Dead Winter (18 page)

“Miss,” she repeated. “Heh-heh-heh. You’re okay, honey. You wanna buy me a beer?”

“Sure.” I turned to the bartender. He smiled and produced a Bud for Raybelle.

She lifted it and drained half of it. Then she pounded it down onto the bar and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist. “Ahh,” she sighed. “Only one thing better’n a good cold Bud.” She dropped her hand onto the inside of my thigh. “So what’s up?” she said. Then she laughed again, that evil heh-heh-heh.

I squirmed under her grip. “I’d like some information on a girl who used to work here.”

“Lotsa girls used to work here, honey.” She patted my leg and removed her hand. “Most of ’em don’t stay long. What’s her name?”

“Maggie. I don’t know what her last name was.”

“You got the hots for this broad?”

“No, that’s not it. She married a friend of mine. She was killed recently. Murdered. I’d like to track down her parents.”

Raybelle accepted this information without reaction. I might as well have told her that Maggie had invested in IBM stocks.

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m the family lawyer,” I said. “Some legal things to clear up.”

She narrowed her black-rimmed eyes. “Like who killed her, huh?”

I shrugged. “That’s police business, not mine.”

She frowned. “Maggie,” she mumbled. “Can’t say I recall a broad named Maggie.”

“Tall, black-haired, brown eyes. Quit about a year ago when she got married.”

“Any scars, tattoos, or identifying marks?” She grinned. “Heh-heh-heh.”

“I never saw her dance.”

“You gotta help me more than that, honey. No chick danced here under the name of Maggie. Hell, I wouldn’t let her. Maggie just don’t hack it for a name. Whaddya think of Dusty Knight?”

“She was very good,” I said.

“I mean the name, dummy.”

“Good name for a stripper.”

She nodded. “I gave her that name. Broad’s real name is McGillicuddy. Imagine this: And now on the Night Owl stage, straight in from the Riviera in Las Vegas, ladies and gentlemen, a great dancer, a fantastic body, let’s have a big hand for the beautiful, the sexy, the stacked—Gloria McGillicuddy.” Her voice had become her announcing voice, lower, cruder, more suggestive. She cocked her head at me. “Heh-heh-heh.”

“My ex-wife’s name is Gloria,” I said.

“Your wife probably ain’t a stripper.”

“No, she’s not.”

“I don’t see how I’m gonna help you.”

“My friend, who she married, his name is Marc Winter.”

Raybelle gazed past me toward the stage. She shrugged. I sensed I was losing her attention.

“He noticed her when she pulled a hatpin on a couple clowns who were bothering her here one night.”

Raybelle turned and frowned at me. “A hatpin?”

I nodded.

“Shit, I remember her. With the hatpin. Sure. Cool one, she was. Hell of a bod. Hang on, I’ll think of it.” She stared up at the ceiling and shut her eyes. Then she snapped her fingers. “Mona. That’s who. Mona with the hatpin. Mona Mist. Mona was good. I was sorry she quit. She didn’t tell me why. Married, huh? Well, that’s what happens to ’em. They either get married or they get disgusted or they turn into junkies or drunks. You like Mona Mist?”

“The name, you mean?”

“Well, yeah. The name.”

“Your name?”

“You betcha.”

“A good one.”

“So whaddya wanna know about Mona?”

“Her real name. Where she’s from. Anything you can tell me.”

She shrugged. “The girls come and go. Mona was good, though. Not much in the tit department. Great ass, legs that wouldn’t quit. She could dance, all right. Real popular, Mona. Thing is, I don’t get involved in the girls’ personal lives. Live and let live, I say. And Mona, she didn’t have that much to say. Kept to herself, pretty much. Came in, danced, left.”

“Anybody here now who might remember her?”

Over her shoulder she said to the bartender, “Mike, you remember Mona?”

He shook his head. “I’ve only been here a few months, Raybelle.”

She shrugged. “None of the girls been here a year. Big turnover in dancers.”

“You must have records or something.”

“Buy me another Bud. Lemme think.”

I nodded to Mike the bartender. He obliged. I lit a cigarette and offered one to Raybelle. She waved it away. “Doctor made me quit. I got whatchamacallit—polyps—in my throat. Can’t drink hard stuff, either. So I stick to the foamies and suck my thumb.” She grinned lecherously. “Providin’ I can’t find somethin’ better to suck on. Look. This is important, huh?”

“Yes. Very.”

She swigged on her beer. “Okay. Hang tight, honey.” She squeezed my knee for an instant, then waddled away.

Sally Flame by now had doffed her bra and G-string and had begun the dollar-bill trick, a minor variation of the theme of her predecessor. As I watched her, I was tempted to agree with Mike’s assessment—you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.

Raybelle returned a moment later. She put an old-fashioned ledger book onto the bar and patted it. “I got it all here. Fellas I know tell me I gotta get me a computer. Like hell I do. What I need’s in here. Okay. So I look up Mona Mist.”

She opened the ledger, wet her thumb on her tongue, and began flipping pages. “Here we go. Mona Mist. Name she gave me was Maggie Burrows. That might not be her real one. I don’t press the girls too close. They have to give me their Social Security numbers to keep me square with the IRS. That’s all I care about.”

She swung the ledger around so I could see it. Maggie had worked at the Night Owl from November to the end of June, a little over a year ago. Her salary began at $125 a week. By the time she quit she was making $350. “You gave her several raises,” I said to Raybelle.

She shrugged. “She was good. I put her on more nights. Private enterprise, right? Don’t forget, the broads make more than just salaries here.”

“You mean the dollar bills on the railings.”

“Heh-heh-heh,” she cackled. “Yeah, that too.”

“You mean—”

“They meet men. None of my business.” She shrugged.

I took out my little notebook and copied the name Maggie Burrows and her Social Security number from Raybelle’s ledger. “This should help me,” I said.

Raybelle flopped it shut, tucked it under her arm, and turned to leave. Then she put her hand on my arm and her face close to mine. Surprisingly, she wore a delicate lavender scent that reminded me of a cheerleader I knew in high school. “Come back some time, Mr. Lawyer. Maybe we can do some business.”

“I would’ve imagined you already had a lawyer, Raybelle.”

“Oh,” she leered, “I’ve got loads of lawyers. But a hard man is good to find.”

She twirled off her barstool girlishly and strutted away, giving her big bottom in her skintight orange pants a couple of exaggerated bumps.

It took me a moment to realize what she had said.

I finished my beer and watched the end of Sally Flame’s performance. Then, oddly depressed, I left the Night Owl.

Charlie McDevitt and I were in the same class at Yale Law School. For a year we shared a ramshackle house on the water in New Haven, where we ate clams we dug ourselves and drank beer and entertained women. We sometimes even studied lawbooks. After graduation, I pursued my quixotic goal of becoming a truly independent lawyer in Boston. Charlie became a prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice, which he insisted was a logical stepping-stone toward his ultimate objective.

Charlie wanted to become a Supreme Court justice. In the nearly twenty years since we got out of law school, Charlie had not lowered his sights.

Several years ago he seized the opportunity to head up the Boston office for the Justice Department. “One step closer,” he told me.

It was good to have him in town. We tried to coordinate our days off so we could fish and play golf together.

And we did each other favors, as friends do. In truth, he helped me far more often than I helped him. But he knew I was willing. And to keep our slates clear, we repaid favors with dinners at Boston restaurants. That way, neither of us ever felt indebted. It enabled us to ask for help more freely.

So when I called Charlie on Tuesday morning, I had no compunction about asking him to do something for me that I couldn’t do for myself. “I need something out of your computer,” I told him.

“You think all the data in the world are stored in government computers,” he said.

“It seems to be.”

“You think all I gotta do is poke a couple keys and I can tell you anything you want to know.”

“You’ve always come through, Charlie.”

“You think you can take me to Legal Seafoods for lunch and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Maybe you’d prefer a trip to the North Shore. I’ve found some good spots up in Newburyport.”

I heard him sigh. “Legal will be fine. What do you want?”

“If I give you a Social Security number, what can you give me?”

“Shoe size, whether or not they take cream and sugar, toothpaste brand.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, if I could access Defense and CIA and IRS computers, you’d be surprised. Scared, actually. It’s kinda frightening.”

“Can you?”

“What, access those computers? Naw. Not without a hassle. But we got pretty good stuff in our data bank. What do you want to know?”

I told Charlie about Maggie, her connection with my client Desmond Winter, and how I suspected that Lanie Horton was her biological daughter and that Nathan Greenberg’s search for Maggie had somehow resulted in both of them getting murdered. “If I could just track down her family, I could take it from there,” I concluded.

“I love the mahi mahi at Legal Seafoods,” said Charlie.

“Good. A deal.”

“So give me that number.”

I read it to him.

He repeated it to me. “I’ll get back to you.”

I humored Julie for the rest of the morning, catching up on my paperwork and answering the accumulation of phone messages. I took her to lunch at Marie’s, a little Italian place just outside Kenmore Square, where we split an enormous antipasto and a half-carafe of house wine. I offered her a raise. She accepted with a shrug, as if it was her due. She had a point. I still made more than she did, and she worked much harder.

Charlie had left a message on the machine while we were gone. “Got it,” was the complete, unexpurgated text.

When Shirley, his round, grandmotherly secretary, put me through to him, Charlie said, “I ever introduce you to Artie Sheehan?”

“No. I don’t recall the name.”

“Good guy to know, Artie. Plumber who actually comes to the house and fixes things. As you know, water pipes and electric wires scare the shit out of me. We had a leak in the shower last week, so I called Artie. He came out on Saturday. He was telling me how he’s trying to get over his divorce. He went to this restaurant in Wellesley one night, decided to have a drink at the bar before he ate. He says he couldn’t believe how many great-lookin’ women were in there. ‘Charlie,’ he says to me, ‘it made me feel rejuvenated, just seeing them.’”

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Is this gonna be one of your stories, Charlie?”

“This,” he said, making the hurt drip from his voice, “is just something my plumber told me that I thought would interest you. If all you want out of this friendship is data from my computer, just say the word.”

“Please accept my apology.”

“Okay. Granted. So Artie gets up his courage and he takes an empty barstool next to a gorgeous blonde. ‘Can I buy you a drink, miss?’ he says. She turns and looks him up and down. Artie’s not a bad-looking guy, actually, when he shaves and combs his hair. ‘What do you do for a living?’ says the girl. ‘I’m a plumber,’ says Artie. ‘Get lost,’ says the girl.”

“Charlie—”

“So,” he continued, ignoring me, “Artie’s a little taken aback, but his ego’s in decent shape. So he goes back to this place the next night and spots a brunette, also lovely. He sits beside her. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he says, because he figures that part of his line is okay. She takes a look at him. ‘May I ask what you do for a living?’ says the broad. ‘Sure,’ says Artie. ‘I own my own business. I’m a plumber.’ ‘Buzz off,’ says the woman. Artie gives all this some thought, so the next night when he returns to this joint, he finds a seat and gets the ear of the bartender. ‘I been in two nights,’ he says. ‘Both times I try to start up a conversation with a couple ladies I get the brushoff. I use mouthwash, spray my armpits. I’m not really stupid, not totally ugly. What’m I doing wrong?’ The bartender says, ‘They ask you what you do for a living?’ ‘Yeah,’ says Artie. ‘What did you tell them?’ ‘I told ’em I was a plumber, mainly because that’s what I am.’ ‘Aha,’ says the bartender. ‘That’s your problem. See, the broads that come in here, well, stuff like that matters to them. You gotta tell ’em you’re a doctor or lawyer or novelist or something. That’ll impress ’em. After that, you’re on your own.’”

I lit a cigarette and sighed into the telephone.

“Am I keeping you up?” said Charlie.

“I’m on tenterhooks,” I said. “The suspense is killing me. Alfred Hitchcock could’ve taken lessons from you. What happened next? Huh? Huh?”

“Okay. That’s better,” said Charlie. “The next night Artie goes back. Spots a most attractive girl. A redhead, he told me. He sits next to her, offers to buy her a drink. She asks what he does for a living. ‘I’m an attorney,’ he says. And, sure enough, she nods. ‘I’d love a drink,’ she says. So Artie buys her a couple drinks. Then she looks at her watch. ‘It’s getting a little late,’ she says. ‘Want a lift home?’ says Artie. She says she’d love a ride. So Artie drives her to her apartment. ‘Want to come up for a nightcap?’ says the girl. Artie’s about pissing his pants, he’s feeling so lucky. So he goes up to the girl’s apartment, and she, you know how it goes, she slips into something comfortable, and the next thing Artie knows he’s in the sack with this gorgeous young redhead. Sometime later, they’re lying there smoking cigarettes, Artie starts laughing. The girl says, ‘What’s so funny? Why’re you laughing?’ And Artie turns to her, and he says, ‘You won’t believe this. But I’ve only been a lawyer for three hours, and already I’ve managed to screw somebody.’”