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14





Girls with Green Tails


The supposed habitat of Igor Drukovich’s supposed sex habit, the Honey Pot was the last building in a decrepit little shopping strip down a nondescript road off Collins Avenue up in Sunny Isles, where Miami Beach merges with the mainland. The building looked like it had been built as a warehouse… big, drab, featureless, and only one story high. But out front was a blindingly bright backlit plastic sign—an enormous thing, at least twenty-five feet wide—with the honey pot written across it in a lit-up blood-orange script outlined in red and yellow neon. This hot, gaudy production was mounted atop a freestanding steel column about four stories high. After dark nobody driving along Collins Avenue could keep from gawking:

THE HONEY POT



Huge huge huge brilliant brilliant brilliant lurid lurid lurid, that sign was, but it was also more than forty feet above the ground. The dozen or so men standing down here outside the club’s entrance were lit by little more than the usual dim electro-gloaming that prevailed outdoors in Greater Miami’s nightlife. The little more was an electro-tinge from above that turned all these white faces the sickly color of orangeade…

Sickly hyper-diluted orangeade was the way it struck Nestor, who had just arrived with John Smith. Sickly? It couldn’t get much sicker-looking than it did right before him, on John Smith’s fair white face. Too bad for John Smith… but it also did bad things to Nestor’s nerves. What the hell did he know about strip clubs? There were 143 of them in the Miami area—it was a f*cking industry!—but Nestor Camacho had never been inside even one. He had entertained John Smith all the way out here with cop stories about these funk holes. Too bad they weren’t his stories, because they had created the impression that he knew this form of vice den inside and out. He was not unaware of that as he told the tales. Vanity! Vanity! ::::::A real cop who doesn’t know the strip club scene? I mean, come on!:::::: Maybe if worse came to worst, he could bluff his way through… After all, John Smith had admitted from the git-go that he had never been in a dirty den like this or any other.

So the two of them stood outside the Honey Pot, discussing strategy. “We’re not here to look at all the shit that goes on there,” said Nestor. Mr. All Business. The leader. “We’re here to find a Russian with a big mustache named Igor Drukovich.” He did a quick air sculpture, putting his forefingers and the tips of his thumbs under his nose and swooping them way out as far as his ears. “Searching the place for Igor Drukovich is all we’re doing. No distractions allowed. You get the picture?”

John Smith nodded yes, and then said, “You’re sure you won’t get in trouble over this? Doesn’t ‘relieved of duty’ mean that you can’t do any police work?”

At first, Nestor thought John Smith was getting squirrelly, now that he was actually here before the door to a strip club… in this disorienting orangeade gloom… If he, Nestor, pulled out at the last minute, it would save him, John Smith, from the ignominy of doing so himself.

“But I’m not here doing police work,” said Nestor. “I’m not gonna flash a badge. As a matter of fact, they took my badge away from me.”

“But aren’t you under a form of… house arrest, I suppose it is?”

“I’m supposed to be at home from eight a.m. to six p.m. After six, I can do anything I want.”

“And this is what you want?”

“I told you I’d try to help you with Korolyov, and here we are. At least we’ve got this much to go on.” From a side pocket he withdrew a laminated copy of the picture of Igor in a car with Korolyov he had obtained from the Miami-Dade Police via the brothernet. “At least we know what the guy looks like, and we know that they know each other. That’s not a bad start.”

The entrance to the Honey Pot was a plain workmanlike sliding door, easily fifteen feet wide, that looked as if it had been there since long before the warehouse was converted into the Honey Pot. Immediately inside was a glass wall with a pair of glass doors leading into what resembled a movie theater vestibule.

The moment the leader and his orangeade-faced follower entered, BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung began BEATING and thunging into their central nervous systems. It wasn’t a fast beat and not terribly loud, but it was relentless. It never changed and never stopped going BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung. There must have been a musical score generating it, but you couldn’t hear it in this small walled-in space that served as a box office… a curved counter… behind it, a paunchy, forty-whatever white man clad in a white polo shirt with an orange Honey Pot logo embroidered on the chest pocket. He was the cashier. John Smith gave him forty dollars for the two of them. The man tried his best to be jovial. He smiled and said, “Have a good time, fellas!” The smile looked like a mean streak turned up at the corners. Nestor led the way through the door into the club itself… BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung and sure enough, there was music behind the beat, recorded music. At the moment a girl with a teenage voice was singing, “I’m takin’ you to school, fool, an’ if you don’ get it, I don’ give it, an’ if I don’ give it, you don’ get it. Get it, fool? You cool with that?” But after a few moments, the song didn’t matter. It was sucked up by the BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung.

Swivel—Nestor’s and John Smith’s heads turned simultaneously. Many eyes watching them! Off to the side, near the door they just went through, was a bar with a seven-to-eight-foot partition separating it from the rest of the club. Packed with women it was, young women with jacked-up white legs, pushed-up white cleavages, three-hundred-watt white eyeballs—white girls and only white girls, their white faces decorated with the tarty black arts of the eyeliner, eye shadow, eyelash paint, black-laden eyelids… white girls with libidos-to-let only to white customers… ¡Dios mío! try mixing the white, the black, the brown, and the yellow in a place like this! It wouldn’t last one hour! It would explode! Nothing left but blood and sexual debris—

“How you guys doing?” A big beefy man, close to fifty, materialized from out of the darkness… clad in the Honey Pot polo shirt with a laminated card pinned to the breast pocket bearing the orange Honey Pot script logo and the inscription ASSISTANT OPERATIONS MANAGER.

“There’s plenty a seats—” He stopped right there and stared at Nestor. He frowned so hard, his eyebrows drew together like two little muscles gripping the top of his nose. “Ayyyyy… don’t I know you?”

::::::Goddamn YouTube again! Growing this eight-day stubble of beard—some disguise, right!:::::: But by now Nestor was tactically ready. “Probably,” he said. “How long you been working here?”

“How long have I been working here?” He seemed to find the question impudent. He closed one eye and sized up Nestor with the other. Do I swat this pest or do I let him off this time because he’s so obviously clueless? The latter, he must have decided, because after the ominous pause he said, “About two years.”

“Then that’s it,” said Nestor. “I used to come here a lot with my friend Igor.” He detected a pained look on John Smith’s face. “You know Igor? Russian guy? Big mustache?” With his fingers Nestor did another air sculpture of Igor’s mustache. “Half the time I don’t know what he’s talking about. You know? But he’s a great guy”… He smiled and shook his head in a Good Old Days way. “Know if he still comes here?”

“If it’s the guy I think you mean,” said the man, somewhat reassured, “yeah, he still comes here.”

“No way!” said Nestor, eyes wide open… a happy boy. “Is he here tonight?”

“I don’t know. I just come on.” He gestured vaguely toward the interior. “There’s plenty a seats.” <<<BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung>>>

John Smith’s pale face was agitated. He kept clenching his jaws and then pressing his lips together. “I don’t know if that was such a great idea, Nestor, bringing up Igor’s name and telling that guy that you know him. What if he comes in half an hour from now, and the guy tells him there’s somebody here asking about him?”

Nestor said, “Well, the guy—did you catch the title he has, pinned here on his chest in big letters, Assistant Some-kinda Manager? If you ask me, he’s got BOUNCER written all over him.”

John Smith smiled ever so slightly and said, “Did you mean that as a play on—”

But Nestor cut him off. “The guy gave me the YouTube look. You know? So I had to give him another reason why he recognizes me. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up Igor’s name, but now we know he’s still coming here.”

John Smith said under his breath, but not very far under it, “We already figured that much.”

Nestor said, “Come on, John! Don’t be so cautious. Sometimes you gotta goose things along.”

John Smith averted his gaze and didn’t respond. He was not happy.

Their eyes began to adjust to the gloom. They could now see that the blaze of light on the far wall was from a stage. At this moment the show was obviously… on. <<<BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung>>> Men crowded about the edge of the stage, cheering, hooting, crying out, making odd sounds. Nestor and John Smith saw them in silhouette. They looked like a single, huge colonial animal wriggling and writhing and throbbing with lust… and blocking their view.

Out of the darkness came a girl jacked up on six-inch-high heels, all of her, her long blond hair, her wisp of black thong cache-sexe, her filmy long-sleeved shirt, wide-open, revealing most of her breasts. She passed right in front of them, barely five feet away—leading a young Anglo—midtwenties?—by the hand. All he had on was a tank top—a tank top!—hanging outside of a pair of filthy blue jeans and a baseball cap worn backward. The notable bulge in the crotch of the jeans he obviously wasn’t trying to hide. John Smith looked stunned—mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off them until they disappeared through a wide doorway on the far wall where a bouncer seemed to be standing guard. Over the entrance was a small but rather stately sign saying, “Private CHAMPAGNE ROOM for Invited Guests.” The couple was no longer to be seen, but John Smith’s eyes remained fixed upon the doorway. It was as if it held him in its hot little Sunny Isles thrall.

Nestor shook his head. “Listen, John,” he said, “this is a strip club? You know? There’s girls with no clothes on in here. Okay? But we gotta go to work. We’re looking for only one hot body, Igor’s.”

By now their eyes were getting used to the nightclub gloaming that stretched on before them all the way up to the theater lights—but there were no theater seats. The audience sat in what looked like a furniture showroom with the lights off… couches, banquettes, love seats, coffee tables arranged in no particular order. The only furniture you could really see were ten or twelve bar stools that rimmed the stage at one end.

As he threaded his way through the deep dusk of the furniturescape, Nestor was astonished at just how many barely clothed girls were leaning over the men who lounged back in all that furniture. The place was far from full. Women, any women may have been welcome at the Honey Pot, for all Nestor knew, but he saw only the kind of girl who looked primed to—ziiiiiip—unzip a zipper and shed every thread she had on and let it all fall into a tiny clump on the floor. More girls than he could ever have imagined were making their catches right here upon the upholstery of the Furniture Land lounge, and hauling them off toward that door, the door that so obsessed John Smith. Lots of lovely dirty girls—but no Igor.

A show had just ended. Good; several high seats on the rim of the stage had been abandoned. Once they were seated, it was like sitting at a dining room table… and the stage was the table, where you could inspect, as it were, all the juicy dirty-girls before you and smack your lips… and then eat it… eat it all up.

Nestor was checking out their fellow diners in the bar chairs… Not a very classy bunch. Strip club dress was casual, but these characters were down to the level of wife beaters and T-shirts with lettering on them. Half of them seemed to have dollar bills sprouting from their fingers. Nestor couldn’t figure it out until he saw waitresses bringing drinks to these high-sitters. Scruffy though they were, they were tossing one-dollar bills onto the girls’ trays as tips. There was a regular green blizzard. For protective coloration more than anything else, Nestor and John Smith ordered beers. The girl returned with the two beers and a bill for $17.28. The Treasury, John Smith, gave the girl a fifty-dollar bill. She brought back four fives, some coins… and twelve one-dollar bills, in case they hadn’t figured out the protocol, which was: If it moves, tip it. John Smith gave her four of the twelve.

A disembodied Master of Ceremonies voice—they couldn’t tell where it came from—announced with the jolly gravity of that calling: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… NATASHA!”

A smattering of applause and catcalls, and BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thungs and a girl, the heralded Natasha, came swinging around the pole at the far end of the stage. Like the previous dancer, Natasha was a blonde, a pretty one, too, not gorgeous but gorgeous enough for this crowd… good enough for John Smith, too. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her… Libido-lorn Nestor Camacho could… he kept scanning the men who had started coming toward the stage to get a closer look… “Natasha” wore a bright-yellow outfit that looked like a little boy’s soldier suit. The jacket’s military collar closed around her neck. Two rows of big white buttons ran down the front, which ended three or four inches above her navel… pierced by a tiny shiny gold ring… The pants began three or four inches below it and came down only to the top of her thighs. Her legs looked impossibly long, tiptoed atop a pair of high-heeled yellow shoes… Nestor saw all only in peripheral vision. His head was turned in a different direction… looking for a man with a waxed black Russian mustache… “Natasha” swung this way and that. She swung with the pole right up in her crotch and her legs on either side of it. Ziiiippp—with one zip she opened up the entire jacket and her breasts popped out. They were not very big, but big enough for this crowd. She smiled suggestively as she BEAT thung THRUST thung HUMP thung SHIMMY thung PUMP IT thung and otherwise swung around the pole.

She finally swung off the pole and headed across the stage BEAT thung BEAT thung SHIMMY thung THRUST IT thung down Nestor’s and John Smith’s way. Nestor couldn’t have cared less. He was looking into the faces of a bunch of men turned into goats by lust… Oh, Christ… some dancer, our girl… ziiiiip!—but the zips on the sides of the soldier boy pants that were supposed to make them fall off—“Natasha” couldn’t get them to work BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung she had to stop and struggle out of them one leg at a time BEAT thung BEAT thung the audio took no note of the problem. It got a bit awkward. But worth waiting for! This crowd didn’t ask for much… Now, where the pants had been… nothing, nothing at all… a totally naked crotch denuded even of pubic hair… Brazilian-waxed away… clearing the way for the star of the show, her pudenda. That made everything quite okay with this crowd. Down to nothing but her wide-open soldier boy jacket, she thrust her pudenda and pumped her pudenda and threw her arms back and the little yellow jacket flew off and BEAT thung CROTCH thung TAIL thung CRACK thung PERI thung NEUM thung she sinks to the stage right in front of John Smith and crawls about naked and on all fours… in this case, her knees and elbows… Her tail is thrust up like a bonobo’s or a chimpanzee’s toward John Smith, offering a full view of the perineum and its forbidden folds, crevices, cracks, clefts, cloven melons, alluring labia, gonopores—the entire fleshy arc. BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAM thung STAGE lights HIT spot PORN spot LUST spot PERI spot NEUM spot BEAT thung BEATing POUNDing MEN rush FORward STUCK dollar bills INto the CRACK in her bottom… John Smith is transfixed, once more… eyes wide, mouth agape… Nestor searches the faces of the men packed in front of the stage… a waxed mustache… a waxed mustache… that’s all he’s looking for… A big Miami Beach municipal bus driver in uniform going “Hoot hoot hoot hoot!” in an ironic way but obviously roused to grinning pleasure by what he sees… reaches over John Smith’s shoulder to get his not one but two one-dollar bills into the crack… Okay, time for more protective coloration… Nestor extends his arm across John Smith and puts three dollars in the crack… and finally John Smith—gingerly—reverently?—before the Devil’s altar?—places a dollar bill in the CRACK in “Natasha’s” ASS, and BEAT thung thung BEAT thung thung BEAT thung thung TODO el MUNDO has DOLlar DEStined for the CRACK in the ASS. The WAITress MAKES all CHANGE in DOLlars ADDRESSED TO the CRACK of a PRETTY girl’s ASS or MY tray. Every man so BEAT privileged as to have a seat thung on the rim feels HONOR-bound to STICK a dollar bill thung into the CRACK thung of her ASS. In NO time the ENtire CRACK is STUFFED with DOLlar BILLS, and many more are stuck BEAT in between the thung ones that BEAT it into the thung crack itself… until the BEAT pretty girl looked as thung if she had some sort of great green peacock tail coming out of the CRACK in her bottom. BEAT thung BEAT—

The moment the music stopped, she looked John Smith in the eye, directly… right in the eye… still on her hands and knees right in front of him… with her bare breasts hanging down practically in his face… and winked. Then she got to her feet and began walking backstage, twice turning to wink at him again. Her posture was excellent. Her gait was queenly, not too fast and not too slow… She would have been the very picture of a ladylike young woman, had she not been stark naked with a promiscuous heap of dollar bills STUCK IN THE CRACK OF HER ASS. Not once did she reach back to dislodge it or otherwise note its existence. Why should she compromise her dignity? Halfway across the stage the bills began falling out of their own accord. But why should she look back at the green wake she had created? Two little men, Mexicans, if Nestor was any judge, came out immediately with brooms and dustpans to gather the dollar bills, many of which had been thrown onstage by those who, despairing of reaching the crack, settled for aiming them in her direction.

John Smith’s pale face had turned red. Was he embarrassed? Was he aroused? Nestor had no idea. He had no take on pale genteel americanos like John Smith. As for himself, he was down too deep in his Valley of the Shadow to get cocked over whores with banners of money flying from the CRACKS of their ASSES. And that was what they were, every last one of them, WHORES.

—BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung the BEAT thung

Nestor scarcely glanced at her. He was scanning the men still gathered in front of the stage. Just beyond that bunch—what is it about that one? Nestor’s eyes were fixed upon a heavyset man wearing a black shirt unbuttoned halfway down the front, the better to see his big hairy chest. He had no grand mustache… just a scraggly one that only barely went past the corners of his mouth… but that unbuttoned black shirt and that big sloppy show of chest hair made Nestor think immediately of the photo of Igor he got from the Miami-Dade cops. He knew that picture by heart… the black shirt, the hairy chest, even the way the deep gulleys that began on either side of his nose ran down past his lips and merged with his jowls… the crooked twist of the lips that was probably meant to look cool.

He leaned over toward John Smith. “Maybe I’m seeing things, because the guy has only a little mustache, but I’d swear he’s Igor!”

He turned back to show John Smith—mierda!—the man had disappeared.

Uh-ohhh. A bevy of somewhat-dressed girls descended upon the two of them. A blonde—what was it with this universe of blondes?—got to John Smith first. She wore a denim dress with a top like a bib overall’s… denim suspenders over the shoulders… except that she wore nothing under the bib and her breasts bulged out on the sides, and you could see the nether curves, too, where they joined her chest. The dress looked like—one yank!—and it’s off!… a mere puddle of cloth on the floor. She shook hands with him—by clasping the inside of his thigh and giving him a big suggestive smile and saying, “Hi! I’m Belinka. Having fun?”

Where was that guy? Nestor got a glimpse of him again… talking cozily with a bouncer. John Smith at this moment was incapable of thinking about their mission. All he could think about was what had appropriated his thigh… his inner thigh… not far from—The pale white face of Mr. John Smith blushed the bloodiest red Nestor had ever seen. He had no answer to her question except “Unnh hunnh.” Nestor enjoyed his distress enormously but didn’t dare dwell on it—now where has that guy gone? He was right there a half-second ago!

“I bet you wanna have more!” said “Belinka.”

John Smith paused, at a loss for words. Finally he managed to say—his voice distraught with embarrassment—“I… guess so…”

I guess so. It was so lame, Nestor loved it, but he didn’t watch. Any second… he scoured Furniture Land… any second—

In the next instant he felt a hand on the inside of his own thigh.

“Hi! I’m Ninotchka! I can see you’re—”

“Hi,” said Nestor, without looking at her. His eyes remained fixed upon Furniture Land. “What kind of name is Ninotchka?” he said idly.

“It’s Russian,” she said. “What are you looking at?”

“You’re Russian? No kidding,” he said. His eyes remained pinned on Furniture Land.

Long pause. Finally: “No, but my parents are… What are you looking for out there?”

“You grow up around here?” said Nestor—and he still didn’t look at her.

Another pause.

“No,” she said, “I grew up in Homestead.”

He smiled to himself. ::::::That’s the first true thing you’ve said! Homestead is so Low-Rent, nobody telling lies would ever have herself coming from Homestead.:::::: To her he said nothing.

The whore had had enough. He was toying with her, mocking her. Two could play that game. She slipped her hand a little bit farther up the inside of his thigh and said, “What’s your name?”

“Ray,” said Nestor.

“You come here a lot, Ray?” said the whore.

Nestor just kept scanning people moving about in the glamorous-damn-it nightclub gloom.

“You know, you’ve got a really big neck, Ray.” With that she lifted her hand from his thigh and cupped it around his genitals… gently but completely. “A very, very big neck,” she said. She gave him a mocking smile. “Your neck’s getting bigger… How about a big, wet kiss on your neck?”

Out the side of his mouth, without any inflection one way or the other: “No, thanks.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. She began caressing his groin and said, “I can just feel it.”

Nestor turned toward her for the first time—and gave her a look. “I said no thanks, which means no thanks.”

The Cop Look. “Ninotchka” withdrew her hand and didn’t dare utter another sound. Nestor immediately returned to his vigil. He looked toward the far wall, where he and John Smith had entered the club… All at once—an electrical lurch in his heartbeat. ::::::Jesus Christ! There he is in the back, by the bar… the guy in the black shirt… I swear to God that’s gotta be him… He’s got a girl on his arm, literally on his arm… looks like a proper Sunday promenade except she’s a half-dressed stripper, and right over there is the door!::::::

Nestor spun about on the seat of his jacked-up chair and sprang to the floor. “Ninotchka” was so frightened, she threw her body backward and hit “Belinka,” who was leaning over John Smith’s thigh. Bam! Both girls landed on their backs on the floor with their feet in the air. John Smith sat petrified upon his high chair. He stared at Nestor, with his jaw dropped.

“I see the guy!” said Nestor. “Heading for that door! Come on!” he said over his shoulder to John Smith and got blip a glimpse of him… sitting straight up on the bar chair—frozen stiff. Furniture Land. ::::::Gotta run!:::::: But in the sofa sea of Furniture Land… too much fat upholstered furniture arranged too helter-skelter… too many men with their legs sprawling out as they lounged back in the upholstered billows… too many whores with their rear ends sticking out because they were standing with their heads bent down over the customers… too many little coffee tables clogging up the floor space that was left… his only hope was to hurdle over men’s legs… veer around the whores’ tails… leap over coffee tables… bango!… he was off…

The men sunk in their plush billows—they’re startled… they’re insulted… they’re furious—and they’re not the most genteel crowd in Miami-Dade County, either!—black shirt, hairy chest!… Nestor turns his head for a split second—::::::It’s him!—I’m sure! I know that’s Igor! Igor with almost no mustache!:::::: Some almost-dressed whore has him by the arm! They’re walking around Furniture Land to the rear where he and John Smith started out!… They’re heading for the door!

Getting to the door before Igor suddenly became as urgent a problem as he had ever faced in his life. In the instant before he turned his head forward again, he sped up—Jesus Christ!… He was going to crash into them!… three men and two whores facing one another across a coffee table… no room, no way to stop in time… Only thing possible—he hurdled across the coffee table… brushed a whore on this side and a big tub on that side… “FOOKIN’ EHHOLE!” It’s the tub… ::::::Where’s he from!… He’s old, but he’s got a hell of a voice!::::::

… “FAGGOT!”… It’s one of the whores…

“PIECE A SHIT!”… Another man… high on lust…

… Now they’re all on their feet yelling… “PUNK!”… “SHITBALL!”…

Sky-high on adrenaline, the springing leaping punk ::::::How could they call me that?!:::::: makes it to the other side of Furniture Land… That door is—what?—ten yards away… Oh, shit—a bouncer… and he’s left the door… he’s coming straight at me… he’s a mile wide… big flat face like a Samoan… No way can I get around him… the Cop Look?! The brute is right in front of him, blocking his way—

“What’s the big hurry, Big Boy?” Guy had the voice all right.

The Cop Look? Nestor had about half a second to decide—bango!—this one’s a hard case! Not a chance! Could be an off-duty cop moonlighting… Before his decision could even take the form of words in his brain, he turned the real Nestor Camacho inside out. He twisted his body into a cringe and pointed toward the ruckus in Furniture Land… In a high-pitched voice, agonized, shaky, frightened, “They’re killing each other in there! They’ve gone crazy! Coulda got myself killed!”

The big bouncer eyed Nestor. He didn’t necessarily believe him—but the commotion in Furniture Land was a bigger problem… Cries of “NO MO’ THIS SHIT,” “OH, NO, YOU DON’T!”… “GEDDIM!”… “YOU SKINNY F*ck!”… So many cries, they drowned out one another… All this commotion. “You stay right here!” he told Nestor. He kept jabbing his finger at the floor where Nestor stood. “You don’t move!” And then he went rocking into the ruckus with a big gorilla stride… He held his arms and his hands a good gorilla foot and a half from each hip… Big Man—now he was about five King Kong steps into Furniture Land… basso profundo… he’s roaring, roaring, “Okay! What the hell’s this all about?!”

“That PUNK!”

“That ASSHOLE!”

“That PIECE A SHIT!” they screamed in response, pointing beyond the Big Man in the direction Nestor had gone.

Just like that Nestor started running running the ten or fifteen yards to the door… to the lair of the luscious loins… and look!… right in front of him… barely one step from the door… the one… black shirt… he’s stopped, he and his whore, staring toward the ruckus in Furniture Land.

“—was that little shithead!”

“—cocksucker hit me right here with his elbow!”

“If I hadna jumped back, those a*sholes woulda—”

“—didn’t come here to get pissed all over by a couple a—”

“—’s wrong with you, motherf*cker? If y’all just let those little pricks run—”

Sounds of a scuffle THOOMP! THOP! EGGGGHUH!

::::::Pricks PLURAL?::::::

“AWRIGHT! SETTLE THE F*ck DOWN! I’M GONNA KNOCK YOUR F*ckING HEAD OFF FOR YOU AND SHIT DOWN YOUR WINDPIPE, NEXT ONE A YOU CALLS ME A—”

Igor ::::::Now I know this is him! I know it’s him!:::::: Igor! He’s got one arm around the whore’s waist… They’re barely two steps from the door. They stop! He’s checking out the beano in Furniture Land. Whatever’s going on in there, he loves it… so much that he keeps pulling her, hard, right up against his thigh and his chest… over and over… She just smiles and takes it and takes it and takes it and takes it and takes it MEAT BEAT MEAT BEAT MEAT BEAT MEAT BEAT What’s the matter with him? He looks drunk—but that’s okay! Just stay there, don’t move! Nestor breaks into a full sprint… he’s sprinting for all he’s worth across the floor of a strip club. TOO LATE! Igor—if that’s him—and the girl step inside the door and disappear… ¡Coño! Nestor comes shuddering to a dead halt… He’s stymied stymied stymied… but what’s to keep him from just going inside? He inspects the door. There is no door per se. Three steps inside the doorway is a baffle wall. There’s nothing to keep him from walking in, but he can’t see in first. He looks over his shoulder… ¡Coño! Here comes the bouncer, back to his station. ::::::How can I get in there?:::::: His eyes pan about the immediate vicinity… Not ten feet away—what’s that? A whore’s bottom! He sees her from behind as she leans over a man in a sofa seat—pink short-shorts she’s wearing, so short that each of her buttocks has halfway popped out… buttocks décolletage, John Smith’s term, and now Nestor got it. They were popping out like upside-down breasts. She had on a sleeveless shirt made of some thin lustrous material almost the same color pink… frilled arm openings… two large oval-shaped openings in the back. For what?—to show that she wore no bra? God only knew… Her torso was slightly turned… that way… But of course! She had one hand on the inside of her mark’s thigh.

No time for niceties and protocol. Nestor leaned over beside her. He put on as ingratiating a smile as he could manage and said, “Hi! Don’t mean to interrupt, but I need a lap dance. I really need a lap dance.”

Maintaining her grip on the other guy’s thigh, she turned her head toward Nestor and eyed him quizzically… then, in defense, skeptically. She was a brunette with dyed-blond streaks in her hair—at the Honey Pot, be blond no matter how you get there! We’ll give you your Russian or Estonian name… but you’ve got to bring your own blond hair and sexy-ecstasy expression and lawless labial lips.

He could hear the digits clicking 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 in her head. <<<I’m busy propositioning that guy on the sofa… he looks rich… but he hasn’t come across yet… and suddenly there’s this guy leaning over beside me—and he’s volunteering!… looks like a decent sort… he’s young, he’s eager 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, click click click click>>> Now she did something with her eyes and lips that made her look mischievous. She turned her head toward Nestor until they were almost cheek to cheek. In a low but actually rather sweet voice, she said, “You know what kind a men I like? Eager ones! I shouldn’t do it—”

With that, she put her free hand inside Nestor’s standing thigh—and held on as if she didn’t intend to let him go—ever—and removed the other from her sofa prospect’s thigh. Nestor got his first good look at the man. He looked almost distinguished… had a gray beard… meticulously trimmed… a thick head of gray hair, well groomed, a go-to-the-office shirt unbuttoned at the collar, no jacket, no tie… a pair of pale-tan pants you could tell were a lot more expensive than khakis… Why would a man like that come to a place like this and listen to a whore’s entreaties? Even Nestor realized he was asking a naive question.

The girl looked down upon her sofa quarry and put on her most mischievous and lascivious expression and said, “Now, you stay right here! I’ll be back in a minute!”—whereupon she stood up straight and let her hand slip from between Nestor’s legs. The man looked at her and Nestor dumbfounded. But Nestor knew he wouldn’t say a word or anything else to call attention to his real—meaning proper—self.

She took Nestor by the hand forcefully and led him the four or five yards to the door. The bouncer was back at his station. He looked Nestor up and down, dubiously, but being in the hands of a bona fide whore made you legitimate. She led him—still by the hand—around the baffle wall. Nestor found himself in what looked like a long, narrow, dingy, and dimly lit locker room with a row of stalls right on top of him, right in his face. He felt like he could reach out and touch them, although in fact they were about six feet away… They were an endless row of cheap partitions about five feet apart and maybe a foot higher than an airport restroom’s… and instead of doors, the stalls had dark-brown-and-tan-striped curtains of Transitester that went with a wall-to-wall carpet in a jumble weave of dark brown, light brown, and tan Streptolon industrial carpet you couldn’t dent with an axe… all of it rather the worse for wear but at least a stab at interior decoration at the Honey Pot. The same BEAT thung BEAT thung music that pounded the rest of the club tenderized you in this room with its congestion and low ceiling and total lack of windows. In the tiny intervals between the BEATs and the thungs Nestor could hear human sounds nearby, not words but sounds… from behind the curtains of the stalls… unhh, ahhh ahhh, ooom-muh, ennngh ohhhhunh… all of them the moans of men—not the girls… moans that sometimes did cross the border into meaningless verbiage… ohhhyes ohhhyes, dohnstop dohnstop dohnstop, yes yes yes yes, diiiig harder diiiig harder, bring it home, bring it home and then back to a lot of unhhh uhnnn ahhh ahhh oooweh oooweh oooweh sounds. Nestor listened to them all with intense interest.

The girl looked up at him with as lascivious a smile as he had ever seen in his life, and in words that slid out of her mouth as if labially, lubriciously, lubricated, “What’s your name?”

“Ray,” said Nestor. “What’s yours?”

“Olga” slid out of her mouth.

“Olga… I’ve met so many Russians here tonight. You don’t have any accent.”

As if offering him the key to Paradise, “I’m Russian on my mother’s side. I grew up here.” Her lips took on the contours of unspeakable ecstasies. “You probably already know the… uhhh… guidelines. A basic lap dance is twenty-five dollars, not touching. Touching brings it up higher, depending on what. And, of course, cash is up front whatever it is. You still want a basic lap dance, Ray?”

“Great!” said Nestor. “Terrific!” He dug twenty-five dollars… of John Smith’s money… out of his pocket, and she put it into a side pocket of her pink shorts.

“Okaaaay… thank you,” said “Olga,” and she took his hand and led him to a stall with the curtain pulled back. The interior was just big enough for a cot-sized bed apparently, composed of a frame, a mattress, and a self-striped tan coverlet… a modernistic lounge chair made of a fiberglass shell with a dark-brown seat cushion… with no arms… a matching stool with a brown cushion, and in the rear a Formica shelf with a basin and two taps set in… and a double-doored cabinet beneath… Just before “Olga” pulled the curtain shut, Nestor heard a man moaning far louder and more ecstatically than any other so far.

“Oh, govno… oh, govno… oh, govno… oh, govno… oh, govno!”

And then a woman’s moans, not that loud but loud enough to rise above the BEAT thung BEAT thungs and the rest of it… moaning sighs, they were, ending in prolonged breathless sighs that went, “Ahhhhh… ahhhhhh… ahhhhhh”… and then they began speeding up… “Ahhh… ahhh… ahhh” and then faster still… “Ahh… ahh… ahh… ahh…”

So did the man’s Oh, govno Oh, govno Oh, govno Oh, govno.

Then a convulsive sigh from the girl that went ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh and dived into a lake of sobs sobs sobs Oh, God sob sob sob sobbbbbb ungh ungh ungh Oh, God, oh God oh God-d-d-d…

Thereupon the man topped that with “Oh govno Oh dermo Oh govno DERMO DERMO DERMO! BOZHE MOY! GOSPODI…” By the end he was loud as a tenor in the opera.

“Olga” had turned away from the entrance. A single movement of her hand, and her shirt fell to the floor and then she took a deep breath and sank back toward Nestor to present her popped-out breasts.

Nestor gave her a happy smile as if to say, “Oh, good. That’s nice”—no more than that, because he was already at the curtain, pulling it back just an inch or two… so he could hear more grumbling audibly inside several stalls… He could swear he heard one man complaining, “Whaddaya mean, I don’t get to go all the way?” He must have been talking to his whore, because he said, “Oh, don’t give me that! Don’t you stand there telling me your f*cking rules—or no-f*cking rules!”

Another man was apparently shouting from his stall at the operatic-climax man, because Nestor heard Climax Man yelling back, “You dohn’t talk to me like zat, you vorm!” He sounded good and drunk. His adversary yelled, “Who the f*ck you think you are!” And the big voice said, “You don’t eefen vant to know! You down zere, a vorm, and I up here! I am artist!”

Boos, hisses, gimme-a-breaks, and other cries of sarcastic denigration.

“You zshut ze mouzzz! You dohn’t belief me? I am een ze museum!”

“Hey, can it, you guys! What the hell’s going on in here?” It was the bouncer. He sounded like he was on a tear. The place quieted down.

“Olga” with the bare breasts was saying, “What are you doing, Ray, standing by the curtain? I thought you were hot for a lap dance.”

“I am,” said Nestor, “but I think I just heard something.”

“Olga” stared at him, bare breasted and speechless.

::::::He looks exactly like Igor with a measly mustache. He speaks with a Russian accent. He says he’s in a museum. That’s one way to put it!::::::

John Smith was waiting outside the door. What happened to him? He was standing there with a big black eye. His blue blazer was smeared with dust and dirt and had a big wet splotch on a lapel.

“¡Dios mío! What happened?”

“I tried to catch up with you in Furniture Land—and they took it out on me.”

Nestor whistled between his teeth. “I heard something going on behind me and saw a bouncer heading that way—but I had no idea it was you. “You look a little… messed up, I guess. Are you… are you okay?”

“I’ll survive… except there are three bastards I’d like to kill. How did you make out?”

“He’s our man, John.”

“How do you know?”

“Let’s get away from this goddamned door,” said Nestor, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

The Honey Pot’s four-story-high backlit sign created an electric twilight out here on the street in front of the strip joint. It was an artificial twilight, but light enough for Nestor and John Smith to surveil both the club and the entrance to the parking lot behind it from inside the Camaro… when Nestor lifted, even a few inches, the SPTotal reflector screen that covered the windshield. SPTotal was the Apprehension Unit’s brand of choice—¡Coño! Everything conspired to make him relive the day he and Hernandez were surveilling that crack house in Overtown.

Nestor had backed the Camaro into the driveway of a shop across the street, Buster’s BoostersX, now closed, since it was going on 3:00 a.m…. John Smith was a soldier now, but surveillance still made him squirrelly. He was afraid Igor had somehow departed without their seeing him, or maybe there was some exit they didn’t know about… or maybe Igor, being such a regular customer, could sleep over in the Honey Pot if he felt like it… maybe there were girls willing to stay and play with him… Maybe this and maybe that… but one thing Nestor knew from working the Crime Suppression Unit: You had to learn how to wait for the action. Without your heart trying to break out of your rib cage, you or a superior had to decide on the plan the odds favored and have the discipline to stick to it… the way Hernandez had planned the stakeout in Overtown… ¡Coño! Why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? There you had it. That was his Deep Worry.

But now it was himself and John Smith waiting in his Camaro for the quarry… and John Smith was no Sergeant Hernandez.

“Suppose he’s not even going home,” said John Smith. “What if he’s going to a girlfriend’s or something? What do we do then?”

“Maybe there’s somebody who spends three or four nights a week at some strip club and then goes home at three or four in the morning to see his girlfriend, but I don’t think the odds are very good. This guy strikes me as a little pathetic. His idea of a love life is the Honey Pot?”

“It doesn’t have to be a girlfriend,” said John Smith. “That was just an example. It could be a—”

“Look, John, so anything can happen. What does that tell you? Exactly nothing. You got to start with what’s likely to happen and go from there. Listen, this has been a pretty good night! This is the first time we’ve made any contact with the guy. Now we know what he actually looks like.”

“I still don’t know how you did that,” said John Smith.

“I swear, it was that black shirt he wears open down the front. He was wearing the same shirt in that picture we got from the Miami-Dade County cops. He’s just spent five or six hours doing whatever the hell he likes to do in a whole building full of whores. I don’t see him driving all the way back to Wynwood at three in the morning. Let’s see where he does go.”

John Smith sank back in the passenger seat and let out a sigh and closed his eyes.

About half an hour later, a heavyset guy in a black shirt open down the front, displaying the vast terrain of his hairy chest, came out of the Honey Pot by himself. Nestor nudged John Smith in the ribs and said, “Well—there’s our boy.”

John Smith sat low in the seat and eyed Igor Drukovich. “Jesus! He doesn’t look very steady on his feet to me.”

The man headed into the Honey Pot’s parking lot. With the lights off, Nestor started up the Camaro.

No more than a minute had gone by when John Smith’s conspiracy-muffled voice said, “What’s he doing? Suppose he just walks through the lot and out the other side?”

John Smith stared at the exit from the parking lot and more minutes crawled by.

Finally, a Volvo, the big one, the Vulcan, emerged from the lot. Nestor had to look twice to see the hairy chest driving it.

Nestor took his cool sweet time folding up the reflector screen… all the while saying, “You wanna know my idea of the worst possible way—”

John Smith, bewildered: “He’s speeding up!”

“—to die? Getting run over by a Volvo Vulcan or a Cadillac Escalade. Why I don’t—”

“—Jesus!—he’s almost reached that bend in the road and we haven’t even—”

“—know except it would be so humiliating. I know that much.”

“Nestor!”

“Cool it. I gotta let him go around the bend before I turn on the lights and start tailing him. Otherwise he’s gonna wonder why he leaves the lot and some car’s lights come on and start following him.”

“But he’s gonna disappear.”

“Yeah, for about five seconds. There—he’s just gone around it. Watch this.”

Nestor turned on the Camaro’s lights and drove it onto the road slowly… then shot past the Honey Pot with a good show-off burst of Camaro acceleration and reached the bend in the road in a heartbeat… slowed down going around it… and sure enough, about 150 feet ahead there was the Volvo Vulcan… The body seemed to recede in the dark… but there was no mistaking the taillights. They were huge and rose up two feet higher than any ordinary vehicle’s and wrapped around the corners in extravagant bands of light. Nestor was able to hang back this far and still keep track of it. Igor and the Vulcan were heading east… but only for half a mile… Igor turned left and headed north on A1A, the little highway that ran right along the coast. There was a fair amount of traffic, and Nestor was able to tail Igor more closely without being noticed. The green highway signs seemed to be drifting toward him. At first he was familiar with the places he was passing… Miami Gardens Drive… Northeast 192nd Street… Northeast 203rd Street… Aventura… Golden Beach… the GulfStream Park racetrack… They passed a big Russian restaurant called Tatyana’s… and then Igor and the Vulcan swung left along a wide boulevard… more Russian names began turning up in the midnight gloaming… the Kirova Ballet Academy… the St. Petersburg Turkish and Russian Baths… the Ouspensky Cultural Center, which looked like just another storefront… Vladim’s Paint and Body… Ivana’s Nails and Spa. Igor kept on heading west heading west. Where the hell was he going?

What they were passing now made Nestor feel like they were heading into another country. Here in the middle of the night there was something alien and ghostly about the roadsides, which were barely visible in a deep, unstable dusk created by passing headlights and highway lamps on metal stanchions so high their illumination was feeble… Every place except the 7-Eleven was dark, it seemed—Speeder Oil Change and Tuneup… Pet Pleasers Salon… IHOP, namely, the International House of Pancakes… Four Guys’ Paint and Body… Spanky’s Cheese Steak Factory… Tara Estates Manses for Active Adults… Supercuts… Smokey Bones BBQ and Grill… Pet Supermarket… Little Caesars Pizza… Applebee’s… Wendy’s… Desoto Luke’s Active Adults, which seemed to consist of a pair of plain brick apartment houses with little terraces and courtyards… another 7-Eleven, lit up… Carver Toyota, with a lot full of automobiles twilit by two overhead lights… Olde Towne Bingo…

“Where are we?” said John Smith.

“Broward County,” said Nestor, “but I don’t know exactly where. I’ve never been this far west up here before.”

“This is really strange!” said John Smith, an unusually animated John Smith. “And you know why? We’ve just entered a strange land… called America! We’re not in Miami anymore. Can’t you feel it? Some Russian named Igor is leading us into the USA!”

Nestor analyzed this concept for traces of anti-Cuban insult, even though he had experienced the same alien feeling just a moment before… Well, John Smith was an alien himself. He was apparently a living embodiment of a creature everybody had heard of but nobody ever met in Miami, the WASP, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Rationally, Nestor knew John Smith’s crack about “a strange land… the USA” was harmless. Emotionally, he still resented it, harmless or not.

West west and farther west Igor kept going in his hulk with the lurid taillights. More low brick apartment buildings drifted by… “The Hampton Court… Active Adults Assisted Living Suites”…

“ ‘Active Adults Assisted Living,’ ” said John Smith. “Come on, you gotta love it!” He turned to get Nestor’s reaction.

Nestor went to some pains not to show any reaction at all. He couldn’t exactly think it through in words. Animated like this, John Smith annoyed him. The animation always came out of some feeling of superiority. John Smith could draw… concepts… out of something as ordinary as this second-rate road… “We’ve just entered a strange land… the USA.”… That kind of thinking was a facility Nestor didn’t have. Irony came always at somebody else’s expense… his own, probably… Did it all come down to education? John Smith had gone to a college with an intimidating name… Yale… At that moment Nestor felt a hatred for everybody who had ever been to a college with an intimidating name… They were all pussies, when you got right down to it… but then what bothered Nestor was that maybe they weren’t pussies…

West west west Igor drove the Vulcan until he reached someplace called West Park, when he turned right and headed due north up a smaller road… past Utopia… past the Deauville Abbey… more low-slung brick apartment buildings… “Active Adult Retirement Leisure Assisted Living Hospice and Coda Chateau”…

“These places—they’re everywhere around here,” Nestor muttered.

“It spooks you out after a while,” said John Smith.

Now Igor turns left and heads farther west.

“Where the hell’s he going?” said Nestor. “To the Everglades?”

Under the Florida’s Turnpike toll road went Igor and his Volvo Vulcan, still heading west… but soon he slowed down and turned into some sort of driveway. Nestor and John Smith knew what he was heading for even before they could see the buildings themselves… Even from fifty yards away they could see the inevitable man-made lake… the Camaro’s headlights were just bright enough for them to make out the fountains geysering up in the middle of the water.

Nestor barely slowed down and drove right on by the place.

“What are you doing?” said John Smith.

“I don’t want to come in right behind him,” said Nestor. “I’m gonna make a U-turn and come into the place from the other direction.”

It took no more than a glimpse to see that here was your stone basic Active Adult housing. A metal plaque on a stanchion by the driveway bore the name Alhambra Lakes. On one side the entryway opened up onto a big parking lot… packed with cars… dimly lit by a few lamps on tall stanchions. Igor’s Vulcan had just entered it. The apartment buildings were the most basic they had seen so far. At a glance they looked like two grim solid cubes of brick… each three stories high… adorned only by the inevitable tiny balconies and the sliding glass doors… no shrubbery or any other horticultural or arboricultural decoration, not even a hopeful palm tree or two.

“What do you suppose this is all about?” said John Smith… with a nod back toward Alhambra Lakes.

“I’m gonna drive in there,” said Nestor. He pulled over onto the shoulder of the road… then made a U-turn… gunned the Camaro so suddenly, it threw John Smith’s head back… but almost immediately had to slow down to turn into the Active Adults’ driveway… and there was the Volvo Vulcan, nosed into a parking slot. The taillights were off, but the lights were on in its interior.

“I’m gonna drive by,” said Nestor, “but don’t look at him. Don’t even look in his direction. I’m gonna go slow, like we’re trying to find someplace to park.”

Before they reached the Vulcan… there was the burly figure, Igor, opening the Vulcan’s big rear door.

“Don’t look,” said Nestor. “Or maybe turn your head a little bit in the other direction.”

Which they did. Nestor didn’t even try to look with peripheral vision. When they reached the end of the row of cars, they were very close to the nearest building, and he was able to see through a wide, open entrance, which looked like a sort of tunnel. At the other end, toward the interior, more miserable overhead lighting.

“Must be a courtyard,” said John Smith.

Nestor made a U-turn and drove slowly down the other side of the row. When they reached the front of the Volvo Vulcan, the interior lights were off.

“He’s walking toward the building,” said John Smith.

“What the hell’s that he’s carrying?” said Nestor. “That big flat thing.”

“I don’t know,” said John Smith. “Looks like a portfolio. You know, an artist’s portfolio.”

“I’m gonna turn around again there at the end. See if you can tell where he’s going.”

Nestor made the turn very slowly and headed back up the other side.

“There he is,” said John Smith. “He’s going into that entrance, the one we just went by.”

Nestor got just the barest glimpse of Igor as he disappeared into the tunnel or whatever it was called. He stopped the Camaro right there in the middle of the parking lot.

“Whattaya think he’s doing here?” said Nestor. “You realize we’re practically in Fort Lauderdale… and we’re hell west of nowhere? I don’t get it. And you say he’s got a studio in Wynwood?”

“It’s not just a studio, Nestor, it’s a whole apartment, and it’s pretty nice. I know plenty of artists, successful ones, too, who would die to have a setup like that.”

“I do… not… get… this,” said Nestor.

“Well… what do we do now?”

“There’s not much we can do right now,” said Nestor. “It’s past four a.m. We can’t just go wandering around the place in the middle of the night.”

The Camaro’s headlights were still on the building… Silence… Then John Smith said, “We’ll have to come back in the morning and wait until he leaves and then see what we can do…”

Silence… the Camaro’s headlights aimlessly illuminated part of a row of cars… the lot was packed… The Camaro was almost ten years old, and Nestor thought about how now, when the engine idled, he was aware of the chassis vibrating.

“It’s already early in the morning,” said Nestor. “A guy like Igor—I don’t see him going out to a strip club and getting drunk until three in the morning and then getting up at six. You saw all that shit he unloaded from the Vulcan. He wasn’t just dropping by for a visit.”

“Ummmm… I guess you’re right,” said John Smith. “Besides, we’ve got to go home and change. We’ve got to look serious when we go in there.” He nodded toward the building Igor had gone into. “Do you have a jacket?”

“A jacket?… Yeah, I got one… It goes with a blue suit.”

“Awesome!” said John Smith. “Do me a big favor. Wear the suit and some leather shoes.”

“I don’t know if it even fits me anymore. I got it before—well, it must a been three or four years ago.” Nestor relived the whole mortifying scene then and there… Mami taking him into the men’s department at Macy’s… him standing there like a wooden idiot… Mami and the clerk talking—in Spanish—about how far down this should go and how far up that should go… only speaking to him twice… Mami saying, “¿Cómo te queda de talle?” and the clerk saying, “Dobla los brazos y levanta los codos delante”… and him caring about only one thing… the horrible chance that somebody he knew might see him like this.

“Before you started working out at Rodriguez’s?” John Smith smiled.

“Well… yeah,” said Nestor.

“Awww… just do the best you can, Nestor. You can squeeze into it.”

“I suppose next you’re gonna want me to wear a tie,” said Nestor, inflecting it with a touch of sarcasm.

John Smith’s eyes lit up. “Hey, you own one?”

“Yeahhh…”

“Wear it!” said John Smith. “I will, too! We’ve got to look serious! That building’s full of Active Adults. You know? They’re not going to appreciate it if we show up as if we’re going to the Honey Pot. Not even a twisted geek like Igor will appreciate it. We are serious men!”