5 Tutti Frutti (3 page)

I was about to say something in protest
, but her glare had me reaching into my wallet for one of Louie’s twenties. Not bad, forty bucks and I hadn’t even sat down. I handed Biker the twenty then turned like Heidi had done so he could spank me. He did, the flake, and then raised his eyebrows two or three times before walking away. He glanced over his shoulder a few steps later and blew me a kiss.

“He really likes you. S
ee I told you this place was fun,” Heidi yelled in my ear.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said
, but she was already up the steps and settling into a table marked reserved.

About three minutes after sitting down I was ready to admit there weren’t any bets being made in the place and we
could leave. The noise was so loud I couldn’t think and the damn vibrations from the thumping base beat were so strong I was about to go into shell shock. I was afraid my PTSD might kick in.

“Anytime you’re ready we can go,” I shouted into Heidi’s ear.

She leaned back, smiled and shook her head no. A waitress made her way up the steps. At least I think she was a waitress. She was in some sort of skin-tight latex outfit looking like a crazed Cat Woman except the thing was unzipped to reveal about twelve inches of deep cleavage. I pegged her a good decade older than me and maybe a little over the weight limit for her latex. She wore the same belt with a night stick and handcuffs that the prison guard guy at the door had on. Plus, she had two bandoliers crisscrossed over her chest. Instead of cartridges, the bandoliers held test tubes with some sort of thick, golden liquid. She made a fluttery motion toward Heidi with her hands and then turned for the requisite spank.

Heidi gave her two spanks
then shrugged her shoulders and gave a little “aren’t we cute” sort of smirk.

The waitress
pulled one of the test tubes out and handed it to Heidi then held one out to me. I shook my head no and sort of waved her off. Heidi handed her empty back then grabbed the one I refused and quickly downed it. Then she pointed at me and mouthed the word “virgin”. The waitress nodded and leered down at me.

I w
aved her down to my level and yelled into her ear, “What kind of beer do you have?”

I think she listed off a couple
, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I just nodded. She turned to Heidi who grabbed another test tube out of her bandolier and downed the thing. The waitress waggled a disapproving index finger at her and giggled. Heidi placed some sort of drink order that apparently required a lot of gesturing with her hands.

“Are you
ready to go?” I asked a few minutes later.

Heidi shook her head and said something
, not that it made any difference, I couldn’t hear a damn thing. Ten minutes later our drinks arrived; my warm, flat beer and Heidi’s bird bath martini. I liked the Tutti Frutti Club even less, if that were possible.

Th
e noise stopped for a moment as a sort of elevated stage off to our left was illuminated. There was a fat, almost-naked, bald guy handcuffed to what looked like a medical examination table. I think it was our waitress who was waving what looked like a riding crop as she strutted around him. Occasionally, she would stop and slap him on the rear with the thing causing the crowd to cheer as he jumped. Heidi leaped to her feet and gave a shrill two fingered whistle, which prompted more whistling and shouts from the crowd. I looked at my watch.

“You
’re no fun,” she yelled into my ear a few minutes later, “Just order me another drinky, party pooper. I’m almost finished with this one.”

Since our waitress was
taking a riding crop to the fat, bald guy up on stage, it took awhile to get someone’s attention. Eventually, another waitress struggled up the three steps to our table. As she turned so Heidi could spank her she faced me and smiled, I think. Her teeth extended fang-like over her blood-red lower lip and she half snarled then glared at me. Heidi ordered her drink complete with all the gestures. I declined another warm beer and sent her on her way.

Once
Heidi finished her second giant drink, she leaned over toward me, glassy eyed, and slurred, “You’re such a Dev, drag, you’ve got to loosen up.”

Actually
, that sounded like a pretty good idea.

“Okay, let’s go back to your place and get really nasty,” I said.

She stared at me through her glazed eyes, “You mean it? I get to do whatever I want?”

“Yeah
, I’d really like that, come on let’s go.” I said and a moment later I carefully guided Heidi down the steps.

On the way out I saw two guys at the ba
r who seemed more out of place than me. They looked to be twins; older, maybe mid-fifties, and both balding. One wore a neon red Hawaiian print shirt and the other a white golf shirt. No wonder I had to wait twenty minutes for a waitress, these two clowns were chatting up four of them. The guy with the Hawaiian print shirt had his arms wrapped around a slutty blonde and a brunette.

His
golf shirt pal kept bobbing and weaving his head all the while dancing around the group. As we got closer, I could see the guy weaving and bobbing seemed to blink a lot, or maybe it was just some sort of slight facial twitch from the dreadful base beat thumping in the place. I couldn’t be sure.

“Hey look
, two guys who are more out of place than me,” I said.

“That’s Mister
D’Angelo and his brother, Mister D’Angelo, they’re twins.” Heidi slurred and then staggered back and forth a step or two to maintain her balance before she turned to face them.

“The D’Angelo brothers, you mean the ones who own this joint?”

Heidi sort of nodded clumsily. I grabbed her arm to help her stay on her feet.

“Yeah,
Tommy and Tommy. I think, they own the place. Real, real nice guys,” she said then staggered another half step or two before I reeled her back in.

“You know them?
” I asked.

“Who doesn’t?”
She gave an overly dramatic wave in their general direction almost falling over in the process.

The blonde with the guy’s
arm wrapped around her laughed then gave me a wink before running her tongue suggestively over her lips. She held her stare longer than necessary with a look that advertised availability. Even from this distance she appeared pretty intoxicated.

Not that I could take her up on the suggestion.
I held on to Heidi and guided her out the back door. I helped her into the car then buckled her seat belt while she sat there giggling.

“Dev, Dev
, you’re tickling me. Stop, I’m going to wet my pants. Oh my God, ha-ha-ha stop it, stop it.”

P
ast experience told me she wasn’t kidding.

I suddenly had a lot of questions, but
I’d been here before, knew where this was going and it wasn’t going to go my way. Once I was buckled in and started the car, she looked over in my general direction.

“I’m just gonna close my eyes for a teeny, tiny little minute.”

Three minutes later her wig had shifted sideways to cover half her face and she had begun to snore. Somewhere between the Tutti Frutti and my car her fake nose ring had fallen off.

***

She must have gotten up in the middle of the night because I found her asleep on the bathroom floor half curled around the base of the toilet. She’d pulled the fuzzy white bathroom rug over her in an attempt to stay warm.

“Come on
, back to bed, party animal,” I said and gently shook her shoulder.

“Oh please, just let me die in peace.”

“I will, but you’re going to have to die in bed. It’s only proper, come on, up, up.”

“Don’t touch me,” she growled
once I helped her to her feet and pointed her in the right direction.

“Pretty tough talk fr
om the girl with clip-on piercings,” I said.

“Oh God, I know, I know.”

“Look, you crawl into bed for an hour. I’m going to shower, get dressed, get us some breakfast, and then I have some questions for you.”

“
Oh God, please don’t make a federal case out of whatever I did or didn’t do last night.” She didn’t bother to wait for my response, but just crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Chapter Six

“So, how’d things go
last night?” Louie asked. He had his feet up on the picnic table with an open file face down on his chest. I had the distinct impression I woke him when I entered our tiny office.

“At the Tutti Frutti?”

“No, that church meeting you were planning to attend. Yes the Tutti Frutti.”

“First of all
, I lost what’s left of my hearing, Jesus, that place is loud. I’m apparently out of the demographic that really likes pounding base music.”

“Yeah,
tell me about it.” He sat upright in his chair then stretched and rolled his shoulders.

I can’t believe anyone is
gambling there, at least the area I was in. The whole damn building has to vibrate with that horseshit music. I don’t think you could find a room in the place where you’d even be able to think straight. I did see your clients the D’Angelos, though.”

“
Tommy and Gino?”

“
Is there more than one set of D’Angelo twins? Yeah, your clients. They looked more out of place than I did. Did you know that joint was some sort of bondage Dom place? They had a woman spanking a handcuffed, bald, fat guy. She was using a riding crop and everyone was cheering.”

“The fat guy?”

“No, the woman with the riding crop, she was our waitress for a while, until she got into spanking this guy. They were up on this…”

“Oh
so you caught that act, it’s pretty erotic. Were they up on that illuminated stage?”

I looked at Louie for a long moment before I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know what I was supposed to learn th
ere that I couldn’t find out online. Like I said, I saw the D’Angelos and they didn’t seem to fit in any better than I did. Well, except that they had the undivided attention of three or four waitresses. I had to wait forever just to order another overpriced drink.”

“Sounds like them, Tommy likes the ladies and
Gino probably just watches and then can’t remember what he saw.”

“
Louie, if they’re running illegal games I can’t believe it’s happening in that joint. The place might be filled with some pretty strange dudes, but no one who looked like any high-priced game players I’ve ever seen.”

“What about the
D’Angelos?’

“What about them? I don’t know,
like I said they looked more out of place than me. Your guy Tommy had his arms around a couple of women who didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. Two other girls flirting around, and the other guy, Gino, who was sort of bobbing and weaving in his own little world. Doesn’t sound like any gambling set up that I know of.”

“Yeah alon
g with the stroke and the short-term memory loss. Gino lost a leg when he was in the service.”

“Hunh?”

“Yeah, he’s got a fake leg, a prosthesis. Course, between that and who knows what sort of brain damage there is from football, boxing, and a stroke he’s a bit of a mess.”

“That
why he sort of twitches or whatever the hell he was doing?”

“
Gino bobs and weaves back and forth, never really stays still, sort of moves his fists like he’s shadow boxing or something.”

“
Did the leg loss cause his stroke?” I asked.

“No, I think the stroke was probably a result of his boxing. Given the years and the time
, it would be a pretty safe bet he was probably on steroids, not to mention a lot of hard hits to the head. He might be able to tell you his fighting weight, but he wouldn’t know who was president or probably what his address is.”

“Sounds like my date
last night.”

“A night of baby
sitting?”

“Sort of.
Let’s just say she deliberately overserved herself.”

“Maybe you should go back and check
the place out on your own. It might be different on the weekend.”

“I think once was probab
ly more than enough. Besides, isn’t Thursday supposed to be the new Friday or something like that?”

Chapter Seven

I
placed a few
calls to Heidi throughout the course of the day. I ended up on her answering machine each and every time. Vintage Heidi, I knew she wasn’t out running errands or working at her office. More likely than not she was still in bed and under the covers. She did this once or twice a year; the drinks just hit her wrong, or the sheer volume of consumption became a recipe for disaster. Then she invariably paid a heavy price over the following forty-eight hours.

Against my better judgment I let Louie hire me
for the night at a discount rate plus expenses. I returned to the scene of the crime; the Tutti Frutti Club. This time I went in the front door with the “normal” folks.