The Last Clinic (15 page)

The next call was to one of the names on the twenties, a man who signed his name
“BART”
—all caps and bold letters with quotes around the name. Darla wondered what Bart stood for or if it was a name he used instead of his real name.

It took Bart three rings before he picked up.

“Yes?” He sounded in a hurry—a guy with important stuff on his mind and doesn’t like being interrupted.

“Is this Bart?”

“Who?”

“Bart. All Caps. In bold. With quotes. That’s you, right?”

It took him a second. “Oh. Okay. Yeah. This is Bart. Is this who I think it is?” Bart sounded older.
Fifty
, she thought.

She gave him the same story. Bart didn’t ask her name, but halfway through her spiel he cut in.

“Listen to me, Miss Whomever You Are. I have no idea what you’re talking about, so unless there’s something else...”

“The twenty, Bart. The Andrew Jackson with your name and this phone number. If it wasn’t meant for me, who was it for? I mean, you don’t write your name and phone number on every twenty in your wallet, do you?”

“Let me be clear. I didn’t give you or any other woman money. And if you keep harassing me, I’m going to call the police.”

“Really? I’ve heard the police are kind of busy these days. You think they’d be interested in this kind of thing? Why don’t you give me an address, Bart, and I’ll ask someone from the vice squad to come and see you.”

“What are you, some kind of private detective working for Rhonda? You can tell that bitch for me, she’s not getting another nickel. No matter what kind of crap she pulls.”

“Nice talking to you, Bart.”

Maybe Bart didn’t remember. Maybe Bart had had a few too many that night. Next was Alex, from one of the other marked twenties. It was written in cursive and very legible.

Alex, it turned out, was a woman. Alex was also very forthcoming.

“Listen Misty, I believe that’s your name,” she said to Darla, “you need to know, this was just something I offered to do for my husband. It was a strange night. We’d had a lot to drink. The idea of me watching him with someone else, it’s been kind of a fantasy of his for some time now. Don’t get me wrong, I found you very attractive too. I guess you can tell, I’m not very experienced in this sort of thing. Look, we’re still interested, very interested. Talking to you now, I’m getting, well, you know. But you need to know, this would be a first for both of us, my husband and I. And probably it would be just a one-time thing. If it comes to that. I mean, if you’re interested.”

Darla wrote the word “Misty” on a pad next to Alex’s name and phone number. She told Alex she’d take a pass. Alex said she understood and thanked her for calling. She sounded relieved.

Darla imagined Alex to be a well-bred young woman, an insurance broker’s wife, maybe, living out in Madison in one of the gated communities. Someone she might have met at a charitable fundraiser. The kind of woman she and Kendall and Lulu used to run around with.

The fourth twenty contained the name and phone number of a man named Rio. All upper caps, exclamation point—RIO
!
      

“Rio?”

“That’s right. Who’s this?” A deep voice. Cool, detached.

“Judging from your writing style, you sound like a man who is confident in his abilities.”

“Wait a minute. Okay, sure.” Rio chuckled. “Well, you made me wait long enough. I don’t know, maybe I should be insulted.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m kidding. But just don’t make it a habit. So let’s get down to it. When are you free, Belinda, or whatever your real name is?”

Darla didn’t need any more information from Rio.

“Thanks, Rio, but the reason I called, is my mother is sick and I’m going to be out of town for a while. Sorry.”

“Hey, family comes first. I understand. I’ll be around when you get back. But just for future reference, what’s your going rate? Hourly and nightly? And maybe you have a friend you’d like to bring. Yeah, that might be interesting, if it isn’t too expensive.”

“We need to end this conversation right now, Rio. Believe me; it’s for your own good.”

“No problem. Rio pays, but Rio doesn’t beg.”

The line went dead.

Darla called FUSION and got Uther on the phone. She told him about the money, what she’d found out, and where she thought it came from. She asked him if he could go online and run a search on various news stories in the
Jackson Crier
over the last two years. She told him what kind of pattern to look for and what her theory was.

“You have accessed the correct resource, Detective. I am a patternologist if nothing else,” he said

“Patternologist? Is that your own word? Or could I use it in Scrabble?”

“You might say I’m its progenitor.”

“How long before you can get back to me?”

“Let me put you on hold…”

Two minutes later Uther was back. He’d found the pattern. Everything fit together. Just the way she had suspected, especially the timeline.

Police work, even homicide, was mostly linear. A leads to B, B leads to C, in a nice straight line. But every once in a while, riding down the two-lane blacktop road, the evidence took you off the main highway and down a dirt road. That’s when things got interesting. That’s when the job could be, well, fun.

16

It’s Showtime.

Darla dressed for the evening in a nice conservative look. A pantsuit, charcoal grey, with a subtle pin stripe, her trousers cut full, the look more loose than tailored. She strapped her .380 Taurus to her ankle, the wide pant leg covering the weapon nicely.

“Are you going with me tonight?” Kendall asked, coming through the door as Darla was getting ready to leave. “If so, I’d say your outfit’s very appropriate for the occasion.”

“Going with you where?”

 “To the service. Reverend Jimmy’s visitation, girl.”

“I thought you hated him?”

“Girl, we
all
go to visitations down here. It doesn’t matter how you felt about the person in life. Visitations or funerals, you have to go to at least one. It’s expected. Of course, it’s better if you attend both, but one new outfit was all I could afford, and I’m certainly not going to show up in something I’ve been seen in before. That would be downright disrespectful. I really think you should go. Lenore will never let you live it down if you don’t.

“I’m not sure Lenore Aldridge sees me as a family friend.”

“That has nothing to do with anything—not in Mississippi. If you don’t show up, Lenore will think you’ve got bad manners.”

“She already thinks I have the bad manners franchise for Central Mississippi. Besides, I have other plans.”

“What on earth could take precedence over a visitation?”

“I’m going to a titty bar.”

Kendall tilted her head as if she was trying to decide what she wanted to say. “Well girl, in that case, I guess that’s between you and your God, isn’t it?”

She moved past Darla and headed up the stairs.

 “Why is it you always end up getting the best exit line?” Darla called after her.

“I think it has to do with the way I was raised,” Kendall said looking down from the top of the landing.

The sign above the double door to the titty bar was lit with three raw bulbs and read: Continental Conway’s Gentlemen’s Club. Home of the South’s most beautiful women. Then in much smaller type: shirts and shoes required.

Darla hadn’t bothered to call ahead to see if the owner, Conway Boudreaux, would be there. Conway, she’d heard, was always there. A separate wing of the club served as his living quarters. Flesh was Conway’s avocation as well as his vocation.

She parked her unmarked Ford Taurus in the lot between a Hummer and a Chevy Silverado and made her way across the gravel parking lot to the entrance, thinking it was a good thing she wore flats.

The showroom was dank and smelled of beer. She surveyed the room doing a head count. There were maybe a dozen customers. Not a bad turnout considering it was the dinner hour, and Conway’s served only potato chips and pork rinds.

The majority of the customers were seated in the first row watching one of the girls—a redhead in an abbreviated Mississippi State cheerleader outfit—curl around the pole. There were only a couple of bills hanging out of her g-string, meaning it was the early part of her routine. Darla wondered if the girl might be Tiffany, Misty, or one of the others.

Conway, in his John Travolta white suit and his early Beatles haircut, sat between two customers, ogling along with the clientele, showing all the wonder of a first-timer. Darla took a seat in the row behind him, leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

“Could you spare a minute of your time, Mr. Boudreaux?”

He turned around and gave himself a nice slow look at her, taking it all in, starting at her ankles, pausing at her crotch, then inch by inch up to her chest, and finally to her face. He nodded his approval.

“You can have a lot more of my time than a minute, Slim.”

Darla suppressed a laugh.
Conway didn’t get a lot in high school
, she figured.

“Come on back to my office,” he said, “and let’s you and I get acquainted.”

They both stood up, more or less at the same time, and ended up face to face.

“It’s back this way,” he said, signaling that she should go first. She did and felt his eyes on her backside, sizing up her broad shoulders, the tiny waist, the gymnast’s butt. She wondered if he’d seen the outline of the .380 Taurus under her slacks. She guessed his eyes hadn’t made it that far south.

Inside his office, he sat down at the end of a couch and slouched back. She remained on her feet and showed him the badge.

If he was fazed, he didn’t let on.

“Law enforcement. That’s your day job. I get it. You got to supplement. Anyway, it’s a nice angle. Of course, I’ve had women cops work here before, but never a detective. I got to admit, none with your kind of class. A detective, that would be an interesting twist. Yeah, we could definitely play with that. Where’s your gun? ”

Have some fun with this
, she thought.
Why not?

She lifted a leg and rested her foot on the wastepaper basket next to his desk, revealing her ankle hostler and the tiny little gun.

“A .380 Taurus,” he said. “Not a very big piece. Most cops I know carry a Glock.”

“I’ve got small ankles.”

“I knew a woman, her .380 Taurus was pink.”

“I’m girly, but I’m not that girly.”

“Not all that accurate beyond twenty-five yards,” he said, looking closer, but careful not to touch her.

She thought of the four men she’d shot.

“So far that hasn’t been a problem.”

Conway’s eyes still fixed on the gun.

“No, I like it. I like it a lot. It fits you. It’s got a lot of, ah, what’s the word I’m looking for? Personality. Yeah, personality.”

She put her foot down, the leg of her slack covering the weapon. It was a smooth move.

Conway, a satisfied look on his face, locked his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, as though he was communing with his muse.

“Okay. Here’s how I see it. The stage is dark and empty, except for a metal chair with a spotlight on it. You come out in that same pinstripe suit you’re wearing, maybe a hat. A fedora would be cool. Only you got mules on, five, maybe six inches. Most important, the mules have got those skinny pointy heels. Like you could take off a shoe and stab a guy in the chest with the heel if he got out of line. And you got a look on your face, the one you came in with. That cop look, like you don’t take crap off nobody.”

Darla knew she should have stopped him, but figured when was she going to hear something like this again?

“A police siren sounds. Conway imitated the siren and continued. “Nice and loud. Not a recording. Nothing cheesy. The real thing. I’ve got one around here somewhere. Blue police lights start flashing overhead. You put your foot on the chair, like you did just a minute go, so the customers can see the piece, that cute little gun strapped to your ankle. The shoes, I forgot, open toes. And I want them bright red, same with the fingernails and lips. Fire engine red. Then, very slowly, stripper slow and sexy as hell, you unsnap the gun and walk to the edge of the stage, the .380 at your side. You pick out a customer down front. It’ll be a plant. You pull the .380 up, two hands, like they teach at the police academy. Then you make like you’re popping him. Blam! Blam! The guy, the plant, he falls back in his chair and puts his hand over his heart. You give him a little wink and make like you’re blowing smoke away from the barrel. They’ll eat it up. Course you’ve also got to be able to work the pole and do the basic moves. That’s the easy part. The girls will show you. But it’s the narrative, the story that keeps customers coming back. That is, as long as you have the stuff, and it looks like you got it. I’m predicting you’ll be our headliner in a month or two.”

“This is very entertaining Mr. Boudreaux, but…”

 “Hey. You think I’m exaggerating? I had a woman come in here, maybe a year ago. She had all the physical equipment, like you. A big redneck kind of a broad. Got a couple of Hell’s Angels tats or her arms. Her name was Helene Jones. That was her maiden name. Actually, she was married to some dude from Europe named Friedrich Heilrazier. So it’s Helene Heilrazier. So, first thing, I’m trying to come up with a stage name. Something I can build a story around. In a moment of pure brilliance, as Jesus is my savior, it hits me—change her name to Helen Hellraiser. I had her come out in a biker jacket and a pair of boots up to here, with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand. The customers went ape.”

A picture flashed into Darla’s mind. Hugh, the time she stripped for him, right down to her earrings and danced for him and then with him, slow, naked in his arms. She wiped the memory. It was time to come clean.

“I’m not really here for an audition.”

“Did I say audition? We could skip that part. Look, we don’t have any actual openings right now, but for the right lady and believe me you are the right lady…”