While Danny poured over Paul Conklin’s credit card charges and phone bills for some clue that he may have previously missed Kane took Farber’s picture to the Capitol Mail & Shipping store.
“Does this guy rent a box here?” Kane asked the fortyish woman behind the register.
“I don’t think so,” she said after a quick glance.
“Look again.”
She pretended to stare at the photo then shook her head. “I don’t know him.”
“He rents box 1126.”
“If you already know that why did you ask me?” she snapped.
“Why did you tell me that you don’t recognize him?”
Angrily she grabbed the picture, squinted as if looking at it through a layer of frosted glass then said, “Oh, yeah, him,” and dropped it on the counter.
“Open the box.”
“Do you got a warrant?”
“Open it or I’ll break it open and drag you in for obstruction of justice.” When she didn’t move and Kane reached for his cuffs.
“People have rights, you know!” she half-shouted then finally reached for her keys when Kane dangled the cuffs in front of her face.
“Open it!”
“Fascists!” she muttered as she unlocked the box. It was empty.
“Are you happy now?”
“I’d be happier locking you up for helping a cop killer.”
“You’ll change your tune when the People take their government back!”
Kane had a momentary urge to slap the sneer off her face but it passed.
“Your government thanks you for your cooperation,” he said instead. “Have a wonderful day.”
It was almost ten when he joined the crew that Wren had provided to search the 817 house. All they found were some fast food receipts, a water bill, and a coupon for 50% off a car wash and wax. There were no pictures, no bank statements, no nothing. They did find a laptop computer but the hard disk had been wiped. The techs promised to go through it anyway but Kane didn’t hold out much hope that they’d turn up anything useful even if they could unscramble it.
He called Danny then Gene Boland, the agent who was running the tip line, and they both had nothing. Kane was back in the office by two. The tip line had yielded a few calls worth checking, but so far they had all turned out to be dead ends. Around three o’clock Boland told Kane that they had four more tips that looked promising and showed him the logs.
“How many guys do you have available?” Greg asked him.
“I’ve got three in the field. They should be freed up in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
Kane leafed through the slips. “I’m not doing anything useful. I’ll take this one,” he said pulling a page out of the pile and returning the rest. Boland made a note and gave Kane his card.
“Call my cell after you eliminate it and I’ll give you the next lead.”
Boland’s pessimism irritated Greg but then lots of things pissed him off, So what’s new? he asked himself. The name on the call slip was “Evelyn Brouseau” with an address not far from Kalorama Park. About fifteen minutes later his phone said, “Arriving at destination on right” and he looked for a place to park. A long black sign with fancy pink letters bolted to the face of the building a few feet above a matching pink awning read: “Gentlemen’s Lounge.”
The door retreated a few inches in response to blows from Kane’s fist and a black woman peered at him through the gap.
“We’re closed. We open at five.”
Kane held up his creds.
“Agent Gregory Kane, Homeland Security. I’m looking for Evelyn Brouseau.”
The woman paused for a moment then pulled the door all the way back.
“I’m Evelyn Brouseau.” A glass booth with a depression in the counter to allow money to slide in and out crouched against the left hand wall. “Let’s go into the office.”
Brouseau led Kane through a beaded curtain and across the deserted showroom. The floors were sticky, the carpet threadbare and stained. Bars, like sausage factories, Kane reflected, were never meant to be seen by the customers in the light of day. They climbed a flight of stairs and she ushered him into a small office. A window made of one-way glass looked out over the runway. Brouseau took a seat behind a cheap, scarred desk.
“I’m supposed to run the place when the boss isn’t here. He usually gets in around eight. After that I watch the registers and I fill in on the floor when we’re shorthanded.” She glanced down at the runway. “The girls come and go. . . . You know how it is,” she added a moment later.
“But not you.”
Brouseau shrugged. “The money’s good if you stay off the booze and the drugs. We’re the employer of last resort for these girls. Most of them, if they didn’t have a drug problem, an alcohol problem, an abusive boyfriend or father or a crack-whore mother problem, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.” A wistful look slid over her face. “Well, it’s better than turning tricks on the street.”
“Do you own a piece of the club?”
Evelyn gave Kane a fleeting smile.
“No. I’m just the hired help.”
“That’s why you still dance?”
“That’s where the money is. I may not be a kid anymore, but,” another quick smile, “I’ve still got what a lot of men want. . . . But that’s not why you’re here.”
Kane handed her two pictures, one from Mearle Farber’s employment file and the other from Paul Conklin’s driver’s license.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” she said, tapping Conklin’s picture after half a second.
“When did you see him?”
“Last night around eleven, more or less.”
“You’re sure?”
Evelyn paused, her lips coming to rest someplace between a smile and a frown.
“Did you ever hear the song, ‘Private Dancer,’ Agent Kane?”
“Ahhh, Tina Turner?”
“Do you know the words?”
Kane shrugged.
“You don`t look at their faces.
“You don’t ask their names,” she said as if reciting a poem.
“You don`t think of them as human.
“You don’t think of them at all.
“You just keep your mind on the money.
“And you keep your eyes on the wall.”
“If that’s how it works why do you remember him?”
“The men who sit out there,” Evelyn nodded toward the runway, “are more or less creatures who come here to fulfill their animal needs, like werewolves under the influence of a full moon. That doesn’t necessarily make them vicious or mean, just pathetic. But sometimes we get the other ones, the ones like him.” Evelyn tapped Conklin’s photo. “The ones who want to do more than just look.”
“What did he want to do?”
“He took one of the girls out back, one of the new ones, young and stupid and desperate. The young and stupid part gets knocked out of them pretty fast until only the desperate part remains.” She paused and for a moment seemed somewhere else, then her eyes clicked back into focus and whatever memory she had dredged up slipped away. “Anyway, he ripped her off and was working himself up to doing something more when I showed up.”
“He was worried about you being a witness?”
“He didn’t like the ice pick I showed him.”
“How close were you to him?”
“About as far away as I am from you.”
“You said that this happened out back?”
“There’s a light over the rear door. I got a real good look at him before he took off.”
“I don’t suppose he paid with a credit card?” Kane said.
“That’ll be the day. This is a cash business.”
“Which way did he go?”
“The last I saw of him he was heading around the building, up toward the street. I couldn’t tell you where he went once he hit the sidewalk.”
Kane made a note and tried to think.
“Is there anybody who might have seen which way he went? A bouncer, a security guard, a street vendor? Anybody?”
Evelyn shrugged. “There are lots of people around here at night but nobody permanent, nobody who’s always out front keeping watch.”
“Regulars? Hookers? Maybe a cabbie who picks fares up here?”
“Sorry.” She gave Kane another shrug.
Greg sighed and slipped his pad into his coat.
“Thank you, Ms. Brouseau. You’ve been very helpful.”
“My pleasure. I hope you catch him.”
Kane stood and she led him back through the club. He was halfway out the door when she stopped him.
“Agent Kane – what did he do?”
“In addition to his other victims he murdered a cop,” Greg told her with ice in his voice.
“So, this is personal.”
“I’m not going to let him get away with it if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good, good for you.”
Kane tried to figure out the expression on Brouseau’s face. Determination? No, he decided, satisfaction. As the door swung closed behind him he heard her begin to sing softly to herself: “You don’t think of them as human. You don’t think of them at all.”