The Corpse Wore Pasties (11 page)

I opened my eyes. Or did I? I still couldn’t see anything.Huh. Weird. I blinked a few times, as a test. Yep, my eyes were as wide open as a pervert’s fly just before he gets himself kicked out of a burlesque show. But my eyelashes were hitting something rough each time I blinked. My guess was that the something rough was the thing preventing me from seeing.

I reached for it and—and nothing. I couldn’t reach for it. My arm wouldn’t move. Something was holding it in place. I tried the other arm. Nope. Tried to move my legs. No luck there, either.

This was somewhat disconcerting.

I wasn’t dead, at least. I knew that for a fact, because I could feel a draft. Although I can’t say that I was at all optimistic about where I was feeling it.

“Oh, Jonny, Jonny, Jonny,” said a voice. I knew that voice. That was Jillian’s voice. I heard a door close. I heard a lock lock. I heard high heels click-clack across the hardwood floor, getting louder as they came in my direction.

Something brushed against my cheek.

I felt fingernails on the back of my head.

Suddenly, the world exploded into light.

Jillian dangled the blindfold in front of me as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, “A client dropped in just before you arrived. I had to finish him off before we could...chat.”

“No worries,” I said. “I’ve just been—”

“If you say ‘hanging around,’ Jonny, I swear to god I will whip you.”

It was an idle threat, and I knew it. She wasn’t going to whip me. She didn’t even have a whip. That thing in her hand was a riding crop.

“—here,” I finished. I figured it was a good idea to play it safe, at least until Jillian’s intentions were clearer. It’s not every day you wake up shackled to a friend’s wall.

“Mmm-hm. So. Jonny. Jonny, Jonny, Jonny.” Jillian caressed my cheek with the riding crop, then ran it down my body to—well, let’s just say the areas further down my body. She continued: “You came here to accuse me of murder, didn’t you?”

I chuckled. I shook my head. “Don’t be silly. No. No, that isn’t it at all. What I came here to do was ask you some questions. Questions about Victoria’s death, yes, but to accuse you of murder? I’m in no position to do any such a thing.” Certainly not at the moment. “Just asking questions, is all.”

“So ask ’em.”

I glanced down.

“Like this?”

Jillian shrugged and lowered herself onto the divan. She began untying those boots I had noticed earlier, when I was passing out on the floor. It wasn’t going to be quick—each boot started just below her knee and went all the way down, and had the laces to prove it.

“I should mention, Jillian,” I said, “that in the grand scheme of things, this looks a little suspicious.”

“What does?”

“Me. Wall. Shackles. Lack of pants, shirt, shoes, socks, or indeed any other clothing-related accoutrements.”

“Does it?” Jillian seemed unconcerned. She continued her work with the bootlaces. At least she had put down the riding crop.

“Well, I mean, look at it,” I said. “I arrive here, you offer me a cup of tea—”

“Tea!” she exclaimed. “Thank you for reminding me. I didn’t get to have any earlier.” She stood up and left. How she managed to walk so quickly in heels that high with bootlaces half-untied was beyond me.

With Jillian out of the room again, I took a moment to consider my situation. It wasn’t exactly what I would describe as promising. I was trussed up better than a freshman pledge during a frat initiation. The chains showed no signs of wanting to come out of the wall. The leather restraints around my wrists and ankles could be unbuckled if I happened to have a hand free. But I didn’t. I clenched my muscles and pulled...no leeway whatsoever. Jillian knew her business.

But let’s see...

If I could just reach that buckle with one finger, just a single finger, I might be able to...

Nope.

I bent my wrist until it hurt and didn’t get within a fingernail of the thing.

Maybe I could slide a hand out of the restraint. The skin was certainly sweaty enough. If I just squeezed my fingers together and pulled with all my strength...

By the time Jillian returned a few minutes later, I had managed to wedge my hand so firmly into the shackle that I was unable to move it in either direction, in or out.

She sat on the divan, poured herself some tea, took a sip, and then resumed the process of unlacing her boot.

“So, you were saying?” she said.

What had I been saying? Oh, right. “I was saying, don’t you think this looks suspicious? I take a few sips of tea, next thing I know, I wake up naked and strapped to your wall.”

“You came to a pro domme and wound up in chains? I don’t think anyone would consider that suspicious,” she said. She called out over her shoulder, to the closed door behind her, “For crying out loud, are you ready yet?”

“Me?” I said.

“Not you, silly. You’re ready for whatever I tell you you’re ready for.”

From the other side of the door came a negativesounding grunt.

Jillian sighed. “Looks like we have a couple minutes to kill, Jonny. What did you want to talk about?”

“You mean, other than who’s on the other side of that door?”

“Yeah, that would be telling.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “Let’s talk about Victoria, then.”

“What do you want to know?”

“To start, what happened between the two of you,” I said. “The rumor going around was that you were pissed because she opened up a burlesque school and you thought yours should be the only one.”

“Yeah, guess who spread
that
rumor,” Jillian said, after downing some more tea. “That’s not why I was pissed. You want to open a burlesque school? Go for it. Be my guest. I don’t own the idea. But I do own the materials I created for
my
school. And when she opened hers, in Philly? Guess what she handed out to her students.”

“Your materials?” I said.

“She covered up my name and wrote in her own. That was the extent of her original work. I had a lawyer friend (who shall remain nameless and about whom we shall never speak again) draft a cease-and-desist, and she ceased. And desisted. And then,” Jillian said, “started saying I was an arrogant bitch who claimed the exclusive right to teach burlesque on the East Coast. Now, I may be an arrogant bitch—but I don’t claim any such thing. Hell, other people teach burlesque in New York City, you don’t see me sending lawyers after them.”

“So she made you pretty mad?” I said.

She smiled a sly smile. “Mad enough to kill her— that’s where you’re headed, right?”

“Not at all,” I said, “just—”

“A month or so ago, I found out that she’d started using my handouts again. This time I just let it go. First off, I had revised them since, and who cares if someone is using your old crap? And second of all, by now everyone in the business knows what she is. It wasn’t worth my time even to send her another C&D—you think it would’ve been worth it to kill her? I mean—”

She was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Ah, finally,” Jillian said. “Yes, he’s all set,” she continued. Then, as the door opened, “What took you so long?”

Filthy stood in the doorway in an outfit that I can’t describe, because there wasn’t enough of it to warrant description. Suffice to say, north of a pair of highheeled boots almost identical to the ones Jillian was now holding in her hands, Filthy wore nothing that wasn’t black, made of vinyl, and skin-tight. Her couture didn’t provide much in the way of coverage, but let’s be fair: it did beat what I was wearing.

“Are you kidding?” Filthy said. “Took me half an hour just to lace one boot.”

“Well, he’s all yours,” Jillian said. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She sauntered out of the room, then turned around and looked back. “For the record, there’s
nothing
I wouldn’t do.” She closed the door behind her. Filthy locked it.

I arranged my face into as judgmental a look as a man hanging naked on a wall can manage.

“Darling,” I said. “I’m sure that whatever you have planned will be fun, but I should remind you that I am currently under suspicion of murder. Now is hardly the right time for this sort of thing.”

“Actually, it’s precisely the time. I’m not here for kicks—though I have to admit, seeing you like this does make me tingle in ways I enjoy immensely. But I’m here to prove a point.”

“That you look hot in skin-tight vinyl? I could have told you that.”

“That you, my dearest, are putting yourself at rather a lot of risk. What if Jillian were the murderer?”

“What if she
was
. Grammar, darling.”

“What if she
were—
look it up, subjunctive case— and I weren’t here? You wouldn’t be chained to a wall, you’d be floating in the East River.”

“Fine. Point taken. I’ll be more careful in the future. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Oh, honey,” Filthy said, picking up the riding crop. “We haven’t even
started
the lesson.”

The sun was setting over Manhattan as I emerged from the subway station onto the streets of downtown Brooklyn. I still had a hike ahead of me, so I tried LuLu LaRue’s number for the third time, but still without luck.

Eventually, Filthy had let me go. She’d had to. She couldn’t keep me chained to Jillian’s wall forever—Jillian had other clients, for one thing, and needed the dungeon back. Filthy had tried her best to convince me to abandon my inquiries, and made her point quite...enthusiastically. But I just wasn’t ready to give it up, not when the cops seemed only interested in closing the case as quickly as possible using the most convictable suspect—me. If I didn’t figure out who killed Victoria, who would?

As a compromise, I promised Filthy I’d be more careful, and wouldn’t put myself at risk needlessly; in return, Filthy promised that if I got myself killed, her eulogy would consist of four words: “I told you so.” But she unlocked the shackles. When you’ve been married as long as we have, you have a pretty good sense of when you’re not going to win an argument, even if you’re the one with the riding crop in your hand.

Given a choice, I prefer not to worry Filthy. I didn’t have a choice. And anyway, there was only one suspect left. If the first four interviews hadn’t gotten me killed, how bad could the fifth one be?

Brioche à Tête lived and worked in a run-down industrial loft building with a bunch of other dancers, the kind of building not zoned for residential use that landlords rent out illicitly to artists for a few years to perk up a sagging neighborhood. As soon as the artists have raised the cachet of the area enough to make it fashionable (“the next Soho,” the realtor listings will say), the landlords anonymously tip off the cops about the illegal tenants and the artists are evicted to make way for people who are willing to pay a premium to appear fashionable and live around the artistic vibe. The artistic vibe, of course, is busy carting all of its crap to the next run-down industrial loft in the next sagging neighborhood, which will be on a slightly less accessible subway line.

I’d never been to Brioche’s building before, but I knew the neighborhood pretty well. I’d helped more than a few friends move out of it. I managed to slip in the front door as someone was coming out. I looked enough like the other residents of the building that she let me in without question. I was playing it safe, as promised—by not ringing up from the lobby, I was giving Brioche as little advance warning as possible, and therefore as little opportunity to plan my murder, if she was inclined in that direction.

To get to the higher floors, the building offered a freight elevator, nothing more than a platform with a metal gate on either side, hand-operated because it hadn’t been upgraded since it the day it was installed. I pushed the lever down and the thing jerked into motion, creaking and groaning as it ascended.

I closed my eyes for a moment on the way up. It had been an exhausting couple of days, and I was operating on even less sleep than usual. I opened them again to discover that I had passed Brioche’s floor. I pulled the lever in the other direction. The elevator clattered to a stop and started down with a lurch that left my stomach on the level above. Even though I was paying attention this time, it took me a few tries to get the elevator aligned with Brioche’s landing. When I did, I pulled the gate out of the way and knocked on Brioche’s door.

She opened it naked. Completely naked.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. Were you in the middle of rehearsing or something?”

“No,” she said. “Come in. I was just about to make tea. Would you like some?”

“Thanks,” I said. “No. Have you been speaking to my wife, by any chance?”

“Why do you ask?” she said, cocking her head to one side. She gestured toward a large open area to her left. “Please, sit.”

I looked around the room. Except for a small braided rug in the exact center of the hardwood floor, there wasn’t a stick of furniture. So I sat on the rug. Brioche sat opposite me.

“I’m not in a rush,” I said. “If you want to put on a robe or something.”

“You’ve seen me in this state dozens of times,Jonny Porkpie. I hardly think it necessary to cover myself in my own house in deference to a societal conception of modesty to which neither I nor you subscribe. Had I been uncomfortable in your presence, I would have clothed myself before opening the door. Besides, it’s too damn hot in here. Feel free to join me if you like.”

I thanked her but demurred. She cocked her head at me and looked me in the eyes. I looked back, but the mottled blue told me nothing—as usual—of what she might be thinking.

“I can only assume,” Brioche said, “that you’ve dropped in to discuss the events of this past Wednesday. No doubt you have already been informed by someone that I am, as you are, among the people who bore a measure of personal, one might even say spiritual, animosity towards Victoria, an animosity that was expiated to some degree, though not entirely expunged, by her death.”

“Yes,” I said.

“To which of the major schools of twentieth century psychology do you subscribe, Jonny Porkpie? Structuralism? Behaviorism? Cognitive? Humanistic? Or are you of the school that conceives of the human psyche in a more philosophical manner?”