,' Dorinda said, adding under her breath, 'the little tramp.'
'You don't like her much,' Jack said, working the obvious.
Dorinda said, 'I'm not in her fan club, if that's what you mean. Simply put, she's a conniving little bitch. I knew she was going to get Marty into a mess of trouble sooner or later.'
'Marty? You mean Colonel Paz?'
'Who else? Martello, that's his real name, but I called him Marty. He seemed to like it.'
'You and he were friends.'
'You could say that. Good friends, very good friends, if you catch my drift.'
Dorinda's long, narrow green eyes took on an inward look, remembering. 'I had Marty first,' she said. 'Had him from the moment he first came into the club and saw me.'
Jack said, 'When was that?'
'Back in the spring, around April.'
'You and Paz were together for how long?'
'Couple of months, until the end of June. I cut him loose.'
Jack said, 'You broke up with him.'
'That's right,' Dorinda said, eyes narrowing. 'Men don't leave me, I leave them. Why? What'd you hear? Has that fat bastard Shelb been talking out of turn?'
Jack said, 'Why'd you break up with Paz?'
Dorinda said, 'It wasn't working. He was just too jealous. It's that hot Latin blood, I guess. Once we were together, he didn't want me seeing any other men. Or even talking to them. Which isn't possible in this line of work, being a dancer, I mean. The job requires that we get along with the customers, be sociable, you know, to build goodwill and whatnot.
'When you're a star like me, you don't have to mingle much, not like the gals at the bottom of the bill, but even then, sometimes there's some guy who wants you to have a drink with him at his table, and it's easier to go along than to say no and make a big deal of it. A lot of heavy hitters come in here, powerful and important men, the real gentry, and you can't risk a shutdown because the invite you refused came from somebody high in City Hall or something. Marty didn't like that so well, even after I explained it to him a thousand times. He got used to it, but he didn't like it.'
Jack said, 'I understand he had a hot temper.'
'Not with me,' Dorinda said, 'except once or twice when we had a few misunderstandings. As couples do. But he was a real gentleman. He never hit me. He could be scary when he got mad, though, his face would swell up and his eyes would turn all red. You've heard the expression, that somebody 'sees red'? I always thought it was just a saying. But when he gets mad, Marty's eyes, the whites of them, really do turn red. You knew he was nobody to mess with when he got in one of those moods.
'But they blew away fast, and most of the time he was — I wouldn't say a real nice guy. But he was decent enough,' she said.
Jack changed the subject. 'What about his bodyguards?'
Dorinda said, 'What about them?'
'What were they like? Did you get along with them?'
She laughed, a harsh cawing sound. 'Sure, I got along with them. I'm the easygoing type. I get along with most everyone, especially men. Men like me, I wonder why?'
She made a show of stretching and yawning: lacing the fingers of both hands over her head, arching her back, and thrusting her breasts forward, so that they threatened to break loose from her low-cut blouse.
Jack asked, 'Talk to them much?'
'Nah. A little, mostly hello-goodbye, how you doing. The two main ones I knew were Aldo and Espy — Espinosa, that is. He was killed, huh?'
'They both were.'
'Too bad about Espy, he was a good-looking guy. What a waste of prime beef.'
Jack said, 'Did Paz have any enemies?'
Dorinda laughed again, that harsh cawing sound. 'He must've, considering the trouble they went to try and kill him.'
