Excerpt from Chapter One
From my post behind the bar, I happened to see him as he entered through the main door on my right. A lot of people act a little strange when they walk into a topless bar, but this guy was different.
He had a square chin and a military-style haircut, but he looked barely old enough to be in here. Zeke, the doorman, stopped him to ask him for his ID and the cover charge. The stranger seemed surprised by this, acting confused and disgusted before snatching a bill from his wallet. Before he handed it over to Zeke, he looked around the place deliberately, as if for something or someone special.
Looking for trouble, I guessed, and in the right place to find it.
It was a Wednesday night in late September. In most parts of the world, that would have meant it was a cool and crisp evening. In Phoenix, Arizona, though, it was just another of the endless summer nights. I was working behind the bar, alone except for Zeke and the dancers. He had looked straight at me when he walked in, and there was no recognition on his face. He wasn’t looking for me.
It was about seven p.m., a slow time for the bar. The pool table lay silent, cue sticks crossed on the green felt under the bright beer light. A couple of regulars sat at the bar, their backs to the stage. I never understood coming to a topless bar and ignoring the dancers, but they seemed harmless, and they, too, had raised no reaction from the stranger.
Fifteen or twenty small tables, each with two or three chairs, crowded into the main area of the bar, and more chairs sat up against the front wall for lap dances. On any given night, the crowd at Sally’s looked like a group of miscreants ranging from street thugs to serial killers, but they usually turned out to be harmless. At the time, a half-dozen or so guys watched the dancers in this area. The stranger paid them no notice as he walked to a table in the far right corner of the room, farthest from the stage and the bar.
In the middle of the wall to my left was the stage, raised a couple of feet from the floor of the bar, backed by full-length mirrors, and with a brass pole from floor to ceiling right in the center. A brass rail ran along the front and sides, except on the left where the stairs connected. A deck for glasses and ashtrays ran along the edges, with stools for customers. At the moment, only one customer sat on a stool, hunched over his drink and cigarette. Raven, an experienced and attractive dancer with a trim body and dark hair, had finished her first dance, and she surveyed the crowd as she waited for her second song to begin. The stranger seemed to pay her no special attention.
The deejay’s booth occupied the other far corner of the room, beyond the stage. Eddie sat on a tall stool in the booth, wearing his headphones and working the controls of the CD player, his eyes and the end of his cigarette glowing among the stacks of CDs. The stranger had a clear view of Eddie, but he didn’t give him a second look. Scratch one more off the list.
The song ended to a patter of polite applause that Raven greeted with a shy smile. After a moment of quiet, Eddie spun up the next tune, and the insistent thump of “White Horse” by Laid Back filled the club. At Sally’s, the dancers took the stage for two songs each turn. For the first, the dancer wore her full costume. This was Raven’s second song, and she wasted no time untying her bikini top and casting it to the side by the stairs. She strutted around the stage with her chest thrust out, trying to stir up some interest, get the evening happening. Despite her best efforts, however, the crowd showed little interest in her act. The stranger paid her no attention whatsoever.
To my left, sectioned off with a velvet rope, sat the darkened “VIP” area, a couple of plush booths for “intimate” lap dances. These were technically no more permissive than ordinary lap dances, and touching the dancers anywhere in the bar would get a customer thrown out, but it was darker in the VIP area, and more private, and if you could afford the drink surcharge for sitting there, and the right dancer took a liking to you or your wad of cash, who knew what might happen. The right side of this area faced the short side of the stage. Rico, a regular at the club, usually sat in this area, as did Manny Galindo, the club’s owner. Both would probably be in later, but at that time the VIP area was dark and quiet.
Lulu, the primary night-shift waitress, who was young and enthusiastic and not yet too jaded, had just started her shift. She came out of the dressing room on my left at the end of the bar. She was an American Indian, and she had long, dark brown hair pulled back in a sporty ponytail. She spotted the stranger and went over to take his order.
The stranger’s arrival had interrupted my work reorganizing the bottles and tools behind the bar. More than that, he had provided me with an excuse to talk to Brandy. In reality, I wanted a bump, and any excuse would do.
I went to the end of the bar, pushed the thin purple curtain to the side, and stuck my head into the dressing room. Inside, to the left, stood a make-up table with dim lights around an oval mirror. A young dancer with feathered, light blond hair sat at the table, dressed only in a bikini bottom. Her nipples were a succulent pink. I wondered, not for the first time, what they tasted like.
She was chopping a rock of crystal meth into white lines on a small mirror. A girl with mousy brown hair and a cowgirl costume stood to the side, watching her cutting the lines, practically salivating.
“There’s a stranger here,” I said.
The blond didn’t look up. “Duh, Jack,” she said. “I think that’s the point.”
“I’m serious,” I said, alternating staring between Brandy’s nipples and the white lines. Her breasts and nipples bounced, bounced, bounced, as she chopped and sliced, chopped and sliced. “He seems like a guy looking for trouble.”
“Really?” Brandy asked, without interest.
The cowgirl, whose name was Venus, spoke up: “Does he look like a cop?”
This had not occurred to me, and evidently not to Brandy, either. She frowned at the white piles on the mirror and chopped a little more quickly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Jack, you’re so paranoid,” Brandy said, still not looking up. “You think everyone’s a cop.”
“I didn’t say I thought he was a cop. I said he seems like he’s looking for trouble.”
“What’s he doing?” Venus asked.
I pulled my head out of the curtain, glanced over at the stranger, stuck my head back in the dressing room. “He’s just sitting there, over in the cheap seats,” I said. Brandy had finished chopping the powder and cut it into four long, white lines. The math was not in my favor. Four lines: probably two for each of them. She leaned toward the mirror with a short straw in her hand. This might not go well. As she traced the straw over the closest line, inhaling deeply, I asked, “Can I get one of those?”
Brandy finished her line and sat up straight, her hand to her nose and her eyes watering and closed. She stuck her left hand out with the straw to me.
I grabbed the straw and stepped fully into the dressing room, letting the curtain close behind me.
“Hey,” Venus said to Brandy. “This was supposed to be for us.”
I leaned forward, put the straw to my nose, inhaled a line. Despite my attention on the mirror, I couldn’t help but notice how close this put Brandy’s nipples to my right ear. I finished the line and dropped the straw on the mirror, pinching my nose as I stood up straight. It burned. It burned good.
After a moment, I turned and went back through the curtain. “Thanks, Brandy,” I said over my shoulder.
Brandy was saying to Venus, “Well, he did get it for me.”
I didn’t hear more of Venus’s complaint, because back in the bar I heard what seemed like the entire place collectively inhaling.
