The Corpse Wore Pasties (16 page)

“To come into the apartment. They always say on the teevee that you have to have a warrant.”

“We don’t need a warrant,” said Officer Brooklyn.

“We’re just here to ask some questions, ma’am,” said Officer Bronx.

“I don’t know...the place is a mess, so, you know, I’m kind of embarrassed,” Cherries said.

“Right.” Officer Bronx wasn’t buying it. She sounded suspicious, and why the hell shouldn’t she? Cherries wasn’t exactly selling it.

“I mean, if you just want to ask some questions, I’m more than happy to have you—” Cherries began, but was interrupted by a
riiiiipppp.

The sound of cloth pulling apart. More specifically, the cloth of Cherries’ shirt, which she had somehow managed to catch on the doorknob. From my hiding place, I could see only her naked back as the shirt dropped to the floor. But the expressions on the faces of the detectives as they were treated to a full-frontal view more than made up for what I was missing on the other side.

“Whoops,” Cherries said.

Officer Bronx blinked. Officer Brooklyn licked his lips involuntarily.

“I guess I’d better go put something on,” Cherries said, and slammed the door shut.

She ran to the couch, grabbed my hat, and stuffed it through the armhole of the Hindenburg, hissing the word
“Idiot!”
as she did. I uncrushed the porkpie and put it back on my head. Then she ran to her bedroom, and emerged pulling on a tank top that only mostly covered what she had just revealed to the cops. Cherries knew her business. Good burlesque performers are experts in sexual misdirection. If your interrogators are so busy looking at the outline of your nipples through your shirt, they’re probably not going to spend quite as much time looking over the rest of the room as they might otherwise have done.

She threw open her door so energetically that one of her breasts nearly popped out of the armhole of the tank top. “Gee gosh, I’m
so
sorry, officers. That must have been really embarrassing for you,” she said, tucking herself back in. “Come on in. I was just about to make breakfast—Bloody Mary, anyone?”

Officer Bronx walked into the apartment, giving Cherries a hard look as she did so. Maybe Cherries wasn’t on my own suspect list anymore, but I got the feeling she had just moved up a place or two on Officer Bronx’s. Officer Brooklyn was also examining Cherries closely, but I wouldn’t describe the look on his face as suspicion. At any rate, neither of the cops were looking at the blimp, and that was the whole point.

“Nothing for you guys? Okay, then. Now what were we talking about?” Cherries said, and absentmindedly flicked her hair out of her face as she plopped down on the couch. By sitting there, she forced the officers to stand—if they wanted to face her as they asked their questions—with their backs to the Hindenburg. Clever Cherries. “Oh, right, sorry,” she continued, “I’m
such
a blonde sometimes. You were asking about Jonny, right? He was here Thursday asking me a lot of questions, almost like
he
was the one investigating that terrible, awful thing that happened the other night. I don’t know what he’s so concerned about. If the
fine
officers of the NYPD are looking into it, I’m
sure
you’ll solve the case.”

Officer Bronx said, “What time did you arrive at the venue on Wednesday night?”

“Me? Why?”

“It might be important.”

“I dunno...I had a drink or two before the show started. But I didn’t look at a clock or anything. The show never starts on time, so why bother?”

“Who was there when you arrived?”

“Oh, my, let’s see, well, the bartender, of course, and DJ Casey, I think, though I didn’t really see him until later, and Jonny, if that’s who you’re asking about, and then a couple other people, let’s see, who were they? Well...” Cherries rambled on, using as many words as she could to convey as little information as possible, until Officer Bronx cut her off.

“I understand that there’s an alcove where performers stash their bags before going backstage. Is that correct?”

“Oh, yes. That comedy show runs on and on, I mean, I’m not sure why, no one likes it, but they’re
always
getting out late and we have to wait in the bar, not that that’s a bad thing, that’s where the drinks are, still it would be nice to—”

I was glad the police were also asking questions about the bags and the alcove. It meant they had probably discovered that Victoria’s suitcase had arrived at the venue before any of the other performers. If it came to a court case, that might introduce what some would call “reasonable doubt.” Of course, the fact that I was currently hiding from the cops in a blimp costume might make that doubt seem slightly less reasonable, but at this point, I was willing to take whatever I could get.

“How many other bags were present in the alcove when you put yours there?”

“Oh, I didn’t see. Jonny stashed my bag for me that night,” Cherries replied.

“Hmph,” Officer Bronx said. “And when did you first notice that...”

This went on for a while. Bronx sounded like she was trying to get Cherries to confess to a closer proximity to the alcove than she was currently admitting. Cherries, in response, rambled on so much that by the end it wasn’t clear whether or not she in fact knew what a bag was.

Eventually the questions petered out. Bronx wrapped the interview up by handing Cherries a business card and saying, “If you see or hear from Mr. Porkpie, you should call us immediately.”

“Oh, of
course
, Officer. Of
course
I will.”

Officer Bronx twitched her head at Brooklyn, who followed her out into the hallway. He’d been unusually quiet during this interview, and I could count the reasons why on one chest.

Cherries walked after them, and watched from the doorway until they started down the stairs.

When they were out of earshot, she shut the door and turned to the blimp.

“Oh, the humanity!” she said.

“Oh, shut up,” I replied.

“This is a very good disguise,” Filthy said, as she sat down opposite me. I glanced around the café, a halfassed bistro in Greenwich Village. Not a lot of style to the place and not a lot of room, either—but it did have a few tables tucked into nooks and crannies, where I could hole up out of view of the street and do the right thing by a cup of coffee or eight.

“An excellent disguise,” Filthy continued, “for a man on the run. Very subtle. The call goes out over the police radio: ‘Be on the lookout for a suspect named Jonny Porkpie.’ ‘But how will we recognize him?’ says our hapless officer. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the radio replies, ‘maybe look for the guy
wearing a porkpie hat.’
Brilliant.
”

I took off the hat. Honestly, I wear it so often, I had forgotten it was on my head.

“Here. You can change the rest, too.” She tossed a bag across the table, knocking over my coffee cup. Luckily, it was empty, but the clatter caught the attention of the waiter, who started walking in our direction. I signaled for a refill, and he rolled his eyes. He was probably justified in doing so. I’d been sitting there for hours.

I opened the bag and glanced inside, where Filthy had crammed a half-dozen changes of socks and underwear, a pair of pants, and a couple of shirts.

“You think I’ll be gone this long?” I said.

“I was a fugitive,”
Filthy said,
“from Justice. Yeah, Justice. That dame had it in for me, I could tell, and you don’t want to get on the bad side of a blindfolded chick with a sword. Don’t get me wrong. Even though she was on my ass like a hot potato, I had it bad for that babe—how can you not like a gal who strolls around town with one boob flapping in the breeze? But—”

I interrupted her. “Really? Now? Now seems like a good time for that?”

“Why not? Hey, maybe I should do a Lady Justice number. Nah, it’s probably been done. Maybe I’ll just walk around with one boob hanging out.”

“Seriously, though, Filthy—”

“So now, honey, tell me. Why are the nice police stalking you? And me? I had just a bitch of a time shaking the guy who was tailing me. I had to pull a reverse Hammett with a half-Houdini and a Cincinnati twist.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I
am
making that up. Actually, I just jumped on the F train as the doors were closing. Who would have thought it would be so easy?” Filthy waited while the waiter refilled my cup. When he left she said, “So tell me, darling, what exactly have you been up to since... oh, was it only yesterday?”

I outlined, in as little detail as possible, my activities since she had last seen me, limping out of Jillian’s dungeon. As I told the story, Filthy’s expression changed from amused to annoyed. By the time I got into the Hindenburg, she was clutching her head in her hands.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you out of those shackles,” she interjected as I was describing Cherries’ cop-distracting tactics. She must genuinely have been worried. Under normal circumstances, she would never interrupt a story that involved one of her friends taking off her shirt.

“And you actually bought a bottle of the exact same poison that killed Victoria?”

I shrugged. Filthy shook her head.

“So let me guess what happened next,” she said. “After Cherries flashed the cops and they left, you snuck out of Cherries’ building—”

“I didn’t
sneak
out of Cherries’ building,” I said. “I
escaped
from her building despite a veritable phalanx of police surveillance. It was pretty impressive, actually. See, what I did was—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Filthy said, looking in my eyes. “You’re actually starting to have
fun
with this, aren’t you?”

It set me back for a moment.

Fun? No. I wasn’t having fun. I was bruised, battered, exhausted, and anxious.

But I had to admit it was kind of exhilarating. Over the years, I’d played a lot of different roles for our burlesque shows—a chef, a priest, a cowboy, a superhero, a starship captain, a teetotaler, a self-help guru, and the president of the United States, to name a few. Hell, I’d even played a detective. But that was on stage, and this was for real. On the run from the cops, the threat of life in prison or worse hanging over my every move, wondering which of the women I was interrogating might suddenly decide to do me in...it was more than enough to get the adrenaline pumping and the heart beating faster.

As was the siren I suddenly heard screaming toward the café. I dropped to the floor and scrambled under the table.

“Again,” Filthy said, as the noise passed us and faded into the distance. “Subtle.”

“Dropped my, you know, fork.” I said, reclaiming my chair.

“Right,” she said, mentioning neither that I had risen from the floor with no fork in hand, nor that there had been no fork on the table to begin with. “So after leaving Cherries, you executed a brilliant and no doubt immensely exciting escape from the cops. Skip that part. What did you do next?”

“Called you, came here, and sat on my ass until you arrived.”

“Smartest thing you’ve done in days. And now maybe you’ll lay low until this blows over?”

“This isn’t blowing over, Filthy. For crying out loud, you had to shake a police escort just to meet me here.”

“So instead you’re going to—?”

“Take another crack at the other four suspects. Or rather, five...there’s one I haven’t talked to at all yet. Hey, you don’t happen to know the name of a guy with a beard who wears an overcoat to burlesque shows, do you?”

“Which one?”

“How many do you know?”

“At least one for every show I’ve ever been in. But come to think of it, I’ve done my best to make sure I don’t know any of their names.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “Where are you performing tonight?”

“Bottoms Up.”

“Do me a favor? Keep an eye out for a guy like that, and if one shows up, send me a message? If you can take a picture of him, that’d be even better.”

Filthy sighed. “And what will you be doing?” she asked.

“Hitting as many other shows as I can, to see if I can spot the guy myself.”

Filthy took something out of her pocket. She pressed it into my hand. “You might need this,” she said. I looked at it. It was a wad of cash. “Just in case,” she explained. I took it, but before I could put it in my wallet, Filthy grabbed the back of my head and pulled my face towards hers. She stopped when her lips were the merest fraction of an inch away from mine. I could feel her breath on my chin as she spoke. It was hot, and angry.

“I’m not going to kiss you,” she said. “And I’ll tell you why not. If you ever want this kiss, the one that you’re not getting right now, you’re gonna have to do something for it. Do you know what that is?” I shook my head. “You’re going to have to get out of this alive. And that means you’re going to have to do your damnedest to
keep
yourself alive. Understand?”

She let go of my head, and stood up.

“But—” I said.

“
Alive,”
she said, and left.

I tapped the man in the overcoat on the shoulder.

I’d seen him coming from a block away, headed straight for the Tiki Lodge. With the police looking for me, I figured it was a better idea, instead of actually attending the shows in question, to observe from a safe distance. So I had been lurking in a doorway across the street from the club, wearing an impenetrable disguise: a baseball cap instead of my usual porkpie, with my long, beautiful hair tucked up inside it. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly impenetrable, but it was enough to make me look different to a casual observer.

So there I was, watching the audience members trickle into the Lodge, when I saw this guy headed in the direction of the venue. Right outfit, right facial hair, right attitude. I ran across the street to intercept the guy and tapped him on the shoulder.

As the man turned around, I realized instantly I had the wrong creep. Other than the superficial qualities of the beard and overcoat, this guy was nothing like the one I had seen at Topkapi. “Sorry,” I said. “Thought you were someone I knew.”