Coconut Grove is one of Miami’s nightlife gathering places. The nightclub district is filled with watering holes, elegant restaurants, desserteries, comedy clubs and other establishments that strive to attract some of the city’s beautiful people away from the Parade o’Glamor that takes place over at Miami Beach’s Art Deco district. One sees a lot of Don Johnsons and Melanie Griffiths on the make.
On the outer fringes of the Grove, however, the scene drifts decidedly downscale, and over by Miami University, where the subway runs overhead on its concrete stilts, one finds the workingmen’s bars, fast-food joints and little bodegas, with their neon beer signs in the windows, music in the jukebox, and paisanos hanging around outside.
La Doll House was located in this part of the Grove. A huge garish sign dominated the streetscape while it tried to lure in the horny motorists from I-95. The sign featured a mostly naked woman, her hip cocked provocatively, arms thrown out invitingly, long blond hair positioned strategically. THE GROVE’S HOTTEST SHOW, it promised. Sounded good to me. I pulled my rental car into the crowded parking lot and joined a short queue waiting to get inside.
The cover charge was ten bucks, collected by a smiling hostess in a shimmery green dress that featured décolletage down to her navel. There was a neckless hulking bouncer standing nearby, his eyes completely hidden by thick, wraparound sunglasses. I resisted the impulse to go up and wave in front of his face, like the tourists do to the guards at Buckingham Palace. I was reasonable sure I didn’t want to get a reaction from this guy.
“Two drink minimum, fellas,” the hostess beamed at us, and she ushered us into her den of iniquity. The inside of the place was all mirrored walls and chrome-edged furniture, with deafening music and flashing strobe lights. A large central stage, made out of backlighted white Plexiglas, had twin runways branching out into a V-shape, with a chrome post extending upwards to the ceiling at the end of each runway. There were tables and chairs alongside each of the runways, and they were packed with the “gentlemen” who came to such places. Flanking the main stage, against the wall on each side of the large room, were chrome birdcage areas. There was a naked woman cavorting in each of the birdcages. Away in the back of the room, a silvery curtain led to what looked like a private viewing area. No doubt, the place for “private” dances, where extra cash bought extra services.
The noise was almost painful. The house DJ had the volume cranked up into the red zone. Scantily clad waitresses, dressed in push-up bras and fishnet stockings, bustled around taking and delivering drink orders. Bottle beer seemed to be the beverage of choice, so I ordered one. My waitress brought me two, and she leaned provocatively over to yell into my ear.
“That’ll be ten bucks,” she screamed. “Two drink minimum.” I thought about telling her it was against my religion to pay more than three dollars for a bottle of beer, but figured she was probably too busy to sympathize.
I glanced around La Doll House, spending, of course, the requisite amount of time checking out the babes who were gyrating on the main stage and wrapping themselves provocatively around the chrome poles. With my finely tuned reporter’s sense, I quickly noted that the ladies were quite naked and not unfortunate looking. The one on the stage nearest to me bent over and segued into a full split. It made me wonder if the stage were ever disinfected.
When I was finally able to tear my eyes away from the stage action and check out the rest of the place, I could see it was a good night: the place was busy. As in most strip joints I had ever visited – strictly for scientific if not journalistic reasons, of course – the all-male audience could be stratified into three basic categories.
First was the party crowd. Groups of men in full boys-night-out mode who were celebrating an upcoming wedding or someone’s 50th birthday with much giddiness and aplomb. They were the ones who, within the safety of their group, felt secure (or were drunk) enough to do the whistling and yelling and motioning for the dancers to come over and receive a folded dollar bill in their garters. Or to be captured between the breasts.It was loud, noisy, sweaty and generally idiotic fun. The dancers put up with the party boys with wary good humor. These guys, after all, were throwing dollars around like, well, drunken frat boys, and were slugging down five dollar beers apparently unconcerned with the sacrilege involved. For the dancers, after all, it was a living, and these guys were the cash cows.,/
The second group was the regulars. These were guys who probably considered La Doll House their local pub, notwithstanding the high cost of beer. The local neighborhood tavern, albeit a little noisier, a little flashier and, oh yeah, with a bunch of young and naked females flaunting their sexual organs in public. The regulars sat and drank quietly with studied nonchalance and general disinterest. They had seen it all, many times before.
Finally, there were the strange ones. The quiet watchers. These men sat there with small, self-deprecating smiles as if they were enjoying this healthy male outlet but in their haunted eyes, even in the neon-colored gloom of the place, one could see pain mixed with desire and the entire range of stunted human sexual emotion. But only in their eyes, which were locked on the gyrating bodies in front of them. The watchers would sit there unmoving, their five-dollar beers turning warm and flat and untouched, while their creepy eyes drank in the buttocks and breasts that bounced and twirled and flashed in front of them. It was quite hypnotic, and after a set of dancers had finished their three-song sets and pranced off backstage, one could often see the watchers blink rapidly, sit up suddenly, breaking free from their mesmerization, glance around sheepishly, rub their eyes and then, as the next group of dancers appeared, sink back into the spell of flesh.
The waitresses hustled, the dancers stripped, the music attacked the ears. Two hostesses dressed in short sequined minis, walked through the place, trying to sell table dances. For an extra fee, usually twenty bucks, one of the dancers would perform a strip right at one’s seat. It was kind of a private performance that everyone got to watch. Some of the party boys had bought one for their buddy. The girl came out, made a big fuss over meeting everyone, and sat in the man’s lap, tickling him under the chin and whispering naughty things in his ear. Then, she got up and, with the music as her guide, began to dance and peel off her teddy and then her panties, keeping a light hand on the man’s shoulder or knee, showing him everything and letting him touch nothing. One of the neckless bouncers was always nearby, implacable behind the shades, ready to pounce the instant a man’s hand strayed someplace where it was not welcome.
I motioned one of the hostesses over to my table, where I sat alone.
“Hey fella, felling lonely?” she purred, smiling at me.
“Yeah, kinda,” I said. “Is Tawny working tonight?”
“I think she comes on in a couple of hours,” the girl said. “Anyone else you got in mind?”
“Nah, I’d really like to see Tawny,” I said. I slipped her a twenty dollar bill.
She smiled at me with cold, seen-everything eyes. “Sure hon,” she said. “Have a few drinks. Enjoy the show. I’ll speak to her when she gets in.”
It was more than two hours before Tawny got there. In the long, long interval, I did what everyone else in La Doll House was doing: watching the girls. I saw all the body types as they came out in tandem to perform. There were the huge, probably surgically enhanced, big-breasted types; the skinny, barely anything on top types, and most every variation in between. Some of the girls ran a little toward the chubby side, but others had hard, lithe bodies that showed off a lot of hard work in the gym.
They were all smiling. It is their job to smile. Look, their smiles say, we’re so happy to be naked, so all you pitiful men can get an eyeful. They adopted that Playboy bunny pursed lips thing, too, that pouty, mock-sexy thing that’s supposed to convey passion.
But don’t look at their eyes, because that’s the ultimate buzz kill in a titty bar. The eyes always betray them. The eyes say they know they’re contributing to human depravity and they don’t like it one bit. The eyes say they hate it, actually. The eyes are dead and cold and hard. The eyes say a girl has to earn a living somehow, so go ahead and look you pigs, you filthy, low-life, disgusting animals.
The bodies may have been arousing, but the eyes deadened the thrill. I tried to navigate between arousal and disgust with the help of about six high-priced beers. I was thinking it was time to upgrade to Scotch when a soft hand tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to face Tawny, nee Cindy D’Angelo, professional golfer.
She was a striking woman, on the tall side, with straight blond hair that hung down to frame her face. It reminded me a bit of Maryann Faithful and the Sixties. The blond went dark at the roots. She was wearing a purple teddy with pearl snaps down the front, where her large breasts strained against the thin material, her nipples making two soft dents. The teddy thing flared out below her waist in a very abbreviated skirting, beneath which I caught glimpses of a matching thong. Her figure was trim, but I could still see what had once been an athletic form in it. Her legs were still strong and muscular and betrayed the baby-doll look she was striving for. Her face, like the other girls’, was heavily made-up and mascaraed, and she had applied some purple sparkling streaks around her cheekbones, giving her face a garish, yet exotic appeal. Her eyes, of course, were dead and cold.
“I understand you’ve been waiting for me for quite some time,” she breathed at me, and bending down, grabbed my earlobe between her teeth and gave me a gentle little nip, finished by a sexy and soft moan. “You got any special requests?”
“I sure do,” I breathed back, trying to look overcome with desire. “I want to spend a few minutes chatting with Cindy D’Angelo, former girl golfer.”
She straightened up, eyes narrowing sharply, her lips turned into a disapproving frown. She gave me the once-over.
“You don’t look like a cop,” she said, all sexuality instantly gone from her voice.
“Nope, ” I said. “Worse. Reporter.”
She blew out a breath that sounded like “pfaw,” put a hand on her hip and stared at me angrily. “I don’t do interviews,” she snapped.
“It’s not an interview,” I said. “I just need some background information.” She looked dubious. “Really,” I tried not to sound pleading. “I just need five minutes. Your name will never hit print. Please?”
My mother was right. Manners are important. Tawny blew out another breath and motioned at me to follow her. She led me to the back of the bar, through the gauzy curtains into the private area. Inside, there were about six tiny grottoes, filled with pillows and soft chairs, where one could go with a girl, pull the screen, and, for the right price in cold hard cash, satisfy your every desire. As long as it didn’t include touching or actual human contact. There was yet another neckless bouncer standing against the back wall of the private area, his arms folded, his face impassive, his eyes covered by his shades.
Tawny led me to the last compartment. She stopped at the entrance to the little room and held out her hand.
“Forty bucks,” she said. “That’ll get you five minutes.”
I placed two twenties in her hand, she shoved me inside and followed, pulling the fabric screen closed behind her. “Okay,” she growled. “Whaddya want?”
“How’d you get the neat name?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “My manager,” she said. “And I suppose you want to know how a nice girl went from the wholesome fairways of the professional golf tour to being a stripper. Well, I make a whole lot more money doing this with a whole lot less effort. So to answer your question…”
“I didn’t ask,” I said quietly. She stared at me for a moment, her anger barely under control. Then she smiled. It was a pretty smile, even underneath the strange purple sparkly stuff, and even with the still-hard cold eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I was jumping to conclusions. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Hacker,” I said and held out my hand for her to shake. “Boston Journal.”
“So where’d you get the neat name?”
We laughed together, the ice finally broken.
“So,” I said. “How did a nice girl go from the wholesome fairways …”
She laughed again. “Say,” she said. “Do you think you can get a couple of passes for Sunday? I haven’t seen the girls play in person now for a few years.”
“Consider it done,” I said. “You want them left under the name of Cindy or Tawny?”
“Cindy’s fine,” she smiled. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Hacker?”
“I don’t know if you heard, but Benton Bergmeister died last night.” I watched her face for reaction. Did her eyes widen a fraction at the name? I couldn’t tell for sure in the dimly lit surroundings of our pleasure palace. I guessed that years of practice in disguising her emotions at a place like La Doll House might have helped.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said noncommittally. “He was a nice old guy.”
“Yeah, I thought so too,” I said. “Anyway, I’m here because there is a rumor that Benton had some deep, dark secret in his past, and the rumor says that you are it.”
“I see,” she said. Her eyes had turned to ice.
“I thought I’d track you down and let you comment on those rumors, if you want,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything. I’ll go away and leave you alone. Or you can help me out and tell me what happened between you two.”
“And what’s in it for me, Hacker?” she snapped angrily.
I shrugged. “Nothing that I can think of,” I said. “Maybe a little peace of mind, putting to rest something that may still be troubling you?” It sounded lame even to me.
Tawny chewed on her lower lip and stared off into space. Finally, she turned and looked at me.
“Hell, if the guy’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter any more, does it?” She sank down into one of the chairs, closed her eyes and began to talk.
“I turned pro when I was seventeen,” she began. “I know now that was way too soon, but I thought at the time I had the world by the short hairs. I was all-everything here in Florida. I don’t think I could have shot anything above 75 if I wanted to. It was all that easy. I beat all the girls my own age, and then I beat all the college girls. I even trimmed Kathy Whitworth in this exhibition match when I was sixteen. Only found out later she had the flu that day. I was the youngest semifinalist in the U.S. Amateur…ever! Everybody said I was ‘can’t miss’ and I believed them.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at me, rueful. “So I decided to turn pro. Why go to college? I could already beat those girls. I decided making lots of money was a much better idea than going to classes for the next four years. Besides, I was ‘can’t miss!’ Cindy D’Angelo, the Florida Schoolgirl! The next great thing.
“But it was too soon. I was naïve. Innocent. Hadn’t finished growing yet. My body changed and my swing changed with it, and I lost it completely. Couldn’t drive it in the fairway, couldn’t get my irons onto the green, couldn’t putt a lick. I had been given five tournament exemptions – I was good PR for the Tour after all – and I missed the cut on the first three.
“That’s when Benton stepped in and tried to help. He saw what was happening and took me under his wing. Kept me away from the press, assigned another girl to room with me and show me the ropes, and tried to spend some time with me whenever he could, trying to keep me relaxed and focused on playing good golf again.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me. Her eyes were wet and shiny.
“He was really being nice to me,” she continued. “And it started to work. I calmed down, made some cuts, got invited to more tournaments. I started to play better, and felt my confidence coming back. Then, one night, he jumped me.”
“Jumped you?” I echoed stupidly.
“We went out to dinner. He’d been drinking before, and kept drinking during and after. He was walking me back to my room when he suddenly turned and pounced. Drunken kisses, hands everywhere, ripping my clothes. It was pretty awful.”
“How’d you escape?” I asked. “Swift kick to the cojones?”
She laughed. “Naw, I told you. I was just an innocent schoolgirl. I never even saw it coming. It was just luck that coming down the sidewalk that night was Wynnona Stilwell. She saw what was happening and came over to stop him.”
“Big Wyn,” I sighed.
“Yeah,” Tawny nodded. “Lucky for me, I guess. Unlucky for Benton. She was breathing fire at him when she pulled him off. He immediately went all contrite and started to cry. He was just drunk on his ass. God, what a scene.” She shuddered.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Well, the next day, Big Wyn came to see me, with a lawyer. She had some papers for me to sign. Said they were my agreement not to sue the Tour for sex abuse and that if I signed, she’d take care of me.”
“Take care, meaning?”
“Extra perks and bennies,” Tawny said. “Good rooms, good tee times, upgrades to first class on flights, stuff like that. In return, I was not to think about suing either the Tour or Benton Bergmeister. Hell, I never even thought about doing something like that anyway. He was a nice old guy, just a drunk who got lecherous. All I wanted to do was forget the whole thing and go play golf. So I signed both papers.”
“Both?”
Tawny smiled at me with approval. “You’re quick, Hacker. I’ll give you that. Yeah…two papers. I remember glancing at the first one and reading some of the legal stuff in there. It said about what Big Wyn had told me. So I signed it and the paper under it, just like the lawyer guy said to. It was a couple years later before I learned that second document wasn’t anything like the first one.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“Basically, it was an affidavit that I had been attacked and was planning to press charges against Benton Bergmeister for assault and battery, attempted rape and transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes. And a few other things too.” She smiled at me grimly.
“But you said you didn’t want to press charges, but forget the whole thing!”
“Exactly,” Tawny said. “Big Wyn and her snarky lawyer managed to get my signature without my knowing what was going on. Once they had that document, which they later got notarized to boot, they had Benton Bergmeister by the balls. They apparently showed it to Benton and told him that I wanted to prosecute him for rape, but that Big Wyn had convinced me to hold off for the good of the Tour. And that as long as Benton did what Big Wyn wanted, she would continue to protect his sorry ass from the press and the publicity, not to mention the jail. But if he didn’t …”
“I’d have called her bluff,” I said. “They couldn’t have made that stand up in court.”
Tawny smiled at me. “You men are so macho,” she said. “Benton did call her bluff. At least, that’s what I heard later in the locker room gossip. He supposedly told her she couldn’t do that to him.”
“What happened?”
“Big Wyn sent the signed and notarized statement to Benton’s wife.”
“Jeezus.”
“Who immediately filed for divorce, got a large settlement and refused to let Benton see his own daughter ever again.” Tawny stared at me coolly. “Benton wasn’t so macho after that,” she said. “In fact, it was right about then that he started getting drunk at about noon every day.”
I thought about Big Wyn’s strange and triumphant look when Bergmeister’s family had been mentioned in the press room. Now I knew why she had looked so victorious. She had beaten this man, destroyed his life, disrupted his family. Pretty good day’s work.
“And you never knew about this?” I wondered.
She shook her head. “Naw,” she said. “I went back to playing golf, but I never quite got over the hump. Benton couldn’t spend time with me any more, for obvious reasons. So I slid back into mediocrity. Oh, I had some fun, made some friends, struggled like mad, never made much money, and after three years, I just walked away. “ She stared off in the distance.
“I think I really missed what Benton had given me,” she said. “Confidence, peace of mind, I don’t know, maybe just friendship. But I burned out on everything. Knocked around for a couple years doing this and that. Waitress. Boat rat. Didn’t even pick up a golf club. My parents eventually threw me out. I ended up working at places like this.”
She turned to look at me, her eyes now large and sad. “It’s pretty good money,” she said, daring me to deny it. “But I miss golf. And the Tour. I had some really good friends. But I lost touch with them all.” She sighed.
“Did you ever get all those perks Big Wyn promised?”
“Yeah, she took pretty good care of me,” Tawny said. “No complaints.”
“She ever come on to you?”
Tawny looked at me with a strange smile. “Hacker, you’ve got a dirty mind,” she laughed, mirthlessly. “Or you’ve been talking out of school to someone. To answer your question, no, not really. She let it be known that she was available for sex if I wanted. But I was just a kid and really hadn’t gotten into sex at all. I mean, I knew about lesbians and about Big Wyn and the others. You learn pretty quick out there. But I was just into golf and not much else.”
I looked at the girl for a moment, turning something over in my mind.
“Listen, Cindy,” I said. “I know I said I just needed some background. But it would help if you agreed to go public with this.”
She was shaking her head.
“No way, man,” she said. “I don’t want to become a public figure, tabloid queen or go on Jerry Springer. It might be hard for someone like you to understand this, but this is a pretty good job. I like my friends here, we all look out for each other. There’s no heavy lifting, the hours are good and the money can be damn good if you know what you’re doing. I’m not about to rock the boat by becoming your star witness. No thanks.”
“Look,” I said. “Benton’s dead. I still don’t know exactly how or why, but he don’t care. I believe Big Wyn is behind it, somehow. That woman has ruined a bunch of lives, including, indirectly, probably yours. I think it’s time someone said stop. I can start the ball rolling, but I gotta have a source or two. You’re it. You’re the hold she had on Benton, which drove him to death. Think about it. He apparently gave up. I’m not going to. I need your help.”
She was chewing on her bottom lip nervously as I gave her my best freedom-of-the-press sermon. Hold high the banner of truth and all that.
It might have been working, but just at that moment a huge, sunburned man in a sleeveless T-shirt and dirty jeans staggered into our private cubicle. His face was shaggy with several days’ beard, his eyes were unfocused, he smelled of hard liquor. He had a large gut, flabby arms and brown leather cowboy boots.
“Omigod,” he gasped, staring at Tawny in her purple teddy. “Honeybunch, you and me got some serious dancin’ to do. C’mere!”
He lurched forward and his big beefy hands grabbed the front of her teddy and pulled it apart. It happened so fast, she didn’t have time to react until he was pawing her breasts and making strange mewing sounds.
“Hey!” I yelled and started beating on the guy’s back, trying to grab his arms and pull them away. Tawny let out a bellow of rage, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur of black as the bouncer, moving far quicker than a man of his size should be able to, moved in. With one hand, he shoved me down into a chair, with the other he smashed a forearm into the drunken fool’s beefy neck. The drunks’ head and shoulders came up in surprise at the sudden pain. That gave Tawny the opportunity to get a knee free, which she brought up sharply into the man’s groin. At the same time, the bouncer slipped his arm under the guy’s chin and began applying pressure, choking off his oxygen.
A second black-clad bouncer burst into the room, picked me up out of the chair, off my feet, whirled me around and smashed me face first against the wall. He grabbed my arm and twisted it painfully up behind my back. “Go ahead, motherfucker,” he said softly into my ear. “Resist me. I haven’t broken an arm in almost a month and I’m starting to get restless.”
“Lay off him Rocky,” Tawny called out. “It wasn’t him. We was just talking when this boozer staggered in and started pawing at me.”
The drunk had passed out and lay face first on the floor. He started to snore. Rocky reluctantly let go of my arm, and I turned around, checking to make sure all my teeth were still intact. Tawny was examining her breasts and wincing.
“Goddamn it,” she said as she fingered each one of her breasts unself-consciously. “Son of a bitch grabbed so hard he left bruises. Shit!”
“Baby, are you okay?” wailed a soft, feminine voice from just outside the cubicle. One of the other dancers ran in and gave Tawny a big hug. She had lots of curly red hair piled atop her head and wore a white stretchy number and high heels. “What happened, baby, are you OK? Do you need to see a doctor?” The redhead hugged Tawny close and then turned to look at the two bouncers standing there. “Where the hell were you guys?” she snapped. “You’re supposed to protect us, goddam it. She coulda been hurt!”
“It’s okay, Doris, calm down,” Tawny said. “I’m fine. Just a run-in with a drunk with fast hands. I may be wearing his fingerprints on my tits for a couple days. That’s all.”
“Oh, baby, how awful!” Doris wailed. “You come back with me right now and let me look. I’ve got some lotion that should help. And some pancake that should hide the marks. C’mon baby, I’ll make you better. You know I can.”
Doris slipped her arm around Tawny and began to lead her away.
“Cindy?”
I threw my hands out in appeal.She looked back at me once. “Okay, Hacker,” she said. “For Benton’s sake.”
“I’ll leave you some tickets,” I said. “Thanks.”
She nodded and turned to go with Doris. I saw her rest her head gently on the other woman’s shoulder and slip her own arm lovingly around the waist of Doris.
The two bouncers watched the women go. “Shit,” one of them growled. The other bent over, grabbed the snoring, bloodied drunk by the belt and the scruff of the neck and effortlessly hauled him out the door. The other one glared wordlessly at me, so I left, under my own power.