Eight

My next stop was the Calico Club. My visit wouldn't cause any undo notice, since I'd been there often before. This was one of the better places I spent time in order to gather information. It always surprised me how indiscreet people could be when they were drunk and trying to gain a woman’s favor. If anything unusual were going on in the club, I shouldn't have any trouble finding out. By removing the jacket and the tights I'd worn under my skirt for my visit with the senator, I was dressed to fit in with the patrons at the club.

I watched a few dances, flirted with a few guys, and waited for my chance to catch my friend Zelda when she went out for a smoke. Her smoke breaks were usually the only time I could get her alone. Zelda Bronsen was a friend from my early computer days. Naturally, that wasn't the name she used as a dancer. She used the stage name “Feathers.” I never found out why, since there were no feathers in her act. I'd even ask her directly how she'd gotten the name, but she would never tell me. She was short, blond and curvaceous, and since she actually had talent, her dances were among the most popular at the club. I wandered around chatting with the people I knew, recognizing many of the regulars in the crowd. Most of them recognized me too, but only as Tammy Carson, which was an identity I used often when I was out tapping my acquaintances for information. Tammy had quite a reputation as a party girl. As I nursed a margarita and chatted with the bartender, I was surprised to see Dennis Clampton on the far side of the room. This wasn't the kind of place I'd expect to find the mayor's son. I'd seen him around the club before, but until I'd looked up his picture online, I hadn't known who he was. It was interesting that he chose this place to party. He looked as gray and nondescript as his pictures, and if anything, his spare tire was even more pronounced than the pictures had indicated. I'd guessed him to be around thirty from his pictures, but on seeing him I revised my guesstimate to over forty.

When the next guy asked me to dance, I made sure we were on the side of the dance floor right beside Clampton's table. He was totally predictable and accommodating. As soon as the dance ended and I started off the floor, he stood and offered to buy me a drink, proving I can shake my booty with the best of them when I want to. As he led me to his table, I bumped into him gently, chest first. As I'd hoped, this distracted him enough for me to lift his keys from his pocket. I hadn't lost my touch as a pickpocket even though I wasn't skinny or short any longer. After I flirted outrageously through one drink, I excused myself. I promised to come right back, but claimed I needed to talk to a friend, and since she was between dances at the moment it was my best chance to catch her. Maybe my one true statement to the man the whole evening. The instant I was out of sight of Clampton's table, I hurried to the restroom. Pulling the stolen keys out of my pocket, I chose the only two that looked like house keys, and quickly used my phone to take pictures. The app would allow me to make the real keys at home. I had plenty of time to duck around the corner to have a quick word with Zelda.

My friend hadn't heard any rumors about prostitution. She had a daughter five years old, and other than making her living stripping, she was kind of a prude. She did know two of the club's dancers had quit recently and had both been bragging before they left that their new jobs paid tons more than they had been making. Zelda had wondered at the time why they hadn't seemed happier about their new situation. She reluctantly agreed to put me together with a woman who had been friends with the two who had left, so we arranged to meet back there when Calico closed at two. She warned me that the woman was pregnant and desperate, so she might be hard to talk to.

From there, I hurried back to my latest conquest, snuggled up real close, and slipped his keys back in his pocket. At the same time, I dropped a little something extra in his drink. It worked very quickly so that in a few minutes he was drunk enough that he barely noticed as I made my escape, confident he would have little memory of me in the morning.

I went back to my original table across the room to have a little fun until it was time to meet Zelda and her friend. It's not good for a girl to be all about work.

When I left the club at closing and walked around back, the two women were smoking in the alley. Zelda introduced me to Candy Camacho. I asked what her real name was, which was not a good start, because it kind of pissed her off, since that was her real name. I tried again, “Candy, I know this may be a sensitive thing for you to talk about, but it's possible the answers you give me will help save lives. Can you tell me what type of second job your friends have taken on, and who hired them?”

She looked horrified. “I can't talk about that! You don't have any right to pry into people's lives.”

She turned to leave. I hated to ruin her day, but I needed her information, so I said, “If you don't help me, my next step will have to be to call the police. People are dying and your information could save them. If the police investigate what's going on you could end up in jail, and your baby will go into the foster system. If that matters to you, you need to talk to me.”

“You're just trying to scare me. They told me everything was handled legally.”

“Who told you that, Candy? If you tell me what you know, it may not be too late to make a difference.”

She started some serious crying then. I hated that, but I just stood and waited for her to calm down. When she'd cried herself out, she looked up and hiccupped a few times. She wasn't the same pretty girl of just moments ago. Her eyes were swollen and red and she had snot running from her nose, but the biggest change was how used up and beaten down she looked. Maybe I should have felt guilty, but I didn't. The information she could give me was too important.

Candy didn't have the strength to hold out any longer, so she poured out her whole story. By the time she finished, Zelda looked sick. She worked hard for the sole purpose of taking care of her kid, and she didn't want to see or know about the seamier things going on around her.

As soon as I left the two of them, I went straight to my car, locked the doors, and made notes on everything I'd heard. The story was a sordid one, but there were only one or two bits of information I found useful.

Candy's contact had been Robert North, the manager of the Calico Club. I'd seen the little pipsqueak of a man around the club. After her friends had left, he'd turned his sights on Candy, knowing that she, too, was in debt and needed extra money. He'd approached her by explaining he'd helped her friends when they had similar problems and promising he could also help her. He explained that he knew of a club where dancers could make real money if they were willing to give a little extra service. Some of the people she owed money to weren't nice people and she was desperate, but she hadn’t accepted his offer immediately. She promised to think about moving to the new job and let him know soon. North was still waiting for her answer, but she had decided she didn't have any choice and was planning to accept.

I'd tried to explain to her how the women working for those clubs were abused regularly and never lived to a ripe old age. I doubt if my argument outweighed her need for money and what she believed was the only way she could get it. She left, telling me to leave her alone and stay out of things I didn't understand and that were none of my business. From the bruises and the despair she'd seen on her friend's faces, she had to know I was right, but she wasn't ready to admit it to herself.

As soon as my notes were complete, I dialed a number. Paul Bender assured me that from now on I would know everywhere North went and everyone he talked to. It was a big favor to ask, but not long ago I'd done an equally big favor for Paul, the PI I'd called. Nothing more could be done tonight. Tomorrow would be a busy day.

~ * ~

With everything else I had to do, I was glad not to have to worry about what North was up to. I trusted Paul to keep me posted. Considering the crazy way we’d met, I guess it wasn’t surprising that we’d formed a bond of trust. We didn’t call on each other for help too often, but whenever one of us needed someone reliable, we knew the other one would help.

Six years ago, I’d been staying at a large downtown hotel while doing some information gathering on a job I hoped to pull. On my third day there, I was walking down a long hall on the way back to my room after having breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was mid-summer and around one hundred ten degrees outside. Phoenix is packed with snow birds in the winter, but in August the place seemed deserted.

I was thinking about the job I was planning. I was at the hotel to watch a gentleman who had a small but famous painting I hoped to acquire. At the moment my job was in the early stages, and I was in the process of learning my target’s routine. I thought he would still be in bed for about another half an hour, since he normally didn’t rise until around ten, so I was more than a little surprised when I got close to his room and saw that his door was slightly ajar. I wasn’t sure what to think but decided to see if I could get a peek inside to find out what was going on without getting caught.

As quietly as possible, I walked up to the door and tried to look in. The opening wasn’t big enough to see anything except the wall on the right side of the room. I didn’t hear anything to indicate anyone was in this room of the suite, so I risked pushing the door open wide enough to glance around. I immediately groaned inwardly and cursed my curiosity. The room wasn’t empty, but I wasn’t in any danger from the one lone occupant. In the center of the room someone had placed one of the wooden chairs from the small dining table. Restrained in the chair was a man covered in blood. The guy was a big, well-muscled blond. I had no idea if he was dead or alive, but he must have started out alive because he was gagged.

I was oh-so-tempted to quietly leave, gently closing the door behind me and forgetting everything I’d seen. I don’t know if I stayed because at that moment the man sensed my presence and looked up with huge pain-filled eyes, or if I was just curious about what was going on. Whatever the reason, I moved quickly to his side, pulled off the duct tape gag, and whispered in his ear, “How many?”

To his credit, he didn’t yell or even flinch at the pain the quick removal of the gag must have caused him. In a whisper no louder than mine, he said “Three,” and then his head dropped back down to his chest. I felt the pulse in his neck to assure myself that he was unconscious and not dead before quietly exiting the suite. I knew enough about the dickhead I’d been following to assume that the guy in the chair was probably the good guy, if there were any good guys involved.

I hurried into my own room and grabbed a gun and my taser from a shoebox in the closet. I started out the door and then returned long enough to grab a sharp knife from the kitchenette in my suite. When I returned and peeked into the room for the second time, nothing had changed. I tiptoed in and cut the tape holding the man in the chair, hoping he wouldn’t fall as the restraints were removed. No such luck. He began to topple as soon as his arms were free. I braced him with my body while I cut the leg restraints and then lowered him to the floor as quietly as possible. The whole time I was doing this I could hear muffled voices coming from the next room.

I was still straightening up when I saw the door to the rest of the suite begin to open. I jumped back, trying to get behind the opening door, but didn’t quite make it all the way. By pure luck, the man coming through the door was talking back over his shoulder to the two men still in the room and didn’t see me until he closed the door. I immediately hit him with the stun feature on my taser and, big as he was, he began to crumple. Stupidly, I rushed up next to him intending to let him down gently to prevent any noise. He was a lot heavier than I expected, and we both went down in a heap with me on the bottom underneath what I was sure must be an elephant. As I lay there shoving and pushing to get free, the man I’d helped out of the chair began moving a little and groaning. The first couple of groans were soft enough that I didn’t think anyone in the next room could hear them, but each one was getting louder as the poor fellow began feeling his injuries the more conscious he became. I gave one last shove with every ounce of strength I had. The weight on top of me shifted just enough that I managed to roll out of the way before he shifted back.

I made a mad dash for the injured man and put one hand over his mouth while hooking his arm with my other arm and dragged him toward the door. He was aware enough to realize what I was doing and did his best to help. After what seemed like hours, where every second I expected to see the remaining two thugs pop out into the hall, the man and I fell into my room where we lay on the floor gasping. That was how I’d met Paul Bender.