Lawyer Trap

72





DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15

THURSDAY EVENING


The club, Cheeks, was packed when Teffinger showed up shortly after six o’clock. Strippers were on all five stages and lots more were grinding out in the crowd, giving table dances. He ordered a Bud Light, leaned against the bar, and then called Sydney at home.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Call Cheeks again and see if the same guy answers who called you a bitch before. Then call me back and let me know.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Just a little something.”

A minute later the phone behind the bar rang. A large man with a shaved head and a muscle shirt answered, muttered a few words, and then hung up. Ten seconds later Teffinger’s phone rang.

“The same guy answered,” she said.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He watched the dancers, particularly the ones giving the table dances. They were friendly, very friendly in fact, rubbing their crotches in the guys’ faces and occasionally sticking a hand down someone’s pants.

Suddenly a woman appeared in front of him. By the time he registered her as there, she had already put her arms around his neck and brought her lips to within inches of his.

“I’ve got a special table dance that I’ve been saving just for you,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

She rubbed her stomach against his.

“We can go over there, in the corner,” she said, pointing. “You can feel my p-ssy if you want.”

“How much?”

“Only ten dollars.”

Teffinger pulled out his wallet and handed her a ten-dollar bill, but remained leaning against the bar. “There’s a dancer who works here called Chase,” he said. “Do you know her?”

“No.”

“Her real name’s Samantha Stamp.”

“Don’t know her.”

Teffinger pulled a photograph out of his shirt pocket. “This is her,” he said.

She looked at it, then at him. “She works nights,” she said. “I work days.”

Teffinger nodded.

“Who’s in charge around here?”

Teffinger ended up in a back room three times smaller than it should have been. The walls closed in as soon as the manager, a man named John Stevens, shut the door. Teffinger explained that the body of a woman had been found today, a woman who they subsequently identified as Samantha Stamp—Chase. He explained that he’d be in the club tonight talking to the dancers to see if anyone had any information.

The manager himself had none.

But he had no problem with Teffinger talking to the women.

“You can use my office if you want,” he added.

Teffinger smiled and stood up. “One more thing,” he said. “One of my associates called here today. The man who answered hung up on her when she identified herself as a detective. He called her a bitch.”

The manager stared at Teffinger and said nothing.

“It turns out that it’s the guy behind the bar, the one with the shaved head,” Teffinger said. “I’m sure that’s not the way you do business around here.”

The manager agreed.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“So my suspicion is that you’re going to walk out there right now and fire his ass,” Teffinger said. “The rest of my suspicion is that I won’t call vice and have them live down here for the next month.”

The man considered it.

“Both your suspicions are right,” he said.

Teffinger shook his hand. “Good. Be sure he knows why you’re letting him go. And be sure to point me out to him. If he has a problem with anything, he can come over and talk to me about it face-to-face.”

The manager frowned.

“The guy’s dangerous,” he said.

Teffinger headed out of the room and said over his shoulder, “Be sure you point me out.”

The day dancers knew nothing. The night shift started wandering into the club shortly before seven and disappeared into a back room. They showed up in the crowd a half hour later, looking drunk and stoned and loose. Teffinger talked to six of them before he finally found someone with something to say, a petite black-haired beauty who went by the name of Mercedes.

She had actually talked to Chase on Monday, the day she disappeared, because they were supposed to go to the gym together. Chase told her that she had to cancel to do a trick that afternoon, someone from the club who was paying her big bucks.

“That’s all I know,” she added. “I never heard from her again.”

“What’d she say about the guy she was going to meet?”

Mercedes shrugged.

“Nothing. Just that she was going to meet him.”

“She didn’t mention a name?”

“No.”

“Or describe him?”

“No.”

“Where were they going to meet?”

She held her hands up in surrender.

“I don’t know.”

The shaved-head man wasn’t behind the bar any more—now he sat on the other side of it, getting drunk and staring Teffinger down. Teffinger looked him dead in the eyes and then headed for the men’s room.

Come on, a*shole. Bring it on.