“Do what?”

“There’s a whole world outside the door.”

She gave me a glance and went out to toss the smoke away from the potential-evidence field.

“You know where Darlene danced?” I asked Driscoll.

“The Velvet Pony in Hialeah. Some places take all your money, but Dar made enough to get by.”

Belafonte returned holding a beer can found on the ground and handed it to Driscoll. “Try using this, ma’am.”

“I own the place,” Driscoll snapped, ashes crumbling from her mouth to the floor. “I’ll goddamn do what I want.”

I realized her odd anger had nothing to do with smoking procedure and everything to do with the request coming from a woman having youth and beauty. Belafonte affected her best Concerned Public Protector face.

“In a teensy bit, ma’am, our evidence unit will be here. They’re a meticulous lot, and will find ashes on the floor. They’ll want to make sure they’re your ashes and not from the person who harmed Miss Hammond. You’ll have to undergo a hemochromatic nicotinic analysis. Have you given blood before?”

Even the Botox-relaxed features of Driscoll crinkled into fear.

“It takes blood, this hemo-whatever?”

“Hardly any. The only problem is, the blood has to come from your lip because that’s where the cigarettes are.” Belafonte smiled sweetly.

Driscoll couldn’t grab the can fast enough. “Will I still have to do that, that thing?” she said, eyes wide.

Belafonte’s big browns scanned the carpet. “I don’t believe you’ve reached critical ash mass yet, Ms Driscoll. You should be fine.”

I started to laugh, but twisted it into a throat-clearing sound. “Was Darlene smart, would you say?” I asked, resuming my questions.

Driscoll carefully tapped ash into the can before answering. “Poor Dar wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, tell the truth. She didn’t finish high school, always talking about getting her GED. Never would have happened.” Driscoll paused to think, and I saw sadness reach her eyes. “Dar was the kind of girl always hoping for something better, and wanting it so badly that anyone who come along and promised it … well, she’d fall right under their spell. Innocent, in her own way.”

We got all we could get from Driscoll and left, after getting her to promise to lock the apartment until scene forensics came by later in the day. Our next stop would be the Velvet Pony.

“Hemochromatic?” I side-mouthed as we headed back to the Rover. “Critical ash mass?”

“The stinky old bag was dripping bloody ashes everywhere. I had to do something.”

I laughed, a moment of mirth in a long and dark day.

34

We pulled into a parking lot of broken asphalt with weeds pushing from cracks, cans and bottles and debris strewn about. Shadows owned the inside of the Velvet Pony, the sole light above the unoccupied stage, one side fronted by the bar area, a smattering of men hunched over drinks. My nose wrinkled on entrance and I recalled Harry Nautilus’s take on the smell: “Every strip joint in the country is connected by tubes pumping fumes of stale beer and dead cigarettes back and forth between them, Carson. They been pumping this same air since 1953 and no one ever thinks to change it.”

The barkeep made us as cops within an eye-blink, and stifled a yawn. “We’re here about Darlene Hammond,” I said.

“She ain’t showed up for two days.”

“The owner around?”

“Lives in Jacksonville, comes in once a month. You want to talk to Monica Dwell, the club manager.” He nodded toward a back booth holding a woman in a blue pantsuit going through what appeared to be receipts and clicking on a calculator. The woman was in her forties, bone skinny, with a tiny mouth and bulgy eyes that made her look like a mix of human and insect. The extra mascara calling out the eyes didn’t help. Neither did the frizzed-out hairdo. Or the tattoo encircling her neck, two strands of barbed wire.

“Yeah?” Dwell said in a nasal voice, not looking up. “What’s Miami’s Finest need?”

I showed the gold.

“FCLE? What the hell you think we did?”

“We’re here about Darlene Hammond. I’m sorry to say she was found dead. Murdered.”

The calculator was pushed aside. “Oh fuckin’ Jesus … How?”

“I can’t comment yet. How long did Darlene work here?”

A shrug. “Shit, I dunno. A year, more or less.”

“Did she appear frightened of late? Nervous?”

A head shake. “Darlene came in, did her shift, boogied. Nothing seemed off.”

“Have you seen anyone suspicious about?” Belafonte asked. “Suspicious for a strip joint, that is.”

“It’s not a strip joint,” Dwell frowned. “It’s a gentleman’s club.”

Belafonte looked toward the bar: one guy in farmer’s overalls, two in white tees and jeans, a broken-down iron-pumper in a sleeveless black sweatshirt, and an obese guy in a blue seersucker suit jamming potato chips into a wet mouth. Overalls said something presumably amusing to Iron-pumper, who slapped the bar and accidentally tipped his beer into his lap, jumping from his stool to grab at his sodden crotch and yell “MotherFUCK!”

Belafonte nodded. “And a fine lot of gentlemen they are, ma’am.”

Dwell’s insectine features tightened into a buggy scowl. “Listen, lady, I don’t know where the hell you’re from, but—”

“Bermuda, it’s a—”

I pushed between Belafonte and Dwell. My partner didn’t appear overly charmed by venues where women removed their clothes and swirled on shiny poles. “Have any of the, uh, gentlemen seemed particularly worrisome of late? Maybe focused on Darlene?”

A nod toward the bar. “If Darlene did have anyone she talked to regular, it’s that big guy at the end of the bar, Billy the Voice. Sometimes after she got off they’d sit in the corner and talk.”

She was indicating the fat guy in seersucker, the seams straining with his weight, perched on the stool like a teed-up golf ball. He was holding a beer mug in one hand, the other ramming potato chips between purple lips like they were his last meal.

“Billy the Voice?” I said.

“He’s here three–four times a week. Comes in at eleven, sits that stool, orders a Michelob Light, a bowl of chips, and watches the dancing. Always polite, too … not like a lot of these losers – manners like fuckin’ animals.”

Ten seconds later we were at the guy’s shoulder. He felt our presence and turned, a chip falling from his mouth to his lap. He brushed it away with a plump paw and when he said “Yes? May I help you folks?” my jaw nearly dropped. The guy had a voice like Johnny Cash bred with James Earl Jones.

He’d seen the drop-jaw look before. “I do voice-over work,” he explained. “Some commercials, but mainly documentaries and audio books. The name’s William Sutherfield.”

Belafonte stepped up with the photo. “We’re seeking information about this girl, Mr Sutherfield. We’re told she was a favorite of yours.”

A frown. “Not a favorite as a dancer,” Cash Earl Jones rumbled, “but as a kind of friend. Is Darlene in trouble?”

“She’s dead, sir,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

I watched his expression. Shock, yes, sadness, yes. Surprise, not so much.

“Oh, my Lord. What happened?”

“We’re not yet at liberty to say, sir. It’s still under investigation. You knew Darlene well?”

“Sometimes we’d take a table in back and have a drink. Or hit the coffee shop a couple blocks over.”

“Were you her confidant?” Belafonte asked.

The sadness again. “Darlene never let anyone that close.”

“Sounds troubled,” I said.

“Trapped by circumstance and limited education,” the big voice sighed. “She fought back by becoming hard, but sometimes the act failed and she was just a lost little girl.”

Music started blasting at jet-engine volume and a woman in a faux-fur bikini sashayed onstage in sequined shoes as tall as the first rung of a stepladder. Silicone had inflated her upper superstructure to soccer-ball dimensions and it strained at the fur. She licked her lips like there was jelly on them and tottered toward the pole.