RAY HAD BEEN RIGHT. AS SOON AS I TOLD THEcabdriver I was heading to the library, he pulled away from the hotel. The sun was going down in the distance, and the neon was coming up all around me. “Do you need the address?”
“Naw, I know where it is,” he said, waving off the card Sinclair had given me. The cab headed east on Tropicana Avenue. In a few short blocks, the bustle and blare of the Strip receded and I felt myself sink into the seat. The cab smelled of stale cigarettes and stale coffee and soured sweat, but I was too tired to care. I was just beginning to doze off when I heard the driver say, “Sir, we’re here.”
I opened my eyes and looked out the window. At first I felt half sleepy and half confused, but then I felt merely totally confused. The cab had stopped in front of a low cinder-block building that pulsed with music. I tapped the cabdriver on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” I said. “I think you misunderstood. I need to go to the library. Here’s the address.” I thrust the card at him; he took it grudgingly and gave it the briefest of glances.
“Yup, that’s the address. And yeah, that’s where we are.” He pointed to a sign above the building’s entrance. I had to lean to the side and look overhead to see the red neon letters: THE LIBRARY. Another large, flashing sign at the edge of the road proclaimed GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Underneath those words was the line CHECK OUT OUR SEXY LIBRARIANS!
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Listen, I need to make a phone call,” I told the driver, “and I might need you to take me back to my hotel. Can you give me some privacy for a couple minutes? Maybe stretch your legs or take a smoke break? You can leave the meter running.”
“Sure, no sweat.” He pulled forward, away from the entrance, and angled the cab into a parking spot. Leaving both the meter and the engine running, he got out and lit up. I leaned down and spoke to my chest, waving my hand in front of my tie. Strapped to my chest was a tiny microphone, with a digital recorder and transmitter tucked under my armpit; my tiepin was actually a miniature video camera, feeding images to a tiny flash drive. Two hours earlier Rankin and a New Jersey agent named Spellman had slipped into my hotel room and fitted me with the surveillance gear. “Rooster, are you there? Spellman? Where are you guys?” Through the fabric of my shirt, I tapped the microphone three times. “Can you hear me? Call me on my cell right away. This is not good.”
Nothing happened, so I scrolled through the recent calls on my cell phone and hit “send” when I got to Rankin’s number.Pick up, pick up, pick up, I prayed. Rankin’s voice answered my prayer. “Christ, Doc, what’s wrong? He’s not even here yet. And don’t thump the mike—you damn near blew out our eardrums.”
“Sorry; it was an SOS signal,” I explained. “Sinclair wasn’t talking about the place where you borrow books. He was talking about a strip club called The Library.” Suddenly it hit me: Rankin had used the word “here.” I scanned the parking lot. “Where are you?”
“Across the street in a panel truck. Six of us. But don’t look.”
I looked anyway. There it was, a carpet-cleaning van. “You knew,” I said. “You knew he was bringing me to a strip club.”
“I didn’t know at first, but I did know before you got in the cab,” he admitted. “We can’t send an informant someplace we haven’t checked out ahead of time. That’d be dangerous. And shoddy.” He laughed. “A strip club called The Library. Only in Vegas, huh, Doc? You gotta love it.”
“No I don’t,” I snapped. “I hate it.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be watching and listening, and we’re close enough to come in and get you if we need to.”
“Crap, I wasn’t expecting a strip club. What do I do?”
“What do you mean, ‘What do I do?’ I believe look but don’t touch would be a good plan to follow. Unless you want to get to know the bouncer really quick.”
“I’m not asking about etiquette. I’m asking if you actually think I should go in there. It seems pretty tawdry.”
“Of course it’s tawdry,” he said. “I mean, I’m not the anthropologist here, but isn’t the tawdriness the point of a strip club?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in one.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.”
“Well, then, this should be interesting. Listen to this. This is the description of the place that’s posted on the Web. ‘This gentlemen’s club isn’t just for bookworms. The club actually does have volumes lining the entrance, but the clientele comes here for a different type of learning experience. And they visit often enough to keep The Library busy even on school nights.’ That’s hilarious.”
“Not to me,” I said. “I really don’t like this.”