Brian Freeman - Stripped

“It may be the only way to find out who killed Peter,” Serena added.

“Peter,” Helen murmured, struggling with her reluctance. “I can’t believe what happened to him. I’ve never been a very emotional person, detectives. I’m not one to believe that attachments last forever. You can ask my ex-husbands about that. But I loved that little boy.”

She drummed her nails on the patio table and bit her lip.

“I guess the first thing to say is that I feel like I have blood on my hands, too. I hated Amira. I was insanely jealous of her. When she was killed, I have to say I was glad. Funny, how petty it seems in retrospect. But I was barely twenty-one then, and ambitious, and Amira was standing in the way.”

“What was she like?” Serena asked.

“Amira? She was scandalous.”

“In what way?”

Helen gave them a wicked smile. “You two are too young to understand the times. It was the sexual revolution, but there was still a lot of the 1950s about the world back then. Big hair. Ugly black glasses that made us look like librarians. Lots of ridiculous hats. Flouncy little miniskirts so you could practically see our pussies, but we were still supposed to look virginal.” She laughed. Stride thought she was pleased to see that her language surprised them.

“There was plenty of flesh back then,” she added. “You had Lido at the Stardust, the Folies at the Trop, Minsky’s at the Slipper. All of them bare-breasted, but pretty tame. Even so, we took a lot of heat. We had some councilmen in Henderson who thought a few tits onstage meant the end of civilization as we knew it. They wanted the girls wearing pasties, elevated stages, all sorts of nonsense like that. Fortunately, no one listened to them. Like I said, the nudity was pretty innocent.”

She took a sip of wine. “Then Amira came along. Looking back, I can admit it now. Amira had something special, something I didn’t. She was utterly uninhibited. When Boni made Amira the lead dancer in our nudie show, she was a sensation. And that show was pretty conservative. But Flame -my God. Everyone thought she was a prima donna going off to Paris for six months, but when she came back, she unveiled Flame. No one had seen anything like it. Amira wasn’t stripping. She wasn’t dancing. She might as well have been masturbating right there onstage. For 1967, my dears, that was scandalous.”

“What was Amira like as a person?” Stride asked.

“Cold. Ambitious. Selfish.” Helen traced the top of her wineglass with a painted fingernail. “Does that sound harsh? I admit, I was biased against her, because she treated me like shit. She treated all the other dancers that way. Most of us would pal around, look out for each other, but not Amira. She was only interested in herself.”

“Do you know how she wound up in Vegas? How she got her start?”

“If you were a young girl with stars in your eyes, you went one of two places back then,” Helen said. “Hollywood or Vegas. I don’t think Amira liked the idea of being a movie star. She fed off the crowd. She liked performing in front of an audience. And she was all about sex. Vegas was a natural for her.”

“But you don’t just walk into town and become a star,” Serena said.

“Most of us, no. But Amira wasn’t like most of us. The first thing she did was have an affair with Moose, and he put her in his show. That gave her an audience. From there, her sex appeal carried her.”

“How did she get involved with Moose?”

Helen laughed. “Moose wasn’t exactly playing hard to get in those days. He told me later that Amira was the greatest fuck he ever had. Of course, he didn’t realize the little bitch would turn around and put a knife in his back. Take over his show.”

“He must have been angry,” Stride said.

“Furious. Which for Moose is saying a lot. He trashed his dressing room when Boni told him he wouldn’t have his own show anymore and would be a variety performer in Flame. Boni had to have Leo talk to him.”

“Leo?” Serena asked.

“Leo Rucci. Boni’s right-hand man. He ran the day-today operations at the casino.”

“What do you think Leo said to Moose?”

“I think Leo told him he’d be out on the street with a rearranged face if he didn’t shut up.”

“So Moose was nursing a major grudge against Amira,” Stride said.

“Sure. Most of us were. Amira didn’t care who she trashed to get what she wanted.”

“Did Amira have a boyfriend?” Stride asked. “After Moose, that is.”

“Not that I ever saw. In fact, I don’t really think she had many friends at all. Amira rarely hung out in the casino when she wasn’t onstage. The rest of us liked to gamble and drink with the other stars. Amira did her act and disappeared. I think that was part of how she cultivated her image. She was unapproachable. It made men want her.”

“Tell us about Walker Lane,” Stride said. “We heard he wanted Amira, too.”

Helen’s eyes twinkled. “Well, he wanted me first.”

“You slept with him?” Serena asked.

“Once. He was filming his Vegas movie that spring. Neon Nights. Remember that one? Well, it was forgotten quickly, but it made a lot of money at the time. A few scenes were filmed at the Sheherezade, and I got to know him when he came to the show. Over the course of about three months, I think he fucked all the dancers.”

“Was Amira one of them?”

Helen shook her head. “She wasn’t back from Paris at that point. But when Flame started up that summer, Walker fell for her hard. Every weekend, he flew in from L.A. and was in the front row. Like a puppy dog. But as far as we could tell, Amira didn’t give him the time of day.”

“It’s a long way from unrequited love to murder,” Serena said. “Sounds like Moose had a better motive. Or you, for that matter.”

“That’s true,” Helen acknowledged. “Then again, we didn’t leave town right after the murder. Why else do you think the word went out that Walker wasn’t in Vegas that night? Boni was covering for his whale. Walker was there. I saw him at the first show.”

“Tell us what happened that night,” Stride said.

“I don’t know, not really. We did our two performances of Flame that evening, at eight o’clock and then eleven o’clock. Amira was in both shows. She left around one in the morning. I saw her leave the backstage area. There was nothing unusual about it. By the next morning, the word was all over the casino that she had been killed.”

“Did you see Walker at the second show?” Stride asked.

“No. He usually attended both shows when he was in town, but he was only at the first show that night.”

“Did you see him in the casino at all after the first show?”

“I never saw him again, period. Ever.” Helen raised her eyebrows as if to say, That’s what I’ve been telling you.

“What did you do after the last show?” Serena asked.

“I went to one of the hotel rooms. Leo met me there, and we sweated up the sheets for an hour.”

“Leo Rucci? The casino manager?”

Helen nodded. “That was what he called himself, a manager. He was mostly just dumb muscle for Boni. He managed people by bullying and threatening and beating them up when he needed to.”

“So why sleep with him?”

Helen seemed amused at their naïveté. “Well, first, I was ambitious, like Amira. I knew whenever she decided she wanted more money somewhere else, I’d have a shot at the lead role. I thought Leo could put in a good word for me with Boni, and he did.” She winked. “But it wasn’t just that Leo also had the biggest cock I’d ever seen. Nine inches and fat like a sausage. I could only do him after a show, because there was no way I could dance after having that thing inside me.” She said it matter-of-factly. Stride got the feeling that Helen liked being outrageous. He tried not to blush but felt his face growing hot.