11

Strock hadn’t come to hurt anybody, least of all Peg. But the impulse started curdling up from someplace almost as soon as he parked at the bar.

The dancers came and went, prinked out in high heels and teddies, drifting through the murky radiance with bored eyes and forced smiles. They left behind clouds of soupy perfume while Trip Hop or whatever it was throbbed at bone-rattling levels like the sound track to a beating.

There were three bouncers.

They lazed in rumpled suits up near the private booths where the luckier girls sat with customers willing to pay for a little one-on-one. The largest of the bouncers stood six-six easy, with skillet-size hands and a shaved head. The next one seemed a poor imitation of the first, same shaved head but fleshy. The wild card was the third guy—a short, bony, long-haired hick with a fey cockiness about him, like he was some kind of hillbilly martial arts queen.

Strock picked at the wet gummy label on his beer bottle, trying to think through how he should handle this. All he wanted was a few words with Peg. She owed him that. She went by the name Celesta here and was taking her own good time in the dressing room.

Finally, in a pot-addled brogue meant to conjure Jamaica, the DJ boomed: “Takin’ yo peeks, mons, will ya now, so slam those hands toge-thah for Stay-cee … and Cee-lest-aaaaah.”

The two girls pranced through the tinsel curtain at the back of the stage, untying their tops as they walked and dropping them to the floor. Excess cargo. Meanwhile, the DJ cued up an eighties tune, remixed for dance: the Pet Shop Boys, “Yesterday, When I Was Mad.” Strock chuckled, it was all too perfect. You got him playin’ our song, Peggers.

She grabbed the nearer pole and did a few routine swings, shaking out her long red hair. Her eyes were rimmed with eyeliner so thick she looked Egyptian, and glitter sparkled across her chest. She’d lipsticked her nipples too, an old trick.

As though on cue, the Pet Shop Boys chimed in:

Admitting, I don’t believe

In anyone’s sincerity, and that’s what’s really got to me

Strock collected his cane from the back of his bar stool, slipped down and began his limping approach toward the stage.

The crowd was scant, it was early. Men sat by themselves or in small clusters around the dim red room—frats, salesmen, off-duty cops. How many times, Strock wondered, when he’d still had his badge, had he sat there just like them? Every girl needs a pal in blue sometime. Not that he was bitter. He’d learned most of what he knew about music, food, and sex from strippers.

About fifteen feet from the stage he pulled up, still obscured by the dark, waiting as some frat in a Notre Dame sweatshirt tucked a bill into the elasticized crotch of Peg’s bikini bottom. The guy got to rub his face against her sparkly chest for that and Strock hated him instantly. A whiff away from fall-down drunk, the boy spun around, cheeks dotted with glitter now, and pumped the air with his fists while his Greek buddies hooted or barked out goading obscenities.

Strock eased out of the dark toward the stage. He caught Peg’s eye. “Seen a little girl around here?” He waved a bill at her, beckoning her closer. Come on, he thought. Play along. I’ll say what I came to say and it’ll all be over in no time.

Tottering backward out of the spotlight, Peg stared at him with those Egyptian eyes as though he were the one standing there naked. Even the lipsticked nipples looked stunned.

“You don’t tell me where you moved, don’t answer my calls, what did you think I’d do, huh? You know me better than that, Peg.”

His voice had an edge to it. Scattered boos came from behind and a wadded-up napkin pelted his neck. From a nearby table a hand reached out and clutched his jacket. Unthinking, Strock spun around, whipped the cane high, then slammed it down so hard he heard bone give way beneath the wood. He pushed another hand away as the first man howled.

Strock turned back to the stage and hefted one knee onto the skirt. The DJ, dropping the Rastaman bit, growled through the PA: “Security—up front.”

Strock got his balance, fended off the last of the grasping hands, then faced off with Peg. She backed up a little more but didn’t run. The other dancer, Stacy, turned away and kept nodding to the beat, like it was no big deal. Just another night at the nude girl nuthouse.

Peg screamed, “Phil! What the—you’re gonna—you—” Her Kentucky twang bent every vowel in two. She stamped her foot, wiggled her hands. “You got a serious problem, Phil, know that?”

“A free talk, okay?” It came out sounding shabby.

Her jaw dropped. “Here?”

“I wanna visit her. I got a right.”

“Aw crap, Phil.” Her eyes teared up. “You can’t—you don’t—”

He had no time to take heart from her pity. The cavalry arrived, Mr. Skillethands and Mr. Kung Fu Prissy-Hick Longhair vaulting onto the stage like a tumbling act, Son of Skillethands hanging back. In the melee that followed, Strock got in a few good licks with the cane, swinging it like an ax, but Skillethands parried the worst blows with his weight-room arms, and Longhair, true to Strock’s suspicion, had a vicious scissor kick that landed once in the thigh, once in the chest, and finally in the midriff, robbing Strock of breath. They wrestled him down and punished him, tongues protruding through their teeth, lusty little gasps of fury. From behind, Peg shrieked, “Don’t hurt him, okay? Okay?” But they got in their furtive stabs at his crotch and eyes, then trundled him off the stage, through the tables.

The front door slammed open, they heaved him outside, and the long-haired hilljack pitched the cane as far as he could into the dark. Mr. Skillethands, panting, told the two uniformed guards manning the parking lot, “Please escort this gentleman off the grounds.” He cleared his throat and spat. “Now.”

Strock struggled to his knees. Behind him, the club music soared briefly as the three bouncers trooped back in, then dimmed to a dull throb as the door closed behind them. His balls ached mercilessly from one particularly crushing squeeze. He ran his tongue along his teeth, checking for broken crowns.

Footsteps shuttled forward as the two outside guards approached. Strock lifted one hand above his head, face still brushing the pavement as he tried to catch his breath.

“A minute, fellas, all right? Just let me—”

A pair of musty desert boots entered his field of vision. Following the image upward, Strock discovered black polyester slacks tightening at a pudgy waist, a tattered black vinyl jacket. The face was triple-chinned. A shiny pate divided identical tufts of mousy brown hair.

It was the other one who spoke, though. “You’re not gonna give us no more trouble now, are ya?”

Through the blur Strock saw a knobby man, tall as Lincoln, with a craggy face and slicked-back hair. Popcorn-knuckled hands gripped his knees as he leaned down.

“That was a question, fella. Round here questions go with answers.”

“I just need a second.” Strock coughed up blood. “Catch my wind.”

“Plenty of wind up here.” The wiry one slipped a hand into Strock’s armpit and yanked upward. “See for yourself.”

As soon as Strock had his balance he swung to rid himself of the man’s grip. The elbow missed, but before Strock could regroup, the fat one aimed a cannister of pepper spray and let go, hitting Strock but the other guard, too. Both men grabbed at their eyes.

“Christ, Bursich, you tubby fuck, what the—”

“Sorry, shit, sorry, Jesus, sorry …”

“Anybody need some help here?”

It was a new voice, male, younger. Strock blinked and squinted but could see nothing through his scalding tears. Words sawed back and forth, ending with: “What say I take him off your hands?” Strock felt himself roughly pulled away. He coughed up a wad of caustic phlegm, then his bad leg buckled, lurching him sideways. The newcomer grabbed him up before he fell and kept them both moving. Kid’s quick, Strock thought. Strong, too.

“Where’d you come from?” The words came out strangled with mucus.

“Let’s get out of here. Then we’ll talk.”

The stranger let Strock rest against the side of a white sedan. Water chugged from a plastic bottle and spilled onto the asphalt, then Strock felt a wet handkerchief pressed into his hand. He spread the soaked hanky across his eyes, which felt like they were on fire.

“I need my cane.”

“We’ll get you another one.”

“I’m lame. I can’t—”

“We’ll get you another one.”

The stranger dropped Strock into the passenger seat, then slammed the door shut and hustled around and climbed in behind the wheel. Soon they were hurtling up the lakeside highway toward the toll road.

“Don’t rub your eyes with that.” The young man tugged at the corner of the wet handkerchief. “Just dab.”

Strock opened his window. The air felt good on his face. “I know how to handle pepper spray.”

The stranger turned off the highway before the toll road interchange and crossed some railroad tracks bordered by sparse woods. They were still in Indiana, somewhere between East Chicago and the Illinois line.

“You’re name’s Phil, right? Phil Strock. They called you Candyman.”

Strock turned toward him, blinking, wincing. “I don’t know you.”

“You knew my old man.”

“And he was who?”

“Ray McManus.”

It took several seconds to focus and the effort hurt but Strock finally managed to keep his eyes open long enough to take the young man in. “You’re Pop Gun’s son?” Ray McManus had been the oldest man in the Eighteenth still working patrol, thus Pop Gun. “You used to hang around your dad’s basement and watch us all cheat at poker.”

“I watched a lot more than that.”

They entered a neighborhood of nondescript one-story homes lined along curving potholed streets. It was dark and quiet. The air smelled of mud.

“Luke, right?”

“Jude.”

“Jude. That’s it. Sorry.” Strock sat back a little, relaxed into the seat. “Well, Jude, let me tell you something. Your old man was a right cop.”

That prompted a dreary chuckle. “Fat lot of good it did him.”

“Fat lot of good it did any of us.” Strock leaned out his window, still open, and spat. It tasted like he’d gargled with battery acid. “Pop Gun saved my life—know that?”

There was nothing but silence for several seconds. Then: “No. I never heard that.”

“You bet your ass. I’ve got a crap leg and my life’s a joke. But I’d be dead if not for your old man.” Strock smiled ruefully. “Laugh Master Ray. Old Pop Gun.”

Jude slowed for one last turn, then pulled into the driveway of a small ranch-style house with brick cladding to match the chimney.

“Weird coincidence,” Strock said, “you of all people walking up like that when I’m getting my ass peeled.”