Wednesday, November 23
Breathing heavily, Agostino stared at Tanner. Who stared back, sending sunshine and cheer. It bounced back. Five seconds later, Agostino bellowed again.
Stanley Green lumbered into the vestibule, his watery eyes blank. He swept a cop glance at Tanner, again poking his curls. Green’s gravelly voice was neutral when he spoke.
“Boss?”
Agostino used the bouncer’s arrival to break eye contact. “New bouncer. Tell him what’s what. Put him on the back hall.”
“Back hall?”
“Don’t fucking question me. Just do it.” He marched off, frustrated rage in every move, swivel-hipping around a garish poster on an easel in the doorway.
Green stepped forward, hand outstretched. The hand had a pronounced tremor. “Stanley Green, head bouncer.”
“Carl Tanner. Cool to meet you, dude.”
“Since when do we need another bouncer?”
“My Uncle Don hired me. He’s, like, helping me get re-established here. I had a little, uh, difficulty in California.”
“If it was drugs, leave `em home. We got cops and dogs out our asses at times. C’mon.”
Green ambled into the mirror-backed bar. A bare-chested bartender in a red leather vest, bent over a cutting board, looked up.
“Mike,” Green said, “this is Carl. New bouncer. You bartend, Carl?”
“Sure. I can, like, do almost anything. Except strip.”
Mike waved the hand with a knife in it, but smiled. “Howdy, Carl. You need a bar tour, come see me. Could be slow tonight, Wednesdays usually are. Just so’s you know, you shoot your own sodas down at the service bar.”
Tanner noted the service bar at the far end. A hallway ended there, right by the waiter’s station, the payment center, and what looked like the hatch to the kitchen.
“No drinking on the job,” Green said with blithe disregard for the reek of booze surrounding him. Near the end of the bar, the sounds of a kitchen became louder, backed by rapid-fire Spanish. “You can eat on your break, five bucks, chef’s choice. Teodoro picks an employee dish every night. He’s Salvadorian, so it’s usually messican shit. Some of us order pizza or Chink from outside.”
Tanner looked through the open hatch. The kitchen was long, narrow, scrubbed. Everyone was in clean white tee shirts and jeans except one. A short, swarthy man in a white chef’s jacket turned and waved, said something in Spanish. It roughly translated to Here’s that fat, drunken asshole. He eats in tonight, I’m gonna spit in his food again.
“That’s Teo. Keeps the wetbacks in line. You speak spic?”
“Spanish?” Tanner shook his head. “Not much. Hola, cerveza and gracias, mostly. You?”
“American’s good enough for me. I’ll show you the rest, then leave you in the back hall. Waste of a body, you ask me. But Richie don’t ask nobody nuthin’. You’ll learn quick that he don’t take suggestions too good. Hates the word no. So save your breath.”
“Got it.” Was Green shutting down avenues of communication so the manager was isolated? Or was Green really saving his breath? He didn’t seem to type to do favors.
They entered the showroom through a wide doorway. The space was maybe fifty feet deep, seventy-plus feet long, with the mirrored stage angling into the room at the halfway point. Silver was the dominant color, with black seating. Green motioned left, to a silver-curtained doorway on the end wall.
“Back hall. Dancer’s dressing room and shower, storerooms, employee lounge and toilet,” his mouth twisted sourly, “the emergency exit, all down there. All off limits to guests, but always some dumbo tries. Just shoo ‘em back. Politely.”
Tanner walked through the tables, parted the heavy curtain, and peered down the narrow hall. It passed two doors on each side and ended in a steel fire exit. The air was pungent with pot smoke. “So I’ll be, like, down here all night?”
“Yeah. If Richie wants to use the hall, then you’ll come out here.” He narrowed his eyes and Tanner saw the cop. “So here’s the deal. You don’t use dope, drink, smoke, or fondle the goods on company time. You straight?”
“Dude.” He walked back to Green. “Yeah. Course I am.”
“We had a bouncer was gay, was making goo-goo eyes at the dancers. After three days Richie told me to take care of him.” He smacked his hands together and cracked his big knuckles.
“So,” he went on, “no touchy, no feelie, either the girls or the boys. You park around back. Come and go by the back door. We rotate last man out, so next week if you’re still here you’ll start locking up. I’ll show you the drill if you get that far.”
A large man plodded through the curtains like a supertanker coming out of the fog. Bud Cobb was bigger in life than the photo suggested, and maybe way dumber. Green beckoned his nephew over. It took him a few seconds of serious thinking to act. When he moved, it was like watching that tanker head out to sea, big and unlovely and seemingly unstoppable.
“Yuh,” Cobb said upon arrival, his dull eyes staying glued on Green. A strong scent of pot drifted around him.
“Bud, this is Carl. Carl, this is Bud, bouncer and headbreaker. We don’t use him for the head-bashing much.”
“Yah,” Cobb sighed with obvious sorrow.
“Hey, dude,” Tanner said, extending a hand. At once, he regretted it.
“Be nice,” Green warned, and the pressure from the car-crusher grip relaxed. Green shrugged. “He’s my sister’s kid.”
Cobb released Tanner’s hand, stood looking aimlessly around. A burst of music blasted from speakers. Off in the far left corner, the deejay in his Plexiglas-fronted booth experimented with the sound board.
“Showtime,” Cobb rumbled and set off for the bar. Had Neanderthals moved like that?
“Uh, dude, I gotta ask,” Tanner said. “Bud. He always like that?”
“Yeah. Useless until you need him. Then priceless. One last thing. You’re always polite, never rude, to a guest..” He adjusted his tie with trembling fingers, a gesture Tanner already knew. “Richie. He treats most guests like they’re interviewing for a job on their knees. But he signs the paychecks. So all of us are polite. Richie? Not so much. Get over it.”
“Got it. He, like, does what he wants, and we do what he wants.”
“You’re smarter than you look.” He stopped fiddling with his tie. “Get back to the hall. At least you need to take a leak, the employee bathroom’s right there. Advice?” Tanner nodded. “Use the crapper in the back room, not the performers’. They’re pissy about their space.”
***
Big money had been spent on the sound system, big enough to put cracks in the ceiling when the deejay cranked up the volume. The enormous speakers appeared to be positioned to blast directly into the back hall. Tanner was functionally deaf before the strippers – call us dancers, thank you very much – began their routines.
Before that, Green had sent Bud to relieve him. His break: thirty minutes in the kitchen, sitting on a metal stool in the corner of the prep area, eating some of the best pork tacos he’d ever chowed down on. He asked for more chilies and Teo loaded him up, then stood back with a big grin. Waiting for him to faint, choke, or breathe fire, probably. But Tanner loved hot foods, and just scarfed them up.
“Muchas gracias, Señor Teodoro,” he said after cleaning the plate and mopping the sweat off his forehead. “Molto deliciozo.”
Teo turned to the room and in machine-gun Spanish told the crew that the new gringo spoke very good Italian and had actually said thank you and that nobody was to spit in his food. The crew laughed and Teo gave him a generous portion of caramel flan for desert, along with the caution that he wasn’t to tell anyone. The custard was private stock for the kitchen, apparently.
Tanner went back to the hot box, now reeking of pot. Minutes later, Green ambled through – “Just checkin’, relax.” – and sequestered himself in the employee lounge/paper goods storeroom for ten minutes. He was a bit unsteady when he came out.
The midweek shows were put on by the second string: six Mr. Americas of various colors sporting a variety of fades, tatts and piercings. The second string had a few problems with choreography, which might’ve explained the sparse house. The guests made up in volume what they lacked in numbers. Tanner figured a lot of them were regulars.
He stood in front of the back door, arms folded, sweating in his all-black uniform, having graphic flashbacks of the oven-like heat of the Sonoran desert. Faces of the fugitive women slipped through his mind: exhausted, frightened, numbly resigned, but forging on. Their dignity in the face of fate’s cruel indifference had stayed with him.
He didn’t want them here, eight yards from Crave’s well-dressed, well-fed, happy guests. But they wouldn’t go away. Hanging in, pushing forward, had been their great talent. They’d personified some of the strengths that he found admirable in women. Beyond the curtain, delighted screams. He shook his head, wishing away the ghosts.
The music reached a thundering crescendo, the deejay babbling superlatives as the dancers took their final turns. Tanner looked at his watch: ten-ten.
A woman stepped through the curtain, stopped with a little shriek when he detached himself from the shadows and strode toward her. Dramatically, she sagged against the wall, one hand on her chest.
“Jeez, you scared the hell outa me.”
“Sorry, miss. This is private back here. If you want the ladies, it’s off the vestibule. Just turn left when you go through the doorway.”
She eyed him, calculation in her eyes. “Cozy back here.” She toyed with the neckline of her blouse. It was showing a nice bit of cleavage. She messed with it, she could wind up half-naked. And he could be accused of getting her that way. She licked her lips.
“You been sick, sweetie? You look kinda drawn.”
“Employees only in here, miss. Just go back through the curtain.”
“You got a nice body, Mr. Bouncer. You’d make a good stripper.”
He shuddered. “No way. Now get going, please. Don’t make me get mean.”
This being polite was wearing him down. He was used to people jumping when he gave an order. Maybe he hadn’t given it the right inflection? Should he sound sterner? He could do stern real good, but this hardly seemed the right place for that kind of behavior. The woman did another top-to-toe survey.
“You look like an undertaker in that outfit, honey. Guy with your coloring, it isn’t your best shade. That Prince Harry hair and skin? You’re probably a Summer. You’d have to wear a, oh, maybe a royal blue or red g-string. No,” she said eyeing his crotch as if measuring for a custom fit, “emerald green.”
What the hell was she babbling about? He cleared his throat. She looked up, her lower lip pouty. Made a face.
“Okay, okay, I’m going. Tell me your name first.”
“Go through the curtain. I’ll tell you when you’re back in there.”
Were they all so obstinate? What part of private area didn’t she get? In the military, with this attitude, she’d be picking up cigarette butts until her spine was permanently curved. He put his hands on his hips and tried a glare. Aha, the magic move.
She flounced down the hall. Flung open the drapes. Paused. Looked back over her shoulder. He made a shooing motion with his hands. She stuck out her tongue, but went through.
“Carl,” he said. “But don’t tell anybody. I’m only a bouncer. You’ll never see me up on that stage.”