Strip Search (3 page)

“It’s not too big a crowd tonight,” said Max.

“Listen, I’m not knocking it—I wish all of them were this good.” His head wagged sadly. “Weeknights, I’m lucky to make the overhead.”

“When did you see Mrs. Sheldon last?” Wager asked.

“Last weekend, what, Saturday? Yeah. She showed up Saturday for work and then Tuesday her husband, what’s his name, he called to ask where she was. First I knew she was missing, I swear.”

“You didn’t see her Sunday or Monday?”

“We’re closed then.”

“Mr. Sheldon didn’t call until Tuesday?”

“My private number’s unlisted. In this business …” He ended with a shake of the head.

“Do you know Mr. Sheldon?”

“I seen him once or twice. He seems like a real gentleman. But I can’t say as I know him.”

“Did you see Mrs. Sheldon leave the club last Saturday?”

Berg shook his head. “Unless it’s payday or unless they got a problem, I don’t see the girls come and go. We have a business meeting once a week—Thursday morning. That and payday’s about the only time I see all of them.”

“She was at last Thursday’s meeting?”

“She was still working Thursday night. You miss a meeting, you’re out on your sweet ass.” He smiled, “That sounds hard, maybe, but some of these young ladies, they never had discipline in the home, you know?”

“Did she have any men friends other than her husband?”

“You mean was she cheating on him? Not with my customers! The young ladies dance for the customers. When they’re not dancing, they serve the customers their drinks. The rest of the time they leave the customers alone and vice versa. This is a clean establishment, gentlemen. Wholesome exotic dancing, you know? You could bring your wife or mother here. Some broad tries dating up the customers, out she goes on her sweet ass.”

“No one ever asks the girls for a date after the show?”

“Well, sure—that’s human nature, right? But all she’s got to say is she’ll lose her job. It gives the girls an excuse they appreciate, you know? I find out somebody’s hustling customers, she’s through. Period. I make this very plain at the hiring interview. I tell them the rules and tell them they can be replaced like that if they break the rules—it’s simple as that.” He thought a minute. “Of course, what they do on their own time away from here, that’s their business. I’m not a fascist, right? But this is a clean place; if Shelly had something going on the side, it wasn’t from here.” The telephone rang again and, after a terse conversation, Berg hung up. “Things get real busy about this time,” he hinted.

“Annette Sheldon never broke the rules?”

“Not here. But like I say, away from here … But she was a real nice young lady, Annette. This is a terrible thing, a real tragedy to happen to such a really talented and lovely young lady.”

“Who might have seen her last?” Max asked.

“The other girls. I guess you want to talk to them?” At Wager’s nod, he pressed a button under the lip of the desk. “Sure. The place is yours. Anything I can do … a real tragedy.” A knock on the door and the bouncer’s wide head poked in. “The last set’s just going on now and the bar’s closing,” Berg told them. “The girls should be in the dressing room soon. Cal, take these gentlemen back to the dressing room. You gents want a drink, it’s yours. But—ah—try not to shake the young ladies up, okay? They got artistic temperaments, you know? Real prima donnas, every one.”

Cal the bouncer said “Follow me” and led them back across the edge of the dark floor where, with intermission, waitresses in hot pants over Danskin leotards moved from table to table getting the last orders before the final set. In his glass-faced booth above the stage, the disc jockey had shifted tapes and in place of the stomach-punching thud of the previous music, the ripple of a quiet jazz guitar flowed over the gradually rising voices and sharp
tink
of glass.

This door was down a short alley separated from the main room by heavy drapes. Another curtain arced away and led to the rear of the dancing ramp, so the girls could make their entry high upstage. Once more, Cal knocked and stuck his head around a door. He mumbled something indistinguishable, then said, “All right, gemmn,” and headed quickly back toward the noise. Closing time was busy for him, too.

Wager and Axton stepped into the hot and heavily perfumed air of a dressing room smaller than Berg’s office. Two light mirrors formed one wall above a shelf littered with makeup and wadded tissues. Along the facing wall was a series of narrow metal doors with combination padlocks and a long bench holding bits of clothing and street shoes. It looked like a gym locker room. An opening at the far end led to a toilet stall, its metal door crayoned in lipstick graffiti.

Four young women looked at them as they came in, one quickly turning her back to snap her bra in place before tugging on a blouse. At one light table, a girl whose bright red hair formed a corona of tight curls wiped cleanser across her face and tossed the tissue near a garbage can.

“We’re with the Denver Police,” Wager announced. “We’d like to ask you some questions about a homicide victim who worked here: Annette Sheldon.”

“Who?” A girl wearing a short, stained dressing gown looked up from tugging on her pantyhose.

“Shelly,” said Axton. “Annette Sheldon. She used the name Shelly.”

“Oh—Shelly’s dead? God!”

Axton and Wager asked them to please wait around until they could be interviewed, then each chose a girl and started the questions. Wager, trying to ignore the glimpses of pale flesh, began with the curly-haired redhead who sat on the bench and smoothed her short robe over her knees. She smiled widely but nervously at him.

“Can I have your name, please?”

“You mean my real name?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She crossed her legs tightly and tugged again at the robe. “Is this going to be published? I mean, like in the newspapers?”

“No, ma’am. But whenever we take a statement, we like to get names and addresses in case we need to verify something later on.” He did not mention the possibility of subpoenas for court appearances.

“Myrtle Singer. 1423 Clarkson, Apartment 2-D.” She spelled her name for him.

“Miss or Mrs.?”

“Ms.”

He wrote it that way. “Do you use an alias, Ms. Singer?”

“You mean a professional name? Yeah. Scarlet.” She patted her hair, making her gown gap slightly. “Because I’m a redhead. A real one.” She had large breasts and that very white skin that a lot of redheads have.

“Did you know Annette Sheldon very well?”

“Shelly? Not real well. We work—worked—together is all. How’d it happen?”

“She was shot.”

The curls shook once. “That’s too bad. Really.”

“Can you tell me the last time you saw her?”

“I guess it was Saturday … yeah, Saturday.”

She stopped as a sweating dancer pushed abruptly into the crowded room, looking with surprise at Axton and Wager and yanking her thin robe tighter. “What’s this shit?” she asked. “What’s these men doing in here?”

“Cops.” One of the waiting girls looked up from filing her fingernails. “Shelly got killed. They’re asking about her.”

“Oh yeah?” With a flourish, she dropped the robe from her shoulders and tossed her folded costume on top of her locker. “Well, cops or no cops, I’m taking a piss.” She turned around once to face Wager and Axton aggressively with her nude body and then strode through the open door. Large butterflies tattooed on each rear cheek flitted away in alternating bobs.

Wager cleared his throat. “Saturday,” he said. “How late did she work, Ms. Singer?”

“Scarlet. She stayed until closing, a little after. She always worked the floor for the last set.” She caught Wager’s glance and explained. “Serving drinks. Girls with seniority get the best times on Fridays and Saturdays. New girls get Tuesdays and Wednesdays—the slow nights.”

“She worked here a long time?”

“Almost two years, she told me. That’s a real long time in this business. I came six months ago when Berg took over and hired some new girls. I’m not going to stay much longer, though. It’s not worth it.”

“How’s that?”

She shrugged and focused on her long, fake fingernails. One had slipped and she re-glued it over the chewed nail beneath. “The money’s good, but you get, I don’t know, hard. At first it’s kind of new and even exciting—all those men watching you, and you can just feel what they want: you. Then you get kind of … superior. You kind of enjoy teasing them because it makes you feel better than they are.” She shrugged. “After a while, you kind of want more … I don’t know how to say it. It’s like, well, you got to have that kind of excitement all the time or you don’t feel like you’re anybody.” She aimed a dagger-nail toward the sound of the shower. “Then maybe you go stale. You do it, but you really hate the customers even while you’re up there doing it. Like Rebecca. She’s a real bitch.”

“Rebecca’s all right,” said the girl filing her nails. “You just keep your fucking mouth shut about Rebecca.”

Scarlet’s lips tightened and she hissed to Wager, “That’s her girlfriend—they’re lesbians.”

The girl filing her nails looked up with a little sneer and then shrugged.

“What about Mrs. Sheldon?” Wager asked. “How’d she feel about the customers?”

Scarlet was still angry and lowered her voice so that Wager had to strain to hear. “Her name’s Shelly. We use our professional names, you know?”

Wager nodded. He’d seen it before: personal names revealed a self that people liked to keep distant from what they had to do. An alias, a nickname, a stage name let them move into a different personality, one that felt no guilt for whatever chance or ignorance or greed led them into. “How did Shelly feel?”

“I think she still liked it—she came across that way when she danced, you know? She acted like she was on Broadway or something. But she was a good dancer—really.” Speak no ill of the dead. “I learned some good moves and steps from her.” Her voice rose a bit, “Not like some of the cows that just go out and swing their butts around.”

The fingernail file paused. “You knew all your moves by the time you were ten years old, honey.”

“Did she have any boyfriends?” Wager asked. “Anybody she’d go out with other than her husband?”

“Dike,” muttered Scarlet. Then, “She better not. Not where Berg could find out about it, anyway. He really keeps an eye out for that—the Vice people would have his license tomorrow if he let that get started.” She added, pulling her robe together again, “Her husband, I don’t think he’d know if she was two-timing him or not.”

“Do you know Mr. Sheldon?”

“Yeah. He’s a wimp. I met him once at the club picnic. We have this picnic at Washington Park once a year. Beer and steak, you know? And live music. It’s real nice—if certain types of girls don’t show up to spoil it.”

“Was he jealous of her?”

“You think he did it?” Her blue eyes blinked surprise.

“We don’t know who did it. Do you think he might have?”

“No way! He’s not one of these people that do things. There’s two kinds of people—the doers and the happeners. He’s a happener. You know, things happen to him instead.”

Wager nodded but thought otherwise. Anybody was capable of murder. Burglary, rape, extortion, embezzlement—not everybody could do those crimes. But murder was democratic. “Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”

“No. Some weirdo in the audience, I guess. I mean, they’re out there.” A note of worry tinged her voice. “That’s another reason not to date them—most of the customers you feel sorry for, but there’s always a few. …”

“Do you know of any?”

“Weirdoes? Not their names—they come and go. But you can kind of tell the way they watch you dance. Their eyes …”

“Were any of them in last Saturday?”

She gave a helpless shrug. “I can’t remember. Saturday’s so busy.”

“Did you see who Shelly left with Saturday night?”

“No. We settled up with Nguyen—he’s the night bartender—and came off the floor. By the time I finished changing, she was gone.”

Wager thanked her and motioned for the girl who was filing her fingernails. She was a leggy brunette whose hair fell in thick curls and caught the glare of the dressing table lights with a ruby tint. She wore stained Levi’s and had pulled on a baggy sweatshirt that read
HERS.

“Is this going to take long?” she asked.

“Not long. Can I have your name, please?”

Her stage name was Sybil. She had worked here four months. She knew Shelly only at work and that was all she knew. She had no idea who might have killed her. Now could she go?

Wager’s third witness was Clarissa—Nadine Bell—who had been working at the club for six weeks. Before that, she worked in a roadhouse up north in Boulder County. That was her first job, and she worked there only two weeks.

“Why?”

“It was a rough place—a biker’s place. Their girls did the dancing and they really didn’t want me around.” She admitted with a slight shudder, “They scared me. Besides, the money’s a lot better here. And nobody’s always, well, you know. It’s just a lot better place.”

“How much do you make?”

“I can pay the rent and have a little left over. And I just bought a new car.” She added, “I paid cash.”

“How much do you think Shelly made?”

“She did all right for herself—she was a good dancer, and she knew how to work the tips. Berg gave her the late sets, too.” She figured silently. “I guess as much as a thousand in a good week.”

And most of that would be tax-free. “Do all the girls do as well?”

“Not me, that’s for sure. You have to get the good sets on Friday and Saturday to do that well.” Clarissa’s hair was long, too, and had been lightened; it was parted by a dark streak in the middle and swept back behind her ears and was clipped in place by two tortoiseshell hairpins. “With Shelly gone, we’ll all move up. Another two or three months, and I should get the good ones.”

“What did you do before you started dancing?”

She smiled. “I went to college. I want to be a writer. Another year of this and I’ll have enough stories to last a lifetime.” Her chin lifted. “And enough money to let me write for a while, too!”