Film Strip (12 page)

By the time I walked offstage, Rusty had actually made good on his promise. Vincent Gambuzzo stood waiting for me, a dark look on his face.

“I try to do what is in your best interest, Sierra,” he said. “Frosty Licks is here to help, not to take away. Look at you.” Gambuzzo was geared up for a lecture. “You're obviously hurting. You got concealer on your ass, but even I can see them two little stitches, and you're bruised. You can't keep it up like this. You'll knock yourself out of commission. Go home. Rest. Come back next week.”

I glared at him. “I take off a week and Frosty Licks will have her name up on the marquee. She's no good, Vincent. I don't trust her and I don't want to leave her alone in my club.”

Vincent shooed Rusty off and stepped closer to me. “I am trying to run a business here, Sierra, and you got a job to do. I will handle Frosty. You got bigger fish to fry.” He looked over his shoulder. “You making any progress?” I shook my head.

“Then a week off will help the both of us. I'm not askin', Sierra, I'm telling. Nailor didn't come in just to say howdy-do to you. He stopped by to see Marla before he came out here and caught you with Mr. Slick. He jacked Marla up and told her he's closing in on her.”

“Police technique,” I scoffed. “He ain't got squat. He just wants to make her nervous.”

“Yeah,” Gambuzzo said, “well it worked. Between him jacking her up and Little Ricky acting like the fool he is, she's over the edge. She left, said she couldn't work. So where's that leave me? I got one basket case and one gimp. I need Frosty Licks and I need you to get Marla off the hot seat. I don't just gotta maintain income here, Sierra, I gotta come up with some extra jack for the government or they're shutting me down. I have only a week to cough up a large chunk of change. This ain't helping, Sierra.”

I couldn't tell him not to worry. I didn't have any idea of where to go next. I needed a plan.

“It don't help, you pissing Nailor off,” Vincent continued. “I told you that at the very beginning. I told you not to mess with a cop. Now look. You need to be on his good side. We need him to look favorably upon us, but no, you gotta go play lovey-face with a customer.”

Vincent paused to take a deep breath. He was getting his second wind and I didn't want to hear it. I spun around and walked off, my ass burning like fire, hurting.

“Hey, where are you going?” he called after me.

“Home,” I said, not bothering to turn around. “I've got something important to do. This could be crucial.”

Vincent took it how he wanted to hear it. He figured I was taking his words to heart. Be that as it may, I was figuring to go home and crawl into bed. This was one day I wanted to see end.

I changed into my street clothes, all the while watching Frosty Licks giving me the evil eye. I was thinking about going down to the end of the counter and helping her to understand my position better, but I just didn't have the energy. The quicker I cleared up Marla's mess, the sooner I'd be showing Miss Licks the door.

Tonya the Barbarian walked up and caught me staring. “Sierra, you say the word and she's yesterday's lunchmeat.”

Tonya meant it, I knew, so I turned around and hugged her. “Not yet,” I said. “If her karma don't catch up with her in the next couple of days, I may call on you, but not yet.” Tonya did only one routine involving her club and the pole at the end of the runway. She wasn't going to help Vincent maintain the club's status. Unfortunately, right now we needed Ms. Licks, but it was only a temporary situation.

I took off, using the drive home to cool down. Bruno and Gordon had both insisted on walking me to my car. Bruno knew I felt lousy and said as much, telling me I shouldn't be working in my condition, telling me I shouldn't worry about a visiting porn star. Gordon echoed him.

“I can't stand to see you hurting, Sierra,” he said. “Not you. Go home and rest.”

Bruno chimed in. “Yeah, put everything out of your mind. Let us handle the club, baby.” Then he hugged me, slipping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me in close. “You're one of us, Sierra. You're family.”

“Yeah,” Gordon said. “You look like you could be my sister. I wouldn't let her work if she was hurting. Don't worry about some loser porn star. Let us handle that.”

Right, I thought, if only it was that easy. I drove the whole way home, worrying. Fluffy ran out of Raydean's newly installed doggie door when she heard the Camaro hit the parking pad. She pranced and yipped and turned circles, overjoyed to have me home.

I looked down at her and had to smile. “So am I to understand from this that you're cranked on sugar and that the Braves won? Or should I figure you're just glad to see me?” Fluffy bounded up the steps and waited for me. She was glad to have me home.

We crashed in record time. I don't think it was five minutes before we were both asleep and snoring. It couldn't have been more than a half an hour later that company arrived.

Seventeen

No one ever knocks on my door and then waits politely for me to come and answer it. No, they bang, they pound, and they generally yell out my name, as if I didn't know who they were looking for, or as if it would make me move any faster. At five
A.M.
, Detective John Nailor was in no mood to make an exception to the rule.

“Sierra!” he yelled, pounding away. “Open up!” I waited for him to add “Police!” but he didn't.

Fluff flew off the bed, heading for her buddy. I was slower. I'd been lying down just long enough for all my muscles to stiffen up. Dancing had been a huge mistake.

I pulled on my robe and shuffled slowly down the hallway. Nailor never let up. The pounding got louder the closer I came to the door. It eclipsed my attempts to call out to him. This just seemed to make him all the more anxious. Finally I pulled the chain off the door, unfastened the dead bolt, and stood face-to-face with one distraught cop.

“Why didn't you answer me?” he demanded.

“Why didn't you listen, instead of pounding away like a jackhammer?”

Raydean's lights came on and I knew we were under surveillance. Nailor ran his hand through his hair and just stared at me.

“When did you get home?” he asked.

“You mean you haven't already felt the hood of my car and made a scientific determination?” Nailor wasn't in the mood for my sarcasm. “All right. I guess I got in around three. Vincent made me come home early.”

“I know,” he said.

“Then why did you ask? And how do you know? You mean you came back looking for me?” This was a positive sign. He'd decided to let me explain.

Nailor ignored my questions. “You're saying you left at three and came straight home?”

I looked at him like he was some kind of freak. What was the matter with him? Did he think I'd run off with Barboni?

“Would you like to come in, or do you want to stand on my stoop, disturbing my neighbors and making me look like a criminal?”

Nailor brushed past me. He was still dressed in the suit he'd worn to the club, but his shirt was rumpled and the tie was loosened. He smelled of something I couldn't quite identify, maybe deodorizer and cigarette smoke, chemicals and old copper pennies. It was a strange smell, but not unfamiliar.

I shut my eyes, the memory almost on the tip of my tongue. Nailor interrupted.

“So you came straight home? No stops? You didn't stop at the store or buy gas or anything? No one saw you?”

“What's this all about, because if it's about that guy you saw me with, I can explain.”

He shook his head again impatiently. “Just answer the question.”

“No. How about you tell me why you're asking, instead.”

I took a step away from him and pulled my robe closer. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the pale light of dawn creeping through my bay window and a tiny light over the stovetop.

“Sierra, Frosty Licks is dead. Someone shot her and dumped her body in her hotel pool.”

That was the smell on his clothing. It was the smell of a murder scene. I'd been around it before, a couple of times. But it was no wonder I couldn't quite remember. My brain hadn't wanted to remember. Dead bodies, blinding camera flashes, the stink of decomposition mixed with fear and blood, the odor of the chemicals the forensics team uses to process the scene. My brain never wanted to remember that smell. Now it clung to Nailor, haunting me.

“I don't understand,” I said, still not really wanting to hear what he was saying.

“Sierra, she's dead. What's to understand?” He was cold, removed, still angry with me or worse, hurt.

“Who? What? When? The basics, John, I need the basics. Why are you treating me this way? Why're you checking up on me, as if I were a suspect?”

Nailor watched me. His face was closed, tight with some unnamed emotion. I was frightened by his withdrawal.

“Sierra, you fought with Frosty earlier in the evening. You were there when Marla caught her with Ricky. I've gotta wonder if you're holding out on me. I come into the club, I see some punk touching you like he owns you. I've gotta wonder what's going on here.”

I stood there, forcing my body to relax, making myself look him in the eye. I wanted to spill my gut, and yet he was standing in front of me, virtually saying he didn't trust me. So I waited.

Nailor hung himself. “What do you have on Marla that you're not sharing?” he asked. “And who was that guy? If you're screwing around, Sierra, I need to know.”

I nodded slowly, like I was really listening. If he had more poison inside his system about me, well, let it go. It was better to find out now than to give my heart away and get burned. But Nailor was done. He folded his arms across his chest, leaned back against the wall, and prepared to listen to my statement. And what a statement it was going to be.

When I get mad, really mad, I start off slow and quiet. I was beyond mad. I hurt so bad I felt like my guts were squeezed up inside my head. I couldn't see or feel anything but pain. You start to trust a guy and where does it get you? Right back where you should've been all along: alone.

“All right,” I said, “so you have concerns about me. Fair enough. The guy, Alonzo Barboni, says he's an insurance salesman, looking to show me a good time. I think he's mob-connected and wanted protection money out of the circuit girls. So I was working him, not screwing him.”

Nailor nodded, pleased that the subject was coming through. He had no idea how I felt.

“And Marla? Marla don't have the brains to kill off all her competition, but I believe I've told you that in the past. She didn't kill Frosty or Venus. I know her gun is missing. I know she made threats, but it's a setup. Going with what seems most logical to me, I figure Barboni's your man to watch.”

Nailor listened patiently, his arms still folded across his chest, still distancing.

“I'd have to differ with you there, Sierra,” he said. “According to Vincent, Marla left early. She had the opportunity to set up and wait for Frosty to come back to her hotel. She was already mad as hell at her. This wasn't a close-range pro hit like the mob would do. She got hit three times, and only one bullet was lucky enough to kill her. Same caliber as the bullet that hit you. And Marla has no alibi.”

I didn't say anything and he went on. “I'm glad you came across with that information about Barboni. We'll look into it.”

He took a step toward me and I stepped aside. He was feeling better, but I was just starting.

“Good, so you have everything you need from me, right?”

“Yeah. I just needed to check, that's all. You can understand my position, right?”

“Yep,” I said, passing him on my way to the door. “I sure can. You didn't trust me enough to know where I stood with you. You don't know how I feel about you after all the time we've known each other. You don't trust me. That's all I read coming back from you.”

“Sierra, you're not remembering that I have a job to do.”

I opened the door wide and stepped aside. “And you're not remembering that I have a job to do, too, but I know who my friends are. You need to leave.”

We were hurting each other, slashing away, and neither one of us could stop the process. It was a pattern, a familiar life dance that we were doomed to repeat time after time, always hoping that it would change, always feeling hopeless when it didn't.

He walked past me and down the steps, pausing once and almost turning back, but I closed the door and he continued to walk away. I leaned with my back against the door, then I turned to further twist the knife in my own gut by watching him drive off.

So now there were two murder victims. The cops would be focusing their search on looking for the gun and completing the circle of evidence to link up Marla to the murders. They might run Barboni's ID through the National Criminal Identification Center, but it would come up clean. No, Barboni was mine. Nailor wasn't going to help. It was just me, just like I liked it.

Fluffy stood at my feet, intimating that she might want breakfast if I was in the mood to serve it. She did this by dragging her bowl over and setting it down on my left foot.

“I know, you're trying to tell me that I'm not alone. I have you.” Fluffy yipped in agreement and went to stand by the pantry door. I followed her and reached for the can of dog food. “We can do this,” I said. “I've got Raydean and Pat. I can hook this up.” Fluffy no longer cared. She was lost in the ecstasy of her meal.

“I'm going to bed, girl. When I get up, we're on the job.”

Fluffy belched, which I took for implicit understanding. I looked over at the counter where Pa's Chianti sat. Ma swears it's good for whatever ails you. I figured I had too many ailments to name and poured a short tumbler full of the cure.

I took it back down the hall with me and climbed under my satin sheets. The sun was just beginning to streak across the sky when I finished my drink and sank deep under the covers. Despite Pa's remedy, it took a long while to fall asleep. And when I did, I had vivid dreams of Venus Lovemotion and Frosty Licks, laughing and mocking me, their arms around John Nailor and Alonzo Barboni.