The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer? Page 9

  So it was just a little difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

  I looked at the clock and discovered that I had spent several hours reading the emails. The late afternoon sun was already out, and rush hour was past its peak, though in Atlanta it took several hours for the pig to get through the python every day, so there was still some rush hour left.

  I had been running the names of some of the letter writers through a Web search engine and had gotten some interesting results, that, in conjunction with the emails, suggested possible leads. Nothing so clear as a smoking gun, but enough to make investigation worthwhile.

  Meanwhile, I thought I'd investigate the thought I'd had earlier. I called Frank Plunkett, the man who was covering April's house for me.

  "Plunkett Technologies," Frank answered when I called.

  "Hey, Frank, it's me, John," I said. "How are things going over there?"

  "Just fine," said Plunkett. "I got over about 45 minutes after you called and was set up within ten minutes -- the phone system here is really simple because they mostly use cells. But I figure any call for April could come in on the main line, so I'm hooked into both."

  "Sounds about right," I said.

  "Kitten tells me there haven't been any calls of the sort we think might happen, but I'm ready if there are," Plunkett said.

  "Glad to hear it," I said. "Could you put Kitten on your cell so I can talk to her?"

  "Sure, and John -- thanks for this gig. Apart from the money, Elmo is going to eat his heart out when I tell him about Kitten," said Plunkett.

  "And so he should," I said. "Thanks to you for working on such short notice." "

  "Ah, it's the nature of the beast," said Plunkett. "Here's Kitten."

  "Hello, Master John," said Kitten. "It is good to hear from you."

  "Good to hear from you, Kitten," I said. "Listen, I've thought of another potential angle to investigate and you probably know April well enough to know if it's worth following. Did April ever do any dancing in nudie bars?"

  'Yes, before she got into beledi dance, she made money for college dancing at a couple of clubs downtown," Kitten said.

  "Which clubs?" I asked.

  "There were several," Kitten replied, "before she settled down in the Purple Persimmon Club. That's where she did most of her dancing."

  "Did April have any enemies, or ... persistent admirers ... from her dancing days?" I asked.

  "Not that I know of," responded Kitten. "I mean, there were rivalries between the dancers which could get pretty sharp, since the top dancers made a lot more cash than the rest, and toward the end of her stay April was far and away the top dancer at the Purple Persimmon."

  "So she had rivals," I said.

  "Yes," April responded. "But they weren't enemies or anything. It was more a case of doing things like putting ground glass in your shoes, or itching powder on your thong, than doing stuff like kidnapping."

  "I understand," I said. "What about admirers?"

  "Well, dancing in nudie bars is all about attracting admirers," said Kitten. "I'm sure April had plenty -- she was a really good dancer. But I never heard her mention any admirers who were stalkers, if I get your drift."

  "You get my drift," I said. "But just because they weren't stalkers then doesn't mean they aren't stalkers now."

  "I see," said Kitten. "How is your investigation going?"

  "We've got some leads that look promising, but nothing definite," I said. "We definitely know she was kidnapped by a group, rather than a single individual. And that's a good thing, in the sense that members of groups talk a lot, and also leave trails when they plan and organize. It's much harder to track your psychotic loner."

  "So, you think there's hope we can find her?" Kitten asked.

  "Of course there's hope," I said. "I wouldn't have taken the case if I didn't think I had some kind of chance of finding her."

  What I didn't tell Kitten was that when I had taken the case, I hadn't really thought she was kidnapped.

  Chapter 8

  You look like a guy who has his nuts screwed on right

  I called the Persimmon and found out the owner, a Mrs. Oakes, was in the club, and that she'd been the owner for the last decade, hence was around when April was dancing at the club.

  The exterior of the Purple Persimmon was a featureless cube painted a pastel shade of purple with pink trim. It had a large sign announcing its name in big letters with a stylized image of young woman clad in a tiny bikini, holding a wedge of the fruit the club was named after in her hand right at crotch level, as if offering it to the viewer. Subtle.

  The inside of the place was a dark, raucous cavern, filled with blaring pop music. There were about 30 customers in the place, and three women were dancing naked for them. I went to the bar where a gal in a thong and a vest and nothing else dispensed drinks and got pointed to the manager's office. I had to wait a bit while the manager settled up accounts with a beer distributor, in a tiny room with a single overstuffed chair and a couple of folding chairs that looked like afterthoughts. At least the magazines scattered around the room had pictures of naked women in them. I looked at all the pictures of silicon-enhanced, peroxided cuties flashing their womanly curves at me and found myself wishing that all waiting rooms had a few magazines of the same sort. It would make waiting a lot easier for most guys.

  Mrs. Oakes turned out to be an ex-dancer who was in that indefinable middle-age that women who care deeply about their appearance maintain from their 40s to their 70s.

  Her walls were plastered with photos of dancers embracing various celebrities who had visited the club over the years, mostly athletes and writers and such who didn't have to worry about being known as a nudie club visitor. I knew from my years on the Atlanta PD that plenty of cops, politicians and civic leaders liked to come to the clubs, but they were leery about being photographed during their visits.

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Bowman? Oakes asked in businesslike way.

  "You can help me find April Dancer, who I understand danced at your club a few years ago," I said. "She's been kidnapped."

  "What?" Oakes asked.

  "She's been kidnapped," I repeated. "We've reported it to the police. You should hear about it on the evening news."

  "I'll be glad to help any way I can," said Oakes. "But it's been a couple of years since she danced here. I don't know what I could give you in the way of leads."

  "I don't expect you to pull leads out of thin air for me," I said. "If you could just answer my questions as best you can, that will help a lot, I'm sure. For example, did April have any particularly interested fans while she danced here? Guys who seemed obsessively interested in her or who were fans of her and no one else, and fans for a long time."

  "She had a lot of really interested fans," said Oakes. "But you have to understand, she was our best dancer by far at the time, probably the best we've ever had. It's no wonder she became famous for her belly dance. And you know, she was loved by most of the other dancers -- even though she's famous now, she still comes here, though she doesn't dance here any more."

  "Why does she come?" I asked.

  "Oh, I guess for the same reason a famous athlete goes back to the hood to hang with his homies," said Oakes. "A couple of the dancers who were just starting when she was here are still here with us -- we're not like some clubs where they turn the girls out when they reach 25. We've got a few in their late 30s. They're the ones who April hangs with, though she's happy to talk with the young ones, too."

  "So mostly they just sit and talk," I said.

  "Yeah, I do the same when I have the chance, which isn't often," Oakes said. "April has some great tales to tell."

  "Are any of her old enemies still here?" I asked.

  "Joy is," Oakes said. "She's on shift today, in fact. The older gals get the late afternoon/early evening shifts, since they bring in less money. But Joy would never do anything like a kidnapping. If you rendered her absolutely furious, she might go so far as to pun
cture your tires or key your paint job, but that's about it. And it's not as if some of the gals who go through here wouldn't kill you for a twenty dollar bill if they thought they could get away with it."

  "Any of those gals hate April?" I asked.

  "Not particularly," Oakes said, "but with those gals it doesn't matter if they hate you or not, just if they have the chance and think they can get away with it. There have only been a couple like that, but that's more than enough."

  She was talking about sociopaths, I was pretty sure of it. Made sense. Sociopaths typically didn't have inhibitions or morals, some female sociopaths might naturally tend to gravitate toward the sex industry.

  "Could you give me their names?" I asked.

  "Sure, so long as no one ever learns where you got them," said Oakes. "Cindy Higdon, Nancy Thornton, Maude Hiott and Teresa Radner."

  "Are any of them still here?" I asked.

  "No, they tend to move on to prostitution rather quickly," Oakes said. "More money there, and frankly I didn't try to keep any of them around because I was always afraid of finding a customer's throat slit and pockets emptied in the parking lot, once I figured out what they were."

  "Got a last known address or phone number?" I asked. "And are those their real names?

  "Of course they're their real names, stage names never have last names and tend to be two syllables at most," said Oakes. "Let me check my books." I sat and waited while Oakes rummaged through her incredibly disorderly desk, finally pulling up two old tattered notebooks.

  "Why don't you keep it in the computer?" I asked.

  "Hell, I never could work that thing," Oakes said. "Anyway, I have enough trouble keeping up with things in the real world."

  "Computers have a function called "Find," I said. "You type in the name of what you're looking for, and you find it. It's hard to beat."

  "I'll stick with paper," Oakes said in the firm tones of one whose mind is slammed shut.

  Oakes read me off the most recent names and addresses of the women and I wrote them down on my phone's notepad.

  "Were there any customers you could name that were particularly interested in April?" I asked. "Or customers who liked April who made you uneasy?"

  "Hell, most of our customers would make any woman uneasy once they've got enough booze in them and they've been eyeballing the girls long enough," said Oakes. "Lessee, April ... nope. Can't think of any in particular. With her, it's kinda hard, because she could really dance and she had a LOT of admirers. Picking one out as more interested than the rest would be hard."

  "That's OK, but if you think of someone, please give me a call," I said, handing her my card. "Would it be all right if I talk with Joy?"

  "Sure," Oakes said. "Slip her a twenty and she'll give you a table dance while she talks."

  "Sounds good to me," I said.

  "You look like a guy who has his nuts screwed on right," Oakes said, grinning.

  I went out to the main dance floor and sat down at an empty table that wasn't too close to any of the dance stages, and asked for Joy.

  By the time my drink arrived (a $6.00 glass of Coke -- I was on the job) Joy was headed over for my table. She was a tall, leggy blonde with artificially enhanced boobs. She was wearing a bright red sling thong -- just a pair of thin straps that ran over her shoulders down to a tiny little patch of cloth at her crotch, with a matching red bra that just barely covered her nipples. The sling was so tight that when she leaned forward to shake my hand as she introduced herself to me, the straps were pulled well away from her back, forming a straight line from her shoulders to her butt, an oddly erotic thing.

  "I'm Joy," she said. "Nice to meet you."

  "Nice to meet you," I said, smiling. Her near-nudity made me feel protective, so I tried to make her feel welcome.

  "So, you up for a table dance?" Joy asked.

  "No," I said. "I'm just here to ask a few questions -- but I'll be glad to pay you for your time."

  "Sorry, management frowns on us taking money from guys unless we dance for them," Joy said. "OK if I dance for you and then we can talk? Management is fine with gals visiting with guys after a dance."

  "Works for me," I said.

  "OK, next song comes up in about a minute," said Joy. "I'm gonna go get my smokes from the bar. I'll be back in time for the dance."

  "Sure," I said.

  I watched Joy walk away. The straps of the sling thong that sprang out of the top wiggled back and forth as her hips swung from side to side. Her walk defined "slinky."

  She came back a few moments later and casually dropped a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the table, along with a glass of what appeared to be ginger ale.

  "Next song is about ready to start," she said. "It's ten dollars for a dance."

  "But I can tip more if I want to," I said.

  "Yes, you can," Joy said with a smile.

  The music started, a disco tune that had an easy beat and Joy casually picked it up, swaying before me, exhibiting her body to me in all its beauty and grace.

  I smiled up at Joy and leaned back with my legs spread wide. In the clubs there was a reversal of sorts in the normal male-female interactions rules, occasioned by the no-touching rule. The men spread their legs wide so the women could approach them closely.

  Joy casually peeled off her thong, which resolved itself into a scant handful of material which she casually laid on the table next to me. Then she peeled off her bra to reveal two full but natural-looking breasts with nipples that were full and round.

  Joy placed her hands on either side of the back of my chair and leaned forward so that her breasts brushed my face. Her perfume was strong, a deep, flowery scent offset by a hint of sandalwood. I liked it, perhaps because it was being almost rubbed in my face by a pair of soft, pendulous breasts with big, distended nipples on the end of them.

  She leaned back after a moment then stood swaying her hips, and took one breast in her hand and arched her neck gracefully downward and sucked on her nipple. She looked at me intently as she did so, in what was supposed to have been a steamy manner. I guess it was steamy, but it somehow didn't do much for me.

  Next Joy turned her back to me and came in real close to me, so that the backs of her legs were touching my inner thighs. She could touch me, I couldn't touch her. Joy bent over at the waist, her hips waggling gently in time to the music, as if set on automatic. When she bent over so close to me, I could see every last fold and crenelation of her pussy up close and personal, as well as the puckered dimple of her asshole. Here was a gal who had no secrets.

  Joy did something mysterious with her butt muscles and her pussy twitched in front of my face. I could smell her pussy, too. It was nice.

  I felt a familiar stirring in my loins. It was strange because I felt no personal attraction toward Joy. She had just cranked my dick up as if she had a tow line on it, without any sense of human connection at all.

  Whereas when Kitten had sucked my cock last night, the feeling had been warm and personal. She had liked me, I had liked her.

  But I didn't like this woman who now ran her fingers through her labia and spread them wide so I could see the pink mysteries inside them, then twitched her butt again to make the pink mysteries pulse. It wasn't that I disliked her. I just didn't like her, but my cock responded to the shaven beauty of her pussy just the same.

  I knew the feeling all too well. During my days as a working cop I had met many women I did not like but had been attracted to, and had had a lot of chances with them. Which I had taken, indiscriminately, even though I was married. Turns out that had been a mistake.

  Still there was something vaguely real about the submissiveness with which Joy displayed herself to me. She'd responded to me as a man in principle, showing every secret part of herself to me. Her mind and heart were opaque, though.

  I didn't blame her for that. Opening yourself up indiscriminately for the guys who came into strip clubs was a recipe for disaster. But still, it kept this wall between us. />
  For the next two minutes or so she writhed in front of me and continued to display her every nookie and cranny to me. It was sexy writhing and a gynecological exam (I could state with some authority that she didn't have any yeast infections.) My favorite part was when she leaned down over me and brought her breasts up against my face, so close that I could feel how soft they were, and best of all I could smell her warm, womanly scent. And yet it was mostly a matter of waiting for it to be over, because what I really wanted to do was find April Dancer.

  When the music ended she stopped dancing, and I applauded her and smiled and put $20 in the only garment she wore other than her heels, which was a garter belt.

  "Thanks," Joy said, smiling. "I do appreciate the tip. You're very nice."

  Joy casually tied her bra back on then stepped into her sling thong and stretched the straps over her shoulder, like a man putting on suspenders that were hooked to a band-aid instead of pants. She had to position it quite carefully to keep her labia from peeking out of it.

  Joy sat down in the chair opposite me and said, "So what do you want to talk about?" as if I had come by to complain about my wife or my job.

  'I'm trying to find out about April Dancer," I said. "I was told you knew her, that you were dancing here when she was a couple of years ago."

  "I knew her," said Joy, "but we weren't best friends or anything."

  "Yeah, I was told you didn't get along with her," I said.

  "That's true, so what?" Joy asked.

  "Well, I'm interested because April has disappeared, and I've been ordered to investigate," I said, not mentioning that my orders came from a private citizen, not a police chief. "We've learned that she was kidnapped. We don't know who did it. Now, if I went around asking all her good buddies about what kind of woman she was and so forth, I'd just get a lot of blah-blah-blah about what a fine person she was who would never harm a fly, and who didn't have an enemy in the world. It's the people who didn't like her so well that will often come up with useful information in situations like this. So, what I want to know is, why didn't you and April get along?"