Daniel Price - Slick

Thankfully, so was Maxina. Her strong new endorsement of my plan would be more than enough to get the Judge and Doug off my back.

She and I held a lengthy discussion about the best way to gain Harmony’s trust. We both knew I had my work cut out for me, being a slick white man and all. We agreed that the only way around it was to play it a hundred percent sincere. No wide-screen pretty pictures. No paper thin platitudes. I’d treat her like a trusted member of the team instead of expendable hired booty. And the only way to achieve that dynamic was to do exactly the opposite of what the Judge wanted. I’d tell Harmony everything, even the things she didn’t need to know, even the things she didn’t want to hear.

In the meantime, I was anxious to move forward. Doug called back a half hour later to give me the official green light. By that point I was al ready in my car, on the town, and out in search of Harmony.

As you can imagine, it’s not easy to engineer a grand-scale media hoax. For starters, what do you wear? Obviously a suit wouldn’t do much to combat the “corporate wolf” aura a guy like me emitted. And yet, overcompensating in the other direction would only make me look like a wolf in cheap clothing.

The middle ground solution was to go business casual, like I always did. Button-down black Gap shirt. Loose-fit khaki slacks. My oldest and second-least-expensive pair of boat shoes. But what about the face and hair? After all, I was about to be seen. If I could be seen, I could be identified.

Screw it. I’d just go as myself. Aside from my height, I was pretty nondescript, or so I’ve been told. One of Gracie’s old college friends was a police sketch artist. He told me that I had such a unique lack of distinguishing features that if I ever robbed a liquor store, I wouldn’t even need a mask.

Although he meant it as a casual barb, I took it well, considering the source. He had a terminally unrequited crush on Gracie and, might I add, a nose you could see from space.

Harmony had an address in Venice Beach, but she didn’t live there alone. The phone, gas, electricity, and cable bills were each registered to a different man. The lease itself was signed to a woman named Tracy Wood. That was quite a lot of inhabitants for a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. Before I left home, I tried calling Harmony but ended up getting one of her male roommates. The rap music on the other end of the line was so loud that I had a hard time telling the speaker apart from the song.

“Lo?”

“Hi. I’m looking for Harmony Prince.”

“Who dis?” he yelled.

“I work for Mean World Records. Is Harmony around?”

“ Who dis?”

I had to raise my voice to compete. “My name is Scott. I work at Mean World Records. We’ve talked with Harmony before. Is she around?”

He turned down the music. He took a wary pause, then a few bites of some crunchy legume. “She ain’t here, man.”

“Do you know where I can find her? It’s really important that I get in touch with her.”

“What you want with her?”

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

He paused again. “McB.”

“Mick Bee. I like it. You a rapper?”

“Hey, man. Why you wanna know about me now?”

“Just curious. You’ve got a strong voice. And we’re always looking for new talent. By the way, I assume you saw Harmony in Hunta’s video for ‘Chocolate Ho-Ho.’”

He laughed. “Yeah, man. The second time. The first time I sneezed.”

I grinned along. “I know. That’s why I want to get in touch with her. We’ve got a video coming up and we want to put her in it. And I don’t mean put her in the background, man. She’s going to be a key player.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. But it’s important that I find her tonight. Extremely important. You feel me?”

After a moment’s thought, he caved. “She working now.”

“Where?”

“The Flower Club.”

Whoa. That wasn’t part of Eddie’s profile. I suppose it was too much to hope that it was just a fun place for gardeners.

“Uh, where is it? Downtown?”

“Downtown,” he said. “On Sixth and Flower. Shit, wait. Seventh. Yeah, Seventh.”

“That’s okay. I’ll look it up. You know what time she usually gets off?”

“I dunno. She usually get home ‘round one or two. Hey, you really work for Mean World?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Cause, I don’t know, you sound white. Really white. No offense.”

“It’s all right. I get that a lot.”

“Just understand that we all look out for Harmony here, you know what I’m sayin’? You fuck with her, we fuck with you. We clear?”

“We clear,” I said, oddly touched by his concern. “But trust me. She’ll be glad you took this call.”

“Well, go find her then.”

That was the idea. But this Flower Club thing made me nervous. My grand design would hit a major skid if our sweet little angel turned out to be a stripper by night.

________________

Before going downtown, I had to stop and make a cash withdrawal, a moderately fat one. I needed some kind of financial incentive to get Harmony to even listen to me. Unfortunately, I had only seventy-four dollars on me. Then I remembered Ira’s Y2K stash, which he now called his earthquake fund. Whatever. It was ten thousand dollars worth of twenties just taking up space in his safe. Perfect.

En route to Marina del Rey, I called Ira and asked him if I could borrow fifteen hundred of it. Though he was initially hesitant to take some of the stuffing out of his disaster cushion, the money was out and waiting the moment I boarded the Ishtar .

“What’s the matter?” I teased. “Too scared to open the safe when I’m around?”

“I don’t recall being entrusted with your combination.”

Touché. Decked out for comfort in his ratty blue robe, he sat in his leather command chair and clicked away at his PC. He seemed to be building some kind of virtual house. I wanted to inquire but I knew that would trigger a painfully elaborate software demonstration. The important thing was that he enjoyed it.

“So what shady business are you conducting now?” he asked, still focused on his work.

“How do you know this is for business?”

“Because your personal life isn’t that exciting.”

The fact that he could say that while putting up digital drywall was an irony that escaped him.

“Actually, I’m off to the Flower Club,” I replied. “To see the strippers.”

I was hoping that would faze him. He didn’t even bat an eye. “It’s not a strip club, Gomer. It’s a hostess club.”

“What’s the difference between a stripper and a hostess?”

“Hostesses don’t strip. They’re simply paid to look nice and sit with dirty old men on dirty old couches. From what I’m told, there’s groping involved.”

“Terrific.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what you get.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” Ira said, adding stucco. “For whatever it is you’re up to.”

________________

A brief history of the hostess club, courtesy of the Internet:

Shortly after World War I, a sweeping wave of moral reform washed away America’s bordellos and red-light districts. That put a lot of prostitutes out of work. A few intrepid bar owners — unaware that the bell was about to toll for them — hired many of these ladies as hostesses. Their new task was comparatively chaste: to lure men out onto the dance floor, hold them tight, and squeeze lots of drinks out of them. Eventually, these bars became closed dance halls, their admission restricted to men. The only women to be found inside were the ones who worked there. And their job, as always, was to work the men.