The Butterfly Clues (32 page)

I coast in, press against the wall until my eyes adjust. Purple light, underwater-velvety dark. The music
bump
-
bump
s everywhere, a steady pulse. Luckily, the club is packed with people tonight. I rest my bag and coat in the corner, balled into each other.

Flash: bleached-out faces of men staring into the stage lights. They’ll die, too, someday. All of them. Their ties will hang limp on a rack in their closets until someone cleans them out and drives them over to the Salvation Army and leaves them in a plastic bag in front of the door.

I need to find the dressing room—to talk to the girls. Now. But when I peer through the darkness, I see that the door guarding the entrance to the break room is blocked: a giant bouncer stands guard, one hand tapping the heart-attack club music beat against his thigh. I adjust my wig, spin on my heels, and walk quickly in the other direction.
It could be him.
The one who threatened me, who wants me killed. Even with my disguise, I probably look suspicious here in the shadows.

I need to think. The VIP area is ahead, and, with no other options, I move toward it, slipping my finger between the cleft in the curtains, peering through. Seeing no one, I insert myself into a dark corner, press myself behind a row of tables lined with glittering ashtrays. I suck in cologne-thick air, hold it in my lungs. I’m not sure what to do next.

I hear voices coming from several of the booths. I can make out infrequent snippets of words and moans—“Ooooohhh”; “Best I ever …”; “More if you …” Nothing more. Nothing solid.

A minute or two later, the small curly-haired girl I’ve seen several times before glides out from a booth, bills fanning out from the garter strapped to her thigh. I bow, praying she won’t randomly turn around before I finish. Three times.
Three times safe.

“Hey!” I whisper, just as I finish bowing and she’s nearly out of earshot. I step toward her from the dark of my corner. She whips around.

“Yeah?” She shifts her weight to the other foot, bending down to double a rubber band around the money in her garter.

“I’m new,” I say. “Brand-new.”

She stands up, flipping her hair back. “Oh, hey. I’m Glory.” She seems friendly, flush with new money.

“I’m Juliet,” I say, needing to bow, again, three times, trying to make it brief, casual, hoping it won’t register.

But it does. “Are you okay?” she asks, squinting at me.

My fingers fly to the backs of my legs; I dig them nervously into my tights. “I’m fine. Just a little nervous, I guess. I’m—I’m waiting for a customer.”

“Oh,” she says. “For a private room? Or a lap dance?”

“Um. Both.” I’m not even sure whether my response makes sense. I rush on, “Have you seen … Anchor anywhere?” I swallow hard, swivel a heel into the floor.

“Anchor?” She pauses, thinking. I hold my breath. “I don’t know who that is.”

My heart sinks.

“But I’ve only worked here for a couple of months,” she continues with a shrug. “I don’t know everyone yet.”

A curtain sways beside me. I angle my head downward so the hair of the wig shadows most of my face. A fat, balding man steps out, smiling at Glory as he passes.

“See you next week, John! Have fun in Jamaica!” She winks as he weaves through the maze of tables and slips from the curtain into the hallway that leads to the rest of the club. The she turns back to face me, hand on bony hip. “Have you asked any of the other girls? They’d know better.”

“No. Not yet. I—he said he would be here, and I—I don’t want to miss him.” I pause, spacing out my words. “It’s my first time dancing. And I don’t know the other girls yet.” I stare at her bare stomach, the small outward pebble of her belly button, her muscular legs capped in purple fringe, glittery-thong girded. I look back at her face. She has small lips and is wearing too much eye shadow.

Glory rips at a hangnail with her teeth, spits it out. “Well, I mean, I’m about to go back out on the floor—I can ask around and let you know, okay?”

I nod, again, again, again. “That would be
amazing
.”

She smiles, big. “I’ll be back after my stage set, okay? And you shouldn’t be nervous around the girls—they’re great. Some of them just need a little warming up, ya know?”

I watch her circle back toward the main floor and retreat back into my dark corner to listen, to watch, and to wait.

Anchor.
Every single person in this club must have a nickname. Like they know at some point they’ll need to become untraceable— like they know at some point, they won’t have a choice.
Anchor.
It pumps through my skull to the techno blast coming through the speakers.
Come on come on come on.

Time expands and contracts around me, birthing images in the dark, out of nowhere: Mom, hugging me before I get on the bus, first day of sixth grade, South Bend, Indiana.
Just go to the bathroom when you need to do those things you do, Lo. Just raise your hand and tell the teacher you
need
to use the bathroom.
Lightning bugs. Oren and me, trapping them in Mason jars, bodies glowing, yellow light. Sapphire’s room. Flynt swept in on a wave. Drum circle. The pounding, the beat. A string of laughter. His arms, stretching to me across the bloodstained carpet. Fingers. Shoulders, skin. His skin. Touching his skin; salt; earth; Sawtooth Oak. Quaking Aspen. Cold, Oren’s boots crunching through the blizzard the snow came up to our chests we pretended to swim in it; the graveyard. Walking in a line, heads bowed. Mom.
I’m staying here. I’m not going anywhere.
Dad and me at the swimming pool in Kankakee. Floaties.
I’m right here, Lo. I’m not going to let go, sweetie. I’m right here.

The past swallows me up until the curtain shifts again, and Glory walks back through, a short, thin man with a gargantuan nose in tow. She directs him inside a curtained-off booth as I step out from the dark to hear the verdict.

“No luck,” she says, shaking her head. “I asked around and no one’s heard of anyone named Anchor. Maybe he bailed. Just get out there and get another one, girl!” she says, winking at me, slipping fully into her booth and out of sight.

Heart sinking, I begin to bow again, all the way to the ground, touching my toes. Could I have been wrong about how Sapphire knew him? No. The texts made it clear he was a customer of hers. Nine, nine, six. Bow, toe-touch, rise. Repeat. Over and over again—until it hits me:
Call him. Call him again.
He’s got to be somewhere. He’s got to pick up eventually.

I slip quietly out of the VIP area. Thankfully, my bag and coat are still in the corner where I left them. I hold my breath as I reach the dark hallway behind the booths. Bow, touch, rise; bow, touch, rise; bow, touch, rise. I try to speed through, but my body takes its time. Demands it, has always demanded it.

Click-click.
Someone is coming down the hallway toward me. I race back to my corner in the VIP area, crouch low to the ground, cradling the phone next to my ear.

It’s ringing. It’s ringing. It’s ringing.

Someone’s cell phone is ringing in the club, too—a tinny tone playing a split second later, in tandem with the ring-back tone in my ear. I end the call, startled. The ring sounding in the club also ends abruptly.

Coincidence
—
it’s got to be—there are any number of people here with any number of cell phones who could be receiving phone calls any minute of any day.

Just to be sure, I dial again. A moment of pause as the signal speeds across some wire somewhere.

But it happens again. The same tinny ring, from
inside
the club.

That wavy, wobbly underwater feeling comes rushing back: dread gnaws at every part of me, tiding up into my throat like a fist—it pushes me through the curtain, out of the VIP section,

moves me forward.

Riiiiiing.

Feet away: tall man, gray T-shirt, tan skin, muscles—the back of him—fishing in his pocket for his ringing cell phone. My chest pulses, pulses, pulses as he lifts the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

And the same word, and the same voice, at the same time comes through the phone I’m still holding against my ear. He turns, pushing away a stripper, who has been rubbing his shoulders.

And then I see his face.

His perfect, chiseled, handsome face.

The perfect, chiseled, handsome face of Gordon Jones.

CHAPTER 30

Hands shaking, madly, head spinning, I press the little red button that ends the phone call. For one second, everything goes black. And then it gets clear, X-ray clear, and I realize I have to get out of here. Tell someone. I turn, pulling off my heels as I race back through the curtained VIP area, cutting quickly around the booths through the exit at the other end that leads back into the hallway, into near-darkness, into shadow.
He’s here. He’s here.
Gordon Jones: Fantasy Man. Gentleman. Loaded. Murderer.

A little farther—
keep going—
a doorway, and, through the doorway, down a different low-ceilinged hallway: the dressing room. Salvation.
Riiiiiing. Riiiiiing.
I freeze.

It’s my cell phone.
Anchor.
The name cuts through the screen.

I answer and hang up. Right away. I didn’t think to block the calls. Oh God. He knows.

Riiiiiing. Riiiiiing.
Again. It’s him. I pick up. Hang up. Turn the phone off, organs punching around inside my body, clenching, coiling. The back of the club spins around me, the long, dark hallway seems suddenly flipped around, wavy. And I feel paralyzed— my brain won’t work—I can’t remember which end I just came from, which end might lead me directly back to him. I suddenly feel as though I’ve been plunged into the icy water of a creek, just like when I was a kid—frigid water floods around me now. I’m drowning. I will drown. Oren isn’t here to drag me out this time. Gordon is. Waiting to push me under.

Shaking, I start trying all of the doors—most of them locked— a whimper working its way out of my throat.

And then I see him.

He’s coming from the end of the hall—the same end I came from, the end connected to the VIP area, following my exact trajectory, pushing toward me—cell phone clutched in hand—face flushed and twisted. I clap mine into my thigh, hiding it.
He heard. He knows.

I whip left and right, searching for an escape route—everything hot, rushing, electric. I leap toward the opening, mid-hall, that leads into the center, the pumping heart of the club. The stage. The balding men in business suits.

But before my body can foist itself forward—where there will be people, who will see, who will know something is not right—the
urge
shoots through me, the stupid all-powerful brain-gripping
force
.

And I have to bow, toe-touch, rise; bow, toe-touch, rise; bow, toe-touch, rise, and just as I finish—about to rise and run and escape—arms grip me around the waist, squeeze the breath out of me. A hand lifts to cover my face, nose, mouth, eyes.

“That’s a cute trick—your little game of phone tag,” he whispers into my ear. His voice is sandy; tiny, salty bits of glass. “You think this is some kind of fucking joke? All right, I’ll play. Tag. You’re it.”

My head feels like it’s floating straight off my shoulders, dizzy; my heart keeps stopping and starting, practicing death.

My esophagus gasps, reaching for more air, he’s so strong, so strong—

Darkness. Clouds.
Easter baskets.
Mom always took weeks to make our Easter baskets. Ribbon-tied and chocolate-filled and socks, warm socks, I always liked socks and Peeps and she’d sit on my bed Easter morning with it all wicker and cellophane-shiny between her hands and she’d beam, so proud, and …

“Didn’t think I’d find you, little girl? Didn’t think I’d recognize you? Didn’t think I’d recognize that necklace? I
bought
it for her. Don’t you know I started watching every move you made, ever since I saw you wearing it?” The sharpness of his voice jolts me into consciousness. “I gave her everything, everything she could have ever wanted. And she gave me
nothing
. Shit. How do you think it felt?” His fingers tighten around my face, pull at the skin, rough. “Huh? How do you think that feels? She was mine… .” He rips the wig off my head and pulls the silver chain, the dangling horse, from my neck with a fierce tug.

I hear his hand hit the exit bar of a door—I try to kick away— need to
tap tap tap
, need to
banana. Oh God, please please please.
I kick him in the leg, trying to pull an arm free, wailing into his hand, biting the skin of his palm.

“Damnit,” he says, releasing his hand briefly before grabbing the back of my neck. “Don’t try that shit with me, you dumb bitch.” Pain shoots through, blood snakes onto my lip, into my mouth. I gag, choke, as the door opens, air whirring around my bare shoulders, neck, legs. Don’t know if the wet down my face is tears or blood. Salt spills through my lips, more blood. It rips through my head:
tap tap tap banana tap tap tap banana tap tap tap banana.

I want to know if mom will feel it as I die, if Oren will be waiting for me. If he’ll be holding a sheet of paper between his hands with my name on it, like at the airport. Or if I’ll be all alone, everything shrouded in silence.

A black van pulls into the back alley behind the club. The door opens. Gordon lifts me up by the waist, throws me inside. My head slams against the other door—everything spins, and goes to fuzzy black.