in your files. My only interest is in finding Marshall Marcus’s daughter. And as long as you stay out of my way, then yes, we have an understanding.”
My head began thudding again as I got to my feet. I turned and walked out the door. His goons attempted to block my way, but I pushed past them. They scowled at me menacingly. I smiled back.
“Nick,” Schechter called out.
I stopped. “Yes?”
“I know you’ll do the right thing.”
“Oh,” I said, “you can count on it.”
72.
It was almost ten thirty by the time I returned to Mr. Derderian’s van. I powered on my BlackBerry and it began to load up e-mails and emitted a voice-mail-alert sound.
One of the calls was from Mo Gandle, the PI in New Jersey looking into Belinda Marcus’s past.
I listened to his message with astonishment. Her employment as a call girl was by far the least interesting part of her history.
I was about to call him back when I noticed that four of the calls I’d received were from Moscow. I checked my watch. It was twenty minutes past six in the morning, Moscow time. Far too early to call. He would certainly be asleep.
So I called and woke him up.
“I’ve been leaving messages for you,” he said.
“I was temporarily offline,” I said. “Do you have names for me?”
“Yes, Nicholas, I do. I didn’t think it prudent to leave this information on your voice mail.”
“Let me pull over and get something to write with.”
“Surely you can remember one name.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
Then he told me.
* * *
IT WAS too late to catch a shuttle flight from Boston to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
But there was always a way. An old friend flew cargo planes for FedEx. He was based out of Memphis, but he got me on the eleven o’clock run from Boston to New York. In a little over an hour I was walking into an “adult entertainment club” called Gentry on West Forty-fifth street in Manhattan.
This was what used to be known as a strip club. Or a jiggle joint. But in polite circles it was called a “gentleman’s club” until that term became politically incorrect too.
I guess the tittie-bar owners didn’t want to offend feminists.
The mirrored lobby was lined with the requisite bouncers from New Jersey in black blazers too short at the sleeves over black shirts with white pinstripes. The carpeting inside was garish red. The railings and banisters were so shiny they didn’t even try to look like brass. The music was bad and loud. There were swoopy red vinyl lounge chairs, red vinyl banquettes and booths, half of them empty. The other half were filled with conventioneers and mid-level executives entertaining clients. Bachelor parties from Connecticut. Japanese businessmen on expense accounts. Spotlights swiveled and disco strobe lights spun overhead and there were mirrors everywhere.
The girls—excuse me, “entertainers”—were pretty and stacked and spray-tanned. Most of them looked cosmetically enhanced. When they danced, nothing jiggled. There was enough silicone in the place to grout every hotel bathroom in Manhattan. They wore thongs and garters, skimpy black brassieres and heels so high I was amazed they could keep their balance without pitching forward head first.
On the main stage, a shallow half-moon with a brass railing, an embarrassed-looking young guy with bad skin was getting a “stage dance” in the bright spotlights with a slinky black woman doing acrobatic moves an Ashtanga yoga master wouldn’t attempt.
A collage of huge “art” photos of selected female body parts lined the stairs. I found the “VIP Room,” according to the red neon sign on the door, upstairs just past the cigar bar and a line of private “rooms” with red velvet curtains that served as walls. A generously proportioned woman with pasties on her nipples held the door open for me.
Here the music was more traditional. Justin Timberlake was singing about bringing sexy back, which segued into Katy Perry confessing she’d kissed a girl and liked it. The walls were lined with white drapes illuminated from below with purple spotlights. A slightly higher class of clientele sat here, in tan suede clamshell banquettes that faced the stage. More scantily clad fembots tottered around with trays of drinks. A Brazilian-looking beauty was giving a lap dance to a corpulent Middle Eastern businessman.
The guy I was looking for was sitting at a banquette with burly bodyguards on either side of him. Each wore a cheap black leather jacket and was as big as a linebacker. One had a crew cut; the other