Part 3 (2/2)

”They find her?” He perked up.

”Nah, I've been hired to have a fresh look into it.”

The room got very chilly. ”Hired? You a cop or ain't you?”

”I'm retired,” I confessed, showing him my investigator's license. ”I'm working this private.”

”He ain't here,” the guard stonewalled, standing up in sections to unfurl all six feet eight inches of himself. I guess he wanted me to get that he meant business.

”Come on, I'm not here to bust his b.a.l.l.s or anything. Look, Officer ... Simmons,” I read his name tag, which was now just a little below my eye level. ”I know I shouldn't've flashed the tin, but-”

”He ain't here 'cause he don't work here no more.” He shook his head and pantomimed taking a drink. ”They let him go, if you know what I'm sayin'. He was doin' awright for a while, but jus' in the last few months, he couldn't handle it no more. He loved that girl. Moira was a good girl.”

”I'm not here to say different.”

”Then what you here for? Little late in the game, don't ya think, to start nosin' around? All you gonna do is hurt the man.”

”You know the man and I don't. I'll give you that,” I said. ”But don't you think he'd trade a little more pain for a chance to find his daughter?”

”He ain't got much left to trade, mister. He and his wife split. She move down to Florida with their boy. I s'pose you could have his soul, but there ain't much a that left neither.”

I said nothing. There was no answer to that, no way to dress it up and take it to the prom. As a cop, I'd seen people kill themselves in all sorts of ways. Some more violent than others, but the saddest suicides were the long marches of self-destruction.

I held my hand out to Officer Simmons. ”Moses Prager,” I said. ”Most people call me Moe. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I'm really not the a.s.shole I appear to be.”

”Preacher,” he offered, his hand fairly swallowing mine. ”Most people call me Officer Simmons.” A mischievous smile flashed across his face. ”And I am the tough-a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker I appear to be.”

”Preacher Simmons,” I mumbled to myself, something stirring in my memory. ”Preacher 'the Creature' Simmons? Boys High, 1964 all-city team, right?”

That knocked about half the smile off his face. He was happy I remembered, but afraid I'd remember more. I did. Preacher ”the Creature” Simmons had gone on from Boys High to Georgia Atlantic and gotten mixed up in a point-shaving scandal. Unlike Connie ”the Hawk” Hawkins, who had, thanks to the ABA, salvaged at least some part of what might have been one of the brightest futures in basketball history, Preacher had fallen off the radar screen. No wonder. It's hard to spot a man so far below ground level.

”Preacher 'the Creature' been gone since before we landed on the moon, Moe. I been jus' plain Officer Simmons now for near fifteen years. I owe that to John Heaton. He got me this gig.”

”Judging people's not my business, Officer Simmons. Finding them is.” I handed him a card. ”There's plenty of numbers there you can reach me at if you can think of anything that might help me. I don't suppose you'd wanna tell me where I can find John now?”

”Wine stores, huh? You jus' a jack a all kinda trades.”

”I've never been great at anything.”

”I have,” he said, his smile having fully retreated. ”It's overrated.”

Ready to leave it at that, I thanked him and turned to go.

”Glitters,” he called out to me when I was nearly out the door.

”Glitters?”

”It's a topless joint in Times Square. John workin' there off the books doin' this and that. Down there, they don't judge people neither.”

THE THINGS THAT become of people's lives. That's what I was thinking about as I pulled my car out of the lot at Mandrake Towers. In his day, Preacher ”the Creature” Simmons was as much a legend as Lew Alcindor. It's sad when the mighty fall or when injury diminishes greatness, but I felt sick at the sight of Preacher Simmons, forgotten by the world, living out his days in a cinder-block bunker. I wondered what would kill him first, the cigarettes or the what-ifs.

Anyway, I hadn't the heart to argue with him when he suggested too much time had pa.s.sed to start looking into Moira's disappearance. If my investigation into the Catskills fire had taught me anything, it was that the pa.s.sage of time, even sixteen years, cuts both ways. Sure, cold leads freeze over and witnesses move, forget, die off. But though time tightens some tongues, it greases others. As years pile up, perps can get overconfident, sloppy, and alibis rot away like unbrushed teeth. Guilt can set in and fester. But time's greatest benefit is distance. Distance allows for perspective. All manner of things become visible that were previously impossible to see. The pa.s.sage of time had helped me get to the truth of the Fir Grove Hotel fire. Whether it would help lead to Moira Heaton, I could not say, but what it had done to her father was clear enough.

Glitters was what the guys on the job so affectionately referred to as a t.i.tty bar. Preacher's calling it a topless joint had been unfairly generous. It was more a bucket of blood with t.i.ts and a.s.s thrown in. When new, the dump was probably just cheap and ugly. Now cheap and ugly was something to aspire to. And the stink of the place! Between the spilled-beer carpeting, cigarette smoke, sweat, and cheap perfumes, it smelled worse than the Port Authority men's room.

I guess Glitters was no different than a hundred other places in town, maybe no different than a thousand other places in a thousand other towns. We had a bar just like it in my old precinct.

It was too everything: too dark, too smelly, the drinks too watery, the women too old and too much the victims of gravity. Everything about the place gave credence to the line about all that glitters not being gold. At that place in Coney Island, a lot of the girls turned tricks for drug money. But none of its myriad faults put a dent in its popularity with my precinct brethren. Maybe that was because head was on the house for the local constabulary. As our precinct philosopher, Ferguson May, was wont to say: ”It sure beats the s.h.i.+t out of free coffee.”

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in a topless place. Probably some cop's bachelor party. What a silly concept. I think the last time bachelor parties served a useful purpose was during the second Eisenhower administration. I'm no prude and no one's ever mistaken me for a saint, but I've never been much of a fan of places like Glitters, even the ones that don't smell like the insides of my sneakers. Maybe it's the pretense of it all. I mean, a lot of the performers were gay and were as enthusiastic about being pawed by the patrons as burn victims were eager to receive skin grafts from a leper colony. Maybe it was just the mercenary aspect of it all. Who knows? Some things defy logic.

Even now, standing just inside the front door, as the music blared so loudly I thought my ears would bleed, I could barely bring myself to look at the women onstage. I paid my ten bucks to get in, but that was as far as I wanted to go. I asked the doorman if John Heaton was around. He didn't quite ignore me. He was distracted, having trouble making change for a twenty for the guy behind me. When that was taken care of, I repeated the question. This time he ignored me on purpose.

The doorman was a real musclehead: handsome, with a store-bought tan and perfectly coiffed hair. He looked strong as an ox but tough as tissue paper. He was the window dressing meant to dissuade the casual a.s.sholes from getting too drunk or carried away with the girls. Somewhere, lurking in the shadows, would be the real muscle; a smaller man, an ex-boxer or ex-cop. If any serious trouble started, you wouldn't see him coming. Maybe that's what Heaton was doing here, supplying some backup muscle. At this rate, I was never going to find out.

I considered flas.h.i.+ng my badge, but thought better of it. Instead, I found myself a seat at a lonely little two-top set back from the stage. As ineffectual as Adonis at the door might be, he couldn't afford to get caught accepting a bribe. Besides, he seemed to have trouble counting past twenty. A c.o.c.ktail waitress at a table in a dark room was more likely to be accommodating.

”Dewar's rocks,” I shouted just to be heard.

The waitress had no trouble filling out her black lace blouse, velveteen hot pants, and nosebleed heels, but she was a little long in the tooth to be up onstage, and the shade of her blonde hair wasn't on G.o.d's original color palette.

”Eight bucks,” she screamed back, a come-and-get-it smile painted permanently across her face.

”Here.” I threw a ten and a twenty on her tray. ”The ten's for the drink and a tip. The twenty's for an introduction to John Heaton.”

She sucked up the ten like a sleight-of-hand artist, but put the twenty back on the table. ”Listen, mister, my job's to get you to buy as many drinks as your wallet can stand. My only concern around this place is me, myself, and me. See on the stage up there? For all I care, Marilyn Monroe could be playing 'Yankee Doodle' on JFK's d.i.c.k. You catch my meaning?”

She was talking a lot and not saying anything.

”Okay,” I said, placing a business card and the twenty back on her tray. ”Keep the twenty as a gesture of goodwill. If you should happen to make some room in there between me, myself, and me for John Heaton, give me a call.”

”I'll be back with your scotch in a minute.” This time, she didn't return the twenty.

A different waitress brought me my scotch. I asked her about Heaton just to be consistent. Though equally unforthcoming, she wasn't quite as chatty about it.

I finished my drink, moved over to the bar, and switched to beer.

”I dated a guy named John Healy once, but he's dead now,” one of the barmaids said. ”He had to lay down his Harley and wound up under a semi. I don't remember where he's buried. Why you lookin' for him, anyways?”

That was the closest thing I got to an answer at the bar. Luckily, the men's room was downstairs and not too far away from the dancer's dressing room. I wasn't stupid enough to try and worm my way in. In the movies it's all just a lighthearted romp, sneaking into the women's dressing room. In real life you get the s.h.i.+t kicked out of you. I was nearly two years removed from my last a.s.s-kicking. Call me crazy, but I just wasn't quite up for another.

I waited to catch one of the dancers at the end of her s.h.i.+ft. First, I hung out just inside the lavatory door, holding it open far enough to give myself a reasonable view down the hall. Above my head, the ceiling literally moved with the thump thump thumping of the only kind of music that made me rue the evolution of rock and roll. Then I made believe I was on the pay phone for ten minutes. Too bad n.o.body was on the other end of the line. I was funny as h.e.l.l.

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