Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“What are they saying?”

“That you killed my floor manager.”

“I didn’t.”

“Wayne was a valuable employee. Not a perfect one, but he was worth something to me. I can’t have people going around killing my employees. Unless, of course, there was a good reason for it in this case.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I went to his apartment, but someone got behind me and knocked me out. That’s who killed him. As for whether whoever did it had a good reason, the answer is yes. Five hundred thousand good reasons.”

“You’re saying Wayne…?”

“Yes, I’m saying Wayne. He and Miranda worked together to set you up, and then when it looked like you might identify Miranda, he killed her to keep her from talking.”

“That’s hard for me to believe,” he said. “The man had worked for me for years.”

“That’s probably why he was able to get away with it.”

“And who is it you’re saying killed him?”

“Not me. That’s all I know.”

“And the money?”

“Gone,” I said. “Whoever killed Lenz has it, presumably, but I’m damned if I know who that is. And as long as I’m locked up in here, I can’t find out.”

He leaned forward and spoke even more softly than he had until now. “Mr. Blake,” he said, “if you weren’t locked up in here, would you be able to find my money and the person who took it?”

“If I weren’t locked up in here, I could do lots of things,” I said. “But I’m being held on a charge of murder.”

“If it’s true that you didn’t do it,” he said, “and it’s just a matter of their releasing you sooner rather than later… ” He spread his hands, palms up, as though there were a simple answer to it all. “The police will listen to reason when you talk to them the right way,” he said.

“I tried.”

“Then you didn’t do it the right way.”

“Are you saying you can-”

“Let’s not talk about what I can do,” he said. “What I want to know is what you can do.”

Could I give him what he wanted? Maybe. But saying “maybe” wouldn’t get me out of jail. “Yes,” I said. “I think I can do it.”

“You’d better do more than think, Mr. Blake. If I do this for you and you don’t come through for me… ”

Could he really get me out? He seemed confident of it – and given that he’d managed to keep himself out of prison all these years, maybe he had reason for his confidence. I thought about Kirsch’s explanation for why they had never booked Murco: he was small potatoes and maybe he’d lead them to someone bigger. Sure, that could be. But maybe this small-potatoes gangster was also making installment payments to the Stan Kirsch Memorial Fund. And maybe he knew the right palms to cross in Queens, too.

Of course, if I accepted this favor and then wasn’t able to deliver, I’d wish I was back in my cell with nothing to complain about but bad coffee. But the alternative was worse: sitting in jail while maybe my last chance to find out what had happened to Miranda evaporated.

“Do it,” I said.

Whatever Murco did, it worked quickly: I found myself on the steps of the precinct house in less time than it had taken for them to book me in the first place. The cop who gave me back my belt and shoelaces was one I hadn’t seen before and he gave me a warning about not leaving town while I was still a material witness in a homicide investigation. I told him I wouldn’t dream of it.

An hour later, I climbed out of the train station on Eighteenth Street. I’d tried calling Leo from the train, but couldn’t get a clear signal long enough to complete the call; I tried again now and got him.

“Where are you?”

“On my way to the office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“How did you-”

“Long story.”

“I’ve been making calls all morning,” he said. “But I didn’t think I’d gotten anyone to pay attention.”

“I got some help from Murco.”

“From Murco? Johnny, you don’t want his kind of help.”

“What I don’t want is to be in jail,” I said. “And what he’s asking for in return happens to be something I want to do anyway.”

“Now it is. What about when he asks for something you don’t want to do?”

“I’ll deal with that then.” I hung up as I turned onto our street and whipped out my keys to unlock the door, but Leo beat me to the punch. He looked worse than I did, haggard and rumpled, as though he’d slept in his clothes, if he’d slept at all.

He led me inside and handed me a FedEx package marked for Saturday delivery. “This came this morning. Susan told me you were expecting it.”

I looked at the return address: Jacksonville, Florida. This had to be Mo Levy’s reluctant contribution. I tore the package open and took out the unlabeled videocassette that was the only thing it contained. Would it be worth watching, I wondered, especially now, when there was so much else I needed to do? What good could it do me to see Miranda and Jocelyn dancing in a video shot three years ago and a thousand miles away?

I almost put it down – I wanted to. But in the end that’s what decided it for me. I didn’t want to watch the tape because of what I was afraid I might see, and that was a bad reason. I slipped the tape into our VCR, powered up the TV set above it, and pressed Play.

After a minute of snow, a picture jumped into focus. The camerawork was steady, though not otherwise of high quality. I figured Levy had probably hidden a security camera in a light fixture, trained it on the stage, and left it at that. The sound was tinny – I could hear the high notes of the music, but the bass was missing. Of course, sound wasn’t what Mo Levy had been most interested in capturing.

Miranda and Jocelyn were already on stage when the video started. They were wearing matching gowns, one red, the other green. They had played up their resemblance to each other with identical haircuts, identical makeup, mirror image moves as they strutted away from each other and back. They moved with self-confidence and the crowd responded. I sat down on the couch, forced myself to keep watching.

They started by playing to the crowd, dancing up to the edge of the stage and back again, bending forward to show lots of cleavage. Then they came together and began working on each other. I watched Miranda stroke Jocelyn’s hair, run her fingers along her arms, embrace her from behind. Then they switched, and it was Jocelyn working on Miranda from behind, easing the straps off Miranda’s shoulders, peeling the dress away from the lace bra underneath, pulling it down over her hips, holding it while Miranda stepped out. Then it was Miranda’s turn, the same moves, till Jocelyn, too, was wearing nothing but heels, a t-back thong, and a push-up bra.

I realized then that they even had the same figure – and why not? They’d probably gone to the same doctor for the surgery, had deliberately told him to give them both the same breasts. It was all part of the act. It was startling how much they managed to looked like each other.

And they were both beautiful. No grotesque caricatures here, no vulgar exaggerations of the female body, just two young women with toned physiques and beautiful faces and more talent for movement than you usually saw on a strip club stage. Or was I just imagining it, trying to paint what I was seeing in the best light I could? The truth was, I couldn’t make out all that much. The footage was grainy, the lighting poor. The camera was far enough from the stage that details got lost. As they danced faster and faster, intertwined in each other’s arms, I couldn’t always keep track of which one was which.

But when they stopped and stood still, caressing each other slowly – then I could tell, then I could see their faces clearly. Miranda was in front. Jocelyn stood behind her, reaching around to slip the clasp of her bra, while Miranda held her pose, hands locked behind her head. And as she stared straight out over the heads of the crowd, straight at the lens of the hidden camera, as Jocelyn opened the bra and pulled the patterned silk away from her breasts and the buzz from the crowd grew louder, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Miranda was looking out at me, trying to speak to me, begging for my help.