V
I have never knowingly spent much time in Chelsea before this evening, but the directions off the nearly hidden bridge exit are fine and, even at rush hour, I pull past a series of desolate-looking trucking depots and into the parking lot of my destination in less than half an hour.
Private Eye Stanley T. Branford, I think to myself with half a grin and half a grimace: Spenser has nothing on me. Nothing except a house to go home to and a woman and a dog that still love him. And a big tough sidekick named Hawk – that wouldn’t hurt right now either.
Well, Shadow still loves me, or at least I assume so from the way he barked, eager for an invitation as I walked forlornly across the front lawn to the car half an hour ago. So I walked back over to the fence and reached down to give Shadow’s nose some pats and let him lick my fingers. I hadn’t looked up to see if Paula Leavitt was back in her front doorway taking note of all this. I just turned, my gym bag over my shoulder, headed for the car, and drove off into the sunset.
Sam still loves me, too. The little guy doesn’t really know any better. Even if Diana and Rachel were to tell Sam that his Daddy was downloading child pornography on the internet, it wouldn’t matter to Sam, at least not for another year or two. When I approached the front door carrying my gym bag, Sam had asked me: “Are you going to work out now, Daddy?”
“Maybe later, Sam,” I said. “But right now I’ve got to go out for a while. I might even be gone all night!”
“Like Runner’s Daddy?”
“Yes, just like Runner’s Daddy,” I said. Runner was the little Native American boy in Sam’s favorite bedtime story, The Circle in the Forest.
“Okay, then, Daddy. I’ll wear my Red Sox hat until you get home,” said Sam, as if this plan were the most logical and helpful thing in the world, and he took the blue and white cap with the red capital “B” off the hook and put it on his head.
“Okay, Big Papi,” I said. I reach down, took the bill of Sam’s cap, and turned it around so that it faced backwards on the boy’s head.
“Hey!” Sam turned the cap around to face the front again. “I’m not Big Papi.”
“I know, Sam,” I said. “Come give Daddy a big grippy hug.” He came over, arms out, and gripped me in a bear hug with all his might. I turned slightly as we hugged so that Diana, standing in the doorway and observing, would be out of my line of sight.
“See you later,” I said.
“See you later, Crocodile,” called Sam.
“In a while, Alligator.”
Yes, Sam still loves me. So for Sam and for Shadow and for myself, I will spend an hour checking out this hideous place to see if I can begin connecting the dots to figure out the nature of the catastrophe that is consuming my life. For Diana and for Rachel, too, I announce dutifully to myself. Once I have some clue about it at all, I’ll be able to call Diana and try to calm her down and get back in her good graces.
I have never thought of my wife as morally simplistic or overbearing, so I’m all the more disoriented by the haste with which Diana and Rachel have seemed to turn on me, but on the drive over from Belmont to Chelsea I sifted through the events of the afternoon and reflected on how it must have seemed to them. These were touchy, loaded issues, after all: the pictures on the computer screen, the instant message from “StanBran,” the bank and charge accounts’ missing funds, compounded by the embarrassment of having the cards declined right in Diana’s well-known face at the supermarket, and then the final image of me sitting again at the computer with the stripper offering me a lollipop as I talked on the phone trying to get directions to some place called “Little Girls.” It wasn’t a pretty picture.
The building that is my destination is multi-purpose, with separate signs that advertise the presence of a motel, a coffee shop, and a strip club. Very convenient. Over an entrance near the rear is a large purplish-pink neon sign that reads, “Little Girls,” in the same font as the banner I saw on the YoungEntertainment.com website. Below that, in small white neon capital lettering, are the words:
VERY YOUNG NUDE GIRLS
Just inside the door to the strip club I am “greeted” by a very large man – he has to be six and half feet tall and weight at least five hundred pounds – who says, “Ten dollars, Pal.”
“Ten dollar cover charge?”
“No, we don’t have a cover charge, Pal,” says the giant. “This your first time here?”
“Yes.”
“The ten dollars buys you a nice lollipop, Pal. In case you want to give it to one of the little girls.” The giant holds up a large heart-shaped lollipop just like the one the stripper had seemed to proffer from the website. I look around the club and see a couple of the so-called little girls in action. There is a stage runway lined with seats, and on it a very slender girl who looks to be no older than Rachel is writhing and grinding to the song “Taking Care of Business,” which is pulsing from speakers above her and in every corner of the club. She is entirely nude except for a pair of white sneakers and bobby socks. Another girl with a very short jumper, a white blouse, and patent leather buckle-shoes with white thigh-high stockings is moving from table to table talking to the patrons, with whom the place is packed. There are several other girls visible in various states of undress, a couple of them providing lap dances for customers as they suck away somewhat overdramatically at lollipops. I hand the giant a ten-dollar bill and, in return, receive a lollipop, still wrapped in clear plastic.
“You can buy more lollipops from the lollipop girls, or from any of the other girls, for that matter. Please do not initiate any touching of the little girls. If any of the little girls should happen to touch you inappropriately, you may report her to the headmistress over there,” says the giant as he gestures toward a booth where a more mature woman sits with a clipboard and a severe demeanor observing everything that is going on in the large, darkened room. “That way you can be sure she will be subjected to proper discipline. Heh, heh. Just wait right here and Roller Girl will show you to a table.”
Suddenly a girl on roller skates races at me out of nowhere and comes to an abrupt halt so near me that her smallish, pointy breasts brush against my sleeve through the undersized pink tee-shirt she wears with “ROLLER GIRL” in black lettering across the front.
“Where would you like to sit, Daddy?”
“Anywhere’s fine, I guess.”
“Take my arm, Daddy.”
She leads me to one of the few unoccupied seats on the perimeter of the runway, and pulls out a chair for me. I sit down next to an elderly man who pays no attention to my arrival. Like most of the other patrons along the stage he has a small stack of folding money in front of him on the bar.
The girl who was writhing on the floor a couple of moments before has completed her “dance” and is hurrying around the stage picking up folded and crumpled bills from the floor and stuffing them into an open “My Little Pony” lunchbox that she carries.
She holds her clothes, her costume, under one arm, having picked them up hurriedly, and now that her act is over, at least for an hour or so, she moves around the stage without charm or guile or self-assurance, naked not only of clothing but of pretense. She reminds me of a Gilda Radner parody commercial from one of the earliest Saturday Night Live seasons, for “the perfume of the One Night Stand, from Calvin Klein,” where a somewhat forlorn looking Gilda appeared exiting an Upper West Side brownstone building at dawn, wearing one high heeled shoe after breaking the heel on the other one descending the steps, her makeup mussed, one spaghetti strap of her little black dress down around her elbow, waving hopefully for a cab. This girl who had writhed and squirmed so provocatively on the stage a few moments before employs no grace as she bends down from the waist picking up the ones and fives that these men have been passing her in their hopes of getting a better look at the inner parts of her genitalia or perhaps even a few seconds of psychodrama.
“Wait’ll you see the next one. She couldn’t be a day over fourteen.”
The old man sitting to my left has spoken to me. I lean back and straighten up on my barstool just enough to allow me to take a peripheral glance at this man without overtly turning toward him. His eyes shine and his jowly face is lit up hideously by the dancers’ spotlight. On my right, another, younger man answers him: “She’s just a baby.”
The guy on my right is tweedy, well-dressed, clean-shaven and almost patrician in his demeanor with a little bow-tie fashion statement, a little taller than my middling five-eleven, probably into his mid-forties but still with a full head of slightly sandy-tinged salt and pepper hair that gives an impression it has always been the same color. He is obviously a regular if he is so well-versed in the dancers’ rotation that he knows who is coming up next, but the only tell-tale sign that I notice that he might be of this place or places like this is a finely etched pattern of gin blossoms on his nose.
I grunt. It is the best that I can do. If I was actually going to speak to one of these guys it would be to ask him not to speak to me again, but I am here on a mission and I don’t want to mess it up before I even begin. I want to stand up. I have to find a better vantage point, not for the gynecological shots but to scout out the clientele. Ideally I would prefer a vantage point from which I won’t be subjected to any more gratuitous conversation from the other patrons.
The speakers crackle, signifying that a microphone has been turned on.
“Gentlemen, let’s put your hands together and give a warm farewell to Amanda, who’s got to hurry back to Study Hall before anyone noticed she’s missing. Amanda, gentlemen! If she can sneak out of Study Hall again she just might come around looking for some candy in a little while, so be prepared to be very generous. These little girls love candy!”
The only thing that shocks me about all this is the explicit, crass directness of the appeal. Don’t any of these men have any self-respect? Who are they? The bow-tied creep to my right looks like a fund manager or a Harvard professor or even for that matter like an editor at the Globe or the Transcript. It is as likely as not that, just like me, he has a wife and kids, maybe even a 15-year-old daughter, at home. I would like to think of myself as someone impossible to cast in the role in which Diana and Rachel have cast me today, but sit me down next to this guy to my right, and who’s to say which of us does not fit here, for instance?
“Now, gentlemen, we have a special treat for you. Your favorite babysitter, Kathleen, needs a ride home, and I’m sure that one of you is just the man to give her what she needs. So please warm up the mini-van, and let’s all put her hands together and give a warm welcome to little Kathleen!”
Kathleen comes out dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl in a short green plaid skirt and a plain white button-down blouse with a couple of extra buttons undone and a gold crucifix hanging at her neck. She wears penny loafers and white socks and she skips from one end of the runway to the other to the rhythm of the Stones’ “Start Me Up.” Her freckled face is otherwise clear as a baby’s with makeup to look like she wears no makeup, flushed pink cheeks, and blonde hair pulled back in cute little French braids behind. She smacks on a wad of bubble gum, and every few patrons she stops in front of one of the men and devotes a few seconds of her performance to him, blowing a big pink bubble with her gum and swishing her hands through her skirt to give the guy a glimpse of what is underneath.
There is some quiet activity to the left and right of me around the horseshoe bar, and I notice that my fellow patrons are hurrying to place folding money on the edge of the stage in front of them. Kathleen is not taking the money yet, but I sense that she is attentive to the activity. A quick survey tells me that I might be the only guy among the forty or so who line the stage who has not placed at least a dollar on the stage for Kathleen. I am not a big spender under any circumstances, but I don’t like feeling like a cheapskate, and I squirm a little wondering if I should ante up. I hate what is going on here and I don’t want to contribute financially to it if I can help it, but maybe a dollar for Kathleen won’t hurt. I don’t think of myself as an equivocal man, yet I’m not often placed in circumstances for which I have had so little schooling as those which I have faced today, and I am beginning to feel as if I am losing myself a bit. Giving Kathleen a dollar seems, at the least, like the polite thing to do.
I remove a dollar from my billfold and place it on the stage, neatly folded in half length-wise like the dollars I see to my left and right. A few seconds later Kathleen steps in front of me and I watch as she blows a big pink bubble and flounces her skirt to offer a quick view of her cleanly shaved pubic area, then does a quick deep knee bend to display even more. When she lowers herself her face comes within a foot or so of mine and I raise my eyes to hers rather than leave them lowered for the head-on in-the-stirrups view to which she is challenging me. Kathleen discreetly picks up my dollar bill, winks at me, and whispers, “Thanks, Daddy.” I flush.
Do I belong here? Certainly not. I want to get up and leave right now. I stand up uncomfortably and decide I will have a better chance of accomplishing something if I move back away from the stage. I scan quickly around the perimeter of the club. The place is rather dark away from the main stage, but I can make out some couples, as well as some guys who are sitting alone, in the dark at the tables along the walls. The movement of the couples has a shadowy quality as if there was camouflaged, undercover activity in progress. At least if I sit back there I will be able to get a better idea of what is going on in this place where over five thousand dollars has been put on my credit card in the past two weeks.
“Hi, Mister.”
Like just about every other girl in the place, she looks too young to be working here legally. She is outfitted in what appears to be a ballet class get-up with a leotard, leg warmers, ballet slippers, and her brown hair up in a bun. The leotard is made of a very thin flesh-colored material and hides nothing, least of all her ribs, which are very prominent.
“Hello.”
“Could you get me a lollipop, Mister?”
“I have this one,” I answer. “Is it any good to you?” I assume, since I was required to buy the lollipop when I entered, that it constitutes some kind of economic currency.
“Sure, Mister, it’s good to me,” she says. Something about her manner of speaking makes me feel as if I have stepped into a scene out of some kind of sexually charged Oliver Twist. “I could suck it for you, Mister. Would you like that?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” I say it without rancor.
“I don’t usually get a ‘No’ for an answer,” she says. She seems to be re-appraising me. “I just mean to say that I could sit with you for a little while, while I suck on your lollipop. This lollipop.” She takes my hand, which is still holding the lollipop, and holds it up, so that I won’t be confused.
“Okay,” I say. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I didn’t understand.” I half expect to be chastised for having my mind in the gutter.
“Please sit down,” I offer. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Myst. Like the game.”
“Myst. That’s an original name.”
“I’m an original girl, Mister. What’s your name?”
“Do you really need to know?”
“Of course not, Mister. But it might be nicer than calling you Mister.”
“You’re the first woman in here who hasn’t called me Daddy.”
“Yeah. I’m not really down with the whole Daddy thing.”
“That’s good.”
“Do you have a daughter?”
“I do.”
“I used to be somebody’s daughter, too.”
“I was just thinking of that,” I say. “Anyway, my name is Stanley.”
Myst laughs.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No. Why would I be kidding?”
“It’s just funny. We kind of have a regular here lately, whose name is Stanley.”
“Oh? That is funny. Not a very common name any more.”
I have an idea, nothing very brilliant, but worth a try.
“I hope it’s not my son, Stanley Junior.”
“Not unless you have a son who is about your age.”
“No. What’s ‘about my age?’”
“Now you are putting me on the spot, Stanley.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t hold it against you if you get it wrong. You’ll probably never see me again after tonight.”
“You’re from out of town?”
“Yes.”
“Convention or something?”
“No. I’m just here on an internet deal.”
“Cool. I think you are, let’s see, forty-six?”
“Well, thank you. I’m flattered. I haven’t been forty-six in a while.”
“Last year?”
“Seven years ago.”
“Oh. I’m terrible at this. I wasn’t even close! You keep in pretty good shape for a fifty-something.”
I know she is toying with me, but it suits my purposes as well as hers.
“That’s a nice way to put it. A fifty-something. How old were you seven years ago?”
“Seven years ago. H’mm. I guess I was the same age that we’re supposed to try to look today.”
“Pardon?”
“Fifteen. They tell us to try to look like we’re fifteen. At the oldest.”
She reaches above and behind her head and in one quick movement pulls out a sharply pointed thin wooden dowel that has been holding her bun in place. She shakes out her brown hair and it cascades down in a stunning mass that reaches all the way down her back to her tiny waist.
“That was dramatic.”
She stares at me, in assent, acknowledging that, yes, she has a capacity for the dramatic.
“They actually make a point of telling all of you that they want you to look like you are no older than fifteen? That’s pretty sick.”
Now her stare turns quizzical.
“Hey, Stanley, look around. Didn’t you see the sign above the door when you came in here? The name of the place is ‘Little Girls.’ What’s that saying from the Bible? Let he who is without sin?”
“Cast the first stone,” I finish for her.
“Yeah, that’s it. I mean, not to put too fine a point on this, Stanley, but you’re here, aren’t you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Always is.”
“I suppose so.”
“Let me find out you’re really a cop or a detective or something like that.”
“Do I look like a detective?” I counter.
“You mean, as opposed to a pedophile?”
“Right. I guess I am trying to play detective, but only for myself.”
“Okay, Stanley, I’ll tell you what. Just to help me get through the night, I’ll be your assistant detective if you buy me another lollipop. Who are we trying to catch?”
“The other Stanley.”
“Why him?”
“I think he might have taken my name.”
“What, there’s a law now against another guy having the name Stanley?”
“No, what I mean is, I think he might have really stolen my name. My whole name. And everything that goes with it.”
“Why would he want to do that?
“I haven’t figured that part out yet. I mean, there’s money, I suppose, but it’s not like I’m loaded or anything.”
“What’s your last name, Stanley?”
“Branford. Stanley Branford.”
“Wow. Bingo. I think that’s it.”
“You’ve seen his whole name?”
“I’ve handled his credit card a few times. It rings a bell, put it that way.”
“Why are you backpedaling?”
“Backpedaling?”
“First you say Bingo, but then you say it rings a bell. Doesn’t that sound like backpedaling to you?”
“I see what you mean. I’m just trying to be careful. I don’t want to lose my job because I tell you something and then you spill your guts to somebody and put me out there.”
I place my hand over hers on the table. “Don’t worry,” I say. “Anything you tell me will stay with me.”
“Sure it will, Stanley. Until it doesn’t.”
“This is so hard.”
“What’s hard, Stanley?”
“It’s just that I am not used to talking with somebody and not having her believe me. All my life, people have believed me without questioning it. I had never really thought about how it would feel if people doubted me all the time. Then today, suddenly, it’s like somebody has taken my world and turned it upside down. Nobody believes me.”
“Have you ever set foot in a strip club before tonight, Stanley?”
“Never.”
“Never?”
“Well, once. My wife and I took a trip to New Orleans and went into a place in the French Quarter together.”
“The only time you’ve ever been to a strip club was with your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Stanley. I’ll buy it. But I don’t think many girls would. We get pretty used to shovel duty in here.”
“Shovel duty?”
“You know, one line of bullshit after another. Of course what most guys don’t understand is that they are getting the same stuff back from the girls.”
“They don’t understand it because they believe you are little girls, like the sign says.”
“And their own little girls would never lie to them, right, Stanley?”
“And they would never lie to their little girls.”
“Except maybe about coming in here and watching us little girls pull down our pants and touch ourselves.”
“Yeah. I guess they wouldn’t want their little girls to know about that.”
“No.”
“You think he might come in here tonight?”
“Who?”
“The other Stanley.”
“He’s here just about every night. He makes deliveries.”
“He’s a delivery man?”
“No.” Myst sizes me up again. “You gotta promise me.”
“Promise you?”
“You promise me you’re not vice or an investigator or anything like that?”
“I promise.”
“Okay. I don’t know why I should trust you, Stanley, but I guess I do. The other Stanley comes in here with a couple of bottles of pills just about every night, about eleven.”
“What kind of pills?”
“Diet pills. They’re called Redux. They’ve been outlawed, off the market, for a few years, but we’re all about getting as many as we can here, and the other Stanley is our hook-up.”
“Diet pills, for the girls?”
“For the girls, Stanley?”
“Why would any of you want diet pills? None of you even looks like you weigh a hundred pounds.”
“Think, Stanley. None of us does weigh a hundred pounds. That’s another thing they tell us.”
“They tell you you have to weigh less than a hundred pounds?”
“More than tell. First thing we have to do when we come in each afternoon is strip down, weigh in, and wax. If we weigh in at a hundred pounds or more we can’t work that day. Three days in a row and we’re out of a job. Then we get made up to look like we’re too young to wear any makeup.”
“Jesus. This is starting to sound like some kind of weird JonBenet Ramsey deal.”
“As it should. But it’s a very successful formula, Stanley. They’re opening up new clubs in Providence and Worcester this month. It makes a lot of money for the girls, and a ton of money for the club.”
“And the other Stanley supplies the girls with the diet pills. The formula must make some money for him, too.”
“Pretty good money, and some extras, too.”
“Extras?”
“Some of the girls come across for him, but I hear he is pretty strange, even for this place. The club pays him very well to keep the pills coming in. If some of these girls started looking their real age I suspect a lot of these sickos would lose interest in a hurry.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t out of business already because of how young these girls are. Or look.”
“Everybody who works here has paperwork that proves that they are at least eighteen.”
“Proves?”
“Well, proves, claims, whatever. It also doesn’t hurt to have some very influential patrons.”
“Customers?”
“There are some heavy hitters who come in here. There’s a back room, of course. But we also do private parties. Sort of like catering.”
“Sort of. There’s something else I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“If the club is paying him so well for the pills, which is he running up five hundred bucks a night on my credit card?”
“I don’t know, Stanley. Because he can. Or maybe they’re just laundering money for him. All I know if I wish I had a credit card that could take a five hundred a night.”
“So do I,” I say. “So do I.”
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