Strip Tease (9 page)

“I’m not protecting him,” Jerry Killian said. “I’m protecting you.”

“In case there’s trouble?”

Killian got up and said, “Come with me.”

Erin followed him through the apartment. The purse was tucked tightly under her left arm, so she could feel the gun through the fabric. Killian opened the door to a small guest bedroom, which he had converted to a private hall of fame. The walls were decorated with publicity pictures of local nude dancers. Interestingly, the photographs were all standard head-and-shoulder shots; one could have shown them to a kindergarten without fear of corruption. Erin’s publicity photo was framed in wood and centered prominently in the pantheon. It was illuminated by its own brass lamp.

Scanning his collection, Killian said, “Nothing is more beautiful than a woman’s smile.”

“Oh really,” said Erin. “That’s why you come to the Eager Beaver—for our smiles?”

“It’s the portal to true love and serenity. Without a smile, what’s the rest of it? Just boobs and a patch of hair.”

“Jerry?”

“Yes.”

“You’re giving me the creeps.”

“Well, Erin, I’m lost. I admit it.”

“You know all these girls?”

“I knew them. Befriended them. And whenever I could, I helped them.” He pointed to a platinum blonde with a sharp nose and spiky greased eyelashes. “Allison had a substance problem. I got her into a very fine program, and today she’s clean.”

Erin asked if she was still dancing.

“No, she’s not.” Killian stepped close to the photograph, contemplating each detail as if it were a Monet. “A week after she got out of treatment, she married a tree surgeon and moved to Tallahassee. I never even got a postcard.” He turned to Erin and brightened. “But that’s all right! I ask for nothing.”

“Except a smile.”

“When it’s from the heart.”

Erin turned off the light and directed Killian back to the living room. She sat beside him on a deacon’s bench, and spoke to him as if he were a small boy.

“This is not a game,” she said.

“I heard they call me Mr. Peepers.”

“We all like you, Jerry. It’s an affectionate nickname.”

“I do have a frail and bookish appearance.”

“Scholarly is the way I’d describe it.”

“Don’t be fooled, Erin. I can play hardball.”

She took both his hands—a standard move, to keep them from wandering. “Exactly what’ve you got on the congressman?”

Killian said he couldn’t tell her. He pulled one hand free and made a zipping motion across his lips.

“It must be good,” Erin coaxed, “to make him lean on a judge.”

“I can’t discuss it,” Killian repeated. “It’s man’s work.”

Erin sighed and relaxed her grip. “Here’s my problem, Jerry. Do I believe your story? Do I get my hopes up for nothing? The whole thing with Angie and Darrell has been a nightmare.”

“I understand,” he said. “I read through the files at the courthouse. That’s how I got the judge’s name.”

“If I knew more, maybe I could help set this up.”

“It’s set up just fine,” said Killian.

He wouldn’t budge. Usually a soft hand-holding would do the trick, but not this time. Erin rose and said, “All right, Jerry. How long will it take?”

“I’m expecting a phone call this afternoon.”

“Congressmen work on Sundays?”

“They do when their careers are at stake.”

Erin stood at the door, searching for a humane way to say what had to be said. “If this works out, if I get Angela back… well, I can’t give you anything, Jerry. You should know that.”

“By anything, you mean—”

“You know what I mean,” Erin said. “I’ll be eternally grateful for your kindness. That’s the most I can promise.”

“Do I look crushed?”

“Slightly.”

“Well, who wouldn’t be?” He chuckled softly. “I bet you’ll quit the club, too.”

“Absolutely. Once I get Angie back, I’m gone.”

“Then there’s one thing you can do for me.” He went to the stereo and picked through a stack of CDs. “Just a second,” he called to Erin. “Please!”

Soon the apartment filled with heavy rock—”She’s Got Legs,” by ZZ Top. Erin gave Killian a look of mock disapproval.

“Let me guess,” she said.

“Do you mind?”

“Just one dance,” Erin said. Urbana would’ve wrung her neck. The first time she went on stage at the club, Erin vomited before and after the performance. Urbana Sprawl took her aside: “It’s like wing-walking, OK? You’re fine, long as you don’t look down.” Monique Jr. hugged her and whispered: “It’s a slumber party, hon. That’s how come we’re in our nighties.” And Monique Sr. said: “Quit crying, for God’s sake. Bobby Knight is at table nine!”

It had taken Erin a week to find a method that worked. Whenever she froze and found herself asking why—why am I doing this!—she thought of Angie. Once on stage, the trick was to dream herself away with the music. That’s why she was so picky about the selections: the songs had to mean something. If things felt right, the awful anxiety would melt away and Erin would become wondrously detached from the surroundings. She’d forget she was jumping around in her birthday suit before a roomful of drunks. In Erin’s fantasy, the men in the audience were cheering the high kicks and fluid turns, and not the shape of her ass.

Smiling was a struggle at first, because Erin wasn’t particularly ecstatic about the work. Morever, she’d noticed that many of the customers didn’t smile, either. Instead they watched with studious and impassive expressions, like judges at a cattle auction. Again, Urbana had offered valuable counsel: “A nice smile beats forty-inch jugs any day!”

So Erin made herself smile, and the money got better. The men came forward and folded ten-dollar bills into her garters or the elastic of her G-string. Many customers were nervous about standing so close, and plainly terrified of touching a foreign thigh. Erin was constantly reminded of the ridiculous power of sex; routine female nakedness reduced some men to stammering, clammy-fingered fools. For the bolder clientele, Shad’s spooky presence discouraged groping and crude solicitation.

Erin had conquered her shyness in about a month. Unlike some of the dancers, she would never be totally comfortable on stage. There was a small thrill to the tease, but no hot rush from the cheers and whistles of strangers. By contrast, the two Moniques loved the boisterous attention, because it made them feel like glamorous stars. The wilder the audience, the wilder their performance. Erin didn’t play to the crowd. The music was her master, and also her escape. When Van Morrison sang, Erin was dancing in the moonlight.

But that was in the club, not in a customer’s apartment.

Still, she wasn’t afraid. Mr. Peepers obviously was helpless in her presence; he would have inserted his tongue in a light socket if she’d told him to. Erin further neutralized the man by asking about the sepia portrait of a curly-haired woman, gazing up at them from the credenza. It was, as Erin had surmised, Jerry’s dear departed mother. Erin felt safer under the late Mrs. Killian’s watchful eye.

Killian cleared the oval table and helped Erin climb up. She handed him her sandals and her purse. By then Killian had already forgotten about the gun, the congressman, the blackmail, what day it was…

The wood was slick and cool under Erin’s feet. She danced for four minutes and never even removed her sweater. Killian was dazzled. “Splendid,” he said over and over, to himself.

As the song ended, he tucked something into the back pocket of Erin’s jeans. It wasn’t a tip.

At the door she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. Killian jumped at the moment of contact. He said, “If I have good news, you’ll see me outside the club.”

“Be careful,” said Erin, although she wasn’t seriously concerned. The worst that could happen was that the congressman would tell Killian to blow off.

He waved fondly from the doorstep as Erin walked to her car. She waved back and gave him one of her best smiles. She had decided that he was basically a good person.

When Erin got home, she took the note from her pocket and unfolded it on the kitchen counter. It said:

Thank you for saving my soul.

That night, Erin worked a double shift at the Eager Beaver in the hopes that Jerry Killian would show up. He didn’t. The following morning, she phoned his apartment and got no answer. When she tried the TV station, the news director told her that Mr. Killian had gone on vacation. He was expected back in two weeks.

At the club, Erin switched back to her familiar dancing routines—Clapton, Creedence Clearwater, the Al tm an Brothers. Soon she got lost in the blues guitar, and the world seemed like a better place, even though it wasn’t.

She never saw Jerry Killian again.

Then they headed for home, which was a valley in the Bitterroot Mountains. Johnny Skyler drove because brother Faron’s license had been suspended four times and revoked twice permanently. That was no small achievement in the great and free state of Montana, where driving and drinking are regarded as inalienable rights.

Johnny Skyler followed the dirt road toward the Clark Fork River and the one-lane steel bridge that would carry them to their respective wives and children, waiting in identical doublewide trailers that had been purchased for twenty percent off at a spring trade show in Spokane. The money that the Skyler brothers saved on the mobile homes had been put to good use: a large satellite dish was wired to the earth on a flat clearing between the two doublewides. A parabolic eyesore among the regal vectors of Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines, the TV dish was still the finest investment that Johnny and Faron had ever made: Wrestlemania! Japanese game shows! One night, flipping channels, they’d stumbled onto a guy talking with real Playboy bunnies! The interviewer was so tan that the Skylers speculated he might be an Indian, except he talked too fast and laughed too loud. Around the man’s neck hung a gold medallion as thick as a goose turd. Johnny and Faron couldn’t get over it.

No doubt about it: satellite TV preserved the Skyler family units. In the long bleak stretch of winter, it was all that kept the men from going mad with boredom. In the summer, it entertained the wives and kids so that Faron and Johnny could stay out extra late: crack open another Rolling Rock, kick back, watch the sun drop down over the mountain-tops.

On this night, though, a storm was rolling in hard from Idaho. There would be no sunset, just an ominous and sudden darkening. Bruised clouds stacked up over the Bitterroots, and a cool wind chased down the river. It rattled the tin price sign that hung over the gas pump outside the Lozeau Lounge. Inside, Johnny Skyler reared back and heaved one more dart at the taxidermied elk, yanked his brother off the bar stool and said they’d better get on home, while they could still see the way.

The dirt road fed straight downhill to the old steel span across the river. Fat raindrops began to slap against the Bronco, dimpling the chalky brown dust on the tinted windshield. Mindful of the strong wind, Johnny Skyler took it slowly. First gear. High beams. Both hands on the wheel. Approaching the bridge, he was careful to line up the truck’s wheels on the twin wooden planks, already slickened by the drizzle.

Halfway across, Faron Skyler said, “Hold up.”

His brother braked the truck to a stop, idling.

“Out there,” Faron said.

“On the river?”

“Yeah. I seen a raft.”

“No way,” said Johnny Skyler. He lowered the window. It was too dark to see anything on the Clark Fork.

His brother said, “Wait for the lightning.”

Up the valley it came, an ultraviolet burst that illuminated the river for a fraction of a second. In that blink of a moment, Johnny Skyler spotted the raft, twenty yards downstream from the bridge.

“There—against the gravel bar,” Faron said.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“Did you see the guy?”

“No.” Johnny dimmed the headlights and squinted into the thickening night. The rain was coming down pretty good, soaking the sleeve of his left arm. Johnny spit hard, and the wind hurled it back in his face.

Another rip of lightning, high and far away. A purple strobe brightened the valley, then it was dark again. But the scene was stamped in Johnny’s eyes: a red raft, oars askew, gliding sideways along a narrow gravel spit that briefly split the river in two. The man in the raft had his back to the bridge. He wore an olive vest and an updowner-style cap, either of which marked him definitively as an out-of-towner. His arms were straight at his sides. A fishing rod lay across his lap.

“Crazy bastard,” said Faron Skyler.

“Think he needs help?”

“Hell, yes, he needs help. He needs his damn head examined. Crazy bastard trout fiend.”

Johnny wasn’t sure what to do next, wasn’t sure what could be done. As the sizzling electrified maw of the storm boiled down on them, a steel bridge seemed not such a smart place to be. Thunder had begun to shake the struts.

“He better get off the water,” Johnny Skyler remarked, staring at the place where the rafter had last appeared in a blast of light. Johnny briefly considered the logistics of a rescue, then pushed the notion out of his head. Here the banks of the Clark Fork were rocky and steep, and of course the Skyler brothers were full of beer. Disaster was the word that came to Johnny’s mind.

He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted against the wind: “Hey out there!”

Faron said, “Forget it, man. He can’t hear you.”

Johnny tried again: “Hey you!”

Another flash, another glimpse of the raft, slipping farther downstream. The fisherman appeared not to have heard the shouts. The rod still lay across the man’s lap; the oar handles remained unattended—one pointing upriver and the other pointing the opposite way.

“There’s one crazy bastard,” Faron reiterated.

“Somethin’ ain’t right.”

Lightning exploded nearby, and the brothers covered their heads. They heard the crash of a lodgepole pine, breaking in three pieces.

“Time to go,” Faron said. “Would you agree?”

Johnny Skyler had a bad feeling in his gut. He gazed down the Clark Fork, waiting for more lightning, for one more look at the lunatic trout fiend.

“He’ll be all right, Johnny. The river slicks out for the next mile. A blind dog could make it to shore.”

“I suppose.” Johnny had never seen a raft on this leg of the Clark Fork so late in the evening. The next takeout was twelve miles downriver. And who the hell goes fishing at night in a thunderstorm?

“Would you please fucking step on it?” Faron Skyler was saying. “I don’t feel like gettin’ barbecued up here on this damn bridge. Besides, we’re missing the ballgame.”

Ever since Denver had gotten a major-league franchise, Faron had become a baseball fanatic. His brother could take it or leave it. Football was something else. With the dish they could even pull in the Argonauts.

“It’s nine-thirty,” Johnny Skyler noted. “Game’s almost over.”

“Well, shit.”

“Faron, I can’t see him no more.”

“Maybe he turned the big bend.”

“Not without rowing he didn’t. Not unless he’s got an Evinrude on that raft.”

Faron said, “All he’s got to do is hang on, he’ll be okay. Now let’s go.”

“Just a minute.” The rain came down in sheets, thrumming on the roof of the Bronco. Johnny finally rolled up the window but he didn’t take his eyes off the water.

Sky crackled and the river became a pink mirror. This time the brothers had no difficulty spotting the small red raft, turning in the slow current as it floated downstream.

“Oh my Lord,” Johnny Skyler said.

Faron grabbed the dashboard with both hands. “Crazy goddamn bastard,” he said.

The raft was empty. The man was gone.

The Skylers hopped from the truck and ran for the river. The rain stopped two hours later. By then the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office had arrived with a motorboat and a bona fide scuba diver. The U.S. Forestry Service had promised to send four rangers and a helicopter, providing the weather didn’t act up again. A few residents turned out with rafts, rowboats and waterproof flashlights. The small riverside campground at Forest Grove served as headquarters for the search, which by local standards was heroic and exhaustive.

By dawn, the raft had been found, wedged sideways under a piling of the 1-90 bridge, due west of Lozeau. The oars had been lost, and the raft contained no clues to the identity of the missing angler. An empty can of Colt.45 and a crumpled Snickers wrapper were the only evidence of a human passenger.

The search for the body lasted eighteen hours, and proved fruitless. A reporter from the Missoulian arrived at Forest Grove and interviewed the Skyler brothers, who gave a richly embroidered account of what they’d seen on the river during the thunderstorm. Then they posed for pictures next to the Forestry Service helicopter. For the next several days the brothers faithfully watched C-Span on the satellite dish, but saw no mention of the Clark Fork rescue effort or their role in it. Fame embraced the Skylers in more modest ways: it was years before they had to pay for their own beers at the Lozeau Lounge.

The children of Al Garcia’s second wife called him Al, and that was fine. “Dad” was out of the question. The kids already had a dad, who was in prison because of Al Garcia.

That was how Garcia had met his second wife—while arresting her husband for a drug murder. There were no hard feelings. Six months after the trial, she filed for divorce and married Al.

From hash dealer to homicide detective, Garcia had told her, you’re moving up in the world. Not by much, Donna had said. Quick on the draw, that was Donna. The children were all right, too: a boy and a girl, ages eight and nine, or nine and ten—Garcia had trouble remembering. Overall he was very fond of the kids, and didn’t feel the least bit guilty about the circumstances.

The first time the boy asked when his real dad was getting out of jail, Al Garcia took the small hand and said: “Never, Andy.” When the boy asked why, Garcia said: “Because your daddy shot a man between the eyes.” Andy appreciated the seriousness of the situation. His sister, Lynne, who was either a year older or a year younger, said maybe her dad had a good reason for shooting the other guy. A hundred thousand reasons, Al Garcia had said, but none good enough. Just then Donna had come storming in from the kitchen and ordered them all to hush up, or else.

When it came time for their first family vacation, Donna chose western Montana because she and the kids had never seen mountains. It sounded fine to Al Garcia. He made a few calls and found out that Montana, for all its Wild West lore, was a safe and tranquil place; there were traffic intersections in Dade County with higher murder rates.

Donna arranged to rent a small log house on the Clark Fork River, about sixty miles outside of Missoula. Garcia was no outdoorsman, but a cabin on the water seemed like a splendid idea. He promised Andy and Lynne he would help them catch a big rainbow trout and they could fry it up for supper. He promised Donna he wouldn’t talk about his job and wouldn’t call Miami, not even once, to check on his open cases.

In fourteen years as a homicide detective, Sgt. Al Garcia had personally investigated 1,092 murders. It was his curse to remember every one; the oddest details, too. “Rescue 911” playing on the television while they chalked the body. The counterfeit Rolex worn by the victim. The smell of burned biscuits in the kitchen. A photograph in the hall, the dead man whooping it up at Disney World. Al Garcia hated the unfailing thoroughness of his memory; it made him an excellent detective but a deeply troubled person.

Montana turned out to be better than he had expected; wide-open and friendly, with a few exceptions. A desk clerk at the motel in Missoula shot him a hard look when she saw the name on the credit card. Being a Garcia from Miami wasn’t easy these days. Some people automatically assumed you had six kilos in the trunk and a loaded Uzi under the front seat.

The next day, when they got to the log house on the river, Al Garcia nearly forgot where he’d come from and what he did for a living. Standing on the wooden deck, he thought the river valley was the most peaceful place he’d ever seen. He drank the piney air, closed his eyes and easily lost himself in the silence of the surrounding woods. The first day, Andy spotted two deer. The second night, Lynne found a small bleached skull from a dead skunk; she wanted to take it home to Florida, but Donna said no, give it a decent burial in the garden.

On the third day, Andy came running up the bank so fast that Garcia thought a bear was chasing him. The boy was shouting: “Al, you better come! You better come fast!”

Garcia told him to slow down, take a breather. Andy grabbed his arm and tugged hard. “Come on. Down to the river.”

“What is it, son?”

“A floater!” Andy exclaimed.

Garcia felt a sour knotting in his gut. Living with a homicide cop had given Donna’s youngsters a gruesome vocabulary. They knew all about trunk jobs, John Does, Juan Does, gunshots, accidentals and naturals.

And floaters, of course.

Garcia followed the boy down the hill to the river’s edge. The detective waded into the water, skating his tennis shoes across the gravel bottom. The body floated face-up, tangled in a shallow brushpile. The face was violet and bloated, the eyes springing out in a cartoonish way.

“Is he dead, Al?” Andy stood on the bank; he folded his small arms across his chest, looking very serious. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Extremely,” Garcia said.

“I told you!”

The dead man wore heavy rubber trousers and an olive vest with many small pockets. Garcia unzipped the one over the left breast, and removed a wallet. The wallet held three one-hundred dollar bills, a half dozen traveler’s checks and a laminated driver’s license with familiar colors.