Strip Tease (32 page)

Once he located the turnpike, Darrell Grant drove northbound at a geriatric pace. His vision and reflexes were abominable. Rita’s splint proved sturdy but cumbersome: the nine-iron got in the way of Darrell’s driving. He had to hang it out the window of the car, as if permanently signaling for a left turn. Since it was Dade County, no one paid the slightest attention.

The trip to Fort Lauderdale took ninety minutes. Darrell Grant spent most of it in the draft of a slow-moving Pentecostal church bus. Miraculously, he spotted the Commercial Boulevard exit in time to steer off. He stopped at a fast-food restaurant next door to the Tickled Pink, and parked obliviously in the drive-through lane. Rousted by a surly assistant manager, Darrell Grant found a new spot. This one offered a clear view of Orly’s strip joint; Erin’s shitheap Fairlane was parked near the front awning between a Porsche and a Cadillac.

Like she was somebody special, Darrell thought. He broke out laughing. Everything seemed hilarious tonight; the sight of a dead opossum on the highway had made him giggle all the way from Okeechobee Road to Miramar. These were absolutely top-notch drugs. “God bless you, Senor Gomez!” he said, saluting the heavens with his nine-iron.

Before long, a limousine appeared at Orly’s nightclub. Darrell Grant thought his eyes were playing tricks.

The driver, a black man wearing a cap, got out of the limo and opened one of the doors. In the Pontiac, Darrell leaned forward and tried to squint the blur from his eyes. He was hoping to catch sight of a celebrity. Rock stars were known to hang out at nudie bars; Darrell had seen a video once on MTV.

But it was his ex-wife who walked out of the club toward the limo. She wore blue jeans, a baggy white T-shirt and sandals. She carried a shoulder bag and a shoebox. It looked like she was heading home early. She was alone, too. No trace of Angela.

Darrell Grant was astounded when she got into the limousine.

“The cunt,” he said, turning the key in the Pontiac. Who the fuck does she think she is? Who?

Then he started to laugh again.

When the limousine pulled out of the club, the Pontiac was close behind.

“They say I padded the claim,” complained Jungle Juan, “but I had papers on every damn snake. Certified papers!”

“Like they do for dogs,” Shad said.

“Exactamente.”

“And they all got killed in the storm?”

“Hard to say.” Jungle Juan thoughtfully fingered his diamond ear stud. “They was mostly just gone from sight. I’ll assume some escapes, I’ll assume some mortalities.”

Shad tried to strike a hopeful note. He said, “Snakes are tough customers.”

“Some are, some ain’t. One old diamondback, the wind picked him up and snapped him like a bullwhip. I seen this myself.”

Shad said, “But the rats and mice made out okay.”

“By and large, yessir. How many you need?”

“A hundred ought to do it. Rats only.”

Jungle Juan said, “Now, these ain’t white. These are semi-wild Norways.”

“Perfect.”

The cage was eight feet long and four feet high. It was fashioned of plywood and chicken wire. Inside was an undulating mass of vermin, two and three deep. Anticipating food, the rats swarmed noisily toward the cage door when Jungle Juan approached. Deftly he barehanded the squealing animals, and dropped them one by one into the jumbo garbage pails.

Shad watched impassively. He had no particular aversion to rodents. “Looks like you got a surplus,” he remarked.

Jungle Juan snorted. “Rats up the ass, and no snakes to eat ‘em. There’s your hundred.” He slapped the lids on the garbage cans and said, “Thank God there’s a shipment of boas due Monday. I expect they’ll be hungry.”

Shad said, “We had a dancer that tried a boa.”

“How big?”

“The snake? Seven feet.”

Jungle Juan said, “Your ball pythons are better for entertainment purposes. They don’t bite so damn much.”

Shad asked how much he owed. Jungle Juan said fifty bucks.

“Man, that’s cheap.” Shad handed him the cash.

“Hurricane discount,” Jungle Juan explained. “I gotta move these buggers before they fuck me into Chapter 11. Every day they’s a dozen new litters and what happens is, I swear, they start to consume one another.”

He and Shad carried the garbage buckets out to Shad’s car. The sound of many rat paws could be heard, scratching feverishly against the heavy plastic. As they loaded the animals into the backseat, Jungle Juan inquired about the dancer with the boa constrictor. Shad told him that she’d taken ill and gone home to Texas.

“What about the snake?” asked Jungle Juan, shrewdly.

“I got him in a stockroom at the club.”

“Healthy?”

“A little farsighted, but otherwise okay.”

“Well, I could sure use him,” Jungle Juan said, “if you ever wanted to sell.”

“Not just yet,” said Shad.

When he returned to the club, Mr. Orly asked to see the rats. Shad let him peek in one of the pails.

“Goddamn,” said Orly, crinkling his face.

“We all set?”

“Yep,” Orly said. “I just wish I could be there to see it. Those fucking Lings.” He laughed venomously. “I’d love to get the whole thing on video!”

Shad asked about Erin. Orly said she’d left to meet that goddamn horny no-good congressman.

“Where?” Shad asked.

“I’m assuming the boat. Who cares?”

Shad called Al Garcia’s office and left a message. Then he went into the stockroom and emerged with a large dirty pillowcase, knotted at the neck. Orly wished him good luck.

“You come right back,” he told the bouncer. “It’s gonna get busy as hell around here.”

“How long since she took off?”

“Erin? Half hour, tops.” Orly studied him warily. “Don’t you worry about her. You just get your ass back here, okay?”

Shad circled the Flesh Farm until he spotted the health inspector’s car, a gray Dodge Aries with yellow state plates. Monique Jr. had been recruited to make the phone call, because no man could resist her helpless little-girl voice. “The rats, they’re everywhere!” she’d exclaimed. “They’re biting me, they’re biting me!” The health department had kept its promise to send someone right over. The inspectors, Shad knew, trampled each other for such an assignment.

Shad parked the car, threw a ladder against the side of the building and hauled the jumbo garbage pails to the roof. The air-conditioning vents rose like squat chimneys at each end of the building. Shad pried off the rusty grids and poured the rats into the duct system. The little guys seemed grateful to be free.

The Lings were hunkered in the office, dodging the health inspector. They had ordered one of the table dancers to get him drunk and compromised. Then they would talk.

Shad barged in and caught the two brothers by surprise.

“What’s in the bag?” asked the one wearing a black tuxedo and a Yankees cap. Shad knew him as the Flesh Farm’s floor manager. He sat on a torn Naugahyde sofa that was the color of ox blood. Behind the desk was the other Ling, who wore a gray pullover and two ropey gold chains on his neck. He, too, inquired about the contents of the pillowcase.

“Stand up,” Shad said.

Both Lings displayed the identical annoying mannerism of laughing through their teeth, hissing on the inhale. Shad took out the.38 Special and shot three ragged holes in a family portrait on the wall. One of the bullets sensationally disfigured the likeness of the Lings’ paternal grandmother; the brothers seemed horrified.

“Bingo,” Shad said. “Who’s next?”

The Lings stood up quickly. Shad arranged them back-to-back in the center of the floor.

One of them said, “You gone shoot us?”

“Nope,” Shad answered, “I’m gonna measure you. Take off the damn cap.”

He quickly determined that the tuxedoed Ling was at least two inches taller than the gold-chained Ling. “You’re the one,” Shad said to the shorter brother, “who grabbed my friend’s tits.”

The smaller Ling frowned in vexation. Urbana’s fingernail tracks were plainly visible on one cheek. Somebody knocked on the door, and Shad concealed the gun in his belt.

A frantic voice of indistinct gender: “Mr. Ling, come quick! Come now!” A woman’s scream cut through the dance music. The brothers glanced at one another in alarm. Shad ordered the one in the tuxedo to go check on the trouble.

The larger Ling said, “Maybe we should call police.”

“Try an exterminator,” Shad advised. With both hands the larger brother fitted the Yankees cap tightly on his head, the visor practically touching his nose. Wordlessly he slipped out of the office. Shad locked the door and shoved the smaller Ling into a swivel chair.

“This no business of yours,” the brother protested. “It’s that boss you got. Mister Hotshit Mafia Man.”

Shad twisted Ling’s wrist to check the time on the phony Rolex. It was getting late.

Ling pulled his arm away. “Fat Tony, my ass,” he said, spitting unintentionally. “Orly must think we stupid, huh? They got Mafia in Japan, too. Plenty fucking Mafia!”

Shad untied the knot in the pillowcase. He felt serene and contented—a rare moment of moral clarity.

Ling said, “I didn’t grab nobody’s titties.” Shad opened the pillowcase and angled it toward the overhead light, so he could see down into the corners. “I feel good about this,” he said, to no one.

Ling noticed the sinuated movement in the bottom of Shad’s sack. He could see the shape of heavy, muscular coils shifting against the fabric. “You better not!” he shouted.

Shad commanded Ling to stand up and drop his jeans. Ling refused. Shad drew the pistol and poked the barrel in the man’s navel. The brother set his jaw and said, “I rather be shot dead. Make it quick, too.” Shad thought: What an actor, this guy. Ling regarded the pillowcase anxiously. “You sick man,” he said to Shad.

“Really? You’re the ones cut poor Bubba to pieces.” The brother scowled in confusion. “Bubba?” Shad clubbed him in the temple with the butt of the.38. Ling fell briefly unconscious. He awoke naked, hot and discomfited. Shad had hung him from the office door, securing his wrists to the coat hook. The smaller Ling cursed and writhed, his heels and elbows banging against the wood. From the hallway outside came the sounds of mounting chaos. Stretched on the Naugahyde sofa, Shad tended to the liberated boa constrictor; before leaving town, Lorelei had neglected to remove the tape from the snake’s mouth.

“What you doing?” Ling demanded.

Shad said, “This old boy’s half-starved.” He piled the reptile on the floor, beneath the dangling and helpless Ling. As the tan-and-brown mass unraveled itself, the brother’s upper lip curled in fear. The boa, being naturally arboreal, searched for something to climb. In the absence of a tree, it chose Ling’s bare leg. The more vigorously the brother kicked, the tighter the snake drew its coils.

“You know what?” said Shad. “Your schlong looks just like a hamster.”

After a short contemplation, Ling issued a series of high-pitched screams. The boa’s tongue feathered against his quaking skin. He cried: “It’s gone bite my wee-wee!”

Shad thought it was very funny. “Your what? Is that what it’s called in Japan?”

“Get it off me, goddammit.”

The snake continued its ominous ascent.

“You were very rude,” Shad said, “to grab my friend’s boobs the other night.”

“I’m s-s-sorry. I couldn’t help it.” Ling had lapsed into a pathetic whine. “Some girls don’t mind,” he said.

“Oh, I doubt that seriously.” Shad wondered how long the coat hook would hold fast under the brother’s weight.

Ling struggled to make himself motionless. Fighting, he feared, would agitate the creature. “Please,” he whispered morosely, “get it off me. I’ll do anything you want.”

Shad yawned. He removed his beret and brushed the lint off the crown. The boa’s tongue flicked in and out. It had drawn a vague bead on Ling’s shriveling organ.

“Oh-oh,” said Shad. The poor thing was starved.

Ling went slack on the door. He let out an involuntary whimper. “It’s gone eat me,” he asserted. The boa’s clouded eyes followed every tremble and sway of Ling’s luckless member.

Shad said, “You act like an animal, you get treated like one. Remember that.”

“I s-s-said I sorry.”

Shad smirked bitterly. “Sorry is the word for it.”

The snake’s head rose in a fluid arc, as if levitated by hydraulics. Its creamy neck banded to muscle in the shape of an S.

“Get ready,” Shad warned.

“Oh my God!”

“Don’t be such a pussy. It ain’t even poisonous.”

“But my wee-wee!”

The boa’s strike was too rapid for the human eye. Ling felt the needle sting of teeth before his mind registered the image of the snake’s open jaws, lashing. He passed out mid-scream.

When the brother regained consciousness, he found himself face down on the moldy shag carpet. There was no sign of Shad or the farsighted boa constrictor. When Ling rolled over, the effort ignited a burst of pain between his legs. He allowed one hand to explore the jeopardized zone. The brother sighed gratefully: he was punctured but intact, and fully attached.

In exhausted relief, Ling closed his eyes. “Sick man,” he said. “Very sick man.”

A faint noise in the ceiling caught his attention. He opened his eyes just in time to see a fat brown rat jump from the air-conditioning vent. It landed, with a perturbed squeak, squarely on Ling’s sad and astonished face. Some of the Flesh Farm’s customers were so drunk that the infestation didn’t bother them. The performers and waitresses, however, reacted more intelligently: they fled. All friction dancing ceased. The larger Ling armed his two bouncers with aluminum softball bats and directed a violent but ineffective counterattack. The rodents proved quick-footed and elusive.

As if by destiny, one vaulted from the Michelob display to befoul the health inspector’s whiskey sour.

Shad watched from a bar stool. He thought things went pretty well. As sabotage, it wasn’t exceptionally clever, but Mr. Orly couldn’t expect miracles on short notice. Orly, after all, had wanted to torch the place! A four-alarm blaze might have been more satisfying, visually, but it wouldn’t have put the Ling brothers out of business. They’d have simply rebuilt with the insurance money, and probably upgraded—new marquees, new decor, a new sound system. Orly didn’t like that prospect one bit, and endorsed the impromptu rat plague as an alternative. Rodent publicity would be fatal to the Flesh Farm.

The TV crews beat the police by five minutes. Onstage, a beautiful nude Brazilian was on her knees, hammering at a lump of lifeless fur. The weapon was a standard high-heeled shoe. With each blow, the dancer’s breasts swung back and forth in tandem, like church bells. Shad wondered how the TV people would edit the tape to make it presentable for the eleven o’clock news.

He went to the parking lot to watch the squad cars arrive. He stopped counting at nine. A busload of orphans could plunge off a bridge and you wouldn’t see so many cops. Shad smiled cynically. Nothing brought out the cavalry like strippers in distress.