Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) Read online

  “Why’s that?”

  “You ain’t never met the man, have you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, you go right ahead then, call him what you want. I’ll be seeing you out here again in no time.” His voice was the sort of throaty growl that would be right at home coming from an idling motorcycle.

  “Thanks for the tip,” I said.

  “What they pay me for,” he said. “Preventing trouble.”

  The place was packed. Maybe it was all thrillseekers and newshounds, people who had come to soak up the club’s sudden notoriety, but somehow that wasn’t the feeling I got. The guys at the bar had the comfortable, broken-in posture of old regulars, and at the stage it was clearly Eros, not Thanatos, that was on everyone’s mind.

  It wasn’t hard to recognize the headliners from their photos on the door. Mandy was the shorter one, and a little older than she looked in her picture, but no less well endowed. She was working the crowd, kneeling at the edge of the stage and pressing the face of one patron after another between her breasts. Her garter had a few bills in it and a few had fallen to the stage. I think one of them might have been a twenty, dropped by some high roller, but I couldn’t swear to it.

  Meanwhile, Rachel Firestone was back by the pole, leaning against it, doing a sort of sinuous Salome thing with her arms over her head that was completely lost on the audience. The ones who weren’t slobbering on Mandy’s breasts were woofing and cheering when she leaned back and bucked her hips in time to the beat.

  Throughout the song she’d been playing with the bowtie knots at either hip, and now that she’d worked the crowd into a lather, she gave each knot a practiced tug and whipped off the spangled g-string entirely. This was a no-no for a club with a liquor license, but there were apparently no cops in the room, or at least none that disapproved, since she went right on bucking and twisting under the spotlight.

  The song reached its climax and faded, and then it was Rachel’s turn. She stepped forward as the next song started. Mandy snatched up the fallen bills, threw a few kisses to the crowd, and exited through a door at the rear of the stage. Presumably to the too-cold dressing room, where the next girl waited to take Rachel’s place at the pole.

  I looked around the room. The mirrored walls made it hard to get your bearings, especially since some of them turned out to be doors, like the one behind the stage. One swung open, disgorging a man wiping his hands on a twist of beige paper. Another opened to reveal a woman in heels and a clingy gown, leading a happy patron by the hand. Some sort of VIP room, presumably, which would be where the girls made their real money, extorting extra bucks for “champagne” and a private lap dance. How far things went in rooms like that depended on the club and how badly they wanted to stay on the right side of the law. Of course, I’d just gotten a hint of how law-abiding this place was. Behind closed doors, it was probably every girl for herself.

  I couldn’t imagine Miranda selling back room sex any more than I could imagine her dancing naked in a room like this. But then I couldn’t imagine her dead of two bullets to the back of the head, either.

  I felt a hand at my elbow, then a soft pressure against my arm as a woman came around from behind me. She was about my height, Chinese, in a green dress cut down the front and up the side to show a bit of this and a bit of that. The smile she gave me didn’t look any more unnatural than, say, a shoe salesman’s. “Hi, handsome. Want to buy me a drink?”

  “I’m looking for Lenz,” I said.

  She dropped the smile and nodded. “He’s around here, I just saw him.” She looked over my shoulder, scanned the bar. “I don’t know, he’s probably in back. He’ll be out in a minute.” She patted my arm. “Back to work.” And up went the smile again.

  I elbowed my way to the bar, ordered my club soda, and parted with a twenty when it arrived. The woman working the tap was not the same one who’d been there earlier, but she was the same general type. If you bothered to look closely you’d see that this one had curlier hair and darker skin, that her breasts didn’t fill the bustier quite so close to overflowing — but who was bothering to look? All heads in the room were turned to the stage, except for the people who were engaged in conversation with one of the women working the floor. I wasn’t watching the bartender, myself — I was watching the room reflected in the mirror behind her.

  But I wasn’t watching closely enough, and I jumped a little when another hand landed on my elbow from behind. This one had a firm grip and didn’t sweeten the pot with the soft pressure of a breast against my arm.

  “I hear you’re looking for me.”

  I turned around, then climbed down off my stool to even things out a little, but it wasn’t enough. Even in boots with two-inch heels, Lenz only came up to my chin. He had unruly sideburns and something in his hair that made it shine under the room’s lights. His head was tilted back and cocked at an angle and there was a stare etched onto his face that dared me to say something smart.

  “Jasmine said you’re looking for me. I don’t think we’ve met. Do we have business together?”

  “We might,” I said. “I was Miranda Sugarman’s boyfriend.”

  He stiffened visibly. After all he’d had to deal with, that had to be low on the list of things he wanted to hear. Still, Leo’d taught me to try the direct approach first.

  “This was a long time ago, in high school,” I said. “I read in the paper about what happened, and I figured maybe I could come here, talk to someone who’d known her more recently.” He was doing a slow burn, which told me my chances weren’t good. “I’d like to talk to you about her. Do you have a minute?”

  His head twitched to the side. “Do I have a minute. No, I don’t have a fucking minute. Two days, the fucking cops have been crawling up my ass, asking me questions. Your girlfriend worked here, what, four months? Gets herself killed on my premises, puts my club in the fucking paper—”

  “Doesn’t look like it’s hurting your business any.”

  “The fuck do you know about my business? Jesus Christ, now I’ve got to talk to the fucking boyfriend from high school? What the hell are you anyway, sixteen years old? Fucking Roy’ll let anyone in. Get out of here!”

  Now some of the heads had turned our way. Even Rachel Firestone was watching from the stage, though she kept shimmying while she did it.

  He tried to grab my arm, but I held my hands up out of his reach.

  “I just want a few minutes of your time,” I said.

  “No, that’s not what you want,” Lenz said. “You want to break my balls. Well, tonight’s your lucky night, since all I’m gonna do is kick you out.” He marched me to the door and pushed me through, giving me a violent shove toward the curb. He turned to the bouncer, shook his index finger in the man’s face. “You let him in again, you’re fired. Understand?” The door slammed shut.

  “Told you not to call him that,” Roy said.

  Chapter 5

  So much for the direct approach.

  I straightened myself up and took my wounded pride down the block, past the deli I’d stood in earlier, past a shuttered FedEx office, past a Radio Shack that was brightly lit but closed, to a pub that was dark but open. The sandwich board on the sidewalk outside listed dinner specials written in chalk — shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, liver and onions — along with a couple of specialty drinks and the name of the trio that played Mondays through Thursdays from nine to midnight. It was Monday, but after midnight, and both the piano and the microphone stand stood silent.

  Behind the bar, a gray-haired man with rolled-up shirtsleeves and ancient blue tattoos on both forearms was wiping down the bar with a rag. He kept wiping after I sat down and only stopped when I ordered a drink. He looked at me for a second longer than he’d have looked at most people, but in the end he didn’t ask to see an ID.

  “What have you got to eat this late at night?” I asked.

  He set my drink down in front of me. “Anything you want, so long as it’s a hamburger.�
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  “How about a cheeseburger?”

  “It’d be stretching a point,” he said, “but I think the chef can manage it.” He hustled off to pass the order to the kitchen.

  Was this guy Keegan? I thought. Or was Keegan the owner, living somewhere down in Florida or out in Arizona while someone else managed his pub for him? Or maybe there never was a Keegan; maybe it was just a name that looked good on the sign. Didn’t much matter, I supposed.

  What did matter was that Keegan’s Brown Derby was the only Derby in the area. I drank my drink and waited for the dancers to arrive.

  The night-shift bartender showed up first, by herself. Then some of the dancers came in — I recognized Jasmine in the first group and Rachel Firestone in the second. Most of the women were wearing baggy sweats under baggier coats, their makeup washed off, their hair tucked up under knit caps. I got the sense that this is what they would have been wearing even if it had been the height of summer — anything to hide the figures they’d spent the night displaying, anything to avoid attracting the attention of the sort of stage-door johnnies who sometimes hang around at strip clubs after hours, hoping to hook up with a dancer.

  Of course, I realized, that’s exactly what I’d look like myself if I wasn’t careful. I waited till there were eight or nine of them sitting around a pair of tables pushed together in the corner, stealing cottage fries and bits of burger from each other’s plates. I came over casually, with my hands in plain view all the way.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but—”

  “Fuck off, creep.”

  It was a practiced response, a reflex like kicking when the doctor taps your knee. But you could tell there was real tension behind it — you could see the stress in the eight pairs of eyes suddenly aware of me, the eight women who’d lost one of their own just fortyeight hours ago.

  “Get the fuck out of here or we’ll call the cops,” the bartender said. “I’m not joking.”

  “I’m a private investigator.” I took out my wallet and this time I did fish out my P.I. license. Maybe they couldn’t read it from where they were sitting, but they could see that I was holding up a laminated card with the state seal on it. That was something, I suppose.

  “I’m investigating the death of Miranda Sugarman. I would appreciate your help.”

  “You were in the club tonight.” This was from Rachel, who was at the table closer to me. She held my eye as she said it.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re the guy Lenz threw out.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you were her boyfriend,” the bartender said. “Was that just a line?”

  “No, that was the truth. I knew her ten years ago. We went to high school together.”

  There was silence around the tables. They’d stopped picking at their food.

  “Did any of you know her?” I asked.

  Jasmine spoke up. “We worked the C shift together last week. First time I met her.”

  “Did she say anything to you that seemed strange? Anything that might explain what happened?” Jasmine shook her head. “Anyone else?”

  “She didn’t talk much,” one of them said, and a few of the others nodded. “Just came in, did her sets, got dressed, and left.”

  “Someone told me she ate with you here sometimes.”

  “Once, maybe. I don’t remember her saying two words to anyone.”

  “Did she have any regular customers? Were there people who came just to see her?”

  No one seemed to remember any.

  I looked from face to face and saw the same things in each of them. Fear, distrust, but also a sort of cautious wishfulness, as though they hoped I was for real and not just some scam artist. Rachel especially — she watched me more intently than the others and seemed to be mulling something over. But whatever it was, she didn’t come out with it.

  I took out a handful of business cards with my name and phone number on them, handed them to Rachel who dealt them out around the table. “My name is John Blake,” I said, “and you’ve got my cell phone number there. You remember anything, anything at all, please call me. If something happens — anything at all — call me. Okay?” A few of them nodded.

  “Mr. Blake,” one of them said as I turned to leave, and I turned back. “Do you think it’s going to happen again? I mean, do you think it’s someone going after dancers? Or was it just her?”

  I thought about the two bullets to the back of the head. A classic execution, Leo had called it. Maybe a little bloodier than average — a pair of hollow-points fired at point-blank range would tear half your face off — but still, it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect from a serial killer or someone getting a sexual thrill from the act.

  God knows these women wanted and deserved some reassurance, and standing there I wanted to give them some. But what if I did, and they let down their guard, and then it turned out I was wrong?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I walked back past the club, which was dark and locked up tight behind a metal gate. The Sin Factory filled the ground floor of a three-story brownstone, and I assumed the whole building was theirs — I couldn’t imagine unrelated tenants living above a club like this, if only because of the noise. Although in New York, you never knew.

  There was a narrow passage at the side of the building, wide enough for a stack of overstuffed Hefty bags filled with the night’s refuse. The garbage trucks would be here in a few hours, and in the meantime the rats could enjoy their own buffet.

  I edged past the garbage and came out in a little rear courtyard, lit by the feeble glow of a sixty-watt bulb over the door. There was graffiti all over the rear wall and dark stains along the base. The door had a plate for a Medeco deadbolt in addition to the standard Rabson cylinder above the knob, and though I was tempted to try to pick them and get inside, I’d learned enough over the past six years not to bother. In the movies you always see people opening locks like it’s nothing, but the truth is it’s easier to take a door off its hinges than it is to pick a Medeco.

  Besides, there were other ways in, if in was where I wanted to be. There was a fire escape running up the rear wall. There were only slightly taller buildings on either side, and the odds were they didn’t both have Medeco locks. And if they did, there were more short buildings on either side of them — it was probably how the killer had gotten onto the roof and then gotten away afterwards.

  But what would I see if I went there now? I could go to the roof and see where Miranda had died, maybe get a feeling for what it had been like there that night, but if I was thinking of searching for clues, I could forget it. The NYPD would have picked it clean. They’d certainly have done a better job than I could do at two in the morning with no light.

  I went out the way I’d come in, my back to the wall, trying not to inhale the sour smell of the trash. On the street, traffic was light and none of the cars that passed me were empty cabs, so I walked to the train station and rode the 1 downtown. When I came up out of the subway, my phone beeped in its plastic holder on my hip. The screen showed a little picture of an envelope with a letter “V” next to it. I found an empty doorway, thumbed in *86 and my password.

  “Mr. Blake? This is Rachel Firestone. We met earlier tonight? I was hoping to talk to you. I guess you’re not there.” I waited, but that seemed to be the end of the voicemail. Either Verizon had cut her off or she’d run out of things to say. But then I heard her voice again. “Listen, there’s no good number where you can reach me. Why don’t you come to the Derby tomorrow at six — I don’t go on until eight, and we can talk. Okay? Okay. See you then.”

  I played the message again when I got upstairs and then once more after getting undressed, but it didn’t say any more to me either time. There was nothing I could do about it but wait.

  I didn’t want to — I wanted to get up, get on the computer, and chase down a dozen leads. I wanted to bang on some doors until someone told me why Miranda Suga
rman was lying in the morgue. But it was almost three in the morning now, I was exhausted, and Miranda wasn’t going anywhere. I forced myself to lie down, close my eyes, and try to get some sleep.

  Chapter 6

  In the morning, I made some toast and a cup of coffee and started working the phone. The only thing that slowed me down was having to wait till noon to reach offices on the West Coast.

  Neither of the Mastadunos I’d found was Jocelyn — one was Jessica, the other Jerome — and neither of them knew a Jocelyn. I left a message with the Rianon alumni office, asking for their help. I logged on to the Internet again and copied down the names of the girls who’d been in all the other rooms on the eleventh floor of Heward Hall, and while I was at it the ones on the tenth and the twelfth. Some were named Smith and Jones or the equivalent, but others had more obscure names and I started hunting them down through public directories. I found a Lainie Burroughs in Midland, Wisconsin, and it was the right Lainie Burroughs, but she hadn’t known either Miranda or Jocelyn. I found Maya Eskin. I found Jody Sinkiewicz. Jody remembered Jocelyn and both of them remembered Miranda, but neither had any idea what had become of them.

  “They were really close,” Jody said, “I remember that, I’d always see them in the hall together. I mean, I didn’t see them all that often, but if I saw one of them, I saw them both. And then for a long time I didn’t see either of them and I asked someone, and she said they’d dropped out.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “God, who was it. Was it Katherine? Probably Katherine, she knew them better than I did.”

  “What’s Katherine’s last name?”

  “It’s Lewis now, but then it was Chin.”

  “Do you know where I can reach her?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” From the other end of the phone came the sound of a clasp being opened, pages being turned. “Katherine Lewis, she’s in Chicago now, working at the Children’s Hospital? I can give you her work number.”