Legato shrugged. “Just started, but yeah, free drinks, that’s about it.”
Another sneer from Phillipson. “Yeah, I bet. Horndog like you? Probably have to hose you down after a shift.”
He faked a chuckle, easing toward the door. “Look, let’s catch up some time. But right now I need to –“
“Hold on, Stallion. I’m not here on a social call. I’m sniffing around about the girl. What can you tell me?”
“The girl?”
Phillipson gestured a slit across the neck. “You know. The girl. Did you know her?”
“I told you. I just started here.”
“But you know the supporting cast, right? What can you tell me about this Raven girl, or Tammy, or the bartender?”
“Sorry, got nothing on them.”
“Huh. You get a new job with a bunch of strangers. No info on anybody.”
“There’s Andy. You know about as much as me about him from the station.”
“And that’s it.”
Legato hid a smirk. He knew the game because he’d played it himself in interrogation. Build a rapport with the guy, become his buddy. Then you’re just two guys chatting and he’s telling you stuff he’d forgotten he was concealing. But Legato had given him nothing so Phillpson had jumped to the second step: push a little harder. Then you’re his buddy lost in the weeds, needing help. And who wouldn’t help a buddy? “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was being treated like a suspect.”
They shared another laugh, this one shorter. “Not yet.” He shrugged, then gave his buddy’s shoulder a warm tap. “But if nobody around here has anything to say, we may talk again.”
“No more bullshit, Phillpson. This conversation is about my departure from the force, isn’t it?”
“Could be. I’m no fan of crooked cops. But if you have nothing to hide, this conversation isn’t about anything.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Legato said, face like granite, unblinking eyes locked in a stare down. But he blinked hard when a scream intruded. Not a real one – Janet Leigh in Psycho, coming from the detective’s pocket. A ringtone only Phillipson would find clever.
“That’s me. Hold on a second.” With a smug laugh, he answered his cellphone. “Detective Phillipson.”
The stare down ended as the phone conversation heated up. Something about needing more time because nobody’s talking.
Legato wasn’t really listening. A notepad on the table drew his focus away. Mostly names followed by question marks. Ginger? Big Trick? Andy? A few words were underlined by angry slashes. Back room, Prostitution, Family problems.
Phillpson hung up and the stare down continued. “You got anything for me?”
“I’m not under rest. Is that correct?”
“Come on, Legato! Seriously? It’s me! And you’re playing the silence game?”
“I’m not playing any game. I’m asking a question: am I under arrest?”
Phillipson looked away, sighed. “You are not under arrest and you are free to leave. Happy?”
He turned to the front door and stepped out. “Very.”
Phillipson followed. “You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be, Legato! All I need is a name or two and I can move on with the investigation. But if you give me nothing, it adds another name to the list.”
Legato was at the car by now, jiggling the lock open. But he stopped. “The list?”
“Come on. You know. Possible suspects. Can you help me out here? Give me a few names?” Phillipson bent to the window as the ex-detective eased into the driver’s seat. “As of now, Legato, you are not a suspect. But with your history, I can’t promise you that won’t change.”
“My history? One fuck-up is a history?”
“That’s all it takes. Look at it from our perspective. We’ve got a guy who put his career in jeopardy by stealing from a drug dealer’s stash. Who knows? Maybe he’d try to mug a stripper – one from a wealthy family, knock her down, get pissed when she has no money. Get violent.”
This was another game Legato had played. Threaten somebody with bogus, trumped-up charges, then sit back and watch the nervous man sing like Pavoratti. The bluff usually worked. But if Phillipson was bullshitting, his performance was Oscar-worthy. His eyes didn’t show a hint of weakness.
With nothing but an empty stare to offer, Legato started his car and took off. If helping this smug prick with a few names was the way to snake out of this mess, he was ready to do it. Before getting home, he wrote down a few words. Back room Prostitution Family problems.
***
Family problems seemed like a good place to start. So he did some homework, dug around the internet when he should have been sleeping and learned what he could about the Strickland clan. Mostly what he learned was how much the family valued their privacy. Not much info on daddy. A website where he’d boasted of the millions he’d earned in the stock market or the way he yanked himself up from modest New England beginnings. But evidence of any kind of family or kids stayed hidden.
Mother Corrine had a Facebook page littered with her lovely kids’ pictures, but after the teenage years, her youngest daughter’s image was gone. There were blanks that needed filling in. And that meant Legato would have to take a trip out late at night.
***
The lights at Bootsie’s hadn’t yet gone dim. But Legato waited, checking his watch until the music died and the last drunken customers were ushered to the parking lot. No use raising any eyebrows stopping into the club before he’d officially started working. Better to stay in the car waiting. Never mind the wind’s savage rattle against that passenger side window. The one he kept meaning to get fixed but never had the money. He spotted Big Trick’s amble toward his Range Rover and it was time to spring from his car and have an “accidental” meeting.
“Hey!” Legato shouted. “Big Trick, right?”
“That’s the name, doctor.” They shared a fist bump. “You digging the new gig?”
“It’s cool.” He studied Big Trick’s face, looking for a way into his head. “So… um, I’m wondering if you’d be okay with me asking you a few questions.”
Big Trick pulled back a little. Bad sign.
Legato moved cautiously. “No big thing, I just want to know a few things about the club. You know how it is, new job and everything. You want to get as much information as you can.”
“Oh, cool. I thought you was about to get into it about old girl. Cops was on my ass about her all day long. Told them cats, “I don’t know a damn thing.” But I’m thinking, even if I did, they ain’t hearing it from me.”
“Yeah, cops can be a pain. All those questions.” He paused, figuring he’d need another way in.
Big Trick braced against a giant gust by hugging himself, giving Legato a glimpse of the bling on his wrist. Twenty-four karat and five times bigger than it needed to be. Plus it matched the earrings, which matched the necklace. “Look, I hate ask for a favor so soon after we’ve just met…”
“What you need, doctor? I can lend a brother a hand.”
“Well… I found out we’d have to wait three weeks before the first check so I…”
By then Big Trick was already pulling a grapefruit-sized knot of cash from his pocket. “Let’s see here, we got fifty, fifty-five, sixty…”
“Look, I don’t want to put you out or anything –“
“Put me out?” he yelled, face twisted like he’d just taken a slapped. “Doctor, I can swallow a loss of seventy-five like nothing. This here is baby change. Here!” He tucked a wad in Legato’s hand.
He whistled in admiration like he’d never seen so much cash. “Man, I gotta’ learn how to mix drinks. Seems like that’s where the big money’s at.” But this was bullshit, a move toward flattering the man’s ego. They both knew Big Trick didn’t get that knot from bartending. And Legato hoped finding his real source of income – a source he’d hinted at when they first met at the bar – might bring him closer to knowing about Cassandra’s de
ath.
Ego sufficiently flattered, Big Trick took a glance around, leaned into Legato’s ear. “Come on, get in my Rover. Too cold to talk out here.”
Once they took a seat, Big Trick drove off, giving Legato a tour of the bodies on display along East Lake street. Mostly the ladies looked frail and unhappy. “You serious about this shit?” Big Trick asked. “Or you just curious? ‘Cause if you just curious, I can tell you what I told them cops – not a damn thing.”
“Dude, I’m scraping together nickels to pay my rent, okay? And a bouncer’s salary probably won’t fix what’s fucked up with my car – and it sure won’t get me a new one.”
“A’ight, a’ight. You want to know how to use that bouncer connection, right? How to get paid from that back room action?”
“Wait, so you get the girls from the club? From Bootsie’s?”
“Hell yeah! Why not? They right there, begging to be pimped. They already getting offers to step into the back room. All you gotta’ do is take command of the situation.”
“Are all the girls at the club down with that?”
Big Trick paused, weighed his words before speaking. “Some play the game, some don’t. The game ain’t for everybody. Some want a price too hefty. Some already got pimps. And some just won’t let theyselves be pimped by any-damn-body.”
“What about the ones who have plenty of money? I mean, that girl that got murdered, for example. What was her name again… Katrina?”
“Cassandra,” Big Trick corrected him. But he said nothing more.
“I mean, she had lots of money in her family, right? That’s what I heard on the news anyway.”
“You hear a lot of things on the news, doctor. But if this just me and you talking, I never could figure out how to rope that girl into the game.” He stared into the distance, ignoring the red light turning green. He seemed oddly saddened by his failure. “Never could crack that code.”
“So she didn’t do anything… in the back room?”
“Didn’t say that. I said I couldn’t get her on my team. Truth be told, I think she was on somebody’s team.”
“You mean, another pimp?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say her fiancé was running her show. Dude named Tolliver. From what I could tell he had her under some firm control. Had that hand up her ass like a puppetmaster.”
Big Trick stopped the car in front of an old apartment building that seemed ready to collapse. “You wanna’ step in, check the game out in person?” He sent a gaze into Legato’s eyes that nearly stung. It felt like a dare. “You so curious about the game, right?”
But a quick scan revealed the place as a bad idea at two in the morning. Too many bodies darting about. Not enough escape routes. “Maybe some other time.”
“Cool. You want a ride back to your car?”
“I’m good.”
“You want to know any more about the game, you know where to find a brother!”
After a fist bump, Legato strutted eight blocks back to his car, his path dotted by vagrants, gangbangers, overflowed dumpsters that spilled tattered clothes and rancid milk to the sidewalk. It wasn’t the war zone he grew up in — pre-gentrified Brooklyn – but it was dangerous enough for him to employ what he called his ‘Brooklyn strut.” walking fast without looking like he was walking fast.
Chapter Three
Legato’s first full shift at Bootsie’s was slow, a typical Sunday. Not much to do for the first few hours but talk to co-workers. He met the redhead with the stacked hair. Up close she looked at least a decade his senior, greeting him with the dainty handshake of a Victorian lady – odd for a woman clad only in glass heels and a silk robe.
“The new bouncer, huh? I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. I’m Ginger.”
“Jake Legato, nice to meet you.”
“You sound funny, Jake Legato. Like you’re from somewhere else.” She hadn’t let his hand go yet.
“Guilty as charged. I’m from Brooklyn. And I think our paths did cross for a second. I saw you talking to that cop.”
She yanked her hand back. “Yeah, that asshole. He talk to you too, honey?”
“Sure did. Wanted to know if I knew the girl, if I’d known anybody here, everything. Guy was up my ass for almost an hour.”
“Only an hour? Lucky you. He talked to me on the night of the murder, then had more questions the next day.”
“You have anything for him? Any info that might help?”
“I wish. Cassandra didn’t really hang with the girls. Her fiancé wasn’t crazy about that. The two of them were at each other like rattlesnakes. Always fighting. What about you? You have any info for officer Friendly?”
“Nothing. Not sure why he thought I’d have anything. I just started here, never even met the girl.”
“Well… I don’t know, it’s a thing sometimes around here with bouncers and bartenders. Things get weird. Guys who work here can sometimes come with an agenda.”
“What do you mean?”
“They want to pimp the girls, they want to stalk them, they want to marry them. So they get a job here. Easy access. And so shit gets messy. They used to have a ton a rules about employees dating dancers, but they gave up because too many people just did what they wanted to do anyway.”
Legato studied her face, wanted to leap into a million questions without scaring her away. “What about you? How’d you wind up here?”
“Plan B, baby. Medical school didn’t work out.”
He waited for the punch line, but only found a sense of loss in her eyes. “Seriously?”
“Hard to picture, isn’t it? But yeah, that was the plan. Until the bills added up and I missed too many classes because I was dancing that day or too tired from dancing the day before.” She paused, stared at a ketchup stain on the wall. “But that’s everybody’s story in this place, isn’t it? Plan B. Nobody winds up at Bootsie’s on purpose.”
Legato offered a smile. But she wanted more: “What’s your story?”
“I guess I’m just another plan B. Like you. Like Cassandra.”
“Got here a little too late for Cassandra, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, now we’re playing coy. You know that’s why you’re working here. You can tell the cop any damn thing you want. But I know better. I know you’re here for the game.”
“You think I’m a pimp?”
“That’s plan B, isn’t it? Come in as a bouncer, scope the girls. I’ve seen that game, honey. I’ve lived it. You’ve got an awful lot of questions for a career bouncer.”
Without an answer, he tried to backpedal from the awkwardness. “Look, I’m just –“
A loud crash leaked out of Cicely’s office. Eager to get away, Legato raced inside to find the room broken by sadness. Cicely stood there, leaning against her desk and staring the floor, now littered with an odd assortment of stuff: a coffee mug, stockings and garters, a teddy bear, jewelry, a Tupperware container, winter gloves, a pair of headphones.
Legato asked, “You okay, Cicely?”
She answered without looking up. “Kind of. I don’t know.” Her hair was a mess, her face raw from tears.
He bent to help clean up the floor, placing the items on the desk.
“That’s Cassandra’s stuff,” Cicely said. “I wanted to bring it to her parent’s house. But it kind of fell. I’m really sorry.”
He stood and cradled her face. She finally lifted her gaze from the floor and said, “I have to bring it to them. They probably want their daughter’s stuff, but I can see why it might be hard for them to come back here and get it and...” Her breath was racing away from her.
“It’s okay, Cicely. Look, I can bring it to them if you let me off a little early. It’s really dead out there.”
“Thank you.” Pointing to the bottom drawer of her desk, she said, “There’s one in there. A box.”
He scooped out the box and gathered everything. “I’m going to need their address.”
??
?Top drawer, black address book. It’s under S for Strickland.”
He grabbed the address book, taking a discrete glance at other addresses that might prove helpful. All the dancers were listed, the other employees, Andy’s new address in San Diego, his old address labeled good until April 3rd. He gave the pages a quick scan for more, But Cicely startled him. “She used to be a dancer, you know. A real dancer – not stripper, dancer, but the kind who wore those funny shoes. She studied dancing, went to college and everything.”
He gathered everything, then studied his boss’s unsteady eyes. “You going to be okay?”
She gave him a feeble nod, then took a seat at her desk again, the lost look on her face slowly fading as Legato headed to his car with the box of items.
Chapter Four
The inner city’s hard concrete and steel surrendered to the leafy comfort of the Western suburbs as he took off for Golden Valley. The ride lasted less than an hour, enough time to give himself a game plan. There was more to making the trip than generosity. It gave him a chance to talk to Cassandra’s parents. But Talking to Cassandra’s parents was going to be hardest part. It always was. And talking to them without a badge would take more than a box full of assorted items.
***
Nobody answered the first two rings of the Strickland doorbell. He tried again and finally got her mother. It had to be her mother because he recognized the look of grieving mother, that empty and confused scowl, eyes reaching out, asking why? “Yes?”
“Mrs. Strickland? Cassandra’s mother?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I work at Bootsie’s, the club your daughter –“
“I’m aware of Bootsie’s. What can I help you with?”
He lifted the box, showed the contents, grappling for the right words. “Can I come in?” He waited for her to step aside, putting the game plan together in his head. How he’d get from yes, come right in to answering a series of deeply personal questions.
But he never got there. The woman shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We don’t want the stuff.” She stood there, arms crossed, lips tight, holding back sobs. “You can keep it. Or give it to that boy, that Tolliver boy. But we don’t want any of it.”