Peepshow (13 page)

‘How’d you get my name?’

‘I’ve been talking to the girls at the Red and they mentioned you used to work there.’

‘Why you so interested in who killed Frank?’

‘It’s a long story. I have to find out to help a girlfriend of mine. She’s a stripper too. I can’t really tell you anymore.’

Ebony nodded sagely and blew out some smoke.

‘What was going on at the club before Frank was killed?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Shit, same old same old. Frank coked up and arrogant, king of the castle, Jim handing out drugs like candy, Sal coming in to collect the cash now and again with some heavy-looking dudes. There was the night Honey’s boyfriend Shane got beat up by Frank and the bouncers.’

‘What about a cop called Dick Farquhar?’

‘He’d come in once a week. I used to stay away from that guy.’

‘Did Frank ever try to crack onto you?’

‘Hell no,’ she laughed. ‘He was scared of me. I used to do this voodoo themed show and he stayed well away.

They’re superstitious, those Maltese.’

‘You really know voodoo?’ I asked.

‘Shit no, I’m from Connecticut. I only know what I see in the movies. Thing is, anyone I meet in this industry, I let ’em know straight away I ain’t taking no shit from no one. One time in Soho this asshole tried to touch my jewel. I broke his fucking arm, you know what I’m saying?’

I nodded. Yes I did. Ma’am.

‘I worked all over,’ Ebony continued. ‘New York, Vegas, London even. Some of these girls though, they’re eighteen. A young eighteen. Don’t know how to play the game and get taken advantage of.’

‘Like Honey?’

‘There are a million Honeys out there, all trying to please daddy.’ Ebony took a final drag and crushed out the cigarette butt with her spike heel.

‘I heard she was having an affair with Frank.’

‘An affair implies consent.’

‘Did she tell you he forced himself on her?’

‘She didn’t have to say anything, I could tell by the look in her eyes. She acted like she didn’t mind but that was to save face. When something like that happens you feel stupid, like in a way it’s your own fault.’

I wondered if Ebony was talking from experience, from some long ago time, before she’d started snapping ulnas like twigs.

‘So if Shane knew, that’s a pretty good reason for offing Frank.’

‘I’m not speculating, sugar. You should talk to him about it.’

‘Know where I could find him?’

‘I don’t have a phone number or anything but Honey’s in the Miss Striptease finals at Crystal T’s tomorrow night. Shane’d probably be there. Won’t want to talk to you though.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ I said. ‘You in the comp this year?’

‘Nah.’ Ebony lit another thin white cigarette. ‘I’ve had it with stripping and I’m really enjoying the B&D game. Beating the hell out of guys and getting paid a shitload. I think I’ve finally found my niche.’

I got up and brushed specks of grit off my hotpants.

‘Just one more question,’ I looked around, paranoid.

‘What do you know about Frank’s brother Sal?’

‘Not much, bit of a mystery man. Rumour has it he imports the coke that’s around the club and has some pretty heavy connections. Mafia. Not someone I’d ever fuck with.’

Indeed.

I went back inside and handed out more leaflets, then watched a couple of strip shows on the main stage.

Two unattractive women in the audience were making bitchy comments about a gorgeous stripper, picking at the tiniest things.

‘She’s got cellulite on her arse.’

‘Her tits are a bit saggy.’

I came up behind them and said loudly, ‘Jealousy’s a curse, ladies.’

They turned and opened and gasped before hurrying away. The guys and girls were good, award winners some of them, but the audience hardly made a sound. I finished up at four when a couple of girls came in to replace Sabrina and me. Kelvin paid me a hundred and twenty bucks, cash. Every little bit helps.

I drove through Macca’s in South Melbourne and bought two McOz burgers. When I got home I threw away the buns and ate the patties on a plate with a knife and fork. The burgers, the day and the hangover had made me tired and I fell asleep on the couch.

I woke in darkness to the phone ringing, not sure what time it was. I picked it up off the coffee table:

‘Hello?’

‘ “Folsom Prison Blues.” ’

‘Johnny Cash,’ I croaked, still half asleep.

‘ “Too Many Nights in a Roadhouse.” ’

‘Junior Brown. Who is this?’ I asked, struggling to sit up. But I already knew. It was Mick.

I arranged to meet Mick at the Doulton Bar where Acland Street smacked into Barkly. It was one of the few watering holes in St Kilda that looked like a pub rather than a space lounge or an eighteenth century brothel. It even had pub carpet. I’d dressed up for the occasion, jeans and my ‘Damn Right I’m a Cowgirl’ T-shirt and had spent an hour putting on makeup so it looked like I was wearing none.

I walked inside and couldn’t see a thing. Everywhere in Melbourne has dim lighting—anything over forty watts seems to be illegal—and Sydney is fluorescent by comparison, dazzling and over-lit. Rather than peer around like an idiot looking for him I walked straight up to the bar and ordered a chardonnay. I felt wine would leave me with a modicum of composure that just wasn’t possible with champagne. My heart hammered as the pouty bar girl poured the wine. It was ridiculous. I was more nervous now than when Blue had pointed his gun at me.

A voice behind me, low and sexy. ‘Hello, Miss Vivien Leigh.’

I took my wine and turned around. It hadn’t just been the champagne-goggles. He was gorgeous.

‘Mr. Halliday.’ Deciding to play it Jane Austen style.

‘I’ve got us a seat.’

I followed him to a couple of brown vinyl armchairs, sat down and kept my knees together. Mick sprawled in his chair with his legs wide apart. He wore an electric blue shirt with the neck open and sleeves rolled up and the same jeans as the night before. Probably still without underwear. I resisted the urge to unzip him and check and pressed my knees tight. How long since I’d had sex?

A couple of months at least.

‘Why’d you call me?’ I broke the silence. ‘Was I the root who got away?’ So much for Jane Austen.

Mick held up a palm. ‘You’ve got me all wrong.’

Had I? I smoothed down my jeans, even though they didn’t need smoothing. ‘I was pretty drunk last night,’

I said.

‘I was pretty stoned.’

‘I have to apologise. I don’t usually do . . . that, on the first date.’

‘Do what?’ He was pretending to be serious but the corners of his mouth tugged up.

‘You know.’ I glanced at his crotch. ‘That. I don’t do that to someone I don’t even know. It was out of character.’

‘No need to say sorry,’ Mick said. ‘I really enjoyed that. I think you’re very good at it.’

‘Will you excuse me?’ I got up and ran to the ladies’ and leaned against the wall by the mirror softly banging my head against the tiles. Then I scrunched up my face and did a little scream. Aaaarrgh. A woman came out of a cubicle. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Now I am,’ I smiled.

When I got back Mick was rolling a cigarette and I asked him to make one for me.

‘How long have you been with the band?’

‘Not long.’ He handed me a rollie as tight as a tailor-made. ‘I’ve only been in Melbourne three months. Met the guys at the Byron blues festival earlier this year. They needed a guitarist and I came down. Tom, the drummer, got me some building work. Can’t live on guitar playing alone.’

Building. That explained the arms.

He leaned over and lit my cigarette with a match.

‘What about you? Do anything besides stripping?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Byron Bay? You from up that way?’

‘I’m from all over. My folks have a farm near Kyogle.

You know it?’

‘Yeah, my mum has a place in the hills fifteen minutes from Byron. I used to live there when I was a teenager.’

‘Hippies?’

‘Uh-huh. What about your folks?’

He shook his head. ‘Rednecks.’ A pause. ‘Do you think we know each other yet?’

‘Not hardly.’ I drew back, ashed. The skill of smoking never left you.

‘What else do you want to know?’

‘Where do I start? Star sign?’

‘Pisces.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-seven,’

‘Married? Kids?’

‘When I was nineteen. Not anymore. My nine-year-old son lives with his mother.’

‘Ever been in jail?’ I was just joking.

‘Once.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ He drained his beer. ‘I’m hungry. You want a laksa?’

We walked down Acland Street to Chinta Ria, sat at an outside table and ordered king prawn laksas and beers. St Kilda went crazy on warm nights and around us music and people spilled from fashionable bars and trams number 16 and 96 disgorged their cargo. Mick was a lot more talkative than he’d been the night before, telling me about the places he’d lived in Queensland and New South Wales and all the jobs he’d done—jackeroo, miner, building boats and finally houses. I, in turn, gave him selected highlights from my ridiculous life: my parents splitting when I was five and my dad moving to America, leaving home at sixteen, running away to sea, countless crap jobs, constantly moving.

‘How’d you get into stripping?’ he asked.

‘Bit of a long story.’

‘I’ve got time,’ he settled back to roll a cigarette.

‘When I first moved down from Sydney I worked at Coles on Elizabeth Street,’ I told him. ‘The Crazyhorse adult cinema’s on the same block and every time I walked past I was fascinated by the place. You know, flashing neon lights, blaring music and the stairs going down below street level, like they led to some mysterious subterranean underworld. It drew me in.’

Mick nodded like he understood.

‘There was a hand-written notice stuck in the window: “Dancers wanted, no experience necessary, apply within”. I always wanted to know what went on in there but never had the guts to get down the stairs.

‘Anyhow, one time at the supermarket I was having a shit of a day, a common occurrence in retail, when this Toorak rich bitch comes in. I handed her the wrong pack of cigarettes and she called me a stupid girl. You know when you get so angry, you literally see red?’

Mick smiled wryly, ashed his cigarette. He knew.

‘I ripped off my name badge, chucked it at her and came out from behind the register. I walked towards her, real slow, and she backed away. Her mouth was opening and closing, like a guppy, no sound coming out. And when I got to her, I reached out, hugged her, looked her in the eye and said, “I forgive you.” ’

Mick laughed. ‘No way. I would have smacked the silly bitch. What happened then?’

‘She started screeching for security and I walked out the doors, up the street, and down the stairs to the Crazyhorse. The woman at the counter looked like a truck-stop waitress and I asked her for a job. She gave me a two-dollar coin to put in the peeps and I had a look. When I came out of the booth she said, “Reckon you could do that, love?” And I said yep and the rest is history. I went from there to the Club X Bar, to the Shaft, and picked up a bit of agency work along the way.

Now I’m doing a couple of shifts at the Red.’

‘You must make a lot of money.’

I shrugged. ‘Some days you do, some you don’t. And quick as it comes it goes out again. Waxing, solarium, hair, nails, shoes, costumes. I never seem to have any left over. Some strippers are paying off houses, investing in shares, but they’re few and far between.’

‘Do you like the job? I think Aurora does but Betty seems to hate it.’

‘Hmmm. Love–hate. When you’re on stage dancing to the music you like and everyone’s cheering it’s the best job in the world. After an hour in the peeps for a lousy twenty bucks, or a show for a bunch of unappreciative arseholes, then it sucks.

‘I love the people you get to work with, though.

Everyone’s a little left of centre. To tell you the truth I’ve never been total y comfortable in normal society, and hanging out with freaks and misfits I feel right at home.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Mick said.

‘And the really great thing about stripping, as opposed to hospitality or retail, is that the customer is always wrong.’

He laughed at my joke and I was glad. The waitress removed our empty bowls and we order another beer each. ‘So what about you?’ I asked. ‘What were you in jail for?’

‘Shot a man in Reno.’

‘Ha ha, no really.’

‘Assault.’

‘A woman?’ My stomach clenched. Our beers arrived.

Bottles glistening with condensation.

‘No. A man. A very bad man, who deserved everything he got.’

‘Who was it? What did he do?’

‘Sorry.’ Mick picked up his drink. ‘You don’t fuck on the first date and I don’t spill my guts.’

‘So we’re on a date, are we?’

‘What do you reckon?’

We had a couple of whiskies back at the Doulton Bar and Mick drove me home in his battered Ute. I didn’t know if I’d invite him up or not. Sitting next to him, in among empty Tally-ho packets, beer bottles and crumpled building plans, the urge to touch him was immense and if it led to that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say no.

‘This is it,’ I told him, and we screeched to a halt in front of my place. He switched off the engine.

‘I’ll let you walk me to my flat,’ I said, ‘but that’s it.’

Trying to pretend I wasn’t a slut.

I led him up the interior stairs and when we got to my place I turned and leaned against the door. We stared at each other for a long time. He had an intense way of looking at me that made my inner thighs turn to liquid. His mouth was only a foot away but the distance seemed impossible to traverse. I bit the bullet and moved hesitantly towards him and in a rush he scooped me up and put his mouth on mine. He pushed me back against the door and put his leg between my thighs, held my face and kissed me hard. I felt his broad back beneath the soft material of his shirt, his hips pressing against me and lost all resolve. I had to get him inside the house and inside of me as soon as was humanly possible.