Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“You got to be careful,” the driver said. “It is very dangerous to run in front of a taxi.”

“Just drive.” I gave him my mother’s address, and when we got there I threw a handful of bills over the back seat. He honked at me as he drove off.

What would Susan have turned up? Something, I prayed. Something that would help us figure out where Jocelyn might have gone. I tapped my foot impatiently as the elevator climbed to the fourteenth floor.

My mother came to the door when I rang and looked startled when she saw me. “My goodness, John, I heard on the news you were arrested-”

“They let me out. Is Susan here?”

“Susan?”

“I’m sorry. Rachel. Is she here?”

“No, she went out. John, what’s going on?”

“Where did she go?”

“John Blake, you tell me what’s going on or so help me-”

I put one hand on each of her arms. They felt tiny and frail. “Mom, I’m sorry. I can’t. Not now. I need to find Rachel. Did she say anything about where she went?”

“Yes, hold on,” she said, and picked up a piece of paper from the telephone stand by the door. She took her glasses down from her forehead and squinted at the page. “She’s meeting someone at a restaurant. A place called Dorni-” She squinted some more. “Dorneolo? Dormiolo? I can’t read what she wrote.”

I took the paper from her hand. It said Dormicello.

*

It was early enough in the afternoon that Zen wasn’t there yet. Her day-shift bartender was a parolee called Trunks who nodded at me when he saw me come through the door. The place was as close to empty as I’d ever seen it, which was just as well. Less chance for Susan to get herself in a scrape.

She wasn’t at the bar or any of the tables out front. There was a wall of booths in the back, past the wallmounted TV that was quietly showing NY1 and the pool table where a broad-backed guy in a wifebeater blocked my view. I waited till he was between shots and squeezed past, careful not to knock down the second cue stick that was leaning against the table. There was presumably a second player somewhere, maybe in the bathroom, and if he looked anything like this one, I didn’t want to do anything to piss him off.

Only one of the booths was occupied, and from where I was I couldn’t see who Susan was talking to, just the back of his head. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed straight back and held in place by some sort of shellac, and I had a strong sense of deja vu: based on his hair alone, he could have been Wayne Lenz’s taller, older brother.

I came around to the front of the booth. Susan must have been surprised to see me, but she kept it from showing on her face. “Peter, this is John,” she said. “He… works with me.”

“At the studio?” The man extended his hand. “Good to meet you, John. I’m Pete Cimino.”

I shook the hand. “Pete.”

“I was explaining to Pete about the segment we’re doing for Fox News on the Sugarman murder, and he’s offered to help. He’s even willing to talk on camera.”

On camera. Good God, she was a natural. “That’s good, Pete,” I said. “Thank you.” Susan had her hair tied back and was wearing a simple blouse. She didn’t look like a TV producer to me, but she didn’t look like a stripper either, and maybe that was enough. People generally believed what you told them, especially when it was something they wanted to believe. And who didn’t want to be on TV?

Of course, the answer to that was that most of the people you met at Zen’s didn’t – but this guy obviously wasn’t a regular, not if he called the place Dormicello. He looked like some kind of tough guy wannabe, the sort who thought some hairspray and a Brooklyn accent made him Tony Soprano. If he kept hanging around here, it was just a matter of time before he got on the wrong side of someone who was the real thing and exited with a blade in his stomach. But that was his problem, and Zen’s, not ours. He was obviously someone Susan had felt was important enough to meet in person and that meant I wanted to talk to him.

“What do you do, Pete?” I asked.

“Things,” he said. “Little of this, little of that. You know how it is.”

“And you knew Miranda?”

He kissed his fingertips and sent a glance toward the ceiling.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“May she rest in peace, she was something. A great dancer, and what a body. Really gave a hundred ten percent every night, her and Jessie both. Any time they worked my club, I could make another ten, twelve percent easy, people coming in because of them. When they split up, I tried to talk some sense into them, but no. I even offered them a raise, which I’ve never done for any girl before or since. But there was no talking to them.”

“Why don’t you tell John what you were telling me,” Susan said. “About how it happened.”

He turned to me. “There was this other girl, this black chick, Tracy, who started at the club halfway through their last booking. We used her as their warm-up act. But then things got a little too warm, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“Man, this Tracy, I’ll tell you, I would’ve done her, and I don’t go for no melanzana normally. She was built like you wouldn’t believe. But strictly a dyke, and she went for Jessie like a bullet. Now, Randy must’ve known about it from the day it started. She was no dummy. But she didn’t say anything, so I figured maybe they’ve got an agreement, they’re not tied down, whatever. Lots of girls are like that. Get so sick of men looking at them, they’ll go to bed with anything long as it doesn’t have a dick.” He raised a placating hand to Susan. “Excuse my French.”

“You can say ‘dick’ in here,” Susan said, “just not on the air.”

“So this goes on for two weeks, three weeks. It’s coming up on the end of their booking, and I’m thinking I want them to extend – all three of them, what the hell, the guys love Tracy, too. So I go to talk to them backstage and it’s like walking into a meat locker. They’re not talking to each other. They’re glaring at each other like they’re ready to take each other’s eyes out. It was ugly.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “What can I tell you? I tried to get them to talk, I tried to joke with them a little, but they weren’t having any of it. If it got to the point where I offered money, you know it was bad.”

“What makes you think they broke up because of Tracy?”

“It was obvious. All three of them were there, and every time Tracy moved closer to Jessie, Randy moved further away. It was like two magnets, you know, pushing each other apart? Finally, Tracy put her arm around Jessie and Randy just walked out. That was it. Never came back.”

“What about Jessie?” I asked.

“She re-upped for two more weeks, tried to teach Tracy the act, but it wasn’t the same. You know, black and white’s not twins, and the twin angle was part of what had made it so hot. But the real problem was just they weren’t good together. They may have been great in the sack, but onstage? There wasn’t that chemistry. They were easy on the eyes, but you put the two of them on stage and it was just two strippers on a stage. With Randy it was something else.”

I’d seen what it had been, and he was right. There’d been something more between them. I tried to imagine the backstage scene Cimino had described, thought about what it must have been like for Miranda to find herself suddenly cast off and replaced in Jocelyn’s life by this other woman. This, after giving up her dreams of medical school and spending years traveling the country at Jocelyn’s side. It must have been crushing.

“When did this happen?”

“What, a year ago? Year and a half, maybe.”