Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

Temple sucked her ice cubes again. There was so little drink in the glass it stayed puddled on the bottom.

That was her theory that saved the neck of everybody she knew. And wrote a satisfying “The End” to the episode that had begun with Cher Smith’s dead body being found in this very club’s parking lot.

Or, if she wanted to depress herself, there was the Terrible Troika to consider: Max, Rafi Nadir, and Lieutenant C. R. Molina converging seconds apart over the fallen form of Gayla in another strip club parking lot more recently.

Had one of the two men attacked Gayla? The victim couldn’t say who had barreled into her in the dark. Temple thought she could eliminate Molina as the perpetrator. That left Max and Rafi. She knew she could eliminate Max, so that left Rafi.

Unless…a third man had been there just before these two natural enemies.

So who was the third man?

Temple had an idea, and she was looking for him tonight.

The migraine music stopped.

Temple glanced at the stage.

Temporarily vacant.

In the glassed-in sound booth, she saw a man standing and talking to the kid who ran the sound board. Not the man she was looking for.

Who do you overlook at a strip club?

The man who is looking at you, but from behind a mask.

She was looking for the man in the mask.

The music started up again, so suddenly it nearly snapped her head back. The strips of tissue she had stuffed into her ears barely muted it.

She figured if the guy was a regular, and he probably was, he’d come back to Baby Doll’s. To allay suspicion if nothing else. Or just to relive his big moment.

Temple had read the true crime books, some of them anyway. She knew the profiles, yucky as they were.

She knew something else as she scanned the constantly moving crowd of customers: that head of dark, slightly wavy thick hair.

Darn! Rafi Nadir was here too. Of all the gin joints…

She spun back to the face the bar, hunkered down. When she’d told him this was her next thong gig, he was a suspect worth watching. Who’da thought that Lindy would later tip her off that a new hot suspect would be here tonight?

Unlike Nadir, this was somone too nondescript to describe, although she’d glimpsed him once, more than once when she reviewed all her forays into the clubs.

He was like a mailman, someone made invisible by his function.

Tonight she wanted to spot him, and then really see him.

And she didn’t need Raf Nadir playing Big Man to her Little Girl to get in the way.

An off-duty stripper (were they ever off duty?) who was cruising the house paused to twine her arms around his neck.

He must like that, being greeted like a Big Spender. The male ego could be a slippery slope to being taken, and then expected to take it back in spades.

Oh, the music! It was worse than forty alley cats caterwauling. Temple liked high-octane rock, the best stuff, but this was jacked up so that the bass became a punishment.

She glanced in annoyance at the gangly kid in the glass booth, his head bobbing on his scrawny neck (which she’d like to wring), staring sightlessly at the stage where a girl slithered out of her second skin (courtesy of Tess the Thong Girl, as they’d started calling her already). Temple was struck by how fast and easy it was to establish yourself in a subculture like this. Well, easy for her as long as she wasn’t masquerading as Suzy Stripper.

It would be that easy for the killer too.

And then she spotted him. Suspect Numero Uno.

That nervous little middle-aged man in the yellow polyester shirt and the polyester-linen sport coat. Hair receding about as much as his belly advanced. A bit officious as he lined the offstage girls up, telling them what to do and clearly liking it.

And that mask he carried everywhere, his ticket to entry into this scene, the reason nobody ever really saw him clearly, because every time they looked right at him, really looked at him, they were thinking of themselves and never saw him, couldn’t see him, not through the monocle of glass that made them small in his eyes and him eternally nonexistent in theirs.

Temple nodded to the bartender.

“Another S and S ?” he asked.

If she had either scotch or soda in her glass, she couldn’t testify to it in court. “Yeah. And…that guy.”

“Lady, there are sixty guys in here.”

“Him. The photographer. Do you know who he is? I mean, who is he shooting the photos for?”

“His bedroom wall.” The guy left to run some tapwater and sheltie pee over the ice cubes in Temple’s glass.

He plunked the glass beside the ten-dollar bill she’d glued to the water spots on the bar.

“Guys can just come in here and do that?”

“They make copies, give ’em to all the girls. What a racket.”

“Well…” Temple said, jiggling her thong ring.

“Yeah, but you’re selling a product. You don’t get off on it unless you’re a dyke. These losers, they just gotta be around the girls but they don’t want to pay for it. They gotta think they’re special.”

And a guy who thought he was special might ask for special treatment, and if he was refused…

“How long has he been doing this?”

“Since I been here?”

“And —?”

“Longer than you’ve been coming around. Why you want to know?”

“I’m new. Just curious.”

“Just curious don’t pay in this game. Forget it. He’s nobody.”

Nobody just might get tired of that condition.

Temple checked out Nadir through a concealing strand of blond Dynel wig.

The same stripper was still with him. His arm circled her waist. They were talking, smiling, flirting.

Revolting! She’d be glad to wash this scene right out of her hair, her fake hair. She glanced at the officious photographer again.

Well, it was an intriguing idea, but there wasn’t much she could dowith it except pass it along to Molina, who would sneer at her amateur theories.

Still, she had come up with an alternative to Max, at least, and they could check on this guy’s movements, his history. Who knows what would show up?

She kissed the ice cubes a less-than-fond farewell and slid off the stool. Her rear was numb.

“Sold out?” the bartender asked.

She nodded, feeling guilty about the two-hundred-something of stripper-earned money in the tiny wallet-purse she’d learned to carry in the clubs on a shoulder strap she wore across her chest like a bandolier.

They worked hard for the money. Temple hated to take any of it under false pretenses, for vulgar accessories to a lifestyle that still made her cringe.

She could hardly wait to walk out of here — if only Rafi Nadir wouldn’t notice her! No, he and that stripper were still hanging on each other.

She had to push with all her might to open the big front door.

The night air wasn’t really cooler, but it felt cleaner, rinsed of all that smoke that made her ears and nose and throat clog up like ice in a pipestem glass.

She walked across the lot to where she had hidden the Miata between two huge custom vans. That was the problem with a new high-profile car. It was a liability for sleazy undercover work.

She missed the snappy click of her high heels on the asphalt, a percussion that had always lifted her spirits since she’d been allowed her first pair at fourteen, and that made her feel taller. But sneakers were smarter to wear and her ears still rang from the relentless music inside, like an infection she couldn’t shake.

The parking lot had a wooden fence stretched between brick posts to present a more seemly view to the street. Facade was all in Las Vegas.

Temple realized she had mixed emotions: she hoped she’d found a suspect who would take the heat off Max. She was so sick of the strip club scene.