Brian Freeman - Stripped

Tierney pressed her full lips together until they formed a thin line. “Yes.”

“Did that bother you?”

“We did a threesome once. That freaked me out. I didn’t want to do it again. MJ wanted to, though.”

“Were you with MJ on Saturday morning?”

She nodded. “And Friday night, too.”

“Why’d you leave on Saturday?”

“I had a thing with Moose on Saturday night. A party.”

“Where?” Amanda asked. She jotted down the details as Tierney told her. “Were you with Moose the whole time? Did he make or receive any calls on his cell phone?”

Tierney shook her head. “He was schmoozing. It was a political thing for the governor. You know, it’s reelection time. I was with Moose the entire evening.”

“Did you know MJ was with Karyn that night?”

“I figured,” she said unhappily.

“You sound jealous.”

Tierney tucked one of her curls around her finger and played with it. “Karyn is the big leagues. I know that. I’m just a cocktail waitress who was in the right place at the right time. I try to fit in with MJ and his crowd, but I don’t, not really. I know they laugh at me.”

“So why hang out with them?”

“What else do I have? My old friends, they can’t deal with who I am now. Because of Moose. You know, living by the lake, the bodyguards, the limo. It doesn’t matter that I’m still who I was. If you’re young and you’ve got money, you just wind up at the Oasis. And there are all the same little cliques in that crowd. It’s like high school.”

“What clique was MJ in?”

“Karyn’s. That’s how I met him. He was at the casino with Karyn about six months ago. She was really friendly to me, and I only realized later it was because she wanted to get me in bed with them. But I liked MJ, so I did it. We started going out after that, just the two of us.”

“How did Karyn feel about that?”

Tierney shrugged. “I don’t suppose she cared. She still slept with MJ whenever she wanted.” There was a hint of bitterness in her voice.

“Karyn says MJ was planning to dump you,” Amanda said.

Tierney was shocked. “She said that? No way. I don’t believe that. MJ wouldn’t do that.”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill MJ?”

“No, I don’t,” Tierney said. “I can’t imagine. But not Moose. Definitely not.”

Amanda asked, “Do you know if MJ had anything to do with Boni Fisso? Did they know each other?”

“Boni? Not that I know of. He never mentioned him.”

“How about Moose? Does he know Boni?”

Tierney nodded. “Well, sure. Moose played the Sheherezade all the time in the old days.”

Amanda wasn’t sure it meant anything, but Moose was a volatile man, despite his age and health. If someone like Moose did want to hire a hit man, it was easy to imagine him talking to Boni.

She thanked Tierney and reached for the door to the limousine. Tierney took her arm in a soft grip. Her hand felt small.

“Does this have to become public? Me and MJ?”

“I can’t make any promises,” Amanda said. “And like I said, it’s already an open secret.”

Tierney nodded. Her eyes drifted to the drawer on the other side of the limo, which wasn’t fully closed. She glanced back at Amanda, then looked away. “You took my stuff, huh?”

“Yeah,” Amanda told her. “But I’m not vice. It gets flushed. You know, it’s none of my business, but you don’t seem cut out for the fast lane, Tierney. Maybe you should think about making some changes.”

“Thanks.” Tierney took a jaded look around at the limo and gave her a half-smile. “Believe it or not, there’s a part of me that wishes I was still slinging drinks at the Venetian. Sometimes it’s easier being on the outside, looking in.”

Stride leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair and stretched his arms. The knotted muscles in his back tugged and strained. He felt a pain behind his eyes, and he closed them, hoping to tame his headache. He had been staring at the fiche reader for three hours, squinting at fuzzy forty-year-old images, feeling himself transported to 1967. The year Amira Luz was killed. It was odd, looking at headlines from newspapers back in those days, knowing how history turned out. The young girls in the ads were old women now. There was a photograph of Robert Kennedy. Most people had cigarettes hanging off their lips.

Things weren’t so different then. Las Vegas still floated above the times, corrupt and somehow incorruptible. He saw articles about desperate times for blacks in North Las Vegas and, a few pages later, ads for the black entertainers headlining on the Strip. He saw names from the past, in their prime: Red Buttons, Milton Berle, Ann-Margret. Miniskirts were in. The latest Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, was in the theaters that summer. Connery was cool.

He tried to imagine what it was like to live back then, to be a part of those days. From a distance, it looked old-fashioned, like the pencil drawings of models and the washed-out color in the photographs. Sophisticated but naive. He felt the pull of nostalgia, the yearning for the good old days. But nostalgia was nothing but sadness over times past. The good old days weren’t so good. He saw headlines about labor strikes and bribery scandals. The death of a Cosa Nostra leader thousands of miles away in New York made the front page in Las Vegas. The rumor of dark things was in the papers along with Frank’s old black magic, like shadows of clouds passing overhead.

He picked up a copy of the first article he had printed. It was dated June 18:

AMIRA MAKES TRIUMPHANT RETURN

Fresh from a six-month stint in the Montmartre district of Paris, Spanish dancer Amira Luz got a roaring welcome home on Saturday night from a packed crowd at the Sheherezade, where she introduced a risqué new show entitled Flame.

Like other shows now in vogue in casino showrooms, Flame features a cadre of lavishly dressed topless showgirls, as well as a riotous comedy performance by Strip veteran Moose Dargon. But Luz is the star. Her showstopper is a flamenco striptease, where the stage is lit by dozens of candles and a single guitarist provides accompaniment as she sheds her fiery red Spanish costume…

Stride retrieved another article from the third week in July. Amira was on the front page:

SHOWGIRL MURDER SHOCKS STRIP

Las Vegas police confirmed today that Amira Luz, star of the hit show Flame at the Sheherezade, was murdered on Friday night in a luxury suite in the popular casino. While police offered few details, sources inside the casino say the dancer was found early Saturday morning in a rooftop swimming pool, her skull crushed. Luz was last seen onstage on Friday during the late performance of Flame.

Detective Nicholas Humphrey declined to speculate on a motive for the crime or on any possible suspects. In a prepared statement, casino owner Boni Fisso declared “profound sadness” over the death of Luz and vowed “complete cooperation with the police in tracking down the deranged individual who defiled our property in order to perpetrate this heinous crime.”

One day after Luz was killed, and already Boni was laying the groundwork to pin the blame on an outsider. Stride wanted to talk to Nick Humphrey.

As he reread the article, Stride felt experienced hands massaging his shoulders. He glanced up as Serena leaned down and put her face next to his.

“This is your idea of a lunch date?” she asked him. “The library?”

“Just don’t stop,” Stride told her. “That feels great.”

Her fingers continued to knead and separate the tissues in his back. She looked at the newspaper articles over his shoulder and at the stack of microfiche boxes.