Peepshow
Authors: Leigh Redhead
Table of Contents
Peepshow
Simone Kirsch Book One
Leigh Redhead
© 2004
Leigh Redhead has worked on a prawn trawler and has been a masseuse, waitress, stripper and apprentice chef. She lives in Northern New South Wales.
Peepshow
is her first novel.
To all strippers everywhere but especially
Dotti, Donna, Lara and Miranda
Monday 3 November
The tripper staggered out of the Palace nightclub into the bright hideousness of dawn.
‘Christ.’
Ten years of raving and the new day still came as a shock to him. He was prepared, however, and fumbled in the pockets of his voluminous cargo pants until he found his sunnies. That was better. They were black framed with blue lenses and, as well as looking incredibly cool, they gave the morning light depth and softness.
Mellowed everything out.
He chewed his sugar-free gum and considered what to do next. He couldn’t go home to Craigieburn. The E he’d swallowed half an hour ago was just starting to kick in.
‘Be careful, mate,’ the dealer, clad only in PVC pants and a thin sheen of sweat, had said. ‘They’re really strong, direct from Amsterdam. Better start with a half.’
As if!
A half was for lightweights, which he most certainly was not. But now, as he looked around the brisk St Kilda morning that seemed to shimmer a little, and crackle and pop, he thought maybe the dealer had been telling him the truth. Man, he was off his head. It was hitting him in waves, each one more powerful than the next. The only thing for it was to go to the beach and have a smoke, chill out for a bit.
He stopped at a palm tree to hang a leak, rested his head against the rough bark and unzipped his pants.
Damn drugs shrivelled things in the trouser department.
He strained, but only a thin trickle of urine dribbled out.
He gave it a shake.
Cars sped past along Marine Parade. It was Monday morning and people were off to work. Losers. Someone beeped and he waved at the traffic, then zipped himself up.
The beach had recently been graded and was flattened down neatly into corrugated ridges. Miniature waves lapped the shore, sounding like a new-age relaxation tape. The sky was pale blue and streaked with rosy wisps of cloud. Magic. He was patting his pockets, feeling for his ciggies, when he saw it, out in the bay.
Far out. It was a dolphin. The tripper loved dolphins.
Always had. He was no hippy but liked to think he had a spiritual side, one he nurtured with copious quantities of chemicals. He was convinced dolphins were mystical creatures, possibly from another galaxy, sent to teach humans the meaning of life. He always bought dolphin-free tuna and had wanted to get a dolphin tatt until his friend George convinced him they were a bit girly, and he would be better off with a Celtic symbol.
He felt the dolphin calling him, using sonar pulses to communicate with his brain. Amazing. He loped to the water’s edge, stripped down to his boxer shorts and started swimming. I’m coming, little dolphin. Wait for me. The dolphin kept disappearing and he thought he’d lost it when suddenly it bobbed up in the swell. He lunged and embraced the animal.
It wasn’t a dolphin at all.
The tripper’s arms were wrapped around a garbage bag that contained something squishy and buoyant. As he trod water the wet plastic slipped off the object and the sun, which had been hidden behind cloud, came out and reflected off the ocean with dazzling brilliance. He realised there was nothing under his feet and instinctively grabbed harder at the thing to stay afloat. It rolled towards him, the bag floated free and he found his arms around the neck of a corpse, his cheek pressed against a dead man’s face. Rubbery lips kissed his skin and one cloudy eye stared directly at him. The other eye was not there. In its place was a hollow red socket with whitish tendrils of nerve, waving like sea anemone. The hole made a gurgling sound as it sucked in seawater.
I was lying on my back in the peepshow at the Shaft Cinema, legs in the air, wearing a peekaboo nightie and no knickers.
Two of the six booths were occupied, and every time one of the guys put a coin in I heard a buzz, the glass went from opaque to clear, and a small orange light came on above the window.
It cost them two dollars for forty-five seconds, and I got a dollar of that. The booths were dark and the men’s faces shadowy, unless they pressed them right up against the glass. Not a good idea.
They kept putting coins in so I writhed around on the thin mattress, got on all fours, flipped my long dark hair around in faux orgasmic throes and pretended to play with myself. A portable stereo blasted out Madonna and the small room was lit with coloured disco lights.
Mirrors on the walls and ceiling reflected each other and there were thousands of me, stretching out into eternity.
You can see yourself from every angle in the peeps.
The peep’s door opened and my best friend, Chloe, pulled across the tatty red curtain.
‘Simone!’ Her blond hair was in rollers and she popped out of a small pink bikini top.
‘You’re keen.’ I glanced at the clock. It was three forty-five in the afternoon. ‘I’ve still got fifteen minutes.’
‘He’s dead.’ She was clutching the pm edition of the
Herald Sun
. ‘That fat bastard’s been murdered.’
‘What fat bastard?’ I lay on one side and lifted my leg up, Jane Fonda style.
‘Strip club slaying,’ Chloe read from the front page.
‘The body of a man discovered floating near St Kilda beach this morning has been identified as strip club boss Francesco (Frank) Parisi, thirty-eight. Police have confirmed Mr. Parisi, proprietor of Flinders Street table dancing venue the Red Room, was brutally hacked to death before being dumped in the bay.’ Chloe worked at the Shaft during the day and moonlighted at the Red on Friday and Saturday nights.
I bent over in front of the windows and gave everyone a flash. ‘Did you knock him off?’ I joked.
Chloe wasn’t laughing. She hugged the paper tightly to her chest and chewed her bottom lip. ‘I think we’d better go for a drink,’ she said.
We crossed Swanston Street, dodging trams and Silvertop taxis, and headed to the Black Opal. It was a pokies place with cheap drinks and the men were too busy willing their machines to pay out to bother cracking onto a couple of off-duty strippers. Maxine was covering for us in the peeps. She should have retired back in the mid-eighties but that was another story.
I bought bourbon and Coke for Chloe and champagne for myself and we sat at a high table at the back of the bar, the newspaper between us.
I sipped my drink and waited for her to fill me in.
She lit a Winfield Blue and looked around the bar with big scared eyes. Drama queen. I slid the paper over and read my horoscope. It worked.
‘I never told you what happened on Saturday night,’ she blurted out. ‘I should’ve, but I was embarrassed.’
When she paused for effect I flipped through to the employment section. She lasted five seconds.
‘It was early in the shift and Frank called me into his office to do a line of coke. You know, kickstart the night.’
I knew, even though I hadn’t done any drugs for a year.
‘I’d been alone with him before and nothing ever happened. But this time, after we’ve done a couple, he gets up and comes over to where I’m sitting and unzips his pants. Gets his cock out and tells me to suck it. Mate, I just fucking laughed at him, thought it was a joke, right? Then he tries to push my head down, like, hard, and somehow I manage to wriggle out of his hands and I bolt back into the club.’
Shit like that made me really mad. If Frank wasn’t already dead I would have had to kill him myself. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
Chloe took another slug of bourbon and rubbed her face with her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have got myself into that situation. You wouldn’t have.’
It was true Chloe flirted and appeared promiscuous and up for anything. But that was no excuse.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘So there I am at the bar and I’m like, coking off my head but I’m also in shock and a couple of the girls are asking me what’s the matter when Frank comes out of his office and tells me to clean out my locker, I’m fired.
‘And I say, well that’s OK ’cause I quit anyway and where’s the two hundred you owe me from the night before? And he says he’s not giving it to me. Fuck, mate, I just went ballistic. I earned that money. I worked fucking hard for every cent of it. I went off at him, called him every name under the sun and told him I was going to report him to the cops, charge him with sexual assault, drugs, you name it.’
I raised my eyebrows. Chloe groaned. ‘I know, not the smartest thing to say to a prick like that. So he goes, you don’t know who you’re dealing with, bitch, you want to wind up dead? And I say, you don’t fucking scare me, you better watch your back motherfucker ’cause I know people. And then Flame, she’s kind of like his girlfriend, hands me the stuff from my locker and the bouncers drag me out.’
‘Do you really know people?’ I asked.
‘No, that bit was bullshit.’
The card machines sang electronic songs and Chloe lit another Winnie off the butt of the first. I wanted one too but I’d given up a few months before.
‘Tell me what I should do,’ she said.
I’d finished my investigative services certificate in October and gained an inquiry agent’s license soon after.
Since then the girls at work considered me the last word on all matters of law and order. They asked me about custody disputes and apprehended violence orders, taxation and drug busts. No matter that I hadn’t found a job and my training covered following people and pissing into a funnel.
‘How many people heard you threaten Frank?’ I asked.
‘’Bout fifty.’
‘You should go to the cop shop now and tell them about Saturday night. Makes you look innocent.’
‘I am innocent!’
I drained my champagne. It had given me a nice buzz and I was tonguing for another.
‘Come on, I’ll take you.’
We caught the number 16 tram and rattled down Swanston Street. The top end where it intersected Lonsdale was home to the Shaft and a bunch of sex shops. As we moved towards the river we passed takeaway stores, discount clothing outlets and shops with spruikers out front flogging perfume rip-offs and cheap sunglasses.
The Flinders Street station end had all the druggies.
Junkies in bad tracksuits hung around the fast food joints and the alcoholics congregated on benches outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Swanston was the street they never showed you in the tourist brochures. I knew it well.
We passed the Queen Victoria Gardens and the Domain and got off at the St Kilda Road Police Complex. I led Chloe straight up to the reception desk.
‘We’re here about the Parisi murder,’ I told a young cop. ‘My friend worked for him and she’d like to speak to someone.’