“Did you see this girl?” I asked. I folded Lisbeth’s half of the photo back and showed him the other half, tapping a finger beneath Irina’s face.
He barely glanced at it. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you should look again,” I suggested. “For more than a nanosecond.”
He glanced at it again. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You don’t know?” I said sternly. “Are you gay?”
He looked me in the eyes for the first time, shocked that I might think so, particularly in front of his cohort, who started laughing. “No!”
I held the picture up. “A girl who looks like this comes prancing n here dressed to kill, looking like more money than you’ll ever make in your lifetime, and you don’t know if you saw her.”
“We were really busy,” he said, evading my gaze. “It was some such guy’s birthday party.”
“She came out this door, late. The party was breaking up. Only the diehards were left.”
He was squirming like the kid who threw the baseball through he neighborhood witch’s window and got caught.
“Do you know why I’m asking you?” I questioned.
A black BMW 7 Series pulled in.
Jeff started leaning toward it. “I have to work.”
“It’s my turn!” the goose protested.
“It’s his turn,” I said. “You have to share, Jeffrey.”
He wanted to snap his fingers and become invisible. I tried again.
“Do you know why I’m asking you if you saw this girl Saturday light?” I didn’t wait for another stupid answer. “Because she’s dead, Jeff. She came here Saturday and had a good time. And then she left here, and someone took her somewhere and strangled her to death and threw her body in a canal to rot and be eaten by an alligator.”
The kid made a nauseous face. “Wow. That’s sick.”
“Yes, it is. Is your memory coming back to you? Did you see her leave here Saturday night?”
He stared at the photograph, then looked away, frowning. “No,” he said. “I didn’t see her.”
A Porsche pulled into the drive.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said, and bolted like a skittish horse.
I watched him, imagining him working Saturday night. A busy evening, money walking in and out the door. Big tippers. Someone slips him a little something extra to lose his memory. Just between us men-wink wink.
The goose came ambling back, oblivious of any tension around. He glanced at the picture.
“Hey, I know her,” he said. “She’s so hot!”
“You’ve seen her around here?” I asked.
“Yeah. She comes here a lot.”
“With anyone or alone?”
“With some other girls.”
“Have you ever seen her with a man?” Sure.
“Who?”
“I dunno.”
I wanted to reach my hand into his brain and pull the information out.
“Let’s try it this way,” I suggested. “Always the same man? Or different men?”
“Different guys.”
“Younger? Older?”
“Older. Old rich guys.”
“If I brought some photographs by, do you think you might recognize any of them?”
“I dunno…”
Even I can beat my hard head against a brick wall for just so long.
“Do you have a cell phone I can call you on?”
“Yeah.”
I dug a small notebook out of my bag. “What’s your number?”
He recited his number to me. I thanked him and went into the club, thinking I deserved a drink after that.
The gorgeous Kayne Jackson was tending bar again. Eye candy in a painted-on black T-shirt, biceps rippling as he prepared a cosmo to send away with the waitress.
“So, Kayne Jackson,” I said, taking an empty stool near him. “What are your goals in life?”
He glanced up at me and smiled. “Ketel One and tonic, big squeeze of lemon?”
I gave him the half smile. “There’s nothing more valuable or more dangerous than a bartender with a good memory.”
He chuckled as he scooped ice into a tumbler. “I’m not dangerous. Where did you get that lip?”
“They were having a sale at Wal-Mart. Lifelike, isn’t it?”
“Looks like it hurts.”
“Nothing a little vodka won’t cure,” I said.
“I’ve heard that story before.”
“Everybody confesses to their bartender. Considering this crowd, I’m sure you’ve got stories that would make the average person’s eyes pop out.”
“I’m valuable because I’m discreet,” he said, pouring the Ketel One. “Or I wouldn’t have this job.”
“Hmm…” I wondered if he drove a Maserati. Blackmail could be a profitable little side job. “I imagine some of your patrons value your discretion enough to pay you a little something extra on the side.”
“I have some generous customers,” he said, noncommittal as he squeezed the wedge of lemon.
He set the drink in front of me and went to the other end of the bar to take an order. I watched him pop the caps on a couple of beers.
“Back to my original question,” I said when he returned. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Kayne?”
He shrugged as he rinsed out some glasses in the sink. “This is it.”
“To be a bartender?”
“Do you think there’s something wrong with that?”
“No. I’m surprised, though,” I confessed. “You’re a young, extremely handsome, and charming man. You could be a model, an actor. Nothing against your profession, but I doubt your tips raise you to the same tax bracket as a Ralph Lauren model.”
“You’d have to ask Juan Barbaro about that,” he said. “I do okay.”
“You’re not secretly a wannabe polo star? A spy? A high-priced gigolo?”
He smiled, and female hearts all around the room skipped a beat. “Why do you ask?”
I laughed. “I don’t buy trouble, but you’d be worth your weight in gold in Palm Beach.”
He pretended to shudder. “I don’t need money that badly. And I prefer my ladies be under retirement age.”
And who could blame him? The median age of the Island’s residents was creeping up toward the speed limit. Plastic surgery was a growth industry.
“So draw the line at the bedroom door,” I said. “Do you have any idea what a walker can make during season?”
“Escorting old ladies to charity balls isn’t my idea of a good time,” he said. “I enjoy what I do, the people I meet. It’s fun.”
“You make a lot of friends here,” I said.
“Yeah.”
The waitress came by, gave him an order, and gave me the once-over and a dirty look. Little bitch.
“You said you knew Irina.”
“Yeah. She was something.”
“Do you know any of her friends? Girlfriends she might have confided in?”
He started to shake a martini. Muscles rippled in his chest and upper arms.
“My opinion: Irina had acquaintances and rivals, not friends. She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would confide in anyone.”
“Rivals?”
“The girls that run with that crowd all want the same thing, and there are only so many multimillionaires and handsome polo players to go around.”
He gave me a funny look. “You worked with her. You must know more about her than I do.”
“It’s becoming clear to me that I didn’t know her at all,” I said. “What about Lisbeth Perkins? She was a friend.”
“Girl crush.”
“Lisbeth is gay?”
“No,” he said. “It was more like hero worship. Irina was glamorous, exotic, sophisticated, self-assured.”
Everything Lisbeth was not.
“Did Irina ever come in here with a boyfriend?”
“Nope.” He poured the drink and added two olives.
“Did she ever leave here with a boyfriend?”
“Not that I noticed,” he said, “but my vision gets poorer and poorer as people move toward the door.”
“Would an infusion of cash improve that?”
He shook his head.
“Did an infusion of cash cause that problem?”
“I have other customers,” he said, and started to turn away. His left hand was braced against the bar. I reached out and caught his wrist.
“She’s dead, Kayne. If you know something, it’s worth a hell of a lot more than a big tip off the books. It’s one thing to turn a blind eye to an affair. Irina was murdered. If you know something about that but you tell the police that you don’t, you’re committing a crime. You could be charged as an accessory after the fact.”